May 2014 ~ Finding Mozilla Pakistan

Group Photo
Photo Credit: Zahbia Sarfraz

The most awaited UI update to Firefox arrived on the 29th April 2014. Mozilla last refreshed the browser's UI with Firefox 4, which launched in March 2011. It has been working on the new UI since at least May 2012. All Mozilla communities across the globe decided to celebrate the change by hosting Firefox Launch Parties in their respective regions. Mozilla Pakistan hosted their launch party on 10th of May 2014, at Beaconhouse National University, Lahore - organized by Huda Sarfraz. The purpose of this Launch Party was to introduce the latest version of Mozilla Firefox and educate the public in detail about the design change and the new added features to this version. Moreover, demo stations were setup to display the developer preview version of the Firefox OS devices and the alpha version of Firefox in Urdu - a work in progress by Mozilla Pakistan.

Tags
Photo Credit: Farooq Saleemi

Registration Desk
Photo Credit: Salman Ansari

I was part of the event management team and I was also asked to present a talk on ' Mozilla and the new Web '. We had a total of 150 expected attendees on our list, out of which around 100 showed up on the event day - we're counting this as a big success, considering this was our very first official event under the Mozilla Pakistan banner. The attendees were registered for the event on spot and they were handed their tags along with some awesome Firefox swag. Registration was followed by tea while the attendees enjoyed different videos (Mozilla Story Video, Firefox OS introductory video, Ylvis - The Fox - 'What Does The Fox Say?' ) playing in a loop. The event kicked off with Talaal Burny introducing the local community, explaining the agenda for the day, and giving away a Firefox cap to one of the attendees who had Firefox installed on his android phone.

(me) Demonstrating the Webmaker tools
Photo Credit: Farooq Saleemi

Talaal Burny joking about me having an IE tattoo on my right arm ... :D
Photo Credit: Farooq Saleemi

The first talk was presented by Asad Sajjad (Club Lead - BNU Mozillians) on how to get involved and different volunteering opportunities at Mozilla. Then it was time for the second giveaway of the day - anyone correctly identifying the Webmaker logo was given Firefox swag. Next in line was my talk on 'Mozilla and the New Web'. I started off with discussing what has Mozilla done, what do we do now, and how Mozilla is reshaping the web with some cutting edge technologies and products. I demonstrated Firefox OS, Appmaker, Shumway, and Webmaker to the audience - they loved it !
The third giveaway of the day was after my talk - anyone correctly identifying the Firefox OS logo was given Firefox swag.

Fawad Hasan introducing Firefox OS
Photo Credit: Farooq Saleemi

Our awesome social media team
Photo Credit: Farooq Saleemi

The next speaker was Fawad Hasan, who came in all the way from Islamabad to speak at this event. His topic was Firefox OS and application development using web APIs. He coded a Contact Viewer demo app in front of the audience to show how easy it is to get started with Firefox OS app development. The source code of this app can be found here: https://github.com/iFadey/FxContactManager ... Next came the tongue twister competition where the participants had to say 'the quick orange Firefox jumped over the lazy dog' (3 times) in-order to win Firefox swag. Watch the video here.

Mehmood Ali & Hasan Ahmad on stage to unveil the new Firefox
Photo Credit: Farooq Saleemi

Panel - Q & A session
Photo Credit: Farooq Saleemi

The most important presentation of the day was saved for the last - THE UNVEILING OF THE NEW FIREFOX ! Muhammad Hasan and Muhammad Mehmood Ali took to the stage and unveiled the latest version of the Firefox, explaining in-depth about the new design and key features that were introduced with this new version. Immediately after this presentation the core team (including reps and core contributors) stepped up to answer any questions regarding the new Firefox. As expected, people had a lot of questions regarding the change in design and about some of the new features like Firefox accounts. The panel answered each and every question to complete satisfaction of the audience. To conclude the program, Huda Sarfraz was invited on stage to talk about Mozilla's mission and why you should become a contributor. After her talk, Talaal Burny announced 2 more contests (apart from the 'The Best Tweet Contest' announced at the start) - 'Best Firefox Selfie Contest' and 'Best Photo-Booth Picture Contest' - that were carried out during lunch break and the winners were announced when everyone came back after the break to enjoy awesome Firefox Cake ! :)