Written by Kenyatta Forbes
Overview
Twice a year, Mozilla hosts a global gathering called All Hands, a special opportunity for all paid staff and our most impactful community members, contributors, and volunteers to come together in person and dig into planning, dialogue and action. Being able to come together as a whole organization, twice a year, sparks new ideas, leads to new solutions, and furthers our sense of community as we build, shape, and protect the open internet. Our most recent All Hands took place last month in London, and brought together over 1300 attendees for an intense, productive week of work geared at celebrating successes from the first half of the 2016, and sparking fire for the next as we implement Mozilla’s ambitious 2020 plan.
Mozilla Leadership Network
A critical component of the Work Week involved bringing the many moving parts of the Mozilla Leadership Network / MLN — a constellation of thematic Hubs (Internet Advocacy, Science, Women & Web Literacy, and Learning, Mozilla Clubs, and Hives) — into one dynamic conversation to move us closer to better collaborations, new programmatic bridges between a range of projects and initiatives, and a deep sense of belonging as leaders to the network itself.
To do that, participants took a deep dive into five issue areas that Mozilla has identified as central to protecting the open internet. Seemingly abstract, we wove/brought the five issues into life with personal stories that displayed the importance and the impact on us as individuals and the web we envision for all. The five issue areas included:
- Digital Inclusion — People everywhere can ACCESS and have the opportunity to PARTICIPATE in building the entire Internet. Everyone on the Internet has the opportunity to ACCESS and SHAPE our digital world. The Internet reflects the diversity of the people who use it.
- Web Literacy — People have the skills to READ, WRITE and PARTICIPATE in the digital world. Together, these informed digital citizens move beyond consuming content, to CREATING, SHAPING and DEFENDING the web.
- Online Privacy & Security — People understand and meaningfully control how their data is collected and used online, and trust that it’s safe. In parallel, companies and governments work to PROTECT our data, and ENHANCE OUR OWNERSHIP over our digital identities.
- Open Innovation — Open is the default: open source and open standards continue to be at the HEART of the Internet and influence organizations’ and industries’ PRODUCTS, POLICIES, & PRACTICES. Entrepreneurs and everyday Internet users can create, innovate and compete online WITHOUT ASKING PERMISSION.
- Decentralization — The technologies and platforms people use every day are INTEROPERABLE and based on OPEN STANDARDS. People EXPECT and DEMAND systems that allow seamless flow and transfer of information and content.
Using these issue areas as a guide, we are working to break out of city specific silos’ and see trends across MLN with the communities that we serve as well as understand the differences in each city. We are also exploring opportunities for cross-team alignment and how our work connects with multiple teams in terms of resources and our membership processes within each city. For example, within the Mozilla-stewarded Hive cities — NYC, Chicago, Toronto, the Gig Cities of Chattanooga, Kansas City, and newly, Austin — conversations continued as we saw ways in which to develop global and local language about Mozilla Foundation’s’ mission and vision as it pertains that describe what Hive’s do and the goals to creating sustainable learning networks.
All Hands provided a unique opportunity in which in-person conversations began organically and gave life to new ideas across teams. As a company where majority of the employees work remotely, face to face interactions create an exciting atmosphere that fosters innovation and collaboration. As we move forward and continue our work in protecting the web as a public global resource, we invite all leaders and learners to ask questions and join the conversation.