Firefox OS Education Booth @ CMDA IT Expo

Date : 11th - 14th December, 2014
Location : Pandit Farms, Pune

No. of attendees : 10,000+ 

CMDA IT EXPO is one of the biggest fair that is organized every year in Pune city. Over the years IT expo has gained popularity among entrepreneurs, developers and most importantly students. Every year it witnesses crowd of over 7000 people of which around 80% visitors are from IT background and the rest are keen in knowing how IT is involved in non-IT fields.

Firefox OS Education Booth

Students exploring Firefox OS phones

Visitors at Firefox OS booth.

It was a great opportunity for us and so we had set up a Firefox OS education booth to create awareness about Firefox OS. The open source communities Pune Linux users Group (PLUG) and Wikipedia community joined us at the booth to promote FOSS technologies.

Gaurav Sir, imparting knowledge about open source

 We the mozillians of Mozilla Pune community and Firefox club STES pro actively came forward to support this initiative.

Proud Mozillians !!

In the 4 day long expo we had visitors from a varied background and to our surprise most of them were hardcore Firefox users. It was a great experience interacting with Mozilla product users.

The Firefox OS stood like a star at the expo. Phones from our hardware partners Spice, Alcatel, Intex and Zen were put on display so that people could have hands on experience while we explained them about Firefox OS.

Ankit with a Firefox OS user

 

FirefoxOS phones

Goodies were given to those who showed great interest in developing apps on Firefox OS. On knowing that Firefox OS app development can be done by using text editor and the apps are based on HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript only, many students and young developers showed great interest in developing apps. Looking at their interests we’ve planned to organize a dedicated Firefox OS hack-a-thon very soon in Pune city.

Responses from visitors after knowing how amazing Firefox OS is :

“You guys are doing a good job educating on Firefox OS. I just bought one more phone and I'm happy about it.”

“This is really a great OS and I will ask my child to start contributing towards it.”

“I can’t believe smartphones OS can run on such low hardware specifications. This is a great technology and I will surely buy Firefox OS phone”.

“Can I root my current smartphone and install Firefox OS in it? ”

Our answer : Yes u can !! 

Visit this link for step by step guide : https://developer.mozilla.org/en-US/Firefox_OS/Installing_on_a_mobile_device

Special thanks to Sudhanwa Sir, Gaurav Sir, Geeta ma'am and Manjusha ma'am for your support at the booth. It was a great experience for us to work with you all and to know the inside out of Open Source world. 

L-R : Suchita Agarwal, Aman Sehgal, Sohan Bandewar, Ankit Gadgil, Sayak Sarkar, Manjusha Atre, Prathamesh Chavan and Sudhanwa Joglekar

Mozillians at the event : 

• Ankit Gadgil
• Sayak Sarkar
• Aman Sehgal
• Prathamesh Chavan
• Suchita Agarwal
• Sohan Bandewar 

Flickr album link : https://www.flickr.com/photos/119054516@N06/sets/72157647568036744/​

MOZILLA @ gnuNify

After becoming a Mozillian it was for the first time when I got an opportunity to attend such a long series of talk sessions on various fields of Mozilla.GBs of information was delivered by hard core Mozillians. It was amazing being there.

Talk sessions were conducted on following topics :

1.Webmaker Tools.
2.MDN
3.L10n
4.Privacy and Security
5.RUST
6.Firefox OS
7.FSA and Reps
8.Support Mozilla (SuMo).

Starting off with Diwanshi Pandey on Web maker tools followed by Priyanka Nag on MDN then Aniket Deshpande on L10n and Ankit Gadgil ended session 1 with Privacy and Security. These talks were very interesting as firstly no coding is required for making any contributions in web maker, mdn and these technologies really enhances Firefox browsing experience.

After lunch it was all technical gyan session by Josh Matthews on RUST and  by Soumya Deb on Firefox OS.Josh elaborated very well on how RUST is different from other programming language. Also how RUST overcomes drawbacks of C , C++.

 Josh Matthews speaking on RUST

@Debloper took us all on Firefox OS tour. His session covered following topics :
Why Firefox OS ?
How flexible Firefox OS is and
How to make simple Firefox apps.

Initially I had some idea that HTML5 , CSS3  and JavaScript is required for making any Firefox OS apps. So I also attended a talk session on same by Prasad Shirgaonkar at gnuNify. Frankly speaking its very easy to make a Firefox OS app.

 Soumya Deb giving an intro to Firefox OS

Then began the most awaited session for newbies i.e Firefox Student Ambassador and Mozilla Reps  by Saurabh Shah and Aniket Deshpande. Many students were interested in joining Mozilla as FSA. We all discussed about upcoming events in Pune and on how can we come together to make it a success.

 Aniket Deshpande encouraging young listners by Mozilla's FSA program

And in the end, I (Aman Sehgal,FSA) got an opportunity to speak on Mozilla's SuMo project i.e Support Mozilla. I explained new Firefox enthusiasts on how can they contribute right now by being a part of SuMo project. My main focus was Army of Awesome as many of the listeners were Twitter users.

 L to R: Suchita Agarwal, Akshay Pathak, Josh Matthews, Aman Sehgal (Me).

Finally, all day long session on Firefox came to an end. Not actually an end, it gave a new beginning to many youngsters who are associated with Mozilla or wish to join in. All Mozillians left SICSR with tons of information , some new ideas , future road maps and cherishable memories.

 

Mozillian Account : https://mozillians.org/en-US/u/amaneight/

FSA Button

 
FIREFOX STUDENT AMBASSADOR BUTTON

Facebook Group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/firefoxclubskncoe/

First POP Up Party of FIREFOX CLUB STES

"If you really want to do something pull up your socks and just get going."

On Wednesday I and Akshay were sitting in lab discussing on various options to initiate something enthralling. We kept on discussing on various topics and finally ended up on coming up with FIREFOX CLUB at STES. Last year I had organised WEBMAKER PARTY at my college so I had some idea regarding club and some contacts of local ReMo.
We decided to contact one of the ReMo Ankit Gadgil and bingo within 10 mins we planned a POP UP at CCD on 30th Jan. We dint knew it was so easy.

I called up few interested friends and we rushed to CCD at 6pm. Ankit was already there at CCD making his notes for the meet.

He then started giving us brief detail regarding FSA program, Firefox Goals, How to build a successful Firefox Community and amazing facts about Mozilla Community.
It was a great learning experience. We got all our doubts cleared. Also we got  a broader vision about MOZILLA and on how to set up Firefox Club.

Thank you Ankit. We will give in our best to build an active Firefox Club at STES.

(L to R : Akshay Pathak , Aman Sehgal, Aniket Chandak, Ankit Gadgil)

(L to R : Suchita Agarwal ,Akshay Pathak , Aman Sehgal, Aniket Chandak)

Facebook Group : https://www.facebook.com/groups/firefoxclubskncoe/

Mozillian Account : https://mozillians.org/en-US/u/amaneight/