Purpose & Goals

what's the goal of this workshop?

The Identifying Contributors workshop is a sequel to the Designing For Participation workshop. The Identifying Contributors workshop was created in order to get Mozilla community members to think about how to better reach out and engage new contributors. As such the workshop has these goals:

• impart on participants some best practices around who and how to reach out to when trying to build a contributor community
• foster a conversation where best practices and ideas can be surfaced and critically assessed, particularly around how suggestion may or may not be relevant to areas the participants work on
• provide participants with action items they can take back to where they contribute to Mozilla that will help increase opportunities for participation from community members
• share differing experiences around the possibilities and obstacles to participation between managers, employees, staff, volunteers, newcomers and veteran contributors.

who should participate?

Almost anyone at Mozilla should feel like this is open to them. "Roles" that might want to participate or lead this workshop include:

• module owners
• newcomers
• veterans
• staff
• volunteers
• managers

Some of the more common questions participants often have that make them a good fit for the course include:

• We are starting a new product/activity/function and want to think about how we can encourage community participation
• I'd like to better understand what motivates current contributors to my project so that I can help them more
• I'd like to better understand what might motivate contributors so that I can attract more of them
• I've just moved to/been assigned as a manager to a new area and we want to expand how we can encourage community participation
• I'm a long time contributor with lots of thoughts about how to encourage participation, I wonder if others at the corporation or foundation have similar thoughts?
• I need to expand the scope of our work without increasing the financial resources I have
• How do I grow the community around the work I do strategically so that it maximizes its leverage

Syllabus

Slide Deck

The slides for this presentation can be downloaded here in

• Identifying Contributors PDF Version
• Identifying Contributors Keynote Version

Identifying Goals & Open Exercise

Please start by watching video number 1.

As per the video, please write down 1-4 goals that you have for this workshop

Mozilla Phonebook

Personas Exercise

Please watch video number 2. Slides 5-7 will be touched upon in this video.

The worksheet template cited in the video is available as a Google Doc template Please make a personal copy of the template to fill out (please leave the template blank for others)

A completed version of that template that you can look at as an example can be found here.

Debrief & Wrap up

Please watch video number 3.

For those interested, you can watch the debrief of this exercise in a group setting at minute 38 of this video.

Hopefully the worksheet you have filled out will serve as a basis for action or at least discussion with your group at Mozilla.

Please feel free to send questions or ideas to david <a> eaves.ca.

You may also find the follow up workshop Metrics for Growth to be interesting.