People now a days address me as a 'Mozilla fan' which is indeed very true. Its not even one complete year that I have started contributing to Mozilla, and within this short time, the kind of involvement I have with this FOSS organization is a big surprise for me too!
In less than one year, I have been involved in several Mozilla organized events, somewhere as a volunteer, somewhere as just a participant and somewhere as an organizer and speaker. The experience had every time been awesome as well as a great learning. The day I got an invitation to be a Mozilla evangelist in an event which was being organized by a few FOSS enthusiasts in the city I am presently situated in, I felt pride, honour as well as loads of nervousness.
I did immediately pull my socks and took this challenge up!
The entire experience was not a fairy tale of-course. The journey from my residence to the event venue was a tough one. Private buses in rush hours and that too in the rainy season is not exactly a very pleasant experience but that couldn't get my enthusiasm down.
Things got tougher when I took the stage and fired the first question to the audience-"Is anyone here aware of Firefox?" I got a very disappointing answer from the audience that Firefox, like Chrome is a Google product. Now this was the ultimate challenge. I knew I had to work harder this time to make my audience knowledgeable about Mozilla as an Organization, the different Mozilla products and the different ways of contributing to Mozilla. This was also my first event where I did take the entire session in the local regional language instead of English (well, English is the language I am mostly comfortable in).
Once I began, things got easier and even before I had realized, I had already spoken for more than an hour....given out some goodies and also passed my Keon to the participants for a feel of how the Firefox OS looked like.
The awesome part was the unexpected response I got from my participants. Along with innumerable request to help them get started with Mozilla, I also got a few invitations from a few students who were present in that event and wanted similar Mozilla events in their respective colleges.
In less than one year, I have been involved in several Mozilla organized events, somewhere as a volunteer, somewhere as just a participant and somewhere as an organizer and speaker. The experience had every time been awesome as well as a great learning. The day I got an invitation to be a Mozilla evangelist in an event which was being organized by a few FOSS enthusiasts in the city I am presently situated in, I felt pride, honour as well as loads of nervousness.
I did immediately pull my socks and took this challenge up!
The entire experience was not a fairy tale of-course. The journey from my residence to the event venue was a tough one. Private buses in rush hours and that too in the rainy season is not exactly a very pleasant experience but that couldn't get my enthusiasm down.
Things got tougher when I took the stage and fired the first question to the audience-"Is anyone here aware of Firefox?" I got a very disappointing answer from the audience that Firefox, like Chrome is a Google product. Now this was the ultimate challenge. I knew I had to work harder this time to make my audience knowledgeable about Mozilla as an Organization, the different Mozilla products and the different ways of contributing to Mozilla. This was also my first event where I did take the entire session in the local regional language instead of English (well, English is the language I am mostly comfortable in).
Once I began, things got easier and even before I had realized, I had already spoken for more than an hour....given out some goodies and also passed my Keon to the participants for a feel of how the Firefox OS looked like.
The awesome part was the unexpected response I got from my participants. Along with innumerable request to help them get started with Mozilla, I also got a few invitations from a few students who were present in that event and wanted similar Mozilla events in their respective colleges.
Comments
Post a Comment