Platform Operations/Project of the Month

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Project of the Month is a team-wide effort to promote Platform Ops projects to the Mozilla community. The idea is to actively expose people to the tools we provide, remind them of our resources and spark interest among potential contributors.

This guide for project teams aims to make promoting your project as simple and convenient as possible.

How it works

Each month, we agree on a project to promote, and then the project team does whatever they can to showcase the project throughout the month.

  1. A contact person for the project writes a brief overview using this handy template.
  2. The overview is shared by the project team early in the month via:
    • Blog post that is shared on newsgroups (dev-platform, dev-quality, mozilla-tools, anywhere else you feel makes sense) + social media, etc.
    • Short presentation at Mozilla's Monday project meeting - Tracked in this spreadsheet
      • If you prefer, you can prepare a video to be played at the meeting rather than presenting live.
  3. Everyone in Platform Ops is encouraged to get to know the project or try it out so they can help spread the word, redirect questions, report bugs, etc. (Team wide outreach to help others see the value in the tool.)
  4. (Optional) If you have the time, why not do even more to highlight the project throughout the month?
    • Get other people to write blog posts about your project (a specific aspect of it, perhaps) with a link to the overview
    • More presentations:
      • Brownbag on AirMo, training session, short demo video on YouTube
    • Organize a hack day, or a tutorial, or a doc sprint
    • Other...?

Project criteria

Which projects should we promote? Here are some characteristics to look for:

  • The project team wants to attract more users and/or contributors and is available to answer/redirect questions.
  • Basic documentation for the project exists (for users, for contributors)
  • There's room for contribution, and if so, at least 1 person who could mentor and help onramp people. Good first bugs a plus.

The project does not have to be a new project; it could be a well-established project that we're maintaining now. We want to remind people of older projects, too, to prevent them from reinventing the wheel.

Get Involved

If you have suggestions for projects to promote next, please add them to this etherpad and/or join us at the next Platform Ops Community Hacking meeting.

Past Promoted Projects

Template for project overview

This template is flexible; it's intended to make it easier for the project owner to write an announcement quickly and to provide a bit of consistency. Not set in stone!

  • Standard intro: "Hello from Platform Operations! Once a month we highlight one of our projects to help the Mozilla community discover a useful tool or an interesting contribution opportunity. This month's project is x"
  • Short, simple description of project -- why is this useful?
    • Main project URL
    • Simple examples of usage and link to docs
  • A few concrete highlights of how the project is currently being used around Mozilla and elsewhere
  • Invitation to contribute
    • Mentored bugs
    • Where to get started (e.g. CONTRIBUTING.md?)
    • Highlight/thank past contributors
  • Invitation to submit feedback (e.g. where to file bugs? or "we especially want to improve this part -- ideas welcome!)
  • Where to get help? Who to talk to?
  • Standard conclusion: "For more information about all our projects visit the Platform Ops wiki. If you're interested in helping out, the wiki has resources for getting started."

Example

Hello from Platform Operations! Once a month we highlight one of our projects to help the Mozilla community discover a useful tool or an interesting contribution opportunity. This month's project is mozdownload! mozdownload is a Python module that makes it easy to download Firefox binaries. You can use it as a command-line tool, or you can use it's API to blah blah blah. Here's a link to documentation. Here are some ways that other projects/teams use mozdownload. Here's a link about how to contribute. We also have some mentored bugs for new contributors. We'd like to thank these past contributors for implementing blah and fixing blah. If you have any questions ping x, y, z in #ateam. For more info about all our projects visit our wiki. If you're interested in helping out, check out the a-team boot camp.

Inspiration

From original proposal: "let's write a never-ending series of blog/mailing-list posts that give a brief overview of one a-team/platform ops project. Kind of like https://pymotw.com and similar in spirit to the Sheriffing Newsletter."

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