The first Mozilla South Asia Inter-Community meet-up took place
in Kathmandu, Nepal, on 23-24 February 2013, with the coordination from
Mozilla Nepal Regional community.
It brought together community leaders from the South Asia, including paid staff from across the SAARC countries, to meet for 3 days of presentations, breakout sessions and discussions to plan the implementation of the Mozilla South Asia community road map for 2013 and ensure that the regional community is fully aligned with greater engagement efforts across the Mozilla organization. The Wiki Link against this event is here.
Well, after the initial introduction (the above content is copied directly from the Wiki page), I will share my experience of this event though this blog.
Why not start from the top! I reached Nepal on the 22nd of February, 2013 by around 3pm. Well, to be honest, the Kathmandu airport is kind of messed up. It took me some time to even find the right Immigration form before actually queueing up for the immigration process. The blessing is, Indians do not need a visa for entering Nepal but those who needed it, did complain about how time consuming and messy that process was. The disaster but ended at the airport only. After coming out from the terminal, Kathmandu's beauty as well as the volunteer's warmth changed the entire mood and made me look forward to some great time in Kathmandu.
I met the rest of the team, the ones who were to tolerate me for the next 2 days, only for coffee at 6pm (from here on, we are in Nepal time zone i.e. 15mins ahead of IST). We began with a round of introduction, more like an ice-breaking session (though we all knew each other...but virtually).
I will definitely regret not being able to explore Nepal in this trip, but the dinner party that night was definitely a glimpse into the culture of Nepal in terms of food as well as the local dances during the dinner.
The next morning, post breakfast, was the official start to the event. This time we had a more formal introduction series than the ones we had the night before. There were three questions which were to be answered while introducing ourselves like:
Post Open Data Day, we continued with our brainstorming session and discussions but this time, instead of it being intra-community, it was inter-community.
Sunday morning didn't bring holiday mood along with it, rather it brought a sense of responsibility and a willingness to work. The problems discussed last day needed solutions and that was the agenda for the day. To make things work best, we decided to assign task and responsibilities to each volunteer present in the room so that each one there has some goal to work towards and some target to achieve.
Once tasks were assigned, each task force team had their part of the independent discussion and chalked out some road map for the coming few months. The event did assign each member with a whole new set of responsibilities. If the year began with so much enthusiasm and planning and commitment from all the contributors, the year 2013 will undoubtedly be a great year for Mozilla!
It brought together community leaders from the South Asia, including paid staff from across the SAARC countries, to meet for 3 days of presentations, breakout sessions and discussions to plan the implementation of the Mozilla South Asia community road map for 2013 and ensure that the regional community is fully aligned with greater engagement efforts across the Mozilla organization. The Wiki Link against this event is here.
Well, after the initial introduction (the above content is copied directly from the Wiki page), I will share my experience of this event though this blog.
Why not start from the top! I reached Nepal on the 22nd of February, 2013 by around 3pm. Well, to be honest, the Kathmandu airport is kind of messed up. It took me some time to even find the right Immigration form before actually queueing up for the immigration process. The blessing is, Indians do not need a visa for entering Nepal but those who needed it, did complain about how time consuming and messy that process was. The disaster but ended at the airport only. After coming out from the terminal, Kathmandu's beauty as well as the volunteer's warmth changed the entire mood and made me look forward to some great time in Kathmandu.
I met the rest of the team, the ones who were to tolerate me for the next 2 days, only for coffee at 6pm (from here on, we are in Nepal time zone i.e. 15mins ahead of IST). We began with a round of introduction, more like an ice-breaking session (though we all knew each other...but virtually).
I will definitely regret not being able to explore Nepal in this trip, but the dinner party that night was definitely a glimpse into the culture of Nepal in terms of food as well as the local dances during the dinner.
The next morning, post breakfast, was the official start to the event. This time we had a more formal introduction series than the ones we had the night before. There were three questions which were to be answered while introducing ourselves like:
- Who am I?
- What do I do in Mozilla?
- What am I planning to do in 2013 for Mozilla?
Post Open Data Day, we continued with our brainstorming session and discussions but this time, instead of it being intra-community, it was inter-community.
Sunday morning didn't bring holiday mood along with it, rather it brought a sense of responsibility and a willingness to work. The problems discussed last day needed solutions and that was the agenda for the day. To make things work best, we decided to assign task and responsibilities to each volunteer present in the room so that each one there has some goal to work towards and some target to achieve.
Once tasks were assigned, each task force team had their part of the independent discussion and chalked out some road map for the coming few months. The event did assign each member with a whole new set of responsibilities. If the year began with so much enthusiasm and planning and commitment from all the contributors, the year 2013 will undoubtedly be a great year for Mozilla!
Loved it!!
ReplyDeleteAlso liked it how you honestly mentioned that the Nepalese Airport is messed up.
That's why we assigned the volunteers to pick you all up! :)
I hope you enjoyed your stay and will come back again.
Regards