On 2013-01-10, at 9:16 AM, Michael McCarthy wrote:
> I'm Mike McCarthy, the animator that has made a handful of animations for Mozilla, mostly through Ben Moskowitz, but also made Popcorn Maker tutorial vid for Brett, and Mozilla Ignite Learning Labs for Will Barkis, and so on. I'm a big fanboy overall, of course. =)
Hey, Mike! Great to hear from you. I'm a big fan of your work.
>
> Up until now, I've never taken the opportunity to introduce myself, but probably makes sense, right? I was reading your post and it got me thinking about what it was like getting to know Mozilla over the last two years. Back then, Ben wanted me to blog about it, but I wasn't ready. I had a lot of observations on what was easy and what was hard as a newcomer and wannabe contributor, getting to know the community.
We'd love to hear more about that, if you're up for it. You're definitely the sort of creative, skilled community member we need more of.
> I think it is definitely easier for some people to get to know Mozilla than others, and as a non-developer, non-technologist (getting there though!) it was definitely a triumph to finally learn how to do the community call/etherpad dance.
I hear you. And I've heard that from others as well.
I just moved into a new role that's more explicitly focused on engagement and on-boarding community,
so this is something I can try and tackle. Making the process clearer and more welcoming for first-timers.
If that something you're interested in helping out with, let me know?
We could almost use a whiteboard animation video explaining how we work and making the etherpad dance easier. :)
> It takes a lot of energy to do our navigating by combing carefully through webpages and wikis, but I think staff and Mozillians alike share those frustrations. It's a lot of hard work.
I agree. I think this quarter is going to be about taking a lot of that messy "back of the mullet" documentation in wikis and etherpads and shipping into more polished, humane, and findable pages on
webmaker.org. We've know that we needed that for a while, but its only really now that I think we have the time and focus to make it happen more consistently.
> I share many of the concerns of community members in wanting to understand where and how I can help, either as volunteer or vendor, but having a few friends like Ben and Brett have made a world of difference. I'm blown away by the quality of people Mozilla attracts. That's our greatest strength.
I think so, too. I also think the kind of energy we see on display at our events (especially MozFest) is totally unique and extremely valuable.
I think we need to figure out how to spread more of that flavor and energy online.
> I'm really excited about this year, including the potential to make more for Moz, but I'm really more excited about making more stuff WITH Mozilla, that is, Webmaker. I'd love to talk about that with you sometime, but I'm also equally curious to see how we can solve the problems and develop the community qualities you're describing in your post.
Sounds good! We're going to do a follow up in Tuesday's community call. If you have some specific ideas, maybe you could share them on the etherpad then?
Or ping me in #Webmaker IRC any time?
Thanks for the great note -- would really love to make use of your skills in some of our documentation and storytelling work this year.
--Matt