Post India
One might ask what is the follow-up for an exploratory, community-building trip to a place like India. Here is a sample of what we are doing:
1) Monday, August 6: We’ll be hosting a conference call with several teams of students from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmadebad. Each team will present ideas they have about spreading Mozilla software and building community in India. We intend to formalize these presentations into semester-long projects where the students will receive academic credit for their work.
2) Tuesday, August 7: We’ll host a very similar call with students from the Indian School of Business. Many of the students interested in helping all have technical/engineering backgrounds and have returned to management school to gain some business experience. Nearly all the students we met intend to return to the technology sector after they graduate.
3) Tuesday, August 7: Mozilla brown-bag presentation about the India trip
4) Wednesday or Thursday, Aug 8 or 9: Call with Mahiti and Indian localizers who will help take on the localization efforts for Firefox.
5) Ongoing: Planning for Mozilla 24, where Indian community members participate. I’ve already had one call with Kaori about this and we are trying to find the best way to get the Indian community involved. Looks like we might have one developer who can present. Still working it out.
If you want to participate in any of this stuff, please let me know. Happy to include you.
Final thoughts: India was a fascinating place to visit. There is so much activity there around open source and Mozilla and we returned to the U.S. enthusiastic about our community. We also learned so many intangible things that we want to share with our colleagues in Mountain View.
In a country with over 1 billion people, it becomes obviously clear that as the population continues to grow, the growth of India’s economy and infrastructure will have to keep pace…and hopefully there will be equal distribution of that economic gain.
Overall, it seemed that everyone we met was deeply aware of the dichotomy of challenges and opportunity that face the country. We heard from one local person we met that Gandhi promoted the concept of “a leader in every village”. Our trip began with an educational stop at Gandhi’s Sabarmati Ashram where we got an even greater sense of his teachings and influence in India. It was clear that his ideas about empowering others pervades the society. Following his teachings, we hope to find leaders in every village that make up the Mozilla community in India and worldwide.
