Author: stormy

The Mozilla Summit is coming! On June 15th,  50 Mozillians got together for a planning session and I discovered just how much Mozillians focus on getting great things done!

We met to help shape the Mozilla Summit (a 2,000 person conference happening later this year) in a way that would move Mozilla forward. We spent the first day talking about top issues and the second day planning out the topics and sessions.

Of all the trips I’ve taken this year, I think the Mozilla Summit Planning Assembly was the one I looked forward to most – a chance to help shape the future of Mozilla and have great conversations with people who are passionate about the same things I am! I also admit I was really worried that we were too big of a group to get anything done. Turns out I was not alone. We all showed up ready to set the content and agenda for the Mozilla Summit.

A day of tough discussions and building trust

We had some excellent conversations Friday night and Saturday. We did a number of different exercises designed to start conversations and pull out key themes. For example, we started out  Saturday with an “unpanel”. Four people sit in the middle of the group. They have a conversation. There’s an empty chair as well and whenever someone in the audience wants to join the conversation, they slide into the empty seat and one of the four sitting there self selects to go back to the bigger circle leaving an empty chair as an invitation for the next person. While at first it didn’t seem very different than a big group conversation where you passed around the mic, it turned out to be a great way to keep the audience engaged in the conversation. Every one was listening hard. The topics we covered were varied but a lot of it centered around non paid staff vs paid staff relationships – culture and responsibilities. We also talked about things like whether there’d be technical roadmap decisions made at the Summit, how people like to communicate, etc. One of the key takeaways for many of us was that we were all worried about similar issues!

Over the course of the day, two themes arose:

1. Old timers and new hires are having a hard time trusting each other at Mozilla. I’m sure I didn’t get all the nuances but it felt to me like old timers think new hires might not have the “Mozilla DNA” and might not have an appreciation for our mission and open source methods. And new hires think old timers are stuck and so concerned with consensus they aren’t always getting things done.  Over the weekend, I think we made great progress in killing that stereotype and building good relationships that bridge the gap. (Lukas Blakk wrote about this experience as well.) I have to admit that personally I’m not sure where I fell on this stereotype other than feeling rather annoyed at both groups and some how personally responsible for both stereotypes. As a hiring manager, I’ve hired many of those new people. As a long time open source community member, I feel like it’s my job to make sure the “open source” way is considered and well represented.  I also think that part of the problem is how members of each group introduce themselves and represent themselves to the world – more on that later.
2. Mozillians like to get stuff done! By the end of the day, we were all extremely uncomfortable with all of the discussions, panels and world cafe exercises with no clear idea of how it was going to produce an agenda for the Summit. Luckily our leaders and the Unconference organizers heard all of our concerns and when we turned up the second day, we got to create a rough outline of an agenda and topics for the Summit!

Getting down to work

On the second day we did a “World Cafe” exercise. We had about 7 rooms and 3 time slots and everyone wrote in the topic they wanted to cover in one of the slots. We then did some consolidation and managed to squeeze everything into the ~20 slots.

The idea was to cover themes or topics we thought should be covered at the Mozilla Summit. Each session was to identify Session Title, Goals and Outcomes, People for Followup and What has to happen between now and the Summit. They were all captured in etherpads.

All the sessions I went to had great conversation. It was rather tricky to focus on how that topic would be covered at the Summit instead of just discussing the topic. We tried to focus on how the conversation would best happen at the Summit: what type of presentation it would be, how much should be a proposal vs a discussion, if it was one presentation or a theme, etc. Some times the topic you signed up for was not the topic your group ended up proposing. I attended discussions on communication, diversity (Dino and Lukas have a great diagram for a starting conversation!) and helping companies that aren’t used to “open” work with effectively with us.

Then Mark, Debbie, Mitchell, Kate and Mardi grouped all of the topics into themes – interestingly “People” had the most topics. Other themes included Strategy, Product, Process and Purpose.

So now we have themes for the Summit. And a lot of proposed topics.

I found it really valuable to spend this time as a group planning for a big event. When you are going to bring 2,000 people together (in groups of 600) I think it’s essential to spend some time uncovering what the real issues that we need to discuss are.

My take aways:

In addition to the bigger goal of planning the Summit, I took away a few more key things:

1. It’s important to work together, preferably in person. We built a lot of trust over the weekend – trust that would have taken much more time to build during our regular day-to-day lives and over the internet. I hope we can take that experience and bring it to the Mozilla Summit.
2. Mentors. After a conversation with Gandalf, I came away thinking part of the solution might be holding mentors more accountable and some how measuring their success over time. We also discussed short term mentorship projects too.
3. How you introduce your self matters. With a few exceptions, most of the volunteer Mozillians introduced themselves as being “a community member” or a “Rep”. Most of paid staff introduced themselves by their functional role or team, “Firefox for Android”. This is natural as while we all feel like part of the greater Mozilla community, paid staff has in general been hired to do a particular role. But I feel like it’s a big part of the disconnect.
4. Lots of communication formats are needed. Lawrence Mandel pointed out that not everyone does well speaking in front of large groups at conferences, so whatever format the Summit takes, it needs to enable lots of communication vehicles, meetings, parties, irc, etherpads, newsgroups, … a way for everyone to find enough of their comfort zone so that they can be comfortable enough to participate fully.

The Mozilla Summit Planning Assembly was one of the trips I was most looking forward to attending this year and it lived up to my expectations! I’m very excited for the Summit now! (And for all the planning that still has to happen before then!)

Many of us working on free and open source software have strong values and we want to make the world a better place. I’m comfortable predicting that the rate of vegetarians, recyclers, hybrid vehicle owners and just general environmentally conscious people is higher than average in free and open source software projects.

We want to work with and support companies that support our values. We buy brands like Seventh Generation products, we try to support companies like System 76 and ZaReason. And we avoid “evil” companies. After hearing Dish Network was the Meanest Company in America, I’m researching other cable providers.

But how much can you restrict your partnerships to those that perfectly align with your values? Is a company evil if it doesn’t match your values in all areas? I personally buy products and have business relationships with companies that I may not be 100% aligned with. (Although some may be too far from alignment.) Sometimes it’s because I haven’t done any research – I buy gas where it’s most convenient not from the most environmentally conscious gas provider. Sometimes it’s because there’s not much of an alternative – if I want high speed network at home, Comcast is my option. Sometimes it’s because I think that while they are not perfect, they are providing a service that makes my world better.

If you partner with someone who doesn’t share all of your values, assuming the partnership goes well, you have a chance to influence them. My friends are much more likely to listen to my opinions than someone I’ve never had a coffee or a beer with.

Now, I realize that open source software projects are often less in the position of partnering and more in the position of accepting donations. But again, I think your chances are greater for being a positive influence if you are working with them than if you are not. You should examine the organization’s motives and make sure if you are part of a political play, that you are comfortable with that move. I still remember the wealthy individual trying to build a big chain store in the town I lived in who donated a house to a family in need. While it was a great donation, and I would thank him for it in person if I saw him, I also know it landed him on the front page of the paper in a positive light at a very controversial time. Should the family have turned down his donation? Probably not. Should those that were anti-big-chain-store have done something differently. Probably.

But the fear of being associated with a company that’s not perfect or of being used as part of political play should not hold us back from investigating options and starting partnerships.

I think open source software projects often hold themselves back. They don’t investigate partnerships that could be beneficial because the other organization is not perfect. Proprietary software is not evil – a lot of really great innovation has been led by proprietary software companies. And doing business with an organization that has proprietary software will not make an open source organization any less good. There will be no perfect organization just like there is no perfect person. You have to recognize the opportunity for good in people and organizations and work with them where it can make sense for both of you.

Make the world a better place through partnerships because if you insist on doing it all yourself, it’s going to be a long road. Personally, I want to visit the stars someday, so I hope those that share a vision of star travel work together even if they don’t always agree on how to do it. I want to live in a world where everyone has access to computing power and the internet and control over their experience and their data. I think in order to do that, we’re all going to have to work together. And we’re going to have to work with those that might agree on pieces of our plan but not the end vision, and that will be ok. The super helpful Comcast guy might not share my vision of the world, but he helped me make it possible for me to continue working on it.