Working Group: Alignment with Participation Team and Mozilla Organisation

Owners: Michael Kohler & Arturo Martínez

Problem statement

The effort of Reps and their time, and the mentoring and resources (swag and budget) provided to Reps are being used in many cases for activities that aren’t fully aligned with Mozilla’s organizational goals and therefore have low impact.
This creates a vicious cycle where Reps and the organization can’t see the impact, newer Reps follow this example and valuable time and resources are used on activities that have low impact.
An additional complication have been the very short timelines for organizing initiatives and events that put both the Rep and the Council under time pressure and are frustrating for everyone and result in less well planned and more expensive initiatives.

Goal

The goal of this working group is to create a plan on how to align with the Participation team to increase our impact and work on common goals to bring our mission forward.

Key results (for now without timeline, let’s define this during our first meeting):

  • We have a clear plan on when and how we plan/workout our alignment with the Participation team. * We have a clear timeline on when we start discussing goals, mid-term review and final draft of the goals.
  • We have a plan on how the goals are communicated with Reps (cadence, transparency)
  • We have identified a way to address concerns regarding goals before they are set in stone
  • We have identified a place to document Mozilla’s goals so Reps can easily look them up in one place

Possible Questions that need to be answered:

  • Where do the goals come from?
  • How do we communicate them clearly?
  • Challenge: Timing of the Alignment (Goals get communicated top-down and it might be too late when they arrive at Reps)
  • How can we communicate the plans early enough so that Reps have enough time to plan?
  • How can we bubble up feedback from the base to higher water?

Agenda / Meeting Notes

How to get involved

If you are interested in helping in this group, please fill out the following doodle with next week dates for an initial meeting.

Please fill out this doodle!

2 Likes

@mosesmatovu7, @alamanda, @couci, @sjmur, @Alifiyah, @bobreyes, @anivar, @Ioana

Still interested? If so, please fill out the Doodle as well :slight_smile:

3 Likes

done :slight_smile:

1 Like

Done. Isn’t it cute how we talk in Telegram all kind of … staff… but u ping here only for serious business? :stuck_out_tongue:

Hi everyone

We will be having our initial meeting tomorrow (Monday) at 6pm UTC. I set the final date on the
doodle, I hope you all got an email out of that.

Agenda: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1nB5WHS9tNkNL0U_e7OPTrdkxhluV8nbi4k2cXFpOkf8/edit?usp=sharing

We will be using the Reps Vidyo channel, here are the details:

https://v.mozilla.com/flex.html?roomdirect.html&key=RWa4tTy27FSM
Phone: +1 800 707 2533 FREE, pin 369 - then 99669 and then #

We will also be watching the meeting notes in case somebody doesn’t have good audio quality.

Talk to you tomorrow!

Cheers,
Michael

Meeting Notes - Monday, February 15, 18:00 - 19:00 UTC

Attendees:

  • Michael Kohler
  • Konstantina Papadea
  • Daniele Scasciafratte
  • Alex Mayorga
  • Sunnat
  • Ruben Martin
  • Kumaresan.C.S.
  • Rosana
  • Vigneshwer
  • Ioana

Agenda and Notes:

Introduction - why are you interested in this working group?

  • To see how Reps is aligned with current goals
  • Help communities to do better

Goals of this working group

  • alignment with the participation team when we are planning
  • communications of plans
  • how we address concerns
  • how can we document the goals (Goals for Reps or org. goals)

Have we missed any goals?

  • No input so far

Have we missed important questions?

  • No input so far

Let’s identify major milestones

  • (@Ioana , end of this week) understand how the participation team has done their planning to respect planned milestones
  • (@mkohler , end of this week) how does documentation work within the working group and then also outside (should be transparent anyway, but how do we do it?)
  • (beginning of next week) after the discussion with the participation team we need to set our milestones
  • How can we adapt during the quarter?
  • Have a plan to review current status monthly together
  • [in parallel; @Sunnat] Council and Participation sync up
  • a) Keeping the alignment during the working group phase
  • b) Keeping the alignment after the working group phase
  • the working group needs to be accountable to both participation team and council
  • Let’s define a timeline for the major milestones

Immediate next steps

  • (@Ioana) Get an understanding how the participation team has done planning in the past / milestones
  • (@mkohler ) publish these meeting notes and a plan on how communication works from now on on Discourse
  • (@Sunnat ) Start a discussion around how this group and the Participation team can keep in sync during the working group and how we can keep the alignment for future semesters
  • (all) Let’s be vocal to get others to bring in their ideas and suggestions
  • We can use the started discussion around sync to drive this action item
  • (@Ioana & @mkohler) Organize the meeting for next week
  • (all) Meet again in a week

Thanks for joining everyone! Of course we can also discuss further here, we want all your inputs!

1 Like

Hi everyone

I would like to have a short meeting to discuss our status. I think tomorrow, 18:00 UTC (same time as last week) is good. Unfortunately I won’t be able to attend, but @Ioana agreed to lead the meeting :slightly_smiling:

You can find the agenda here in the meeting notes doc. Of course we will publish the notes here as well.

Speaking of documentation, we will use this discourse topic for general questions, and if needed we will start a new topic for a specific discussion here in Discourse. Once we achieve a final draft of a plan or idea, we document it on the github issue. Does this sound good? Is this transparent enough?

Pinging @Ioana @Mte90 @couci @alex_mayorga @Sunnat @Kumaresan @dvigneshwer @nukeador @rosana for the second meeting. Of course anyone else is happily invited as well! :slight_smile:

Cheers,
Michael

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Please, send us a calendar invite :slight_smile:

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Is the meeting going to happen today? (February the 22nd). It seems I’m the only one in the Reps room

I was waiting for the confirm for that meeting i think that they forgot that.

I am in for the meeting too.
Let me know if it’s happening ??

Sorry that this didn’t work out. Please fill in this doodle so we can plan our next steps towards the proposal.
(Please use a name that I can find on Mozillians in the Doodle, so I can send out a calendar invite via email once decided). Please fill it out until end of day Wednesday (tomorrow).

Thanks a lot for all your help!

Pinging again: @Ioana @Mte90 @couci @alex_mayorga @Sunnat @Kumaresan @dvigneshwer @nukeador @rosana for the second meeting. Of course anyone else is happily invited as well! :slight_smile:

Hi everyone

I’d like to meet to discuss our next steps for the Alignment Working Group. I have created a “Draft of the plan” in the master document, which currently only has questions. We need to discuss if this captures everything and assign tasks for this.

Let’s meet next Monday, 15:00 UTC / 16:00 CET / 10:00 EST / 20:30 IST in the Reps Vidyo room. Here’s the agenda. Invites have been sent out, get in touch with me if you want one as well.

Please already think about the questions in the document and if you are bored, you might also already start to fill it out with your ideas :slightly_smiling:

Cheers,
Michael

Meeting Notes - Monday, February 29, 15:00 - 15:30 UTC

Attendees:

  • Lucy
  • Konstantina
  • Michael
  • Daniele
  • Kumaresan.C.S

Agenda and Notes:

General

  • Goals are final a few weeks into the quarter
  • Reps Council could weigh in the same time as the rest of the Participation team
  • But things change a lot after that
  • This is a major point we need to look at, because we need time to communicate that to Reps and Reps need time to plan accordingly
  • Once goals come back from Leadership, there is not a lot of space to change them
  • This means we need Reps input before that goes to Leadership
  • Communication should at least include reps-general and Discourse for discussion

What are the next milestones and next steps?

  • Does the “Draft of the plan” above capture everything we need to specify for this WG? → yes
  • Fill out the answers (or better “a draft of your ideas”) to the plan above within the next week and discuss it

Is our scope still up to date or do we need to include something else?

  • Still valid

Next steps (TODOs)

  • (All) Fill out your ideas to the plan in the WG google doc within the next week and discuss it - until the end of the week so we can discuss next steps next Monday
  • (Michael) Start a discussion around the question regarding adapting to change on Discourse - until Wednesday
  • (Konstantina) Talk to Lucy and the rest of the Participation team to have a “Alignment” or “Feedback” towards the Participation team category on Discourse - until Wednesday

Quick reminder to jump into the discussion in the draft document :slight_smile:

Further I created a discussion regarding adapting to changes after the goals/direction are set. We need your input and ideas there!

Thanks a lot,
Michael

I’d like to chime in the working group if that’s still possible. When is the next meeting? 14 March?

I think 7 march :slight_smile:

Hi everyone

I’d like to meet to discuss our next steps for the Alignment Working Group. Since the last meeting worked well at that time, I think we can schedule the next meeting without a doodle. Please feel free to object.

Let’s meet next Monday, 15:00 UTC / 16:00 CET / 10:00 EST / 20:30 IST in the Reps Vidyo room. Have a look at the agenda and add your topics. Invites have been sent out, get in touch with me if you want one as well.

In the mean time, jump in on our current discussion regarding adapting to goal/direction changes on Discourse. Or help us come up with a plan on Alignment with your thoughts in the working document in the “Draft of the plan” part.

Thanks a lot for your help, this is greatly appreciated!

Cheers,
Michael

1 Like

There is a small conflict for the Reps Vidyo room, so we will move to Konstantina’s vidyo room for the meeting on Monday.

Meeting Notes - Monday, March 7, 15:00 - 15:30 UTC

Attendees:

  • Daniele Scasciafratte
  • Elio Qoshi
  • Konstantina
  • Michael (last part)

Agenda and Notes:

General (i.e. what have we done already and what do we need to discuss now?)

What are the next milestones and next steps?

  • Create a new document for the final draft (Michael) and link it from the master document!
  • Clean up the actual draft plan (until next Sunday)
  • Define a final draft of the plan and get feedback from more Reps

Is our scope still up to date or do we need to include something else?

  • Still on plan :slight_smile:

Next steps (TODOs)

  • Konstantina to take the first question in the draft
  • Everybody helping out to clean up the draft