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If you'd like to volunteer for Mozilla, please visit our Get Involved page or consider becoming a Mozilla rep. This page is for Mozillians who want to help more people contribute to the project.
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Contribute Wiki | |
| Owner: Mozilla Community Building Team | Updated: 2014-01-28 | |
| Our mission resonates with people around the world who want to help and we have an opportunity to bring in more contributors to Mozilla to advance that mission. These pages have information about how you can connect with people wanting to volunteer and successfully build a community around your projects. | ||
I am a new contributor!
I made a contribution or filed a bug! I'm a new participant! I am on my way to becoming a Mozillian! What now?
I want to be more involved
I want to go deeper into community building! I want to find my pathway to greater participation.
Tell me about working groups
I would like to join a working group or find out when my working group meets.
Show me resources
I am looking for resources and guides to become a better community builder
I want to see community events
Show me the Mozilla Community Calendar
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I am a new contributor
How to get started
Mozilla has a long history of being a place for participation and we know from experience what elements make up a successful community building effort. Below, you will find resources developed by the community team to optimize your project groups, as well as contact information, and ways to scale levels of participation. If you want help creating a community building plan and creating these elements for your project, get in touch with David Boswell.
If you are looking to get more involved with the community building group as a whole, start by posting to the mailing list and hanging out in the #mozillians IRC channel in order to connect. Get yourself a Mozillians account as well!
You can also check out the other listservs across the organization.
Don't be afraid to get more involved and reach out! We're happy to help you in whatever way we can.
Who are community builders?
We are a cross-functional team of staff and volunteers who are deeply passionate about empowering people to support the Mozilla mission and contribute to the project. The Community Building Team (CBT) is responsible for growing the size and capabilities of the Mozilla community. Working closely with functional areas and regional communities, the CBT increases the capacity for participation throughout the project and leverages a broad range of tools, processes and training to match existing and potential volunteers with contribution opportunities. In doing so, the CBT helps evolve the best of our culture to allow us to remain an open and participatory movement as Mozilla continues to grow.
What kinds of things have we accomplished?
Going to need some content creation here
Get in touch with the community
There are a number of ways to get in touch with people driving community building efforts:
Our Goals and Roadmaps for 2014
Our general goal for 2014 is to work towards the goal of "One Million Mozillians" in ten years. This section should be expanded upon by Mozillians in order to make it very vital and clear.
I want to be more involved
How do I get more involved?
If you've already begun building your community and want to go further, there are many resources you can use in the Mozilla universe and beyond.
Working Groups
Community builders utilize working groups to get things done. Go here to read more about the working groups, what they do, and when they meet.
Community Stewards
Click this link to find stewards and community builders involved with bringing in volunteers to functional and regional areas. If you are interested in becoming a Steward, please contact David Boswell.
Here is a list of people who can help provide pathways to contribution.
Meetups
To increase the effectiveness of working together, we've started to organize regular meetups for Community Builders to share tips and to create processes and systems that will help bring more people in to Mozilla. These include contributor meetups specifically for community building as well as Mozfests. Summaries of previous meetups can be found at:
Mentors
The community building team is beginning a mentoring program for Mozillians. If you're interested in mentoring new Mozillians, or if you're a new Mozillian seeking a mentor, please get in touch on the community building listserv.
Tell me about working groups
Working groups are the backbone of the community building team. The working groups get together on a regular basis to get stuff done! They will also often present their findings at the next in-person meetup.
Systems and Data
Description: This group is focused on systems and data that are needed to handle the volume of potential volunteers and to provide visibility into the operations of contribution pathways.
Etherpad: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/cbt-working-group-systems-data
Filter: [systems] -- please add this to the subject line of any emails about this working group that you send to the community building list to help people filter discussions.
Is Systems and Data Meeting Yet?
Systems meets on Fridays at 20:00 UTC
I want to join this meeting!
Research
Description: This group is currently researching the following central questions:
- How are people (new volunteers) finding us?
- New volunteers' motivations: What do new volunteers believe their involvement with Mozilla might include?
- Staff expectations: What do staff members believe their roles are in contributor interactions?
Etherpad: https://openbadges.etherpad.mozilla.org/get-involved-process
Blog Posts:
Filter: [research] -- please add this to the subject line of any emails about this working group that you send to the community building list to help people filter discussions.
Research doesn't have a regularly scheduled meeting, but feel free to reach out on the list if you want to be involved.
Pathways
Description: This group is focused on contribution pathways for functional and regional areas as a way to identify, qualify and onboard new volunteers.
Etherpad: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/cbt-working-group-contribution-pathways
Filter: [pathways] -- please add this to the subject line of any emails about this working group that you send to the community building list to help people filter discussions.
Is Pathways Meeting Yet?
Education and Culture
Description: This groups is focused on capturing and spreading information about how volunteering works and how all Mozillians can acquire new skills to have a deeper impact on the project.
Etherpad: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/cbt-working-group-education
Filter: [education] -- please add this to the subject line of any emails about this working group that you send to the community building list to help people filter discussions.
Recognition
Description: This group is focused on how to recognize volunteers for their contributions to deepen and extend relationships.
Etherpad: https://etherpad.mozilla.org/cbt-working-group-recognition
Filter: [recognition] -- please add this to the subject line of any emails about this working group that you send to the community building list to help people filter discussions.
Is recognition meeting yet?
Events
Here will be information about events
Show me resources
Workshops
Slides, recordings and worksheets for developing community building skills
- Designing projects for participation
- Identifying contributors
- Metrics for growth
- How to have a productive discussion
Missions
Training missions are a scalable way for new contributors to gain experience and develop skills that will help them successfully get involved in projects at Mozilla.
- Firefox development training mission -- Walks someone through how to turns the tabs of Firefox green by editing Firefox's CSS files
- Bug triage tutorial -- Walks someone through the basics of Bugzilla triage on test data
- What can I do for Mozilla? This walks through various languages and skills in which people may want to contribute!
- Learn to code by hands on coding Firefox!
Videos
There are a number of videos available with community building information at this link. These videos were created by Mozillians and staff and could also be created by you! You can also watch videos of and read notes from the regular Grow Mozilla meetings here.
Reading List
Following feedback from the December 2013 summit, the CBT is creating a bigger, better list of resources for community builders! For more information, please contact Dino or Jennie. Resources will be made available primarily through [http://www.safaribooksonline.com/%7C Safari Books. ]
Safari Books
Mozilla offers a free subscription to Safari Books to contributors Safari Books is a digital library that includes books on a wide rage of technical and professional development needs, video content, short form content and evolving manuscripts. If you want to gain access to this service, please follow the steps on this page.
Presentations
For more information about the evolution of these community building plans, take a look at these archived presentations.
- Community Building in 2014 brown bag (from December 2013): Video and Slides
- What Happens When I Say Yes To Community Building? (from August 2013): Video
- Onboarding New Volunteers workshop (from September 2012): Session info
- Contributor Lifecycle Audit presentation (from January 2012): Slides, Video, Data
- Getting More Contributors Involved with Mozilla brown bag (from November 2011): Slides and Video
- Stewards All Hands session (from September 2011): Slides and Notes
Organizational Support and Capacity
Capacity is a measure of the community building potential of teams. Knowing the capacity of a team helps us provide support through programs and guides that are appropriate to their current situation. The organization needs to support community building and can do this by establishing accountability for community growth. There also needs to be a voice for community building and volunteers at the Steering Committee and Director levels. How do I determine my community's capacity?
Contributor Conversion Points
In 2012, community builders decided upon a set of "conversion points" (or levels of participation) (found here) to provide information about the contributor lifecycle for the Grow Mozilla dashboard. See bug 736109 for details about implementing this and see The SuperStar Radar blog post for information about why this is helpful for community building.
Important Cross Organizational Links
The awesome thing about open source is that there are so many things going on all over the place. Sometimes that can be a bit overwhelming. Go here to add projects, websites, and blogs from around the Mozilla-verse that you think are relevant to the task of community building.
Frequently Asked Questions
- How will volunteers reduce my workload instead of add to it?
- What skills do volunteers have?
- How can I rely on volunteers to do things I need to get done?
- How does adding volunteers compare with adding employees, interns, or contractors?
- How long will volunteers stay involved?
- Does my team need a full time community builder? If not, would it be useful to have someone spend part of their time on community building?
- Are there ways for me to learn more about volunteer management and community building?
- Can you define some of the crazy language you use? Can I define it, too?
Community Building Myths
The Top Myths of Community Building
- Myth: working with contributors will take my time and energy away from meeting my personal goals or our team goals.
Working with volunteers does not compete with other goals. If the work is organized right, it helps you meet those goals by expanding your team.
- Myth: We will have to work with whomever shows up and they are not likely to have the right skillset for us or enough time to do the project.
There is no obligation to work with everyone who shows up. You can be clear about skills, time and other requirements needed.
- Myth: volunteers are unreliable.
Volunteers can be depended on. There are community practices for establishing trust and accountability.
- Myth: Volunteers will try to change decisions we already made.
Volunteers should not alter the decision making process. Indeed, volunteers generally want clear, meaningful tasks. Engaging volunteers should not eat up more time, it should create systems that will enable both volunteers and staff to be more productive
- Myth: establishing systems and tasks for managing volunteers will take more time than it is worth Engaging volunteers should not eat up more time, it should create systems that will enable both volunteers and staff to be more productive
Community Events
Community Calendar
This is where the calendar will go once the widget is added.