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10 days of Mozillians: meet Melek!

Firefox is turning 10! In order to celebrate, meet 10 Mozillians from all over the world.
They share with us how they feel about Mozilla and the Web : their memories, their daily life as a Mozillian, their expectations for the next 10 years and more.

Melek Jebnoun

“Safety, diversity and accessibility to all!”

Melek Jebnoun

Hi Melek!

First of all, would you mind introduce yourself shortly and give us the three keywords that define you the best?

My name is Melek Jebnoun. I’m a 26-year-old Tunisian computer engineer. My keywords are OpenPower, WomenPower and trust. What I like? I would say challenges, sharing, to please people with surprises and small gestures – I know, weird! – shopping and chocolate ice cream!

How and when did you discover the Web?

I would say the Web and I had a “superficial relationship” at first. I discovered the Web because of my studies – I graduated in IT – and I used it to do some researches for my studies.

The Tunisian revolution in 2010 opened up my eyes on the many faces of the Web ! I discovered the power of social networks, of digital media, of blogs… That’s the moment when I started being fascinated by the Web, and I started seeing things differently.

I discovered Mozilla a few months later, which gave me a whole new vision on the Internet… the open Web ! I’ve been surprised to discover how cool the Web may be. In addition to my studies I started writing technical articles about my country in a news website, http://www.webdo.tn, and my relationship with the Web evolved and grew up as it became a dependence and my first resource in my everyday life.

If you had one thing to say to the world about the Internet and its potential, what would it be?

Explore it as much as you can! And don’t lose any occasion to benefit from it for your business, daily life…

When you realize that without Internet and its help, the Tunisian revolution wouldn’t have spread and possibly wouldn’t have given good results, you measure how huge the impact of Internet is!

Let’s talk about you and Mozilla furthermore! If you had one word or sentence to describe Mozilla, what would it be?

Mozilla makes sure of your freedom, feeds your passion and fills you with love with others!

How and why did you start contributing to Mozilla?

I was very involved in a university club about open-source and free softwares. That’s how I started my immersion into the “open” world. I was lucky to meet Rafik – the initiator of Mozilla Tunisia – at an IT event. He asked me to join the Mozilla adventure. It was my first concrete experience of community and non-profit work! It was a shock, you know, that feeling like “God why and where all this was hidden before?” I felt like I had been living in a cave for many years before!

We started the Mozilla Tunisia experience from scratch with the help of two other contributors. Working during late nights on the website, on contents and organizing the Firefox 4 party.

Those are amazing souvenirs! I think that launching this community is the personal and collective accomplishment I’m the most proud of until now!

What do you like the most about what you’re doing with Mozilla?

What I like the most is the expression of people when you tell them it’s free, that the documentation is open and that you may hack it by yourself! Especially the reaction of young people, priceless! I love to meet amazing people and new friends from all around the world, I love this “other face” of Mozilla!

Do you have a Mozilla-related anecdote you’d like to share with us?

The idea to launch Mozilla Tunisia wouldn’t have seen the light of day if the digital newspaper I worked for hadn’t made a mistake and written “the *Mozzarella* Firefox navigator” in one of its articles – the damages of spellchecker!

When Rafik saw it he thought it was time to start a community and make people aware about Firefox.

And what’s your best memory with your fellow community members?

The Mozilla Tunisia tour in 2012! It was one of the best six months I’ve ever had! We visited many universities, met a lot of people, recruited new Mozillians… I think it was one of the major things Mozilla Tunisia did and it strengthened our team a lot.

Some employees and Mozillians from all around the world took part in events within the tour, we had amazing moments with Tunisians students and super funny moments at night!

What do you think makes your local Mozilla community unique?

Members differences!

We are a community with a lot of different personalities and ages… I love this mixture, it makes the exchanges very rich and funny sometimes!

What about the future? What do you expect from Mozilla in the years to come?

Free and accessible resources to use the web the way I want, especially in a secure way.

I love the fact that Mozilla offers Internet users a lot of tools so they may choose what they want! The fight for security and privacy is also such a wonderful cause to me. I really admire Mozilla for fighting for this.

And new experiences in new fields with new people! I think the under 15 year-old world and their web experience may be more explored!

And so what do you wish for Mozilla?

Success, diversity and many many many contributors!

What do you wish for the Web?

Safety, diversity and accessibility to all!

Thank you Melek for your dynamism!

One comment on “10 days of Mozillians: meet Melek!”

  1. Ioana Chiorean ( wrote on

    Melek is such a wonderful mozillian! A true leader, hard working Rep!