What got shipped

from the Reps and Regional Communities Team

Executive summary

Our two objectives for 2016 were:

1. A focus set of relevant training and learning opportunities for mobilizers are systematized and they regularly access these opportunities to be more effective in their contributions and as a result providing more impact to Mozilla’s main initiatives.
2. Reps is the program for most core volunteers where many communities feel their voice represented and influencing the organization, and where mozillians join to be more aligned, grow their skills and be more impactful in mobilizing others.

During 2016, the Reps and Regional communities team delivered:

• A coaching training material to systematize training and coaching support to core mobilizers and communities, starting to be completely volunteer-driven in 2017.
• An initial Leadership toolkit tailored to invest on the main identified skills our core mobilizers need to support Mozilla's focus initiatives and areas.
• Five in-person community gatherings in our top focus regions (Brazil, India, Europe, Arabic and Mexico) to test, iterate and deliver these coaching and leadership opportunities to key core mobilizers, as well as document and systematize this effort to allow volunteer to run their own local ones by themselves in 2017.
• Support the creation (and regular update) of Activate Mozilla, a site to summarize the main focus areas for Mozilla (Rust, Servo, Test Pilot, WebVR, Internet Issues...) and how to provide value through activities co-created with functional partners.
• Clear alignment, re-activation and impact delivery from the five focus communities, re-energizing and providing value to organization goals with Activate Mozilla activities during 2016 and helping them to come up with aligned plans for 2017 to support focus projects, including future partnerships with local organizations.
• Alignment and impact delivery from regional communities around the world, with our Reps mobilizing almost 150 activities and events in more than 23 countries in the last 4 months supporting Test Pilot, Webcompat, Rust, Addons and E10s 2016 team goals.
• A big update to Mozilla Reps (RepsNext) to evolve the program by supporting all these learning opportunities and becoming the main alignment, leadership, mobilizing and backbone force at the volunteer community (improving internal processes, mentors, coaching and regional representation/support).
• Expand the support to our core contributors communications by enabling a discussion channel for NDA volunteers and staff and keeping core mobilizers in the loop with the organization communications, direction and encouraging conversations.
• 100% increase in the positive sentiment about Reps program and Participation from our core mobilizers, as well as a very positive re-activation, engagement and alignment with 35 local communities thanks to Reps Regional Coaches.

The team

• Guillermo Movia - Coaching toolkit and Community Gatherings content and facilitation.
• Brian King - Reps evolution, Activate Mozilla, Community Gatherings facilitation.
• Francisco Picolini - Community Gatherings logistics, Reps events.
• Emma Irwin - Leadership toolkit.
• Konstantina Papadea - Reps Evolution, Community Gatherings facilitation.
• Rizki Kelimutu - Reps evolution.
• Subhashish Panigrahi - India Community Gathering and follow-up.
• Ruben Martin - Team coordination and strategy, Reps Evolution, Community Gatherings facilitation.
• The Mozilla Reps Council - Reps evolution.
• Reps Regional Coaches - Reps evolution, Activate Mozilla regional support.
• Reps Mentors/Coaches - Coaching toolkit, Reps evolution.
• Reps Review Team - Reps Evolution.
• Participation Systems - Technical support team for Activate Mozilla, Leadership toolkit, Reps Portal and Mozilla Discourse.

Release notes

December 30, 2016 (Q4HB4)

• The Reps Review Team managed to reduce the budget approval time by 30%, this means that now it's easier than ever for volunteers to request resources to support their activities.
• Data from our last community survey shows that in the past 6 months we had a 100% increase in the positive sentiment about Reps program and Participation from our core mobilizers.
• The coaching training material is available for anyone to use and will enable to systematize coaching training and be volunteer-driven thanks to the first cohort of new coaches we trained.
• The Leadership Toolkit has now generated 13 new workshops and has a solid group of core contributors with a strong background developing and testing the material.

December 2, 2016 (Q4HB3)

• The documentation about the Reps program Resources track is now online, explaining how we systematized how we provide resources to our core mobilizers, structure, accountability and processes.
• Communities have now a standard mechanism to request local swag for MozActivate campaign activities.
• Following the work during this year Arabic Community gathering, now the community has a clear roadmap, aligned activities and accountability.
• The same way, after the Mexico Community Gathering, now the community has aligned plans, activities and accountability in place.
• An initial version of the Leadership Toolkit website has been put online.
• A toolkit on how to organize and run a Community Gathering have been published, giving any community a structured way to run these gathering on their own. This contains all the learnings from the gathering we have been running in 2016.
• We now have a discussion channel for NDA volunteers and staff to discuss about topics that should be internal-only.

November 11, 2016 (Q4HB2)

• We held the Mexico Community Gathering in Mexico City, with a clear focus on reactivating the community, solving conflicts and aligning with the focus priorities.
• 10 existing Reps Mentors began the new coaching training, expanding this way our coaching efforts to the existing mentor group in an effort to refresh and improve their skills.
• At least 35 local communities showed a very positive sentiment about the re-activation, alignment and support from the Reps Regional Coaches.

October 21, 2016 (Q4HB1)

• There is now a wiki page where the budget allocation of the Reps program is explained each quarter, a transparency effort and also a way to signal Reps about the priority areas at Mozilla.
• Reps Regional Coaches were provided with training on coaching and conflict resolution an identified need to better perform in their work with communities.
• The Arabic Community Gathering took place in Casablanca, Morocco, reactivating, aligning and improving the community health.
• The plan for systematizing coaching training was presented with the initial learnings from the work we have done so far.

September 23, 2016 (Q3HB3)

• The European Community Gathering took place, with special focus on reactivating communities and align with the Copyright campaign.
• The first cohort of Reps Coaches started their work onboarding new Reps.
• Reps Regional Coaches started their work meeting with all Mozilla local communities as a way to understand their current status, needs and align them.
• The new Reps Review Team started to operate as an administrative body to review and approve the resource requests from the community and align the allocation with the current priorities. This body is accountable and overseen by the Reps Council.

August 26, 2016 (Q3HB2)

• We provided training to the new Reps coaches as an evolution to the mentor role and a way to empower our core mobilizers.
• The India Community Gathering took place, with a clear focus on restructuring and alignment with Mozilla's current goals
• Activate Mozilla campaign initial launch to provide core mobilizers a clear list of priorities and activities to mobilize in their local communities.