Conductors

The Conductors team is a group of Mozilla community members who are here to help conversations run more smoothly and harmoniously. It's not always easy to discuss contentious issues through primarily text-based systems like email, newsgroups and Bugzilla comments, and sometimes it helps to have someone to assist with phrasing, interpretation and the flow of discussion. If you ever find yourself in a tricky conversation within the Mozilla community and want some assistance, hop into #conductors on irc.mozilla.org, or drop a line either to the whole group or any of us individually and we'll be happy to help. We'd also love to hear from you if you just want to learn more about strategies and techniques for online discussions!

Email conductors@mozilla.org or jump to an individual ...

David Ascher | Dietrich Ayala | Mike Beltzner | Matt Claypotch | David Eaves | Michelle Luna | Kev Needham | Johnathan Nightingale | Stormy Peters | Melissa Shapiro | Gavin Sharp | Benjamin Smedberg | Mike Taylor (Bear) | David Tenser | Daniel Veditz

David Ascher

Timezone: PST

Tell us a little bit about yourself, what you do within the Mozilla community, and maybe something disarming and friendly that helps others connect to you personally?

Email
preferred@email.adress

IM/IRC
username on service
username on service

Dietrich Ayala (@dietrich)

Timezone: PST

Dietrich Ayala is a Firefox front-end developer and engineering manager. He's been working on Firefox for over 5 years, on projects like session restore, Places (bookmarks, history and the awesomebar), Jetpack and various other bits and pieces. He also enjoys talking to The People of Earth about Firefox and Mozilla, so gets himself out to meetups, tweetups, user groups and conferences as much as possible. He thinks you should come hang out with him in Portland Oregon sometime, and tell him stories about places that are not cold and wet.

Email
dietrich@mozilla.com

IM/IRC
dietrich on twitter
autonome on gtalk
autonome on skype

Mike Beltzner (@beltzner)

Mike has been a Mozilla community member since 2004, first working on Calendar user experience issues and eventually joining the Mozilla Corporation and becoming the product director for Firefox. Although he left the company in 2011, he's still active in the community and currently moderates the mozilla.dev.planning newsgroup. He learned how to have difficult online conversations the hard way, and wants to show you his scars and help you avoid getting your own. He also wrote this in the third person - isn't that kinda strange?

Email
mbeltzner@gmail.com

IM/IRC
beltzner on irc.mozilla.org
mbeltzner@gmail on gtalk

Matt Claypotch (@potch)

Timezone: PST

Hello!

I'm Potch (well not legally, but functionally) and I'm a WebDev working on the Add-ons team. In addition to hugs, I'm also good at JavaScript, CSS, HTML5, Photoshopping things, and cracking wise. I'd like to think I make a tasty meatball. My favorite movie is Groundhog Day.

If you're looking for me, I can usually be found on the 3rd floor of the Mountain View office over by 10 Forward.

I'm a Mozillian!

Email
potch@mozilla.com

IM/IRC potch on IRC
thepotch on GTalk
@potch on Twitter
(for Mozilla Corporation employees, I also Yammer from time to time!)

David Eaves (@daeaves)

David Eaves is a negotiation and conflict management expert with over 10 years experience advising companies, non-profits and open source communities on their critical negotiations. David has been contributing to Mozilla for over 5 years with a strong interest on community engagement, and workflow in systems like Bugzilla. He's also big into open data and gov2.0. Feel free to drop me a line if you'd like some advice or help!

Email
david@eaves.ca

IM/IRC
deaves on IRC
david@eaves.ca on GTalk
@daeaves on Twitter
I blog at eaves.ca

Michelle Luna

Timezone: PST

I'm a Mozillian. I joined Mozilla to coordinate Firefox for Android support in July of 2011. I'm a long-time Firefox user and a newbie contributor. And I like hats!

Email
mluna@mozilla.com

IM/IRC
michelleluna

Kev Needham (@deadsquid)

Location: Ottawa, Canada Timezone: EST

I work on a number of things at Mozilla, but they all centre around playing nice with others. Since 2007 I've been active in partner distributions & service integration, technology partnering & evangelism, taking our PR team for Mexican food, and trying to get my phone to work. I'm a Canadian, and live a little South of our nation's capital in a farming community. I claim that I have cows for neighbours, but they're actually a flock of wild turkeys and a dude who works for Alcatel named Jeff. I like pinball, beer, the Toronto Maple Leafs, and messing with my family. I'll do what I can to help you out.

Email
kev@mozilla.com

IM/IRC
kev (irc) I hang out in #ewg, #partners, #byob, and #privacy most days
kev@borken.ca (gTalk)
moz_kev (Y!)
bomb_long@hotmail.com (MSN)
Skype on request

Johnathan Nightingale

Timezone: EST

My business cards say "Director of Firefox Engineering" but mostly I float around trying to add Canadian-ness to things. I was a mozilla fan well before I joined the company, and when I did join it was to work on security and usability code in the front end. These days they don't really let me anywhere near a text editor.

Email
johnath@mozilla.com

IM/IRC

• johnath (irc)
• johnath (gmail)
• Mozillians Page

Stormy Peters (@storming)

Timezone: MST

I'm Stormy and I work on the Developer Engagement team at Mozilla. I've been involved in open source software since 1999 and I'm fascinated with how well communities work online and globally. I'm part of many communities including Mozilla, GNOME and Kids on Computers and I feel privileged to work with such passionate, hard working and world changing people. If I can help you make the world a better place, let me know.

Email
stormy@mozilla.com

IM/IRC
stormy on irc.mozilla.org
stormy on irc.gnome.org
@storming on Twitter

Melissa Shapiro (@shappy)

Timezone: PST

I head up Mozilla's global PR team and have been part of the Project since 2007. I worked with a few other open source communities prior to joining Mozilla (KDE - hi Stormy!, PHP). I'm a Baltimore native and an avid fan of John Waters, blue crabs, and the Bromoseltzer Tower. I'm based out of Mozilla's San Francisco office.

Email
melissa@mozilla.com

IM/IRC
shappy on irc.mozilla.org

Gavin Sharp

Timezone: PST

I'm the owner of the Firefox module, and have been involved with the Mozilla project since 2004. I'm on IRC and in Bugzilla a fair bit. I'm Canadian, and I'm a Mozillian.

Email
gavin@gavinsharp.com

IM/IRC

• gavin on irc.mozilla.org

Benjamin Smedberg

Timezone: EST

I started as a volunteer programmer with Mozilla in 2002 and became an employee in 2005. I have worked with diverse parts of the code including localization, the build system, the extension manager, the crash reporting system, and multi-process support. I was formerly a professional organist and choir director and have seven children.

Website/Blog
http://benjamin.smedbergs.us/

Email
benjamin@smedbergs.us

IM/IRC
bsmedberg on irc.mozilla.org
bsmedberg on skype (normally offline)

Mike Taylor (@bear)

Location: Philadelphia, PA Timezone: EST

Bear started out as a volunteer working on Bonsai and Tinderbox(en) in 2006 when he worked at Open Source Applications Foundation as their Build/Release Engineer and continues now as a Mozilla Employee since 2010 working with Build/Release and also as Release/Operations. He has been a part of online communities since the days of CompuServ and BBS and having seen almost every variation of bad behaviour, from both sides of the fence, would love to help folks enjoy the community.
He is a Mozillian.

Email
bear@mozilla.com
bear@code-bear.com

IM/IRC
bear on irc.mozilla.com
bear on irc.freenode.com
bear@code-bear.com (xmpp)
bear42@gmail.com (gtalk)

David Tenser

Hi! I'm David Tenser and I'm the director of User Support, also known as SUMO. I started to volunteer for Mozilla in 2001 and focused mainly on helping other people with Firefox -- and I still do today. Feel free to reach out anytime if you need any help!

Email
djst@mozilla.com

IM/IRC
IRC: djst

Daniel Veditz (@dveditz)

Location Ben Lomond, CA Timezone: PST

Chief Nervous Nellie: worrying about what bad guys are up to so I can protect Mozillians and our users. When not staring at screens I like tactile things: playing music, reading books made of paper, turning dirt into food.

Email
dveditz@mozilla.com

IM/IRC
IRC: dveditz
@dveditz on Twitter