Mozilla Add-ons Community Blog
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New York City Add-ons Meetup Wrap-up

5 responses

IMG00014-20090818-1806Last week’s Add-ons Meetup in New York City turned out to be really great. The attendees ranged from the “curious about add-ons” to developers & companies that are hard-core add-on developers. It was a perfect blend of participants and it allowed us to be extremely flexible in how & what information was presented.

While we had a set agenda for the event, we kept the event very loose encouraging participation at any point. We wanted attendees to be able to get immediate feedback and feel engaged and from the level of interaction, that was definitely the right choice (Thanks Fraser!). We also made sure to have food & drink for attendees as a full belly always helps keep developers focused.

IMG00019-20090818-2026Mozilla’s Justin Scott gave excellent overviews of Developer.AMO & Collections and fielded a number of questions about these two initiatives. Developer.AMO was a hot topic since we were actively looking for greater detail on what information is important to developers. The consensus was that more metrics is a good thing & providing greater detail in terms of data or mechanisms that could help developers better gauge conversions would greatly help in managing their add-ons. Justin also discussed opening up multiple release channels for add-ons that would allow developers to support multiple versions of an add-on in a single listing.

IMG00017-20090818-2025Rey Bango followed, presenting on the recent Contributions project which allows developers to request financial support for their project. More than one developer expressed a strong desire to have a “subscription-based” contribution mechanism added to Contributions essentially providing a mechanism for “pay-as-you-go” type of services. Also, along the lines of other marketplaces, there was a suggestion of being allowed to offer a free and a premium version of an add-on. The multiple release channels mentioned above could be a way of making this happen.

IMG00016-20090818-2023Last but not least, Shaun Salzberg of Drop.io gave an excellent demo of the Drop.io add-on and service. The Drop.io add-on is really one of those extensions that pushes the limits of JavaScript and it was exciting to see what this team had done. It was especially important to show those developers who are just getting their feet wet in the Mozilla platform the power available to them.

We’d like to thank the team at AdaptiveBlue for their help. Apart from providing the venue, they helped to spread the word locally and generate plenty of buzz in the add-on community.

Our next meetup will be in Miami, FL on September 15th. If you’re in the area, please be sure to stop by. Entry is free and we’d love to get your feedback.

5 comments on “New York City Add-ons Meetup Wrap-up”

  1. Fraser wrote on

    This was a great event – thank you to Mozilla for pulling it together and for the local add-on community for supporting it with full force.

    We were spoiled to have Justin and Rey fly in and participate in the event. Their attendance really showed just how committed Mozilla is to the add-on community!

    If you’re local to Miami and involved with add-ons the meetup on Sept 15 is something you must attend.

    Fraser

  2. Vin wrote on

    I attended the event and it was absolutely worthwhile. It’s great to meet some of the faces behind Mozilla and AMO. Please swing back to NYC for another addon meetup.

  3. rbango wrote on

    Glad you liked it Vin. It was a pleasure to meet you there and hopefully we can hold another one soon.

  4. Chuck Baker wrote on

    Any plans for a meet-up on the west side? Phoenix is really nice in the winter. [/hint]

  5. rbango wrote on

    @Chuck: Once we’re done with these 3 events, we’re going to see when we’d like to have some meetups in other cities. Phoenix is a great city so it’ll be considered for sure. 🙂