Jsan4christ/Council Campaign

Council Election QnA - San E. James

Awesome reps, mentors and current members of the reps council, I'm San Emmanuel James [1], candidate for the 6th council. As part of my campaign, I have been required to answer a couple of useful questions to help inform you on where to cast your vote. Please find below my sincere responses to these questions, and hope that they are insightful and invoke some really interesting thoughts and ideas to you as well. You can also watch my campaign video here:[2] :)

1. What are the top three issues that you would want the Council to address were you to join the Council?

• Empower reps to better support and build communities - As Reps, we have been doing a great job supporting and growing local communities. I believe, council could support them even more with training in community building and running of functional areas.
  

• Where next after reps? - According to the wiki page [ReMo/Structure Governance], a clear path is defined for reps within the program [rep---mentor---council member] but not outside. There should be some work going on around this, but as the program has grown maturity (over 400 resp, 40 mentors, 5 councils already), it has become more urgent than ever, to have a clear growth path beyond reps into higher circles of leadership. The new council would priorities this to come up with a clear pathway.
  

• Recognition and visibility of reps - A lot of reps currently in the program feel their efforts are not recognized and rewarded accordingly. The council would work towards effective recognition pathways to ensure that these reps and mentors are all happy and look up to the program.
  

2. What is in your view the Mozilla Reps program's biggest strength and weakness?
Strength
What I would consider the biggest strength of reps program, is the oneness and unity among reps. As reps, the doors of help from any other rep will be open to you at any time. That implies that you are able to accomplish anything you would love to do simply by calling out for help and support. For example, while organizing MozFest EA[3], we worked together with reps from Kenya, Rwanda and by beyond. Elio Quoshi[4] and Az Anita[5], helped with all the custom graphics and designs that we used, Alex Wafula[6] helped pull up the event site and more. I think this is totally awesome and enriching to have a broad and diverse ecosystem at your disposal.
Weakness
I would not consider this a weakness but rather an area in the program that requires a significant amount of attention and even if I did not make it to council, would be something I will continue to devote a significant amount of time and effort to. The reps program is designed to support and grow communities, however, until now, most rep activities are tailored to one-of events and not to continuity which makes it had to have a strong community and real impact that is measurable. Can we for example have quarterly activities and budgets to give time for the activities to have impact? how can we support the community to grow and become self relient?

3. Identify something that is currently not working well in the Mozilla Reps program and which you think could be easy to fix?
Budget approval and disbursement - In as much as a lot of work has been done in improvement of the budget approval and disbursement process, there are still a couple of pertinent issues such as effective and convenient methods to remit funds to certain areas. . 4 What past achievement as a Rep or Mentor are you most proud of?
Mozilla Festival EA. an event of more than 300 people that has gained far reaching support. With figures such as Mark Surman, the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation, Nyombi Tembo, the minister of state for ICT and James Saaka, the Executive director of National Information Technology Authority. Considering the amount of time and resources available at our disposal, it was definitely a huge challenge. It was a time of my life, when I did experience the true spirit of the reps program with everyone in their capacities, ability and skills coming in to support in every way. More than proud, I felt humbled and grateful to everyone for making it happen.

5 What are the specific qualities and skills that you have that you think will help you be an effective Council member?
Skills:
- Knowledgeable about developing processes of up taking localizers and getting them started in Pootle and the translate toolkit used for localizing software and especially for Mozilla such as Firefox and FirefoxOS.
- Organization, structuring a local community and empowering reps and Mozillians to take on organizational roles to ensure smooth running of the community and contribution to the project.
- Conflict resolution, a key challenges of scaling and growth is conflicts. I’m knowledgeable about creating structures and processes resolve conflicts in communities.
- Super webmaker mentor with webmaking and mentoring skills using teaching kits for Popcorn, Thimble and X-Ray gaggles.

Qualities:
- Listening, I have learnt to listen more and say less. To accept criticism and use it to improve who I'm as an individual and the community as a whole.
- Commitment, I do commit to a cause and will not give up until realized. Taking the first step towards an agreed course of action. - Honesty, as a leader setting the bar high for myself and leading by example.
- Open minded, considering all options while making decisions and listening from all interested parties.
- Enthusiastic, motivated and passionate about the cause of Mozilla which in turn persuades others to the same cause.

6. As a Mentor, what do you do to try to encourage your inactive Mentees to be active again?

• The very first thing I do is approach them and listen to try and establish why they are not currently active. Active listening, implies that you look out even for what is not said but needs to come out. is it budget issues? is it is just no where to start? or personal problems?
• Together with the non-active mentee, come up with relevant solutions to the challenges affecting the rep e.g. encourage them to try something different not currently done in the community.
• Identify contribution opportunities together with the rep and and encourage them to take them up. Sometimes, reps just don't know what would be the best way to contribute or whats currently happening in the organization that they could be involved in.
• Encourage them to explore innovative ways to improve the program so its more appealing to them. Sometimes, reps feel they do not like much what the community is currently focused on. For example, found the community doing a lot of localization, they can choose to focus on webmaker and thus have something more exciting. Mozilla a huge organization with a million ways to contribute so its difficult not to have something interesting.

[ReMo/Structure_Governance] https://wiki.mozilla.org/ReMo/Structure_Governance

Thank you for taking the time to read, I'm eager to hear back from you on what your thoughts are and to continue to work with y'all to support and improve the reps program.