With less than two weeks left until the Mozilla Summit 2010, a proposed schedule for the Mozilla Summit has been published.
While this schedule has yet to include names of sessions, it’s clear that there will be as many as nine (9!) tracks that attendees can follow. With hundreds of attendees, a large number of sessions should allow for better dialogue and less of a keynote-esque feel.
While most groups have submitted their ideas for sessions, lightning talks, and the science fair to the various private Google spreadsheets, a few groups have been publishing their ideas and proposals on the Mozilla wiki.
The first, the Mobile group, has published a list of sessions they’re proposing for the summit, as well as proposed lightning talks. Attendees of the Summit will likely get a chance to attend sessions on Mozilla’s mobile roadmap, writing and designing add-ons for Fennec, user experience on mobile, and how mobile fits in with Mozilla’s out of process project, Electrolysis.
The mobile group will also have a “keynote” which will feature Stuart Parmenter – Mozilla Corporation’s (MoCo) Director of Mobile Engineering – giving a general overview of all things mobile, including Fennec, Android, Meego, and Firefox Home, the new iPhone application.
The second group to publish their ideas and plans is the Mozilla Foundation (MoFo), which have given a list of sessions and lightning talks they hope to present at the Summit. Among them are sessions on project communication, branch management in Bugzilla, the Mozilla web universe, growing the Mozilla community with Drumbeat, learning from non-Mozilla movements, and a general “participation” session.
The most interesting MoFo session looks to be one on exploring supporter and membership models for Mozilla, which MoFo is especially interested in as a way to raise funds. Membership at Mozilla could mirror that of the Apache Foundation, Gnome Foundation, or other open source non-profits.
The final group that has posted its plans on the Mozilla wiki is the Mozilla Labs Jetpack team. The Jetpack team has posted plans for one session that discusses Jetpack and the future of add-on development, mirroring a talk Myk Melez – Mozilla Labs engineer – is expected to give at the London MAOW the week prior. The group also has plans for three different lightning talks and a Science Fair booth to demo the Jetpack SDK and FlightDeck.
Additionally, the Jetpack team will be holding a Rocket Your Firefox add-on content and will announce winners at the closing dinner on July 9.
The Summit should be a fun and interesting event for those who attend. Hopefully more groups will publish their plans and ideas for the Summit to give outsiders a better look inside the event.
At the Mozilla Summit 2010, attendees will be asked to help with an assortment of tasks throughout the duration of the event. Mozilla has published a Job Board sign-up sheet and asked that all attendees sign up for a task.
The various jobs Mozilla is trying to fill include:
Asking attendees to fill these positions is in stark contrast to the previous summit, where much was organized and handled by an outside firm in conjunction with the Mozilla Corporation HR department. Mozilla hopes this will keep people from passively attending the summit.
For those of you not attending the Summit and still interested in its goings on, the second weekly newsletter – being sent only to Summit attendees – has been mailed off and is available online for your viewing pleasure.
The sheer number of people attending the Mozilla Summit 2010 is quite impressive. It’ll likely be a great event for all who attend, but a few could get lost in the crowd.
This year, Mozilla is trying to curb that by introducing “Summit Buddies,” a program and a game that pair first time attendees with a “mentor” of sorts, someone who’s attended before.
The game part of the program involves several aspects including quests, points, and prizes. Buddies will participate in quests to earn as many points as possible. The top scorers will receive prizes.
Not everyone has to participate. Those that don’t want to have until June 15 to send an email to opt out.
Of course, before you attend, you may want to hop onto Facebook and RSVP to the event. From there, you’ll be able to see everyone who’s attending (and who has Facebook). Pictures should help ease you into the Summit.
Today is the final day for Summit 2010 travel to be organized and, with just one day shy of four weeks before the Summit, you might wonder about communication surrounding it.
For the vast majority of the Mozilla community that won’t be attending, one of the easiest ways to keep up with the latest gossip and news is to follow Summitr, Mozilla’s aggregator of tweets, photos, and links from the Summit.
Additionally, non-attendees can hang out in #moz10 on irc.mozilla.org to try and read a glimpse of what’s happening or follow the MozillaSummit twitter account to see the Mozilla-approved information.
Attendees will be receiving a newsletter every week leading up to the Summit. The first newsletter has already been published.
As always, watch the Mozilla wiki page on Summit communication to keep up to date with newsletters or new forms of communication Mozilla will be using.
In an earlier article on the Mozilla Summit 2010, we mentioned that some long time community members like Robert Kaiser were not getting invited to the Summit 2010.
On that topic, Kaiser has written a blog post about why he won’t be attending. From the post:
But my invitation didn’t arrive. I tried to ask back with the person in charge of invitations but didn’t get an answer, so I mailed Mark and Mitchell, the heads of Mozilla. And Mitchell, who I hold in high respect due to her openness among other things, did reply – though unfortunately a bit differently than I had hoped. Apparently some inherently stupid remarks of mine, some passionate tries to prove some arguments back in the days when I was so frustrated (see above) did go as far as to break the trust in me with a number of powerful individuals in the Mozilla community. Enough that they apparently vetoed my being invited.
His post is interesting on a couple of levels. First, the Mark identified is his post is Mark Surman, a relatively new Mozilla community member and the executive director of the Mozilla Foundation (MoFo). In a meritocracy, it usually takes more time for such employees to become a “head.”
Second, while Kaiser never linked to the “stupid remarks” he made, it’s not clear what remarks could get you kicked out of the Mozilla community. The Summit is supposed to be for all active community members and Kaiser, who is very outspoken, is one of the most active community members in Europe. He’s also one of the few non-localization community members who’s not employed by a Mozilla entity. Losing the trust of the “heads” of Mozilla shouldn’t be an easy thing and shouldn’t have happened just because he fired off remarks. If that’s all it took to veto a person from attending, there are a number of Mozilla Corporation employees in the Toronto office that shouldn’t be attending.
The Mozilla Summit 2010 will have a new feature this year, a “World Expo.”
Different from the aforementioned science fair, the Mozilla World Expo will allow community members from all over the world to share bits and pieces of their culture. For the many localizers attending, the expo will give them a chance to show off their community logo and the work they do (e.g., localization, marketing, events, etc.).
Mozilla asks attendees to bring anything from their local culture and even mentions food. I’m sure they’ll have a fun time getting through customs.
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