Community/Start building your local community

Draft

Step 1 : Identify in which step you are

Is there a community in your country ? Check this page for that! https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contact/communities/

• If yes, try to contact them and check who you can help them and in which area you can contribute. There are many ways to contribute to Mozilla and here a link to know more about https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/contribute/
• If not, try to find Mozillians or contact communities in your region or in countries near to you and here some ways to start mainwhile.

Step 2 : what's Mozilla? How and where can I contribute ?

It's very important to understand what is the Mozilla Project and why you want to start a community in your country to contribute to this project.
Our website is our main resources to know more about the project, don't hesitate to check it and visit the links: https://www.mozilla.org
Here is a very interesting presentation made by Gauthamraj to give you a better idea about it. http://gautha91.github.io/
We also added here some of the most frequent questions that people can ask :)

• Is Mozilla all about coding ?
  • No there a bunch of non-technical contribution opportunities such as  : SUMO, QA, Affiliates, Localization, visual Design, Education (Webmaker) etc
• Benefits around contributing/supporting Mozilla, to be more specific, are there rewards for contributions? This could probably phrase to why should I contribute
  • We do give swag from time to time though some great rewards as a contributor could be noted as:
    • Synergies: you get peer support from highly qualified mozillians to help/give feedback on personal stuff you are working on that relate with Mozilla
    • Career (Resume): Mozilla is a real life organization with actual projects and problems for you to get involved with and solve which builds your experience in your field of profession
    • Interact and meet with really smart and creative people: who work and contribute at Mozilla
    • Mentorship: great thing about Mozilla, we don’t lock you out over lack of experience, if you feel you can do something with some help, you’ll be right at home over here with great mentors ready to help when you get stuck
• Can Mozilla be supported through functional areas created and managed by local contributors?
  • Great way to diversify and support local contributors. It’s encouraged to work together with the already existing functional areas when coordinating local activities.

Step 3 : have more people with you!

Mozilla at it first definition is a community of people. We believe that together the web will be better so don't hesitate to make calls to make others join you to this cause.

• There are many ways for that:
  • If you are a student:
    • Organize a mozilla meeting in you university club.
  • Resources that you can use: presentations, videos ..
  • Tell your friends about the project
  • Tell your teachers about the project
  • Booths at IT events that your university organize

• If you are not a student:
  • Contact open source and free software community to spread the word about you and your wish to start a mozilla community.
  • Booths at IT events of other free software community or national IT days.

• Both cases
  • Share on you social media channel the word about Mozilla
  • Create a facebook page , a twitter account ... about the community. Keep in mind that those channels will be probably used later, so keep the name related to your community and the passes generic (preferred to create a dedicated email account for that and not use your personal email)
  • Ask Mozilla communities in your region to talk about your wish and to clearly put your contact so people can reach you very easily.
  • Join IRC channel (it's the main communication way for Mozillians) more details here...

Step 4 : Once you have some people with you

• Work on a website for your community https://wiki.mozilla.org/MCS
• Create an IRC channel for your community https://wiki.mozilla.org/IRC

Random Ideas:

• Clearly talk about the reps program. It's not for the starters but for Mozilla experts.
• Mozillian Starter Pack: it's a pack dedicated to people who want to start a community in there country. No need to be a rep to have it but it aims to help those people to make small events to spread the word about Mozilla and get in touch with new contributors to start a community in there country/town..
  • Content:
    • Some swags: pens, stickers, pins
    • Booth cover
    • 5 firefox tshirts
    • Borchures about Mozilla