Devrel/Resources

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Internal Communication

Mailing Lists

We have two mailing lists, both @mozilla.com:

devrel@

  • Archives visible to all MoCo/MoFo
  • Membership includes DevRel management chain, events reps, etc.

devrel-team@

Strive to use the devrel@ list as much as possible. It is not publicly accessible, so it is ok to talk about NDA'ed information there.

For immediate concerns or private matters (PTO, etc.) use the devrel-team@ list.

IRC / Slack Channels

On Slack, you might be interested in the following channels:

  • #devrel-team: Our immediate team, ask an existing colleague for an invite.
  • #developer-outreach: The broader Developer Outreach group at Mozilla
  • #et: All of Emerging Technology
  • #moco: Mozilla employees

Historically, we used IRC, and many engineering teams still use IRC, however most of these channels have moved to Slack:

  • #devrel: Our previous team channel (with public logs).
  • #awayteam: Social channel for remote employees
  • #moco: Private MoCo employee channel (password)
  • #airmozilla: Chat regarding current broadcasts on Air Mozilla
  • #servicedesk: Technical support

For IRC, Mozilla has a corporate private IRCCloud instance. You can request an account by filing a Service Now ticket (Service Desk → Accounts → Other).

Vidyo

We use Vidyo for teleconferencing. You can install it from v.mozilla.com.

Headsets are strongly recommended with Vidyo.

Team Calendars

You should be added to this private calendar:

  • DevRel Travel and PTO, a *private* calendar which tracks where the DevRel team is, including both work travel and PTO. Dan Callahan or Havi Hoffman can add you.

You should add and contribute to these public calendars:

  • CFP Calendar, which tracks upcoming conference submission deadlines, managed by Havi Hoffman. Editable by all of DevRel, so you can add CFPs you're tracking.
  • Mozilla Staff Speaking Appearances. You should add your public speaking appearances here, including the talk topic and conference information. You can see where other Mozilla staff are speaking (many people outside DevRel speak publicly!).
    • Please adhere to the following conventions when using this calendar:
      1. Only enter your own appearances.
      2. Use all-day calendar entries.
      3. Speaking multiple times at an event? Create multiple calendar entries.
      4. Name the entry like Name What @ Where (Topic), for example:
        • Alice Speaking @ FutureConf (ECMAScript 2023)
        • Bob Workshop @ WatFest (Hands-on CSS Centering)
        • Chris Keynote @ ConfConf (Representation Matters)
      5. Set the location to the event's city and country
      6. Be consistent with your name, title format, and verbs!

You might want to watch these public calendars:

Directories

Mozilla has two primary directories

People tend to put their cell phone number in the Phonebook so that folks can get in touch with them in an emergency or while they're on the road.

Outbound Messaging

Blog

We own the Hacks Blog. (Admin link)

Hacks uses your LDAP credentials for authentication. To get access to the Hacks blog, ask someone on the devrel-team mailing list.

Twitter

We own two Twitter accounts:

YouTube

We post on the Mozilla Hacks channel.

Adding subtitles

If you have written (and followed quite faithfully!) a script of your video, YouTube can do a pretty good job of calculating the timings and thus generate subtitles automatically without having to manually transcribe it or sending it to a transcription service.

Once you have uploaded the video, go to the video details page in the manager, and click on the "Subtitles and CC" tab, and then on the "Add new Subtitles or CC" blue button/dropdown on the right. It might ask you to select the video language beforehand. Select the language of your video (e.g. English (United Kingdom)) and then in "Select method" choose "Transcribe and auto-sync". Copy and paste the script into the text area and click "Set timings". This will take a bit - like one or two minutes. Refresh and see if the timing is right with the video preview in that page. You can adjust things there.

Each subtitle track will be a "draft". You need to click "publish" before it's available to everyone.

Here's another way to do transcripts (that doesn't require using YouTube):

  1. Go to rev.com. Sign up/in. Fill out their forms and request a transcript for your video. It'll cost $1/min.
  2. Be sure to order CAPTIONS. That will give you the needed timecode, so the video knows when to display which part of the transcript. https://www.rev.com/caption
  3. When offered the chance (usually after ordering), do provide names of people and industry vocabulary (like the words CSS, JavaScript, etc). That will help the transcriber get more things right.
  4. After you get the transcript, proof-read it and fix the mistakes. Sometimes there are a lot. If so, give that person a low rating. Usually it's pretty darn good. Still a lot of work for you to clean up, but way less work than transcribing it yourself.
  5. If you are using YouTube, go there to add the captions, using their directions as a guide. https://support.google.com/youtube/answer/2734796?hl=en or https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qYcj85tBje4. If you are using Vimeo, search their documentation for directions. If you are using AirMozilla, ping that team to find out if/how to do transcripts.
  6. I recommend also publishing the transcript in the notes section of the video page, that way if someone goes to the webpage to watch, they can read along in a big block of text if they don't want to use the CC function. Just gives people options. It's easier for scanning and referring back to something. And it helps with SEO.

Notist

Some of us use and recommend Notist as a portfolio of of our presentations.

Other Resources

Team Meeting Notes

Our weekly meetings are recorded in Google Docs (link visible to anyone at Mozilla).

Older meeting minutes and other team information can be found on the wiki.

Bugzilla

Many Mozilla projects, including Firefox itself, track issues in Bugzilla.

You can use bugzil.la to shorten links, like this: https://bugzil.la/1000000

We tend to care about two Bugzilla keywords:

  • DevAdvocacy, for bugs we file based on external feedback.
  • devrel-needed, for things we should evangelize once implemented

Watch Bugzilla for Humans II to get a better understanding of how to work with Bugzilla.

Other Notes

Single Sign-on (SSO)

Many internal websites, like ServiceNow and Egencia, use single-sign-on.

You can see a dashboard with links to services at https://sso.mozilla.com/.

PTO (Paid Time Off) and Holidays

For PTO, fill out the form and make sure you CC devrel-team.

When on PTO, traveling, or just out of the office, add the dates you'll be gone to the "DevRel Travel + PTO" calendar.

To see what holidays we get, check out Mana. There are instructions for adding them to your Google Calendar on that page.

Mozilla Standard Time

Assume that everything is Pacific time unless otherwise specified.

Public By Default

Strive to do your work and hold your discussions in public. Mozilla an open, non-profit project with a vibrant community. Privacy makes it more difficult for volunteers to stay aware of or contribute to Mozilla's efforts.

Put a license on it!

Generally we use the Mozilla Public License 2 or Apache 2 for individual repositories created from scratch. When contributing to existing repositories (which is encouraged--we strive to be good open source citizens!), respect existing licenses. Here are the full details of Mozilla's License policy, where you can also find a handy flow chart to help you decide which license you should use.

The Manifesto

Mozilla Corporation (MoCo) is a normal corporation, but we're also a wholly owned subsidiary of the non-profit Mozilla Foundation (MoFo), which exists to safeguard and promote the Web as a public resource.

We have a manifesto that explains our principles. It's DevRel's job to ensure that we're upholding that manifesto when working with the developers who build the Web.

Don't Ask for Permission

Mozilla is an open, chaotic, participatory ball of fun. Push buttons, send emails, and edit wikis like you own the place.

Sponsorship and Speakers

If someone wants you to speak at their event, or wants Mozilla to sponsor their event, ask them to fill out the speaker request form and mention you by name.

Staff involvement at conferences + events: If staff wants to attend an event, approval should be from their team and manager and from their budget.

Reps and community members should first go through the Reps Council for review.

Branding materials

Mozilla logos / icons / marks can be found at mozilla.design. Firefox itself follows the "Photon Design System." You can find Firefox logos under "Product Identity Assets."

Travel, Expenses & Event Reports

We use Egencia for booking most travel and lodging, though AirBNB is also available. Details and policies on Mana.

Request an Egencia account on Service Now under Workplace Resources → Travel

When traveling, add the dates you'll be gone to the "DevRel Travel+PTO" calendar.

We use Expensify for managing reimbursement for work-related expenses. Details and policies on Mana.

(Tip: Most expenses should be marked as "reimbursable," and not as "billable" in Expensify.)

Event Feedback / Trip Reports

Speakers & all attendees (whether you're audience, speaker, staff): Please share your feedback about developer events in the event feedback form.

Booking travel tips

  • Short trips (less than a week) incur on the "unofficial business travel tax" so they might be even more expensive than a trip to the same place for 8 days. Sometimes it's cheaper to stay a day after or before and pay an extra hotel night, than coming back sooner. It's a good idea to juggle a bit and check various dates to find what's the best rate, if you can afford some flexibility.
  • When you have to connect, always aim for at least 1:30h of layover, specially in big airports. 2h should be good, 3-4 hours is a long break and could be a good option if your trip is really long so you can stretch legs, have a decent drink, etc. Anything more than that is going to drive you nuts; it's advised you try other options, as advised above.
  • Also: avoid busy and big airports or airports where meteorological conditions make it often hard to land or take off. Case in point: Chicago (ORD).
  • It's also better to book all travel with the same company or alliance, as if something goes wrong, it's easier to get rescheduled in their systems. Otherwise you'll be dealing with various companies that are not interested in your wellness (i.e. they don't care about you).
  • If anything goes wrong (cancelled flights, missed connections...), call Egencia (+1 (866) 397-2677 or +1 (702) 939-2530). It might take time, as they have to deal with airlines' systems and rules, but they will sort it out for you. That's what we pay them for.

Travel Policy Guidelines

  • The most current version of Mozilla travel policy for staff lives on mana, which is behind LDAP.
  • Here are relevant excerpts for staff and volunteer contributors when booking travel for Mozilla:
    • Low Fare: We try to balance cost savings with convenience and allow flights that are within $200 of the lowest otherwise logical fare as still being within policy. Any flights greater than $200 of the lowest logical fare will generate an "out of policy" notification and will require special approval.
    • Reasonable flights: We ask that you consider other departure times during your day of travel as well as longer trips.
    • Advance Purchase: Please book your travel at least 14 days in advance, otherwise you will get an "out of policy" notification that requires special approval. Flights more than 365 days in the future are also "out of policy".
    • Layovers: We do consider flights with 2 or more connections as unreasonable and don’t expect you to consider those as a "reasonable flight option".

Personal Safety and Harassment

Your safety is important to Mozilla. There are guidelines and resources available to you if you ever feel unsafe or harassed while representing Mozilla.

Winning the upgrade lottery

Although we travel Economy / Coach, there are ways you can experience a bit of luxury. First thing is to sign up for the fidelity program of the airline you're going to fly with. Enter your membership details in Egencia, so they get added to the flights you book.

If the flight is overbooked and they need to seat groups or families together, but they can't because you're taking one of the seats, and there is space on better cabins, they might relocate you, i.e. upgrade you.

You increase your upgrade chances by having more 'status' than other solo travellers in the flight. The more points, the higher in the list of upgrades you are.

The only exception is if you have special dietary requirements, as then they can't upgrade you because they prepare those meals per person in advance, and they can't serve you "lesser quality" food in a better cabin. So, specifying a special diet disqualifies you from an upgrade.

How do you find if you've been upgraded? When your ticket is scanned before boarding, they might get a 'new seat' alert, or if you use the airline app you might notice that your checked-in seat has been changed.

Swag

We tend to focus on stickers since they're affordable, compact, and travel well. We usually print our own via StickerMule.

If you need stickers, pester someone on devrel-team and we'll get some ordered or shipped.

Business Cards

To order business cards, request an account on in ServceNow under Workplace Resources → Business Cards

Remote Work

If you work remotely, familiarize yourself with the Home Space Worker Guidelines on Mana.

CrashPlan Backups

We have an enterprise subscription to CrashPlan for backups.

If you'd like to use it, check the instructions on Mana.

Presentation Software

Use what you're most comfortable with, but consider using an HTML5 based slide framework like reveal.js if possible.

Screenflow and Other Software

We tend to like Screenflow for recording screencasts. Buy a license and expense it, or request a license through ServiceNow under Service Desk → Order something → Software Applications → Other Applications → Non-Catalog Software.

If you need other software, it's likely available in the ServiceNow catalog.

Audio Recording Equipment (i.e. microphones and so)

TL;DR: the Blue Yeti with a pop up filter is a good combination.

Traveling abroad

VISA

Depending on your nationality and country of residence, you may need a visa to travel to international destinations. It is important to check with each country you will travel through to determine what documents you need, well in advance of your travel. Expense any visa fees with your other trip expenses.

Health considerations

When traveling to developing countries, you will likely need additional immunization or travel medication. Look into this as soon as possible; many vaccines need weeks or months to become effective.

Your doctor can advise you on what you'll need. You can also check the CDC's Travelers' Health portal.

Medical insurance

Mozilla has a medical insurance policy for employees and their dependents who are traveling on business. See the travel insurance page on Mana for details.

Make sure you print out the policy ID card and keep it with you while you travel.

Mobile data connection

The recommendation is to buy a local pre-paid SIM card. Use Prepaid Data SIM Card website to check the alternatives per country.

New Hire Checklist

  • Profiles
    • Mozillians
    • Phonebook (with cell phone, if willing)
    • Devrel Wiki Page
  • Subscriptions
    • Both Mailing Lists
    • Both Calendars (+ the company holiday one, if desired)
  • Accounts
    • Hacks Blog
    • GitHub (and added to Mozilla organization)
    • Bugzilla
    • Egencia
  • Hardware / Gear
    • Comfortable headset for Vidyo
    • Document camera (if needed)
    • Mozilla / Firefox Stickers
    • Business Cards
  • Software
    • Vidyo
    • Screenflow (or other)
    • CrashPlan (if desired)
    • Expensify App
    • IRC client w/ persistent connection (e.g., IRCCloud, if desired)
  • Information
    • Read the Manifesto
    • Watch "Bugzilla for Humans II"
    • Read Home Space Worker Guidelines (if applicable)