Mozilla 15th Celebration

Mozilla 15th Celebrations at Allahabad on 31st March 2013

A long back, I have planned to celebrate Mozilla 15th Anniversary at Allahabad. Following is the URL of the event page.

Event Page:     https://reps.mozilla.org/e/mozcelebs15/

There were several objectives/reasons to host this event at Allahabad. The major objectives behind it to host this event at Allahabad are to "Spread Mission and Objectives of various Mozilla Projects", "Building a Mozilla community", "Starting activities at least in 5 colleges of the city", and "Recruitment of new contributors  and volunteers".

It was a great occasion to celebrate 15th year of Mozilla in my home town Allahabad.

We hosted our event in a restaurant "Friends Forever" in Civil Lines which is situated in most posh area of the city. About 30 attendees turned up to celebrate the event. We started our event at 11:30 AM sharp with a brief introduction about Mozilla and its initiatives. I have given a talk on Mozilla Mission and its products like Firefox OS, Firefox browser, Thunderbird etc. I also thrown light on other projects like localization, NeMo, SUMO and Webmaker etc. I also talked about WebFWD project for entrepreneur. Attendees  were enthusiastic and keen to know "How to contribute in Mozilla projects" and How to become part of such an awesome community. Attendees enjoyed delicious snacks and cold coffee during the talk

Chocolate Cake: Mozilla 15th Cake :)

The Cake was cut by our chief guest of the event 'Ms. Sania' who is the youngest Mozillian of Allahabad community :)

We hosted a Quiz competition right after cutting the cake. In quiz, the questions were asked on FOSS and related to Mozilla which includes identification of various logos. Eleven attendees participated in the quiz, top five attendees got the Firefox OS T-Shirt.

The winners are Ravi Kumar, Mushahid, Shahid Akhtar, Rahul Mishra, and Chandan

We planned for the regular community meetup in Allahabad and how to start contribution in several Mozilla  projects.

We all then gathered for a group photograph which is the witness of Mozilla 15th celebration and very first community meetup at Allahabad.

Thanks to Mozilla and all attendees for a wonderful organization of such a very successful event.

I thanks and wish to all the committed contributors identified in this event.

Thanks & Regards

Shahid Farooqui

MozReps

Story behind I turned as Mozillian :)

Being a FOSS activist, I am very much into various FOSS activities in our country.

I was attending the Wiki India Conference in November 2011 in Mumbai. 

While participating in Hackathan session during the above conference, one person walked

to the stage and called participants to help him in Localisation in Urdu, Arabic and 

other languages. 

He was Aamir Aharoni, Mozilla Reps from Israel. I spent about 2-3 hours with him and

contributed for localisation in Urdu language. 

Aamir introduced me several Mozilla initiatives and Mozilla Reps program. 

I joined Mozilla Reps program on 13th December 2011 and turned as Mozillian :)

I thanks Aamir for introducing me such a wonderful and amazing program. -:) 

MozCamp Durgapur – A success story of enthusiasm and outstanding event management skills

MozCamp Durgapur – A success story of enthusiasm and outstanding event management skills.

https://reps.mozilla.org/e/mozcamp-durgapur/

The first MozCamp of Durgapur , West Bengal is held on 13th February 2013. I was witness of an awesome organization of the event and the level of enthusiasm which I have seen in students of Dr. B. C. Roy college of Engineering, Durgapur, West Bengal. They wanted me to join the event and encourage them. Althogh It was a working day for me but I could not stop my self to take off for a day and join them.

The on spot registration started at 10:00 AM. Most of the participants were from Dr. B. C. Roy college of Engineering, Durgapur and few students from NIT Durgapur are also participated in the event. The event was divided into two parts, one is talk sessions and another one is hands-on session.

There were following talks in the event.

“Introduction to Mozilla and its products” taken by Chandan Kumar.

“A short introduction to Mozilla Design” taken by Umesh Agarwal.

“Localization” taken by Biraj Karmakar.

“HTML and Webmaker” taken by Sayan Chowdhury.

I talked on “Mozilla Mission and initiatives, How to get involve, GSoc, FOSS initiatives in Indian and across the Globe.”

You may get an idea about the level of enthusiasm of participants by going through the following blogs written by them.

http://ciypro.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/mozcafebcrec-durgapur-a-great-success/

http://youthsm.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/the-first-season-of-mozcafebcrec/

http://fosswithumesh.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/mozcafebcrecdurgapur/

http://pkseetechie.wordpress.com/2013/02/13/mozcafebcrec-horizon-2k13/

http://birajkarmakar.wordpress.com/tag/mozcafebcrec/

I have seen the level of outstanding enthusiasm in these students who are really very passionate, dynamic, potential to contribute and hunger to learn new technologies. They just want proper guidance to move forward.

.....Shahid

Sprint Session for Firefox OS localization in Hindi

We hosted a virtual event “Sprint Session of Firefox OS Localization in Hindi” on 24th February 2013 (Today). It was a fantastic experience for me to host my first virtual event. Following is the link for our event.

https://reps.mozilla.org/e/firefox-os-in-hindi/

It was a very successful event in terms of achieving our goals.

We have completed the Firefox OS localization in Hindi. About 4000 submissions in a day :) is an amazing statistics.

We have planned this event about 15 days ago, We have provided the link of resources well in advance in order to ensure expected out come of the event. Planning pad can be seen at following link.

https://etherpad.mozilla.org/remo-firefox-os-in-hindi

We started at 10:00 AM (IST) sharp and completed the localization of Firefox OS in Hindi by 7:00 PM

Following was the sequence of different modules submissions:

1. Rajesh Ranjan - Emails

2. Shahid Farooqui - Homescreen

3. Chandan Kumar - Settings

4. Keshav & Amit - Communications

5. Umesh Agarwal - Systems

6. Gunjan Kumar - Music + Cost Control

7. Ashish Namdev - Cost Control

The event was a collaborative efforts of all participants. The entire team worked with full of dedication and enthusiasm., the credit of this successful event goes to the whole team. :)

A special thanks to Rajesh Ranjan Ji and Chandan Kumar.

Firefox OS in Hindi is ready for testing. Congrats All :)

A Day of Happenings: Firefox OS App Day

A Day of Happenings: Firefox OS App Day in Bangalore, India

26th January 2013

Shahid Ali Farooqui, ReMo, India

A full day of fun, joy, networking, sharing, and learning “Firefox OS App Day is kicked off on January 26, 2013 at ThoughtWorks, Kormangala, Bangalore, India.

Firefox OS App Days happened in at least 25 locations across the world during the January 2013. The concept of this event was to bring Mozilla Contributors, Reps, Developers, Technologist, Evangelist at one platform and to collaborate on this program.

The objective of the Firefox OS App Day is to Educate and inspire developers to work on HTML5 Apps and submit them to the Firefox Marketplace, Amplify and inspire grassroots developer momentum worldwide, Create opportunities for local developers to showcase their apps, and Raise awareness of Firefox OS and the developer ecosystem.

The day started early for us volunteers to do the final preparations to make the event smooth for the attending developers. I was having my bed tea at 5:30 AM, Vineel called us just to make sure that we are awake :) Soumya was a step ahead, he visited each and every room and rang the bell :).

Attendees started coming as per the scheduled time, most of the attendees were from Bangalore, but there were also people from across the country. Matt Basta and Arun Ganeshan from Mozilla Corporation and at least 25 Mozilla Reps from across the country attended this event. The conference hall was over packed with the participants during the entire sessions.

Since 26th January is the Republic Day of our contry, the event started with our National Anthem “Jana Gana Mana” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jana_Gana_Mana).

After the Nationa Anthem, Matt Basta from Mozilla Corporation gave a very enlightening talk entitled “Introduction to Firefox OS & Apps Marketplace”. It was a good overview about the Firefox OS and why developers should consider creating Apps for Firefox OS. After a very inspiring and enlightening talk, now It was a time for a Q/A session. Matt Basta and Arun Ganeshan replied more than 100 queries at the moment and off-line. Q/A session was the witness of excitement of the hall packed attendees.

Right time to take lunch break :)

After having a delicious meal, every one was excited for the most awaited session, Yes “Hacking Session”. The developers spent the rest of the afternoon session in creating and testing Apps for Firefox OS. Around 5:30 PM we have started demos of Apps developed by the developers. About 50 Apps were presented and at least 20 Apps were in pipeline/progress.

The organizers identified 10 best Apps of the day and winners awarded with awesome Firefox OS mobile device.

Apart of hacking, attendees also enjoyed delicious food and lots of swag like T-Shirt, Bag, Notepad and a beautiful Pen Drive. :)

Finally the event concluded with a great learning experience, lots of fun and joy. This made possible with a collaborative community efforts and outstanding leadership of Vineel, Soumaya and Galaxy.

More pics of the event can be seen at following link.

https://www.flickr.com/photos/mozillaindia/sets/72157632656050905/

Thanks & Regards

Shahid Ali Farooqui

ReMo, India

Represented Mozilla India in “Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013” held in Pune between 12-13 January 2013

I represented Mozilla India in “Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013” held in Pune between 12-13 January 2013.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Wikipedia_Summit_India

Before updating about the Wikipedia Summit, I would love to share about an awesome event which was organized in just 30 minutes of short notice. Since there is no direct flight from Kolkata to Pune, I decided to take flight for Mumbai and then traveled from Mumbai to Pune by train. I took halt at Mumbai for few hours. I called one of my friend at IIT Mumbai and asked him to meet. I reached IIT Mumbai at 10:00 PM and met him. He asked me the reason to visit Mumbai. I told him about the purpose of attending Wiki Summit Pune. He then immediately said, me and my friends are very curious to know about various initiatives of Mozilla foundation and how to start contribution. He said to me that, my friends may even come now (at 10:30 pm), he immediately called his 7-8 friends at IIT Mumbai and our meeting fixed at 11 pm. I named this meeting as MozCafe IITB -:)

I showed them a 20 min. presentation and mainly covered Mozilla Mission and projects. They were glad to know about the initiatives and keen to contribute in B2G and Localization.

Next day in the morning, I met with Prof. Kannan Moudgalya who is mentor of Akaash tablet project at IIT Mumbai. I updated him about the Firefox OS and App Days to be held in Bangalore on 26th January 2013. Ubuntu 12.04 is successfully ported on Akaash2 tablet. About 1 million tablet with Ubuntu 12.04 loaded will be available for students very soon. I discussed with Prof. Kannan about the possibilities of porting Firefox OS on Akaash2. But It will be too early to take a decision at this point of time when we do not have enough Apps. Lets contribute more and more Apps for Firefox OS platform. -:) . Akaash team is interested to give demo If we may give them a session in Firefox OS App Days to be held on 26th January 2013.

Lets now talk about “Wikipedia Summit Pune 2013” held in Pune between 12-13 January 2012 in which I represented Mozilla India. The Wikipedia Summit India 2013 was two days event organized by Wikipedia Club Pune to promote Wikipedia as an effective means of education, to empower and reach out to India. About 150 participants of speaking 10 different regional languages were participated in this summit. I planed to represent Mozilla India in this event and get more contributors for localization. The idea was that, since this event was to bring people from different regions who speaks different regional languages, we may get some potential contributors for localization project. Since there was a huge gathering of FOSS enthusiast in this event, I discussed and pushed for Firefox OS among the FOSS enthusiast.

I did not get chance to host a sessions but I very much interacted with the participants during the breaks, before and after the sessions. I presented my slides in group of 3-4 people and showed them few videos as well.

I am happy to say that, I got at-least 7-10 very potential and dynamic faces to take forward Localization, Webmaker and B2G project. They were seems to be very hunger to know more and more, but it was not possible to interact each of them seperately. I contacted all the students and FOSS enthusiast right after I came back to Kolkata. We are in constant touch and will start contributions in various projects very soon. I would love to mention some of the names here, Zulekha, Nikhil, Salman, Sankoswal, Anjali, Jay and Manan. I would also like to introduce following two very potential contributors.

1. Nikita Belavete, Executive Committee Member at Wikipedia India
2. Subhashish Panigrahi, Programme Officer, Access To Knowledge at Center for Internet & Society
   

   

   
   
   This blog is also available at: http://mozillaindia.org/node/693

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