All Hands/Austin/electives/submittedsessions

This is the full list of submitted elective proposals for Austin before voting. The final list is now posted in Sched.

Grow Firefox and Grow From Firefox

1 Activity Stream and In-Product Communications: Practically Perfect in Every Way

Presenters

Maria Popova and Jean Collings

Description

Like peanut butter and chocolate - these two areas just fit together. Firefox Quantum has a new look and feel including the about:home and about:tab pages - come to learn about the journey of how we collaborated to make sure users have the best experience with snippets and Activity Stream combined together on both about:home and about:tab.

2 All things Pontoon

Presenters

Matjaž Horvat, Staś Małolepszy

Description

Would you like to get your project localized? Are you interested in creating a report from Pontoon data? Do you have requests for extending the Pontoon API? Come learn what's new about the Mozilla's translation tool! https://pontoon.mozilla.org/

3 Amplitude for Firefox Accounts & Pocket

Presenters

Josephine Tanumijaya, Ryan Kelly & Tushar Kirtane

Description

Amplitude is a product analytics tool catered for Product Managers that focuses on providing insights on user behavior and/or user events of our products to measure user retention and engagement. Firefox Accounts (FxA) and Pocket teams have just implemented Amplitude and the teams would like to show how they use the insights in Amplitude to make better and more effective business decisions quickly, and ultimately create better products for our users.

4 AreWeSmoothYet (Hang Telemetry Dashboard)

Presenters

Doug Thayer

Description

Go over what https://arewesmoothyet.com is, how to interpret it, and discuss where we might want to take it in the future.

5 Can we improve privacy without breaking the web?

Presenters

Luke Crouch

Description

Does Tracking Protection break websites? Do broken websites make users leave Firefox? Are there existing privacy protections we could enable with minimal web breakage?

In August, the Firefox Privacy team conducted a first-of-its-kind, exploratory research study to start learning how certain privacy protections may - or may not - break certain websites. Over 19,000 users participated to report broken websites under 8 different privacy protections. We learned some surprising and unsurprising things.

In this session, I'll present a detailed summary of what we built, measured, and learned in our study. We want every Mozillian to learn about the opportunities and possibilities we have in Firefox to improve peoples' online privacy.

6 Cross-channel and continuous localization

Presenters

Francesco Lodolo

Description

You will learn about continuous localization, and how we use a single set of strings to localize all versions of Firefox. We'll show how common challenges in engineering get new solutions on the localization side. And last but not least, how we shipped Firefox 57.

7 Death-Defying Stats 2 - Using Telemetry Data to Answer More Questions

Presenters

chutten

Description

Come one! Come all! See the amazing Data Engineer perform analysis before your very eyes! You don't want to miss out on your chance to get data answers to your deepest, darkest, data questions.

Submit your questions ahead of time to Moderator, or surprise the Data Engineer live, during the presentation!

Gasp as he struggles to remember SQL syntax to answer "What country has the most Firefox Beta users?" (It isn't the US). Scream as he puts a semicolon in an IPython notebook to graph "What do we know about users who opt-out of Telemetry, anyway?". Laugh as he stares off into the middle distance to try and remember what dataset contains the information to solve "How quickly do we get Telemetry pings from users?"

Come in with questions, and leave not only with answers but with knowledge of how to find these answers yourself in the future!

Please post your questions ahead of time on Moderator: https://moderator.mozilla.org/?next=/e/elective-death-defying-stats-2-more-questions-you-d-like-telemetry-to-answer

8 Does our content work for people?: How Firefox uses content testing to improve our products

Presenters

Jennifer Davidson; Michelle Heubusch

Description

User research is not just usability testing or field studies -- we can also test content. Do people understand the content? What did they feel when they read it? What personality does the content have? In this session, you’ll walk away with examples of how we have content tested different areas of Firefox including: Importing User Data, Firefox Desktop Onboarding, and Error Messages. You’ll see how the testing changed not only our content, but our design. You’ll learn how to think about content, and how to ask questions about your website content.

9 Driving Mobile Growth with Marketing

Presenters

Devyani Gupta

Description

What will happen during the session: In this session we'll share the tactics and techniques mobile marketing team uses to grow Firefox Apps market share. What attendees will learn / take away: Attendees will get an overview of the mobile marketer's toolkit including - aligning marketing strategy to customer life-cycle, executing and optimizing user acquisition and retention digital marketing campaigns and running growth experiments. Who should attend: Mozillians interested in growth, experimentation and being customer-centric. We plan to have an interactive session where we will create growth strategies and experiments together. What track it supports and why: This session supports Firefox's growth and how we can harness 'Mobile First' users around the globe to grow Firefox's market share.

10 Engineering Lightning Talks

Presenters

Naveed Ihsanullah

Description

Collection of twenty 5 minute lightning talks by Engineering for any who are interested.

11 Experimentation & Firefox

Presenters

Jared Kerim

Description

Experimentation means testing new features and ideas quickly with real users to make better quality products faster. A new set of tools and processes make this simpler than ever before, including Shield, Telemetry, Data Tools, and Experimenter. Firefox projects like Activity Stream are already using them, and with very little effort, so can you!

12 Firefox Growth: Retention and Referral Experimentation A quarter of a million dollars with one click - find out how we did it!

Presenters

Chris More and Jean Collings

Description

Using snippets this year, we targeted long-time users with a “Thank You” campaign which resulted in over $250,000 in LTV for Firefox. As we look to grow market share and expand the reach of Firefox, we are also experimenting with our Heartbeat ranking to pop a referral mechanism in place. Join us to find out more about these growth experiments

13 Firefox Rocket (lightweight Android browser for Indonesia and emerging markets) - learnings and what's next

Presenters

Joe Cheng

Description

By joining this session, you will learn about the stories behind in building the Firefox Rocket mobile browser and all the latest learnings about the Indonesian users and market. You will also learn about what's next for Firefox Rocket. This session is ideal for anyone who wants to learn more about emerging markets and users such as Indonesia.

14 From Shield to Snippets: The Lifecycle of an Experiment

Presenters

Jean Collings and Kamyar Ardekani

Description

Those little delightful notes delivered in the product are powerful and our users love them. Learn how we have implemented messaging tests using Shield, gather user sentiment and applied those results. In-Product communications have provided increased engagement from current users, new user growth, reduced churn to competitor products, improved brand perception/loyalty and mean fewer issues for users and support. Come learn more about how you can put these tiny titans to work for you.

15 Get Rid Of Past Thinking And Position Yourself For A Shift in How You Think About Firefox Product Communications

Presenters

Michele Warther

Description

Our lean data principles mean we have a small window into the lives, habits and motivations of our Firefox users. Come join us to see how we applied the data we have from GA, Telemetry and Accounts to better understand our users’ interests, what stage of the lifecycle they are in and how to best serve to their unique needs. Our core investment around audience segmentation means we will focus on the ability to see and speak our users as groups of individuals rather than a one-size-fits-all model, which is going to be the most efficient and effective way to meet our long-term Firefox user retention goals. Hear about our year of experiments along with a case study on how we used that approach for both desktop and mobile.

16 How Contextual Hints Will Lead The Way to Mobile Growth

Presenters

Nick Chapman, Devanyi Gupta and Jean Collings

Description

We rolled out a new testing tool and approach this year to help our mobile users. Come join us for an overview the iOS/Android campaigns we launched this year,, lessons learned and how we are able to quickly test/optimize for mobile retention and growth.

17 How Lockbox will win at password management

Presenters

Sandy Sage

Description

Firefox is uniquely positioned to have a password manager that crosses the chasm

18 How To Make Friends & Support.mozilla.org

Presenters

Roland Tanglao

Description

There's no better way to learn about real-world Firefox usage and Firefox users than a few minutes a day answering support questions. So this week, we want as many Mozillians as possible to join us and spend a few minutes answering our users' questions at the All Hands. It's fast, easy, and the SUMO team will have your back; by the end of this session you will have answered your first support question and learned something new about the challenges our users are facing and who knows you might be hooked on this fun act of helping and learning! That would be awesome (and our not so hidden agenda)! No technical knowledge required, just a laptop and a desire to help. (Are you an old hand at this already? Then come help us help our fellow Mozillians help Firefox users.)

19 Introduction to React (even for Python devs!)

Presenters

Armen

Description

Frontend web development is in a new renaissance. The number of technologies sprouting is staggering and one that has become very prominent is React from Facebook.

Even if you're a Python developer you will probably enjoy this session and won't find it too difficult to follow along.

In this session you will get to learn what React is (and few more supporting tools), how to get started writing React and build your first app.

Attendees can choose to A) install few tools on their machines, B) connect to some cloud editor or C) just watch along.

We will have time for open forum at the end to ask questions.

About presenter: I've worked as an automation and release engineer for almost 10 years. Mainly writing in Python. I've recently taken some courses on React and written few projects with it.

20 Mozilla & Tor: Engineering, Product Ideas, and More

Presenters

Tom Ritter & Ethan Tseng

Description

You've probably heard that Mozilla collaborates with Tor, the Firefox fork that provides users with near-bulletproof privacy and anonymity from advertisers, their ISP, and even national censorship regimes. But what do we actually _do_? What does Tor gain from this, and what does Mozilla? One day, could Tor be integrated in Firefox?

21 Mozilla Money Matters

Presenters

Jim Cook + Mark Crandon (& Team)

Description

Ever wondered how Mozilla makes - and spends - its money? Hear an overview of the Business of Mozilla and Firefox: how we generate revenue, who our revenue and distribution partners are. And how we spend money too. You'll discuss all things money and Mozilla with Jim Cook, CFO and Mark Crandon, Senior Director, Business Development. This presentation is a hit with previous electives attendees and our new hires. Come join the conversation.

22 Performance Profiling

Presenters

Greg Tatum

Description

Become more effective at making software fast with profiling. Get a walkthrough of the features of perf.html and how to effectively use them to diagnose performance problems. The first half will be a directed demonstration of features and effective profiling strategies, but for the second half, bring your own profiles so that the profiler team can help diagnose where your own projects are slow.

23 Performance testing: debugging, hacking

Presenters

Joel Maher

Description

Writing or editing performance tests at Mozilla can be confusing and frustrating, come here to learn hands on how Performance tests are run and managed for Firefox, how to create new tests, and how to work with regressions.

24 Phabricator/Lando training

Presenters

Mark Côté

Description

The development team will be giving a short presentation on how to use Phabricator and our new automatic-landing system, Lando. The rest of the session will be a workshop to assist anyone who wants to try out the system. Open to all developers in the Firefox org and anyone else looking for a new review tool integrated with Bugzilla.

25 Photon Design System Tools for Designers and Engineers

Presenters

Amin Al Hazwani

Description

The Photon Design System group currently provides a website where you find design decisions like visuals, copy, patterns and components that are available to designers and engineers. But how can we make sure that these decisions stay true and valid on different products and platforms?

This is what design system tools are all about. Participants will discover how existing tools like services, plugins, APIs and extensions bring design and engineering closer together and how these tools facilitate conversations and let people speak and use the same shared language that supports a cohesive product experience.

Later on, participants are invited to join the conversation and brainstorm on how to build a holistic system that serves design decisions to multiple people, platforms, languages and Firefox products, from desktop to mobile, from web to native.

This elective supports the track “Grow Firefox and grow from Firefox” because the long-term goal of these tools and the design system group is to allow Firefox teams to design and build new features and even new products that converge instead of diverge, enabling users to be part of a harmonic experience.

Mobile and desktop engineers, product managers and designers are more than welcome to join the conversation in defining what is the ground work necessary to make this happen. And what could be the tools or services that will effectively deliver a design decision as one unique source-of-truth.

26 Photon Performance: How We Made Firefox Faster

Presenters

Florian Quèze

Description

We'll share things we've learned while working on improving browser performance. Techniques, best practices, what to definitely avoid, etc.

There won't be a deep dive into any specific tool, but examples of how we measured performance and avoided / eliminated regressions during the Quantum / Photon development cycle, and what things we learned along the way.

We'll also discuss next steps and welcome suggestions.

27 Retention, churn, and funnels, oh my! Everything we know (and don't) about Firefox retention.

Presenters

Jennifer Davidson Chris More Su Hong

Description

Churn. It’s not just for butter. How many people leave Firefox after downloading (churn)? Why? What do people do in their first sessions of using Firefox? What do people who stick around do in the browser? How is that different from people who leave? You’ll leave this session with an understanding of Firefox retention, the reasons for it, and how we measure it. You’ll also learn what we don’t know, and we’ll brainstorm together about what we might want to know.

28 Ship happens: A better Firefox build and release pipeline

Presenters

Kim Moir

Description

The Firefox build and release pipeline is crucial to delivering our products to customers. Over the past year we have transformed our pipeline to a more robust and scalable system using Taskcluster, Docker and in-tree scheduling. We have also implemented release promotion, which takes existing continuous integration (CI) binaries and transforms them for release, significantly reducing wall clock time.

Attend this session to hear exciting stories about how to replace components of a large running distributed system using the ominously named strangler application approach. I’ll discuss some metrics regarding the end-to-end time for our release process. I’ll also cover how developers can implement changes to transform builds and tests themselves in-tree.

Who should attend: Folks who want to learn more about how we optimize the build and release pipeline to be more scalable, robust and able to deliver product more quickly to our customers. As well, people who are interested in how to use the new tools to optimize their interactions with our CI system. This talk tracks the Grow Firefox topic because it allows us to collaborate with various teams at Mozilla to deliver our product more effectively.

29 Storage UX

Presenters

Anne van Kesteren

Description

Discussion about improving storage management in Firefox. Simplifying the myriad of options around cookies, HTTP cache, and site storage.

30 Testing our Assumptions about Products & Users

Presenters

Tyler Downer

Description

We have many assumptions about our products. Do users know what our logo is? Do users really not know what we mean when we say VPN? What happens when we put these assumptions to the test? The Strategy and Insights team has run multiple studies over 2017 that test assumptions we had about how users use our products. Attend this session to learn what "Mozilla Myths" we tested and what we learned!

31 The New Localization API in Gecko

Presenters

Zibi Braniecki

Description

The new localization API is landing in Gecko. I'll demo the new API, explain how to use it and how it'll change the way we do front-end UI.

32 Untangling Mozilla's Content Ecosystem

Presenters

Chelsea Novak, Justin Crawford

Description

Do you blog about Mozilla? Tweet? Post on Facebook? Write PR? Answer questions on Quora? Build rep on StackOverflow? Post on Reddit? Respond on HackerNews? Publish on Medium? Screencast on YouTube? Yep, we all do, all at the same time in every direction. Why? Is it working? How do we know? Mozilla’s content ecosystem is colossal and complex and more tangled than your earbud wires after the airport security line, and we need your help to untangle it. We’ll present an ecosystem map; talk about challenges; talk about opportunities; and discuss.

33 WHATWG

Presenters

Anne van Kesteren

Description

Update on the WHATWG, followed by Q&A and discussion.

34 Walk in Indonesian's slippers

Presenters

Ruby Hsu

Description

In order to understand how Indonesian uses mobile phone in general, we did an ethnography research in Indonesia, talking to real users at their home, street intercept at malls and talk with students at schools. We zoom-in into details of how they use mobile and also zoom-out to know their lifestyle, mindset and culture. We'll share insights on mobile usage, pain-points and latent needs, paints an overall picture of the target market.

35 Want a better product? Call your friends at Firefox Accounts

Presenters

Ben Niolet and Michele Warther

Description

This year, we did something unusual: we set fire to our playbook and the metrics we have been using forever: opens and clicks and impressions — oh my who cares? We worked with the Firefox Accounts team to connect email to user data. The result: relevant messages that got half a million lost users back to Firefox and a measurable increase in retention. Firefox Accounts didn’t "make" this campaign, but they sure made it better. You don’t need to base your feature or product on Accounts. But incorporating rich user data could make your feature better for users and for you (smoother conversion funnel, built-in metrics, retention and re-engagement capability). Find out why incorporating Accounts into your product or feature can make yours better too.

36 Web Standards: How and why we standardize

Presenters

L. David Baron

Description

This is largely a discussion about standards and about how Mozilla is and should be involved in standards. The first 10-15 minutes will give some brief background about how I look at our involvement in standards (both in terms of what we do and why) and about how standardization works at the W3C and elsewhere. Then I'd like to have a group-wide discussion of questions about standardization, with topics to be determined by those who are present. Potential topics for discussion (though I'm very open to others): what standards we should be working on, where to standardize, openness of standards process, patent policy, speed of process, getting the right parties involved, when the right time to standardize is, how to interact with and implement standards in development, speaking as an individual or on behalf of an organization, when to let other parties take the lead on developing standards, how we track our work on and our opinions of standards, and dealing with discussions that have to be private.

37 Welcome to Firefox - Experimenting Across the Globe

Presenters

Ben Niolet, Jessica Osorio and Kirby Fowle

Description

Benvenuto, Bienvenue, Willkommen, Bem Vindo - How ever you say it, we want to welcome you to Firefox in the warmest way. This year we ran over 100 experiments to find the right messaging, at the right time to the right audience.

38 What You Can Learn From 3+ Billion Messages a Month

Presenters

Jessica Osorio and Jean Collings

Description

When it comes time to launch a new product feature, change, or redesign, we have just finished selling to our own internal “congress” of decision makers, making our case with metrics and user feedback, then finally getting that change to development – but that is just the start…Now it is time to meet the people – the users. So, how do we communicate product changes and maintain positive user relationships? Snippets and email - come find out how you can do more for and with our Firefox users.

39 What's new in Telemetry

Presenters

Georg Fritzsche

Description

We will walk through significant recent improvements and changes in Firefox Telemetry: from improvements in how to do data analysis to new data being sent and what its good for to . If you work with data, you will get a better understanding of what we can do now and what tools to use.

40 Why use Firefox instead of Chrome? Hear product marketing's story, and help make it better.

Presenters

Ryan Pollock

Description

Part presentation & part brainstorming - hear product marketing's thoughts on how to pitch Firefox Quantum vs Chrome. Group breakout to provide feedback on story and brainstorm additional features to further differentiate Firefox from Chrome.

Grow Mozilla

1 Agile Games

Presenters

Nushin Haghighi

Description

What does it mean to be Agile? Explore the values and principles of Agile through a fun and interactive session.

2 AirMozilla - live interactive streaming tools for success

Presenters

Andy Kochendorfer

Description

The new AirMozilla platform offers significant opportunities for audience engagement, social streaming to Facebook, YouTube, etc., OTT platforms, and more. Learn how you can give an effective webinar with just a laptop.

3 Being "Open by Default" isn't working. Now what?

Presenters

Patrick Finch, Susy Struble

Description

"Everyone I talk to feels they know they should work with community but they feel too busy working on stuff, getting shuffled themselves." -Rel Eng Manager

"Everybody I know at Mozilla really cares about Mozilla having a strong community." -Front-End Engineer

In 2017, we studied the needs and experiences of working with community. The resulting strategy - Open by Design - aims to revitalize how external participation can be a competitive advantage for Mozilla.

We will review our key findings, discuss how “defaulting to open” has created inertia and perceived lack of value in community, and the shifts needed to restore this advantage for Mozilla.

4 Conscious Choosers: Best practices, lessons learnt and stories from research

Presenters

Venetia Tay, in collaboration with Jennifer Davidson & Aaron Benson

Description

A short introduction the Conscious Choosers (who they are, the differences between US & German Conscious Choosers). We will talk candidly about the process, what worked and what didn’t work, lessons learnt and best practices. We will also share stories from research in USA & Germany from different team members.

5 Could the current EU copyright reform proposal be the end of FOSS in Europe?

Presenters

Melissa and Raegan

Description

“In the near future, it will become possible to book a commercial space flight — a sub-orbital trip to any destination you like. Think of how complex the laws will have to be when space flight goes from something done only by a few, to anyone, and eventually everyone.

Now imagine if we decided to govern that industry by taking the Highway Traffic Act and adding the words “in space”. This is a lot like how we’ve updated copyright law for the web. Mostly, we just took the old law, and added the words “digital” and “online”. And that's worked out just about as well as you’d expect it to." (Ryan Merkley, CEO of Creative Commons)

Raegan MacDonald, our Sr. EU Policy Manager, will discuss the current EU copyright reform, how it could drastically change the FOSS ecosystem in Europe, how it could affect our internet experience, and what you can do about it. Why should you care? Because we believe in "default open"; because we want to grow the open source community, and because the internet continues to be in danger of being ruled by politics.

The copyright reform proposal also puts pressure on platforms to monitor and filter all content, proposes a 20yr license on news snippets, and limits who can access datasets -- including open data. Let's demand better copyright reform.

(Disclaimer: we won't be discussing the right of governments or the EU Parliament to propose or enforce internet regulation. We're working within the existing system, not against it at the moment.)

6 Diversity & Inclusion Open Forum: Strategy Update and Inclusive Culture Survey Results

Presenters

Larissa Shapiro

Description

Join the Diversity and Inclusion Team for a forum on the D&I Strategy a year into implementation -- what has been achieved, what is next, and how Mozillians can help.

This spring, we conducted our first survey on Inclusive Culture at Mozilla. What did we learn? How have the findings shaped our approach to Inclusion at Mozilla? We will examine our strategy progress through the lens of the survey results.

Join the Diversity and Inclusion Team as we share our insights learnings from the survey, and engage in an open discussion on how we can continue to build inclusion at Mozilla.

7 How Mozilla is Fixing The Comments

Presenters

Andrew Losowsky, Kim Gardner, Jeff Nelson, Wyatt Johnson, Sam Hankins

Description

Mozilla software is now running comments sections for several major news organizations, including The Washington Post and the Wall Street Journal. Why is Mozilla doing this, and why do we think our open-source software can fix one of the internet's worst problems? Come find out what we do, how we do it, and how to get involved.

8 Lighting talks: Power tools for open source

Presenters

Don Marti

Description

Our speakers will cover the latest findings on how small changes in tools and practices can make a big change in an open source project. Bots are your friends. Open source research shows that participation by bot collaborators can help projects get and retain contributors. And is your unconscious bias affecting your code reviews? Learn to break the habit with a technique that we borrowed from symphony orchestras and turned into a WebExtension (really!). Finally, we'll cover some winning habits and configuration settings for some open source collaboration tools you probably thought you knew inside and out.

9 Living the Community Participation Guidelines

Presenters

Larissa Shapiro and Jane Finette

Description

The Mozilla Project welcomes contributions from everyone who shares our goals and wants to contribute to our community in a healthy and constructive manner. This year, we rolled out a substantive evolution of our Community Participation Guidelines. These guidelines are intended to help us create a respectful and positive community experience for everyone. This session opens a conversation on what kind of community we want to build together, leaning on the elements of the CPG and offering examples of positive behavior that upholds the guidelines. This is your opportunity to learn more about, as well as weigh in and ask questions on, how our guidelines specifically support Mozilla’s Mission, Manifesto, and Worldview.

10 Mozilla Brand Update: Tools, Assets and Guidelines

Presenters

Yuliya Gorlovetsky

Description

Update on the evolution of the brand after the launch. Overview of new assets and tools available. Deep dive on quick how to's. Overview of what is to come in the next year.

11 Office of the Chair 'Drop In'

Presenters

Mitchell Baker

Description

Please come join Mitchell and the Office of the Chair team to discuss the latest and most important topics regarding the Internet and Mozilla. Your personal opinions and observations are important. We’d love to connect with you and learn more.

12 Rapid Prototypes and Engineering Tools

Presenters

Emma Humphries, Potch, Jason Laster, Eli Perelman

Description

• We introduce Glitch, Zapier, Neutrino, and Airtable and how you can use them to rapidly prototype and deploy engineering tools at Mozilla
• You'll have confidence to quickly build and deploy new tools
• Anyone building web-based tools at Mozilla should attend
• This supports our goal of building the future, instead of saying "we can't build a new tool" we want you to be able to rapidly build tools from components and services

13 Setting the conditions for open

Presenters

Chad Sansing

Description

In this hands-on workshop, participants will learn about the Open Leadership Map, a new matrix of principles and practices describing how to "lead open." Then they'll take part in a collaborative, social game-design experience that will help them reverse-engineer the cultural and strategic supports needed to foster openness in a project or workplace. Finally, they'll debrief on the insights they've gained and help one another identify opportunities to lead toward openness back on their home teams.

14 Trading bug futures on the blockchain: efficient new model for software incentivication

Presenters

Don Marti

Description

We hooked up a futures market to a bug tracker, and you won't believe what happened next. Our latest research shows how smart contracts can enable participants in a collaborative project to share information. Come learn about the pros and cons of bug futures as a complement to organizational tools such as crowdfunding and crowd-sourcing.

Grow New Areas

1 Behind the Scenes with our CRM and How You Can Use it

Presenters

Michele Warther and Andrew Morales

Description

What? We have a CRM system at Mozilla? Yes, we do and over 15 teams are using it to engage with their audiences from Firefox to MDN, MoFo to SUMO and AMO to PR. Come find out how these team are using our CRM tools in innovative ways and what your team might better engage with your audience - current and future ones.

2 Escape from the Smart City

Presenters

Katie Hendrix

Description

We want to help people better understand the kinds of interactions they might be subject to in a smart city full of connected devices so they can talk about the kind of healthy, connected future living spaces they want for themselves and their communities with privacy as society’s default setting. This session will introduce the idea of creating an Internet of Things (IoT) “escape room” that invites participants to invent a story and craft a series of puzzles that pit the room’s “players” against the kinds of sensors and surveillance equipment set up in a fully automated smart city of the future.

3 Foxy: Voice Assistants in the Browser

Presenters

Tamara Hills

Description

ET is exploring voice-driven user interfaces, including our keyword-driven voice assistant Foxy. Come to this session to see a demo of Foxy in the browser, sign up to Foxfood Foxy, discuss new possibilities for voice-driven user interfaces, and explore ways to contribute future new voice skills to Foxy.

4 Machine Learning at Mozilla

Presenters

Kelly Davis

Description

Hey, human!

Want to learn about machines? Want to learn about learning? Want to learn about machine learning?

Step right up to learn about machine leaning, Mozilla’s machine leaning efforts, our machine learning cluster, how open data and machine learning walk hand-in-hand, and what’s in store for Mozilla and machine learning in 2018.

The price of admission is an open and curious mind.

5 Mixing up realities

Presenters

Lars Bergstrom

Description

From immersive virtual reality experiences to real world experiences augmented with 3d web content, Mozilla's Mixed Reality efforts bring the open web to all of these modern devices and platforms. Come to this session to briefly learn about what we're doing and then immediately dive in to hands-on experiences on your laptops, mobile devices, and some loaner headsets to try it out for yourself!

6 Research Talks

Presenters

Michael Bebenita

Description

Come hear the latest on Servo, Rust, WebAssembly, Video/Audio Codecs, Machine Learning, Speech Recognition, AR/VR and much more from the Emerging Technologies team.

7 Revolutionizing scientific computing the Mozilla way

Presenters

brendan colloran + hamilton ulmer

Description

Despite it's virtual ubiquity, scientific and technical computing remains one area in which web technology has made few inroads. However, recent trends in web tech present a number of opportunities for expansion in this space. In this talk we'll discuss the needs scientific computing users, the strengths and weaknesses of web tech compared to existing solutions, and the opportunites we see to address those needs. We'll introduce the Vademecum Notebook, our first experiment directed towards addressing some of those needs. Finally, we'll explain why we think Mozilla is particularly well-suited to lead the charge, and we'll outline ways for you to get involved.

8 Solving complex technical problems with the crowd

Presenters

George Roter

Description

Do you sometimes experience bottlenecks because you might not have all the knowledge, skills, time or budget to solve a complex technical problem?

Join us for a session to discover how crowdsourcing has helped teams and organizations solve complex problems and stay for a quick workshop to figure out if it can help you!

9 The most interesting research at Mozilla (that you have never heard of)!

Presenters

Jessica Margolin

Description

"What is going on, who is doing it, where, and how could this inform my project?" Many wonder! In this lighthearted overview session, we'll survey a variety of analysis and research teams' results, interests, and methods, as well as how specific teams could help you. This is intended for everyone, whether you're an analyst, a researcher, or have a different function altogether. The goal is to foster cohesion, with maybe some interesting conversations, and perhaps a collaboration or two!

10 Trolling with voice: Learn about how Mozilla is using open data to change ecosystems, including on speech recognition

Presenters

Michael Henretty

Description

Want to learn about how we are using open data and collaboration to challenge speech recognition monopolies? Want to hear about how we're bringing diverse voices to speech recognition technology? Want to hear about other ideas for how we can use open data to change ecosystems?

Come spend time with the Open Innovation team and Machine Learning group, in a mixture of lightening talk and interactive workshop, to dig into the Common Voice project.

11 Web of Things

Presenters

Ben Francis

Description

The Web of Things applies lessons learned from the World Wide Web to create a decentralized Internet of Things by giving web URLs to physical objects in the real world, so that they can be monitored and controlled via a private network or the Internet. Come and learn more about the Web of Things, see a demo of Project Things by Mozilla (iot.mozilla.org) and learn how to build your own Web of Things gateway with a Raspberry Pi.

12 What Everyone Ought to Know About Email and How to Make It Happen at Mozilla

Presenters

Ben Niolet and Lisa Wright

Description

Since its introduction over 40 years ago, email has become one of our main choices of communication despite being declared dead daily. Did an email drive you to this description? Come hear stories from across Mozilla, Firefox, Developer, Participation, Foundation and more teams, about how email programs have helped them better engage with their audiences.

People Development & Support

1 A Guide to Data.world: a Social Network for Data

Presenters

Ann Marie Carrothers

Description

The first mile on the road to solving any data problem is, curiously, the longest mile. We spend too much time and energy searching for the ârightâ datasets, wrangling them into usability, and loading them into rigid systems. Amidst the chaos of the first mile, this work too often resides in silos. Work is used for one project, then lost forever, only to be repeated from scratch by the next person to touch the data. In this session, Austin-based B Corp. data.world, will discuss how technical and non-technical teammates can successfully work together on data projects. We will share tips for fostering effective collaboration using data.world based on how the Associated Press uses the platform to democratize access to data with journalists and how the Anti-defamation League uses the platform to engage its community.

2 Career Development Workshop

Presenters

Matt Frassica Huma Shah Jet Villegas

Description

Mozillians will learn tips on owning their development, creating a development plan, and creating partnerships with their manager and influencers that drive career growth.You'll learn some common success patterns from leaders who have successfully promoted and advanced careers of team members. Join in to learn how to manage your career!

3 Containers @ Mozilla

Presenters

Michael van Kleeck

Description

Many groups at Mozilla have been using containers to deploy applications and services. Let’s get together and look at a couple examples (i.e. Docker, Kubernetes) of how teams are using containers, share challenges and learnings and discuss where there may be opportunities in 2018.

4 Contributing to Firefox as a Non Technical Mozillian

Presenters

Emma Humphries, Hossain Al Ikram

Description

You'll learn how to triage Firefox bugs. We'll show you what a good bug looks like. Then you'll break off into teams to triage bugs, and share your analysis and get feedback.

After this session, you'll be able to contribute to Firefox by reviewing new bugs, and be comfortable knowing what to do when you run into questions.

Non-technical Mozillians wanting to know more about working on Firefox and build up some technical skills should attend.

This item supports our goal of developing people by providing non-technical Mozillans an introductory path into helping with bugs.

5 Crucial Conversations®

Presenters

Kathleen Kirkish & Marta Leon

Description

Crucial Conversations® teaches skills for communicating when the stakes are high, opinions vary, and emotions run strong. In this session we’ll practice real-world conversations and build skills to engage in open dialogue and gain alignment and agreement on issues that matter most.

6 Demystifying Reporting Problematic Behaviors/Incidents (anti-harassment + CPG)

Presenters

Shoshana Isaac and Larissa Shapiro

Description

This session is ideal for anyone who has not previously attended an in-person session about anti-harassment or the Community Participation Guidelines, and anyone who wants a deeper dive into how Mozilla protects its employees. We will also delve into the process Mozilla follows when we receive reports and minimum specific protected categories under the law and our guidelines.

- what is problematic behavior - why Mozilla cares - ways to report - what happens with you report - What does confidential reporting mean - how does Mozilla take steps to prevent retaliation

Guided discussion lead by Larissa Shapiro and Shoshana Isaac

7 Design Systems: Thinking Beyond The Page

Presenters

Craig Cook

Description

Last January Mozilla unveiled its new logo and brand identity, which has continued to evolve in the months since. We have a lot of websites at Mozilla, literally hundreds, and every one of them instantly became outdated as soon as the new logo was released. A new brand sets off dozens of redesigns across the entire Mozilla ecosystem. That's an awful lot of pixels moving in a lot of different directions. We need a plan.   Although the branding comes with some overall guidelines, we're still shaping our idea of what a Mozilla website should look like under this new identity. This is a great opportunity to shed a few preconceptions and adopt a fresh, modern approach to designing websites.   In this session I'll talk about breaking away from old-school design processes, to think beyond designing pages and think about designing complete systems. You'll learn about what design systems are and how they can bring greater clarity and consistency to the way we express ourselves on the web. I'll talk about what we're doing to develop our own cohesive design system for Mozilla websites and how it can make our sites better, for both the makers and the users.   This session is for designers, developers, content creators, marketers, and anyone else who makes websites. I hope to change the way you think about web design, and maybe the way you think about the world. I'll also have stickers.

8 Everything you always wanted to know about security but were too afraid to ask

Presenters

Gene Wood

Description

Come get an intro on how to live and work more securely from Mozilla's enterprise information security team. Learn about how to prevent the bad guys from getting their digital hands into your online life, how to limit the impact to you and Mozilla in case they do find their way in as well as best practices for both digital and physical security. Bring any questions about security and hear about some exciting past Mozilla security incidents (better than the script to the next James Bond movie).

This session is intended for all Mozillians and requires no technical background or knowledge of security.

9 Getting People to Listen in an Age of Constant Distraction

Presenters

Ann Marie Carrothers

Description

In this time of constant distraction, user design and thoughtful digital communication are becoming critical to the success of any venture. In this session, I will discuss how I've used my background in UX, marketing, and education to increase website digital engagement by 243% and have project proposals selected out of thousands for nationally recognized conferences. Attendees will learn of tools that can instantly turn their spreadsheets into stunning visuals and apps that can tell you how likely someone is to act based on the language in a message. By the end of the session, attendees will have the digital marketing tools and communication skills to make people not just read their survey/report/website, but act on it.

10 I'm A Manager, AMA.

Presenters

Mike Hoye

Description

If you're thinking about becoming a manager or just wondering what life looks like on the management track, join us for Q&A session some new and veteran members of the Firefox engineering management team.

11 Inclusive Hiring @ Mozilla

Presenters

Denise Gammal (with Mozilla D&I Team)

Description

Inclusive Hiring at Mozilla, formerly known as Debiasing the Hiring Process, is a required workshop for all hiring managers and interviewers. Research shows that unconscious bias impacts people decisions, creating an invisible barrier for diverse job candidates and robbing organizations of some of the best talent available. How can you evaluate candidates more accurately? The workshop is designed to build awareness, generate productive conversations, and teach practical solutions people can act on in their everyday work. Participants will learn about the research on unconscious bias - what it is, how it works and why it reduces our ability to hire the best. The focus quickly moves to a focus on research-based strategies and actions hiring managers and interviewers can take to mitigate bias and hire the best talent available.

12 Leading with Emotional Intelligence: A Leadership Simulation

Presenters

Sean Rich

Description

Servant leadership is about making sure that the needs of the people with whom you work are your highest priority and are being served. Servant leadership focuses on employee empowerment, encourages innovation and is widely embraced by some of the most successful organizations in the world. Because the focus is on individuals, emotional intelligence is one of the key ingredients in the secret recipe of servant leadership success.

During this session we will see what emotional intelligence looks like in multiple leadership situations. Our goal is for you to understand the power of servant leadership through a simulation experience and discussion with your peers. You can count on taking away 2-3 skills that you can put into practice right away. Ideal participants for this session are people managers, aspiring managers, and individual leaders who want to increase their influence or level up their leadership game.

13 Legal, Finance and CASA

Presenters

Jeff Garver, Nicholas Grammater and Jeannie Roebuck

Description

How to Make Purchases and Obtain Vendor, Subscription, Independent Contractor and Temp Agency Worker Services In Mozilla.

What is the process to obtain a purchase, retain a service/subscription or contingent worker, and what reviews and approvals might be required? How do I use CASA (the online Contracts and Spend Approval System)? Does everything have to go into CASA? How can I get my requests handled and completed more quickly? When is contract review required?

Is there a different process for retaining an independent contractor or temp agency worker as compared to retaining a company/vendor?

The Legal Commercial Team and Finance, with assistance from others, will give a high level overview of the process and checks, and provide examples of how things go smoothly and why they may not.

An open Q&A session will follow.

14 Mozillians Speaking to Technical Audiences BOF

Presenters

Havi Hoffman

Description

We've learned a lot about public speaking since DevRel launched Mozilla Tech Speakers in 2015. This active program trains and supports volunteer Mozillians who speak to technical audiences about Firefox, Mozilla and the Web in communities around the world.

The purpose of the BOF session is to bring together Mozilla staff and volunteers who give talks to technical audiences and want to grow their skills, mentor others, and connect with Mozillians who also present to technical audiences. Interested in giving or receiving specific actionable feedback on your slides/scripts? Looking for topic experts to review your material? Are you a remotee interested in 'attending' a talk rehearsal over vidyo or getting feedback from people that know your topic?

This will be a conversation for learning and sharing about any aspect of presenting to developers and other technical influencer or practitioner communities. Please bring questions and ideas.

15 Overcoming Imposter Syndrome

Presenters

Lizz Noonan

Description

Impostor Syndrome is the false feeling that you aren’t qualified for the work you are doing and will be discovered as a fraud at any moment. It is prevalent among people in open tech or culture projects, many of whom have been socialized to value other’s opinion of their work above their own, and to do things “by the book”. Even though they are often very successful by external standards, they feel their success has been due to some mysterious fluke or luck or great effort; or perhaps they are afraid their achievements are due to “breaks” and not the result of their own ability and competence. They may also feel that, unless they go to gargantuan efforts to do so, success can not be repeated. In this session, you will learn how societal phenomena lead to Impostor Syndrome, and how you can learn to recognize and fight your own Imposter Syndrome and help others to overcome theirs.

16 Password Manager 101

Presenters

Lucie Daeye, Chris DeCairos

Description

In this hands-on workshop, we will assist attendees in the setup and configuration of a Password Manager on their work device. They will learn about creating strong passphrases to protect their accounts, and how to automatically generate and save new credentials in their password vault. This session is intended for Mozillians who wish to implement more secure password practices in their day-to-day activities at Mozilla.

17 Performance Management @ Mozilla

Presenters

Tyler Haugen, Shoshana Isaac and Jishnu Menon

Description

Performance Management @ Mozilla provides managers of others with practical tips and guidance for managing performance.

18 Real Life Solutions for Online PR Problems

Presenters

Erica Terry Derryck w/ support from Marcomm team members tbd)

Description

Ever find yourself staring at a Reddit thread bashing Firefox and wonder how you can help? What do you say when a reporter finds you on Twitter to ask Mozilla's position on something controversial? Did your latest Medium post spark a conversation that has spun out of control? You're not alone. These are the real life online experiences of Mozillians. Instead of back channeling your concerns in an email, taking up a crusade on Slack, or simply going it alone, come to a session run by the Marketing and Communications Team to learn how you can more effectively handle these and other PR challenges in ways that empower you and help Mozilla.

19 Storyboarding for Non-Designers: Cultivating Product Ideas Without Drawing Skills

Presenters

Sharon Bautista and John Gruen

Description

Storyboarding can be a valuable activity in the product development process for understanding how, where, and why people might interact with your product idea. However, storyboarding can be intimidating if your team does not have a dedicated designer with visual storytelling skills. This session is geared toward anyone who has had an interest in storyboarding but thought they didn't have the skills and/or knowledge to get started. Participants in this elective will:

• Understand the what, why, when, and hows of storyboarding
• Practice key activities related to planning, executing, and evaluating storyboards
• Become familiar with the resources for employing storyboarding in the future

No artistic skills required!

20 User Research After Hours: The teachers in our midst

Presenters

Sharon Bautista, Jennifer Davidson, Heather McGaw

Description

Firefox User Researchers out in the wild! Sharon, Heather, and Jennifer not only perform a ton of user research related to Firefox, they also teach user research to novices outside Mozilla. What do we teach? Who do we teach? Why do we think teaching the discipline in which we work is important? If you’ve ever considered teaching your craft, but weren’t sure how to get started, come to this talk to:

• Hear how we’ve approached different types of teaching engagements and what we’ve learned
• Identify contexts in your community where there may be teaching opportunities for you
• Understand resources available for developing syllabi, supporting students, evaluating student work, and more

21 IAM: past, present, and future of how we manage identity at Mozilla

Presenters

Andrew Krug, Guillaume Destuynder

Description

Now for a controversial intro: Persona, Firefox Accounts, LDAP, passwordless email … you heard it, you saw it, you love it, you hate it? Join the IAM Team for a briefing on the past, present, and future of how we manage identity at Mozilla. In 2017 we have spent lots of time and careful effort building the core of a secure and stable identity system. With this platform we’ll be empowering community and staff Mozillians to collaborate seamlessly. Now we need your help! - Learn how you can leverage the suite of OSS Projects in Mozilla’s identity product portfolio to make your applications both friendly and secure for our growing communities. - Collaborate on our 2018 roadmap. - Help us identify unmet needs and desires. - Get a demo of our advanced access management capabilities. Ready for you to use NOW!