Reps/SIGs/Evangelism Reps/Conference participation/Camp JS Australia

Warning: With effect from 1st September 2023, the Mozilla Reps program was closed and activities ended.

Conference details

Camp JS Australia, a hack retreat/unconference in the Gold Coast hinterland.

Your goals

I was hoping to get a few people interested in hacking on Firefox OS apps, and spread the general mission of what we're trying to do with the project.

Audience type and size

About 120 participants, most of them JavaScript developers. A surprising number of Ruby developers, and a few designers wanting to learn JavaScript better.

My workshop on Firefox OS was, according to the organizer, the most packed session. Whoa!

Mozilla's participation at this event

I gave a 30 minute high-level intro to Firefox to all of the attendees, and then followed up with a one-hour deep dive workshop into building an app and taking advantage of the tools/simulator.

Audience reactions

To be honest, I wasn't expecting the enthusiastic reaction that I received. I assumed because Australia hasn't had a Firefox OS launch yet that developers would be lukewarm about building apps for other regions or hacking on the devices over the weekend. But, developers made some cool demos and a few submit apps to the marketplace. Yay!

Evening event/party

Everyone hacked into the evening. Then there was drinking. Mostly I was helping people with their apps, drinking games aren't fun to me anyways.

Materials (eg. slides, presentations, audio clips, photos etc…)

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/3zlz8fxa2spza7w/e_1fyLKmRD

Other notable presentations

The "Cowboy Jukebox" demo - multiplayer geolocation instrument with Firefox OS devices.

Other open projects attending (if applicable)

Thoughtworks did some cool hardware hacking, but I don't know that it was all open. Not sure. Was neat though.

Organization rating (1: bad - 10: excellent)

9/10 - the format gave just enough structure to get people going/hacking. I was actually impressed with how little direction the developers needed, they were all intrisically motivated to make stuff.

Overall feel of the event

Overall feel was

This event helped us…

Several apps submit to the marketplace and a lot of Aussies wondering when they can buy themselves a ZTE Open to play with. Great exposure for Firefox OS considering this wasn't a launch market at the time.

Was it worth it? Should we participate again?

Heck yes. This event attracts developers who look forward to playing with new things, especially with regard to hardware.

Connections

Not anyone organizationally speaking, but I do have developers following up with me to try and follow through with their apps.