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Mozilla gets a visit from some Slovenian students
This past Wednesday, about 15 students from the Information Science Students Association (associated with University of Ljubljana) came to Mozilla to learn more about the project and what we do. The students are in the U.S. for two weeks doing a tour of software companies in Silicon Valley and we were the first stop on their trip. It was good for us to learn up front that many of these students use Firefox, but are not open source enthusiasts. The beginning of our conversation was educating the students on our open source community and software development process. Many of them knew our Slovenian localizer, but had not taken the plunge into the world of Mozilla. We finished a brief presentation and then opened it up for comments and questions.
Frankly, the Q&A started a bit slow and the students seemed a bit shy. Perhaps they were feeling some nervousness about their first visit or sitting inside Mozilla’s Mountain View office. Nearly all of them were avid Firefox users and the few who weren’t greatly admired the project. At this point, we did our best to engage the students. It felt very much like grassroots campaigning or organizing. We were surrounded by knowledgeable users of our software, but none had taken up the call to get involved. That’s not to say the students were not engaged, but it became pretty clear that they may not have known how. Fortunately, Mary had prepared a slide with several ways to get involved and we went right to that during the Q&A. We began to brainstorm what this group could do to and what would be fun for them.
What’s fun for a college student? Partying, of course.
The group decided that they would host a launch party at their campus for the upcoming release of Firefox 3. That party might also serve as a starting point for their campus reps program. After about an hour of visiting and touring about the office, the students left for Google seemingly enthused about helping Mozilla.
Why was this visit important and what did I learn?
For one, Slovenia has the second highest market share of the Firefox browser, just behind Finland. Both of these countries are over 40%. (see the Xiti monitor study) According to this study, Firefox has 44.6% market share in Slovenia. We’re always excited to welcome visitors to Mountain View, and we were thrilled to have students visiting from a country where Firefox has so much popularity.
Also, I was reminded about the importance understanding the audience to whom we were presenting. We had to start at step one with these students, explaining the nuts and bolts of open source software development and what Mozilla has been able to achieve. After we established that foothold, we were able to adjust our message and present a way to participate. I think we did that and the result is that we have a group of enthusiastic students who will hopefully bring the Mozilla message back to their campus.
A final takeaway: always have some good SWAG to hand out. Yep…Stuff We All Get. It can mean a lot to a visitor to Mozilla, if nothing more, it’s a nice souvenir for a tech student who visited one of the “big” companies in Silicon Valley.
With most every blog post, I like to end with a call to action. If others have similar stories of community building, perhaps messages or presentation styles that were successful or anecdotes about trying to organize others, please do share them with us.
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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.”
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Mozilla student projects wrapping up in India
Chofmann and I returned from India last July with a few opportunities to work with various campuses where students had shown interest in doing “something” for Mozilla. I took a chance at setting up four different teams to do projects related to community building and market research.
As it turns out, managing student teams to do community building on the other side of the world can be difficult. But, I suspected that going in. It was best to keep my expectations fairly realistic while setting goals for the students. We accomplished some stuff with our projects, and I am still gathering final write-ups from a few of the teams. Today, I’ll focus on Team 21 from the Indian Institute of Managemenet, Ahmadebad.
Team 21, led by Vijay Haryal, jumped right into a fairly comprehensive market research plan for Mozilla. We’re going to post their final report to Spread Firefox, in the Firefox in India Group. Once we have listed the report there, please download it and read for your enjoyment.
The initial goal of the team:
To develop a marketing plan for the launch of Firefox 3 customized to the needs of the Indian community.
This was an ambitious goal, and I can say that we did not quite create a marketing plan for the launch of Firefox 3, but we learned a great deal from the students about the Web and Internet culture in India.
The team started by addressing the language issue in India. I’ve blogged about this before, but a crucial aspect to understand about the Indian Internet culture that is different from other countries is the existence of over 20 languages spoken regularly by different groups within the country. The team looked at the pros and cons of localizing Firefox in multiple languages and later surveyed users about this issue.
Additionally, the team created a plan for their market research. It was fairly straightforward:
- Research frequent user behavior to identify some key attributes of Indian Web users through in-depth interviews and focus groups
- Validate what we learn about the attributes by looking at the demographics of those surveyed and interviewed
- Analyze the data
- Present the findings
All of this is explained in further detail in the forthcoming report we’ll post on Spread Firefox. When it is loaded there, I’ll link to it. (If you want an advance copy, email me or comment here and I will send you a .PDF)
Here are some main findings from Team 21:
- Position Mozilla as a more secure browser. To back it up, reach out to various financial institutions, encouraging them to enable their sites to allow secure banking transactions. According to what Team 21 found, Indian users can only use IE to complete their banking transactions.
- Also, in order to make Firefox look and feel “more Indian”, in addition to the en-IN version proposed, Firefox should ensure that Hindi and Tamil fonts render properly
- Factor analysis shows that the users can be categorized into two main segments – one which is seeking technical features like compatibility & security, and the other which is seeking a browser with a more “Indian feel”
- Mozilla should start an evangelism campaign to convince Indian web and content developers to make their sites compatible
- India-specific user preferences, like addons for travel websites, should be promoted or included in some bundled download
I thought these were particularly helpful action points to learn about users in India.
In closing, this was a great project to do with the student team. They did many things that got them involved quickly in the Mozilla community. They took time to understand how we work by doing simple tasks like logging into Bugzilla and commenting on bugs. They hosted regular calls with us via VoIP software. They wrote many progress reports and sent them to us, copying their advisers. Thanks, Team 21, for making the 13 hour time zone difference seamless.
Vijay has indicated that he would like to stay involved in some capacity. As an engineering student who returned to business school, I hope he does because he has both the technical background and the business acumen to help spread Mozilla in India. Thanks for leading the project, Vijay!
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