“Coming Together is the Beginning, Staying together is the progress and working together is the Success.”
A team of initiators joined to put forth the future into the present as a plan. A team of 25 members, selected gems from various sub-communities represented their crew by their presence in the Mozilla India Planning Meetup – 2016 at Pune on 09th & 10th of July 2016. The team had also invited George Roter, Head of Core Contributors, Participation at Mozilla to support them in their journey.
With the energy being widespread the Day 1 had marked its beginning.
Day 1
Inspiration, the only thing which kindles the inner spirit of every human. The first session of the meetup was Stories of Self conducted by Haiyya. A well-organised presentation of one’s life, i.e., the experience we share can be the best rope of hope to all those who listen to it.
Future vision of Mozilla
Future goals of Mozilla were the theme of the next session. The goals focus on five important areas
- Context Graph and other Test Pilot features in Firefox
- Future of Rust and Servo
- Connected Devices
- Mozilla’s Issues Agenda and Advocacy
- Mozilla Leadership Network
1] Context Graph
Context Graph is a recommendation system for the Web. Searching content in the search bar won’t just limit the results based on the browsing history but will also explore documents and links corresponding to the search, based on metadata of all web pages.
The Activity stream is the first Context Graph feature, currently available in Test Pilot. It will evolve into a search engine which will also help the users to discover places on the Web, they have never seen. It would be available for both desktop and mobile platforms.
2] Future of Rust and Servo
Mozilla Research is supporting a new system programming language called Rust since 2009. This language concentrates on three crucial necessities – safety, speed and concurrency. Rust is one of the key focus areas, and it aims to provide a better platform for programmers in writing efficient codes with a comfortable level of abstraction.
On the other hand, Servo – the parallel browser engine project is under trial. It is a modern, high-performance engine designed for both application and embedded use. It is written in the new system programming language – Rust. This project aims to achieve better parallelism, security, modularity, and performance. To know more about Servo, check- https://servo.org/.
3] Connected Devices
Mozilla wants to create open and accessible platforms that will allow individuals, businesses and others to benefit from Internet of Things(IoT). IoT leads the way to the next phase of the Internet. The IoT ideas that align with Mozilla’s goals would be selected, and their problem statement and solutions would be worked on. Later, the prototypes of such statements would be built and would be tested in the market. Depending on the market response, the production of such devices would begin.
Thus, the outcome of the overall process would be defining platforms.
4] Mozilla’s Issue Agenda and Advocacy
Mozilla has identified five issues that must be tackled in the current era, to build an Open Internet:
- Open privacy and security
- Open innovation
- Decentralization
- Web-literacy
- Digital inclusion
Mozilla Advocacy Engine:
A global movement to build and protect the next wave of openness and opportunity online.
The near-term goals are Online Privacy and Encryption whereas the mid-term goals are to increase the influence on issues like privacy, digital inclusion and web literacy.The long-term goals were set as behaviour change and policy change. The impact of this will be providing conscious choice to build and protect Open Internet and launch of products, policies and laws in support of the Open Internet.
5] Mozilla Leadership Network
The Mozilla Leadership Network is a global network of diverse leaders who will ensure the next wave of access, inclusion and opportunity online. It open practices to shape the Web in new ways and increase influence on privacy, digital inclusion and web literacy. It also supports to improve their skills and experience as leaders.
The thematic hubs to be focused are learning, science, internet policy and advocacy, women and web literacy, Internet of Things.
MLN audience:
- Champion
- Executive
- Professional
- Emerging Leader
- Young Leader
This will generate a high impact on network alignment, network connectivity, network size, member influence and reach.
Discussion on community restructure was the next session.
Restructuring – the way to fill the gap.This session focused on bringing out the thoughts of participants regarding the structure of the Mozilla India community. The participants were divided into groups and were asked to project their ideas about the structure of the community. The presentation by each team laid the first stone of change. With this brainstorming session, we got an overview, i.e., we paved the foundation.
Day 2
The agenda for the second day focused on two topics, one related to a restructuring of the community structure and the other about the plan for the Meetup 2016.
With the foundation we created the day before, we were ready to lay the roads towards reformation.The attendees were divided into various groups and were asked to derive strategies around the following blocks:
- Training and Workshops.
- Conflict Resolution.
- Team building and Recognition.
- Planning and Community restructure.
- Communication.
The motive of this session was to take into consideration a broader perspective about the functioning of the Mozilla India community and derive strategies around them. The restructuring process is a five weeks plan from 20th July to 21st August. Mozilla India has invited people to suggest the task force structure via this link before August.
Following this, “the planning for the Mozilla India Meetup 2016” was set to fire.
MOZILLA INDIA MEETUP 2016
Dates: August 26th – 28th 2016.
Title: “Mozilla India Meetup 2016”
The following points were listed as the goals for the meetup in August after the acceptance by all the participants.
- Develop a strategy, direction and plan for the future of the community.
- Re-structure the Mozilla India community — structures and processes.
- Increase the leadership/mobilising skills of the attendees (and develop strong onboarding programs for new community members).
- Improve communication processes and tools, and transparency.
- Build strong teams.
- Build strong recognition practices.
- Create accountability systems and a code of conduct.
- Build a plan for increasing diversity and inclusive practice across the community.
“Team working marks its excellence only by the space given to everyone in the team.”
Believing this saying the team assembled at Pune was divided and assigned with separate task regarding the preparation for our Meetup.
Communication
Members: Biraj, Ashish, Siddhartha, Shaguftha.
Role: Share updates about the meetup to the community. Work closely with the Marketing Communications Team.
Logistics
Members: Prathamesh, Chandrakant, Sayak.
Role: To make local logistics arrangements like booking hotel, travel, etc.
Regional Coordinators and Invitations
Members: Mehul, Akhil, Viswaprasath.
Role: Keep a follow-up with the regional members. Work closely on the invitations with the Reps Council members from India and the Participation Team.
Staff/functional coordination
Members: Sayak, Anivar.
Role: To work closely with the Mozilla staff and share status updates of the meetup.
Documentation
Members: Ankit, Kailas, Harsha.
Role: To document the entire meetup.
Content/facilitation
Members: Mayur, Anup, Priyanka, Meghraj, Diwanshi.
Role: Work on agenda and broadcast the content which would be facilitated for the meetup.
Strategy/Structure Options
Members: Deb, Vnisha, Prathamesh, Vineel, George.
Role: Draft an email which will call for proposals/suggestions. Make the proposals/suggestions public and open for the community to review and comment. The process, analyse and integrate the suggestions. Declare the finalised structure.
In the order, as mentioned above, the responsibilities were shared among the people within the gathering.
The selection criteria for this meetup was also drafted as a document. As per this document, the application will be open during the last week of July and the selection will be purely based the interest and contribution of the people towards Mozilla. [Update: The application is open to all now]
The days were on the swing, teaching everyone in the crew a new thing every second and also allowing us to explore a lot new sides of the community we have been travelling for a considerable period in the past.
Hoping to meet a much bigger team in Mozilla India Meetup 2016.
desilootera
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