What do Webmaker mentors need in 2013?

[Matt Thompson]

Based on some stellar work from Laura, Michelle T, Chris L and the Hive team and others,
we just published this blog post on what we learned from talking to 80+ Webmaker mentors last month:

What do Webmaker mentors want?
http://openmatt.org/2013/01/10/what_do_mentors_want/

(Emma, I used you and Clint as an example -- hope that's ok!)

It tries to highlight the key messages we're hearing from existing mentors,
and think about next steps to improve our offering for them together.

I'd like to use this thread to continue that discussion.
1) As a mentor / instructor / educator / coach, what do you think we should focus on this year? This quarter?
2) Where's the low-hanging fruit? What's stuff we could do quickly and easily?
3) Are there pieces of this you'd like to take on and help drive forward?

--Matt

[Matt Thompson]

Hi, Greg! We've done various forms of user testing with learners already,
but I'll need to defer to others here on what's planned on that front next.

--Matt


On 2013-01-10, at 8:49 AM, Greg Wilson wrote:

> Hi Matt,
> Thanks very much for this --- do you know if similar interviews are in the works for learners?
> Cheers,
> G

[Emma Irwin]

I see Clint and I as a great example of webmaker matchmaking, I've been so
fortunate as a programmer working in a university to have
teaching/educating help at arms-reach . Our Popcorn Hackjam Icebreaker
bingo was whiteboarded in the hallways of the Center for Teaching Studies
at our university :) If more people could find each other as we have
(and share resources + networks of friends & colleagues ), think of the
possibilities .

On Thu, Jan 10, 2013 at 6:46 AM, Matt Thompson
<ma...@mozillafoundation.org>wrote:

> Based on some stellar work from Laura, Michelle T, Chris L and the Hive
> team and others,
> we just published this blog post on what we learned from talking to 80+
> Webmaker mentors last month:
>
> What do Webmaker mentors want?
> http://openmatt.org/2013/01/10/what_do_mentors_want/
>
> (Emma, I used you and Clint as an example -- hope that's ok!)
>
> It tries to highlight the key messages we're hearing from existing mentors,
> and think about next steps to improve our offering for them together.
>
> I'd like to use this thread to continue that discussion.
> 1) As a mentor / instructor / educator / coach, what do you think we
> should focus on this year? This quarter?
> 2) Where's the low-hanging fruit? What's stuff we could do quickly and
> easily?
> 3) Are there pieces of this you'd like to take on and help drive forward?
>
> --Matt
>
>
>

> _______________________________________________
> Webmaker mailing list
> Webm...@lists.mozilla.org
> https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/webmaker
>

[Matt Thompson]

+1

One of the questions we're working on is:
how do we make this easier in the short term?

We may ultimately have functionality on Webmaker.org that helps with this.
But I believe Laura has also been looking at some short-term possibilities as well.
Maybe making use of third-party tools or platforms that already exist.

--M

[Matt Thompson]

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

[Rebeccah Mullen]

Hello All,

I'd like to share that we (comms/social media) are also trying to explore solutions for the 'where do we talk together' problem - although we're mostly looking at transitional spaces that will fold easily into future infrastructure.

One idea we've set up but not explored is Google Communities, an idea from David Ascher.

We have one here:

https://plus.google.com/u/1/b/104682913709460611261/communities/106022863174952221205

And we'd be interested to discover if it suits any basic needs for the Mentor groups right now? It's a skeleton so far, and we're unsure how it should perform, so we're open to suggestion on tailoring it to your needs.

(With Gmail being so ubiquitous, I figured it might be the most naturalistic and scalable choice for the here and now).


If that doesn't quite work, we'd be happy to help support any other channels you might suggest.

:)
Rebeccah

[fish...@gmail.com]

Hey,

I just saw this : "Case studies: How four community information projects went from idea to impact" from the Knight Foundation. I would guess that many might be familiar with this already, but it could be an interesting resource to look otherwise.

http://www.knightfoundation.org/publications/case-studies

Cheers
Tom