-
Chat with Zak Greant
Zak Greant visited Mozilla yesterday and it was really good to catch up with him over lunch. Among other things that he is working on, Zak has been speaking at conferences about the importance of open source software, net neutrality, and the long-term implications of not promoting each of these ideas.
He’s written an interesting abstract on the concept on his website and you can visit that by clicking on this link.
He also gave he speech at Mozilla 24, and it can be watched here.
If you get a chance to chat with Zak about it, it’d be a good lunch conversation. Thanks for stopping by, Zak.
-
An update on some distributions to the Mozilla Community
The past month has been busy for me with distributing stuff through the Community Giving/Empowerment program. Here is a list of what we have done.
- Philipp Kewisch, who is our first participant in the Community Loan Program. He is helping on the Calendar project. Philipp has been a critical member to the team and figured out how to make Lightning read and write to Google Calendar. He is working on better integration of Lightning with Thunderbird. I asked Philipp if I could include any specific information about his work and he wrote back:”My next big feature will be a patch to bug 353492, to allow support for multiple alarms and also different alarm types. This in turn will allow specifying Email and SMS type reminders for the Provider for Google Calendar. This will be integrated after the 0.8 release.”The unique aspect of Philipp’s participation in the Community Loan Program is not only that he is the first to participate in this new subset of our program, but also that he has mapped out a 1 year project timeline of what he hopes to be doing with the new Dell that we are lending to him. In that year, he hopes to really advance the calendar project and has set specific metrics to hit. Together, we will regularly check in on progress and revisit his accomplishments quarter-by-quarter. After one year, we’ll reassess and see if he is ready to move on to something new, or let another developer use the resource that we are lending.
- Kai Engert: Kai did some tremendous work to get us working on yet another mobile device. Because of his great work and continued dedication to Mozilla, we are reimbursing him for the hardware that he purchased.
- Henrik Skupin: Henrik has been very active doing Mac QA. He does not have the Leopard OS, so we are purchasing him a Mac Mini and I am going to see if it makes sense for him to also participate in the Community Loan Program. We’ll meet at FOSDEM in Brussels to discuss more. For some stats, a quick query indicates comments in 2195 bugs. Lately, he has been very active verifying trunk bugs for QA.
- Babelzilla: We’ll pay the annual hosting costs for Babelzilla. If you’ve visited Babelzilla, you’ll see that it is a very vibrant part of our community, creating a platform for extension developers to have their extensions localized into other languages. Jürgen Berg has been my community contact and his been very understanding and helpful. The payment has been a bit of a logistical nightmare, mostly due to my own fault because I accidentally requested a monthly payment be sent rather than the entire year. Manitu is the hosting company and has been very understanding. Thanks everyone, and sorry for the delay!
I think it’s an important time to recognize that in a little over one year, this program has distributed over US$ 315,000 in resources to the Mozilla community. We have looked at each request carefully to ensure that it fits with the goals of the program. In the coming year, I’d like to continue to focus on leverage, rather than set our sights on any dollar amount. Dollars rarely mean success, unless they’re spent wisely. So, we’ll continue to seek leveraged ways to support our community.
-
FOSDEM Planning, calling all localizers
FOSDEM’s coming. I’m going. So are a ton of others.
Why am I going? Primarily to present about the Community Survey Program. We’ve conducted two surveys with over 1,000 responses to each one. Pascal, Stas and I will use this time to present our findings and then I’ll post our presentation here or to Spread Firefox.
The second reason I am going to FOSDEM is to speak with tool developers in the l10n world. We’re bringing together some tool developers like Friedel Wolff from Translate.org.za; Alexandru Szasz from the Narro Project; Gandalf who’s working on a tool; and a number of localizers who have all experienced the painful process of localizing Mozilla. (If it’s not painful for you, my apologies. Please introduce yourself to me because I’d love to meet you, Neo.)
Mic Berman and I will be hosting an off-track BoF at a room we secure at the Novotel in Brussels (room location TBD). If you’re a localizer who’s around from 15:00 – 17:00 on Friday, February 22, and you have interest in talking about and learning about tools, please, please attend. The Novotel is close to where FOSDEM is taking place. I believe this is the spot.
Final reason for going to FOSDEM: to see David Tenser.
-
Another student report from India
Another student team from India has posted their report to Spread Firefox. If you follow that link, you’ll see the team, an executive summary about the project, and a link to download the .PDF. Please take a look and participate in the forum there if you have questions or comments.
From the student team’s executive summary:
“India being a country of more than 1 billion people with significantly growing number of internet users presents itself as a prime target crucial for the success of internet browsers like Mozilla Firefox. This report provides guidelines for developing the marketing strategy for Mozilla Firefox. We conducted extensive market research among college students because they are the most heavy internet user segment. This research was administered through an online questionnaire widely circulated among college students. The proposed strategy stands on three prime pillars – Development of community leaders via viral marketing, content development for targeting the Indian consumer and addressing the cyber cafes – the primary centre for internet browsing by the Indian youth. To address the cyber cafes, a field visit was organized but our efforts suggest that success of this initiative requires active involvement by Mozilla senior management.
“The success of this strategy would need high level of commitment from Mozilla in conducting campus campaigns for developing community leaders, targeted content development for Indian masses addressing their usage requirements and exclusive agreements with large cyber café chains. We believe this marketing strategy would enable Firefox in achieving larger market share and in becoming the first internet browser of choice for the Indian customer.”
community website
