Sony Z3C devices to support communities and Mozillians

Mozillians
#1

Hello Mozillians!

As part of helping individual contributors and communities have more impact, we are sharing a new initiative to get you new mobile hardware.

Over the last 2 years we delivered dozens of brand new Sony Z3C devices to support communities and Mozillians in an ad hoc way. Since it proved to have value we have decided expand this program.

Starting on April 13th, we will open a form to allow communities and Mozillians to request Sony Z3C devices. We want to help communities improve their impact, and we believe that this is a great opportunity for all. And especially those communities and individuals that don’t have easy access to hardware.

You can apply either as an individual – to help your own work on a project – or on behalf of a community that has a larger project idea. Our main requirement is that you can use this device to increase impact on an active Mozilla initiative, and ideally use this to attract new developers/technical contributors to Mozilla.

Although with great power comes great responsibility!

  • In your request, we will ask you to indicate how this device will help you or your community have an impact on a Mozilla initiative, and how are you planning to measure that impact quantitatively or qualitatively (a brief explanation)
  • If it’s an individual request, we will ask for your Github or Bugzilla handle (or where the project will be based and developed)
  • We ask you to commit to telling us about the impact you have had through a lightweight report, at least two times in the next 3 months

Requests will be reviewed by a committee inside Mozilla, and there will be a maximum amount of devices per request (up to 10, but exceptions can be made).

Feel free to contact me if you need more information.

Best regards,
Francisco Picolini
On behalf of Open Innovation Team

11 Likes
Sony Z3C program Update
#2

Hello Franc, one question, how can Mozilla help us to deal with Customs? In the past this was a headache to explain to them that these devices aren’t new, but used and non-profit.

1 Like
#3

Unfortunately we don’t have the time or budget to help with that.

So my suggestion is that if you know that you will have issues with Customs, request the minimum amount possible. And be realistic. If you had issues in the past with Swag request, you will have issues with receiving these phones for sure. I can only offer to send the devices in small batches (2 max), for those countries, and try to think in a solution in a long term plan

#4

Your field length for

Briefly explanation about how this request will increase impact in your region, and how you are planning to measure that impact. *

is small. 1000 is not enough to actually explain all the points for interesting projects :frowning:

#5

Apologies for the radio silence over here.

We wanted to review all the applications, and indeed there were too many to review them quickly. I will be sending emails between today and tomorrow to those who are approved (to request shipping details), and to those were we need more info, or clarification about the purposes.

Best regards,

2 Likes
#6

Hello Again,

By today some of you that requested on the first batch have received an email from me, asking for more information, or to inform that your request was approved.

For the new requests the process will be:

  • Committee will review the requests weekly. The committee is composed by at least 2 members of the Open Innovation team, 1 from Marketing, and 1 from Engineering team.
  • I’ll be sending the emails on Tuesday and process the request to ship on Wednesday-Thursday

Please note that shipping can take around 3 weeks minimum, so have this on mind when you indicate the event date, or the date that you will need the devices.

If you need more information, don’t hesitate to contact me.

Regards,

PS: Based on Rabimba’s comment, I’ve extended the amount of characters on the form to explain your project

1 Like
#7

Hello Everyone,

Quick update about this:

  • We still have devices, so you are more than welcome to apply (there’s no deadline and there won’t be. I will let you know once we are about to run out of devices).
  • For new requests: is super important to have clear objectives and present a good plan. We are flexible, but with proposals that has a good plan behind. Generic things, or comments like “it will help our community”, will be requested to give more information about the plan.
    (think on What is the purpose of the request?, Why the project needs the devices?, What’s the expected outcome?, How will you measure the results?)
  • Shipping times: Please note that shipping might take up to 4 weeks, depending on the country and the availability at the office.

We will be sending the report template on this Wednesday 31st, to help people to report and give us an update about the progress. If you have a blogpost already, feel free to share it directly with me or on this topic.

Cheers,