• GNUnify09

    February 15th, 2009 by seth bindernagel with 1 comment »

    Arun and I spent the past two days at the GNUnify conference in Pune, India.  This conference was especially important for me because it was the first time I was able to meet all of our Indian localizers.  We had a great dinner at a local restaurant and I got to know many of them on a more personal level and that was great.  Thanks to Krishna (Telugu), Shankar (Kannada), Sandeep (Marathi), Ahmed (Assamese), and Manoj (Oriya) for coming to the dinner.  Ani (Malayalam), Ankit (Gujurati), Runa (Bengali), and Rajesh (Hindi) couldn’t make it due to prior obligations.  We chatted a lot about localizing Mozilla and all its challenges.  Dinner was straight after Arun and I presented our web standards/evangelism/localization routine at GNUnify.  If I could sum up the remarks from the day/evening, this is what I captured:

    1. The localizers may not face the same complexity of plural forms that we see in other languages in other regions.  But, they are craving *more* transparency and clarity for our process.  It’s my belief that we have made it very clear just what needs to be done to get a localization official.  So, it might require me to do a summary email or reblog post to highlight a few places to look when wondering what checklist exists for localizing.
    2. Again and again, I heard people asking me what Mozilla is going to do to get content localized on the Web.  A common remark I heard was that it’s very nice to have the browser chrome and UI translated into so many languages, but what are we going to do for translation of content on the web.  Frankly, I am not sure what stance Mozilla should take here.  I can see the obvious point that a translated browser is a good step, but what good is it if all the content on the Web is in English.  But, I also know that we are developing client application software in addition to fighting for standards on the Web.  My first thought is to keep a close watch to see where we can enter to help promote a healthier Web that includes content for everyone. One response that I provided to a lot of people is that we do our best to work with localizers to find the best local content that exists on the web that we then feature on our “Getting Started” page.
    3. Fonts are an issue in India and some of the creators of most highly used fonts have only designed them to work on IE.  Arun took particular passion in this field and we plan to follow up with a few folks to start the evangelism on making fonts work on the Web, regardless of a users browser.
    4. Web developers we met found Arun’s presentations and demos terrific and we seemed to gather a lot of questions about SVG, OGG and theora.
    5. HTML5 is a hot topic with a lot of curiosity.  A lot of excellent questions arose about the specs of HTML5.  Arun did a really nice job illustrating canvas and video tags with relevant examples demoed in Firefox 3.1.

    It’s my opinion that we had a really successful trip through India.  Our localizers are a close team who are dedicated to helping Mozilla.  Our campus reps program is taking off and everywhere we went we met at least two or three new reps.  Web developers we met had a sincere interest in the open Web and Arun made lots of friends with that topic.  Without question, there is a lot of interest in the Mozilla here and I think we’ll benefit by offering continued support and helping those inspired Indians to become the leaders of the large, diverse, and complex community.

    I am now leaving India and “stopping through” Beijing to see Li Gong and meet the localizers and community there for the first time.

  • IIT Kanpur developer workshop using Bespin

    February 13th, 2009 by seth bindernagel with 4 comments »

    We’ve wrapped up our stop at IIT Kanpur.  Arun and I did a developer workshop last night…well, Arun led the workshop and I assisted.  Nearly 150 people attended an we were there until after midnight, working with students for over three hours.  The enthusiasm of the students was inspiring to see, and Arun and I felt very at home with this crew of young Mozillans.  But, what made this workshop so special was that it was the first time the the web-based IDE, Bespin, was used by such a large group.  All things considered, it was a big success.  We found a few bugs, but used Bespin to edit an HTML and JS file using <canvas> to have the students draw an Indian Flag.

    One quick bug to report for the Bespin guys.  It seems that there is a limit on the number of people who can login with a project of the same name.  Initially, everyone named their project “IndiaFlag”.  Only a few were able to start and everyone else was locked out.  A sharp student realized the potential bug and made the suggestion to have everyone try to rename their project to a unique name.  That did the trick and the room applauded his fix.  Also, the copy/paste function didn’t seem to work.  Not sure if this is just a limitation of cut/paste with <canvas> or not.

    Today, Arun gave a talk on the open web.  I met many of the campus reps here and got a few testimonials on video about their passion for Mozilla.  As I write this, Arun is meeting with a professor interested in the semantic Web.  We are now heading to Mumbai en route to Pune for the GNUify conference where we’ll both speak.

    If you attended either of our sessions, please comment here, leaving your name and what you thought.  Arun and I (and Jay and Mary in California) would love to keep in touch.

  • More from India, now in Kanpur

    February 12th, 2009 by seth bindernagel with 2 comments »

    Arun and I just arrived at the IIT Kanpur and were welcomed by a crew of students led by Shanshank Chintalgiri and Surya, whose last name I didn’t catch.  Surya actually came 2 hours by car to pick us up in Lucknow at the airport.  We had a brief lunch at the Campus Restaurant and then went to the lab where we will host our three-hour workshop tonight.  At that, Arun will lead a sure-to-be spillover audience through a series of exercises where students will demo Bespin (Mozilla’s experimental Web IDE) and run through other exercises with SVG.  We anticipate spillover because last time this team hosted a kernel hacking session, they expected 50 and almost 400 showed up.

    Now for some side-candy related to India. I’ve posted picture below that shows some interesting Firefox usage statistics here. These were sent to us by Chofmann to use as a talking point for the various conferences where we will present about Firefox growth.  Chofmann’s commentary:

    “This one shows a great pattern of growth over 2008 almost doubling the number of active daily users from 600k to almost 1.2M current. The challenge to the students is to see if they can double the number of Firefox users again in 2009…”

    Please keep in mind a few things about these stats:

    1. They are a tally of anonymous pings we receive on our update server.
    2. The active daily user (ADU) number translates into a higher number of actual end users that is some multiple of the ADU figure. We don’t know that multiple for India and make a guess.
    3. The dip right around the year-end 2008/year-beginning 2009 is an IT glitch getting fixed.

    Indian usage Feb 2009

  • Moz Camp Delhi

    February 10th, 2009 by seth bindernagel with 4 comments »

    Today, we arrived for the Mozilla Camp Delhi at the India Social Institute at 2 PM to a crowded room of Mozilla contributors and developers led by Mohak Prince, the most enthusiastic campus rep from Delhi.  In just two weeks, Mohak organized a midday event that attracted somewhere between 75 and 100 interested folks.  Three to four large posters had been created feature me and Arun’s visit.  (I have some pictures forthcoming, but I left my USB cable at home.)  Our names were spelled out on the 4′ x 3′ screen-printed posters.

    At the start, we did some initial introductions while we got ourselves technically situated.  During that initial go-round, we found that nearly 100% of the participants in the room had coding experience with C++, JS, HTML, XML, CSS, and more.  All used Firefox with several extensions.  A few had developed add-ons.  The audience had some great initial questions, teeing us up for an extra special afternoon.  Here is what took place:

    *  Pascal Finette did an online Skype chat discussing the Mozilla Labs concept series
    *  I spoke about Mozilla community and L10n
    *  Arun gave a presentation with lots of demos on SVG, HTML 5, OGG video formatting

    Frankly, I was blown away by Arun’s presentation.  This guy is good.  As a member of the Developer Relations team, he really showed excellent demos to this audience.  My favorite was probably an OGG formatted video with SVG and CSS overlayed.  The reaction by the audience, if I remember correctly, was a gentle “Oooohhhh!”.  The combination of his showing his excellent demos, explaining the technology, drawing laughs (when a man was shouting outside and Arun somehow thought he was getting heckled), and driving interaction with the audience really made the crowd squeeze the most out of the 2 hours he presented. Obviously they were impressed and I won’t be surprised to hear from Arun that a number of the developers emailed him to find out how to participate.

    I focused on l10n and community development.  After I finished, one request I had for Mohak and his team was to use the Mozilla Community Sites project for Mozilla Camp Delhi.  Given all the excitement, I hope they’ll use the MCS to set up a point for community development and interaction here in Delhi.  I also handed out a number of cards to people who hope to look at and contribute to Silme.

    In closing, the first event in India was a big success.  I am not sure we could have anticipated such enthusiasm or curiosity in Mozilla.  If you attended the event, please comment on my blog.  Tell me who you are, what you do, and how you want to get involved.  I’ve linked below to many of the topics I mentioned in my presentation and will post the slides soon.

    Special thanks to Mohak for his efforts.  Well done!

    http://contribute.mozilla.org
    http://wiki.braniecki.net/Silme
    http://diary.braniecki.net/tag/mct/

  • Travel

    February 6th, 2009 by seth bindernagel with 2 comments »

    Yesterday, I embarked on a long journey where I will visit much of the Mozilla community.  By the time I am done, I will interact with about 30 of our localization teams at various conferences where I will be a participant.  Here’s an itinerary for anyone who might be interested in meeting up:

    February 6 – 9:  FOSDEM in Brussels with many European localizers and open source developers
    February 10 – 11:  Delhi, India for MozDelhi Camp
    February 12 – 13:  Kanpur, India for FOSSkriti at ITT Kanpur
    February 14 – 15:  Pune, India for GNUify
    February 18 – 21:  Beijing, China with a big community event on Saturday, February 21 at the Mozilla office

    On my journey through the subcontinent, I will be joined by fellow Mozillan, Arun Ranganathan.  When I separate from Arun, I’ll go to our China office in Beijing to visit Li Gong and the team and to present to the community there.

    During our presentations, we will demo several tools for developers and localizers to use to expand their impact, build new community, and drive more mainstream adoption of Mozilla ideas.  It will be a breakneck pace and we are staying with friends along the way in hope to make this trip as leveraged as possible.  Many thanks to Shashank (FOSSkriti) and Harshad (GNUify) for providing me and Arun both transportation and accommodation at their respective conference locations.

    My presentation has four sections, designed for easy plug-and-play, depending on the audience.  Here is what I plan to discuss on the quest.

    1. Mozilla and Community overview, using localization efforts to illustrate the breadth of Mozilla’s community contribution.  I’ll present some interesting Firefox 3.1 localization participation statistics, including new languages since FF 3.0.
    2. New Community tools, demoing Mozilla Community Sites project
    3. Improving localization tools, recapping Verbatim, demoing Silme, and discussing new ideas
    4. Where do we go next?  L20n demos

    I’ll post the slides when they are ready.  They are still in pieces and demos are still being finalized.

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