Learning/Strategy

	Mozilla Learning strategy working group
	Owner: Mark Surman, Ben Moskowitz	Updated: 2015-05-26
	planning process for what is colloquially called 'Mozilla Academy'

Our Goal

By the end of Q2, have a well-documented learning & community strategy that all of Mozilla understands and in which partners & funders see opportunity for impact.

To understand the foundation for this work, please begin by reading the 2015 Mozilla Learning plan.

You can also watch Mark Surman's presenting the early vision and Plan for Mozilla Learning in Portland (December 2014) here.

Lastest Discussions

May 21st

• Topics Discussed:
  • Who else is being, and should be involved during this planning going forward
  • How the thinking of the participants has evolved based on prior sessions
  • If we were to pick one audience or space to focus on, which one would you pick (asked all participants)
  • Some new frameworks and models of the world highlighted, both as it is now, and how it could be in the future
  • A look at where Mozilla is now (geographically)
  • What the participation team is working on
• Insights / Questions
  • We need to focus more on the audience going forward
  • Need to simplify the narrative and the communication further
  • Getting razor level of transparency going forward so people can follow along, and bringing in more people into the conversation
  • Sessions have been successful in evolving the thinking of the participants over the past weeks
  • There could be a tension between focusing on the various audience segments that needs to be identified, discussed and resolved, if possible
  • People with an affinity for us, with an affinity and interest to share and service others in the same user segment as them, with lower skills/capabilities than them
  • We haven’t been good at providing users that fall within this profile the tools and the structure to do this effectively
  • It's possible that we are so close to our stuff that we may not realize how transformative it is and miss the opportunity to put a structure around so others can build off it, use it and learn from it
  • Our open philosophy (providing agency to others) might be getting in the way of showing up with an opinion, a plan and thought leadership about how to enable our contributors be more effectively at teaching and learning
• Reference Documents: Coming Soon

Up Next

• Looking at some of the other players operating in the same landscape
• Discussing what needs to be true within mozilla and in the world for us to work on our objectives

Previous Discussions

May 8th

• Topics discussed:
  • Strategy group participants defining their role in the process
  • Participants discussing the biggest unanswered questions about where Mozilla is headed
  • Mark revisiting and defining the vision for the participants
  • Discussing SWOT analysis of existing Mozilla programs
• Insights / Questions:
  • More local, proactive participation may be necessary to make the outputs of various programs like Webmaker more relevant more widely
  • Concern about volunteer fatigue - few volunteers own many of our community led initiatives / programs
  • The programs are well placed to connect with each other to improve upon Mozilla’s current offering. We haven’t been doing that very well so far. There is a definite opportunity to connect our programs together more effectively in the future
• Reference Documents: Coming Soon

May 15th

• Topics Discussed:
  • Define a template / overview of strategy components that need to be defined

1. (a) What are our broad aspirations for our organization, and (b) the concrete goals against which we can measure our progress?
2. Across the potential field available to us, where will we choose to play and not play?
3. In our chosen place to play, how will we choose to win against the competitors there?
4. What capabilities are necessary to build and maintain to win in our chosen manner?
5. What management systems are necessary to operate to build and maintain the key capabilities?

• • Defining the role of the working group(s) participants, the decision making process, and timelines

"This group is advising on what goes into the overall plan / framework
 Members of this group are also responsible for specific pillars of the plan via working groups (e.g. Mozilla Fellows Working Group)
 Mark is final decision maker regarding what goes into the plan"

• • Participants looked at the existing Mozilla Learning plan, and discussed what patterns they saw
  • Discussed the various audience segments, which ones are served by our existing programs, which ones we would like to serve with Mozilla Academy (some or all?)
• Insights / Questions:
  • When in this planning process would we be looking at the feasibility of the plan with respect to funding?
  • How do you create a community of excellence that isn't exclusive?
  • Are we defining the movement or the “school” that trains the leaders of the movement?
  • We want to build a virtuous circle where one program coherently enables another
  • Open source may be our big differentiator when it comes to positioning our offerings to the users
  • The ability to hold on to both, the political movement, and the broad market users, has been a key strength and differentiator for Mozilla in the past
  • Our bias is to do as much as we can, and design machines that feed the virtuous circle
  • We have to simplify both in description and mechanics of getting this done
• Reference Documents: Coming Soon

What we are talking about

Within 10 years there will be five billion citizens of the web. Mozilla wants all of these people to know what the web can do. What’s possible. We want them to have the agency, tools and know­-how they need to unlock the full power of the web. We want them to use the web to make their lives better. We want them to know they are citizens of the web.

Building on Webmaker, Hive and our fellowship programs, Mozilla Learning is a portfolio of products and programs that help these citizens of the web learn the most important skills of our age: the ability to read, write and participate in the digital world. These programs also help people become mentors and leaders: people committed to teaching others and to shaping the future of the web.

In 3 Years

By 2017, Mozilla has established itself as the best place to learn the skills and know­how people need to use the web in their lives, careers and organizations. We will have:

• Educated and empowered users by creating tools and curriculum for learning how to read, write and participate on the web.
• Built leaders, everywhere by growing a global cadre of educators, researchers, coders, etc. who do this work with us. We’ve helped them lead and innovate.
• Established the community as the classroom by improving and explaining our experiential learning model: learn by doing and innovating with Mozilla.

At the end of these three years, we may have established something like a “Mozilla University / Academy” ­­ a learning side of Mozilla that can sustain us for many decades. Or, we may simply have a number of successful learning programs. Either way, we’ll be having an impact.

In 2015

Our focus in 2015 will be to consolidate, improve and focus what we’ve been building for the last few years. In particular we will:

• Improve ­­ and grow ­­ our local learning networks (Hive, Maker Party, etc.).
• Build up an engaged user base for Webmaker product on mobile and desktop.
• Prototype a leadership development program, and test it with fellows and ReMo.

The short term goal is to make each of our products and programs succeed in their own right in 2015. However, we also plan to craft a bigger Mozilla Learning vision that these products and programs can feed into overtime.

Resources

• Master list of events + people consulted in this process
• Overall Mozilla Foundation 2015 plans

Blogs to date

• Mark Surman: Building an Academy
• Phillip Schmidt: A Mozilla Developer Institute
• Justin Crawford: Learning experiments on MDN
• Matt Thompson: Mozilla Learning in 2015

FAQ

You can find a comprehensive list of answers by Mark Surman on his blog: Coming Soon

Q: At what level of ambition are we thinking?

• What could Mozilla’s next 5 years look like?
• Dream big, but be realistic about where we’re starting from
• Want to build on what we’ve got, not start over

Q: What is the role of the strategy working group?

• Develop clearer direction, together
• Identify points of consensus and dissent
• Help Mark prepare for Whistler + lay groundwork for 2016

Q: What is the nature of exercise / what are we trying to address?

• All programs (and program partners) operating on unified vision
• We have a sustainable path to scale.
• More effective allocation of resources across initiatives
• We can justify donors’ investments with evidence of impact

• We eliminate confusion about what we advocate vs. what we deliver
• Then finally — brand simplification

Q: What is the timeline?

• May: core strategy team in place, initial research happening
• June: north star / market segment discussion at Mozilla all hands
• Summer: working groups and community engagement
• October: strategy retreat with Mozilla board
• November: MozFest, Academy is major focus
• December: implementation planning and budgeting
• January: any changes or new programs in place

Q: Who is involved?

• Core advisory committee includes: Mark Surman; David Ascher; Rebecca Davies; Allen Gunn; Chris Lawrence; Lynn Moore; Stormy Peters; George Roter, Dave Steer, Robin Miller
• Planning and information management: Ben Moskowitz; Bhuvan Shrivastava; Phia Sanchez
• Outside consultants / advisors like: Dalberg, Innvonomics, Jeff Guntzel

Q: How can I get involved?

• The idea is to engage Mozillians, partners and the public all along the way.
• The simplest way to get involved is to pick up themes from the process, talk to people about them, blog about them, or comment on blog postings listed here
• If you want to be more deeply involved through a working group or some other method, email ben at mozillafoundation dot org and bhuvan at mozillafoundation do org
• There will be a significant number of new opportunities for engagement and involvement starting in July as we move beyond scaffolding mode

Parallel Working Groups

Mozilla Fellows Working Group (chair: Dave)

• Build a shared definition of what it means to be a fellow at Mozilla
• That aligns with Mozilla’s top line org goals and strategies
• Attracts and gives talent deep experiential learning, while maintaining what each community of practice needs.
• Attracts new investments with evidence of the impact (collectively and individually) of Mozilla fellowships
• Unlocks scale benefits and increase return on each dollar spent
• Makes life easier on program leads — shared application, fellows support & administration, on- boarding, and alumni communications across focus areas