Priyanka's Scrapbook

Globetrotting, meeting new(awesome) people, getting a chance of public speaking, exchange of knowledge....everything I always loved was given to me by Mozilla; by giving me a chance to host and participate in several of its events. I became greedier with time and starting getting involved in more and more events. In the last 4 months, I have been out for some or the other event every weekend. It feels great when people invite me to their event as a speaker. But in the entire 'Oh I am loving it mode...' I have neglected by job enough. I work in a start-up which deserves a bit more attention from me than I am currently giving. There are two events that I have already committed to, after that (from March 10th) I am taking an official break from events for the next few months. I will continue my contribution in all other forms in my free time. The offers to speak at an event are always too tempting and really tough to turn down, so I am writing this blog post to let everyone know ...

Since the day I had been involved with Open Source and known about FOSDEM, it was my dream to be able to attend at least one FOSDEM before I die ;) I never knew the dream would come true so soon, that too, it was a dream come true++ scenario for me. I was not only invited to FOSDEM, I was invited to give a talk on the platform of FOSDEM. I still remember the exact feeling when I had received that email which read "Your talk proposal for the Mozilla DevRoom at FOSDEM 2014 has been accepted!". I was on cloud nine....too happy to be able to share the news with even the people sitting next to me in office (I was in my workplace at that time). From the day of receiving the invitation to the day of travel...things moved a bit too fast and even before I had realized, I was already in the flight for Brussels. Day 0 in Brussels Brussels welcomed us with an awesome climate. The temperature was 0'C when we landed. I was warm in my jacket but I remember not being able to feel...

The event was rightly named and it was organized exactly a year after the version I. This time, the venue was chosen to be Techno India college at Rajarhat, Kolkata. This event was meant to open the doors of the Open Source world to the first year computer students of this renowned technical college. The event was planned and organized by Sayak Sarkar , presently a Mozilla Reps Council member, with the help of Srijib Roy ,a local Mozillian from the college. Kaustav Das Modak , a Mozilla Representative, and I were invited as guest speakers for the event. The event start unfortunately got delayed by an hour due to some technical issues faced by the organizers. Instead of 10am (IST), we began at 11am. I took the stage to begin the day with an introduction to Open Source followed by a Mozilla introduction. I touched a bit upon what are the different Mozilla products and current projects being supported by Mozilla. I also spoke a little about how one could get involved with Mozilla and ...

Public speaking and Evangelism is now getting a hang on me. I am loving the travelling, the interactions and the feeling of being able to enlighten someone with the little knowledge in my mind's bank. This time it was Bhubaneshwar that I got a chance of visiting. A student of the CET college, Bhubaneshwar, had contacted Kaustav (a Mozilla Rep) for hosting a Mozilla event in their college. When Kaustav shared the idea of hosting an event in Bhubaneshwar, the offer was too tempting for me to refuse. Bhubaneshwar is a small city in Orissa where there are quite a few renowned colleges. These colleges hosts some of the tetchiest minds of India. The city never had much exposure to Open Source in general. It was a platinum opportunity (golden is surely an understatement here) for us to introduce the Mozilla world to these techy minds. 21st and 22nd of December were chosen as the dates of the event. The Webmaker table-cloth....shot best Pre-event preparations: Kaustav and I we...

I remember rushing through my paper which got over by 4.30pm and I had a cab booked for the airport which was to pick me up by 5pm. Well, that was the level of adrenalin rush I had faced throughout my MozFest. After a not so uncomfortable journey of about 9.5 hours from Mumbai, I finally landed in London in the morning at around 6.45am (from here on, all the mentioned times are going to be London's local time). Well, after the immigration check and luggage check out, now the challenging job began. Initially had thought of not sharing this part of the story, but then again, why not! While trying to find the station from where I could get a train to Green park, I kind of got lost at the airport. I went to the wrong station and almost boarded a wrong train! Phew! A timely realization just saved my day. Finally after finding the RIGHT path, I did manage to check into the hotel. Didn't get much time to explore my room or the hotel though, had to immediately leave for the venue...

This one is gonna be long as I have too much to write this time. Mozilla Summit 2013 was my first International Mozilla event. The summit venue for me was Santa Clara, California. It was still 2nd of October 2013 when I did meet my fellow Mozillians at Mumbai International Airport. Though we were together at the airport, we were not traveling together. Mine was a flight to SFO via Amsterdam. After a long restless wait at the Mumbai airport, I did board the flight for Amsterdam. Well, it was a long flight indeed but somehow was not as tiring as I had thought it to be. I did get the first glance of Summit at the waiting lobby of Amsterdam airport. There were some 30+ Mozillians there....all heading to the Summit. Oh my god! Wearing a Firefox/ Mozilla T-Shirt made so much sense. It was like several members of the Mozilla family, who didn't know each other, did recognize each other instantly by the Family mark they were in. Another long flight took us to San Francisco. At the airpor...

When the India trip was being planned, it was Vineel's idea to have an event in Pune as well. This offer could never have been rejected. As the plans started taking shape, 24th of September was the date chosen for a MDN documentation sprint event in Pune. After Bangalore, I met Ali again on the 23rd, in Pune. Whenever it comes to taking an international guest out for food, we need to do some extra thinking on the food place options. Well, when I took my guest out, I thought I would need to make sure about the spice level in my ordered food. I did need to. But, instead of having to request the chef to decrease the spice level, I had to request him to make the food even spicier. Well, when I am the event organizer, being on time is the first requirement! With all my efforts, I did manage to get the event started by 10.30am (though delayed by half an hour, keeping the past event records in mind, I wasn't much disappointed). I began the event with a brief introduction to Mozilla...