MozCamp Europe 2009, Prague – an amazing Mozilla community get-together

After some crazy weeks of preparing my move to Berlin (and some crazy days of continuous searching of a flat-room) I finally had a little of time to write-up about the great events which took place 3 weeks ago in Prague. First of all, I would like to thank William, Irina and to the other people involved in the organization.

Mozilla European Camp 2009 (Prague, Czech Republic) was an inspiring and amazing event, better than the first edition (much more contributors and a very relaxed and friendly atmosphere).
I was very happy to meet there, for the first time, people (with whom I worked on some Mozilla projects) such as Mary and other Mozilla community members as Kerim and Bogo.
One day before MozCamp I participated at Mozilla DevDay, an event specially held for people from Prague and around, where I also participated at some sessions. Among all sessions, I was focused especially on OpenWeb Workshop, where we discussed about different groups who are making the Web and how we could collaborate with them in order to build and maintain the Web open (since that is a very complex and, at the same time, interesting topic, I’ll blog about it in the following posts).

Another interesting keynote was the one of Glyn Moody, who made a short incursion in the browser’s beginning and showed how the web have been open since the beginning. Then, he explained how important is Mozilla for the future of the web and how we, the Mozilla community, could not only make the web a better place but also inspire other people and spread the collaboration and participation spirit. I think that this style of combining history and the future can make a lot of people to meditate and be aware of the importance of free software and the freedom of the web.
Maybe this is the kind of presentation that could inspire us to spread the Mozilla Mission at various events.

The second day, at MozCamp Europe, Mark Surman presented Drumbeat, another Mozilla project for the next year. Drumbeat is a set of advocacy events and campaigns which aim to involve more and more people in spreading Mozilla Mission and advocating for an open web. Here is the Drumbeat wiki page, Drumbeat presentation and a set of posts on Mark Surman’s blog, related to the project.
Later on, Mark and Chelsea led a very interesting and productive session about how we can get involved in Drumbeat and which kind of activities we could organize in order to involve more and more people in building the open web.
Here are some examples of what different groups thought during the session.
During the second day, I participated more at the Advocacy track’s sessions and I saw the great (and funny work) of Tobbi from ArtZilla and also, how we can reach more people on community marketing and ideas about how we can celebrate the 5th anniversary of Firefox.

Last, but not least, a big thanks to Patrick Finch for leading the Advocacy Track .

I can’t finish this post without mentioning the funniest moment at Mozilla Camp, Chris Hoffman assuming the role of Chris Ballmer with I LOVE THIS COMMUNITY.
I said, I love this community? Yes … I love it and I am happy to be part of. See you at the next MozCamp!

Photo credits: Ludovic Hirlimann (CC-BY-NC licence).