Friday and Saturday, I and a few others were at the BlogHer ’10 conference in New York to promote Firefox Add-ons to more than a thousand bloggers in attendance. I had a great time and think our presence there was very effective.
This is the second event I’ve been to where we’ve focused on getting the word out about add-ons to consumers, the first being last year’s Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco. Almost all of my time is spent talking with developers and other technical people, so getting the chance to talk to real people who use Firefox and add-ons is fun and educational. I get to learn about things that aren’t obvious to normal users and the problems they encounter.
I spent both days of the conference in our hospitality suite answering questions, telling people about Firefox, add-ons, and Personas, promoting the new BlogHer Toolbar, and showing off Firefox 4 features. Our suite was packed with bloggers all day both days; I’d estimate we saw at least 600 people come through, most of whom we had personal conversations with.
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This Friday is Add-on-Con 2009, in its second year as the only conference dedicated to browser add-ons. It takes place at the Computer History Museum again in Mountain View, California, so I’m hoping the turnout is as good or better than last year. I was very excited when I first learned that Add-on-Con would happen again this year, as I had such a great time at last year’s event, despite having 0 hours of sleep the night before.
Mozilla will be participating heavily in the event again this year as a platinum sponsor and speaking at quite a few sessions:
If you’ll be in the Bay Area this week and are interested in add-ons, be sure to register for Add-on-Con before it’s too late! Even if you’re not going to Add-on-Con, don’t forget that we have an add-ons meetup at Mozilla HQ on Thursday night.
I’m looking forward to seeing everyone for great add-on events on Thursday and Friday!
Tomorrow night at 7pm we’ll be hosting an Add-ons Meetup at Mozilla HQ in Mountain View, California. If you’re in the area and are interested in add-ons, RSVP and stop by!
We’ll have free BBQ and lots of good information for add-on developers. You can learn more at our meetup site.
Just a quick reminder that we’re having an Add-ons Meet-up tomorrow, Tuesday 8/18, in New York. Check out the agenda and if you’re in the area, please RSVP and stop by.
Earlier this year, while working on a presentation for our AMO brownbag, Nick Nguyen turned to me and said “AMO is like a Renegade Craft Fair“. I figured this was an obscure Star Trek reference, as is often the case when I don’t know what he’s talking about. But he persisted, and decided that we should actually have a booth at the real Renegade Craft Fair in San Francisco. The idea was that the add-ons community loves to make things, and people that come to craft festivals appreciate that and love to customize things.
I had no idea what to expect, but I picked up some interns and drove to San Francisco this morning for the first day. We set up our booth, complete with Firefox swag and 2 computers to demo add-ons and Personas. The crowds started coming, and it was really exciting to hear almost everyone we talked to already used Firefox. In fact, most people’s response to “do you Firefox?” was “of course”. Most of the events I’ve been to for Mozilla are tech-oriented, so interacting with this crowd was really fun and interesting. We introduced lots of people to add-ons and Personas, converted a few people to Firefox, and taught some of the more technical folks a few tricks.
We even had a planet.mozilla.org reader from the community come out and help us out for several hours — thanks James! (please email me)
Plus, I picked up some awesome robot artwork from 3 Fish Studios. Eric said a bunch of people had emailed him about Mozilla’s robot design challenge and that he’d be entering, which was great to hear.
There’s still another day left of the craft festival in San Francisco tomorrow (Sunday), so I encourage anyone in the San Francisco area to check it out at Fort Mason, and be sure to stop by the Mozilla booth. I’m pretty sure I’ll be back next year, Mozilla-sponsored or not!
