Some of the key goals of the Mozilla India Task Force Meetup '15 included ensuring an organizational structure which promotes larger inclusion, allows wider participation and better recognition of contributors. We had precious little time to discuss about the Evangelism Task Force (ETF) in this year’s meetup, but the focus was to build an inter-disciplinary and decentralized team.
Why the change
Community members have been promoting technology awareness and have been reaching out to new members way before ETF was in place. The ETF was formed to give a general direction to those efforts and help increase the momentum of those efforts through peer support and knowledge sharing. Our initial efforts in the ETF were centred around building a training kit for new members and recruiting contributors who were interested in technical evangelism.
That approach did not scale. I was busy building new things and the team could not meet up as frequently as we needed. But that did not stop all of us from working in small groups or as individuals to help/mentor peers get better at public speaking and writing.
A key element of success of the community evangelism team is to have members who have technical expertise in their respective contribution areas and can help others learn them. I’ve often seen folks who have been helping their peers and want to improve their skills at spreading the education. We need to find a way to discover these folks and help them so that they can help others in a better way.
What will change
Instead of having a central group of mentors, we will have a decentralized approach.
Joining: Joining the ETF is as simple as getting yourself in the MozSpeakers group on Mozillians.org.
Communication: There are public channels: #etfindia on Mozilla IRC, and /etf on Scrollback. Also, you can drop an email to the community-india mailing list.
Public speaking: The team will assist anyone willing to give a presentation or organize a workshop. You can always get in touch with existing members, contact me directly, or leave a note on the communication channels.
Metrics: This needs to be discussed. As far as I can pitch in, it needs to be:
- Number of people the ETF helped in presenting their talks/workshops
- Number of talks/workshops conducted by ETF members
- Number of community members that are under peer-guidance from ETF members
Recognition: This needs to be discussed further as well. The ways can be:
- Listing members of the task force in a searchable portal hosted by the Mozilla India community. This is a WIP by the Technical Task Force.
- Giving out badges (?)
With that said, the overall goal is spread awareness. But that is never enough.
Let’s get some real work done. Push your feedback. I’m all ears!