Mozilla Hrvatska: Plans February-July

Mozilla Hrvatska celebrates its 6th month of existence!
And, now, it’s time for new plans and even better and more productive part of year!

The list is pretty long, some would say, but with all that “man power” and motivation we have,
I think we’re up to it!

So, lets start!

1. L10n Marathon – Verbatim
The center of our localization work is Verbatim (for now). There are 20 000 words that needs to be translated.
If we put that in percentages, we have 51% of currently active projects to translate.
So, to speed up that process, we are going to organize a marathon – We plan to gather all L10n people in one place for few hours and do as much as we can!
I hope that it will be productive and that we will make significant improvement of our work.

2. L10n Marathon – Firefox Mobile
Fx Mobile is our weak point. Nobody started working on it but it’s importance rises every day, there are more and more users and we need to do something about it. So, like presented in previous point, we plan to make another marathon, another gathering and translate it.

3. Persona Spring Contest 2012
Yeah, I know. We failed with Persona Winter Contest 2011, but I still strongly believe in this project.
As I said in previous post, we can’t judge it’s potential based on PWC2011 as it wasn’t properly organized, so I’m giving it another chance – we will organize PSC2012, try to “brand” it and attract more people.
Maybe things will turn out better this time.

4. Culture Shock Festival
CSF is, well, like its title says, culture festival.
We are invited to participate!
So, we have presentation/discussion and Hackasaurus in mind.
We are going to present our community, Mozilla, Firefox, explain people how they can get involved, why are we doing this, what is our motivation and other cool topics.
After presentation, we are organizing Hackasaurus workshop for teens.

5. Video Shooting – Commercial
This is one of rescheduled projects (also mentioned in previous post).
I asked myself, how are we communicating with people? What are the best channels and ways to transfer the message?

Well, I still don’t have an answer on what’s the best way to channel it, but I know that, for now, we are limited to written communication. + live communication during events.
So, I decided to make – “commercials”. Video commercials.
We already have great ideas and concepts. We are filming 2 longer videos (2-3 minutes long) and several short videos (like, half of minute).
What will they be about? Well, you’ll have to wait to find out.
I can only say that those longer ones will include more than 70 people.

6. Balkan Meeting
This one is still not sure but our odds are good.
If we get Balkan Meeting in Zagreb, we will change whole concept of it and make it more useful and productive.
You can read more about plans and ideas on balkans mailing list – topic “Balkan Meeting – Zagreb”.

7. Spring Awakening!
Viral Marketing Campaign.
For now, I can say that we have a plan to go out on street and spread the word among people.
We will make baloons and other interesting swag for that, talk with people, take photos, …
All in all, I expect it to be great!
Until now, we haven’t done anything like that, so – it’s time!

8. Campus promotion
Big outdoors promotion on college campus, biggest in Zagreb. We expect hundreds and hundreds of people.
Some (successful) ideas from past will be “recycled” (like the one with Pigeon, described in Software Freedom Day wiki page), but we also have new ones. Success guaranteed.

9. FER Presentation
ALSO mentioned before. We are going back on FER (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing) but this time we are not setting up a booth – we’re making real multimedia presentation. Or, maybe I should call it – a show, cause that’s what it will be.
Perfectly and nicely timed mix of videos, presentations, video calls and other things.

10. Cross Community Meetup
This one is not sure and I don’t believe that we will make it. But, still… I don’t want to dismiss it right away.
The idea is to gather all communities around Croatia in kind of informal meeting so that we can discuss hot topics in person.
If we somehow find time to pull that thing trough, it will, most probably, last for one day.
Could be useful.

11. Mozillians.org
Oooh, that project…
We are trying. We really are.
People in Mozilla Hrvatska are knowledgeable, they are almost desperate ( ) cause I don’t have anything for them to do (yeah, there are SO many people in Croatian Community ), so we started negotiations with Aakash Desai and Dave Dash about joining them in Mozillians.org project.
Some problems occured and everything kind of stopped.
But, I got in contact with Aakash again and we are really pushing this one right now, so… Expect croatian programmers in Mozillians.org team soon!

12. Website + Intranet
All of you can see how terrible our website looks like right now.
Although I (and some other people) had time to work on it, publish posts and other things, we didn’t.
The reason was that cool mix of website and intranet.
We planned to make “super powerful” system, and website was (kind of) supposed to be integrated in Intranet.
But. Things have changed, we are getting new, appropriate host, and we will finally use those Atlassian Free Licences, for which I begged so much.
That means that Intranet is… kind… of… solved problem.
We only have to deal with that website. So, we will.
Consider it done.

13. Guerilla Marketing Campaign
If you don’t know what Guerilla Marketing is, try to google it. You should get the picture pretty soon. (Just, please. Don’t read that info on Wikipedia. )
When you read it, you will know what are we up to.
Everything else is a secret. Top Secret.

14. Mozilla Flashmob
Again, if you never heard for it, check it out.
It’s a pretty cool way to get noticed and this is exactly what we are going to do.
We have some ideas, nothing phenomenal yet, but we are working on it.
Of course, we will film this so you’ll have the chance to see it in video.

15. Comics Production
This is one of those “never ending” projects.
We already started with it, but don’t have too much, for now.
The idea is to make funny comics about Mozilla, Firefox, other browsers, relations in our community (that people outside of it can understand it) and stuff like that. We will regularly publish them on our official website, social profiles (like Facebook, Twitter, Google+, etc.) and other places.
When we accumulate an impressive number of it, we’ll print it in “comic books”.

16. Documentation Release
Don’t get me wrong, we are transparent but we are going to put even more effort in that.
Of course, we won’t publicly share our invoices from customs or restaurants, but everything that can be prepared for public release, we will prepare it.
The only thing we have to do before that is to agree on branding issues and make everything “mozilla-like”.

17. Implementing OKNO
OKNO (acronym for “Quality Assurance for Non Profit Organizations”, eng.) is one of the best quality assurance programs.
Organization work is divided in several areas, evaluated in every one of them and has clear directions how stuff should be organized and also how should you work.
What do we get from it?
Well, it should secure us a safe path to success, in every possible way.
It’s supposed to give us better structure and secure better quality of our results.
We won’t lose our “community touch” because of it, no fear because of that.

18. Video Tutorials
Many people only use basic Firefox features and, in fact, don’t know how great Firefox is.
So, we have a mission to change it.
We will tape short tutorials that are showing some cool Fx features that everyone can use and that can improve user experience. They will be published on our official YouTube channel.

19. Mozilla Photo Session
The name of project says it all. Need to elaborate?

20. MOZaik (Mozilla Mosaic)
You all know what mosaic is, right?
So, expect one of the coolest mosaics from Mozilla Croatia.
(still in “innovation” stage but it looks great, for now)

21. Mozilla becomes Prom King/Queen
OK, this one I really can’t promise.
It’s not that we can’t organize it. The question is if we can find a class in any Croatian high school that would be willing to dress in Mozilla TShirts.
You probably don’t know how high school graduation works in Croatia, so I’ll explain it to you:
We don’t do those dances like Americans do in movies.
Every graduating class of every high school in country pics it’s own theme, or better to say, uniform.
Something that they like, can relate to, etc.
So, one class is dressed in hippies (I’m mentioning this first cause my class was all dressed up like hippies ), other class dresses up in grooms and brides, etc. (Again, every class decides on their own, themes aren’t given, you need to think of something).
Last day of school, we have “Crazy Day” – saying goodbye to professors trough ceremony, parade trough city and stuff like that.
In the end, we have that “dance”, or better to call it – party. But, let’s stick to that first part with dressing up.
So, one of ideas was to persuade one class of one high school to dress in – Firefox.
If we make it, it will be …. WAIT FOR IT! ….

…..

AWESOME!!!
(that was parody on this )

Fingers Crossed!

22., 23., 24., ……
There are some other plans, but I mentioned only the coolest of all.
I hope you enjoyed reading, I’ll keep you updated!

Croatian Community – first 6 months – what and how happened

Hi all!

I started writing this post on 7th November 2011.
I’m finishing it today.
I’m saying it right in the beginning – this is extremly long 

The idea is to put everything from last 6 months in one place, but from specific point of view:
the one all ReMos could “reuse” and maybe learn something from it (or benefit in some other way).
That is the reason why every mentioned project has “Why” section. Sometimes it’s more philosophical
explanation, sometimes it’s pretty concrete. Either way, I hope it will make sense to every reader.

I won’t make special introduction in post, i’ll shoot right in the head. More or less.
In the beginning, when I officially got accepted to ReMo, I had many plans and ideas.
Some things were done, some not.

I started with building a website for Croatian Community (I’ll use „Mozilla Hrvatska“ in future). I had some problems with host in the beginning but it was taken care of (with William‘s help), so after some time, I managed to install WordPress, redesign it, make it more Mozilla like.
Not finished, and pretty much still empty, but it’s up.

(Why? I find it extremly important, even mandatory for every community. Website is a framework/leverage/outline for most of
(initial) communication with possible new active contributors, for maintaining communication with fans and people interested,
but also for work with current active members.)

Right there in the beginning, after I formed a small group of people that will work on Mozilla projects, we had a “small” event (in cooperation with Croatian Free Software Association, we organized Software Freedom Day @ Križevci) in Krizevci, town near Zagreb, and we did it great (not bragging, it’s true XD):
A lot of people visited our booth, talked with us, asked questions, learned something, etc.
Also, we made big media outreach, got an article in country’s most popular newspapers (Večernji List) about Software Freedom Day and Mozilla Hrvatska. Story about SFD in Križevci was also published in some other newspapers and web portals.
We also recruited some new members there.

(Why? You have to start somewhere. If you follow guidelines and ideas from Mozilla, it’s clearly that everything is „about community“.
So, forming a small team of contributors is first and most logical step. After that, the easiest way to make an outreach, to let people
know that you are there at all and that you exist, is trough public presentation of some kind. I find booth settings most convenient because they have more „informal“ note and give more informal impression (like other possible events), they give people the opportunity to feel more friendly, relaxed, dare to ask more, but also booths enable you bigger circulation of people as there is no strict agenda, start of presentation and its end, etc.)

Some profiles on social networks were created, we got good initial response from public, too.

(Why? This is especially useful for reaching to younger population. It’s the fastest way, you are definitely more present in digital world, there are great possibilities for interaction with public that is interested in you and, in the end, it’s easier to get more people on your official website from there than from nowhere.)

There were some smaller things, but not really important right now.

In October, I decided to make presentation on FER (Faculty of Electrical Engineering and Computing), one of strongest colleges in Croatia. The idea was to gather and recruit the most interesting people to us right now (at that moment) – programmers.
After some thinking, I came to conclusion that we are not ready for something like that because of what could happend to us -
in the end of presentation you need to ask if anyone has any question. And, considering our public on that presentation, my evaluation was that none of us is fully ready for answering to that type of questions.
So, we made a booth.
And - it turned out great. Students didn’t give us enough time to set up the booth, they were already all over us and swag. )
Even some professors visited us, asked some questions, took some swag etc. (one of them took bunch of stuff, “for his students”, as he said. He decided to share some swag during his lectures. Hehehe! )

Results were … PHENOMENAL!
We recruited 15 programmers. real programmers.
When you put them all together, there is nothing that they can’t do.
Some of them are already giving lectures on some courses on FER. )
(Not sure how to translate it to english but it’s something like Advanced Programming, or if you want literal translation, Contestant Programming.)
We found guys I like to call “Dream Team” – they are already “formed” as team, they know each other and already worked together. They will build new website designed for our needs, + intranet, something we crave for a long time, but don’t have luck with it.
Everything will be finished until March.

Considering that and feedback from students on FER, we will make another presentation on FER, but this time it will be a real presentation, in biggest auditorium (with movable wall, that can me removed/pulled if needed), where we can put around 300 people (or around 600-650 people).
I’m saying this because interest is very big, and they want us back on FER. Very soon.
I plan to make it happen, and I want it big, too – multimedia presentation with Mozilla movies on screens (there is also tremendous surround in auditoriums), interactive presentation, with guests from Mozilla (if possible. That would be great!), video calls, guests  from other local communities (I mean other ReMos), etc. …
This requires lots of preparations and timing needs to be perfect.  I’ll stop talking about this right now and get back to what I was saying.
FERlicious! booth – After FERlicious, our fans of Facebook tripled, active members more than doubled (now there are around 40  active contributors and “workers”), some officially registered associations contacted me too, and more than 100 people signed up on a list for sending them additional information…

With this event we made a connection with strongest technical student association in Zagreb – (BEST Zagreb). (they are part of European Board of Students of Technology)

(Why? Considering our branch in which we are working, it is very important, in fact crucial, to have people knowledgable
in this/these specific area/s. Maybe my next lines can be declared as “stereotyped” but in most cases it’s the truth:
IT people are great in what they do, but they sometimes lack other skills (and interests), especially communication skills,
managing, leading, organizing. Their interests are also often pretty limited and they simply don’t want to get in toucht with anything other but “IT stuff”. (Again, don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that ITs are “idots” or anything like that, just that sometimes it’s hard to work with them )
Of course, rules have exceptions. So does this rule. And, your job is to separate those exceptions and put them in charge of whole department.
So, back on track with the point: after initial phase, it is crucial that you have that „kind“ of people so you can proceed with more
specialized projects, improve your infrastructure, etc.

Furthermore, it’s smart to connect with other associations, especially with those that have similar mission like you do. You never know when you will need help and it’s better to be prepared, than to act in moment of need. Also, connecting with others can be beneficial to both associations, in terms of „joint operations“ (projects), education (you maybe have/know something they need. Help them, teach them. Maybe you’ll see that they have something cool. Have faith, they will return the favor.), or any other kind of collaboration.)

Our next project was more or less “populistic”. We organized Persona Winter Contest. The idea was to introduce personas, ease
of use and “customizability” to more wider audience. Idea was good but organization was – bad. We failed to do everything we
planned (needed to do) on time, so we had to bear the consequences. We had other obligations at that time and we didn’t have enough time to make it great.
Nevertheless, we got some contestants and we gave out promised prizes.
Considering sloppiness and lousy job that we did, we can’t judge potential of this project and can’t make decision if we will shut it down
for good or not, based solely on results we had. So, we are determined to proceed with persona contest for at least one more time.
That means, Persona Spring Contest is coming.

(Why?  It is good to cover as much areas and different groups of people as possible. That way, you are reaching to wider audience,
making impact and assuring that you are more „present“ and with more success (this second thing is especially important). More and more people get to know about/for Mozilla and your active (and maybe new, too?) community. Step by step, you start to exist.
Don’t forget that this is also a great way to show off adaptability Firefox has. Well, one part of it.)

We had pretty ambitious plans for December. But, I haven’t found enough reliable people to work on them, and I was already spreaded too thin.
So, we dropped them (in fact, we didn’t, we just rescheduled ). All but one, to which I was fully dedicated. Community Meeting.
That was, in fact, project for January, but it needed proper preparation.
I took it pretty seriously, additional reason and motivator was the fact that we had guests coming to that meeting. Before I continue talking about this meeting, I want to thank Niko Višnjić. He covered everything for what I didn’t had enough time during meeting.

Note that, no matter how good you are in planning and organizing, you can never pull bigger projects by yourself. It’s against laws of nature, you simply can’t be on different places at the same time. So, predict those situations and appoint someone who can cover something when you can’t, but make sure you pick that person carefully, as it is pretty essential.

So, meeting. Our „stars“ were:
Brian King – Nice „irish fella“ from Slovenia. Also, my mentor, member of ReMo Council, works with Addons.
Matjaž Horvat – also from Slovenia, working on localization. Currently developing Pontoon.
Ioana Chiorean – Romanian girl, busy with QA, Fx Mobile and some other cool stuff. Found some time to come to Croatia and share some smart thoughts with Croatian Mozillians.
Oskar Ivanić – our Serbian neighbor, current community leader of Serbian Mozilla Community, Firefox Nightly tester. This guy really had troubles finding a way to come in Croatia, I hope it was worth it.

As Ioana and Oskar came in Croatia one day earlier, we used that time to discuss some things but in more informal tone.
After „Finding Matjaž“ mission (that was my mission. He was on a „Finding hotel parking lot“ mission ) and checking „Slovenians“ in a hotel, we started with planned sessions.

We started with „Why should you get involved with Mozilla?“ presentation, held by Brian and Matjaž. Great presentation which got people interested and made them interact with guests. Also, they found out for many interesting things about Mozilla.

We all presented our communities after that. The idea was to see who does what, maybe to „steal“ some ideas and take some advices.

QA presentation followed up. We got pretty good insight in what is happening and what are the plans for Firefox Mobile. Thanks, Ioana!

Sunday was dedicated to localization, Firefox, beta channels and general discussion.

Matjaž explained localization and presented Pontoon, great tool, I think it could have great bright future.

As I mentioned before, Oskar made a great presentation about Firefox, it’s beta channels, testing, etc.

Although this description of what we did doesn’t look too impressive and interesting, I have to say that we really benefited from that meeting a lot. I should also mention that I had conversation with all participants about many things, from discussions about organizing and running community and localization to topics like Balkan region and how Mozilla works.
We came to fine conclusions and also agreed on better collaboration between comunities.
But, more about what happend on Community Meeting in another post.
(Why? Bonding in community is very important. Although we didn’t managed to gather all people at the meeting (many reasons), we did another important thing: Learned about Mozilla, got deeper in Mozilla Story, spent quality time. I think that these kind of events can do only good to people in community. They meet people from other countries in person, they see that, although they are from different part of world or continent, they have that passion and that great goal in common. It is nice to see that in people, especially those which you just met and with which you maybe can’t identify in any way, as your lives are totally different. I also think that these things can give more power to a community and also motivate it. Do it frequently. You don’t need to invite guests every time but gather all people together, spend some time working on Mozilla plans and projects, get to know each other and try to establish good connection with them.)

Of course, we already have plans for incoming period and those will be published in one of my next posts.

I have no idea how to “close” this story, so I’ll just leave it as it is.
Although I wrote giant amount of words, I still haven’t said everything what I wanted to share but… That
only means you can expect more posts soon.

Greets from Croatia!