Hi @nukeador and @lucyeoh,
Thanks a lot for making this video, it is quite hard to try to convey multi-year long context and processes into 13 minutes, I really appreciate your efforts here. Below you will find my feedback which is focused on the video and from a point of view of someone who has not been deep into the discussions and processes. I hope you’ll find this feedback useful.
Mission-driven mozillian monicker is confusing
I believe the name “mission driven mozillian” sounds cool but it is confusing and will lead to more noise than signal in our whole communication.
In my personal understanding, mission driven mozillians would be mozillians who pick on a specific mission inside mozilla or the web to champion. Some examples may help clarify what I thought:
- Mr Foo has a passion for the extensible web, he is championing add-on development and awareness.
- Ms Bar dreams of the power of democratic access to the Internet, she is a champion for advocacy
And the video made it feel like it is about mozillians who are doing multiple stuff inside mozilla which might be related to one another, the idea that they are so in tune with the mozilla mission that they spread themselves all over the org. I find this definition so vague that I have difficulty thinking about planning anything that would cater to this group.
By making such vast category in which members only align together by the sheer quantity of things they are doing is very tricky and I don’t believe the name given to this category of volunteers is descriptive enough.
Research data is good but conclusions are a bit fuzzy
I think it is awesome that the team used a ton of research data to plan future actions, this is fantastic. The insights from this data will really help move Mozilla forward.
One of those insights which related to the overlap of areas in which volunteers are active which contradicts a previous assumption that different areas of action attracted different people is very valuable but I believe that after that insight, the video became a bit fuzzy with a lot of vague information that although useful, can also be applied to any other form of volunteer including non-mission driven ones. The 7 themes for example, can be applied to any type of volunteer and even employees and even other organizations. It is not that this information and project is not useful, it is, but it is also too broad and vague at the moment and I do appreciate that it is early days and there is a lot more to come.
Possibilities for opportunity matching are really needed
The part I liked the most is about opportunity matching and helping on-ramp volunteers into areas where they can contribute. There is a lot of friction inside Mozilla but not due to ill-will or bad actions but due to the sheer amount of different locations to find what to do and how to do something. Tackling this can lead to more impactful contributors which is awesome.
conclusion
I like how you all identified a type of volunteer that is working on multiple projects and the 7 themes presented at the end are an awesome thing to focus but I believe that the name and scope used for this category of volunteers is too vague and will lead to fuzzyness and confusion. I’d recommend finding a more descriptive name and maybe narrowing a bit of the scope which might make it easier to reason about this category and provide actions and offers to it.
