Wow! I can’t remember the last time I actually had logged-in to an IRC network not until tonight. I got a message from the Mozilla Philippines Community Manager that the rest of the gang are online at #mozilla-ph but I was mobile that time.

The moment I logged into my desktop machine, I immediately searched for the chatroom using Mibbit. If you’re the type of person who’s always on the go but don’t have a laptop, then Mibbit is for you. It’s a web-based IRC client. To join us online, simply use the following settings in Mibbit:

Or, you may opt to install ChatZilla as an add-on to our favorite web browser, Firefox:

If want to be more sentimental, you can always download and install mIRC on your Windows machine.

Enjoy and see you all online! Join us and help improve Mozilla products the Filipino way.

Everyone seemed to be busy on Christmas holidays, also the bad weather that hit the country,  hope everyone is now ready for some action in our Mozilla Community. Last year made a new mark in our mission that more volunteers are coming out but still a lot more things are needed to be accomplish. The Mozilla Reps program is one of the great things that make our volunteer efforts with ease in a structured manner.

We’re going to have the meet-up on January 13, 2011 at  Racks Restaurant Festival Supermall Alabang at 6pm-8pm. It’s a community event so we’ll just make a small contribution for the food and of course swags will be given away. The delegates from the Mozilla Asia Camp 2011 have a lot to share to you guys that will definitely inspire everyone to volunteer and be part of the community.

The Mozilla movement in the Philippines welcomes everyone to attend, especially college students. This is a limited slot only because of the small space of the venue so if you want to join the fun fill up this form.

On the same day the Mozilla Firefox 4 event in Cagayan De Oro was held, the folks from Cebu had their own Mozilla Firefox 4 event.

Organized by Evanjohnn Mendoza, the new local community had a great kick-off with the Firefox 4 event. According to Evanjohnn:

The gathering of Webdevs and bloggers was successful with Ruffy Heredia as our primary speaker talking about Mozilla Firefox 4, its new features and some add ons which are very useful for the bloggers.

The Cebu community’s main objective was to create a community in Cebu for Mozilla Firefox and build an awareness of the new version of Mozilla Firefox. Evanjohnn feels that they established the sense of community and were able to come up with an idea.

The good thing about this event is that it spurred excitement over creating a community in Cebu:

We want to create a small community: The Mozilla Firefox Cebu Community. Ruffy Heredia, an avid user of the Mozilla Firefox browser (and previous versions), is willing to head the community. The objectives of the community is to build small forums, discussions and meet ups so that we can learn more about the different features of the Mozilla Firefox  browser at the same time build a collation of user experience data so that we can learn more what Browser users like to to do.

Wow, isn’t that awesome? Thanks to Firefox 4, there’s a new local community in the Philippines.

Last week, Mozilla participated at the 8th annual Philippine Youth Congress in Information Technology, more popularly known as the Y4IT Conference, at the University of the Philippines – Diliman. This year’s four-day event attracted around 23,000 IT students from all over the Philippines, making it one of the most-attended IT events in the region.

Mozilla was an exhibitor and we had a booth placed at the U.P. Bahay ng Alumni. We also had two speaking slots– one in September 15 at the Bulwagang Tandang Sora (Tandang Sora Theater) and one in the University Theater. For the first talk, around 700 students were present, and for the second talk, around 3,000 folks were in the audience.

For the speaking slots, I talked about the Open Web. I wanted to drive the point effectively that I decided to ditch my Powerpoint deck and use a slideshow from Eric Maeyer’s S5. And for the first time, I gave my talk primarily in Tagalog, or the main local language here in the Philippines. (I normally deliver my talks in English). Fortunately it worked.

Mozilla Student Reps leaders Joell Lapitan and Jun Barrun were also in the event, facing the students inquiring about Mozilla and the student reps program. Jun also took great photos of the Y4IT event.

One final note: Thanks to the support of Sarah Doherty, William Reynolds, Gen Kanai, and Seth Bindernagel for making the participation possible and awesome!

Photos:

The Mozilla Philippines Community had a kick-off meeting at the Old Spaghetti House at the UP-Ayala TechnoHub in Diliman and we had a productive meeting. Here are some of the items and ideas that were bounced around:

• Special events – We’re evaluating which special activities to support this year, some of the events that popped up were (the names in the parentheses are the point persons):
  • Y4IT
  • WordCamp
  • Software Freedom Day
  • Joomla Day
  • Ubuntu Release
  • Form Function Class
• Community-hosted events – We can also events ourselves. Some suggestions include:
  • Mozilla Devcon
  • Mozilla Hack-athon
  • Add-on Contest
  • Cosplay(?)
• Regular events – We’re targeting a quarterly assembly/get-together this year and the next event is likely to be in G2IX
• Mozilla Firefox Mascot in the Philippines – Once we have decided to host an event, I’ll try to arrange to borrow the Mozilla Firefox Mascot and bring it here
• Social Media – We decided to create presences in several popular social media sites. You can be a fan of the Mozilla Philippines Community in Facebook (http://www.facebook.com/mozillaphilippines) and follow in Twitter (@MozillaPH)
  • All bloggers in the community are encouraged to create a link to the Mozilla Philippines Community site
• Campus Reps – Campus Reps leaders Ren-Ren, Joell, and Jun shared their plans of coordinating with schools. Among them is the Colegio De San Pedro, where they are coordinating w/ Sir Francis
  • The email address campusreps@mozillaphilippines.org has been created and may be ready by next week.
• Localization – The main consenus is a “Translate-athon” activity where we crowdsource the localization/translation of Firefox in an event
• Evangelism – It was suggested that a project where we give “Powered by Firefox” stickers/posters to internet cafes that carry Firefox as their main browser. This is very interesting and may need some participation of Mozilla.

Looks like a busy and promising year for the community.

The Mozilla Campus Reps Team, led by Ren-Ren Gabas and Jun Barrun, visited Angelicum College in Quezon City last December to spread the word on the Mozilla Campus Reps program.

Ren-Ren shared this very interesting anecdote on Firefox usage in the Philippines:

One of the most curious comments that we received was from a elementary school-aged girl who lingered about the booth, and told me, “Meron kami niyan sa bahay. Sabi kasi ni mama, mas maganda gamitin ang Firefox.” (“We have Firefox at home, because Mom said that it is better to use.“)

Wow! Proof that mother knows best, huh?

For more information on the Angelicum College visit, hop to Ren-Ren’s blog post.

The Five Years of Firefox in Manila event was held yesterday and it was a great launchpad for the Mozilla Philippines Community.

I, along with Community coordinators Ren-Ren Gabas, Allan Caeg, and Mozilla Campus Reps from Colegio San Juan de Letran Calamba led by Joell Lapitan, came at 12 noon to make the necessary preparations at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM) in Makati City. Since the event was scheduled at 3:15, we had enough time to iron out the logistics and event flow. Also, we had great support from the AIM folks in the event management.

People started trickling in at 2:15 and the heart snacks were served. In line with the Philippine community theme, we had Filipino delicacies for the food. (Yum!)

We started a but late at 3:30 with around 70 people in attendance. The program proper was kicked off by Allan Caeg, who had a short welcome message and showed the “Light the World with Firefox” video:

Ren-Ren Gabas then had a short talk about the Mozilla Campus Reps initiative and I then followed up with the Five Years of Firefox in Manila talk and introduced the official Mozilla Philippines Community website and invited the people join.

Globe Telecom also showcased the Web2Mobile add-one where Globe subscribers can send SMS and MMS via the Firefox, with a very intuitive interface. This demo drew a lot of “ooooh”‘s from the audience. On a side note, the app will be launched soon and this was a project by a couple of Computer Science students from the University of the Philippines – Diliman. Then came the most awaited portion: the raffle.

I think most of the Firefox fans who came to the event really wanted the special edition Firefox shirts we gave away, but we could only give out five shirts. Maybe we can have more in the future. But nonetheless, no one went home empty handed as we gave everyone little Firefox goodies.

If you ask me, the event was able to introduce the Mozilla Philippines Community in a nice way and it was able to make people look forward to the next set of events.

A huge thanks to everyone who came and those who helped, I hope you will be a part of the Mozilla Philippines Community moving forward.

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Here are some photos of the event, courtesy of Aja Lapus and Joell Lapitan:

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One final thing: props to my fellow bloggers/Firefox fans who were there:

• Juned Sonido
• Jane Uymatiao
• Rochelle Sy Chua
• Ia Lucero
• Eugene Alvin Villar
• JC John Sese Cuneta
• Marvin Beduya
• JP Manahan