Mobilizer experiment - WebVR India
Hello Reps and Mozillians,
As most of you know, I was part of the mobiliser experiments team, representing the WebVR India community, which started a couple of months back. The aim of this experiment was to enhance community engagements in order to effectively move towards what’s most important, in terms of the technology !
Here are the results of the experiment:
Research phase
1. What was done?
The aim of the research phase was to learn about the community in general, it’s people, their interests, and likes and dislikes in terms of the community.
Hence, for this purpose, a lot of people from the community were interviewed. These people were a diverse group who varied in terms of region of the country, age group, profession as well as gender.
2. What was learnt about the technology in my area?
The members of the community felt the following about WebVR:
i. Easy to use, just needs HTML knowledge
ii. Open source: Can learn from existing projects
iii. Good prospect in the future
iv. Technology supported by Mozilla
v. Local people already in the group
vi. Students can add something to their technology stack, resume and see it as a career opportunity.
vii. Professionals can explore professional opportunities and applications
3. What was learnt in terms of mobilizing the community?
i. Better tech support from community (Especially for beginners) is needed
ii. Experts support for people who want to help others is needed
iii. Slack is not providing help as beginners feel intimidated by the supposedly expert conversations there
iv. Lack of exposure/recognition of individual efforts. This is leading to disengagement
v. Training is expected in terms of Webinars or curriculum workshops
vi. Lack of Updates about the technology
vii. Not very community feeling, mostly individual contributions
First iteration
1. What was done?
i. Five expert WebVR contributors were identified to be committed to support the community every week
ii. There was a clear communication about where to go if you have questions to ask
2. What was learnt about the technology in my area?
i. The community is currently not spending enough time working on code.
ii. They are mostly interested in knowing about the technology (theory in general)
iii. However, beginners who are finding difficulties wished to have Q/A system which is a little less intimidating than Stack Overflow and slack. Hence, the following local community specific forum was set up: https://github.com/webvr-india/aframevr-forum
3. What was learnt in terms of mobilizing the community?
i. It was observed that most people are not in the coding mode for now. They want to attend webinars, watch tutorials, attend talks or live workshops instead of reading out the documentation on aframe.io
ii. Hence, the aframe forum although helpful, failed to increase in the communication and involvement within the local community.
Second iteration
1. What was done?
i. Superstars telegram group was proposed to be dissolved
ii. Encourage discussions in the WebVR India telegram group
iii. Form a core team
iv. Set up guidelines for the community
v. Set up criteria to be part of the core team
2. What was learnt about the technology in my area?
People wanted to explore both the technology themselves as well as help others who are new
3. What was learnt in terms of mobilizing the community?
i. Core teams form a hierarchical structure and people have a bad feeling that they are led by others
ii. They would like to retain a separate group since it’s the most efficient way to get a community decision into actionable state
Third iteration
1. What was done?
i. The superstars group was retained
ii. However, it’s name was changed to WebVR India Mobilisers and their function was specified and documented to suit the name
iii. Anyone from the WebVR India community can join the mobilisers group based on their interest
2. What was learnt about the technology in my area?
The members have re-started experimenting with the technology, thanks to the revived communication in the community apart from the vacation season
3. What was learnt in terms of mobilizing the community?
People have a good community feeling and now participate actively in conversations and problem solving.
I had a really good time during this experiment as I got to know a lot about communities, people and the technology. Thankyou @nukeador for this opportunity, looking forward to working on more awesome projects !
