Connected Devices participation update

Connected Devices
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Hi Mozillians,

I’m excited to share this update on participation in Connected Devices at Mozilla.

Product Innovation Projects

At the start of the year we embarked on a process to bubble up ideas within the organisation and start experimenting. This is known as the Product Innovation Process. Last week, we published a blog post detailing the progress we’ve made so far. You’ll see that the first set of projects proposed by staff have just passed what we call “Gate 0”. This means that they are still in their very early stages, aiming to validate their hypotheses on the ‘Problem/Solution Fit’ by building early prototypes and doing some initial testing.

So what does this mean for participation? This is the phase where our small participation staff teams will start to work with the projects to a) find out the big challenges they are up against, and b) design ways in which those challenges can be addressed effectively by volunteer Mozillians – ideally we’re trying to find that sweet spot of challenges that are both motivating to tackle and that volunteer Mozillians are the best equipped to address.

As we continue to fine-tune this work here are a couple of things to be aware of:

  • The teams may not have the bandwidth during this phase to engage a general set of contributors – they have a very short window of a few months to bootstrap and prove their ideas. Building great onboarding, contribution funnels, and other contribution practices for the long term is not the priority right now. The good news is that we are dedicating employee time (from the Connected Devices and Participation Teams) to help design high impact contribution opportunities. These are likely to be on a specific slice of each project. More details will be coming soon.

  • These projects are transient. They are very early stage and it’s likely that many – if not most – won’t make it all the way to becoming products. Some will likely not even make it beyond Gate 1 before Mozilla resources are withdrawn. Getting involved in these is truly being part of Mozilla’s innovation process and portfolio, which includes a spirit of trying new things, learning and adapting to change quickly.

The projects are now listed on the wiki where you can dig in and find more information. Over the next weeks as we work more closely with the teams, opportunities to jump in and help will be made very clear.

Finally, for those volunteer Mozillians interested in the innovation process itself: For the time being, “pitching” to the product innovation process will be limited to employees. We are exploring ways to broaden that in the months ahead, which brings us to…

Community Experimentation Launchpad

Parallel to the work we’re doing on product innovation, we’re also building on great feedback we’ve received in the past months from Mozillians and designing a program to support volunteer-led projects. The program, which we’re calling the "Community Experimentation Launchpad’ (CEL) is a community-driven program that aims to empower Mozillians to dream up the future of connected devices, test and prototype their ideas, and make them a reality through open collaboration and innovation.

The program provides resources (e.g. Reps Innovation Fund), tools (e.g. learning resources and event kits) and mentoring (volunteer/staff IoT task force) to help you get involved, either through contribution to an existing project or bootstrapping your own. The CEL is still very much in its infancy but it’s already picking up great momentum. Make sure to check the dedicated section on the wiki regularly as we will be continuously adding new content.

Stay connected!

These are the early days of Connected Devices Participation and so it’s a particularly ripe time to get involved. Stay in tune and stay connected as we continue to design and build for participation. We’ve created several new communication channels to ensure that you don’t miss a beat, so make sure to check these out:

Last but not least, we run Connected Devices “innovation and participation” calls every week. They take place every Thursday at 18:30 CET (i.e. 17:30 UTC)**. **They are open for anyone to join. You can dial in on Vidyo or join on IRC, on the #cd-participation channel.

We’re excited about the future for Connected Devices, and we’re working hard to have both staff and non-staff community participation built into the very fabric of how this team will have impact on Mozilla’s mission.

Onwards!

George (on behalf of the Participation Team)

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