Draft for feedback: Developing participation leaders - MozFest, Leadership Summit, Work Week -- 2015

Mozillians
#7

¡Hola @george!

I guess I kind of concur with @amyt and @tad mostly, plus a few questions of my own below.

My memory is a bit fuzzy now, but I recall participation for the 2013 Summit was heavily advertised and I wanted to go so much that I ended up going and Mozilla even helped with visa applications and stuff.

As a Mexico national I do need a visa for the US, but do not need one for UK. Should that be a factor for me to consider?

How do I weigh in if I’m more fitted to be at MozFest, Leadership Summit or Work Week? Am I even worthy to be at any of them? Am I a “leader”?

Is there a proper and polite way for a Mozillian to nudge staff somehow to signal “I’d like to be at the MozFest, Leadership Summit, Work Week”?

For the last Mozilla event I participated was the QA/LATAM Hackathon in Lima for which there were two ways to signal interest detailed at https://wiki.mozilla.org/QA/LATAM_QA_Meetup_2015#How_to_Apply and https://groups.google.com/d/msg/mozilla.community.mexico/J29jg3E_Ut8/KVlUOWUyIOQJ

Again as I was very exited to participate and I’m fond of both QA and l10n I ended up applying both ways but to this day I do not know if I was selected for my contributions to QA or l10n =)

While in Lima, paid staff members of both QA and l10n asked me variants of “Why weren’t you at Whistler?” to which I was too shy to ask “Why you didn’t invite me?” =)

Hope I made sense and sorry for the wall of text…

¡Gracias!

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#8

seems good to me , but please take into account when choosing participants how many this participants already been to these events !
for me a reps mentor , been with Mozilla for about three years and i Havant participated in a global event yet!
the team who is responsible for the selection should be fair and neutral

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#9

I’m noticing that the application pool will be based entirely on self-selection. I think a widely shared nomination process should be added to help identify leaders who might miss out on this opportunity otherwise for whatever reason (didn’t find out about it, imposter syndrome, don’t identify as leaders, etc). This would also add an additional signal for selection.

I’d also like to see Mozilla alumi targeted/invited to apply. A nomination process could help with that as well.

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#10

So I really like this process as an application to be in this “Leadership Cohort” and I like a cohort because it is a commitment to reach out to specific people and follow up with a relationship over time, so you can see what works and what doesn’t, then iterate and repeat for another cohort.

But I agree with all of the qualms raised about making this the path for volunteers to get invited to these events. For MozFest, people can also just attend or they can submit sessions (hopefully people submitting sessions are still considered for sponsorship outside of this application process). For the Leadership Summit I like this application process, and I also like the suggestion that people “invite” community members to apply. For the work week, well I had sort of an “aha” about my opinion on that, let me know if this is off topic for this discussion:

I think for the work week volunteers should be treated like staff. You’re either part of the team or you’re not, and if you’re part of the team you get an invite. There should be guidelines on how to identify someone as part of the team, and then if a volunteer meets those guidelines, they should get to go. I think this Leadership cohort could be used to seed volunteers on teams that don’t have volunteers they identify as team members yet, but that this cohort shouldn’t take away invites from other volunteers.

2 Likes
#11

Thanks for the great feedback everyone. Just an FYI that I’m going to wait
for more to come in and then we’ll work on a final iteration on Thursday.

#12

First of all, this is sooo awesome Participation team! This detailed process and guidelines are very helpful.
In the Leadership Summit, I think regional distribution needs to be taken into consideration, so we can ensure that as many countries as possible can be represented.

#13

Love to see that we’re trying to clarify the criteria and process, and it’s good that we’re not limit the chance to Rep only. (Although I’m rep, I know many people who is not rep but still contributing a lot.)

I just wonder about “choose 1 of 3” process. If someone choose one, but he had not been select (perhaps he is more suitable to join other 2). We’ll lost his participant for all. It will become a difficult choice for contributors, and we will miss 2/3 of potential participants for all 3 events.

I still feeling that apply process should be separate considering. But we can make the rule clear that “if you’re qualified to be all 3, you can only choose 1” (or “we will only invite you to 1 of 3”).

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#14

Getting feedback on dates for the Leadership Summit (note: November doesn’t seem to make sense for a variety of reasons related to planning and too many events and a need for ACTION in November on Mozilla’s campaigns and products)

Also, location is likely to be in Asia to increase our global presence of gatherings (looking at Singapore for ease of travel and visas).

  • January 22-24
  • January 29-31 (same time as FOSDEM but not at FOSDEM)
  • Feb 5-7
  • Similar dates, but not a weekend (Reply with suggestion)
  • Another date (Reply with suggestion)

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#15

Currently Discourse only allows for one vote, this might be better as a doodle so people can say all of the times they’re available.

#16

I just have the time to read all of this. My only worries is the cancellation of the REMO camp, i was really looking forward to it to talk to the other mentors face to face in a dedicated weekend about the program and in this proposal this will be lost

#17

Is REMO camp definitely cancelled?

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#18

Strongly agree, we also know that some sorts of folks, who are traditionally more marginalized, will not self-select into these groups - so I think it is important to our inclusion goals that people can be recommended and that a wide variety of types of leaders (staff, volunteer, people who lead in less traditional ways) are made aware that they should be considering people to nominate.

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#19

another thought - I like the diversity criteria already established and would encourage us to also seek additional diversity - ask people (who are comfortable doing so) to explicitly state further ways that they bring unique or unusual/important perspectives and highlght those intentionally in the application review.

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#20

ReMo Camp is going to be incorporated into a broader Leadership Summit (i.e. more diverse than mentors/council) + those who would have come to ReMo Camp are being encouraged to consider whether MozFest or the Work Week are a stronger fit for contribution.

Plus, none of these is an automatic invitation – they all require people to articulate the impact they want to have through attending.

#21

This isn’t the point of objection. ReMo camp hasn’t traditionally been about providing leadership training to mentors, though we did always want to include that. The main purpose of ReMo Camp has always been to review how the program is working, make sure mentors are on the same page about how processes are meant to work, and vote as a group on any new ideas or proposed changes.

Perhaps a discussion on the Reps list, from the Reps point of view would be a good idea. Which parts of ReMo camp are meant to be covered in the Leadership Summit? Obviously what I described above fits into work week territory, but I don’t believe this process is being designed to include all of the mentors in the work week.

#22

The intention is to incorporate those elements of ReMo into the Leadership
Summit. There will be space for that.

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#23

Thank you for clarifying and it sounds really excellent honestly.

#24

Thanks to all again for the feedback. Incredibly useful.

You’ve probably seen the final initiative go out here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/Participation/Globalgatherings2015

I wanted to take the time to report back on how the feedback you gave was used for the final initiative:

  1. Scrapped the idea of using vouches on Mozillians.org – instead went for a single Letter of Recommendation

  2. Narrowed to pushing applicants to have a single team of focus for the All Hands.

  3. Changed the date and location of the Leadership Summit to Jan 22-24 in Singapore.

  4. Allowed people to choose more than 1 gathering to apply to if it makes sense, giving them an opportunity to indicate their #1 choice (a form of ranking).

  5. Set 30% of spots for the Leadership Summit aside for emerging leaders – either a nomination process or something else TBD later in Oct/Nov.

  6. Made the application/selection criteria for the All Hands more clearly about impact in a functional area.

  7. Created a parallel staff nomination process for the All Hands (which will be integrated with the application to find both well known and more surprising attendees).

  8. Emphasized a “Shoulder Tap” process for nudging people to apply, and attempted to clarify what we mean by the word and concept of leadership.

  9. Clarified how the Leadership Summit and other pieces relate to ReMo Camps of the past.

There’s obviously some feedback that I didn’t incorporate or thought was already taken into account. Feel free to flag anything that remains a major concern.

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#25

awesome! Glad to see these changes.

The only difficulty I’m facing now is the single letter of reccommendation. I don’t feel like there’s a single person that I’ve worked with that can truly and honestly share their perspective of all of my work over the last few months.

I’ve been scattered too much over different departments of Mozilla :smile:

Other than that, which is probably a localised issue that I’m facing because of personal changes at Mozilla, I think you’ve made a brilliant plan and criteria for this!

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#26

Yeah, I sort of feel that way as well, but then the idea is to push members of this program to focus on a single area, so you should pick someone to write the letter who can speak most about your impact in that area, and they can probably mention your achievements in other areas as well.