[DISCUSSION] Splitting Mozilla North America into Mozilla USA and Mozilla Canada

Communities North America
#1

Hi all,

Below is a snippet from last night’s community call and as you can see we are discussing and analyzing whether or not the Canadian and USA communities would thrive stronger with separate leadership (or regional coaches). Currently, Mozilla North America is USA and Canada combined.

WE NEED YOUR INPUT! What do you think? Why would a separation benefit the community? Or why shouldn’t a separation happen? Etc.

NOTES:
Canada and USA going separate ways

USA focused on conferences (MoCo)

Canada is more focused with developer stuff (MoFo)

Goals don’t align

In community organizing, it’s better to organize with smaller scale (scale and sustainable)

Communication with everyone

How to communicate this to Mozilla?

create verbiage to show that strengthen the countries separately is more productive  

Mozilla Canada may need their own leadership

Don't want burnout! Don't shoot too high!

Also please contribute to the goals that will construct our NEW vision statement: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1gDqVQEwp82qCWiBB24w6GShIeGhSq5Y96Soljkd8Rp0/edit

Best regards, Semirah

Etherpad notes: https://public.etherpad-mozilla.org/p/moznorthamerica

#2

I’m in favor of this. It’ll be easier to support individual community needs this way. When Mozilla Utah was up and running, it was really hard to unify our community’s goals with the rest of the NA community. We are primarily focused on l10n here and l10n hasn’t figured into the priorities for the NA community as long as I’ve been a part of it.

2 Likes
#3

I agree with separating into Mozilla USA and Mozilla Canada communities for these very reasons specified, herein, as well as because then, we can document, better, Mozilla’s goals on which each community of Mozilla (USA and Canada communities) should work and document what each Mozilla area has already achieved.

2 Likes
#4

I wonder if also getting others interested in Web Development could gain more contributors? I constantly get people from all across the world communicating to me in interest about contributing via Web Development and asking me and others to teach them Web Development, especially since they know I have websites out that I coded and host (though those websites aren’t of Mozilla) and that I sometimes revise Mozilla’s MDN website. There is interest by many, and by a few within the US for this type of contributing.

1 Like
#5

Good Evening,

Point of clarification in regards to keeping USA and Canada separate. So, before we get off topic and I want to reiterate what we are trying to accomplish as regional coaches. @semirah.dolan and myself have been asked to bring the two countries together and reestablish the region. With that saying, its Mozilla intentions to keep the US and Canada together. Collectively, we have to work together, despite past issues that the region may have encountered. The two coaches are here to be neutral and help with guidance and moving things forward. Hope this help you understand Mozilla position on the new regional project.

Regards,
Regional 1 Coach
Robby

1 Like
#6

I think this is going down the road of putting the cart before the horse
(to mix metaphors).

I agree that collaboration should be split along the lines of goals, but we
haven’t established our goals yet. So we have no clue yet where it makes
sense to group as local, national, continental, or functional teams.

Eg if we decide to do something for an internationally observed day, it
would make sense to pull resources across N.A. But trying to get a presence
at a local conference would be a local community initiative.

I think in the past we focused too much on aligning our goals with “target
rich environments”. I think we need to harness what the active members of
the communities are passionate about and focus on supporting that and
recruiting more people to help with those things.

Like we all agreed getting involved on local campuses had potential to be
successful but I don’t have connections on campus, I’m not currently a
student so I’d have to do a lot of ground work and would have to rely on
finding interested people on campus before anything really took off.

However I could run an event in a box locally if I could collaborate with
others on content and marketing, like we did for Firefox OS days.

We agreed that a certain plan made sense, but we’re not always stirred to
be passionate about an idea by logical arguments. Especially as volunteers
with busy lives we need to be passionate about an idea to be able to make
time for it.

2 Likes
#7

With utmost respect I agree with @Kensie on,
“I agree that collaboration should be split along the lines of goals, but we
haven’t established our goals yet. So we have no clue yet where it makes
sense to group as local, national, continental, or functional teams.”

That being said we need to agree to the values of the company with unity through free web. We are volunteers some of us have technical backgrounds and some are just plain old marketing savvy like me. Its a great decision to collaborate with Canada’s Dev community and learn a little bit about their world and they could learn about us.

Being realistic now, anyways it will take us a lot of time building a community from scratch and with little to no help from other countries (With defined foundations) it will just result in fall out of volunteers, just like the last time.

I understand that it didn’t work out together with Canada last time when the US community tried, but that’s ok we are a different team with different creative thinking and we can surely come together with some points to work together with. IF we cannot work combined we can share insights on partial things, slowly building relationships.

After all everyone talks about web development now a days, even after starting a club on campus all they do is coding. Its good to have some communities at home base with such knowledge.

Think about it optimistically cheers

4 Likes
#8

I agree with you completely about this. And I hope we can make a schedule to which most club leads, etc., can adhere. :slight_smile: That way, we all can be better organised for our local events similarly to how Reps meetings are done (via a having and keeping up with an online schedule much the same way it is done of schedule on the Mozilla Reps website).

1 Like
#9

I’m supportive of this obviously since I pitched it and basically I think we are too inactive and disorganized to try and have a cohesive dual control game plan.

I think in the past trying to cooperate across country lines on events and efforts and even having coordination agreed upon by contributors in two countries just adds too much complexity for already busy contributors.

I think our energy would be better spent on smaller goals at each country level with coordination happening separately and goals that make sense to each country.

Keep it small and simple and build from there when we have momentum.

2 Likes
#10

Yes and as a US contributor I had wanted to come work with Utah but felt like our ambitious goals to unify efforts with Canada made that difficult or less of a priority.

I do not think a NA effort makes sense until we have a contributor base large enough to scale an entire continent (sans Mexico ;))

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#11

Agreed. THEN we all can focus on combining with Mozilla Canada to become an even greater community. In time.

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