Case 1
The coachee is a part of a small but growing community and would like to know how they can increase their numbers, enable these volunteers to make an impact and make their community visible in the local tech scene.
Ranjith as Coach
[Asked questions to clarify the scenario and Sanyam replied:
Ranjith: What is the size of the community
Sanyam: 4-5 people
Ranjith: What purpose do you see in need to increase community?
Sanyam: More people from diversified backgrounds learn from each other. It promotes overall interaction & community health.]
Dev/Meetup groups
Reach out ot active Dev/meetup groups anf get in touch with organizers and plan for collaborative events. Involve them in our roadmap planning.
Reach out to educational institutes to start Campus Clubs
Students are most enthusiastic folks to actively engage in FOSS activities with their passion to learn and grow their skills. Reach out to tech clubs in colleges and ask them to organise Mozilla activities and preferrably start a Mozilla Campus Club in their college.
FOSS Hackathons/Srints
Organise more generic FOSS Hackathons/Sprints, use this opprotunity to talk about Mozilla projects and Mozilla mission and invite people to join us and contribute to our projects. This will give a broder scope to contribute.
Online:
Hackathons on Hackerrank or other sites and promote PWA, A-Frame etc. and reward them. Doing online hackathons increases accessibility who can’t can’t travel and attend in-person.
Also plan more webinars, these can also be used as digital library later.
Growing community needs more mentors, reach mentors online not just your local mentors, so that we can accommodate more newbies comng up with mentors. Encourage the newbies to engage more in public groups, and find ways to make them comfortable around their early experience of involving the community.
Sanyam as Coach
[Ranjith asked: My local group was an active community, but now is a small community (15-20).
How can we expand, and have teams that focus on functional areas?
Sanyam: Are they new people/veterans
Ranjith: 15 are newbies for on-ground volunteering. 5-6 people are in functional areas
Sanyam: What are the functional areas they’re in?
Ranjith: 4 are on Rust; 1 on testing; 1 on add-ons.]
You can have hackathons (Mini-sprints) promoting a particular project and improve participation. Filter bugs on basis good-first-bugs/ good-second-bugs/ contrib:welcome
Observe other active FOSS communities, understand their working and objective, attend local meetups and events and then try to collaborate.
Find an mutual interest with other FOSS groups, have combined meet-ups. It should be
equally benefiting to all the participating communities.
Thinking on how can we increase interconnections b/w community, plan an introduction session with good networking session where people have enough space to interact with each other.
Have weekly webinars listing current community activities.
Seek help from veterans in the community and distribute work among all
Promote good work of other contributors and make them feel appreciated in the community.
Case 2
The coachee is an existing member of a community who does activities as the opportunity comes (i.e new campaign, an invitation from schools) making the community stalled sometimes. The mentee wants to learn how he can step up to drive his community in a better direction.
Ranjith as Coach
[Sanyam is new to community, does events on opportunity, needs inputs for driving his local community in better direction.]
Make a list of projects and contribution areas in Mozilla and give details of suitable persons to reach out for particular domain/functioanl area.
Roadmap:Doing things in hurry or only when opportunity comes is not a contributing factor for good growth of the community. Having a roadmap, and engaging more people from community take-part in designing this roadmap and giving shared responsibilities would be a good practice to do. Always take feedback from activities, as it gives us room to improve.
Local leaders: Nurtureing more local leaders and delegting work to them would ensure that even if someone is on break, others will be active in community, so that community is not stalled.
Grow diveristy: Some feel comfortable talking in local language and a leader who talks in same language. Some women might find it more safer to reach out to women for help and suggestions, so diversity always helps us stay open to wider sections of people to join and involve in the community for long run and we can ensure the community is not stalled.
Sanyam as Coach
[Ranjith told that he spent more time in the library as a research student. Less time on the weekend. Hard on mobility. How to be more available to the community? Many pign me on personal messages, but I feel better to take these questions in a group.]
Define your priority communication channels, so you can sepnd time atleast for them.
Don’t be the sole point of contact aka leader, make more leaders. Don’t try to do everything in the community, learn to delegate responsibilities. Let other make mistakes and learn.
We are volunteers, and recognition of pur work is important, define contributor of the Month. All contributions should be recognized
Speak in public. Encourage more people to engage in groups.
Make them aware and educate on how to organize the events.
Ensure everyone should get updates about an opportunity like local websites, social media, mailing list.
Weekly call or coffee meetups (on the location) about this activities would be helpful.
Case 3
The coachee is an active functional area contributor who has contributed to a couple of projects but this is the first time he’ll be involved in a community. He wants to learn how he can reach out to people inside and outside the community to grow and make quality contributors.
Ranjith as a coach
[Coachee’s functioonal interest in Python and Django]
In reps you have functional reps and mobilizer reps.
First move, approach functional reps of your interest
Inside
find the roadmap and activities from recent past, check upcoming events and ask them to introduce you and engage with the community in networking breaks.
Outide
Talk to them and figure out what activities can be done to strengthen the local functional group.
A online hackathon/activity can be organised (on HackerRank or HackerEarth or other). Collaborate with local python groups and Django experts like PyDelhi, DjangoGirls Delhi etc.
Do satellite events to meet in-person. In-person meets are preferable for better networking.
Find the tech interests of people and enthusiasm to involve in our community, so that we can suggest them suitable areas of contribution in Mozilla.
Getting engaged in functional group is like vertical growth, talk to your mobilizer reps in your region to help in finding about other functional groups and active people, this would be your horizontal growth.
Sanyam as Coach
[Coachee’s Interest is Aframe]
Find funtional reps in your region from reps portal, or in Mozilla Telegram groups like Mozilla India.
Find communication channels to engage with these folks, if required set-up a local channel.
Find the current state of the community and future plans and upcoming events.
Organise an event to meet & greet, spread the word on social media.
Outside the community, reach out to JS and VR enthusiasts on Meetup.com and get in touch with existing campus clubs.
Case 4
Being a new rep, the coachee wants to be more involved in being a leader in his community. His community had a lot of achievements before, but it all stalled as community members slowly became inactive due to organizational changes, community conflicts, and shifting priorities. He wants to learn how he can move forward as it feels like a big task to him that he isn’t even sure if he can do something about
Ranjith as Coach
Find roadmap planinng and activitiy history of previous reps and active community members. Analyse what went well and what didn’t go well, and possible areas of improvements. Plan how the activities would ensure a strong leagacy, quoting “You are not a leader until you have produced another leader who can produce another leader”
Listen to the personal aspirations and interests, may be via a form but preferrably(if possible) via informal meetings like MozCoffee. Let’s provide all the different ways to contribute to Mozilla and mentor them to choose best projects that suits their personal aspirations and interests. Let them grow in thier functional domains and as mobilizers, so the groups will be formed with liked-minded people with similar interests. So that we can invite newbies to suitable group, for example we can recommend new designers to join open design team, encourage them to collaborate with local design/photography groups, such collaborations would ensure long-term activity.
We have to ensure accessibility in these community activities, such that it ensures no exclusion and loss of members.
Sanyam as Coach
Become a leader to create more leaders while you’re active in the community. Don’t do everything yourself as it sould lead you to burn out.
Learn to delegate responsibilities and encourage others to do more. Even if you leave (for personal commitments etc.) community shouldn’t be stalled
Talk to the previous leaders, know why the community get stalled learn from their experience. Create an action plan from these learnings
Maintain list of community members and their contribution area
Plan weekly online meetings to discuss contributions and promote people who have already contributed