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.

We were heavily promoting Rock Your Firefox, so sticking with its retro theme, we had lava lamps, disco lights, retro candy, 80s music, and cupcakes. Many attendees came back the second day and told us we had the best suite at the conference.

While talking with visitors to our suite, I was pleased to hear that the vast majority said they exclusively use Firefox, and many even said they use add-ons. Those who filled out our survey confirmed this, with 90% of participants saying they use Firefox and 65% of those people using add-ons. For folks who said they didn’t use add-ons, I demoed a few blogger-friendly add-ons from the BlogHer Collection and many people said they’d check them out as soon as they got home.

I answered a number of interesting questions from current Firefox users — everything from choosing where downloads are saved to managing 50 tabs (answer: Tab Candy demo) to what red pandas have to do with Firefox. Despite the good vibe in the room, one of the most common questions I heard was “why does Firefox crash so much?” from users who said they were on the latest version. We tried to give these users tips on debugging and reporting crashes, but it was disappointing to hear firsthand about the frequent crashes that some people experience. I’m hopeful that our continued efforts at reducing crashes will have a noticeable impact on these users soon.

Mozilla will be participating heavily in the event again this year as a platinum sponsor and speaking at quite a few sessions:

• I’ll take part in the opening keynote panel on add-on marketplaces
• Aza Raskin, Chris Finke, and myself will hold a panel on the Future of the Firefox Add-ons Ecosystem
• Aza Raskin will talk in depth about the latest on Jetpack
• Mark Finkle will tell add-on developers what they need to know to get their add-ons ready for Firefox for mobile
• and, by popular demand, Mike Shaver will reprise his role in the closing keynote panel on the Future of the Web Browser

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!

We’ll have free BBQ and lots of good information for add-on developers. You can learn more at our meetup site.

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!

The Renegade Craft Fair is this weekend in San Francisco, and is a “FREE urban art, craft and DIY extravaganza”. I’m excited to be attending to promote Firefox add-ons and Personas to a crowd that loves customization. Mozilla will have a booth set up both days, so if you’re in the San Francisco area, please stop by and see us.

If you’re going to be in the area and are interested in add-ons and add-on development, we’d love to see you there. We’ll have pizza and refreshments for you to enjoy during some presentations from the AMO team, as well as presentations from the community.

If you’re interested in attending and haven’t already signed up, please RSVP using this form. We’ll be putting together the schedule soon, so if you’d like to give a presentation on a topic of interest to add-on users and developers, please let us know this week on the form and we’ll be in contact with you.

We look forward to seeing everyone then!

It was a weird, great feeling being around so many people that spend their time working on add-ons and care about them as much as I do. Some of my thoughts about the sessions:

• In the opening keynote panel on add-on business models, it was great to hear that our compatibility outreach with Firefox is helping developers and that being featured on AMO has such a positive impact on extensions.
• Brian King gave a great talk on the state of the Mozilla Add-ons universe, covering the history of extensions in Mozilla, AMO, Mozdev, and a number of other topics.
• I was unexpectedly part of the Add-on Distribution Strategies session panel, along with Rey Bango (Mozilla), Pat Buckley (WebMynd), and Alec Jeong (Cooliris). It was interesting to hear and talk about the journeys add-ons go through for better distribution and exposure, and reminded me how important metrics and statistics are to making those decisions. I have some follow-up notes on this and will be blogging about this more in the future.
• The closing keynote was a browser vendor panel of Microsoft, Mozilla, and Google. I was very glad that the questions were all add-on related rather than a generic browser panel seen at other conferences.

One of the things that struck me about yesterday was that “AMO” was mentioned in every talk I went to without ever being defined. I usually always define it the first time I use it, but everyone at the conference seemed to know what AMO is, which was a very strange feeling.

Overall, the conference was a really great thing for both business folks and technical folks, and people on the add-on development side as well as people on the browser vendor / distribution channel side, especially for being its first year. I can’t wait until next year.

From Mozilla, Mark Finkle will be giving a presentation on leveraging third party APIs to create mashups with add-ons. Having Mark in attendance is great for both myself and add-on developers: I get to send all technical questions to Mark, and add-on developers don’t get incorrect technical answers from me! It’s a win-win.

Mike Shaver will be taking part in a panel on the future of the web browser, along with representatives from Microsoft and Google to wrap up the sessions. As former Director of Ecosystem Development (loosely translated: “add-ons”), Mike has a long history of working with add-on developers and improving extension support in Firefox. Plus, he’s kinda funny.

On the business track, Brian King will be exploring the state of the Mozilla Add-ons universe. You can read more details in Rey Bango’s post on the Add-ons blog.

Additionally, Mozilla will be hosting an add-ons open house the night before, so if you’re interested, you can find the details on the wiki. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to attend the open house as my flight gets in later.

I’m also very happy to announce that I’ve accepted a full-time position with Mozilla after graduation in a few weeks, and will be moving to the San Francisco Bay Area very soon. It’s been a great 2-3 years being immersed in add-ons at Mozilla and I’m very excited for what’s coming in 2009.

The event had a lot of traffic of people coming in and out throughout the day (especially when there was free pizza). The event leaders did a great job of promoting the event in the newspaper, signs, and word of mouth. Everyone we met seemed to already know about and love Firefox, but our main purpose in being there was getting more people involved in the community.

Mark and I were treated to a stormy surprise when leaving UNC and heading to the airport that resulted in me having wet pets for several hours and owning a UNC umbrella that I will never be able to use again (at least not in Baton Rouge… or Louisiana).