Addon-Dev @ LMNIIT

Above all a very Happy Diwali to all my readers. 

After a long duration of few weeks I once again got an opportunity to interact with the students of the LNMIIT college.This workshop was organized for the First and Second Year students of LNMIIT College , Jaipur which held on 15th November,2015 named "Addon Dev in the Box @ LNMIIT" organized by Mozilla Community Rajasthan. The Technical lovers Irrespective of Branches and semesters have attended  the workshop on how to contribute to the World of Open Source and to know about the Firefox Addons  and how they can contribute to world of Mozilla.

 

The event was initiated with a basic introduction about Js and Addons. In this section the students were breiefed about what are addons and what is the architecture of an addon along with a basic understanding of JavaScript. We talked about the various Api's that are available in the Mozilla SDK for the addon development with reference to MDN Documentation.

After the introduction to the Addon SDK and the JavaScript now was the turn of the hands on session for the addon development in which we gathered the ideas from the various attendees of the event and then started the development.

 

We reffed to the MDN documentation for the information about various API's and then created some awesome addons like the HTTPS Redirector , Selection Calculator and Select to copy etc.

At the end of the event the students were rewarded for their adorable efforts and contribution to the addon development.The event ended with a smile on everyone's face with the expression of proud open source contributors. Once again I was very glad to introduce new emerging addon developers to the community.

"Doing Good Is A Part Of Our Code"

 

 

Mozilla at St. Xaviers College

                   This time awesomeness was spread at Saint Xavier College in an event co-organized by Integration Edutech and Mozilla Community Rajasthan.Event emphasized on cross-platform application development.

I was left speechless seeing the amazing arrangements by the college. Event started with a very warm welcome at the college by the college authorities and the IT club members.

Everyone was keen to know the coding techniques and the emerging technologies.The students were keen to know more and more about the opensource and Cross platform applications. We started with Discussion about the Opensource,Mozilla and various web development technologies and the moved on to the live application development and coding.

We had a great discussion about Firefox OS, Cordova and Android. The students had an impressive knowledge about the web development and were very quick learners when it came to Application development and deployment 

Then this was the time for some icebreakers and some amazing swags .

At the end the session summed up by a token of thanks by Mr.Dharamveer Yadav and a group picture with the Integration team, Xaviers IT group members and the college authorities with whom this event could not such a great success.

This event was also covered by many newspapers .. some of them are as follows:-

That's all Folks..... Had a great time Thanks to Integration edutech and Xavier Authorities for organizing this great event.

Moz-Explore Kids

"This was my first experience with primary school kids and thus was undoubtedly very memorable for me. "
This was the thought in my mind when i returned home after interaction with kids in a primary school in a rural place nearby Jaipur

I received a very warm welcome at school by the Principal and Kids, Everyone was very keen to know about Mozilla. Since the kids still had a lot to learn about the computers so this was more a kind of web literacy session.

We started with a brief discussion about internet , web browsers and web sites. Then we discussed how to search for the desired topics online.

We performed some searches on web for the solutions of some academic problems they were facing and kids were amazed to know that everything they wanted to know was answered online.

Then we saw some interesting videos online which was really fun, we also viewed the Mozilla
Mission video which was appreciated a lot by everyone.later the swags were distributed to kids to encourage them to try and know more about the technology and internet .

Had an Amazing time with these kids, looking ahead for more opportunities to have a word with them..

Introducing MCR SIGs

In Mozilla Community Rajasthan we strongly believe that miracles can be done when we unite  and work passionately to attain any goal.There is nothing a person can't achieve with proper motivation, guidance, knowledge and resources. And the growth of volunteers involved with any community is the measure to visualize the growth of that community.

Finally after a long wait Mozilla Community Rajasthan brings us the Special Interest Groups (SIG). SIGs are groups of individuals within the Community who have a particular interest (focus) in a  specific area of  the Mozilla project (eg. Coding, Localization,  Support, QA, Marketplace etc). These groups are created to enable contributors to focus on developing specific skills and work more closely with experienced contributors for those projects. 

After a lot of  brain storming we came up with this idea of introducing the special interest groups that would help thee volunteers to devote their best focused contribution to the open source community. This would help us in keeping the track of the contributions of the new volunteers in more efficient manner.This would also enable various contributors to get access to all the required resources , guidance and information.

Each SIG would comprise of a team of passionate mentors and volunteers thinking and working round the clock to help the new volunteers to groom their skills. The mentors would ensure that the contribution done by every volunteer is rightfully recognized and rewarded. Any Individual can mentor one or more groups. The mentors posses the responsibility to make sure that volunteers get recognized and rewarded for the contributions made. All the mentors would be backed up by various reps in the community for any issues they face (swags, Institutional permissions, budget etc). So that they could devote all their time and concern in planning and delivering upcoming sessions or workshops.

Being a mentor would mean a great fun and learning experience for everyone of us. We would be organizing amazing sessions, would interact with new volunteers and doing some awesome contributions together. We can spread more awesomeness together and grow the community together. The best part is that its too easy to apply for being a mentor, all you need to do is mention your name along with the name of Special Interest Group which you can mentor. Soon the SIGs would be functional and the fun would begin.

 

There would be frequent interactive session and get-together events for better impact and momentum. These sessions would enable everyone to groom their respective interest with the help of their mentors.At any instance if any help is required by anyone involved all the Mozilla Reps. in MCR are always available and easily reachable :).

 

Hurry Apply HERE

Mozilla Bootcamp - LNMIIT

After a long break of two months due to the accident I was overwhelmed to be part of a Mozilla LNMIIT Club inauguration.This was my first chance to interact with the students of this college. I was amazed to see the interest of students towards the open source and coding. Seemed that the binary lifestyle was their art of life.

 

The Event started with a formal introduction of speakers and walk through of the entire event by Sagar Chandra Agrawal (Active Mozilla Contributor ). This was enough to fill the attendees with the curiosity to learn more about open-source and Mozilla Community.

Then followed up by my session giving the brief introduction of open-source and its need. This time I used small stories and instances of life to explain the effect of open source. Then explained the role of Mozilla in the same, also discussed about the contribution verticals too. Everyone was now too excited to start contributing.

Now Shivam Dixit took a mind blowing session explaining the students about the basics of Git and Github including the various commands . Things became more clear by his live examples to the contribution.

With this now Utkarsh Pyne briefed the students about the encryption and code conservation mechanism in the Git at the same moment he also briefed everyone about various common issues which users face while working with Git and Github .

 

Then the event was successfully completed and we presented some swags to various students for their active involvement in the event. 

Looking ahead for awesome contributions :)

Thanks to Mozilla LNMIIT Club specially Sagar Agrawal, Shivam Dixit, Utkarsh Pyne and Ashish Madeti for the awesome event.

Know The Foxy - NobleFoxy

 After a long time I got an awesome opportunity to interact with kids again. This time I had some of my dear friends with me and we had a great time with these kids.

 

As always kids were busy flying kites and playing till one of them saw the Mozilla sticker on my laptop. He knew nothing about Mozilla nor Internet or computers but this sticker fascinated him and his curiosity brought him to me. This child named Akilesh came to me asking about the sticker and told that he also wanted to paste it on his class 4th notebook.

Talking to him about the sticker I told him about the computers and Internet. I showed him my laptop and demonstrated that using net how can we interact with various people at long distances (video chat ). Soon he called his other friends too to show this and everyone found this very interesting. Then in showed them some funny cartoons and showed some funny editing  on pictures. They all found this very interesting.

With this came the moment of dusk and they all had to go home but every one was very happy because the kids had awesome experience with the computer along with some cool stickers for their notebooks and I was happy to fly kites with them. Then we had a group picture with a promise of meeting again soon. Missed A good Camera :(

Know the foxy @ Funtime Womoz

Today the day was amazing as I had a nice time with few friends. As we had a great time with everyone telling them about the Open-source and Firefox OS. The conversation started with three friends and later the hostel mates also joined and the conversation transformed into session about the contribution to Mozilla and the open source.

    This was more a fun session than being a hard core technical session. Although the topics discussed were new for most of them yet it seemed that they were pretty much aware about the concept of the open-source and the involvement in Mozilla mission.We also talked about the application development for Firefox OS. And one of our apps named "Manifest creator" would be soon submitted to market place.

    They all had the first interaction with the Intex device with Firefox OS and were pleasantly surprised to know its price. Everyone was very happy to know that Mozilla encourages the female contributors a lot.With this it was a time for the group picture (we missed a nice camera).

 

    The best thing about this session was that everything happened very quickly as initially we sat down for a informal conversation gradually we discussed about Mozilla and the session was shaped and this Womoz workshop turned to one of the best Womoz sessions delivered by me.

Know The Foxy - App dev

     Today I had one of my most memorable application development sessions ever delivered. As today I had development session with my buddies at one of my friend's room. Things started when everyone saw the FXOS device  then we had a informal conversation about my journey with Mozilla community Rajasthan. Followed by a chat about the Firefox OS , its other devices and its USP's .

With this we started with a informal introduction of Firefox OS as not everyone of us was not from a very technical background. Everyone found it very interesting and easy to use and contribute thus asked me to acknowledge them about the detail how the applications can be created for this platform. As i knew that everyone was familiar with HTML i showed them how small applications can be created using it. The part that everyone found most interesting was that an application that is created for the FXOS can be executed on the other platforms like android and windows etc that too with very minor updates.I had few swags too from some of the past workshops delivered. At the end everyone was very happy and specially me because today i had realized the actual power of open-source that could fascinate a person who is not from a core technical background.

 

Thanks Manvendra, Asif , Rahul and Dhanraj for the awesome time . :)

Diving Deep - MCR Anniversary Planning.

    

    As the time for the ceremony comes closer the planning for the event becomes more rigorous . So today we had one more online meeting with the club-leads of various institutions aiming at a strategy planning for the event and to decide the flow of the event .

The topics that were discussed included :-

• Invitation Criteria 
• Follow-up Strategies
• Event Publicity 
• Event Walk-through 
• Responsibilities Distribution 

     Initially the conversation started with the formal introduction of all the club-leads who were part of the meeting along with the current status of their clubs and the area of contribution in which their club is most actively contributing.

     Then the discussion about the invitation criteria for the event was started and finally after a healthy discussion we reached a conclusion that a common form would be circulated which would be filled by anyone who wants to a part of this event and would list down their contributions.

     Followed by the planning for the follow up strategies which would be followed for being in touch with all the attendees so that in case if they need any help they might require from our side. At the same moment we can expect great help from the representatives of various start-ups more emphasis would be on the companies that are keenly interested in the open source . 

    Event publicity strategies were also discussed simultaneously in which we planned for continues posts and updates on various blogs, groups and pages. 

   Now it was the time for the discussion about the event walk-through and the responsibilities distribution among the various members. The suggested sessions and the speakers for the event were decided along with the order of the session keeping in mind that the sessions  were supposed to be more hands-on and less theoretical . The responsibilities were opted by everyone as per their area of specialization , a detailed documentation of the responsibilities and the event flow was sent to every concerned person at the end of the meeting.

With this the meeting ended and everyone was ready to rock the event.