Elections November 2015 - Nominee Q&A

[pierros (Pierros Papadeas)]

Hey all, in this post the 4 nominees should post their answers to the following questions:

1. What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?
2. What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
3. Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?
4. What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
5. What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
6. As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?

[faisalaziz]

What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

I’d like to address following three issues if I get elected for Council:

1. Getting Aligned with 2016 Goals:

We have seen an amazing energy and enthusiasm in reps with recent initiatives driven by council & participation team. I’d like to put more focus on how we can align our reps with upcoming strategies. I’ll communicate, gather feedbacks and help our reps with the challenges that might be hindering their efforts. Impact is the key for us to build a great community with awesome productive events. There is need to discuss the best practices among communities and try to learn from success stories of communities around the world. It is essential to convey the expectations with a right pathway to achieve our goals and this would be my primary objective to explore best possible way to bring our reps on a common pathway.

2.Improving the reporting & feedback system

We love events! Yes! However, in majority of cases reporting back about event is so tedious, specially for large scale events. To successfully justify post event metrics, a rep need to invest a lot time in gathering and reporting data like pictures to blogs. We can seek some help from technology to automate some part and make reporting more visible, comprehensive and productive. If we are successful in doing this, hopefully a rep can focus more on quality of events and it would also help mentors to evaluate and help their mentees to achieve a significant impact post his event.

3.Growth,Recognition & Diversity
With a continuous wave of improvements in process,operations and platforms, we are expanding in numbers day by day, Growth is what we are seeing today in numbers and impact, and since we are scaling internationally, the challenges would also grow with us.so we need to prepare ourselves with more efficient approach to handle this scaling community.

We need to come with more innovative ideas about recognizing reps, I’ll explore ways how such recognition( in any form) can help reps in their personal and professional growth. Certainly recognition are always motivating for everyone and it surely helps in running a healthy community.

Last year I have observed some awesome emerging Womoz contributors, Mozilla believes in maintaining a healthy ratio in gender diversity, hence I’d like to motivate Women contributors to come forward and lead the communities. We already have some inspiring Womoz Leaders in Mozilla which surely act as inspiration to new generation of Womoz.

What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
In my all these years as Mozilla Volunteer, I found the biggest strength of Mozilla Reps program is visibility and ease of communication. At many trouble instances I seek help from council,peers and mentors, and they always helped me by advising the best solutions to those issues. The generous supporting attitude is the biggest strength of this program.

Well, I think we need to focus on inactive reps, lack of activity is a prime concern as we have people who do have ample time for reps program so they might replace them and help us in maintaining consistent pace of activities.

Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?

As I have already mentioned, Reps “inactivity” is a stumbling block in path of Mozilla Reps program, even mentors inactivity is now a concern, we need to identify root cause for this inactivity and we can fix it by either replacing the inactive reps with new fellows or revamp inactive members by helping them with their challenges.

What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
I consider myself fortunate to be part of multiple regional communities, I enjoyed putting foundations of communities in different regions and helping them to grow day by day, This is an amazing experience to learn from challenges of community building, The greatest achievement for me this year is revamping Mozilla Madhya Padesh community, I merged all sub-communities under one roof as MozMp. We have designed a roadmap for it and with team of amazing reps we achieved many milestones so far and become one of the most happening community in India where our contributors are marching in different functional areas like SuMo, L10n, AOA,Webmaker and many more. Its a proud moment for a mentor to see a community growing in such a great pace!

What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

My passion for Mozilla is first thing that drives me, being one of the earliest contributor and volunteer from community I have gained a variety of experiences in community building, driving initiatives and conflict resolution. I have worked with contributors of different countries and shared my opinions and suggestions with them. I am easily approachable to reps hence they usually find easy to communicate and share their thoughts with me. I am always open for healthy discussions and feedbacks to improve myself.

As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?
The best thing worked so far for me is engaging inactive mentee in some task of his/her interest. The sense of attention to mentee would motivate them and also they enjoy being part of task that suits their interest.Also, following up with all mentees bring some great feedbacks which we may help in enhancing their productivity. I believe a mentor should appreciate his mentee on a public platform and make him understand that how special you are in Mozilla Reps program. Sense of responsibility always drive people to deliever best out of them.

Thanks,
Faisal

[umeshagarwal]

What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?
First to work closely with reps for big events.
Second to work with inactive Reps and mentors to motivate them.
Third one i am still thinking as the council is really doing awesome work!

What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
Biggest strength is the diverse Reps we have from all over the world.
Weakness i would say that we are not able to keep all the Reps member active.

Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?
The number of Reps member is growing thats really awesome but the same ratio of outcome is not growing. It wont be that easy to fix but yes we can have training session and motivate people to focus on getting output from our activities.

What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
As a Rep I was part of many important events including MozFest where i worked on reducing budget for Hive events.
As a Mentor I am proud that i am able to help not only my mentee but all those people who need my help.

What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
Patience is the key to success which i always work on. I think i am good at managing events and budget which can help fellow reps in optimizing their activities.

As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?
Till now its great that i don’t have an inactive mentee but still i keep on appreciating their work and closely work with them to optimize their activities to make them feel proud of what they are doing!

[thephoenixbird (Arturo Martínez)]

What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

1. I think that the Reps program has reached the maturity point where it needs to rebuild itself to continue moving forward, some Reps have told me that feel that they are stagnated and think that things aren’t moving, going inactive over time, the Council should focus their efforts to bring a refresh to the Reps program to revitalize it, make it more exciting, effective and gratifying, bring back that feeling when we all joined the program.

2. Some Reps find challenging to request budget and swag because our processes may look complicated, and may not understand why they are rejected sometimes, in other instances, we have so much documentation that its hard to follow up the changes, in the past the Council has done lots of changes to make this as easy as possible while keeping it organized due the size of the program, I would like to work to keep improving these main resources for Reps, simplifying the SOPs to make them plain easy to understand and not a huge wall of text to go over with.

3. I do also think that Reps should get more involved with Participation team initiatives, in the upcoming year we will face a lot of challenges and reps energy and enthusiasm would significantly help in order to achieve Mozilla goals, with the strategies that together the Council and Participation would design with the functional areas within Mozilla, also i would like to study feedback channels like the Weekly Call as the main place for reps to voice their ideas.

What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
Our biggest strength is that the Reps have evolved into highly trusted contributors that support their communities, and you can see how their voices are taken into account on Mozilla, as we participate in lots of public events, we have become a accessible way to reach Mozilla as a person that you can directly talk to.

Still our biggest weakness is that sometimes Reps underestimate their value and don’t participate on some activities because they think that their opinions won’t matter, thus leading to mistrust. Also, i think that we have lost some focus on what we do that makes a significant positive impact for the goals of Mozilla.

Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?
Some Reps are stepping down and our dashboard data shows how some keep long periods of inactivity, I would like to investigate more into this matter and see how Reps can stay active in a meaningful manner for Mozila projects and goals.
Transparency is always a field to improve, the previous councils have done great improvements on this, so the their work doesn’t look like a Blackbox to others, so I would like to keep pushing into this need.

What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
My first time running for Council was an amazing experience, we were in a point when Mozilla and the program faced many changes and challenges, but we together as a team managed to overcome and improve so much, we tackled specific cases of many Reps and Mozillians and it was full filling and energizing to work with so many incredible people and also be part of the volunteers leadership, i’m very proud of what we achieved at that time.

What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

• A inexhaustible source of energy to drive and motivate others.
• A mindset on Community Building and always looking to improve.
• Always open to talk with anyone and not afraid to speak my mind.
• I love chipotle burritos.

As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?
First is to understand what is blocking them from being active, sometimes it’s unavoidable, but most of the times its just that they don’t organize correctly their time, or they would do better in another area or project, this is only achieved by talking 1on1 with them, and try to put ourselves into their shoes, also I think that mentors should give more attention to the RoM, since its very motivating for a mentee to get recognized for their efforts.

[rara (Irayani Queencyputri (Rara))]

What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

• Leadership. Mozilla Reps are leader in their own community. It is important to make sure that every Reps in Mozilla feels enabled and empowered. I believe that this can be achieved through setting examples and to lead with their existing skill sets. I want to encourage fellow Mozilla Reps to maximize their potentials and using it to work together with contributors in strengthening their community.
• Engagement. Today’s participation climate is flooded with volunteer opportunities. Aligned with the vision for Participation at Mozilla, we need to keep the volunteers in the community engaged. Reps and Mozillians are working together at the same level in the local communities, this is one of my dreams.
• Local Swags Production. At the moment, we wasted so much resources to send swags from the storage to various events. To have a t-shirt made with very low cost and sending it to storage with unbelievably high shipping expense. And then ship it again to the event. Almost always, the shipping cost is at least 5 times the production cost. Even worse, if there is a problem with local custom. The shipment could be stalled and even re-send back to Mozilla, all with amazing amount of money for shipping. I want to provide alternative for having swags produced and shipped more effectively. Indonesia already did some local swags production in 2015. I want this to be happen to other communities, too

What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength and weakness?
Mozilla Reps program’s biggest strength:
Mozilla is an example on how we can build and managing community. I believe that its power is coming from contributors and volunteers and all Mozillians around the world. Reps has been a system for Mozillians to be empowered. In some communities, Reps empowered their communities.

Mozilla Reps program’s biggest weakness:
The growing number of Mozillian and the community is much bigger than the available resources, especially the number of existing Reps.

Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?

• There are too many communication channel and tools we are using at the moment, and many of which are not being used by everyone. It seems that whenever someone find a tools that they think useful, then he or she will open a new channel of communication. It happens over and over again. I still think that the best tool available at the moment is mailing list, more than discourse or telegram. It has no member limitations, characters, and it stays forever. We can trace back and re-read whatever we had written ages ago using this tool easily.
• Need to focus on some inactive Reps. We should discuss the strategy on how to keep Reps stay active in the program.

What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
As a Rep, I was featured as the Rep of the Month in June 2012. And as a Rep also, since 2011, I am helping building the community, encouraging people in Indonesia to join Mozilla projects, even if I have to go the east side of Indonesia. Doing workshops, give talk in seminars, etc. Invited to MozCamp Asia 2011 and 2010, Mozilla Summit 2013, being invited to the All Hands, to Mozilla Work Week are the best times of my Rep life. I learn so much from Mozilla.
As a mentor, I am proud of my mentees, especially in the past years, they have been very active and inspiring more than ever. Almost every month they have some great events. Some are big events, some are just small events. We had some regular webmaker training monthly, also tried to implement the Lo-fi No-Fi Maker Party in the park.
Seeing my mentees grow and inspire other Mozillians is a happiness for me as a mentor ^.^

What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?

• I did community building and community engagement more than 8 years
• Posses a broad network from past entanglement with various communities, organizations and events
• Free dental health consultation, if needed

As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?
Approach my mentee personally and ask him/her the reason of him/her being inactive. Ask him/her whether there are any obstacles he/she faces in doing activities as Mozilla Reps. I will offer help if there’s any and will provide any inputs or suggestions needed.
When all of those do not work, I give the said mentee an opportunity to temporarily leave the program to solve his/her problem. Of course, the mentee will have the opportunity to be active again in Mozilla Reps program whenever he/she becomes ready again.