Developer Skills minutes

MDN-MoFo conversation at Whistler, June 2015

We started off by discussing a few points:

Who is involved

How to keep in touch, how to keep the right people in the conversation loop. What complement of skills we have.

MDN's role

How to insert MDN into the overall web literacy learning strategy Looking at turning MDN into a content and education delivery platform, part of the overall learning product

Autonomy is good, MDN learning material currently provides good autonomy in learning, traditional approach.

• But it is arguably not the best
• Better to foster a collaborative community
• Giving developers a sense of being in a tribe.

We could test a narrow focus - are developers interested in connecting with other developers? In what ways?

• penpal system
• screen share
• collab tutorials
• What works for people in the context of the site at large

What material should we test? Measuring the popularity of material, JS looks to be the most popular in general.

We could test an advanced topic, e.g. SW And test a beginner topic, e.g Beginner's JavaScript Although both are quite a narrow focus really, in the grand scheme of things How about a really basic topic too, such as HTML basics?

Another group of users to consider too - hobbyist types. what about these guys? they want quick grokking, and simple messages How could we suit their needs too. What specifically are their needs?

Learning about what kind of traffic we have, locales learners are in, etc. What metrics are useful?

We could also test different recognition mechanisms, e.g. badges, whatever else.

Getting moving on this

We (MoFo and MDN) are very enthusiastic to explore this space

Would learning links on general MDN content pages work? Not just on the learning zone? We think so, but this approach would need to be tested.

How should we work together?

Plan!!

Action - Let's have a 2-3 day work session later in the summer to work out a plan for this Bring in metrics, hive, writers, etc. Decide where and when to meet. Detroit? Paris? Japan? ;-)

Action - start writing up testing plan, based on some of the material above. Start by writing up a list of capabilities we have on both sides And what people we have that are interested in this

Action - Create some kind of cross-org task force to move this forward and help to answer questions and share information. Create a mailing list to start communicating. Think about what other discussion channels would be good.

Action — give MoFo engineers access to mdn analytics. I think Simon can sort this out without needing us?

Action — think about how to normalize running fellowship programs across mozilla. We have quite a few of them around the place. Bill made a very good point about this.

Action — Think about looking at teach.mozilla.org and normalizing process, etc. Some stuff here similar to MDN content kits? Again, good point from Bill.