Below is the brief summary of the Mozilla activities that took place during GNUnify'13 over a course of 3 days(February 15-17th) at SICSR, Pune. The idea was to target 3 major events at a time.

  1. Friday, February 15: Firefox OS App Day Hackathon at GNUnify’13

  2. Saturday, February 16: Mozilla participation at GNUnify’13
  3. Saturday & Sunday, February 16-17: Mozilla India community meet-up at SICSR Campus.

1. Firefox OS Apps Hackathon:
Firefox OS Apps Hackathon was hosted on 15th February. Fredy (Alfredos Panagiotis), a Mozilla Rep and Firefox OS hacker came all the way from Greece to give a talk on Firefox OS and helped host Firefox OS Apps Hackathon. Around 60 developers participated in this event. 5 app demo's were showcased by the participants at the end of the event.

2. Mozilla participation at GNUnify'13:
GNUnify'13 is the annual open source event organized by SICSR, Pune. Open source enthusiasts from across India attend/speak at this event.


Background: Organizations like Wikimedia, Creative Commons, Drupal and Mozilla have been participating for the last several years at this event. Last year for GNUnify'12, Mozilla staff, Gen Kanai & Arky joined us for the event. Mozilla was the official sponsor at GNUnify'13. The event host, SICSR university has been the backbone for our local Mozilla community in Pune(half the reps from Pune are from this college) by supporting with the Mozilla events year round by providing facilities like conference hall with audio/ video equipment, computer labs and internet to host workshops and meet-ups. Sayak(Mozilla intern-Jan 2013, Mozilla rep), Faisal(Active Localizer, Mozilla Rep), Sara Khan(WoMoz, Mozilla Rep) and many other were recruited as volunteers at GNUnify 2012.

Sayak giving a talk on Webmaker initiative
Wikipedia, Creative Commons, Drupal, OpenStack, KDE and various other open source organizations and its community participated this time. We had separate Mozilla track for full day for all the 3 days. 7 Mozilla Reps gave talks this time:

  • Priyanka Nag: WoMoz - A Mozilla initiative to get more Women in FOSS

  • Fredy (Alfredos Panagiotis): Firefox OS App Days

  • Rajesh Ranjan(as part of the FUEL project): FUEL Project - Content Collaboration Consistency

  • Vineel Reddy: Mozilla Community and How to Get Involved

  • Sayak Sarkar: Web Maker Initiative

  • Soumya Deb: Getting started with Mozilla Development projects

  • Amir Ahroni(as part of the Wikimedia): jQuery.IME - Contributing an input method for your preferred language

3. India Inter-Community Meet-up 2013:


The second India Inter-community meet-up took place at Pune during the time of GNUnify'13 at SICSR Campus on 16th and 17th February 2013. The first meet-up took place in 2012 during GNUnify'12 at the same venue. One of the reasons we've selected Pune as the venue is, number of our key localizers and Mozilla reps are based in Pune. This was a special event for our regional community and will remain a important milestone as we move forward.

The goal of this meet-up was gather the India community together to share, discuss and brainstorm on various topics related to Mozilla community in India. The objectives of the meet-up include:

  • build roadmap for 2013

  • establish the community structure

  • identify priorities for the community

  • assign roles and responsibilities

  • bring together core and active contributors including localizers, developers, testers, Mozilla reps, student reps, webmakers

  • plan events and campaigns for 2013

  • promote Mozilla in India

  • get aligned with Mozilla organizational goals – Firefox for desktop, Firefox for android, Webmaker and Firefox OS.

Anyone who is active in the Mozilla India community was welcome to join this event. 34 community members from across India participated in the meet-up, that include Mozilla India active and core contributors(localization team, developers, Mozilla reps & Student reps) and also members who are new to Mozilla community and are interested in getting involved.
Attendees for India Inter-Community Meet-up 2013:

  1. Abhijeet Safai

  2. Amrut Dagade

  3. Ankit Bahuguna

  4. Ankit Gadgil

  5. Arjun Verma

  6. Ashish Namdev

  7. Mohd Aquib

  8. Dwaraka Nath

  9. Fredy (Alfredos Panagiotis)

  10. Galaxy Kadiyala

  11. Gauthamraj Elango

  12. Gaurab Patra

  13. Komal Gandhi

  14. Krishna Kumar Deep

  15. Meraj Imran

  16. Naresh Kumar

  17. Parth Shrouti

  18. Priyanka Nag

  19. Rahman

  20. Rajesh Ranjan

  21. Sara Khan

  22. Sayak Sarkar

  23. Shahid Farooqui

  24. Sneh Kumar Shahani

  25. Sopan Damodar Patil

  26. Soumya Deb

  27. Srikar Anathula

  28. Subhasish Kundu

  29. Sulay Desai

  30. Suraj Kawade

  31. Trailokya

  32. Vaibhav

  33. Vineel Reddy Pindi

  34. Viren Rao

Day 1, Saturday afternoon onwards, February 16th:

We started the meet-up with ice-breaker session and tried to keep it informal. Members were asked one question - “How did you get-involved with Mozilla?” Below were the common answers:

  • Student Reps Program
  • Heard from Senior's/ College
  • Attended a Mozilla event
  • Open Source enthusiasts
  • Mailing list
  • Social Media

Interestingly there was no reference to mozillaindia.org website. So our next topic of discussion was on Mozilla India website followed by what's working and what is not working and ways to improve the regional community. Some of the things we identified and that should be improved/ changed ASAP:

Topics discussed at the meet-up(may not be in a order):

  1. Website:
  • the mozillaindia.org website is created to become a key communication platform for the regional community. The website has several functionalities including events calender, blogging, profiling, in-built IRC chat, and many more. The website was made on Drupal with the intentions to contribute a drupal theme for Mozilla community websites project that is not only for the use for Indian community but by any other community.
  • its been almost two years and we are at the same stage of the website what it was like at the beginning. It is still not sure if there would be enough time and contributors to improve in the coming days. The idea is to maintain all the content and functionality as it is and add new functionality where-ever needed and move from drupal to something that is already existing and be in sync with the One Mozilla theme. The website should be something simple to update even if the maintaining teams change.
  • have documentation on how to get started with Mozilla India regional community, that include:
  • join Mozilla India - Get Started Guide
  • faq
  • interactive popcorn video
  • tools & resources
  • useful links
  • list all the regional communications channels and how to use them step by step
  • Mailing list: https://lists.mozilla.org/listinfo/community-india
  • IRC: #india
  • Wiki: https://wiki.mozilla.org/India
  • Social Media:
  • http://twitter.com/Mozillain
  • http://www.facebook.com/mozillaindia
  • https://plus.google.com/103052563100386898416
  • http://www.flickr.com/groups/mozillaindia/
  • http://www.youtube.com/user/MozillaIndia
  • podcasts [L]
  • rss [H]
  • list of active and core contributors with details of their area of contribution, role and responsibility with-in Mozilla India, contact details and city they reside in.
  • list of Mozilla India project specific mentors [more information covered below]
  • event Request form
  • events Calender – scheduling and planning the events year round across the country
  • contact information to get in touch with Mozilla India.
  • showcase + Download option of Firefox available in various Indian languages for regular users. (feature the 11+ Indian language Firefox versions at mozillaindia.org)
  • flickr API for community members to upload photos – major events only?
  • mozillians API
  • #repsReport
  1. Mailing list
  • members registering to the list for the first time should get an auto reply with useful information about the regional community and links to get started.
  • monthly Newsletter to summarize pan India community activity for the past month and update about the upcoming events, announcements, campaigns. [This activity is open for contributors, if interested contact us]
  1. Local Mozilla representation:
  • local community engagement is important for building strong local groups.
  • at the same time to maintain the identity of the Mozilla India community and work together as a team, all the local communities with-in India are encouraged to work as 'Mozilla India Regional community'. This would help get our community better visibility in the global context.
  • discourage & discontinue regional fragmentation by calling Mozilla Hyderabad, Mozilla Pune, Mozilla Chennai, Mozilla Kolkata, Mozilla Delhi etc.
  • this will help prevent unwanted competition in between local community members. The idea is to work together as a team.
  • all things related to online - local events, community activity, documentation will remain as part of the Mozilla India community to prevent duplication of efforts and keep everyone on the same page. The offline activity may continue to have local identity.
  • local communities are strongly encouraged to use Mozilla India web properties like, Community-India mailing list, mozillaindia.org website, social media channels.
  • local tags will be introduced in the website to track local activity and segregate the content.
  • local communities can create and use social media groups, personal blogs, local mailing list to reach and discuss with other members in their locale informally.
  • the events/ campaigns hosted by pan-India community in sync with the global events can be associated with the city in which the event will be hosted. Example: Firefox OS App Day Bangalore.
  • as we move forward and gain experience with the things, documentation will be improved case by case.
  1. Events
  • pushing Mozilla India activities "more" on development side.
  • Organize hack-days
  • Facilitate virtual hackathons
  • Promote Firefox OS & Webmaker projects
  • create event templates – event hosts will help document/create event templates. Example Gauthamraj on how to do webmaker events in a village with availability of less or no resources.
  • naming of events – be consistent with naming of the events with similar format/ event agenda. It would help evaluate the metrics and plan better events in future. Also it will be useful to note these numbers to showcase to the global community, say if we name all the localization related events with similar format with a similar name it would be easier for us to track them and we can say “x” number of such events were hosted in the past year, and then focus on the things that worked and the things that have not worked. Improve the event format accordingly.
  • there can be a balance of Mozilla events planned in various cities to fully support as many new regions as possible by sharing the resources, wo(man)-power.
  • maintain a database of all the attendees
  • followup with the attendees and share event summary, blogposts, pictures and next steps from the event. Share links to the regional communication channels.
  • Future events:
  • mozilla India tour
  • online hackathons, contests on modules - example webmaker pages, website UI
  • mozilla carnival
  • country wide GSOC type event
  • hive events
  • webFWD conference
  • continued Firefox OS App Hackathons
  • Mozilla Reps Activity:
  • in order to be a consistent and become a skilled active contributor, Mozilla Reps are encouraged to contribute to any of the Mozilla project area of their interest. The project can be Webmaker, Localization , SUMO, MDN, Web Dev or any project that is close to their interest.
  • doing events is good but sometimes it is exhausting to only focus on events, also it is more likely the member may burnout with hosting continuous events.
  • for members who contribute to the Mozilla project and look forward to grow in the community, it is strongly encouraged to balance their activities both online and offline.
  • online projects include – Webmaker, Firefox OS, L10n, SUMO, QA etc.
  • offline activity include – Attend/ host events, volunteer for events, host informal meetups like MozCafe, Speak at technical events etc.
  • reps mentor ~ mentee relation: Some reps mentioned that they do not have any basic interaction from their mentor. Ask reps Mentors to have occasional chats and encourage his/ her reps and provide feedback where-ever needed.
  1. Documentation:
  • keep the wiki up-to date with latest information
  • all the documentation that need regular modifications can go to wiki
  • documentation sprint for:
  • Getting Started with Mozilla India Guide
  • Event Templates
  1. Recognition:
  • recognize the efforts of Mozillians other than Mozilla Reps - Student Reps, SuMo, Webmaker contributors by doing guest post about their work at Mozilla India channels.
  • owner – any member or project specific mentor can write about any Mozillian.
  • informal get to know blogposts vs. criteria to select. Meaning there will be no set criteria.
  • the idea is to encourage new members who are doing some great activity in their local.
  1. Promotions:
  • mozilla India website link on all banners, posters, stickers,
  • mozilla India mailing list bit'ly customized link
  • join mozilla India offline brochure – to print and distribute at events
  • Encourage FOSS interested faculties to make students to develop their projects on FOSS

Day 1 of the meet-up session went longer than we planned, we realized that we covered a good part of the agenda already! The community members do a lot of hard work through out the year and the only time they get to meet the other community members is at occasions like these meet-ups. After the intense discussions and brainstorming, we went out to party. Harshad Gune(Board member of Open Source Initiative and GNUnify host) joined us for the dinner.

Day 2, 17th February:

Day two of India Inter-community meet-up started at 10.00 AM. Everyone was given a pen, paper and asked to prepare for a short "Who am I" presentation, there were 4 questions:

  • background/ introduction
  • why i choose mozilla
  • what i work on at Mozilla
  • one thing i'm excited for 2013

Along that community members were asked to do a SWOT (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats) for Mozilla India in 15 minutes. The members were given a option of either sharing their SWOT publicly or they can just share it written on a paper if they want to give some anonymous feedback.
The 'Who am I' & SWOT session is video recoded and the same can be found at Mozilla India Youtube channel.

The next topic was to have a bold vision for Mozilla India, for 2013.

Statement with respect each project area:

  • Developers
  • at least one Mozilla developer from each tech-institute in India
  • 5 MDN contributors
  • 5 Code contributors
  • Localization
  • have Firefox available for 30+ Indian languages
  • identify and coordinate with l10n team
  • Webmaker
  • regional webmaker initiatives – localized
  • SUMO
  • answer 50% of questions
  • bring regional focus
  • Firefox clinics
  • Student reps
  • at least one student rep from every city in the country.
  • Mozilla Reps
  • have 6 Mozilla Reps mentors by next quarter
  • 50 active reps by the end of 2013[Video: "Imagine 50 Mozilla Reps walking together" - Gauthamraj]
  • Firefox OS Devs
  • identify 50 App Developers.
  • Events
  • host events at least in 10 new cities
  • online/offline hackathons in every region where we have the mozillian presence
  • Press
  • work closely with both local and national press/media.
  • Zero entry barrier – let anyone join the community and bring their skill to the table.
  • legal
  • finance
  • logistics
  • Design
  • web/graphics designer
  • mascot/logos
  • brochures/t-shirts
  • Stickers/goodies
  • Event banner
  • Film-makers
  • short films
  • video editors
  • animators
  • Project specific mentors
  • provisional mentors based on past experience

Owners, Mentors & the Task force teams:

One major outcome of this Inter-Community meet-up is having come-up with the Task Force Teams with respective owners and mentors to focus on respective areas of Mozilla in India. The model is a remix of the Mozilla Hispano community. The objective of the outcome is to make every contributor/ community member have a stake and sense of responsibility in the regional community - Mozilla India. The new roles and responsibilities are on meritocracy basis.

The new structure is briefly documented here: https://wiki.mozilla.org/India/community

As of now nothing is set in stone, we'll try things and based on the feedback we get, we'll improve.The framework will undergo mandatory review every 6 months, possibly during physical community India meet-up. If you are an existing Mozilla contributor from India and wish to join any of the task force team, please write to: join at mozillaindia dot org.

The India Inter-community meet-up was productive, lots of discussion, covered several important topics and reached consensus on things. The regional community is all excited and has great plans. Get ready to witness the amazing activity in the coming days.

After the meet-up we went to dinner at a shopping mall, the food was great. Some of the members had to leave to catch the flight back. Those who were there, we went to the movie 'Special 26'. We booked a whole row in the theatre and Fredy sat in the middle seat, everyone translated the movie to him! Can't tell how awesome it is to spend time with the Mozilla community!

Thanks Fredy for coming all the way to help with the event!

Hashtag: #gnunify13 & #MozMeetupIN
Photos: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mozillaindia/sets/72157632805233834/
Videos: http://www.youtube.com/user/MozillaIndia