Planning a Workweek
We're more than 200 contributors on Mozilla Hispano. Since the creation of the community on 2007, they have been a wide range of changes on how we can optimize the information architecture, the collaborative work and the internal and external communication. It's not easy peasy.
Anyone can join Mozilla, it is a meritocracy. The more you contribute, the more responsibilities you can have (if you want).
Work less but work better
At the time of March 2013, the Firefox OS project was advanced and almost ready to launch. The thing is that the launch teams were going to be community members. There was a lot of work to do and we needed to organize it. This is the main reason of a workweek: Organizing big chunks of information and getting people to understand how to followup easily.
As a community, we proposed the Workweek to the Mozilla community team (employees specialized on managing the local communities). It needed to be somewhere near to everyone, and since MH has contributors from Argentina to Mexico or even Spain, Peru looked like a good option. We also managed other options like Venezuela or Colombia.
People are collaborating, it is not a fixed-time workday
Mozilla Reps (experienced contributors with proven knowledge on how the community works) were the ones who started organizing the trip and how we will work.
We had 3 days of hard work at Peru and I met with more than 30 contributors from America. We really thanked the Peruvian community for their work on making everything go like a bed of roses. We even recorded videos as an introduction to new contributors. Have a look at the program here.
Every operative areas shared what they have been working on the last months: News, support, QA (quality assurance), labs, diffusion, creative and localization. Then we talked what were the next steps and what we think that should be changed. Talking in person is way faster than emails, IRC or Teambox. You can watch a -funny- video of everyone introducing themselves (in Spanish).
Think globally, act locally: Firefox OS Launch
The second day we had a conference call with Jesse Montano (marketing contributor) about the role of the community on the launch of Firefox OS. Afterwards, Rosana and Willy hosted a conversation about the topic and explained a bit deeper how we were supposed to communicate the product. We all have our own thoughts about Firefox OS, but it is important to share the key values of what we are doing.
As of November 2013, we are talking about organizing a new Workweek next year. The projects evolves fast. Firefox OS is going even faster than we thought. It is incredible how much things you can do when you work with 10 people on the same room.
Come and shape the future with us.
See you soon!
