Tomcat's Blog

Hallo!

wie bereits angekuendigt, findet am 17.Juni der naechste Mozilla Stammtisch in München statt !

und zwar haben wir einen Tisch reserviert:

am Mittwoch, den 17. Juni,

ab 18:00 Uhr

im Augustinerkeller in der Arnulfstraße in Bahnhofsnähe (www.augustinerkeller.de).

Wenn noch jemand teilnehmen moechte, bitte kurz per E-Mail direkt an [email protected] Bescheid, wenn und mit wie vielen Personen ihr kommen wollt!

Vielen Dank und viele Gruesse !

Bis naechste Woche dann !

– Carsten / Tomcat

Hi,

so back from the Mozilla Meetup in Sweden !

A big thanks to the guys from Bwin and especially to Patrick for organization of this Meetup ! It was a evening with great talks from “Mr. Sumo” David Tenser about the support.mozilla.com Project, William about Community Marketing and the great Robert Nyman and also from me about getting involved into Mozilla QA.

Beside the interesting talks we had some great conversation with Community Members and i hope that we got on this evening a lot of new Community Members for the Swedish Community and QA, SUMO, Addons and Marketing.

My presentation slides can be found here : https://wiki.mozilla.org/images/c/c4/Stockholm-meetup-qa.pdf

Hi,

its time for the next Mozilla Meetup in Munich !
We plan to do this at June 17 starting about 6pm local time.

So when you are interested to join please let me know via email: [email protected]

thanks !

– Tomcat

Hi All,

here a little recap of the first MozillaMeetup that has happened in Munich on May 14th.

Overall 5 people got together on that evening in Munich and i think for the first meetup ever it was a great success.
We have met in the Augustinerkeller in Munich, a great location and one of Munich’s traditional Beeergarden. So no hacking (not even wifi connection 🙂 and just talking “unplugged” 🙂

The meetup went from 6pm to approx. 9:30 pm, so 3,5 hours full of talk around Mozilla, Firefox, Thunderbird and more !

2 guys were already active in the Community and the other 2 guys were interested in Mozilla and about ways to get involved and to hear more how “Mozilla” works.

We had a lot of great talks around different topics – like how Mozilla Code Changes works (we explained how the review process works) and a lot of questions around Firefox and Thunderbird.

Steffen and Tosha were a great help to show ways to get involved from coding to working in newsgroups to forums !
Also it was personally a great experience to connect Mozilla Fans and Contributors here in my local Bavarian Area. Before the Meetup is was not quite sure if and how many Community Members living here in my area, but now i feel very great about that experience and about connecting the local guys here !

It was great to connect local community members and to share ideas/Feedack and to talk to them in real life and to also answer questions form people who are not so familiar with the Mozilla Project. To share the enthusiasm about Mozilla is a wonderful thing !

Not to mention that the 2 guys who joined us will now working as active community members and they will take a look into bugzilla, sumo etc

We will now do this meetup a monthly base and the next Munich meetup is planned for June 17.

But this is not only a Munich thing thing 🙂 There are anywhere Mozilla Fans and Community Members aroudn the world !

With this first experience i encourage everyone to setup own meetups, its not that hart as it sounds, its basically:

-> Posting a plan/idea about a meetup in your favorite forum/spreadfirefox and set a date as proposal
-> Collect Feedback and get a idea how many people might come
-> Set a date and location, like a restaurant/bar
-> thats all 🙂

and trust me , every meetup is worth the time of setup and let me know when i or william quiver from the Mozilla Marketing Team can help. Connecting the Community is a wonderful thing and we have such a awesome Community ! Talking to the Guys of the Munich Meetup was worth every second of planning and organizing this!

thanks !

– Tomcat

Hi,

as some of you know, before i got hired by Mozilla is was since several years Mozilla Community Member and a lot of great people helped to get started, to find the docs to get started and answered my questions in the beginning and helped me to find my way in the “Mozilla Universe”.

I have also now as Mozilla Employee a lot of contact to the Community as example on IRC, Conferences like Cebit/MAOW and i always get a lot of Questions about Mozilla and how to get involved – people are very interested to be part of the fantastic Community!

I was invited to join one of the regular OpenOffice Meetup in Munich (thanks again Florian!) and i found it very impressive, about 12 OpenOffice Community Member got together to discuss and talk about OpenOffice in a very informal atmosphere (no sessions, no agenda, just getting together).

And i was thinking that this would be a great thing to have such meetups also for the Mozilla Community. And so i developed the Idea of the “MozillaMeetups” (if someone has a more creative naming, send me a mail 🙂 – A get together open for everyone – for people who are interested to contribute to Mozilla (Hack/Test/Spread the word/etc) and also is open to people who have questions about Mozilla.

The Idea of this Meetups is to connect Mozilla Community Members in local areas (like the Munich Area where i live). And i think this meetups can be organized all over the world. The Mozilla Community and Firefox Fans and even Mozilla Employee’s are spread over the world, so if you are interested in organizing such a Meetup in your local area, feel free!

So how does a typical meetup look like:

* They can happening during the week, as example on Wednesday
* The Location is a restaurant or other location where you can put tables together
* Starting as example a 6pm and plan to be there 3-4 hours
* People can join/leave whenever they want and everyone pay his own bill
* As this meetups happen in restaurants, people can eat&drink during the meetup
* People chat on the table about various topics, new features, how to get involved, how to start with Mozilla….there is no agenda, everyone can chat on the topic they want

So its very simple to organize such a Meetup ! We plan to do such a Meetup (the “prototype” 🙂 in Munich/Germany in May and i hope there will be a lot more everywhere ! 🙂

I have created a Project on Spreadfirefox.com – and if you have feedback, feel free to comment in the Spreadfirefox Group or send me an email: [email protected] !

Also in addition to the Mozilla Meetups i work together with Florian Effenberger from the OpenOffice Project on something that we call “OpenSourceMeetups” (we are working on a more creative name 🙂 Idea is to bring OpenSource Projects together in a local region like as example the greater Munich Area and to Connect People that are interested in getting involved into OpenSource.

It should be a way to connect OpenSource Projects, to exchange knowledge and to maybe work together on local events.
As Prototype and best-practice showcase we plan the event in the Munich Area (for those who are not familiar with Germany, Munich is the High-Tech Area of Germany).

We have so far we have no set date or location for this OpenSourceMeetups, but i will blog here and you can also find more information -> here

Feedback and suggestions are welcome 🙂 !

– Tomcat

Hi,

Firefox 3.1 Beta 3 is now available for Download ! For Information about this Beta and the Download Links can be found here !

Also there will be a Beta 3 Testday this Friday (see the Announcement here)!

There are now both a facebook group and a twitter account for Firefox betas: http://twitter.com/FirefoxBeta and http://www.facebook.com/group.php?gid=54860359570&ref=ts

Thanks !

– Tomcat

CeBIT is still very awesome and i think we do a great job!

Saturday will be a great day, we expect a lot more users and are happy to answer all the Questions about Mozilla, Firefox and Thunderbird !

Tim Reily will also speak at the OpenSource Forum about “Getting involved into the Mozilla Project”. You can also watch this Session via a live-stream!

When:

Saturday March 7th at 2:30pm

What:

Mozilla will describe how you can have impact on improving the web, and contributing to a better browser experience for 230 Million browser users around the world.
Sharing the core values of the Mozilla project and why people participate, Mozilla will explain how you can get involved in a wide variety of ways; including non-programming areas. Find out about projects which are looking for help.

There will be also a live stream available here: http://streaming.linux-magazin.de/en/program_cos09.htm

Don’t miss this Talk !

– Tomcat

Hi!

We are currently at the CeBIT 2009 and its really great here. Mozilla is part of the Open Projects Lounge in Hall 6 (our booth is at Hall 6 – F50).

Also Mozilla will have 2 Talks in the Open Source Forum !
Today’s talk (04.03.2009, 14:30-15:15 o’clock) is about “Understanding Open Source & Mozilla. How You Can Leverage Firefox in Your Enterprise or Institution” with Chris Hofmann, Director of Special Projects.

Chris will explain what is behind Firefox’s amazing growth in browser market share over the last 5 years, and offers insight into what is
driving adoption in Enterprise and Institutional settings. He will share ideas on how to evaluate if Open Source is the right solution for your organization, and how institutions are gaining leverage in their businesses by using Open Source Software solutions.
Chris will describe how to set up pilot projects to identify and remove obstacles for successfully deploying Firefox.

There will be also a live stream available here: http://streaming.linux-magazin.de/en/program_cos09.htm

Don’t miss this Talk !

– Tomcat

Hi,

Mozilla will be this year at the CeBIT in Hanover, Germany !
(see the German Announcement here)

During the CeBIT (3. – 8. March) we will be in Hall 6 F50.

Also there will be 2 very interesting Sessions:

04.03.2009, 14:30-15:15 o’clock
Understanding Open Source & Mozilla. How You Can Leverage Firefox in Your Enterprise or Institution.

Speakers: Chris Hofmann (Dir. of Special Projects)

Chris will explain what is behind Firefox’s amazing growth in browser market share over the last 5 years, and offers insight into what is driving adoption in Enterprise and Institutional settings. He will share ideas on how to evaluate if Open Source is the right solution for your organization, and how institutions are gaining leverage in their businesses by using Open Source Software solutions. Chris will describe how to set up pilot projects to identify and remove obstacles for successfully deploying Firefox.

and

07.03.2009, 14:30-15:15 o’clock
Getting involved with the Mozilla Project

Speakers: Tim Riley (Dir. of Quality Assurance) and Chris Hofmann (Dir. of Special Projects)

Mozilla will describe how you can have impact on improving the web, and contributing to a better browser experience for 230 Million browser users around the world. Sharing the core values of the Mozilla project and why people participate, Mozilla will explain how you can get involved in a wide variety of ways; including non-programming areas. Find out about projects which are looking for help

See you at the CeBIT !

– Tomcat

so Rey has tagged me (thanks 😉 and here are the rules

1. Link to your original tagger(s) and list these rules in your post.
2. Share seven facts about yourself in the post.
3. Tag seven people at the end of your post by leaving their names and the links to their blogs.
4. Let them know they’ve been tagged.

7 Facts:

1. Before getting lost in the IT World I was trained from 1994 – 1997 as a bank official at a local German Savings Bank
2. My Nickname has nothing to do with the Tomcat Server 🙂 Its from the F-14 “Tomcat” U.S. Navy Plane  and i have actually visited a Tomcat on Board the USS Hornet
3. I like skiing, i learned this about 25 years ago and practiced this almost every year (also happy to live now in a skiing area 🙂
4. Moved around in Germany so far 14 times (12 times when i was a kid). So i have no kind of German Accent
5. Do you remember the Movie “The Great Escape” ? The famous motorbike sequence was actually filmed in the town where i live now !
6. I like strategic games, when i have time, i play games like “World in Conflict” online.
7. And if possible i visit the home matches from the local Ice hockey Team EV Pfronten Falcons – its not the NHL, but it makes a lot of fun to visit the Games ! GO FALCON’S !

Now finally my seven victims:

Stephen Donner – the WebMonster !

William quiviger – thanks again for a great Event in Barcelona !

Ted Mielczarek – i think the first Mozillian that i meet on my first onsite

Mike Morgan– Morgamic !

John O’Duinn – Because i still remember the night when we were working on a Lotus Notes Server 🙂

Justin Fitzhugh – because a great time during the Firefox Summit !

Jay Patel – the QA and now Marketing Rockstar !