TechSpeakers

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Overview

Description: Increase developer awareness and adoption of Mozilla products and the Open Web as a platform through a strong community-driven technical speaker development program.

• Status: Program design, pilot development
• Contact: Havi Hoffman
• Core Team: Rosana Ardila, Dietrich Ayala, Soumya Deb, Emma Irwin, Janet Swisher

Mission & Purpose

Increase developer awareness and adoption of Mozilla products and the Open Web as a platform by:

• Growing a base of high-quality volunteer speakers...
• Supporting their efforts with training for both speaking and content generation...
• In order to present timely, relevant technical material at regional developer events.

Outcomes

• Volunteer speakers have improved speaking skills and high quality technical content when representing Mozilla at influential, top-tier developer events, and at relevant regional, educational, and community-run events.
• Mozilla has a global team of trained speakers to send to conferences, to host workshops, and represent the project in other technical contexts.
• Speaker materials and assets become easily discoverable and accessible (content and templates).
• Graduates replicate the program in their regional communities.

How It Works

Tech Speakers is a six week program combining group speaking practice and technical content development.

Each participant:

• Picks a topic at the beginning of the program
• Develops a talk on that topic during the program
• Submits their talk to a conference CFP by the end of the program

Each week:

• Participants speak for two minutes on a predefined topic
• The group provides feedback to the speaker
• Guest speakers will join, to teach their area of expertise

Materials

• TechSpeakers Curriculum
• Speaking Tips

How To Join

• We are currently running the second iteration of the pilot program, to test the format and curriculum.
• After the pilot phase has completed, we’ll share our learnings and develop the next steps for extending the program and making it available to all Mozillians.

Project Meta

Timeline

Pilot #2 - IN PROGRESS

• Q3/Q4 - High-level Schedule
  • Determine schedule and general structure
  • Candidate selection process
  • Invite candidates
  • Select and invite guest speakers
  • Pre-program introductions
  • Program begins
  • Program completes

Pilot #1 - COMPLETE

The first pilot completed successfully.

• Q1 February
  • Program design solidified
  • Program mission and goals socialized
  • Pilot design completed
  • Pilot participant list drawn up
• Q1 March
  • Program design published on wiki
  • Workflow with Reps, MDN decided
  • Pilot participants selected and communicated with
  • Achievement criteria defined and published
• Q2 April
  • Pilot is ongoing
  • Participants are working through the curriculum
  • Regular meetings for ongoing assessment
• Q2 May
  • Pilot concludes
  • Post-mortem to identify improvements and impact
  • Program refinements from pilot results are implemented and communicated

Pilot Program

• Description
  • Work with Mozilla Reps to select five participants
  • The selected participants help work out the kinks - refine criteria, identify mentorship needs
• Outcomes
  • Set of program refinements required to be implemented prior to official launch

Communication

• General
  • Mailing List: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/mozilla-tech-speakers
  • IRC Channel: #techspeakers (for now)
  • Telegram: techspeakers

• Announcements
  • Lists: devrel, mdn, mozillians, reps
  • Hacks - blog post (Havi/Mar 30)
  • Social: TBD