India community meetup at GNUnify ’12 in Pune

January 27th, 2012 by Gen Kanai

This is the formal announcement for a meetup of the Mozilla India community at GNUnify ’12 in Pune, the weekend of February 10-12. Mozilla will participate at GNUnify on Feb. 10 and 11, and the India community meetup will be held on Sunday, Feb. 12th.

  • Friday, February 10 – Mozilla participation at GNUnify ’12
  • Saturday, February 11 – Mozilla participation at GNUnify ’12
  • Sunday, February 12 – Mozilla India community meetup in Pune

The goal of this meetup on Feb. 12 is to gather the India community together for a number of objectives including:

  • establish the community structure
  • build road map for 2012
  • identify priorities for the community
  • bring together key localizers and other core and active contributors (including ReMo)
  • promote Mozilla in India

Arky and Axel from the l10n Drivers will be attending. I will be attending. We also hope to get a member from Developer Engagement to attend. More info to come when we have it.

Anyone who is active in the Mozilla India community is welcome to join this event. As Mozilla will not be providing any funding to attendees, we selected Pune as this location is home to the Red Hat team which has a number of key localization team leaders and members.

We will do our best to accommodate online participation via IRC but this will depend on local connectivity at the venue which is not yet determined. Information about the weekend will be posted here:

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Indiameetup2012

Vineel is helping to organize the weekend but we would love help from Mozilla community members in Pune for local support and knowledge. If you can help Vineel with planning, please contact him directly or post to the Community-India mailing list or Google Group interface.

The planning for the event will be discussed on the Community-India list (see above) so please join the list to participate.

See you in Pune!

Mozilla meetup in Cambodia Jan. 23

January 20th, 2012 by Gen Kanai

John O’Duinn’s Mozilla meetup in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, on Jan. 23rd has been confirmed:

We’ll be meeting at East-West Management Institute, House #43, Street 208, Phnom Penh, Cambodia. Events formally go from 2pm-5pm Monday 23rd January, 2012; at 7pm, we’ll head over to Romdeng, House# 74, Street 174, Phnom Penh for dinner+drinks+chat.

If you are interested in helping to make the Khmer Firefox a reality, helping to promote Mozilla in Cambodia, please join John and Vannak and the EWMI team on Monday.

Khmer Firefox on Aurora; meetup in Cambodia

Mozilla Vision 2012 in Japan

January 20th, 2012 by Gen Kanai

Mozilla Japan will be hosting their developer event this weekend in Tokyo. Some portions will be streamed in English on UStream. Please see the details below for viewing remotely.

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Japan/Events/MozillaVision2012/Conference

A live broadcast of the event will be available at these times:
January 20th (Fri) 17:00 – 18:00 (PST)
January 20th (Fri) 20:00 – 21:00 (EST)
January 21st (Sat) 1:00 – 2:00 (WET)

The following is a list of sessions available for live broadcast:
———————————
Opening/Special Talk Session (60 min.):
Pursuing Dreams – Technology and Creation from an Open Mind
(Navigator: Satoko Takita of Mozilla Japan, Jun Murai of Keio University)
(Guest: Tomotaka Takahashi as Robot creator)

Panel Discussion (90 min.):
Raise Golden Eggs! – Discussing the Future Education Style
(Moderator: Kaoru Takeuchi as Science Writer)
(Panelists: Mark Surman of Mozilla Foundation, Kim Jones of Curriki, Shinpei Toyofuku of GLOCOM)

Session (50 min.):
The Future of HTML5 and Web Technology – Overview of the Latest Web Technologies for Everyone
(Presenter: Chris Heilmann of Mozilla Corporation)

Session (50 min.):
The Current and Future of Web Standards
(Presenter: Tantek Çelik of Mozilla Corporation)

Session (50 min.):
pdf.js – Challenging the Limits of HTML5 and JavaScript
(Presenter: Andreas Gal, Chris Jones of Mozilla Corporation)

Lightning Talk (60 min.)
———————————

Following are other URLs for the event as your reference.

Mozilla Vision 2012 (English web site)

https://wiki.mozilla.org/Japan/Events/MozillaVision2012

Mozilla Vision 2012 (Japanese web site)

http://mozilla.jp/events/vision/2012/

Joining Mozilla Conductors

January 12th, 2012 by Gen Kanai

Just a quick note to let everyone know that I’ve joined the Mozilla Conductors. What are the Conductors you may ask? They are:

a team of Mozilla community members who are available as mentors to help conversations run more smoothly and harmoniously. We’re not police or referees, just a group of people who have offered to be available to give advice, counsel and support to our fellow community members when a discussion or debate gets a little tense.

If you have any questions about the Conductors or have a concern for the Conductors to address, please send an email to the address listed on the Conductors’ website.

MozCamp 2011 wrapup

December 22nd, 2011 by Gen Kanai

In November, Mozilla’s Contributor Engagement team (the team I am on) worked hard to produce two MozCamp events on back-to-back weekends in Germany and Malaysia. Between MozCamp EU (Berlin) and MozCamp Asia (Kuala Lumpur), we gathered over 450 core contributors of the Mozilla project and shared lots of important information about the project, our goals, our challenges and what we’re planning for 2012.

Heros of MozCamp 2011
I want to take a moment to thank everyone who was involved in making our MozCamps in Berlin and KL successful. Specifically, I’d like to thank:
Havi Hoffman, Laura Forrest, Dave Berz, Zandr Milewski, Shyam Mani, Paul Rouget, Greg Jost, Lee Tom, Sean Martell, Atul Varma, Spencer Hui, Team Baked Goods and all participants & speakers for making the events as memorable as they were for everyone who participated.

Please enjoy a short video covering both MozCamp events.

The post-events presentation is available here:

MozCamp wrapup 2011

We also have video of the presentation which is being edited and when I have it, I’ll add it to this post.

Zed Shaw on the GPL

October 24th, 2011 by Gen Kanai

EDIT: thanks to a comment by njn and others on Twitter, I know know that post by Zed is 2 years old

Very interesting blog post by Zed Shaw on why he chooses the GPL over other licenses. Emphasis and bold is my own.

I’ll always be an open source developer, but quite frankly, we’re dying off because the companies who use our software do not give back. The irony of the situation is that, in order to improve my motivation to do open source, I have to charge for it.

I obviously won’t ever charge an open source project, since they are honoring the unwritten contract: If I give, you give.

But the days of quick-flip corporations and ingrate programmers making money on my software are over. My new motto is:

Open source to open source, corporation to corporation.

If you do open source, you’re my hero and I support you. If you’re a corporation, let’s talk business.

Why I (A/L)GPL

Open Cambodia 2011

September 28th, 2011 by Gen Kanai

Thanks to Gunnar from the Mozilla Foundation, Arky from the l10n team, and Mark West from the East-West Management Institute in Cambodia, Mozilla was able to co-sponsor the Open Cambodia workshop in late August.

The event is a specialized, exclusive session for local Open Sourcers – bloggers, coders, and designers who share the Open Source ethic – to attend before Bar Camp. This session is a unique opportunity to learn about the relationship between Open Source and civil society issues, such as: protecting the Open Web from Internet censorship, the benefits of continuing to develop “indigenous” (Khmer) Open Source tools, and using web-based Open Source security tactics to improve data collection for both the public and private sector. This event is a special, exclusive opportunity to spend two days with these American experts leading into late October’s Barcamp meeting.

The largest Cambodian online news source, Sabay, covered the event as did the Cambodia Daily (English.)

http://news.sabay.com.kh/articles/143765

Mozilla meets Opera — Beyond HTML5: Dialogue between Web Developers and Browser Experts

September 5th, 2011 by Gen Kanai

Guest posting here from the Mozilla Taiwan (MozTW) community.

報到中

We just had COSCUP, the biggest open source conference in Taiwan, last weekend. This year, MozTW community once again used all its power to overthrow support the COSCUP staff. Mozilla not only sponsored COSCUP but also invited Paul Rouget, Web Evangelist, to Taiwan to give a talk entitled “HTML5 and Friends: intelligence client side” about recent development of HTML5 and its capabilities.

Beyond HTML5

As Paul came here from as far as Berlin, we didn’t want to let go of the chance to have further interaction with him. After Tiramisu Tim Dream, our beloved, full of passion, MozTW Web developer had a discussion with friends from Opera Taiwan, we decided to hold a mini-workshop entitled “Beyond HTML5: Dialogue between Web Developers and Browser Experts” in which Zi Bin Cheah, Web Standards Expert, from Opera would be giving a talk, along with Paul.

Beyond HTML5

Paul firstly introduced HTML5 features that are already implemented, and then the recently announced WebAPI project. The projet includes DOMCrypt for client side encryption/decryption, Notifications for service notification, Mouse Lock/Capture API for game developerment, WebUSB for controlling USB, WebVibrator which sounds just erotic funny, Camera for video capturing, Orientation/Accelerometer for device activities, WebGL/Canvas for displaying, WebTelephony/WebContacts/WebSMS for telecommunication stuff, and WebNFC and so on.

Through this endless series of cutting edge APIs, Mozilla hopes to break the gap between web pages and mobile devices, and finally enables Web developers to build full-fledged (and unimaginable?) services. In the process of developing these APIs, the relevant specifications and prototype implementations will be submitted to W3C in order to turn these APIs into Web standards and benefit everyone in the world.

Beyond HTML5

Zi Bin of Opera then shared several HTML5 demos with us like HTML5 games under hardware acceleration, getUserMedia for getting phone camera image and then CSS3 Transform for ruining the image, WebRTC for implementing Skype Killer video conferencing on Web pages. He also demostrated the potentials of making games using these technologies.
Finally, Zi Bin gave a demo on Opera Dragonfly, the remote bug fighting technology for mobile pages, and once again gave us a *Never Live Demo* lesson.

Beyond HTML5

And then the big show began. The panel had the two speakers and Kenny, the Team Contact of the W3C HTML5 Chinese Interest Group as the moderator. Kenny prepared various intense questions such as “What should Web developers do now that different browsers implement different thing?”, “What benefits do we get by having these new features when we are making Web pages but not Web applications?”, “Among these new features, what makes you the most excited?”, “Mozilla and Google keep inventing new APIs but ignores various features in the HTML5 spec. Why?” Paul and Zi Bin gave excellent answers to these questions.

Beyond HTML5

“People who are passionate about the future of the Web should go deep into it, either via investigating into the technology, experimenting with new features, participating in the community activities, joining discussions in HTML5 Interest Group and so on,” the two speakers reiterated.

(comic illustrating the Beyond HTML5 event by MozTW community member 電腦君(polliwog) )Slides of the two speakers:

Link to the slides, navigate via left/right keys.

We would also like to thank those who helped with the event: from Opera, Peko, from MozTW community Peter, shadowcrow and our Captain Bob, who really wanted to come to the event but didn’t make it due to heavy workload. Poor Bob!

More information:

Opera@COSCUP 2011 and Beyond HTML5 | Opera Taiwan
HTML5 Chinese Interest Group | zibin
HTML5 Slides Module – DZSlides by Paul Rouget

φ Reported by Irvin, correspondent of Mozilla Links Traditional Chinese Edition, and translated by Kenny.

Save the date! Mozilla Camp Asia 2011 – Kuala Lumpur (Nov 19-20)

August 16th, 2011 by wquiviger

 

Guest posting here while Gen is away on vacation, I’m thrilled to announce that the first ever Mozilla Camp Asia will take place in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia on November 19th-20th, 2011, exactly one week after the Mozilla Camp Europe in Berlin.

For those who aren’t familiar with the event, Mozilla Camp (aka MozCamp) is a large 2-day regional Mozilla summit that brings together Mozilla staff and active contributors from a given region for a (intense!) weekend of presentations, discussions, brainstorms, workshops, hackathons around specific areas of the Mozilla project, all with a special focus on the region. The event is, of course, also the opportunity for Mozillians to meet in person, to put a face on a lot of quirky IRC nicknames, and to spend some quality time together!

That’s all for now. Save the date in your calendar and make sure to tune in regularly on this blog as Gen will be giving regular updates and more detailed information on the Mozilla Camp Asia, on the schedule and on the sponsorship policy for participants.

 

Stay tuned!
(photo credit nina.bruja under CC-SA)

Malaysian l10n sprint at BarCamp KL (CyberJaya)

August 11th, 2011 by Gen Kanai

This weekend, August 13th, the Mozilla Malaysia community will be gathering at BarCamp KL (Cyberjaya) in Malaysia for a localization sprint for the Malaysian Firefox that is in development.

Arky Ambati will be coordinating the localization sprint alongside Muhammad Syafiq.

If you are interested in helping to create a Malaysian-language Firefox, please do consider joining the event at BarCamp KL (Cyberjaya.) You may get some cool Firefox swag :)

Unfortunately I am unable to attend myself but Arky and Syafiq will be your coordinators.

Have a great localization sprint! Let’s see the Malaysian Firefox soon!