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Welcoming New Faces to the Thunderbird Community Team

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Community First

Thunderbird is (and has always been) powered by the people. The project exists because of the amazing community of passionate code contributors, bug-bashers, content creators, and all-around wonderful humans who have stood behind it and worked to support and maintain it over the years.

And as the Thunderbird community grows, we want to ensure that we [the team supporting you] grow alongside you, so that we can continue to collaborate and build effectively and efficiently together. 

That’s why we’re thrilled to announce a refreshed and growing Thunderbird Community Team here at MZLA! Expect a little more structure, a lot more collaboration, and an open invitation to our users and contributors to join us and help shape what comes next.

Meet the Team

Whether you’re filing your first bug, searching for support, writing documentation, or just dropping into Matrix to say hi, this is the team working hard behind the scenes to make sure your experience is productive, constructive, and superconductive:

Michael Ellis | Manager of Community Programs

Hey there! I’m Michael, and I’m joining the Thunderbird family as Manager of Community Programs to help grow and support our awesome community. I’ll be working on programs that help improve contributor pathways and make it easier for more people to get involved in the work we do and the decisions we make on a day-to-day basis.

I come from a background of managing developer communities and running large-scale programs at organizations like Mozilla, Ionic, and NXP Semiconductors. I believe open-source communities are strongest when they’re welcoming, engaging, and well-supported. I like gifs and memes very much. 

I look forward to seeing you in the Thunderbird community and saying hello to one another on Matrix!  

Until then, Keep on Rocking the Free Web!

Wayne Mery | Senior Community Manager

Greetings everyone.  Wayne here, also known as wsmwk.  I have used open source for forty years, been a user of and contributor to Thunderbird for twenty years, and am a founding member of the Thunderbird Council, and have run several of the council elections. 

I love to mentor and connect to our community members who assist Thunderbird users in Reddit, Connect, matrix (chat), bugzilla, github, topicbox forums, Thunderbird support in SUMO (SUpport MOzilla), and other venues.  And I help manage these venues and assist users, to bring the concerns of the user community to developers.  I also assist in developing content for users (including knowledge base articles in SUMO) and assist in our general communications with users.  

There are many ways you can participate in small ways or large, including through praise or constructive feedback through the venues listed above and those listed on our participate web page – I encourage you to do so at your convenience. And I look forward to connecting with you soon. 

Heather Ellsworth | Senior Developer Relations Engineer

Hi everyone! *waves*

I’ve been part of the Thunderbird family for nearly two years, working with the awesome Desktop team. Now, I’m thrilled to be joining the Community team, led by Michael, where I’ll be focusing on initiatives to support and grow our amazing contributor community.

My work will include creating helpful video content to make it easier for folks to get started, as well as improving our technical documentation at source-docs.thunderbird.net and developer.thunderbird.net.

If you’re interested in contributing or need help getting started, don’t hesitate to reach out to me on Matrix — I’d love to chat!

What’s the Road Ahead?

Community is at the heart of everything Thunderbird does. As our product continues to evolve and improve, we want our community experience to keep pace with that growth. This means not only working to keep Thunderbird open, but striving towards better contributor pathways, clearer communication, and more opportunities to participate.

We’re here to listen, collaborate, and help you succeed. You can expect to see more initiatives, experiments, and outreach from us soon, but you don’t have to wait till then to weigh in.

Have thoughts or suggestions? Drop a comment below to share them directly, or visit our Connect thread to see what others are saying and add your own ideas there. Together, we can help shape the future of the Thunderbird community and product.

After all, Thunderbird is powered by the people, & that includes you.

13 responses

ken goold wrote on

Hi all, I absolutely love what you are about, I’ve had thunderbird for at least 20 years from memory, maybe longer. I would be devastated if your very small team of passionate coders could not keep going, so I donate when I can to support the team. My son left a high paying job to to work with a guy he worked with that mortgaged his home to start a web site to help kids with literacy. The mortgage payed their wages, so far they are 2 years along, with very little income, definitely not enough, but they are making gains, so I absolutely understand what you do through his struggles. https://writelike.org if you are interested. He coded this site, just him and another guy. They are trying to get it into schools to help kids and teachers, so far his subscriptions are growing, but the first year they earned nothing. I totally get you guys, and love what you do. respect.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks so much for your support and your kind words! And starting any project is hard, but when you’re passionate about what you do, like what our team does and your son does, it’s absolutely worth it. I used to work as a writing tutor a few years back, so personally, I think what your son is doing is incredible and I wish him the best of luck!

eugene wrote on

Good work, thank you for the introductions! I am a longtime Thunderbird user and fan and I hope to contribute to Thunderbird somehow in the future!

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks so much for commenting, and our community team is definitely here to make contributing to Thunderbird easier, more sustainable, and more fun for everyone!

Jeff Wynn wrote on

I contribute financially to Thunderbird – because I use it, honesty requires it.

However, THIS message seems like a large cotton candy at a fair: full of fluffy words but no substance.
I cannot even see where I can download this (these?) new version(s).

Help.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for the feedback, though we feel that having a growing community team who can help current contributors and future contributors is pretty important!

And if you’re looking for Thunderbird downloads, please head to our website’s Download page!

Jack Shane wrote on

Thanks for continuing to provide the public with THE BEST email application available anywhere….!! There is nothing even close to all the functions you provide….

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

You’re so welcome!

Thomas wrote on

All current ESR updates applied. Thunderbird does not spell check tasks or events, only emails. Thunderbird’s editor is very primitive. Can I select a non native Thunderbird editor. For example, is there a way I can make Notepad, or another editor, the default editor in Thunderbird settings?

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Unfortunately, we don’t have an option for another editor this time but we are doing a lot of work on Calendar and Tasks this coming year. This is also something you can suggest on Mozilla Connect!

Mike Ramey wrote on

REMINDER PANEL — Change Request

Please reverse the order of columns:

CURRENTLY:
[event description] followed by [date time]

PROPOSED:
[date time] followed by [event description]

WHY?

[date time] is fixed-length
[event description] is variable-length

The proposed order brings the two data fields closer together
and they are easier to scan in that chronological listing.

ALSO —
REMINDER PANEL does not always sort events in sequence, sometimes mixing “All Day” items in with “hour-minute” events. Restarting Thunderbird sometimes resorts events in correct contiguous sequence.

Monica Ayhens-Madon wrote on

Thanks for your feedback, and we’re currently working on improving things like the in the Calendar UI. We’d definitely suggest joining our UX mailing list at thunderbird.topicbox.com and also suggesting this at Mozilla Connect!

Douglas Barrett Wilkinson wrote on

Great to meet you all!

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