Update from the Firefox 2 Summit

November 16th, 2006 by seth bindernagel

This morning at the Firefox 2 Summit, I hosted a session that was an overview of the community program. Firefox contributors from France, Japan, Canada, U.S. and Germany (I hope I didn’t forget any countries) attended and gave some really thoughtful remarks about the development of this program. Aside from the excellent opportunity to meet face-to-face some of the people who have benefited from the program, we also discussed new ideas and ways we can improve.

Some of the questions that came up:

1) How do we reach out to our international community? For example, one way we find contributors is through Bugzilla. But, as some commented, searching for candidates in Bugzilla seems very specific to English speakers. One response to address this concern was for people to blog about the program, link to this blog, or refer others through this blog.

2) Can we help plan meetings or summits? Or, something smaller where new ideas can flow? Getting people together to work on Mozilla projects has been successful in the past. However, the question about summits being the best, most-leveraged use of resources for this program did arise.

3) Communities differ across cultures. How will the community program work to interface with contributors from country-to-country where communication style and process is different?

I created a space on the Mozilla wiki with details about the program’s actions to date, the process, and some case studies that exemplify what we are trying to do. Please take a look at it here. I will also link to this site on my blog so people who want to know more about the process and how to participate. If you have any questions about the program, please email or respond to the blog.

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  1. Hi Seth!

    In first words, thanks for your efforts and Communty Giving Program. I’m hope it will be the best support itiative soon ;)

    It second words, I’m want to try clarify and detail something in your proposal. There are other localization commuties apart France, Japan, Canada, U.S. and Germany :) For example it’s Russian Mozilla Community (to be more precise, russian-speaking/exUSSR community). It’s very fast growing group – I’m know at least russian, ukrainian, byelorussian and tatarian translators and all this people make their work without any help (matherial help) from Mozilla Organization. If we want interaction with people listed above we also need to include their needs and efforts even from plain Firefox russian-speaking user living in Verkhoyansk. Okay, it be longer way but it’s possible way! Over localized Bugzilla->english-speaking local community team member->Mozilla crew. We (Russian Mozilla Team) discuss this with Asa during Interop forum in Moscow. In basic, idea is simple – i’m can explain it in private letter cause it separate thread for discussion.

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