Reps/Webinar/2017-04-04

Warning: With effect from 1st September 2023, the Mozilla Reps program was closed and activities ended.

This page contains outdated information. This workflow has been replaced by a Teachable course. If you are interested in the new workflow, read the Teachable page

Information

Date: 2017-04-04

Stream: https://air.mozilla.org/reps-webinar-2017-04-04/

Etherpad: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/Reps-Webinar-March-2017

Hosts

• Michael Kohler, Mozilla Reps Council member and moderator for this Webinar
• Konstantina Papadea, Mozilla Reps Community Manager
• Alex Lakatos (Laka), Mozilla Reps Council member

Notes

These notes are from our planning doc, so please check the recording for the full information. This is not a literal transcript.

Reps Program Review

• Created in 2012
• Goals:
  • Volunteer-driven program
  • Better structures to empower Mozillians who want to dive deeper
  • Resources infrastructure
  • Visibility into global activities
  • Accountability
  • Value Proposition for Reps
• Reps program as mobilizer program / RepsNext
  • Support and grow communities
  • Create bridges within and around the community

The Reps program consists of Mozillians with a diverse skillset, from technical to non-technical. For all of them the same applies: when joining the program, a Mozilla Rep agrees to take on the following responsibilities:

• finding and connecting new talent with Mozilla projects
• growing in their mobilizing and coaching skills
• supporting their local communities and the rest of the organization to reach their goals and be more effective and
• creating collaborations with other local communities in an effort to expand Mozilla’s mission and Mozilla’s outreach in the open source ecosystem

Remember, as a Rep you are responsible to help your community. This is in no way a title that gives you a higher rank than anyone else. This also includes coordinating with other local Reps as well as globally to share your experience with other Reps.

Examples of how this works in practice:

• Srushtika and Ram have created a WebVR community in India and are inspiring Reps all over the world to invest their mobilizing efforts in their community towards WebVR. There was a need to have a community around WebVR and now they are working on spreading their knowledge to other regions as well. This is exactly what we need, Reps stepping up, creating something that hasn’t existed before and drive it. Of course these efforts need to be new and it’s not recommended to do the same for already existing communities. We don’t want to duplicate efforts.
• Reps all over the world are advocating Mozilla’s mission in their personal lives, at events globally as well as in their country and online, supporting Reps globally with what works in their countries. Reps is a big community to teach and learn from eachother.
• Reps have guided their communities in the past years since the existence of the program, one example is the yearbook we created
• Reps are contributing to the Mozilla Activate Campaign by mobilizing their community to run events for these impactful topics
• Most Regional Coaches are Reps and are helping local communities to align and development themselves as well as surfaces local problems and needs to a broader audience
• The Reps Council is highly involved in strategic discussions with the Open Innovation / Participation Team

Main points to take away

• Reps is a program built by volunteers, for volunteers.
• Main focus is to support and develop your community
• Main communication channels
• Discourse (please make sure you are not missing any posts there, you can set the category to “Watching” to get emails for new posts)
• Telegram (you can ask any Rep or Council to add you once you have signed your NDA and created your Reps profile)
• Reps Blog & Reps Newsletter
• Twitter (new announcements for things to check out)
• ReMo/Communication lists all channels and their purpose
• If you have any problems or suspect any problems coming up in your community, please contact the Reps Council immediately and we can help out. You can also find resources for Conflict Resolution.

Onboarding Period: The First 3 months

Now let’s get our hands dirty and find out what the next 3 months are going to look like. Please note that “onboarding” in the picture below is more like the “application” step. You are currently in the onboarding phase in the blue circle.

4 things to watch out for:

• Mentoring
• SOPs - documentation
• Your first activity
• Reporting

There will be a short evaluation of your activities at the end of the orientation period. Once you leave the orientation period, your application will be closed and you are officially a Mozilla Rep.

Mentoring As a self-sustaining program, the program was envisioned where Reps are mentored on the in-and-outs of the programs by other Reps, known as mentors. Mentoring is still a crucial part of the program, but because of scaling issues with mentors we are trying something different this time. You, this cohort, will be mentored by the Council until we will find you a Coach.

How will this look like in practice?

• The Council is there for you for all questions you might have
• The Council is going to ask you to create a plan for the next few months which you will get feedback on
• For any questions you could also directly contact other mentors and Reps through the Reps telegram channel or the Discourse category

Coaching

We are currently working on a Coaching Training to have more Coaches in the program. Our goal is to have a coach for every Rep for a specified amount of time and then the Coach is switched (if desired). This enables maximum personal growth. As of now, we unfortunately can’t scale this well enough, therefore you will be coached by the Reps Council on a needs-to-be basis. We know that this is not perfect and doesn’t nurture your potential, but we will give our best to assign you a real Coach as soon as possible.

Administration

Before the fun stuff starts, you’ll need to follow some necessary administration steps to get setup for action.

• After hearing the scope of the Reps program and your responsibilities, think about these and decide if you still want to be a Mozilla Rep (it’s okay if you don’t, no worries!). Please write a quick response in your application bug with your decision.
• Sign and return the Mozilla Reps Agreement - nothing else will be done until this is done (we will post the link in your application bug as well after you’ve given feedback - see above)
• Create a user profile on the Mozilla Reps website (you will get an invite)
• Once you have created your profile, please send the link to the Reps Council so we can subscribe you to our mailing list
• Accept the terms to join the Mozillians NDA group (you will get an invite)
• Brief yourself all the SOPs -- please note that we are creating a dedicated Resources group within Reps, therefore you will not be able to create a budget request nor swag request for now (ask a Council member to find you somebody who can)
• Add your Reps profile username to the mozillians.org profile in the Accounts section. For example, if your Reps profile is https://reps.mozilla.org/u/ninja, add the username 'ninja'
• Reps telegram (you will be invited, please tell us your telegram username)
• We also have a Discourse category, please make sure to subscribe to this one if you are not checking it regularly, so you can get a mail instead
• Ask all the questions you may have

Reps Portal

We showed a screencast of the following areas of the portal:

• Dashboard
• Events
• Reports
• People

Warm-up activities

Reps are accepted into the program based on their skills and for some on their previous involvement in other volunteer programs (non-mozilla activity) and the orientation period should not last more than 3 months.

We will get you involved in some simple but mandatory "warm-up" activities to help you get your footing in the program. These warm-up activities can involve:

• [MANDATORY FOR ALL] Get in touch with your fellow Mozilla Reps in your country/region to introduce yourself, seek and offer support. It is crucial to work together to make sure the local support is as good as it can be.
• organizing or attending an activity [OFFLINE]
• host an informal Mozilla meetup (e.g. MozCoffee) [OFFLINE]
• giving a talk about Mozilla at a local school or university [OFFLINE]
• joining open Mozilla calls (eg. Reps Weekly Call, Mozilla Weekly Project Meeting, etc..) [ONLINE]
• joining regional meetings on IRC (e.g. regional meetings run by coaches, ReMo webdev office hours etc...) [ONLINE]

Wrap-up

We ask you to report all those activities (and whatever else you are doing in your Reps role) on the Reps Portal. After the Orientation Period the Reps Council will evaluate your reports. Once that is signed off by Council you will officially be a Mozilla Rep ready to support the community. After this period you will also be able to request your Reps Welcome Package.

Next steps for you to take

• Watch the recording of the Webinar
• Indicate whether you are still interested in joining the Reps program in your application bug
• Get in touch with your fellow Mozilla Reps in your country/region to introduce yourself, seek and offer support. It is crucial to work together to make sure the local support is as good as it can be
• We will take it from there and if there is something else you need to do, you will get an email (for example an invitation to create your profile, or a follow up from Council)

Questions & Answers

• We should progress moz.coffee that I bought a while ago :jkt Jonathan Kingston
  • I'm @alakatos on Telegram, please ping me
• if i want to get started now what will i have to do ? ( writing yes on bug ? )
  • Yes, confirm your interest on the application bug and we will guide you from there
• What about mentors? how are we gonna get those?
  • For now it's the Council who is mentoring you. Once we have enough Coaches, we will be assigning them to you. We are tracking who is without a personal coach for now.
• how many reports we need to submit during mentoring period ?
  • Quality over quantity
• Could you threw some more light on 3-month orientation program. What activities would be in it for us.
  • We highly encourage to join our Call this Thursday, as well as mobilizing your communities around http://activate.mozilla.community/
• Are the reps counsil gonna be responsible for aiding us find budgets and resources?
  • yes but only under 500, please do reach out to me. Before you do so check the following links:
  • https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReMo/SOPs/Budget
  • https://discourse.mozilla-community.org/t/budget-allocation-q1-2/14650
• At the time of filling the application form, I was in a different city. Now, I have moved to another city. Will it effect the onboarding process in anyway?
  • No problem at all!

Feedback

Captured directly after Webinar, so we might be missing some. See Etherpad for all.

What are your initial thoughts?

• Nice clearing the air, all my Reps questions were answered
• A lot of doubts are cleared with this webinar
• It was good to hear from you guys and yes very precisely you have covered all things that should be shared.
• Thanks for sharing orientation programme.
• I thought maybe I was gonna take a year to be a Remo, but now to hear that it's gonna take 3 months is like music to my ears
• It was descriptive and simple
• read the script before the webinar, went as expected.
• First to see the Webinar I had the opportunity to collect some information from other reps but more over from the other Program that I'm involved (Reps regional coach).
• The webinar was good at the same because given me a refresh of all information in general.
• The webinar was pretty informative, it cleared all the doubts that I had.

ROTI 5/5/5/5/5/5/3/4 --> Average: 4.625

Is there anything we should do better if we record the Webinar for a second time?

• If will be possible to use Vidyo next time, we can interact with all of you :)
• Yeah to meet prior to the webinar and allocate segments of the topic to each other for easy coherence