Hey Mozilla India, Let's Talk This Out

Hey Mozilla India,

Last one year has been hectic. We all know, it has been. But it was worth it.

We've been busy doing things. We've been busy scaling up. May it be the first true 10x participation, may it be the first community launch of Firefox OS, may it be the first Firefox OS bus to reach out to the length & breadth of this big country, may it be the only place where the MozCamp was hosted in 2014, or may it be becoming the largest regional Mozilla community globally (or any FOSS community, for that matter). We've been executing at a scale that magnificently surpasses all the things we've done in previous years. And we did good!

BUT, we've somehow forgotten to take care of the community itself. The community grew that large for what all we did in previous years, what we planned for it previously. But in last year, we've given much less attention to the growth and health of the community. The garden of Roses was so beautifully flourished, we were busy awing at it & taking pictures, but we forgot to water it.

That's not good.

And it took its toll.

There were several concerns & discomfort around several issues, on several occasions, coming out from several community members. Some voiced it out loud, some did poster-parades with masks on, some kept their silence. May be some just simply walked off. Who knows!

That's worse.

And that was mostly unattained.

Well... under-attained - to be politically correct. We've been so busy with the deliverables, we couldn't focus on these breeding issues, growing larger and larger. Some of them even trivially petty, that's for a fact. But some, not so much.

Many community members - volunteers & staffs - have stepped in to resolve this. But the effort within the community didn't hit the gas-pedal hard. We've had the opportunity to talk with community engagement staffs for that matter (this last November), and one thing (yes, just one thing) that came out to be causing the issue is the communication gap. We're still waiting for a public report/insights on that from them.

But c'mon! It's a family issue.

It can only be resolved within the family.

Over the course of last two days, I've been talking to people. People who have - in any way - publicly voiced their depression. But the list isn't very small, and still it's incomprehensive at best. I'm going through them. It'll take some time.

What's apparent though, that nobody (NOBODY) has any evil intentions, malicious purposes, or discrimination plans. It just so happens, that they are all mostly disconnected. There's a huge communication barriers between many people in the community, that's about 20+ language speaking, ~1000 people strong active ones from all different backgrounds and age groups (boggles entire mind... I know).

SO... if you happen to be one of those people, or if you happen to know one of those people - let's get in touch. Let's catch up. If you're one of those who know this is a problem worth addressing, reach out to others. Catch up with them.

Don't wait for you rank, or status, or leadership socks in the community.

There's none.

That's how Mozilla India is designed to be.

The ask is not to provide a crying shoulder, and say "there there"! The ask is to look at this situation, identify that as a problem & figure out a solution. That's something that only can happen when we have more inputs from everyone, and chomp all those information to figure out the root cause - and fix it.

So hey Mozilla India... let's talk, okay? Okay!