Mozilla Philippines attended the Mozilla Asia Camp 2011 at Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia last November 18-21, 2010. Mozilla Asia Camp is a gathering of the most active contributors of the Mozilla Asia community, and was the first Mozilla Camp held in the region. The event lasted only two days, but it was such an intense weekend of presentations, discussions, brainstorms, workshops, hackathons, BOF, impromptu gatherings centered around the Mozilla projects, with a special focus on Asia.

The Philippine delegation was led by Eusebio “Jun” Barrun, our local Community Manager. He was accompanied by Joell Lapitan, Allan Caeg, Robert DC Reyes, Juned Sunido and Renren Gabas.

“We expect to meet new friends, as well as HQ guys,” Jun said. “We want to network with our Mozillians and learn new things about Mozilla.”

Joell added, “My most unforgettable moment was the sharing with Mitchell Baker during one of the breakout sessions when we were asked about how we became part of Mozilla.”

Some fellow kababayans who were part of Mozilla were also there, notably Grace Jimenez and William Quiviger. Will previously visited the Philippines for a meet-up at the UP Ayala TechnoHub last August.

The delegation was most impressed with the new “Boot2Gecko” technology where a phone was demo’d to use HTML5 technologies. In addition, the Mozilla Developer Network (MDN) was also introduced as an authoritative replacement for the W3Schools site. MDN is an online resource where developers can find tutorials and references about web technologies.

Other technologies and programs that were highlighted included the Web Forward initiative, Test Drivers program, and the Aurora and Beta Tester programs.

As the delegates returned from the Mozilla Asia Camp, some of them have already programs in mind for 2012. “For me, it will be about localization, developers and a solid action for recruitment,” Jun concludes.

Foxkeh. G-Fox. Foxmosa. Kit. Kumi.

Those names may not be familiar to a lot of people, but for Mozilla Firefox fans, they are quite popular. They are the local mascots for Mozilla Firefox in different countries all over the world.

Here’s the good news: that group will be joined by the Philippine mascot!

Created by comic artist Martin Jimenez, the uber-cute mascot is wearing the salakot, a traditional Filipino hat, and a traditional scarf.  The look is very reminiscent of Katipuneros, revolutionary Filipino freedom fighters in the 19th century. This is a nice touch, since Mozilla’s mission is to “promote openness, innovation and opportunity on the web.” Nice touch there by Martin.

However, the little critter doesn’t have a name yet. This is where we need your help.

We’re launching a “Name the Mozilla Philippines Mascot” contest. To join, just comment on this post with your name entry plus one sentence why you chose that name. Don’t make it profound and deep– we just want to simply know what inspired you for the name you came up with. Be creative!

The winner will be judged by a panel from the Mozilla Philippines Community, plus Martin Jimenez. 

The prize? A special Mozilla Firefox gift pack, plus world-wide renown for being the awesome person to name the Mozilla Philippines mascot. Ain’t that sweet?

In the last post, I said that there will be a big announcement in the coming Manila leg of the Mozilla Firefox 4 Philippine launch events. The big announcement is that we will announce what the name of the mascot will be.

* Please take note that we will accept multiple entries from each person.

For questions, feel free to comment on this post.

Mozilla Firefox was the topic in one of the columns of the Manila Standard. Columnist Chin Wong shares why he sticks with Mozilla Firefox despite the improvements in the competition:

As a long-time Firefox user, I have avoided the Chrome bandwagon for a number of reasons. Even if Firefox is not quite as fast, it has a rich set of features that I have grown to depend on, including extensions that enable me to customize the browser as I see fit. Also, the latest beta of Firefox 4 is pretty darned fast – though it is starting to look a bit too much like Chrome for my taste.

Chin also shares a lot of nice insights about Mozilla’s mission and Firefox’s place in the internet. A great read– Mozilla fans should definitely take a look at the article.

The AMA Comuputer University will be holding their Web & IT Summit 2010 on November 24-26. The Mozilla Philippines community will be represented by Eusebio Barrun, Jr. and Ren² Gabas. They will speak on the local usage of Mozilla products, some history and the impact of Mozilla on the Open Web, future directions and ways to get Mozilla, join the community and contribute support.

After the successful meet-up a few weeks ago (where we saw the very first Mozilla Firefox Pizza), it’s time to share some of the key points of the community meeting:

• The Mozilla Philippines Community will be at the upcoming Philippine Youth Congress for Information Technology (or Y4IT Conference) this September. I’ll be having a speaking slot at September 16, 2010 and I’ll be talking about Open Web Technologies. Mozilla is also going to be one of the sponsors of the event, which is the biggest IT event in the Philippines to date (an estimated 20,000 college students will be attending the 4-day congress).
• The efforts on the Mozilla Student Reps will continue under the leadership of Joell Lapitan and Jun Barrun. The focus will be on getting more schools in easy to target areas, such as Metro Manila and in the Laguna province. The meeting also attacted first-time volunteers from AMA and De La Salle Canlubang.
• There’s also effort in supporting global Mozilla initiatives in our locale. The Mozilla Philippines Community is promoting sites like Mozilla Drumbeat, Mozilla Hacks, and Rock Your Firefox at the Top 10 Emerging Influential Blogs 2010. While each of the sites a long shot to make it the Top 10 at this point, the sites still got some exposure in the Philippines.
• Localization is also picking up, albeit gradually. The localization for Tagalog is now at 15%, up from 6% a couple of months ago.

Not included in the meeting, the Mozilla Philippines Community is now part of the 2010 Software Freedom Day event in the Philippines.

If anyone is interested in having the Mozilla Philippines Community in their respective events, feel free to drop us a line.

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 Philippines Community website now has  a new home!

Thanks to MSWEB Network Solutions, we now have a better web host that has more features than our previous hosting provider. This transition will enable our website to be more engaging and social.

After the success of the Five Years of Firefox in Manila! event last month, I’d like to keep the momentum and invite Mozilla Firefox fans in the Philippines to join the official mailing list for the Mozilla Philippines Community.

The mailing list was created by Mozilla’s Gen Kanai (Director of Asia Business Development) and the list is for discussion of Firefox and Mozilla technologies in the Philippines.  The list also aims to be the communication hub for localization and compatibility issues here in the Philippines. The list will also be the initial place of quick updates for offline and online in the community.

So if you’re a Filipino Mozilla Firefox fan, web designer, web standards enthusiast, blogger, or a student interested in open web technologies in the browser space, I again invite you to join the Mozilla Philippines Community mailing list.

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