DeveloperDays

What are Developer Days?

Once upon a time, Netscape/AOL used to host informal gatherings of Mozilla developers for day-long miniconferences. People would talk about what they were working on, get help with problems, put faces to IRC nicks, and debate the various potential futures of the project.

These "developer days" were good.

And now they're back.

About these pages

• This page: background and description of most-current Developer Day activities.
• This page's talk page: discussion of general DD issues and thoughts (activities, infrastructure, general stuff that doesn't fit elsewhere)
• DeveloperDays/MountainViewMarch2007: sign up to attend, propose topics that you'd like to discuss, for the March 25th Developer Day in Mountain View, find details about the event schedule
• DeveloperDays/BostonMarch2007: sign up to attend, propose topics that you'd like to discuss, for the March 30th Developer Day in Boston, find details about the event schedule
• Firefox/Mozilla conference in Japan
  • Tokyo, Japan, 2008Nov: CY08 Firefox developer conference got a big success attended by over 150 Firefox fans. If you missed the chance to attend it, you would be able to enjoy watching videos of Mozilla's hot topics including Fennec and Mozilla Labs on an url.
  • Tokyo, Japan, 2007 June: sign up to attend, propose topics that you'd like to discuss, for the June 16th Developer Day in Tokyo, find details about the event schedule
  • Mozilla 24, 2007 Sept: We're conducting a Developer Day on Saturday, Sept. 15th in conjunction with Mozilla Japan's worldwide, 24 hour conference. Details to be shared shortly, but we'll have a venue in the SF Bay Area and will broadcast the sessions online. Sign up to attend and propose discussion topics -- we want your feedback!
• DeveloperDays/ParisJune2007: sign up to attend, propose topics that you'd like to discuss, for the June 23rd Developer Day in Paris, find details about the event schedule
• DeveloperDays/TorontoSept2008: sign up to attend, propose topics that you'd like to discuss, for the September 15th & 16th Developer Day(s) in Toronto, find details about the event schedule
• DeveloperDays/OtherLocations: where should we do the next ones? Put your wheres and whys (important!) in here!

When and Where

The first of the modern-era Developer Days was held in December, 2006 in Tokyo, Japan Firefox Developers Conference 2006

The first pair of modern-era Developer Days in the US was held the last week of March, 2007. Specifically:

West Coast: Sunday, March 25, 2007, Mozilla Corporation HQ, Mountain View, CA.

East Coast: Friday, March 30, 2007, Hotel @ MIT, Boston, MA.

Recent DeveloperDays:

Toronto: September 15 & 16, 2008, @ Seneca

But that's really far from Europe/Asia/Africa/New Zealand/South America/Antarctica!

Hard to argue with that! The only thing harder than finding good vegan food in rural Texas is choosing physical locations for Mozilla-related events. We're starting with these two spots because they will make logistics easier, and restarting this fine tradition has enough complexity and sufficient unknowns as it is.

These are the first, not the last. We don't know how often we'll have them, but it'll sure be more frequently than every 5 years, and we'd like to do them several times a year, and in many different places. The format may well need to be different to make sense in other places, but we'll figure that out as we get closer to those. (Many Europeans will be having something suspiciously like a Developer Day at FOSDEM at the end of February, and there was recently a Firefox Developers Conference 2006 held by Mozilla Japan in Tokyo, so things aren't as North American-centricly dire as they might appear.)

These Developer Days are...

• for active Mozilla developers;
• loosely structured and very much attendee-guided in terms of format and topic;
• limited in size, which means that, quite possibly, not everyone who wants to come will be able to fit (see above, though, about these not being the last);
• entirely appropriate for grabbing a few people and holing up in a room to hack out a fix or extension;
• entirely appropriate for presenting works in progress, especially as they may affect other developers;
• going to be recorded/broadcast/minuted as best we're able;
• going to be a lot of fun, if we have any say in the matter.

These Developer Days are not...

• aimed at people who want to learn about Mozilla development (those sorts of folks are welcome in the project and community, and helping them get up to speed is certainly worth some investment, but that's not what this set of events is about);
• a place to advertise your company's product or project, though if you are an active Mozilla developer you can certainly come and join discussion of things that are relevant to your product or project;
• fully-funded endeavours, so we won't be able to pay for travel for everyone who might like to attend (even subject to the limited spaces mention above); we may be able to help with travel expenses for an extremely limited number of people, if there are key developers who have no other way of arranging such things;
• set in stone, though we would prefer to make changes based on experience with these first two rather than debate potentialities before-hand; please try to keep your suggestions concrete, focused, and respectful of the fact that many different people will have different goals in their attendance, and may not consider your Obviously Most Important thing to be as important to them!