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Mozilla Conductors
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Stormy Peters
Apr 5, 2012, 4:44:56 PM4/5/12
to mozilla-g...@lists.mozilla.org
Mozilla Conductors have been mentioned quite a few times on this mailing
list in the past couple of days.
Mozilla Conductors was created to be a group of mentors. We specifically
chose not to try to be enforcers. Who we are and what we do could evolve if
Mozilla needs us to but for now we believe that we can help others by
helping them communicate more effectively. We mostly do this in 1:1
communications in private emails and chats. Usually when people reach out
to one of us for help. Occasionally we reach out directly to someone we
notice is having difficulty.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Conductors:
We're the Conductors - a team of Mozilla community members who are
available as mentors to help conversations run more smoothly and
harmoniously. We're not police or referees, just a group of people who have
offered to be available to give advice, counsel and support to our fellow
community members when a discussion or debate gets a little tense.
It's not always easy to discuss contentious issues through primarily
text-based systems like email, newsgroups and Bugzilla comments. Sometimes
it can help to have someone to assist with phrasing, interpretation and the
flow of discussion. If you ever find yourself in a tricky conversation
within the Mozilla community and want some assistance, just hop into
#conductors on irc.mozilla.org, or send an email either to the whole
group or any of us individually and we'll be happy to help.
(We'd also love to hear from you if you just want to learn more about
strategies and techniques for online discussions, or want to join this
mentorship group!)
I suggested the group be created during a conversation about difficult
conversations. Someone suggested that we could pull in a consultant to help
with difficult conversations. That made me think, "but we have a bunch of
people who are great at communicating!" I meant it to be an explicit list
of people who could serve as mentors or coaches.
The original group was pulled from nominations. I asked a bunch of people I
saw as leaders in the Mozilla community who they'd recommend and then I
invited the set of people that appeared most often in the list of
recommended people. Since then several people have asked to be a part of
the group. We evaluate each request carefully. In some cases, we've added
the person as a Conductor. In other cases we've provided specific feedback
why we don't think that's a good idea right now and we've offered to mentor
the person and help them make their online conversations more productive.
Conductors could - and probably should - evolve as Mozilla's needs evolve.
(I was/am hoping that the need for us goes away eventually. :) For the
moment we are mentors and happy to be a friendly ear and a source of ideas
for how to have difficult conversations in a productive way.
Stormy
list in the past couple of days.
Mozilla Conductors was created to be a group of mentors. We specifically
chose not to try to be enforcers. Who we are and what we do could evolve if
Mozilla needs us to but for now we believe that we can help others by
helping them communicate more effectively. We mostly do this in 1:1
communications in private emails and chats. Usually when people reach out
to one of us for help. Occasionally we reach out directly to someone we
notice is having difficulty.
https://wiki.mozilla.org/Conductors:
We're the Conductors - a team of Mozilla community members who are
available as mentors to help conversations run more smoothly and
harmoniously. We're not police or referees, just a group of people who have
offered to be available to give advice, counsel and support to our fellow
community members when a discussion or debate gets a little tense.
It's not always easy to discuss contentious issues through primarily
text-based systems like email, newsgroups and Bugzilla comments. Sometimes
it can help to have someone to assist with phrasing, interpretation and the
flow of discussion. If you ever find yourself in a tricky conversation
within the Mozilla community and want some assistance, just hop into
#conductors on irc.mozilla.org, or send an email either to the whole
group or any of us individually and we'll be happy to help.
(We'd also love to hear from you if you just want to learn more about
strategies and techniques for online discussions, or want to join this
mentorship group!)
I suggested the group be created during a conversation about difficult
conversations. Someone suggested that we could pull in a consultant to help
with difficult conversations. That made me think, "but we have a bunch of
people who are great at communicating!" I meant it to be an explicit list
of people who could serve as mentors or coaches.
The original group was pulled from nominations. I asked a bunch of people I
saw as leaders in the Mozilla community who they'd recommend and then I
invited the set of people that appeared most often in the list of
recommended people. Since then several people have asked to be a part of
the group. We evaluate each request carefully. In some cases, we've added
the person as a Conductor. In other cases we've provided specific feedback
why we don't think that's a good idea right now and we've offered to mentor
the person and help them make their online conversations more productive.
Conductors could - and probably should - evolve as Mozilla's needs evolve.
(I was/am hoping that the need for us goes away eventually. :) For the
moment we are mentors and happy to be a friendly ear and a source of ideas
for how to have difficult conversations in a productive way.
Stormy
Gregg Lind
Apr 6, 2012, 12:31:06 PM4/6/12
to mozilla-g...@lists.mozilla.org
On Thursday, April 5, 2012 3:44:56 PM UTC-5, Stormy Peters wrote:
> Mozilla Conductors have been mentioned quite a few times on this mailing
> list in the past couple of days.
>
...
> Mozilla Conductors have been mentioned quite a few times on this mailing
> list in the past couple of days.
>
> Conductors could - and probably should - evolve as Mozilla's needs evolve.
> (I was/am hoping that the need for us goes away eventually. :) For the
> moment we are mentors and happy to be a friendly ear and a source of ideas
> for how to have difficult conversations in a productive way.
>
> Stormy
Stormy,
> (I was/am hoping that the need for us goes away eventually. :) For the
> moment we are mentors and happy to be a friendly ear and a source of ideas
> for how to have difficult conversations in a productive way.
>
> Stormy
Thanks for this quick introduction!
Johnathan Nightingale
Apr 9, 2012, 12:17:45 PM4/9/12
to Stormy Peters, mozilla-g...@lists.mozilla.org
Hi, I'm Johnathan, and I'm one of these conductors Stormy's writing about.
> Mozilla Conductors was created to be a group of mentors. We specifically
> chose not to try to be enforcers. Who we are and what we do could evolve if
> Mozilla needs us to but for now we believe that we can help others by
> helping them communicate more effectively. We mostly do this in 1:1
> communications in private emails and chats. Usually when people reach out
> to one of us for help. Occasionally we reach out directly to someone we
> notice is having difficulty.
Right. If you're wondering who the conductors are, this is really it.
There are people in Mozilla who will ping me from time to time if a bug is going sideways or if they're in a hard conversation. They aren't usually Summoning My Authority, they just want a calm voice in a tough spot. Those pings are really helpful. People can get pretty fired up about the work they're doing or the problem they're trying to solve, and occasionally they lose sight of how their words are being heard by others.
More than half the time, the first I hear about one of these conversations is from a third party - someone watching the conversation unfold who knows it's in trouble, but isn't sure how to help it. When it actually is one of the participants who asks for help, it's rarely "go shut that other person up." More often, even in tense conversations, people say, "I know I'm handling this badly, but I don't know how to do better."
> Conductors could - and probably should - evolve as Mozilla's needs evolve. ... For the moment we are mentors and happy to be a friendly ear and a source of ideas for how to have difficult conversations in a productive way.
I think this bears repeating. Conductors is not a prescriptive or legislative group. It will evolve, maybe dramatically (young groups do), but for the moment conductors exists to provide a sounding board and communications gut-check. Ping if you think we can help.
J
---
Johnathan Nightingale
Sr. Director of Firefox Engineering
joh...@mozilla.com
> Mozilla Conductors was created to be a group of mentors. We specifically
> chose not to try to be enforcers. Who we are and what we do could evolve if
> Mozilla needs us to but for now we believe that we can help others by
> helping them communicate more effectively. We mostly do this in 1:1
> communications in private emails and chats. Usually when people reach out
> to one of us for help. Occasionally we reach out directly to someone we
> notice is having difficulty.
There are people in Mozilla who will ping me from time to time if a bug is going sideways or if they're in a hard conversation. They aren't usually Summoning My Authority, they just want a calm voice in a tough spot. Those pings are really helpful. People can get pretty fired up about the work they're doing or the problem they're trying to solve, and occasionally they lose sight of how their words are being heard by others.
More than half the time, the first I hear about one of these conversations is from a third party - someone watching the conversation unfold who knows it's in trouble, but isn't sure how to help it. When it actually is one of the participants who asks for help, it's rarely "go shut that other person up." More often, even in tense conversations, people say, "I know I'm handling this badly, but I don't know how to do better."
> Conductors could - and probably should - evolve as Mozilla's needs evolve. ... For the moment we are mentors and happy to be a friendly ear and a source of ideas for how to have difficult conversations in a productive way.
I think this bears repeating. Conductors is not a prescriptive or legislative group. It will evolve, maybe dramatically (young groups do), but for the moment conductors exists to provide a sounding board and communications gut-check. Ping if you think we can help.
J
---
Johnathan Nightingale
Sr. Director of Firefox Engineering
joh...@mozilla.com
Majken Connor
Apr 9, 2012, 4:06:22 PM4/9/12
to Johnathan Nightingale, mozilla-g...@lists.mozilla.org, Stormy Peters
I just want to say I really appreciate that it started from the existing
community rather than going straight to "experts." This feels like Mozilla
to me. It might be helpful to have more non-employees on that list. I
imagine for some community members it might be intimidating to use this
resource especially given some of the roles represented in the current
group.
I also like the idea of not being enforcers. I think the other thread about
creating more modules will help with that aspect. If there are modules and
module owners for all of the teams then those people can be "enforcers."
Thanks for doing this!
Lucy
On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Johnathan Nightingale
<joh...@mozilla.com>wrote:
> _______________________________________________
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
>
community rather than going straight to "experts." This feels like Mozilla
to me. It might be helpful to have more non-employees on that list. I
imagine for some community members it might be intimidating to use this
resource especially given some of the roles represented in the current
group.
I also like the idea of not being enforcers. I think the other thread about
creating more modules will help with that aspect. If there are modules and
module owners for all of the teams then those people can be "enforcers."
Thanks for doing this!
Lucy
On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 12:17 PM, Johnathan Nightingale
<joh...@mozilla.com>wrote:
> governance mailing list
> gover...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/governance
>
Robert Kaiser
Apr 9, 2012, 4:39:26 PM4/9/12
to mozilla-g...@lists.mozilla.org
Majken Connor schrieb:
good people from our community and 2) people who don't put their full
work time into Mozilla might not have a lot of capacity to take part in
things like that.
In the end, I'm not sure if those patterns are good or bad, but they are
understandable. I find it laudable (both to us as a community as well as
those individuals) if we even have people not paid by Mozilla who are on
this list.
> Thanks for doing this!
+1
Robert Kaiser
> It might be helpful to have more non-employees on that list.
Well, the patterns I'm seeing repeating here are 1) we hired a lot of
good people from our community and 2) people who don't put their full
work time into Mozilla might not have a lot of capacity to take part in
things like that.
In the end, I'm not sure if those patterns are good or bad, but they are
understandable. I find it laudable (both to us as a community as well as
those individuals) if we even have people not paid by Mozilla who are on
this list.
> Thanks for doing this!
+1
Robert Kaiser
Stormy Peters
Apr 9, 2012, 4:44:41 PM4/9/12
to Majken Connor, mozilla-g...@lists.mozilla.org
On Mon, Apr 9, 2012 at 2:06 PM, Majken Connor <maj...@gmail.com> wrote:
> I just want to say I really appreciate that it started from the existing
> community rather than going straight to "experts." This feels like Mozilla
> to me. It might be helpful to have more non-employees on that list. I
> imagine for some community members it might be intimidating to use this
> resource especially given some of the roles represented in the current
> group.
>
Feel free to nominate people. (Maybe check with them too. :)
> I just want to say I really appreciate that it started from the existing
> community rather than going straight to "experts." This feels like Mozilla
> to me. It might be helpful to have more non-employees on that list. I
> imagine for some community members it might be intimidating to use this
> resource especially given some of the roles represented in the current
> group.
>
Stormy
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