Community Ops & 2015

Community Ops
#1

I’ve been thinking a lot recently about this group and what 2015 will look like for us. I’m looking at this more as an evolution of what we all started last year, an evolution of Community IT.

I’ve iterated a number of times on the mission for Community IT/Operations.

When I think about Big Picture Thinking, I break it down into the What, Why & How.

In other words, what’s our Vision (the What), our Mission (they Why), our Strategy (the How)?

Or, put in yet another way, Are we working on the right things?

The Vision: the What

A Vision is pretty aspirational. It should stretch our imagination. It defines a future state, perhaps 10 or more years out. What do we want to do?

The Mission: they Why

Our Mission should help define why we matter. Why we exist.

For example, at one point Disney’s mission was clear and simple: “Make people happy.”

What is ours? How do we support the Mozilla Mission?

How do we support radical participation? How do we help build the Internet as a global public resource, open and accessible to all? What is our maniacal focus?

The Strategy: the How.

How do we do this? What is our step-by-step plan?

I have a lot of thoughts on this and most revolve around this central question:

How can we use use technology as a force multiplier to grow and empower the Mozilla Community?

It seems odd to define the How before we’ve really defined the Why but we already have a set of Hows:

  • Community Hosting (via OVH/MediaTemple & Google Apps)
  • Discourse (both discourse.m-c.org & guides.m-c.o)
  • Multi-tenant Wordpress

My ask:
My ask is for some thoughts on our Mission in 2015. Why do we exist?

(I’ll share my thoughts on this later.)

Later we’ll talk about how we accomplish that, our How.

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#2

I would suggest framing the vision and the mission differently. I think the vision is the change we want to see, it’s the version of the future we want to happen. Then the mission is more like the 5 year plan, what are our goals, what do we want to achieve as a group that will build that vision into reality. And then of course strategy is clear, how do we accomplish the goals in the mission.

Vision and mission might sound very much the same, but vision might be to see Mozilla be the place where people come to learn how to run (not just build) a healthy open internet. Then the mission would be to create a platform that allows people to develop skills, especially in open ways. After that strategy would be things like teaching people how to monitor, how to set up etc etc.

#3

I think our mission is to create a space in Mozilla that allows participation in the devops space. We should tie it to the mission of having people building the web and being literate, but the thing is there is more to the internet than knowing how to code. We will help build a community of good web citizens in the people who maintain the kind of stuff we touch.

Talking about doing that through supporting Community sites and through more complex webmaker stuff, I don’t know if that fits under mission or strategy. I feel like it should be strategy, but the community sites stuff feels like mission as well.

#4

Yes, strategy. That’s the “how”. Supporting Community Sites is a Jira in support of a larger epic or mission.

#5

There’s another theme that’s been running through my mind and was put more succinctly into words in an email thread recently.

  • How do we tie volunteers/community into effectively building technology and products?
  • How do we connect people (Communities) with Products?

Or more succinctly, how does multi-tenant Wordpress relate to product/technical work?

#6

If you find out the answer to those two questions let me know
because Mozilla has invested a lot of money and staff into
trying to answer those two questions.

As far as vision and mission I would suggest tying into to Mozilla mission in some manner or at least supporting some of the products. One of the reasons I decided not to immediately contribute to Community IT is the vision and mission of the group seems unclear.

Right now it seems the existence seems experimental versus a solution in response to any problem.

#7

Discourse was a response to an actual problem (mailman+Google Groups). But not clear how that answers either of the bullet points.

Thoughts on how to best support products through this group?

#8

Right so I think having a clear vision and getting a team to really invest some time in taking Community IT under its umbrella and mentoring and supporting it would be the first step. I think as a project much of Mozilla does not know Community IT exists and if they know it exists may not totally understand why it exists?

I mean IIRC you first iteration of Community IT was to bring it into Mozilla IT as a contribution pathway right?

#9

Myself and @tanner have been working on a build server for fxos devices in our spare time. That’d be something that directly supports product but it’s not related to anything we do now. Not sure if you mean with things we already do.

#10

Except that would hurt product because Mozilla is not allowed (contractually and do to licensing) to build images for distribution externally which is why the internal build servers are LDAP’ed off.

#11

Do you think having Community Ops under some Mozilla team is a necessity?

Agree. How to change? We’ve talked about presenting more frequently at the Project meeting but haven’t done so yet.

#12

(Seems to me there’s an element to our 2015 strategy that includes communicating more broadly what this group does and why and how…)

#13

Continuing the discussion from Community Ops & 2015:

I do believe so yes and the reason for this belief is I have not personally yet to see an example of a team (individuals yes) but a team trying to do something on their own as contributors without being in some way under the umbrella of a staff team. There is some kind of link to every success contributor team… ReMo -> Engagement, CommSquared -> PR, Evangelism Reps -> Dev Rel, Community Speakers -> Dev Rel, Dev Events, l10n Communties -> MoCo L10n staff there always seems to be that distinction.

A standup with some slides and a short talk about what Comm IT is currently doing and some paths it might go in 2015 would probably be pretty effective. Although if you are to associate with a team (above) I would think it might make sense to figure that out first so that can be part of the storytelling so the team can better explain how it fits into the puzzle.

Either way though I think a Monday meeting standup is a great idea… In fact one of the slides could show off discourse as Tanner pointed out not a lot of people know about it so if people did perhaps that could increase adoption two birds with one stone… I think Comm It is mostly unknown to staff and to contributors who are not part of ReMo (which is a pretty big part of the community in itself)

#14

More thoughts - and this is from one of my mentors (paraphrased):

Your mission is to build the IT/Operations bridges & connection points that enable regular local community members to contribute to our Products in very real tangible ways that not only gives them a sense of recognition and impact but also enables the product leaders/engrs/employees to finally see how valuable leveraging these people are!

#15

There are some specific questions that we should answer before starting to build out the mission and strategy. I’ve started an etherpad to make it easier for us to brainstorm answers to those questions:

https://communityit.etherpad.mozilla.org/Community-Ops-2015

Please add your thoughts there, but also please continue discussion here as well.

#16

I’ve been rather wrapped up with work and haven’t had a good chance to followup on this. Still on the top of my mind, however.

Wondering if there’s someone who can help and take point by taking the thoughts in the etherpad and doing a first draft.