William's blog

A big thanks to Mozilla Italia and XUL Italia for a most fascinating (and inspiring!) Mozilla Add-ons Workshop last Saturday in Florence. Although the workshop was organized in somewhat of a rush, and in the middle of exam period for some, we definitely pulled off a great event ! (see photos here) It's exciting to see such great feedback pile up in my inbox and even more excited to see XUL Italia galvanizing all these new talented XUL developers. A special hat tip to Massimiliano and Luca for preparing those 60+ slides and leading an awesome workshop, accessible to even the most absolute beginners like me !

Grazie a tutti!

My colleagues at Mozilla Japan have just launched a new promotional campaign called Discover Shiretoko, in collaboration with the non-profit Shiretoko Nature Foundation of Hokkaido, Japan.

The campaign is built around four stories explaining the commonalities shared by Shiretoko (the UNESCO World Heritage Site in Japan) and Shiretoko (the code-name for Firefox 3.5 - soon to be released). The campaign aims not only to inform the public about the philosophy, mission and activities of Shiretoko Nature Foundation and Mozilla, but also to make clear that the power of many can change our environment’s future.

Visit the Discover Shiretoko website to know more about the campaign and how to get involved.

Finally back in the groove of things after an exciting, enlightening, electrifying, eye-popping, enthralling and frankly epic week-and-a-half trip to Scandinavia. (ran out of "e" adjectives...)

First stop : Copenhagen, where I was warmly greeted by Danish Mozilla superstar, Hansen, who dragged me straight to the most logical place to have a frank and constructive brainstorm on the state of the Danish Mozilla community: the local pub. It was a good warm up for the busy two days that followed. Indeed, I was there, with my Nokia counterpart Quim, to kick off and MC the Mozilla Maemo 2-day workshop (or "Danish Weekend" as we coined it), the first community event we co-organized with our friends at the Maemo project. This hands-on developer meeting aimed to bring together developers from both the Mozilla and Maemo communities to code, test, fix, port and improve add-ons and applications for Fennec and Maemo 5, as both approach their final releases. Add-on guru and veteran Mozillian wrote an excellent write up of the event. More than 90 developers from both projects converged at Copenhagen's IT University for 2 fun-filled days of hacking that produced a dozen of pretty amazing add-ons for Fennec. I will confess that going into the event, I felt slightly nervous, not that the event wouldn't be a success, but rather, that there wouldn't be much community cross-over (and to be sure, it was pretty quiet on the first morning) but interesting discussions soon started taking shape and it was quite a feeling to see both Maemo and Mozilla developers engaged in active brainstorms, scribbling away ideas on flipcharts.

Some of my main takeaways :

* inter-community meetups are fascinating and are sure to be productive if you let them evolve organically throughout the day. Still, some basic structure is essential. Make room for it to grow organically but have a basic schedule at the outset

* representatives from each community (who know eachother) need to be the MCs of the meetups to help break the ice and get people in a hacking groove. Once the hacking starts, it's smooth sailing from there

* large open spaces are conducive to great hacking. Avoid smaller compartmentalized rooms

* never underestimate the number of vegetarians who will attend a meetup. Make sure you order enough food for the day : hacking on an empty stomach is a no no

After a few days in Copenhagen, my next stop was Stockholm. I met up with my dear colleagues David, Patrick and Tomcat for a very interesting community meetup, organized with all the passion, rigor and gusto you would expect from Patrick "superfly" Finch. I was happily surprised to see the number of people who showed up (close to 50!) considering there is still relatively low community activity in the country.

The Mozilla crew and volunteer evangelist Robet Nyman gave short talks which David sums up quite well in his post-meetup blog entry. We're already getting some good feedback from some new folks interested in joining the project and setting up a working group to formalize Swedish community. Awesome to see that we're getting some good traction !

After the meetup, Patrick, David and I hopped on a train for my much anticipated visit to Eskilstuna (population: 65,000) home of my two favourite Eskilstunian colleagues.

I was not disappointed. Despite winter-like temperatures, a near-constant drizzle and a slight hangover from the previous evening, Eskilstuna lives up to its much vaunted reputation as the BEST CITY TO LIVE IN in Sweden. Granted, my observation is completely biased and is based on a 24 hour visit, but spend one day in Eskilstuna with Patrick and David and just you see...

After eating devouring what is by far the best vegetarian meal i've eaten in a very, very, very long time (thank you Merit!), we strapped on our seatbelts and whisked away westward to the city of Skövde to the 5th International Conference on Open Source Systems.

The 3-day conference was, to say the least, instructive, albeit a tad bit too academic. I would concur with David that practical presentations and discussions on community building in open source projects left wanting. Needless to delve more into this, I prefer pointing you to my Mozillian compañeros' good write-ups (here and here).

So that's it for my Scandinavian adventure. It was quite a ride and if I could press a button and do it all over again right now, i'd press slam it in a wink. A big thank you to Patrick and David for being such wonderful hosts. Swedish hospitality doesn't get better than this.

Sunday night, I flew back from an enlightening 3-day trip to Bucharest, where I spent some quality time with our friends of Mozilla.ro, and where my colleague Gandalf and I gave a talk at eLiberatica 2009. On the plane going home, as I strapped on my seat belt for take-off, a female voice welcomed us on board. It was our captain speaking. In the seat next to me sat a woman in her 20s who looked quite jittery and uncomfortable. I asked her if everything was OK and she confessed that she had a fear of flying and that "knowing a woman was going to fly the plane did not re-assure her one bit". After a smooth flight, she seemed to have completely forgotten what she had uttered hours before. Still, what she said is very telling of course and I bet many people on the plane felt the same way as her. Alas, we still have a long way to go to change people's perception of women flying planes. The same holds true for female developers.

I had the chance to chat with Danese Cooper, who came to speak at the conference and I asked what she thought about the very low number of female developers in the world. She said that the 2% figure that usually floats around is a red herring, and that she thinks that number is actually closer to 10%, if not more. I hope she's right. To be sure, if there is one thing that amazed me at the conference, it was that roughly 20% of attendees were women, most of whom were developers. I spoke to many and I asked them why they thought there were so many female developers in their country. Everyone to agree that in Central and Eastern European countries, if you're a woman, it's very well-viewed to be working in IT and know how to write code. In France, for example, if you're a woman and you say you're a developer, you'll be hard-pressed to find someone who is not taken aback, who thinks you've made an odd career choice, or worse, who looks at you very strangely. In Romania, you'll most probably meet nods of approval. Obviously, this is simplifying things a tad bit but clearly, people's perception of female developers play an important role and we have to start changing mentalities here in France (and most parts of the world, for that matter!). My colleague Delphine has been thinking about this a lot lately and recently wrote about the role of women in Mozilla and in open source in general. She kicked off a fascinating discussion on her blog and I urge you to check it out and share your thoughts!

PS: A big hat-tip to Alina Mierlus who organized Mozilla's participation at eLiberatica 2009. Mulţumesc Alina !

If you're a fan of Firefox and what to help promote the upcoming launch of Firefox 3.5, then you won't want to miss the first of several interactive workshops my colleague Mary and I will be airing to help prepare Mozilla's global team of volunteer marketeers for the launch. We'll be focusing on "Events" this Friday. Events have always been critical for Mozilla — helping to celebrate successes, such as a launch, garner awareness for Mozilla and Firefox, build community and draw in new members, and more!

We’ll cover the following topics:

   * Why events matter
   * How to participate
   * What types of events to host
   * How to find a venue
   * How to promote an event
   * What resources are available
   * How to track your success

Here are the details on joining:

   * Friday, May 1, 10:00a.m. PDT/17:00UTC/19:00CET
   * The workshop will be held on Air Mozilla
   * Dial-in Info: +1.650.903.0800 ; 92# ; 7391#
   * Or you call our toll-free number: +18007072533, 
followed by 369# and then 7391#. If you’re outside 
the US, use Skype to call in with our toll-free #.
   * If you can’t join the call — but want to ask 
questions — you can join us in #marketing on IRC 
(irc.mozilla.org).

Please sign up on Spread Firefox. We’ll be archiving the Air Mozilla episode and sharing the presentation if you can’t make it. Looking forward to Friday!

Stay up to date with the latest on community marketing at Mozilla by joining us for the bi-monthly open community marketing call. The call starts at 10 a.m. PDT/17:00 UTC/19:00 CET

How to join the meeting

• Dial-in Info: +1.650.903.0800, followed by 92# and then 7391#
• Or you can use our toll-free number: +1.800.707.2533, followed by 369# and then 7391#. If you're outside the US, use Skype to call in with our toll-free number.
• You can also watch the meeting live in Open Video at air mozilla
• For those that can't make the call or want to participate online, join us in #marketing on IRC (irc.mozilla.org).

Agenda

• Firefox 3.5 Launch
  • Upcoming workshops on launch-related activities
  • Beta 4
• Proposed Mobile eCard project
• Twitter Fox
• Spread Firefox update
• Events:
  • Europe update
  • Indonesia Mozilla Add-ons development talk
  • JSConf
  • Open Source Bridge
  • Portland BarCamp
  • FISL

What happens when you hold a mozilla add-ons developer conference in a terrestrial space-station built by a non-profit organization run by hackers? You get the MAOW Berlin. I'll let my flickr photos and the MAOW mashup page speak for themselves.

The one-day Berlin hackfest was great fun and was an awesome display of the passion and drive of open source communities. Two inspirational keynotes kicked off the day (special hat tip to Rey Bango and Chris Beard) followed by some really solid sessions throughout the afternoon and well into the evening. All this in the amazing c-base space-station that, sailed smoothly into virtual orbit from start to finish (save for a few very minor intergalactic bumps along the way).

This is the 3rd MAOW we organize and we're still experimenting. We're trying to get a more eclectic set of sessions every time and improve the session format to encourage audience participation, ranging from the ultra-geek hack session to the "add-ons for REAL beginners" tutorial. Of course there are a few things we will definitely improve next time, namely, making the schedule a bit less dense. Many people voiced some concern that we had squeezed in too many sessions and the sessions were a little too short, so we'll make sure to make it a bit lighter next time, and leave a little bit more room for some freestyle hacking :)

So, here are a few of my own takeaways from this quite unique Saturday:

• developing an extension is REALLY not that complicated. Seriously. This is coming from a guy who barely knew what XUL was 6 months ago. I'm more confident than ever that I will successfully develop my first extension before my self-imposed deadline :)
• there are some AMAZING and incredibly CREATIVE hackers out there doing some great stuff but they're not getting the visibility they deserve. If you're one of them or you know one, make noise, spread the word, organize a MAOW in your town !!
• I estimate roughly 90% of attendees were Linux users. How cool is that?
• no matter how off the mark you are in guessing the number of people who will actually be attending your event and how much space you have (or lack of), somehow, everything falls into place at the last second and the venue you've chosen ends up being just right size. Divine intervention...
• developing an add-on is first and foremost about having FUN and there's nothing more rewarding than to get people to download and use your add-on. Still, developing Mozilla add-ons can also make a lot of business sense, provided you find the right model and you stay true to Mozilla's values . My colleague Patrick just wrote a most interesting blog post on the matter.
• if ever you plan on organizing an event at the c-base raumstation (space-station), Nielc is your man. "Zen" is his middle name :)

Can the next MAOW be better? Yes ! Will the next MAOW be better? Yes ! We already have strong city contenders for the next one, scheduled for some time in June, but my little pinky tells me it's going to be in Italy. Of course, that can change. We're still open to suggestions, so if you're an add-on space cadet and want to organize a MAOW in a space-station near you, drop me a line !

Ok, it took a little more time than I thought, but i've finally uploaded some truly fantastic photos taken at FOSDEM 2009 last month. The brains (and eyes) behind each one of these photos is passionate Mozillian and photographer-extraordinaire Dom Payette (aka homardpayette). I'm not sure how he could have better captured the energy in the air on that special weekend. 

Click here for the first set and here for the second set.

Enjoy !!!

Yep, it's that time of the month again :)

Join us for our open Community Marketing call today - March 11 at 10am PST / 5pm UTC.

Call information:

Dial in +1.650.903.0800, followed by 92# and then 7391#. Or you can use our toll-free number: +1.800.707.2533, followed by 369# and then 7391#. For those that can’t make the call or want to participate online, join us in #marketing on IRC (for an easy way to login, visit the CMT IRC page).

On today's agenda :

1) Announcements

2) Mozilla Labs:

• Overview
• How to get involved

3) Firefox 3.1 -> Firefox 3.5:

• Update on timing
• Launch team

4) Marketing idea incubator

• Public Displays of Firefox
• Holi update
• Easter promotion

5) Affiliate Buttons:

• How to create one

6) Community Marketing Guide

• MozCamps Explained

7) Quick events update

Catch you all tis evening !

Yesterday, I was honoured to attend the launch of the CyberMentors programme, an important initiative created by the UK charity BeatBullying and with whom Mozilla has officially partnered. The programme aims to recruit mentors who monitor cyberbullying and whom young people can turn to for help and assistance whenever they feel they are being bullied on the web.

Cyberbullying can take lots of different forms, namely :

• Sending nasty or threatening texts or emails
• Posting abusive messages online - on a social networking site, in a chatroom, or using IM
• Posting humiliating videos or pictures online, or sending them on to other people
• Taking on someone else's identity online in order to upset them
• Setting up a hate site or a hate group on a SNS site
• Prank calling

I chatted with several cybermentors who shared with me some pretty horrifying stories of kids being bullied to the brink and in some cases, pushed to suicide. Cyberbullying is a REAL problem and yet, it has received such scant attention. Fortunately, things are changing now and it's starting to get the attention it deserves, thanks to the amazing work of Sarah Dyer, Director of New Media for Beatbullying.org and her team.

We’re extremely humbled to be a partner of the programme here at Mozilla. Our mission to help make the web a safe and open place and help improve the online experience of people everywhere, is furthered by helping to sponsor programmes like Cybermentors.

Indeed, as part of our partnership, Mozilla will sponsor the training of 10 Mozillians living Britain to become CyberMentors. The training is in London, so we hope to find SE England-based community members first - over time, the programme will roll out to the rest of the country. For more information on how to become a CyberMentor please contact me directly at william at mozilla dot com or my colleague Patrick Finch at pfinch at mozilla dot com.