Re: [Mozilla India] Status of provisional meta team

Mozilla India
#1

" 1. Almost everyone is keeping shut."
So what am I supposed to say ? I (probably like many others) just have
questions at the moment about status of the meta team, the same questions
which Akshay has already asked. I have no idea what the meta team is
doing (and
to some extent is going to do) at the moment and why it hasnt started to
function already.

If the current team or members are currently unavailable, maybe lets keep
this issue of forming/formalizing aside for a while. If a document about
how to structure a community in general is made available, at least the
other functional teams can start working. We can keep the structure as
flexible as possible for now and just adaptive to any changes. All roles
can be labeled temporary so that if any changes in future we can adapt.

This process of restructuring is turning out to be very linear where
everyone has an easy answer to give ie “we are waiting for the directions
from Meta Team”.

" 2. We could be trying to solve a non-existent problem"
Of course we have problems, lets not even go there because it just sounds
like a scene from a cliched bollywood movie with last minute afterthoughts
before the wedding.

So why arent people participating:

“Yeh baade logon ke problem hai” (These are the problems that adults are
supposed to solve)
Lets be honest this has been attitude which everyone has had. That some
issues are not supposed to participated by me, it something that
reps/council/they or now the meta team is supposed to solve. I guess for
this to be fixed we need to ensure that everyone feels its a problem even
they need to be involved in (and are eligible to get involved in).

Suggestions:

  • Lets remove meta team from the equation and put out like a beta version
    of the structure in place (with the structure that was presented at MinM)
  • Give the community a TL;DR version of guildlines and structure (maybe a
    series of blogs)
  • Lets get people to start working on their F/F teams
    • Ask F/F team start working/functioning and give them responsibilities
    • Lets not get into issues like membership of F/F teams, for now who ever
      is active and readily taking responsibility, they are the members
  • Lets set deadlines
  • Make everyone aware that everything is flexible and can changed
#2

Hey Guys,

Sorry for late reply on this discussion.

I see some important points raised by you all and I appreciate the hard
work done by structure team.

I would like to inform you all that due to my job and other work
commitments in Mozilla I am not able to participate as a member of draft
meta team so would like to officially step down from this role.

I would encourage you all to work together to run this rather then
depending on any team and Tripad explained that very well.

Whenever you need my help do not hesitate to ping me :slight_smile:

#3

Tripad, highly appreciate your clear tone. That’s the kind of inputs that
will help us to carry on ahead.

Umesh, we are all volunteers here, so, let’s not be too hard on ourselves.
We have our day jobs/studies/commitments.

Everyone, at this point, I believe that opening up this process for mass
participation is a better way out. Let chaos take over and eventually
settle itself.

#4

Hey all, I am really feeling sad about our restructure community meetup,
there were many voices and everything looked soo successful that it will
move ahead and all that will be implemented but here the scenario is
different, people are just capable enough to keep themselves lazy without
processing any work(reasons being office work/personal work, one thing I
don’t understand is if someone is really busy he/she should step down or
let others take position to work in his place or let the interested person
take place for the success of our program because in the end it’s a
voluntary program). I personally feel all the efforts are going wasted and
also the amount which we’ve spent on meetup makes me feel sad :frowning: . Finally
they say that provisional meta team is working on it where it’s not at all
transparent , the question over here is " why is provisional meta team not
open to everyone to take part in it?"

Secondly I suggest every functional to work on their duties as small
modules can build big blocks,once they are done submitting their plan where
it becomes easy for meta team to take action on it and to maintain a
decorum.

Finally I don’t think there is much time to wait and discuss, rather we
should work on it to see results.

Regards
Dyvik

Tripad, highly appreciate your clear tone. That’s the kind of inputs that
will help us to carry on ahead.

Umesh, we are all volunteers here, so, let’s not be too hard on ourselves.
We have our day jobs/studies/commitments.

Everyone, at this point, I believe that opening up this process for mass
participation is a better way out. Let chaos take over and eventually
settle itself.

Hey Guys,

Sorry for late reply on this discussion.

I see some important points raised by you all and I appreciate the hard
work done by structure team.

I would like to inform you all that due to my job and other work
commitments in Mozilla I am not able to participate as a member of draft
meta team so would like to officially step down from this role.

I would encourage you all to work together to run this rather then
depending on any team and Tripad explained that very well.

Whenever you need my help do not hesitate to ping me :slight_smile:

" 1. Almost everyone is keeping shut."
So what am I supposed to say ? I (probably like many others) just have
questions at the moment about status of the meta team, the same
questions

which Akshay has already asked. I have no idea what the meta team is
doing (and
to some extent is going to do) at the moment and why it hasnt started
to

function already.

If the current team or members are currently unavailable, maybe lets
keep

this issue of forming/formalizing aside for a while. If a document about
how to structure a community in general is made available, at least the
other functional teams can start working. We can keep the structure as
flexible as possible for now and just adaptive to any changes. All roles
can be labeled temporary so that if any changes in future we can adapt.

This process of restructuring is turning out to be very linear where
everyone has an easy answer to give ie "we are waiting for the
directions

from Meta Team".

" 2. We could be trying to solve a non-existent problem"
Of course we have problems, lets not even go there because it just
sounds

like a scene from a cliched bollywood movie with last minute
afterthoughts

before the wedding.

So why arent people participating:

*“Yeh baade logon ke problem hai” (These are the problems that adults
are

supposed to solve)*

Lets be honest this has been attitude which everyone has had. That some
issues are not supposed to participated by me, it something that
reps/council/they or now the meta team is supposed to solve. I guess for
this to be fixed we need to ensure that everyone feels its a problem
even

they need to be involved in (and are eligible to get involved in).

Suggestions:

  • Lets remove meta team from the equation and put out like a beta
    version

of the structure in place (with the structure that was presented at
MinM)

  • Give the community a TL;DR version of guildlines and structure (maybe
    a

series of blogs)

  • Lets get people to start working on their F/F teams
    • Ask F/F team start working/functioning and give them
      responsibilities
  • Lets not get into issues like membership of F/F teams, for now who
    ever
    is active and readily taking responsibility, they are the members
  • Lets set deadlines
  • Make everyone aware that everything is flexible and can changed

Given the apparent silence over this thread (and the ones before
this),

I

want to highlight two major points that I think need addressing. These
are
somewhat cultural, somewhat personal and somewhat related to the
community-at-large.

  1. Almost everyone is keeping shut.

They are either keeping their opinions to themselves or waiting for
someone
else to jump in and solve the current issues. The problem here is that
barring a few of the active voices, we haven’t publicly heard many
opinions. This could mean either this process is not something that
people
are interested in, or solving the issue of scaling the community in a
flexible model is not appealing enough to them, or they are concerned
about
voicing their ideas publicly. Neither of these situations are
conducive

for

a large community to operate cohesively. We have tried to create as
much

open forum as possible and we encourage everyone to contribute to this
process. That being said, there could be other reasons behind this
lack

of

activity.

If you think that there are other, more qualified people to take lead,
you
may be losing the opportunity to take up ownership yourself and drive
the
conversation forward. After all, all of us are trying to do
something

here. It will only get better when we have more brains. So, if you
have

any

thoughts, voice them. Don’t wait for others to do it for you, because
they
may not see things from your perspective.

We need brain storms. Like crazy typhoons, but made of intellect.

  1. We could be trying to solve a non-existent problem

Let’s face it. One reason why not many people would be interested in
this
process is probably that we are trying to solve a problem which people
don’t even perceive or are not bothered about. Probably, drawing the
attention away from the fragmentation caused by a rigid, hyper-local
structure and implementing a fluid, enabling system was not needed in
the
first place. Probably, the way things were working were good enough?

The interesting part, as well as the irony, here is that we have been
proposing a process which in turn removes excessive processes from our
operations. It is like, people were bothered about climate changes and
were
building small safe-houses, and we made a way to fix the climate and
now

they don’t to be cramped up in small houses any more. But, what if,
the

people were happy with their small safe-houses and were way more
content?
Do we really want to tell them that they don’t need their safe-houses
any
more? See the pattern?

Thoughts?

Just correcting the github’s issue url typo
https://github.com/MozillaIndia/meta/issues/2

[Cross-post from https://github.com/MozaillaIndia/meta/issues/2 ]

It’s been 40+ days after the meetup and it’s about time to think
if

all

is

good.

Apart from this repository and two conference calls with spare
attendance,
I’m not sure the provisional meta team has been able to produce
any

#5

Dyvik,

Highly appreciate your voicing of concerns. As I have been saying all
along, we really need such voices. Let me try to put some clarity so that
we can all have a good idea of the situation.

Akshay, Deb and I have been trying to get as much voice and inputs to the
process as possible. Still, as you have noticed, not much has got done. It
has already been past the end October timeline that was adopted to put an
actual meta team in place. The target for the provisional meta team after
the meetup and till the deadline was: a) take a decision on the
participation criteria for the meta team, b) clarify that the meta team is
an enabler and not a blocker/bottleneck/overlord, and c) open up the
participation for meta team. But as you can see, apart from the 2 meetings
that we tried to organise (and after I did much time-scheduling/shuffling
between the members) we have got nowhere near the target. Heck, we did not
even have the necessary people showing up at the meetings.

The answer to your question about why isn’t the provisional meta team
transparent at all is that there hasn’t been anything happening around here
to report to public. Whatever little was done has entirely been public -
scheduling of meetings, live broadcast and participation in meetings and
publishing of meeting notes. I began writing up the Open Book in the hope
that we can do all of this together and to have it as yet another example
of how we can do creative things together. We even tried to have the
provisional meta team asynchronous to enable people to contribute, but even
that did not gather much wind. What you see as lack of transparency is
actually an utter lack of activity. Irony stares me in the face.

So, on to the more important questions, a) Why don’t people step down if
they are actually busy? and, b) Why isn’t the provisional meta team open to
everyone?

The answer to the first question is that people are actually busy. So much
so that it is not always possible for them to respond, or follow up on
threads. There has been one glitch however. During the meetup, possibly
George (I don’t clearly remember who) suggested and we agreed that the
"Structure" team could be extended with the then current reps-council
members from India. No one voiced any concern then and I got back home
happy from the meetup, knowing that we had enough things to do ahead. I
believed that we had already put forward a proposal that puts the control
of contribution to everyone’s hands and ensures the dynamic nature of our
collaboration can bring in more fruitful results. In short, the proposal
that we had put forward can be summarised to, “It’s your playground. Do
whatever you want. Play together.” Still, Umesh had told me early enough
that he will not be available, and on a previous email he has publicly
mentioned that he wants to step down because he does not have the time for
such a role at the moment. So, people have been speaking up and stepping
down. It is just that not enough people have been voicing their thoughts.

The answer to the second question is that the provisional meta team was
supposed to act like a focus team - short-term and focused - with the goal
of putting forward a proposal and helping the eventual meta team to shape
up. Nothing there was set in stone. But, taking a first attempt is always
easier with a smaller team, working in the open and documenting their
journey. This effort has clearly failed. We need to close that chapter and
open up the entire process to the whole community, but we still need to
have a clear direction. I can only propose here because, after all, it is
not just about me or you.

The last two months have almost been as if ASD and I were shouting on the
streets saying, “Come play with us, we have cool toys”, and most of the
neighbourhood kids only stared through their windows. Only a few
enthusiastic kids came forward saying, “let’s start playing, guys”. But,
you see, we want to play together with everyone and give everyone a taste
of how we can all play creatively. So, do we wait till everyone joins or
just get the heck on with our game? Time to take things into your own hands?

Cheers!

#6

Hey Kaustav,

I appreciate your effort to make things move ahead and i believe that its not you,me, Akshay or Deb who can take this forward, although you are inviting people go play with us but still few doubts are still dropping them out of it.

  1. Who can be the part of the game? (Is it only council members, Provisional Meta Team or every individual who has love and passion to work for betterment of Mozilla India)
  2. Where should one start and end the game?
  3. I believe that we should build standard rules to play because if everyone starts playing their own games its really difficult for us to understand.
  4. Again every game will have teams,where I’m still not sure about our team.
  5. A game without a strategy always fails and if we already have a strategy whats it?
  6. Finally i believe in following timelines, Its better if we set timelines and work accordingly.

Happy to help you with building Rules and Strategies for the game :slight_smile: Count me in.

Regards,
Dyvik

#9

Can I play? I want to play, doesn’t matter if it’s as a 12th man or a water boy…

#11

Dyvik,

Nice questions and all of them need answering. I will refrain from
answering them in detail because the answers at this point would be my
opinions, which may not necessarily be the ideas of the collective. Nice to
see you play on my “play” analogy :wink:

The short answer should be: be open, get together and get stuff done, be it
something focused, long-term or strategies.

I see that while many of our friends here did not reply to this thread,
they have been having interesting discussions on Telegram. So, then, how do
we actually do stuff? For those of you that want to step up, here’s a quick
guideline:

  • Start putting your notes/thoughts/comments on
    https://github.com/MozillaIndia/meta.
  • Join #india-meta on IRC and get the conversation going on there.
  • Build flexible rules and regulations that can warp like spacetime.
  • Help others.

The idea behind the Meta team is not have a moral high ground, but be an
enabler and sort out the complexities in other areas. So, let’s open up,
let people step up and take responsibilities and be an enabler for the rest.

There you go. I’ve opened Pandora’s box.

#12

Correct me if I’m wrong but it seems to me that the whole Mozilla India Restructure is paused just because we can’t form a Meta team. I won’t blame anyone for that. What if we start with the Focus team, which supposed to have short time goals. Maybe no one is coming forward because they’re not sure what they’re going to face in near future. Let’s start with short term goals so that we can accomplish something within a given time frame & the roles, responsibilities makes sense.

As per my understanding the meta team only makes sense when we’ve both active “Functional Teams” & “Focus Teams”. If we don’t have those teams then why do we need a meta team?

The top-down approach is failing so far, let’s try the bottom-up approach.

Personally I’m contributing to bedrock with my limited knowledge. I’m looking forward to learn Rust or start contributing to connected devices (haven’t decided yet). Yeah, so let’s begin fixing / breaking things…

#13

It is designed as a bottom up approach itself. Essentially nobody should be waiting for meta team to start working on or forming teams.
Only, since not much is happening either way, everything seems to be stuck.

#14

Everything looks great in Restructure of Mozilla India but one part is still not clear.

Firstly, Why do we really need a Meta Team when we have Reviewers,Peers,Council members and staff who are available to support us 24/7, Is Meta Team formed to put all our Restructure work in Pause? When Meta team comes in to existence we we will be shifting our whole focus from flat structure of Mozilla India to a hierarchical structure, which creates more problems than finding solution for existing ones.

Secondly, Why not we just start working as functional groups? I mean with a flat structure where anyone can join in particular functional group and start working on it with no boundaries,where it brings more openness to the program and encourages every volunteer to take part in it,and focus groups will be there for the same within the internal communities.

Waiting for your replies.

#15

I guess these are for Reps. I’ve not heard of Mozilla India’s reviewers, peers, council, or staff.

No. Refer above.

Yes and no. Meta team might be functionally overseeing other teams, but that doesn’t mean day to day vertical hierarchy. If you’re into social science, think of meta team as judiciary or constitutional assembly and of functional teams as execution branch. These branches are independent and powerful.

Why not?

exactly the point of the restructure.

#17

  1. I accept that "Reviewers,Peers and Council members are for reps and staff is open to all,In this case i believe that Reps are the people who should act as a Meta Team for Mozilla India as they have access to every resource and I don’t find anything interesting in forming a Meta Team when we already have 40+ reps working across India to serve Mozillians and non-Mozillians.

  2. I don’t see any progress in Functional groups as Provisional meta team/Meta team has no updates from their side and most of the mozillians are not still clear about things that are happening around and hardly we could see any contribution in functional groups. So i still consider it as a pause when you compare situation before MinM’16 and after MinM’16.

  3. I consider Meta team as Reps and its their responsibility for the growth of community and to take a look at things that are happening around for the better growth of community as a whole,as we already discussed Reps have an access to all the resources.

  4. Refer to my second point and it states that Mozillians are not clear about structure yet and i cannot expect them to start working on their functional domains without any clear understanding of restructure.

This should make sense.

#18

Hi everyone,

First of all, thank you all for playing some or the other role in the entire community restructuring exercise. Your participation has been very crucial to come this far. It might have been frustrating for some of you at times to see the efforts going in vain. But the great patience you all have showed so far is our strength as a community.

For those of you who I am a whole new face, my name is Subhashish and I have recently joined Mozilla’s Participation team. And one of my first few priorities in this new position is to help build a process, and work closely with you all in the community to help restructure. My role will be facilitating the process, reaching out to the community leaders for bettering the consensus. And the community will take a major role in the entire process esp. in most of the decision making and defining roles for themselves in different teams.

I was fortunate to meet in person with some of the members in the provisional team – Kaustav, Prathamesh and Vnisha, and many other community leaders during the Dino Tank workshop here at Bengaluru.

Members of the provisional meta team and I have planned to restart the restructuring process with more time-bound and clear goals. Thanks to all of them that they have kindly agreed to get on a call this Friday. We are going to look at the high level structure that was planned and shared during the Mozilla India Meetup Pune in August – this is well captured in the Mozilla India Open Book – and the ideas (this and this) proposed by the community.

Looking forward to working with you all and aim for an open process to respect everyone’s opinion and bring up a clear consensus. And I am hopeful that all of these will lead to restructuring that will be widely accepted and participated.

Subhashish Panigrahi
South Asia Community Catalyzer
Mozilla

1 Like
#19

Hey @psubhashish congratulations for the new role :slight_smile:

I’ve a small question. Can I join the call (as a spectator :stuck_out_tongue_winking_eye:)? Just want to witness the discussion :smile:

#20

Hi @rcmainak thanks for the kind words. About joining the call, of course you can. Kaustav has kindly volunteered to set the live Hangouts YouTube link so anyone interested can join. You are most welcome to join and share your comments.

#21

Sounds fun. Thank you :smile: