Mozilla Summit 2013

http://summit.mozilla.org/

Mozilla Summit 2013 [1] in Santa Clara was my first International Mozilla Event out of the region. The first one was Mozilla South Asia Inter-community Meet-up [2] which was held in Kathmandu, Nepal in February this year. Mozilla Summit 2013 was held from 4th to 6th of October in Brussels, Santa Clara, and Toronto in parallel. Most of the Mozilla communities in Asia including but not limited to Sri Lanka, India, Bangladesh were invited to Santa Clara.

I was excited as it was my first flight outside the region, a long one of course and because I am going to meet a lot of Mozillians. After a long flight of almost 15 hours from Dubai we (Rohana, Suresh and myself from Mozilla Sri Lanka community and a lot more from India and Bangladesh communities) landed in San Francisco airport where I was warmly welcomed by the Mozilla team and after about 30 minutes ride we were there in The Santa Clara Marriott hotel where the summit was going to unveil and where we were going to stay for the next couple of awesome days.

Welcome Pack
Photo courtesy: Danishka Navin

Three t-shirts for the three days, that was cool. It was a sound sleep on 3rd, so sound it was I missed the photo walk the next morning. Fortunately it was not only me who missed the photo walk, a couple of others also were there in the lobby who has missed the photo walk. We started by our own, a self guided photo walk, we named it.

Day 1, Friday kicked offed with Michel Baker's keynote speech on The Nature of Mozilla where she emphasized the idea of Know More, Do More and Do Better. "Where do we want Mozilla and the web to be in 10 years", the speech by Brendan Eich was followed by the world fair, where participant from different communities show cased their community activities, their delicious food, their games, their culture basically. That was great to have that number of communities, in one place. Several sessions took place in the evening and "Firefox OS in 2014 and Beyond" was one in which I was of great interest. Next was the group photo, outside the hotel, a huge one of course. The day concluded with dinner and karaoke. Food throughout the event was awesome :-)

Day 2, morning session was interesting with the videos and demos from different ongoing projects in Mozilla. New Firefox OS Marketplace, App Maker and App Manager are some of the many of interest. Next was the innovation fair where the new products and technology from Mozilla were presented. We, the Mozillians at the summit were lucky that we got the chance to be exposed to the latest products and technologies from Mozilla before the rest of the world do. In the evening there were some sessions going on and next we went to Great America, an amusement park just a few blocks away from the hotel. It was a night full of fun, the halloween theme, drop tower, roller coaster, games, music and a lot more.

Day 3, the final day of the summit was more into people getting into small groups and discussions and brainstorming on the products that they are interested in. It was nice to see the ideas for a better web being pasted on the paper covered walls by the individuals. The last day at the summit concluded with dinner and DJ.

It was fun, informative and a great experience to participate at the Mozilla Summit 2013 and after a long flight I was back in my motherland with the determination that I should contribute more towards building a open web and to aware people about Know More, Do More and Do Better.

[1] http://summit.mozilla.org
[2] http://kalpapathum.blogspot.com/2013/02/mozilla-south-asia-inter-community-meet.html

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