1. Paul Buck introduces me to the community and talks more about what the role will encompass.
2. 2020 Annual Report: Our Momentum Reflects Major Industry Trends by Mike Milinkovich, the Foundation Executive Director.

With great momentum so far in 2020, and the recently announced transition to a European organization, the Foundation is very well placed to continue to make a huge impact in the open source world which is just as important as ever. As Mike mentions, with “more than 375 projects in our technology portfolio, there are likely projects and opportunities you’re not aware of that could be bringing value to your daily life as a developer or to your organization”.

Be sure to get in touch if you want to join us on this journey.

In summary, there was:

• 351 events
• 173 Developer focused events, vs 178 other types of events
• 4832 event attendees
• Taipei sees the most traffic, in terms of events and attendees

Yet data only tells some of the story. We’ll be also getting input from space stewards with insights on what worked and what didn’t ‘on the ground’ throughout the year.

What?

First, a reminder of what the community spaces program is all about. It is an initiative to open (or use existing) physical spaces for Mozillians around the world. It’s an experiment to create open spaces for people who are passionate about the open web, to collaborate with other communities, attract more talent into Mozilla, to strengthen local communities. The main hypothesis is that great things will happen. At Mozilla it was started by the WPR team in collaboration with the Community Building team in 2014, and in 2016 the Participation team took over the oversight of the project. Huge hat tip to William Quiviger who led the project until I took over in March.

Here are some hypotheses we wanted to work on in 2016:

1. We can engage more with developers in the local communities that the spaces are in, to promote what’s new in Firefox and Web technologies in general
2. We can work with more partners (organisations, companies, individuals, …) to amplify common goals
3. The local spaces strengthen the local Mozilla communities

Events

While it can be used for other purposes such as co-working, the main function of the space that we encourage is events. These can be presentations, workshops, hackathons, and so on. The goal is to promote knowledge sharing, learning, building relationships, and of course raising awareness of what Mozilla does from new and exciting technologies for the web platform going into Firefox to the issues campaigns we run to advocate for users and a better Internet.

Focus

In Q2 we teamed up with the developer marketing team to make a targeted effort to have more events in the spaces for developers. The goal was not just to introduce that audience to the latest and greatest technologies coming out of Mozilla, but to talk about the best in Web tech in general. We provided general guidelines on topics to focus on, and tips on how to run effective events. Then we introduced mentors to space stewards, and then left enough room for the magic to happen.

Metrics

So let’s jump in and look at some numbers, with a reminder that these are not for the whole year but from April onwards. Another caveat is that Jakarta has a handicap of only starting events in mid-May, so 1.5 months less than other spaces.

For reference, the full report is here. Thank you to Rizki Kelimutu for putting together this great report based on event data we logged since April.

There were 351 events in total, which is almost 1.3 events a day in the collective. This averages out between the three spaces at 117 per space. That’s is a solid rhythm but as you can see the number is not evenly distributed. Taipei comes out on top, with 55.8% of all events.

There is almost an split between developer focused events and other events 173 vs 178. Looking at the breakdown of events between developer focused vs other types, per space they mirror the total however with Taipei a little stronger on developer events and Jakarta stronger on other events.

The over time trends shown here for each space show consistency, with several peaks and troughs. They can for the most part be attributed to holidays. For example, in Manila the summer vacation saw a peak as people had time to attend events, and the start of college classes in May/June resulted in a drop. During some months Taipei was seeing close to 25-30 events per month, meaning almost one a day! The November to December rise was helped by a visit from Alex and Nina from wizardamigos.com who hosted seven events to help people code for the first time in JavaScript.

In general, the number of attendees reflects the number of events in each space. A couple of things jump out however:

• The high number of returning attendees in Taipei. People coming back time after time to the pace shows high positive sentiment and engaging content for the local tech community
• Manila attracts significantly more new attendees. This could be for a number of reasons, such as a large local community, compelling new content, a wide variety of different topics covered, or increased awareness in 2016 of the Manila space.

And here is the the space by space comparison of attendees:

What is interesting here is the more frequent ups and downs in new attendees in all spaces, but take note that it is exaggerated by the smaller range (150) than returning (300). Attracting both new and returning visitors is a challenge. At its core however, it is about forming a strong sense of community, and ensuring strong and compelling content for people to learn and grow. In general for new vs returning, more detailed exit surveys would be needed to really find out the real story behind the data.

There is one other topic that warrants a look, and that is the size of events. Here is how we classified them, in terms of number of attendees:

• >30 Large
• 10-30 Medium
• <10 Small

Let’s see how the spaces shape up. One thing to keep in mind is that the capacity when comfortably accommodating people is around 30 people, with only Taipei able to fit in more safely by removing tables. So large events would need to happen elsewhere, e.g. there is a cafe below the Jakarta space that they can rent out for bigger events.

So I would say that the main barometer for success in general is that the majority of events lie at the mid-size level. And that seems to be mostly the case in Jakarta and Taipei, with Manila fairing worse with events most months having <10 attendees.

What trends do you see in the report, and what other conclusions would you make from the data? Leave comments on this post if you have anything.

Happenings and Highlights

For me the highlight was visiting the three spaces in 2016. In January I went to Taipei to explore the idea of merging the staff space with the community space. While that didn’t happen this time, I did see up close the prolific and crucial work that volunteers do in the city and more broadly in Taiwan.

In May I visited Jakarta and Manila. The purpose was to be present for the official Jakarta opening as well as: Check the status of the space in Manila, and visit other spaces in the city to see what the co-working/incubator/Maker Space scene is like; Talk to Mozillians in both communities to gauge community health; Monitor progress so far of, and provide guidance for, the developer engagement program; Get a feel for the wider tech scene in both cities to see where Mozilla sits and how we can spread our wings and make new relationships.

I came away with a fresh appreciation of the intense dedication that a core group of volunteers in the community have towards Mozilla, the impact they have, and more context on the vibrancy of the wider tech scene they are working in.

Here are some more insights and highlights on 2016 from some of the space stewards.

Jakarta

(by Yofie Setiawan)

The Jakarta Space has been and continues to take part in campaigns for Mozilla. We are reaching the local Rust community, Developer community, and Web of Things. We took part in the Inter-Connected Community session at Mozilla Festival 2016, and we also support Mozilla’s marketing campaigns throughout the year.

Our space is limited to maximum 25 people that can fit in the space. Already we have run many events that are really inspiring for many people. The Mozilla Community Space Jakarta Launch Party of course was the most crowded event, which happened on May 2016. We invited many inspiring speakers to share knowledge and do workshops at our space.

Our strengths include that we have a good location central in Jakarta, that is easy to access. We have strong relationships with many inspiring people and communities who love to share their knowledge and ideas through Mozilla Community Space.

Some groups or communities that we’ve been working with are:

• WebVR Community
• PHP Indonesia
• Blogger
• Framework (NodeJS, Rust, etc)
• Rust Community
• Python Indonesia
• Open SUSE
• Linux Community

Our main challenge is managing human resources, especially keyholders who help as volunteers to taking care the space when there are events running. We continually adjust for efficiency, so everything will stay well managed.

We would love to see more events, especially which also relate to the ideas, vision, and mission of Mozilla.

Some categories of events that we are looking forward to are:

• Web of Things workshop
• Mozilla Tech Speaker workshop
• SuMo workshop
• Teach the Web
• WoMoz programming workshop
• Engage more activity with Open Source Community
• Rust Community
• WebVR Community

Manila

(by Bob Reyes)

The year 2016 saw a couple of firsts for the Mozilla Community Space Manila (MozSpaceMNL). Launched in August of 2014, MozSpaceMNL in 2016 became the venue of choice for new or re-established developer communities around the metropolis.

As for Mozilla Philippines Community’s part, we began conducting Introduction to Rust Programming Language events on a monthly basis. This led to the creation of a RustPH Group and the subsequent formation of a RustPH Mentors Group. Said group is now in the process of formulating a Standard Training Module for people in our locale interested in learning Rust as a second programming language.

In Summer of 2016, MozSpaceMNL played as host for the 2nd run of Maker Party for Kids (several days in the month of May). Conceptualized in 2015, the Maker Party for Kids events were able to train more than ten (10) kids aged 6 to 12 years old on the basics of HTML, CSS and JavaScript the Webmaker’s Thimble as the primary teaching tool.

Also in 2016, a couple of events related to Privacy awareness were held at the Community Space in Manila. Noteworthy was the forum to discuss the Implementing Rules & Regulations (IRR) of the Philippine Data Privacy Act of 2012 with no less than the Deputy Commissioner of the Philippine Privacy Commission as our resource speaker. This event was followed by smaller weekend pocket sessions targeting on students to be aware of issues related with data and online privacy.

Aside from MozillaPH-organized events, MozSpaceMNL also served as venue for meetups of other like-minded organizations:

• Several Code Camps co-organized with Developers Connect Philippines (DevConPH)
• Emacs Users Group Philippines Meetup
• Manila WordPress Meetup (which eventually led to the resumption of Word Camp Manila)
• Mechanical Keyboard Warriors Meetup
• Philippine Web Designers Organization Meetup
• Google Developer Group Philippines (GDGPH) Firebase Live Viewing Party
• Virtual Reality Philippines (VRPH) Meetup

In October 2016, MozSpaceMNL participated in the very first Inter-Connected Community Spaces activity during the Maker Festival held in London, England.

For 2017, we plan to continue with at least one Rust-related event per month. Co-organizing developer-related events with like-minded organizations will also continue. MozSpaceMNL’s support to other organizations by means of providing venue for their meetups and the like will still be there. We also hope for more inter-connected community spaces activities soon.

Taipei

(by Irvin Chen)

2016 is the third year of Mozilla Community Space Taipei. MozTW and more than 30 local open (source/culture/data/gov) communities together, we had host 320+ various events for 3300 people, and introduced Mozilla and our Mission to more than 600 first time visitors.

The best event in the space is “MozTW Lab” (as always), the local Mozillian’s weekly meetup. Volunteers gathering each Friday night to socialize, work, and give lightning talks on different topics including Mozilla’s latest update. This meetup had been running for 8 years, and in 2016 we had visitors from all over the world including Mark Surman, Brian King, Larissa Shapiro, William Quiviger, Max Ogden, Fa-ti Fan, 田爱娜 and many more.

Another highlight of 2016 for the Taipei space is the diversity of the events, visitors and connected communities. There are growing types of the communities, dev-rel, open culture, open source and civil society community host events, workshops, meetups, talks, hackathons, and study groups. Different types of fun almost every night happened in Community Space Taipei.

For dev-rel topics, Rust and WebVR workshops are the newest. But people also shared knowledge on JS / NodeJS, Python, Swift, React, Spark, OpenStack, C#, Clojure, Java, D3, Functional Programming, Android App… You can learn and meet community for almost every programming languages, popular or not. We also help by providing the venue for new dev communities such as “WizardAmigos CodeCamp” (local one).

For open culture and non-dev technical events, Wikipedia and OpenStreetMap use Taipei Space for regular meetup, and there are workshops and meetups on Ubuntu, openSUSE, Fedora, R, Arduino, InfoSec, students and many more. There are also many gender based technical communities and events such as WoFOSS, R Ladies, Swift Girls and PyLadies. Larissa Shapiro’s visit in January reminded us of the importance to keep the space a place of diversity and inclusion for all.

One of the most special part of the Taipei space is the events and meetups from local civil societies, open government and open culture communities. Gov. hackers and programmers played an important role in democracy development recent years in Taiwan, and Taipei Community Space had become a base for popular open communities such as Open Culture Foundation and G0V. Our keyholders also actively support events about digital human rights or internet governance from Taiwan Association for Human Rights and Citizen Congress Watch. People came to making, hacking and watching not only the technology, but also the human rights, democracy and civil society in the community space.

Wrap-up

Let’s revisit our hypotheses and see how we fared.

We can engage more with developers in the local communities that the spaces are in, to promote what’s new in Firefox and Web technologies in general.

We teamed up with developer marketing, and had a total of 173 developer-focused events since April. This was everyone from beginners to experienced developers, on a host of technologies related to the Web.

We can work with more partners (organisations, companies, individuals, …) to amplify common goals

All three spaces have built up a network of all different technology companies and organisations. They engage at different levels, from working together on projects to sharing the space to have events.

The local spaces strengthen the local Mozilla communities

The Philippines community has in recent years been one of our largest and most dynamic, most notably in the area of student engagement. However, 2016 presented a number of challenges that decreased engagement. They have reached out for support from Mozilla and have a desire to bounce back. The communities in Taiwan and and Jakarta have a strong core, and while they have the classic growth challenges that all communities have, they have been trying new things and working in different ways to strengthen the broader open source movement.

On balance, 2016 was a strong year for our community spaces. It has been shown that with the right support, and with alignment with community development and Mozilla goals, spaces can make an impact and raise Mozilla’s profile locally. Other communities around the world have been paying attention, and have requested support for the own spaces leading to an open question is how can we scale this model.

Looking beyond, we can keep momentum going and identify areas for improvement. One thing I would like to see is teams at Mozilla working more directly with the spaces on programs that can help them achieve their goals. So far in conversations I’ve been having, Developer Relations, Developer Marketing, and Connected Devices are interested in doing this. And a broader question is how can the current spaces help with our broader Firefox product goals in Asia.

Many thanks the community space stewards and keyholders who devote their free time to this. It is a great pleasure working with you, and I salute you for what you do!

One of the main asks from our community recently has been the need of more clarity on what are the most important things to do to support Mozilla right now and how to participate. With this site we have a place to answer this question that is always up-to-date.

We are launching with three activities, focused on Rust, Web Compatibility, and Test Pilot. Within each activity we explain why this is important, some goals we are trying to reach, and provide step by step instructions on how to do the activity. We want you to #mozactivate by mobilizing your community, so don’t forget to share share share!
This is a joint effort between the Participation team and other teams at Mozilla. We’ll be adding more activities to the campaign over time.

Around 150 Mozillians gathered in Singapore for education, training, skills building, and planning to bring them and their communities into the fold on the latest Participation projects. With the overarching theme being leadership training, we had two main tracks. The first was Campus Campaign, a privacy focused effort to engage students as we work more with that demographic this year. Second, and the focus of this post, is Connected Devices.

Unchartered Ground

As we built out a solid Firefox OS Participation program last year, the organisation is moving more into Connected Devices. The challenge we have is to evolve the program to fit the new direction. However, the strategy and timeline has not been finalised, so in Singapore we needed to get people excited in a broader sense on what we are doing in this next phase of computing, and see what could be done now to start hacking on things.

Sessions

We had three main sessions during the weekend. Here is a brief summary of each.

Strategy And Update

We haven’t been standing still since we announced the changes in December. During this sessions John Bernard walked us through why Mozilla is moving in this direction, how the Connected Devices team has been coming together, and how initial project proposals have been going through the ‘gating process’. The team will be structured in three parts based on the three core pillars of Core, Consumer, and Collaboration. The latter is in essence a participation team embedded, led by John. We talked about some of the early project ideas floating around, and we discussed possible uses of the foxfooding program, cunningly labelled ‘Outside the Fox’.

Dietrich Ayala then jumped in and talked about some of the platform APIs that we can use today to hook together the Web of Things. There are many ways to experiment today using existing Firefox OS devices and even Firefox desktop and mobile. The set of APIs in Firefox OS phones allow access to a wide range of sensors, enabling experimentation with physical presence detection, speech synthesis and recognition, and many types of device connectivity.

Check out the main sessions slides and Dietrich’s slides.

Research Co-Creation Workshop

Led by Rina Jensen and Jared Cole, the Participation and Connected Devices teams have been working on a project to explore the open source community and understand what makes people contribute and be part of the communities, from open hardware projects to open data projects. During the session, some of the key insights from that work were shared. The group then partook in co-creation exercises, coming up with ideas for what an ideal contributor experience. During the session, a few key research insights were shared and provided to the group as input for a co-creation exercise. The participants then spent the next hour generating ideas focused on the ideal contributor experience. Rina and Jared are going to continue working closely with the Participation and Connected Devices teams to come up with a clear set of actionable recommendations.

You can find more information and links to session materials on the session wiki page.

Designing and Planning for Participation

True participation is working on all aspects of a project, from ideation, through implementation, to launch and beyond. The purpose of this session was two-fold:

1. How can we design together an effective participation program for Connected Devices
2. What can we start working on now. We wanted attendees to share their project ideas and start setting up the infrastructure NOW.

On the first topic, we didn’t get very far on the day due to time constraints, but it is something we work on all the time of course at Mozilla. We have a good foundation built with the Firefox OS Participation project. Connected Devices is a field where we can innovate and excel, and we see a lot of excitement for all Mozillians to lead the way here. This discussion will continue.

For the second topic, we wanted to come out of the weekend with something tangible, to send a strong message that volunteer leadership is looking to the future and are ready to build things now. We heard some great ideas, and then broke out into teams to start working on them. The result is thirteen projects to get some energy behind, and I’m sure many more will arise.

Read more about the projects.

In order to accelerate the next stage of tinkering and ideation, we’ve set up a small Mozilla Reps innovation fund to hopefully set in motion a more dynamic environment in which Mozillians can feel at home in.

To Conclude

Connected Devices, Internet of Things, Web of Things. You have heard many labels for essentially is the next era of computing. At Mozilla we want to ensure that technology-wise the Web is at the forefront of this revolution, and that the values we hold dear such as privacy are central. Now more than ever, open is important. Our community leaders are ready. Are you?

Though a great deal was achieved and accomplished through the Participation Team’s collaboration with Firefox OS, a major realization was that participation can only be as successful as a team’s readiness to incorporate participation into their workflow.

Problem Statement

Firefox OS was not as open a project as many others at Mozilla, and in terms of engineering was not structured well enough to scale participation. Firefox OS was identified as an area where Participation could make a major impact and a small group from the Participation Team was directed to work closely with them to achieve their goals. After the Firefox OS focus shift in 2015 from being partner driven development to user and developer driven, participation was identified as key to success.

The Approach

The Participation Team did an audit of the current state of participation. We interviewed cross-functional team members and did research into current contributions. Without any reliable data, our best guess was that there were less than 200 contributors, with technical contributions being much less than that. Launch teams around the world had contributed in non-technical capacities since 2013, and a new community was growing in Africa around the launch of the Klif device.

Based on a number of contribution areas (coding, ports, foxfooding, …), we created a matrix where we applied different weighted criteria. Criteria such as impact on organizational goals, for example, were given a greater weighting. Our intent was to create a “participation sweet spot” where we could narrow in on the areas of participation that could provide the most value to volunteers and the organization.

The result was to focus on five areas for technical contributions to Firefox OS:

• Foxfooding
• Porting
• Gaia Development
• Add-ons
• B2GDroid

In parallel, we built out the Firefox OS Participation team, a cross-functional team from engineering, project management, marketing, research and more areas. We had a cadence of weekly meetings, and communicated also on IRC and on an email list. A crucial meeting was a planning meeting in Paris in September, 2015, where we finalized details of the plan to start executing on.

The Firefox OS Participation Hub

As planning progressed, it became clear that a focal point for all activities would be the Firefox OS Participation Hub, a website for technical contributors to gather. The purpose was two-fold:

1. To showcase and track technical contributions to Firefox OS. We would list ways to get involved, in multiple areas, but focusing on the “sweet spot” areas we had identified. The idea was not to duplicate existing content, but to gather it all in one place.
2. To facilitate foxfooding, a place where users could go to get builds for their device and register their device. The more people using and testing Firefox OS, the better the product could become.

The Hub came to life in early November.

Challenges

There were a number of challenges that we faced along the way.

• Participation requires a large cultural shift, and cannot happen overnight. Mozilla is an open and open source organization, but because of market pressures and other factors Firefox OS was not a participatory project.
• One learning was that we should have embedded the program deeper in the Firefox OS organization earlier, doing more awareness building. This would have mitigated an issue where beyond the core Firefox OS Participation team, it was hard getting the attention of other Firefox OS team members.
• Timing is always hard to get right, because there will always be individual and team priorities and deliverables not directly related that will take precedence. During the program rollout, we were made acutely aware of this coming up the release of Firefox OS 2.5.

For participation to really take hold and succeed, broader organizational and structural changes are needed. Making participation part of deliverables will go some way to achieving this.

Achievements

Despite the challenges mentioned above, the Firefox OS Participation team managed to accomplish a great deal in less than six months:

• we brought all key participation stakeholders on the Firefox OS team together and drafted a unified vision and strategy for participation
• we launched the Firefox OS Participation Hub, the first of its kind to learn about contribution opportunities and download latest Firefox OS builds
• we formed a “Porting Working Group” focused on porting Firefox OS to key devices identified, and enabling volunteers to port to more devices
• we distributed more than 500 foxfooding devices in more than 40 countries
• the “Mika Project” explored a new to engage with, recognize and retain foxfooders through gamification – The “Save Mika!” challenge will be rolling out 2016Q1

Moving Forward

Indeed, participation will be a major focus for Connected Devices in 2016. Participation can and will have a big impact on helping teams solve problems, do work in areas they need help with and achieve new levels of success. To be sure, before a major participation initiative can be successful, the team needs to be set-up for success 4 major components:

1. Managerial buy-in. “It’s important to have permission to have participation in your work”. Going one step further, it needs to be part of day-to-day deliverables.
2. Are there tools open? Do you have a process for bug triaging and mentorship? Is there good and easily discoverable documentation?
3. Do they have an onboarding system in place for new team members (staff and volunteers)?
4. Measurement. How can we systematically and reliably measure contributions, over time, to detect trends to act upon to maintain a healthy project? Some measurements are in place, but we need more.

We put Participation on the map for Firefox OS and as announced at Mozlando, the Connected Devices team will be doubling down its efforts to design for participation and work in the open.

We are excited about the challenges and opportunities ahead of us, and we can’t wait to provide regular updates on our progress with everyone. So as we enter the new year, please make sure to follow us on Discourse, Twitter, and Facebook for latest news and updates.

2016, here we come!

We are really excited to let you know that next week we will be launching a renewed program to support Firefox OS Participation, and we want to give you a sneak peek of what’s coming.

As a way to unify all participation opportunities we will be launching the Firefox OS Participation Hub as a central site where you can discover how to get involved with Firefox OS and install the latest version on your device. The central contribution areas that the hub will be showcasing are Foxfooding (our take on dogfooding), ports to Android and other devices, b2gDroid, Gaia development, and Firefox OS add-ons. The goal is not to displace other sources of information, but to make it more accessible from a central location.

If you have a compatible device (they will be listed on the Hub), we want you to be able to experience, test and hack the latest version of Firefox OS (2.5) along with all the new features that are coming. Just by becoming a Foxfooder, you are helping shape the future of Firefox OS, and deeper opportunities will surface –  from filing bugs, to joining discussions, to developing for the platform and on top of it. Community participation is key in this new phase.

In preparation for launch, get your Flame devices ready. If you don’t have one, there will be a limited number of new Foxfooding devices that you can apply for if you commit to being a regular user. We’ll also be showcasing exciting ports for some existing Android devices on the market. We have opened a new discourse category that will be the central place for discussions about this program, if you are interested we recommend you to log in with your Mozillian account and select “Watching” from the top right blue bubble so you can get email notifications about everything that is happening there.

This truly has been a team effort. We pulled in members from engineering, developer relations, engagement, legal, research, metrics, and other teams who are fully invested in the open evolution of Firefox OS. Join us and you can play an important role in it’s success.

Join the discussion.

For more context, please read these other posts from some of my team members.

• David Tenser – Brace for impact (in a good way!)
• Emma Irwin – Mozilla Community Education in 2015
• Rosana Ardila – Expanding the scope of the Mozilla Reps program

Where Does Regional Fit?

In a very broad sense, the Regional team will focus on the health of our local communities on the ground. Our communities, whether they be country-based (e.g. Mozilla Philippines) or a broader region (e.g. Mozilla Hispano) touch all parts of the globe. They range from small to large. While many Mozillians work individually and identify as part of a functional team, many more identify as part of a regional team. They are not mutually exclusive of course.

Why are they important?

• People: They enable people to connect from all walks of life behind a common mission. There is a sense of camaraderie, sharing, and fun.
• Language: l10n teams still have a crucial role in ensuring our products are localised, our product pages are translated, and our mission and the web ecosystem is understood by as many people on the planet as possible. There is still more work to do to make everything we do open to more languages.
• Culture: Understanding cultural norms is crucial for the organisation to adapt and apply our mission everywhere. Different cultures help shape and change Mozilla, for the better.
• Diversity: Input and opportunities for everyone give everything we do a rich foundation. It is reflected in our products, and in the way we work.

And there are more reasons. Regional communities have sprung up organically and are structured in many different ways. Mozilla India and Mozilla Hispano have working groups. In the Philippines, a Rep leads a functional area in the community such as localization, developer relations, FSA, education and women empowerment. Many have a strong online presence, with blogs, photo streams, social channels, and more. Some have community spaces for co-working and events. Find the community near you on our listings at mozilla.org.

Goals

The focus for 2015 and beyond will be:

• Support our communities to be set up for success. This is of course catch-all, but worth calling out explicitly. Community Health is the foundation from which everything else follows.
• Continue aligning communities towards product and functional impact. Today, our products such as Firefox and Firefox OS are our primary levers for carrying out our mission. They give us influence. I think in the last few years, via events such as Summits, brownbags, Mozillians email, and other channels we have done a good job of reminding people what work will make the biggest impact.
• Support functional teams: How can Mozillians be more embedded in teams in the organisation? One way is via a number of pilots we’ll be doing throughout the year, matching volunteers to projects that will help move things forward.
• Leadership: Not just in the sense of community leaders, but how can we empower all Mozillians to be leaders. This could mean a project leader, a functional lead, an events lead, a policy lead, a recruitment lead, and so on. Beyond Mozilla, how can we help Mozillians be leaders in other parts of their lives? The Reps program will be focusing on leadership this year and we will be working closely together.
• Support: How can help in structuring communities for optimal impact? What processes can we put in place to detect discord in communities earlier and act before it gets out of hand.
• Reconnect: Communications are crucial. We want to hear your ideas what you are doing, and we as regional community managers want to communicate plans, priorities and pointers with you.

The Team

Our regional sub-team is myself (EMEA), Gen Kanai (Asia), and Guillermo Movia (LATAM). If you live in other parts of the world, we have you covered as well. William Quiviger, who has substantial regional community building experience, will be providing guidance and support. As we proceed we will be evaluating the need for other resources.

How Can You Help?

You can help primarily by becoming more involved in your local community. Together we are stronger. Even if that means giving constructive criticism to help the community adapt and grow. As outlined above, some of our goals are not fully defined. Help us define them. Start conversations within your community on what they all mean to you. Coming very soon, we will be sending out a survey with a focus on finding out more about our regional communities. Please fill it out to help us get a better understanding of how we can support you.

The first was back in 2006 when I first contracted for Mozilla writing an add-on. Chris was product managing the add-on and we were on an early call with others trying to wrap up and get a first version out the door. I forget the details, but the general tone of the conversation changed for me when Chris said something to the effect of “let’s ship something we are proud of and that users will love”. Up until that time I had volunteered for many years for Mozilla with a carefree attitude. This was Chris’ way of saying that what we are doing is important, and we have to do it well. After that I contracted on other projects but also put in a lot of volunteer time. It never lost the fun aspect, but I knew what we were doing was serious and making an impact.

Fast forward to 2010, to the Mozilla Balkans Meeting in Ljubljana. We gathered in the center of the city at a typical Slovenian ‘gostilna’ (restaurant) and were told a special guest was coming. Everyone was expecting a famous Balkans singer. Instead our brand new CEO at that time Gary Kovacs walked in, accompanied by Chris and a few others. After all the excitement, we settled down to eat and I was sitting beside Chris. We talked about many things, but throughout he was passionate and sharing his big ideas both for what I was working on and the opportunities that Mozilla had moving forward. Every encounter with Chris was a piece of advice, inspiration, a big idea or all wrapped up in one.

Somehow I feel the best Chris Beard stories are to come.

Rosana’s role in Reps will be to help the program evolve to meet the new challenges that constantly arise at Mozilla. She will assist in defining strategies to grow and develop the program, including a robust leadership structure, and measure its impact on community health and organizational goals. For example for our 2014 goal of scaling our contributor base by 10x, Reps can have a crucial role in this. Rosana will also be hands-on in some day to day work ensuring that the processes and documentation we’ve put in place continue to serve effectively.

My role has evolved to oversee a few of the programs in Contributor Engagement (another post to follow on that), but I will still be working very closely with Rosana in Reps.

Oh, and Long Live The Queen! (fun)

Related articles

• Community growth in 2013: we’re ready for 2014
• Reps Leads Meetup Summary

2014

Our 2014 goal is simple:

Mozilla Reps in 2014 are more engaged, empowered and enabled.

What Happened?

We started day one with a question to attendees to frame the weekend:

How can we improve the Reps program to better enable Mozilla Communities that have impact?

This was the measure for everything we would do for the rest of the time. The two primary topic areas on day one were program structure / goals, and leadership. We broke into sub-groups with the remit of coming up with the bottlenecks and problems in these areas. Solutions were for other sessions. In calling out what we felt were important issues, we could provide focus for the rest of the weekend. We grouped items into three different categories that we felt caught all we wanted to capture – Council and Peers, Mentors, Reps.

Mixed through day one were other sessions. Prefaced by Michelle talking about Teach The Web/Webmaker plans for the year and how Reps can support, we had a general discussion about events. With an average of 3 daily globally, events are central to the program, and will continue to evolve to meet the needs of everyone at Mozilla. Tristan Nitot came in to talk about TRIBE and personal development. Kate Naszradi dialed in really early California time to give us an update on the fast growing Firefox Student Ambassadors Program. Then Mary Colvig and David Boswell to discuss the topic ‘Enable Communities that have Impact’, aka One Million Mozillians. How we are going to scale by 10x in 2014. To round out the day we did a recap and there were mixed feelings on what we achieved, which fed into a new framework for day two.

For day two, we basically threw out the written schedule, and decided to hack. There was a hunger for finding solutions to the issues we identified on day one and starting to fix them. Out of the breakouts we had came a Trello board with specific tasks.

Also on day two: Pete Scanlon dropped in for a discussion on Engagement, the team’s role in 2014 Mozilla goals, and how Reps fit in and can make an impact. We had a few more discussions on important topics that bubbled up such as the Reps application process. We collaborated. We argued. We laughed.

Huge thanks to Henrik Mitsch who did a fantastic job as facilitator over the weekend. Without him it would have been chaos!

Tasks

Here are some of the important topics that surfaced:

• Program Purpose
• Visibility of Council
• Council Accountability
• Council On-boarding
• Council and Budget
• Leadership
• Mentors Scaling
• Mentors Training
• Reps Portal
• Reps Activity

For these and other buckets, we brainstormed solutions and then broke them down to tasks. For sure, there is a lot of work to do, but it can be done. One of the challenges coming out of previous ReMo work events was implemention of work items. There were various reasons for this, and we are coming up with new work models to fix this. Primarily tasked are the folks at the meeting but we will be looking to mentors and all Reps for help.

What Next?

The program purpose is clear and articulated on the wiki, but the scope and mechanisms for working with us have perhaps not been clear. We will fix that, to make it more accessible. Thanks to Michelle for writing a great case-study of Webmaker working with Reps. After we prioritise tasks, we’ll be sharing out with everyone for feedback. We all have a stake in Mozilla Reps.

We can help your team, your community, you. We’ll be telling you how. But this is a two-way street. Tell us how we can support you.

Very soon I will have some more exciting Reps news for you. Watch this space.

Related articles

• Contribute/Working Groups
• Community growth in 2013: we’re ready for 2014
• A great Community Builders meetup
• How the Mozilla Reps Portal grew in 2013
• ReMo/SIGs/Webmaker

Italy

Starting with the last country out of the gate in 2014, the Italian community moved quickly on tight deadlines and rose to the occasion. Led my longtime Mozillian Francesco Lodolo, they participated in sales training with Telecom Italia (TIM), led promotional activities, and celebrated the coming of Firefox OS. Kudos to Carlo Frinolli in Rome for pulling off some great events during the debut weekend. First up was a street promotion to raise awareness outside a busy TIM store. Then there was a hackathon to raise awareness among web developers and get more apps, followed later by a party for everyone.

I’m looking forward to seeing what else we can pull off together in 2014.

More Italy Links

• Wired Italy article – Nightingale, Mozilla: “Con Firefox OS daremo il Web a tutti”
• Tutto su Firefox OS – Another Wired article
• TIM press release
• Firefox OS Celebration: The Italian Launch Hackathon
• What the Fox say? – Firefox OS Flashmob (video)
• il lancio in un flash (mob)! (pictures)

Greece

Many communities have already been working on Firefox OS for months beforehand, including Italy and Greece when 25+ App Days were held around the world in January. Greece put together a strong team, with a mix of experienced Mozillians and relatively new faces to tackle all Go To Market (GTM) activities (Comms, Dev Outreach, Social Media, Marketing, and Sales Training). In a collaboration between Cosmote, Mozilla, and other partners, Greece put on another app day in Athens just after launch. It was a day of hacking, talking about Firefox OS, and celebrating. The community was once again out in force helping in every way they could.

The team is now actively working with Cosmote to find other opportunities to amplify the Firefox OS message in the new year.

More Greece Links

• GERMANOS – Xmas Alcatel One Touch Fire (TV ad)
• App Day Articles – in.gr | H KA?HMEPINH | Pathfinder
• Athens App Days 2013 photos – Set 1 | Set 2 | Set 3
• App Days English Cosmote Press Release
• Firefox OS Hellas

Apps Selection

Serbia and Montenegro

Telenor Srbija and Telenor Montenegro were early to embrace Firefox OS both in engaging with developers and with working with our community. Months before release they were running competitions to get apps into marketplace. As a result, Serbia has a high number of quality apps relevant to the local market. The community has been active in sales training, social media, support, and more.

Not resting on their laurels, the team plan to do a series of events into the New Year. First up was a street action in Subotica. By the numbers: 25 Mozillians, 1300+ pictures taken, 2500 shares + 60000 views (Faceboook competition page), 8+ hours on the street, 1 street mural, and 1 Fox.

More Serbia / Montengro Links

• Article in Telenor magazine
• Prvi telefon sa Firefox operativnim sistemom u Telenoru
• Sportal.rs aplikacija i na mobilnim telefonima sa Firefox OS u ponudi Telenora
• Launch day pictures at Telenor – Set 1 | Set 2
• Pictures: On the street in Subotica – Set 1 | Set 2

Apps Selection

• Beoprevoz: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/beoprevoz/
• TrippyTap: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/trippytap
• B92: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/b92
• Srickie: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/srickie
• Meet Serbia: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/meet-serbia
• Kursna lista: https://marketplace.firefox.com/app/kursna-lista

Hungary

Last but certainly not least is Hungary. Hungary was in the unique position of being a market with two carriers releasing Firefox OS – T-Mobile and Telenor. Doing double duty in some areas, our community rose to the occasion and indeed was the most active community of all judging by number of events alone. The tireless efforts in this area were led by Marketing Lead Kami, with support from the rest of the team in all the other GTM focus areas. Around launch time there were HQ Days, In-store events, Phone conferences, and a concerted effort to win the hearts and minds of local developers which culminated in a workshop on 23 November.

And we’re not finished yet. Hungary will keep going in 2014. At the end of January, watch out for a big event!

More Hungary Links

• Telekom in shop event, Allee , Budapest (pictures)
• Developer Workshop, Budapest (pictures)
• HVG: Firefox top phone is coming!
• HWSW: Firefox phone is available at Telenor
• IT Cafe: Phone with Firefox OS is available at two Hungarian provider
• Gamechannel: Alcatel phone with Firefox OS is available with preferential price
• Mobilaréna: Firefox OS phones from Telekom
• IT Business: First Firefox OS device is coming
• Telekom HQ Day (pictures)
• Okostelefon Akadémia 4.0 – Keresés (video)
• Web Konferencia 2013 @ Óbudai Egyetem (video)

Apps Selection

• StockExShadow
• MemoryGame FC
• Pizzaloc
• Where is the red
• Caelum

If you have read this far, please take a moment to catch your breath and reflect on all the great work that Mozillians have done. I really couldn’t cover everything here, but I hope it gives you some idea of the passion and dedication of our communities. Look for more in 2014. Mozilla is mobile and we’re in this for the long haul. This was just the beginning.

Related articles

• Firefox OS devices now available in 13 countries
• Italy becomes Firefox OS’ next target as Telecom Italia begins selling One Touch Fire
• Mozilla and its Firefox OS partners launch Open Web Device Compliance Review Board

Mozilla Slovenia wrote about it [sl]:

http://www.mozilla.si/obiscite-nas-v-nasih-prostorih/

Nino wrote about it:

http://blog.elnino.si/post/61428859498/bright-future-ahead-of-me-and-mozilla-slovenia

From a community perspective, this gives us a physical home where we can lay a foundation and grow further. We’ve grown this year from 4 active members to about 15, and while we are spread out across the country it is useful to have a place where people can drop in any time to work. It is also great for events. The desk space is small, but if we grow locally and more people come in to work, I see that as a good problem to have and we’ll scale up.

From a personal perspective, it gives me a chance to get out of my home office and get social and collaborative. Not only will there be Mozillians there, but folks working on many other projects in the the local and global tech scene.

Kudos to Nino and Startup Novo mesto for pulling this off, I’m looking forward to working with everyone.

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• mozillians.org profiles are now even more awesome
• Milestone: Mozilla Antarctica brings community to all 7 continents
• Firefox OS in Colombia – The Launch Team

How does this format (Storify) work for you? Would you like to see more stories like this about Mozilla events? Are there any other sharing tools you would recommend?

Among the many takeaways, the main one for me is that with a little more support, there is nothing preventing strong Mozilla communities growing there.

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It was a weekend of yellow vests, paella, brainstorming, planning, and much more. I’m confident that Mozilla Reps has a bright future after being in the company of such passionate and talented people from all over the globe.

Related articles

• ReMo/Council/ReMo Camp 2013
• Taking Ownership
• Milestone: Mozilla Antarctica brings community to all 7 continents

• Oslo MozCafe, Monday 19 August (Reps Event | Facebook Event)
• Stockholm MozCafe, Thursday 22 August (Reps Event | Facebook Event)