Mozilla in Canada - my day

[Emma Irwin]

Hi,

I'm looking for feedback, sympathy whatever you can offer - a bit of a
frustrating day in Rep land for me.
Today I led a workshop (with a colleague) on Popcorn Maker. This workshop
was at a university and the primary audience were faculty, and educational
technologists all working with online learning as the primary method of
teaching. Of 20+ people, only 2 knew who Mozilla was and of those, only 1
could name Firefox as an initiative.

So here is my frustration today. The average Canadian does not understand
the influence Mozilla can lend to their urgent concerns like privacy. I
am the only Rep in this province, through my grassroots efforts
collaborating with colleagues we have made some inroads with Webmaker but
more in the way that foundation after foundation want us to come and 'run
hackjams', Since we all work full time, it's just not possible. I think I
could start my own foundation just for the purpose of providing web
literacy programs this community( but I'm not a foundation-starter type of
person)

There is a common conception that we are selling Firefox, and I've had one
comment that the 'story of firefox' video is very commercial in appeal
(kind of agree - would be nice to see more faces or stories of
contributors).

I'm wondering if this is a Canadian thing? Is it that Mozilla isn't
properly associating it's work with every day, concerns of Canadians? Why
do other Mozillian communities seem so much more engaged and growing?
Shouldn't Mozilla be aligning with common concerns among Canadians like
Cyber safety (number #1 topic foundations want me to run hackjam around).
I feel that projects like this one: http://about.me/redhoodproject which
seeks to make online sites accountable for privacy should be looking to
Mozilla for guidance and support but they're not because that connection
simply doesn't exist yet. The #2 concern is the kids are playing too many
video games, already in front of the TV , I fight this too when I'm trying
to explain the consumer vrs maker aspect.

So I was just a bit sad today, that in a room full of leaders, teaching
online - parents, technologists teachers that hardly anyone knew who we
were much less understand fully the power of what Mozilla is doing to yes :
empower, teach, innovate, open, but also to address the every day concerns
like cyber safety and tech-overload. I feel Mozilla needs to do this
better , how can we do this better with hardly any community outreach(so
few reps etc)? I am only one person.

Thanks for reading ,

-Emma

[Mark Côté]

I don't have any answers, aside from generic, probably unhelpful things
like "continue to raise awareness", but I do agree that there isn't a
lot of knowledge about Mozilla's mission and goals in Canada. Certainly
few people I talk to in eastern Canada (Montreal, Ottawa, Toronto areas)
know much about how we work, what we do, and why we do it. I myself have
to admit to not knowing very much at all about Mozilla before a few
years ago, and even then only because I was contacted by a recruiter and
started doing research, despite being a long-time Firefox user.

That said, the Montreal community is organizing a FirefoxOS App Day this
Saturday, and I think we have about 50 people signed up at the moment.
I'm sure many of them don't know much about Mozilla but have probably
heard through tech channels about FirefoxOS, so I view this as a really
good opportunity to do some educating about Mozilla. :)

I have heard that awareness of Mozilla's mission is a lot higher outside
of Canada and the US, and this is mainly due to communities that
originally organized to help with Firefox localizations. This common
purpose gave rise to a lot of lasting communities. In English-speaking
countries, particularly the US and Canada, there wasn't much of a need
for localization, and hence those communities never arose. I'm sure this
is somewhat simplistic, but it does make some sense.

Mark

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[Majken Connor]

I am also having a bit of I'm-only-one-person syndrome. I'm handling it by
some lessons I'm learning about how long these things actually do take to
get off the ground, that this isn't exceptional, I'm not failing.

Due to l10n, we have much more active communities in other countries
outside of North America. Reps from those countries have been doing a lot
of work for YEARS already. I'm sure there are clueless people in those
countries as well, but the local reps have had time to grow a community of
people to work with who do know Mozilla.

I am going to propose on the marketing collective that in the lead up to
the summit we do a lot of local engagement to let people know that Mozilla
is in Toronto and we're pretty big. It's a damn shame that people don't
know we're here. Firefox (proper, not including Phoenix) has *always* been
lead from the Toronto office. Mike Connor was the first Director of Firefox
Development, Mike Beltzner took over for him and now we have Johnathan
Nightingale who is VP of Firefox. The Foundation has also been lead from
Toronto for I believe at least 5 years.

I'm learning to say no to a lot of stuff to work on leading the local
events. Turns out you can make meaningful contributions to a project with
only a small daily effort, but leading something takes up ALL your time.

I would suggest since the demand is huge to figure out how to find more
people willing to train to run the hackjams. The student ambassador program
should be a great resource. Also have an event for people who want to have
you host a jam and trick them into learning how to run it themselves (kinda
like what happened in Athens!)

[Emma Irwin]

Thank you Mark - Kenzie,

I guess two things really shine today - we are close to the top (if not the
top) of global web consumers, near the top average-household income, and
global influence- but perhaps least active Mozilla community ( happy to be
corrected )
I'm concerned that if Toronto doesn't know Mozilla exists (as most active
Moz city), the rest of the country is...<insert sad but trying to be
positive word here>. Hopefully localization is not the only reason for
communities to support our work.

I ran an 'train the trainer' event earlier this month as you suggest Kenzie
- and six people turned up (1 was the lab owner). youth agencies /groups
want us to run events *for them* - because for numerous reasons - they're
simply overwhelmed/not interested in taking this on themselves. Shortly
after I ran this event - I had 3 agencies email me to run hackjams.
Obviously frustrating trying to grow a community that prefers to be served.

I know Canada would be behind us - if they knew us.

[Regnard Raquedan]

Hi Emma and Kensie!

This was the type of discussion I'm hoping to have in the North America
Reps Meetup (which is currently in a wait-and-see mode with developments in
the Mozilla Summit and Firefox OS events).

I think we have ideas why things are different/challenging in Canada, but
also think there is a way to get better certainty on this.

Let's ask people in Canada.

Do you think folks will support the idea of running a survey to find out
what we can do to be known and have a stronger message? We probably need at
least 100 respondents from the key geographies (does anybody know someone
from the prairies?)

I know it sounds reactive, but I think it would be good to have concrete
information to focus our energies on.

--
*Regnard Raquedan, MBA, MSc.*
http://weboplex.com
http://ca.linkedin.com/in/regnard
@regnard <https://twitter.com/regnard>

[Majken Connor]

I think the solution is already in the works with the formation of the
marketing collective, I think we should bring this up there as well, we can
start to plan an awareness campaign.

Cesar worked in Regina for a while, he might still have contacts there.

[Regnard Raquedan]

All right, maybe it would be good to see what's planned and find out how to
be part of that.

[Lawrence Mandel]

Trying to win over the entire Canadian population is simply too great of a challenge at this point. As Geoffrey Moore puts it, we need to find a beachhead (or niche). I would suggest that the local student populations are that beachhead. Mozilla has a very strong presence at Seneca in large part due to the support of Dave Humphries. Can we find similar supporters at some of UofT, Ryerson, York, George Brown, UoiT, Waterloo, McGill, Western, etc.?

Train the students and send them out to the many companies that they'll start or for which they'll work.

I would add that Kensie's Open Web Open Mic events in April and May brought many new faces into Mozilla. By creating a venue in which others can share their voice you include them in the community and give them ownership over its success. These events are definitely work but seem to be very worthwhile.

Lawrence

[Emma Irwin]

I don't think winning over the entire Canadian population is a goal, but at
very least for a nation of web users, know the name Mozilla? And feel that
we are empowering their experience and not selling it.

For me, this week meeting with academics, who teach online, who deal with
privacy concerns, who are actively creating learning opportunity on the
web to not know Mozilla was concerning.

I agree about getting more involved in universities , but having Dave
Humphries in a learning space is an exception. I see a lot of Toronto/ON
in your response - so wondering in training students in all of Canada what
plans do we have around that? Does this all hinge on FF ambassadors? Are
we engaging with IT instructors in any way?

Here we have lots of spaces open for use, but no real volunteer base to
make it happen. (our biggest goal right now is to collaborate with others
for a Hive Popup this fall) .

Thanks for this conversation, I think it's valuable.
Regnard I like the idea of asking Canadians - I think also there are a lot
of surveys out there on what concerns / values / dreams Canadians have for
their online world. I believe that aligning with these values is a
meaningful way can accelerate and amplify our message. it's barely there.

[Regnard Raquedan]

Hi Lawrence!

I agree with the beachhead approach, but what's the right beachhead at this
point? That's one of the motivations behind the "Let's ask Canadians"
suggestion.

Kensie and Emma had already said that doing activities take time and
energy-- and I think being able to have a better idea where we best spend
our efforts would mean less feelings of frustration for the community and
more effective ways of getting the Mozilla message across.

[Lawrence Mandel]

----- Original Message -----
> I don't think winning over the entire Canadian population is a goal,
> but at
> very least for a nation of web users, know the name Mozilla? And feel
> that
> we are empowering their experience and not selling it.

What I meant was that we need to pick a portion of the population to target initially. I agree with your statement about knowing of Mozilla and would extend that to knowing of Mozilla and what we stand for.

> For me, this week meeting with academics, who teach online, who deal
> with
> privacy concerns, who are actively creating learning opportunity on
> the
> web to not know Mozilla was concerning.

Agreed.

> I agree about getting more involved in universities , but having Dave
> Humphries in a learning space is an exception.

OK. Bad example. We don't need the same level of engagement at every institution but I think we do need a strong ally within the institution to help us find the right opportunities to engage with the teacher and student bodies.

> I see a lot of
> Toronto/ON
> in your response - so wondering in training students in all of Canada
> what
> plans do we have around that? Does this all hinge on FF ambassadors?
> Are
> we engaging with IT instructors in any way?

The Toronto bias is only because I'm based in Toronto. I didn't mean to suggest that we only focus on Toronto. Mozilla has presence in a number of cities such as Montreal, Ottawa, Calgary, and Vancouver.

> Here we have lots of spaces open for use, but no real volunteer base
> to
> make it happen. (our biggest goal right now is to collaborate with
> others
> for a Hive Popup this fall) .

I think it's great that we're collaborating with others. This should make it easier to spread the word and engage with new people.

Lawrence

> Thanks for this conversation, I think it's valuable.
> Regnard I like the idea of asking Canadians - I think also there are
> a lot
> of surveys out there on what concerns / values / dreams Canadians
> have for
> their online world. I believe that aligning with these values is a
> meaningful way can accelerate and amplify our message. it's barely
> there.
>
>

> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 9:12 AM, Lawrence Mandel

[Lawrence Mandel]

----- Original Message -----
> Hi Lawrence!
>
> I agree with the beachhead approach, but what's the right beachhead
> at this
> point? That's one of the motivations behind the "Let's ask Canadians"
> suggestion.

I think the beachhead is with the students. However, this is only my opinion. We should collect whatever data we can to help inform this decision so long as collecting data doesn't impair our ability to make progress.

> Kensie and Emma had already said that doing activities take time and
> energy-- and I think being able to have a better idea where we best
> spend
> our efforts would mean less feelings of frustration for the community
> and
> more effective ways of getting the Mozilla message across.

I completely agree. This is also why I think it's important to find other supporters. In my other response I said supporters within the institutions. We need people who can do a lot of the leg work in terms of identifying opportunities and making introductions. We then can focus on events and content that can be reused across the country.

Lawrence

>
>
>
>
> On Thu, May 23, 2013 at 12:12 PM, Lawrence Mandel

> --
> *Regnard Raquedan, MBA, MSc.*
> http://weboplex.com
> http://ca.linkedin.com/in/regnard
> @regnard <https://twitter.com/regnard>

[Emma Irwin]

"We need people who can do a lot of the leg work in terms of identifying
opportunities and making introductions"

Yes. Ideally Reps would be those people, for communities like mine (no
Mozilla office), but.... there are what is it?... 4 reps in all of Canada?
I think we Reps have been doing this legwork already, but wave is far
greater than our boat. A goal of low effort, high impact in sharing the
message is ideal.

[Majken Connor]

This might be a good moment to start talking about some static web pages
for mozillacanada.org to explain Mozilla's presence in Canada, how to get
in touch etc.

I'll start a discussion on the Marketing Collective now - Emma, Regnard are
you both members? - and we'll see what sort of support we can get from
engagement.