Anyone that’s been doing add-on development for awhile is sure to relate when I say that the add-on arena is aggressively expanding in a very positive way. We’re starting to see a greater number of business ventures appear on the scene devoting a huge amount of time and resources into building top-notch add-ons and extending the power of Firefox for Mozilla users.
As further validation that add-on development is a viable business, the first annual Add-on-Con Conference has been announced. The conference, hosted by add-on developers OneRiot, AdaptiveBlue & Sxipper is the first event specifically designed to bring together developers who are interested in improving their capabilities to produce professional add-ons. Co-promoter, Robert Reich of OneRiot, explains his motivation for organizing the event:
As the founder of a company that leverages add-ons (OneRiot.com) I felt our community was missing a voice, a place where we could meet each other, work together to influence the platform vendors and find opportunities to help each other grow. I reached out to AdaptiveBlue and
Sxipper who both agreed and the first Add-on-Con is scheduled for December 11, 2008. We have lined up two great keynotes plus a group of our peers to kick start the conversation about business models,
marketing techniques and best practice in add-on development.
As expected, Mozilla is very involved in this event acting not only as a Platinum sponsor but participating along with partners in both the business and development tracks. Experts such as Mark Finkle of Mozilla, add-on guru Brian King and Bijan Marashi of Xoopit will be providing focused sessions covering Mozilla add-on development best practices and business case studies. In addition, Mike Shaver, Mozilla’s Vice President of Engineering, will be giving the closing keynote address for the conference. With over 6,000 add-ons being hosted on AMO (http://addons.mozilla.org) and over 1.5 million add-on downloads occurring daily, it goes without saying that Mozilla provides the most mature and extensible add-on platform available today and we’re looking forward to helping add-on developers learn more about it.
Registration for the conference is now open and we urge you to attend this great event. The Add-On-Con will be a great opportunity for developers to further explore how to take advantage of the add-on space.
Jud Valeski
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