Hi everybody,
In our Meta working group we have a question that needs all your input and ideas to solve it! 
If we set goals/direction for Reps to align with the Participation team and overall Mozilla goals (*), how can we adapt to changes during that period? What is important so Reps can re-align themselves and maybe have their plans go into another direction? What would be useful/necessary to know?
(*) Connected Devices and Campus Campaign is an example for this
Thanks a lot!
Michael
I think that the better way is a monthly update so for the reps can schedule the changes.
For the rest of the questions i prefer to listen the others.
I would suggest to have a point in the middle of the quarter to re-sync on goals and make sure if they are still relevant of there has been major changes.
I’m concerned with all the buzz regarding goals requiring Reps to get on the same page every month or so. I really hope that is an exception due to the latest changes with Connected Devices (but really, with Mozilla changing strategy so often, I do not see it as an exception).
Ideally, goals should be clearly and briefly communicated to Reps, without going into unneeded details, which shouldn’t be the concern of the average Rep, rather than the Participation team + Council. Looking at it this way, a Rep should contribute 90% of their time to actual Mozilla contributions, doing things on the ground or empowering others to do things.
With all the goals and impact topics, I feel that Reps are asked to contribute quite more of their time to these discussions, than actually doing things. While this could be lucrative for some contributors, I do not see it as a requirement for all Reps. I hope this is only a temporary situation with the recent changes at Reps and that it will be clearer in the coming months.
To answer the question: Announcements on Reps-General and Discourse are the heart of this obviously. However, I think it would be worth for the mentors to ping their mentees about these changes, which should be an effective way to make sure everyone gets the memo.
My 2 cents, that is.
I really like this idea too.
I have found myself regarding Reps this year in similar situations to what I have been doing exactly 1 year ago, yet processes and goals have changed, which seemingly wouldn’t affect my contributions, yet they do. For example a budget request or Mozilla presence at some event which would have made sense last year, doesn’t make sense now, although this is not clearly documented (not talking about Connected Devices or Firefox OS specifically). As a Rep, I find myself learning the learning curve again, and needing to forget everything I have learned at Mozilla Reps in the past 2 years.
I don’t think that’s the case, things don’t change that radically, they evolve. For example in the last year we have improved the budget SOPs to ensure more impact and accountability, but doesn’t mean you have to forget about all the previous learnings, just keep up with communications and your mentor and adapt.
I do the latter, yet it feels like I cannot predict the outcome of a budget request for example, although I do my research and ping-pong arguments about everything. I might be too generalizing though, so I will see when the next occassion arises to get adapted to new procedures. However, having done my first budget request this year, I don’t feel like I have learned anything specific on how I can improve to get the next done right.
That’s what your mentor is for 
I think my mentor is doing a good job, as having discussed this for hours and still not getting it is either my fault, or something unclear in the system. If it’s my fault, it will get fixed sooner or later though.
Well goals are changing every quarter, that’s when the participation team set goals. The discussion here is
a) how can we give feedback on those goals
b) how the participation team communicates changes on goals in case they happen
I do agree that there is a lot of time asked from Reps but I tend to believe that is better to ask for feedback and participation on conversation rather announcing decisions.
Yeah well, it’s good Reps get to choose. If you want engagement and transparency, you need to contribute to the discussion. However that shouldn’t be a requirement. The downside of this is that your voice will not be heard (which is normal, if you do not plan to contribute some time to voice your thoughts).
I do think that Q2 goals of 2016 are way more major than Q4 goals 2015 for example. That’s what I was concerned about (add the new Reps program structure to it and it’s a lot of changes). Hence I was saying that I hope this will be temporary once Connected Devices and the new Reps structure settles down. I’d see it as a problem if we are constantly going through these discussions in a routine manner however. The border between Reps and Participation is already blurry, let’s define this a bit better. Most Reps see the program as something to empower their contributions at Mozilla, not policy and strategy making, so we should keep that in mind.
It might be the case that it’s like that, because Reps is part of Participation, therefore it’s basically one big team?
Do you mean their own as you have written or other’s contributions? If their own, could you please elaborate on how Reps helps there currently? Regarding strategy, this might be the case that part of Reps see it that way, but then we need to try to change that. Reps are in a position where they might have some NDA information before these are released to the public, providing them the opportunity to comment on it. This is IMHO a great opportunity to help out with strategy as a liason for their local communities.