Emma Irwin

Webmaker Exploratory

Posted by Emma in community, Mozilla, remo, teachtheweb

Two years ago I proposed a Webmaker Club at my daughter’s school, and it was turned down in an email: Because it involves students putting (possibly) personal info/images on-line we are not able to do the club at this time. They did say that they may have to reconsider in the future because more and more of life is happening on-line. One year, and because our principle is amazing, and sponsored it – I had a ‘lunch time’ Webmaker Club at my daughter’s elementary school (grades 4 & 5) . …read more

Feb.11

Kindness in (Open Source and Online) Communities

Posted by Emma in community, Community Education, contribution, remo, women in technology

Kindness is the language which the deaf can hear and the blind can see. ~Mark Twain I’ve had this post swirling around in my head for a while. A post on my experiences and preference to lead, participate and negotiate conflict in online communities through kindness. I might be writing it as a proposal to others, but also it might be a bit of therapy to review this strategy for myself. Kindness is the tone you set for yourself When we consider approaching community conversation with kindness and patience; when…read more

Feb.04

Community Education – Building Together

Posted by Emma in Community Education, remo

So, yesterday I wrote an introductory post : Mozilla Community Education in 2015 with a promise to write a each day leading up to our first Community Education Working Group Call on Thursday. I wrote about our vision for Community Education as core to the virtuous circle in Mark Surman’s vision , and how the strength and leadership of the Mozilla Reps will act as a launching pad for participation across, and well beyond the project. Today I want to talk about a vision for virtuous circle of education &…read more

Feb.03

Mozilla Reps Council AMA

Posted by Emma in remo

Cross-post of Majken Conner’s invitation to participate in the first Mozilla Reps Council AMA. Come ask us questions this Thursday! This Thursday, launching during the Reps call, council will be doing a 24h AMA. They’ll be using Discourse, so you only need your Persona account, no need to sign up to Reddit to post. You won’t need to log in to read the AMA. For those of you that haven’t done an AMA before, AMA stands for “Ask Me Anything.“, made popular by the SubReddit. It’s a way to get…read more

Feb.03

Mozilla Community Education in 2015

Posted by Emma in Community Education, Mozilla, remo

Last year, to research some theories I had about empowering community, I polled numerous open source communities about their experiences as contributors. Some key responses to “why do you contribute” were: To learn more about a specific technology or project To grow and develop existing skills For challenge and feedback from respected peers. Opportunity to mentor, or be mentored To better learn and understand the philosophy of Open To improve my resume. The majority of responses identified learning opportunities and mentoring as a key motivators for participation, and (perhaps even…read more

Jan.12

Teaching Contribution

Posted by Emma in community, contribution, Mozilla, remo

There are a lot of wonderful challenges in open source: opportunities to learn, to make a difference and to impact the world in a positive way. There are good difficulties learning in open source: hard problems we need to solve-for, but usually we’re OK with that- we’re problem solvers, fixers, inventors, builders… we invest in challenge for causes we care about. But for technical contributors, the potential impact of an individual person weighs heavily on their ability to survive on-boarding. The not-so-good difficulty: Navigating wikis, understanding communication tools, getting a…read more

Dec.15

#mozlove for Nigel Babu

Posted by Emma in community, contribution, remo

Two weeks ago some 1000+ Mozillians gathered in Portland for a workweek. Attendance was, as usual, from all over the world – staff and volunteers all working really hard, together, to visualize 2015 – and in the evenings we met at various restaurants all over town to unwind and socialize. It was on one of these nights at the Deschutes Brewery , I met and was inspired by Nigel Babu and the story of Mozilla Sheriffs. ‘Sheriffing’ is not just the coolest contributor title – but a truly amazing collaboration…read more

Dec.02

Radical Participation – Scaling the Human Network

Posted by Emma in community, Mozilla, remo

Co-written with Larissa Shapiro At Mozilla we’re always thinking about how to improve our products, how to continue a legacy of innovation and quality while shipping often. That said, we can’t talk about Mozilla’s history, or future without acknowledging the critical role of our global volunteer community in our success, and of it’s importance to our future. Software is made by people, and community is made both by and of people. This year’s learnings around the challenges of contributor growth and retention, come with a recognition that we have two…read more

Nov.22

Being a Mozilla Rep Mentor – Training & SOP Updates

Posted by Emma in community, remo

This post has been a long-time coming, as there are important changes to the Reps Mentorship program SOP and process as a result of RemoCamp Berlin. A quick background! I believe very, very much in the power of mentorship in general, and in Reps specifically I know that in mentorship lies the potential to unlock the possibilities of all Reps can achieve together if we value the opportunity of empowering each other. That said, this role to-date, has been loosely implemented as more of a administrative role – and that’s…read more

Nov.20

Mozilla Guides Call – Nov 19, 2014

Posted by Emma in community, remo

In an effort to make the call more accessible to other timezones we had an early call (7AM PST) today. EtherPad We covered a few things I want to highlight: Guides Update Guides continues to get busier, and as we’ve had an expected drop-off of Guides from our original group, I want to thank those who are really championing the development and leadership so far in Guides David Teller Vesper Diziewonski Ioana Chiorean Julien G Stefan (Costenslayer) Jennie Rose Halprin Abhishek Potnis Saurabh Diane With a special shout-out to Ioana,…read more