Categories: Announcements General

Coming soon: Support Firefox Day 4

Support Firefox day is an event that the contributors with the Firefox Support project (support.mozilla.com or SUMO) hold to introduce new people to working with Support, help people with any questions they may have and have a little fun.

The next Support Firefox Day will focus on localization of the Support project. Primarily, in this case, localization is translation of support articles into a number of languages for our users worldwide. Firefox is available in over 30 languages and with so many users, support documentation is also needed in all these languages. We are also leading a discussion with the SUMO community about Mozilla’s goals for 2010 as Mitchell  has been blogging about recently.  Even though the discussion is about Mozilla as a whole, it’s important that everyone who’s helped with SUMO or looks to start helping with SUMO participates — you’re all members of the greater Mozilla community.  Whether you work with the knowledge base, help on the forums or are active on Live Chat, we’d like you to join in and offer your input during this roundtable discussion.

While the final schedule is still being worked out, we’re hoping to work the following into each three hour slot:

  • Presentations on how to localize SUMO articles, finding articles that need to be translated and how to keep up to date with changes and get changes approved by others in your locale.
  • A roundtable on Mozilla goals for 2010 and how user support and our contributors ties in with those goals.
  • An open meet-and-greet. This will give you all a chance to find other people interested in Firefox Support in your language and coordinate your efforts. This includes getting translation questions answered by a locale leader.  Some of our most active contributors will also be available to answer questions about SUMO in general.

Due to the global nature of localization, rather than having one large event that spans a full day as we have had in the past, we’ll be having a few smaller events (about 3 hours long) with a slot for our Asian contributors, one for our European contributors and one for those in the Americas. Primarily, the event will take place on Friday, November 21st, 2008 in your local time zone. (Of course, while the slots were designed with certain locales in mind, they’re open to everyone; discussion will be in English.)

Our three sessions are at the following times:

  • Friday Nov 21st, 5:00 AM GMT (2 PM Tokyo time, 6 AM Central European time, Thursday 9 PM PST)
  • Friday Nov 21st, Noon GMT (9 PM Tokyo time, 1 PM Central European time, Friday 4 AM PST)
  • Friday Nov 21st, 7 PM GMT (Saturday 4 AM Tokyo time, 8 PM Central European time, 11 AM PST)

We’ll be hosting the event, as we always do from our Support Firefox Day page where all the information will be posted as it comes out.  We’re asking you to start spreading the word in your various communities and among your friends and get the word out.  We’re also looking for help putting the event together and for some volunteers to lead sessions (especially in Asia).  If you’re interested in user support or would like to help us, please respond in this forum thread.

Thanks and I hope to see you on the 21st!