Contribute choose your own adventure
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Contribute Wiki | |
| Owner: Community Building Team | Updated: Frequently | |
| Whether you've been building a community for a long time or you are just getting started, these pages will help you find the information you are looking for to build vibrant, supportive communities that will have impact on your project. | ||
Getting Started
I want to build a community around my project!
We're here to help. Learn more about all of the resources that are available.
Learn more about how you can join a Working Group to create things with other community builders.
I want to volunteer to a Mozilla project!
Please visit our Get Involved page to learn more about contribution opportunities or consider becoming a Mozilla Rep.
Resources
There are a number of resources available to help you build a community around your project. The Community Building Team is also here to help you make use of these resources and to create additional resources that are needed by teams across the project.
Communication Channels
A great place to get started is to join one of the available communication channels where other people involved with community building are there to help. Feel free to join one of the following and introduce yourself.
Frequently Asked Questions
We've compiled a list of some common questions about getting started with community building that may address some of the questions you have.
- How will volunteers reduce my workload instead of add to it?
- What skills do volunteers have?
- How can I rely on volunteers to do things I need to get done?
- How does adding volunteers compare with adding employees, interns, or contractors?
- How long will volunteers stay involved?
- Does my team need a full time community builder? If not, would it be useful to have someone spend part of their time on community building?
- Are there ways for me to learn more about volunteer management and community building?
- Can you define some of the crazy language you use? Can I define it, too?
Workshops
We have created some workshops that will help you walk through the process of designing your project for participation. These are available in a variety of formats to fit with your needs—you can interact with this through a series of short videos or you can set up an exercise for your whole team to work through this content together.
Other Resources
Here are a list of links to other useful resources.
Working Groups
Working groups are where we create the participation resources that teams use to build communities. Each working group includes stakeholders from across the project that are interested in collaborating on a specific topic. Please feel free to join a group to help us build the resources you need.
Pathways
- Description: This group is focused on creating effective contribution pathways for functional and regional areas as a way to identify, qualify and onboard new volunteers.
- Meetings: Thursdays at 17:00 UTC
Systems and Data
- Description: This group is focused on systems and data that are needed to handle the volume of potential volunteers and to provide visibility into the operations of contribution pathways.
- Meetings: Every other Friday at 20:00 UTC
Education and Culture
- Description: This group is focused on capturing and spreading information about how volunteering works and how all Mozillians can acquire new skills to have a deeper impact on the project.
- Meetings: Coming soon
Recognition
- Description: This group is focused on how to recognize volunteers for their contributions in order to deepen and extend relationships.
Research
- Description: This group is currently researching the following central questions:
- How are people (new volunteers) finding us?
- New volunteers' motivations: What do new volunteers believe their involvement with Mozilla might include?
- Staff expectations: What do staff members believe their roles are in contributor interactions?
- Meetings: Research doesn't have a regularly scheduled meeting, but feel free to reach out on the community building list if you want to be involved.
- Blog Posts:
Events
- Description: This group is focused at collecting best practices for how to run effective events that help connect people to Mozilla contribution opportunities.
- Meetings: Coming soon
I want to see community building resources
Community Stewards
Click this link to find stewards and community builders involved with bringing in volunteers to functional and regional areas. If you are interested in becoming a Steward, please contact David Boswell.
Here is a list of people who can help provide pathways to contribution.
Mentors
The community building team is beginning a mentoring program for Mozillians. If you're interested in mentoring new Mozillians, or if you're a new Mozillian seeking a mentor, please get in touch on the community building listserv.
Missions
Training missions are a scalable way for new contributors to gain experience and develop skills that will help them successfully get involved in projects at Mozilla.
- Firefox development training mission -- Walks someone through how to turns the tabs of Firefox green by editing Firefox's CSS files
- Bug triage tutorial -- Walks someone through the basics of Bugzilla triage on test data
- What can I do for Mozilla? This walks through various languages and skills in which people may want to contribute!
- Learn to code by hands on coding Firefox!
Organizational Support and Capacity
Capacity is a measure of the community building potential of teams. Knowing the capacity of a team helps us provide support through programs and guides that are appropriate to their current situation. The organization needs to support community building and can do this by establishing accountability for community growth. There also needs to be a voice for community building and volunteers at the Steering Committee and Director levels. How do I determine my community's capacity?
Contributor Conversion Points
In 2012, community builders decided upon a set of "conversion points" (or levels of participation) (found here) to provide information about the contributor lifecycle for the Grow Mozilla dashboard. See bug 736109 for details about implementing this and see The SuperStar Radar blog post for information about why this is helpful for community building.
Important Cross Organizational Links
The awesome thing about open source is that there are so many things going on all over the place. Sometimes that can be a bit overwhelming. Go here to add projects, websites, and blogs from around the Mozilla-verse that you think are relevant to the task of community building.
Community Building Myths
The Top Myths of Community Building
- Myth: working with contributors will take my time and energy away from meeting my personal goals or our team goals.
Working with volunteers does not compete with other goals. If the work is organized right, it helps you meet those goals by expanding your team.
- Myth: We will have to work with whomever shows up and they are not likely to have the right skillset for us or enough time to do the project.
There is no obligation to work with everyone who shows up. You can be clear about skills, time and other requirements needed.
- Myth: volunteers are unreliable.
Volunteers can be depended on. There are community practices for establishing trust and accountability.
- Myth: Volunteers will try to change decisions we already made.
Volunteers should not alter the decision making process. Indeed, volunteers generally want clear, meaningful tasks. Engaging volunteers should not eat up more time, it should create systems that will enable both volunteers and staff to be more productive
- Myth: establishing systems and tasks for managing volunteers will take more time than it is worth.
Engaging volunteers should not eat up more time, it should create systems that will enable both volunteers and staff to be more productive