Planning a Summit is hard, let’s go shopping

Hello fellow Mozillians (and curious onlookers)!

In a couple of days you will, en-masse, get your first peek at the high level agenda of the 3 day MegaMozillaFest you’ll be cannon-balling into this coming October. As someone who feels very fortunate to have been part of the planning processes (more multiple threads than you can shake a stick at) I thought I’d take some time during my layover en-route to Toronto and fill you in on what got us here in the hopes that:

I can shine light on how much hard work and sincerity went into the organization so that participants can get a lot out of this experience
You can see how many different voices and teams come together to plan an event at this scale
You’ll become as excited as I am (or close) for the journey we’re about to go on together this fall

It started, for me, back in June when 70 ‘delegates’ were brought together at the Mozilla Paris office to begin the conversations that were intended to bubble up the big issues and tensions that our community needs to address at Summit.

Wait. It started before that.

For delegates going to the Paris Planning Assembly, we were asked to go out and interview people in our ‘functional areas’ and query them about the story of how they got engaged with Mozilla, what they perceived our challenges and opportunities to be, and where they see Mozilla going in the next 10-15 years. I reached out to our Homozilla list, WoMoz, and also to the Firefox Team – a nice, diverse group of people to try and drag up some feedback to bring.

Sidebar: We often get asked to seek feedback from others in preparation and most recently I did this for a TRIBE workshop. From doing those interviews in person I now plan to commit to doing all sorts of info-gatherings in person/vidyo rather than over email. It’s too easy to send out an email blast and then just pick up what comes back to you. I get so much more from talking with a person face-to-face (video chat counts) and as you’ll see later in the post about Summit planning, it’s important to go a little further trying to encourage feedback than just a one-way missive over email that can be easily ignored or missed.

I got less feedback from people than I would want or expect. It’s a part of our culture to be cycling rapidly on our work and that results in a general air of being overwhelmed and too busy to do anything out of the usual routine so I largely attribute the low response rate to that. For my part I could have framed the questions differently, reached out to individual people instead of group lists, held a vidyo ‘office hours’ to talk with people in person, and followed up more (ie: nagging, a RelMan’s #1 skill).

Minimal feedback aside, I went to Paris feeling very much like I could bring a certain voice to the discussions as someone who wears many hats in our organization and who’s been involved with the project since 2006. Also, as a former unpaid contributor, intern, then full time hire I can imagine some of the realities of what it’s like in the shoes of many Mozillians.

I’ve already written a bit about what happened at the Paris Summit Planning and how it impacted me so I’ll sum up by sharing that when we left Paris the “what’s next?” action was that we each put our names to one of 5 groups where we could be called upon later for ideas/session planning/accountability for that area: People, Process, Product, Strategy, Purpose

Those groups then got turned into three track themes and were assigned two track leads who would work with Steering Committee members on refining the sessions for each as well as with the other delegates from Paris who had signed up to be accountable for those topics. The entire breakdown of this process is handily in a wiki page, but here’s the high level of who’s involved so you know who I’ve been working with for the past month or so:

Purpose & Strategy – Track Leads: myself and Michelle Thorne, Steering Committee: Mitchell Baker and Mark Surman
Products & Technology – Track Leads: Dave Herman and David Ascher, Steering Committee: Jay Sullivan and Brendan Eich
People & Process – Track Leads: Michael Coates and Zbigniew Braniecki (Gandalf), Steering Committee: Debbie Cohen and Jim Cook

The above listed people, along with Dino Anderson and Dia Bondi (and then a whole host of people behind the scenes like Kate, Mardi, and outside contractors) shepherded us through the last month while we did 3 iterations on an agenda in order to get the results you’ll all see this Tuesday. We held a TON of meetings with each other, in our small Track groups, and with our body of delegates from Paris. In our group, Purpose and Strategy, we kept circling back to the Nature of Mozilla (NoM) and how to best transmit that message so it can be held as the core of every Mozillian’s understanding of who we are, why we are, and what we do. We’d have to ask ourselves: Do our sessions have NoM aspects to them? If not, this isn’t the time. The very core of what makes us Mozillian is the key to this experience because it’s at the heart of how we will move into the future with our new projects as well as continuing to properly steer our existing ships in the waters of the open web.

During this process of multiple hour-long or more meetings each week with some serious thinkers & planners at Mozilla, several things happened for me:

I worried sometimes that we had become too narrow, that as such a small group we weren’t getting enough input, yet at the same time I saw new, and very engaged people at the table taking on leadership roles and bringing up strong points. I had to trust that this part of the planning process (similar to with the Paris planning) was for the best and that we’d get the right pieces cobbled together – always with the larger group who will attend & participate in the final product foremost in our minds.
It was reinforced for me many times over how it is for me to participate in meetings that are over 30 minutes long. I’m really going to need to work on that for my own professional development and opportunities in the future. I’m most definitely open to suggestions on how I can ‘game’ my own self to be better at meetings. In TRIBE we learned about the forms of listening and I’ve been aware of/practiced active listening for 2 decades but there’s something about meetings – the group factor, the agendas, getting off topic. Perhaps some training in facilitation might help understand this area better.
At the beginning of our meetings Dino asked all the Track Leads to speak a little about how we work best and I stated that I always prefer *doing* and am at my best with a list of clear steps to take. While I still enjoy talking/dreaming big, at the end of a rousing brainstorming I need that list of “now what?” and it had better be clear what is expected from me next. This planning process was definitely done in a way that met & exceeded my needs in that area. I applaud all the people who are at the top of the accountability chain for the Summit on their skillful communications and guidance throughout the last few months.
I felt incredibly fortunate to be a part of the creation of this next milestone in our shared Mozilla experience. We were *creating* a journey for (almost) all Mozillians to share. Having these touchstones within a project is so important. Being at the table to dream up and then turn into actuality the plan for complete engagement, alignment, and inspiration of what will get us all to the next billion web users is a heady task and I truly believe we’re very much on the right track to providing a creative and engaging space in October that will change all of your lives in good ways.

At the end of our last agenda review, I was filled with excitement about our schedule: Science & Culture Fairs, lots of Open Sessions, something called ‘Speedgeeking’ which I suspect will be like lightning talks, and then the overall story we’re going to learn about but also build into over 3 days. I’m sad that I’m missing almost 2/3 of Summit due to a prior commitment to the Grace Hopper Conference Open Source Day but I’ll join many of you on Saturday evening in Toronto and go deep Sunday so I can get the most out of it.

I hope this explanation of the process helps you understand how many people put in a lot of time to create what you’ll be participating in. Please join us with an open heart to the goals of this gathering – whichever location you end up in – know that we brought in as many of your voices as we could, that we want more than anything for you to get as excited about Mozilla’s future as we’ve been while dreaming about how we’re all going to build it together, aligned and re-energized. See you in October!

My Big Shift

This is the second in a series of blog posts that will summarize my experience and takeaways from the Mozilla Summit 2013 Planning Assembly that took place in our Paris, France office on June 14-17, 2013.

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Stereotype: something that may be true about some members of a group, but not all, and yet is applied to all members of the group without regard for the individual. While stereotype might be a scary word to some people, worry not – they are within your control to manipulate, eliminate, and examine thoroughly for holes in logic.

Debunk your internally held stereotypes, and not just once.

Unpacking a stereotype you’ve held for any length of time is not a ‘set it and forget it’ process. It came as quite a shock to me this past weekend when I became aware of the deep levels of distrust I had been holding toward new hires within the last 2 years. These are people who were in the ranks of our explosive growth spurt* and when I examined this feeling I saw that I didn’t believe this new bunch of Mozillians could be as hooked, committed, and passionate as myself.

It dawned on me over the course of our intensive 2 days of plenary activities that I held this belief while still going day to day believing what I care most about is bring new people into the community. And I do care about this, but I see now how my stereotyping might also be holding me back. When I bring someone into the community or get a chance to passionately wax on how Mozilla has changed my life I like to think I can tell if they are also catching the fever. For me, it’s been such a good pairing of challenging technical work and new areas to practice social justice activism in, so I’ll evangelize to anyone who’s interested while also inquiring with them to discover what area of Mozilla contribution might be a good starting place for them. I expect to see a similar spark of what is possible, working with Mozilla, for their passion. When I’m able, I try to help them network and make connections within the project to help clear barriers to their goals and find a mentor. Again, that’s based on my experience of coming on board with the help of a strong mentor as well as having social connections to leaders within the organization.

If it’s not apparent yet, I am trying to recreate for others what I saw as the perfect ‘hook’. I believe I have a strong set of core values that align with being Mozillian and I want to install them into others. Here’s the catch: becoming a Mozillian isn’t close to how, in a perfect world, one might install a binary package containing certain values into a person and we have no reliable test of whether it patches correctly and provides a guaranteed shared core with each other.

After this weekend, and talking deeply and at great lengths with people who have joined the community in the last two years, who have obvious passion & commitment to the Mozilla mission, I have started unpacked my stereotype of a what makes a new Mozillian passionate and what hooks them. It’s something I will have to keep reminding myself of. The reminder will look like asking people what their hook was instead of looking for mine in them. Knowing logistically that it was impossible for everyone to have my exact experience but trusting they had something to activate them in the ways I felt mattered were not aligning at all until I got to spend this time having what sometimes seemed like the same conversation over and over. I was with 60 people where at least half of them were brought on in the last two years and yet, the discussions were passionate, committed, and inspiring. I am thankful for our process that it allowed me to have this revelation that will help me be a better Mozillian and community leader in the future.

In the actions I have leading up to the Summit, one is to look closer at the ‘hooks’ of others and to work on how we might abstract & synthesize those into options for new Mozillians to have an activity to engage in where we can be as close as 100% certain as possible that they’ve been activated as Mozillians with the core values we’re wanting to trust each other has. A follow-up post will talk about the core values and their importance to several other big topics for Summit 2013.

* ~300 employees to ~600 employees over the course of 2011 and continuing to grow towards 1000 in 2012-13

Trust Process

This is the first in a series of blog posts that will summarize my experience and takeaways from the Mozilla Summit 2013 Planning Assembly that took place in our Paris, France office on June 14-17, 2013.

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We are a group of very smart people. Don’t ever doubt that for a second. We are a hit-the-ground-running bunch of doers who really like actionable items and clear instructions as well as accountability and deliverables. Oh and throw in some metrics and a post-mortem so we can iterate, please. This makes us very challenging for outsiders to work with, especially when trying to engage a sizable group in open process activities. Turns out we’ll ask a lot of questions to clarify instructions, search high and low for actionable items, and demand deliverables. We’ll interrupt process, we’ll doubt the value of the process, and we’ll assume even before attempting that it is too open-ended to be of value or to generate the tangible items we’re craving as the proof our time was well spent.

If we go too far down that path in this unconference style of meetup, we will lose out tremendously on letting ourselves be changed and engaged by each other.

Love it or hate it, asking each other “is this making sense to you?” or “are we doing it right?”, that uncertainty IS a big part of process. Asking each other questions, being confused together, not knowing what’s coming next together is a form of bonding.

Bonding – which I shall refer to from now on as friendship – typically strengthens over equal parts of time spent together + common interests + shared experience. Sometimes you can fast forward a friendship by just overloading one of those areas. Having a particularly intense experience with someone (eg: riding a roller coaster), spending a lot of consecutive time (eg: traveling together), and connecting intensely on a common interest (eg: hacking) are all examples of ways to ramp up the development of a strong bond with another human. When attending a Summit we are provided a multitude of opportunities to have many of those three with a variety of Mozillians we normally might not interact with, and sometimes with ones we do – deepening connections is the ‘bonus’ to the work we get done when we assemble en masse. My most remembered experiences at Summits, All-Hands’, Moz Camp, and other larger gatherings with Mozillians have always been about the micro interactions which are not part of the schedule. Walking to dinner, sitting on the bus, playing Rock Band – those are opportunities to look at the person or people around you and to try to make sure you’re getting to know even a little bit about them.

In the very earliest part of our process for the weekend of discovery and digging into the meat of what should drive our Summit planning a question came up about whether we could affect the decision to have the Summit in 3 different geo-locations. Just that one little detail was something many people were tripping over and wanted to discuss and it was clear our dive into the weekend’s process would be held up until there were answers. What ended up happening was Mardi explained how logistically they had looked at previous Summits & large gatherings and had determined that 600 people seemed to be the largest number of Mozillians in one place where there still could be a ‘cozy’ feeling that allows for the kind of bonding previously mentioned. Once Mardi said this, I was changed. I, too, had wondered about the dispersal but now it made sense to me that the importance of connection between Mozillians had been placed before the need to put us all in one location and I appreciated getting this new perspective on what the process had accomplished already.

Mitchell then spoke about how sometimes we get hung up on comparing one thing to another and are quite vocal if we find it wanting. It’s important for us to have this gathering, this alignment exercise for the project as a whole, and if we don’t want to call it a ‘Summit’ because it’s not everyone in one physical space then call it something else in your head. I found her point to be very inspiring and concluded that it’s important to go to this 2013 gathering – at whichever location – and BE there. Do not waste time comparing it to other events, attend the event you’re at and reflect later. For me, this was when I knew I could trust the weekend’s activities would lead to great things and more changes of my tightly held beliefs I came into the weekend with. There will be more about this in future posts.

Thanks, Process.