He aquí un pequeño recuento de mis experiencias en el MozCamp:

MDN Hack Day

El MDN Hack Day ocurrió el día antes del MozCamp, un viernes. Se dieron varias charlas interesantes sobre apps, herramientas de desarrollo, y el Add-ons SDK, entre otras.

Desafortunadamente la mayoría de las charlas fueron en inglés, lo cual fue un problema para muchos locales que atendieron el evento. A pesar que uno esperaría que la gente que trabaja en software tenga un entendimiento razonable del inglés, esto varía mucho a través de América Latina. Creo que tenemos que hacer un esfuerzo mayor en conseguir expositores que hablen la lengua nativa, aunque no sean expertos de primera mano en los temas de los que se va a hablar.

La tarde se abrió para hacer hacking libre. Al principio nadie sabía qué hacer, pero luego nos organizamos y formamos grupos alrededor de distintos temas y empezamos a trabajar en proyectos pequeños que se pudieran hacer durante la sesión. Dediqué un tiempo para demostrar cómo se puede hacer un userscript de cero, utilizando las herramientas de desarrollo del Firefox. La herramienta de inspección, el Scratchpad y la extensión Scriptish sirven para crear buenos userscripts en cuestión de minutos; ésto lo aprendí durante la preparación para mi presentación en el MozCamp.

Luego Hernán se nos unió y propuso una idea que podíamos trabajar como equipo: un complemento hecho con el SDK que imita a Instagram. El Hipsterizer permite hacer click derecho en una imagen y subirla a un servicio de imágenes luego de aplicarle un pinche efecto fotográfico. Actualmente solo aplica blanco y negro, y sube la imagen a imgur, pero podría aplicar cualquiera de los efectos de la librería filtrr, que es lo que utilizamos. Los filtros se aplican usando un canvas, así que estamos utilizando estándares web de lleno. Quieren contribuir? También estamos dispuestos a vender el proyecto por 7 mil millones de dólares.

MozCamp!

Como siempre, el MozCamp arrancó con una maratón de presentaciones excelentes, seguidas de un tallado calendario de dos días. Los tracks estaban muy bien organizados, así que no tuve mucho problema en decidir qué charlas atender. El sitio del evento estaba muy bien, aunque sí había que caminar bastante para cambiar de salas. El clima no fue ningún problema, afortunadamente.

El domingo temprano hubo un juego de fútbol para los pocos que estuvimos dispuestos a levantarnos a esa hora tan terrible y correr un rato bajo el sol mañanero. Terminamos abarrotando alrededor de 20 jugadores en una cancha de fútbol 5. Estuvo genial! Me divertí mucho y todas la carrera me dio energía para el resto del día. Debería ejercitarme más cuando viajo.

Dí mi charla el segundo día. Normalmente me pongo muy nervioso al hablar en público, y las circunstancias no ayudaron ni un poco. Siendo el segundo día del evento, las cosas empezaron un poco tarde, y la sesión de Q&A antes de mi charla se extendió más de lo esperado, así que ya todo iba con una media hora de atraso. Luego hubo un problema con las pantallas en la sala donde yo iba a dar la charla, y eso tomó una eternidad en resolverse (creo que fueron unos 15 minutos de tiempo real). Tuvo que dar la charla muy rápidamente y luego robarle algo de tiempo al almuerzo para poder responder preguntas.

A pesar de todo, creo que la charla salió bien. El demo salió sin problemas, que es mucho decir dada la pobre conexión de internet que tuvimos todo el tiempo. Recibí una buena ovación cuando dije que iba a dar la charla en español. Mi elección de idioma iba a depender en quiénes iban a estar en la charla, pero finalmente la decisión la tomé debido a la limitación de tiempo que tenía. Solo había un brasileño en el público y por suerte él entendía español suficientemente bien.

Community Work Day

Luego del MozCamp hubo un día adicional dedicado a coordinar el proyecto Mozilla Hispano.

Esto es algo que creo que es bastante único de la comunidad hispana. Mozilla Hispano es una meta-comunidad compuesta de varias comunidades hispanohablantes, las cuales comprenden numerosos países y potencialmente uno de los grupos de contribuyentes más grandes del mundo. La ventaja de tener un idioma común significa que la mayoría de las iniciativas se pueden coordinar a nivel de Mozilla Hispano, en vez de individualmente en cada comunidad.

La comunicación en el MozCamp ocurre principalmente en una dirección, un punto que Kevin Dangoor cubrió muy bien. El Work Day le dio a las comunidades un canal de dos vías para alinear sus visiones y decidir qué quieren hacer. Las sesiones fueron muy abiertas y dirigidas a entablar discusiones y debate. Todos tuvieron la oportunidad de dar sus opiniones, a veces emocionalmente pero nunca agresivamente. Esto es algo que me gustaría que todos los MozCamps tuvieran.

Estaba muy interesado en la sesión de Mozilla Hispano Labs, por razones obvias, y me encontré hablando mucho en ella. Las mayores preocupaciones del grupo tenían que ver con conseguir la gente correcta para contribuir en sus proyectos, además de mantenerlos interesados. Esto me recordó muchas de las experiencias que he tenido con la comunidad de desarrolladores de complementos, y el grupo de los AMO Editors, así que tuve mucho qué decir al respecto. Se puso en evidencia que el grupo no estaba haciendo lo suficiente para proyectar su imagen y atraer desarrolladores. Una serie de acciones salieron de la discusión: crear una lista de correos separada, actualizar la página principal de Labs, y crear un blog de desarrolladores (al que me ofrecí a contribuir). Avanzada la discusión, Felipe – quien la estaba liderando y actualmente coordina MH Labs – dijo algo que me pareció divertido y curioso. Fue algo como “Bueno, parece que no podemos codear ninguna de estas soluciones”. Cuando tienes un martillo, todo parece un clavo .

Me alegra mucho haberme reconectado con la comunidad de MH, y me hace sentir un poco culpable que ellos hagan tanto por Mozilla en su tiempo libre mientras yo me siento frecuentemente agobiado solo haciendo el trabajo por el cual me pagan. También me avergüenza un poco que no exista una comunidad de Mozilla en Costa Rica, y que yo debería haber hecho algo al respecto hace mucho tiempo. Así que estoy tomando algunos pasos iniciales en esa dirección, y estoy determinado en formar aunque sea un grupo pequeño que represente a mi país en MH. Daré actualizaciones sobre esto en el futuro cercano.

A pesar de lo exhaustivo que fue mentalmente y físicamente, este MozCamp es el mejor evento de Mozilla al que he atendido. Cada hora que pasé sin dormir valió totalmente la pena. Juntar tanta pasión, intelecto y fuerza bajo un solo techo es algo que no tiene precio. Me encanta la dirección que los MozCamps como un todo están tomando, y espero que continúen creciendo de esta manera.

Y, finalmente, para todos los que trabajaron organizando este evento: GRACIAS!

Here’s a recap of my MozCamp experiences:

MDN Hack Day

The MDN Hack Day was held the day before MozCamp, on Friday. There were a number of interesting talks about apps, developer tools and the Add-ons SDK, among others.

Unfortunately most talks were given in English, which is a challenge for many locals who attended the event. While one would expect people working in software to have an above average understanding of English, this varies significantly across Latin America. I think we need to make a bigger effort getting native speakers to give these talks, even if they are not first-hand experts in the subjects being discussed.

The afternoon was opened for free hacking. People at first had no idea what to do, but then we got organized and formed groups around different subjects and started working on small projects we could get done during the session. I spent some time demoing how you can build a userscript from scratch using the developer tools that now ship with Firefox. Inspector, Scratchpad and the Scriptish extension can help you create effective userscripts in a matter of minutes, as I discovered while preparing my MozCamp talk.

Later, Hernán joined us and came up with an idea we could work on as a team: an SDK add-on that imitates Instagram. Hipsterizer lets you right-click on an image and upload it to an image service after applying some lame photo effect. At the moment it only does black and white and uploads to imgur, but it can potentially use all effects supported by the filtrr library, which is what we’re using. The image filters are applied using canvas, so it is web standards all the way down. Want to contribute? We’re also willing to sell it for 7 billion dollars.

MozCamp!

As usual, MozCamp began with a marathon of excellent keynotes, followed by a tightly packed two-day schedule. The tracks were fairly well organized, so I didn’t have much trouble figuring out which talks to attend. The venue was a nice place, though it took lots of walking most of the times you needed to switch rooms.

Early on Sunday there was a soccer match for those few of us who were willing to get up at an ungodly time and run around under the morning sun. We ended up packing 20 or so players in a small field usually meant for 5-on-5 games. It was a blast! I had a great time and running around energized me for the rest of the day. I should exercise more when I travel.

Madalina - best goalkeeper ever

I gave my talk on the second day. I’m usually very nervous about speaking in public, and the circumstances didn’t help at all. This being the second day, things started a bit late, and the Q&A session right before my talk ran longer than scheduled, so we were a good half an hour behind. Then there was a problem with the video displays in the room I was giving the talk in, and that took what seemed like an eternity to fix (I think it took about 15 minutes in reality). So, I had to rush the talk and then take some extra time from the lunch break to do Q&A.

I move my hands too much

Overall, I think the talk went well. The demo went without a hitch, which is saying a lot given the poor Internet connection we had across the whole event. I got a good cheer when I told people I was giving the talk in Spanish. My choice in language initially depended on the crowd, but finally I just went with Spanish because of all the delays. There was only one Brazilian in the crowd and fortunately he understood Spanish well enough.

Community Work Day

Following MozCamp, there was a separate day dedicated for Mozilla Hispano project coordination.

This is something that I think is fairly unique to the Hispanic community. Mozilla Hispano is a meta community composed of several Spanish-speaking communities, spanning numerous countries and potentially one of the largest groups of contributors in the world. Having a common language means that most efforts can be coordinated at the Mozilla Hispano level, rather than the local community level. The communication at MozCamp is fairly unidirectional, a point Kevin Dangoor covered very well. The Work Day gave the Hispanic communities a bidirectional channel to align their visions and figure out what they want to do. The sessions were very open-ended and meant to encourage debate. Everyone had their chance to speak their mind, sometimes emotionally but never aggressively. I’d like to see MozCamp have some of that.

I was very interested in the Mozilla Hispano Labs session, for obvious reasons, and I found myself talking a lot in it. Their biggest concerns were focused around getting the right people to contribute in their projects, and keeping them interested. This paralleled many of the experiences I’ve had while working with the add-on developer community and the AMO Editors team, so I had plenty to say. It became evident that the group wasn’t doing enough to project its image and engage developers. A number of important action items came out of this discussion: setting up a separate mailing list, updating the Labs landing page, and setting up a developer blog (where I volunteered to contribute). About halfway through the discussion, Felipe – who was leading the discussion and currently manages MH Labs – said something like “Well, it looks like we can’t code any of these solutions!”. When you have a hammer, everything looks like a nail .

I was very happy to reconnect with the MH community, and it makes me feel a tad guilty that they are doing so much for Mozilla in their spare times while I often feel overwhelmed just doing the work I’m paid for. I’m also a bit embarrassed that there’s no Costa Rican Mozilla community whatsoever, and I should’ve done something about it long ago. So, I’m taking some initial steps in that direction, and now I’m determined in forming at least a small group that can represent my country in MH. Expect updates about this in the near future.

As mentally and physically exhausting as it was, this MozCamp is the best Mozilla event I’ve attended so far. Every hour I spent not sleeping was totally worth it. Bringing so much passion, intellect and strength under one roof is priceless. I love the direction MozCamps are taking in general, and I hope they continue growing as they have.

To all the people who worked organizing this event: THANK YOU!

My presentation is meant to be a starting point for those interested in add-on development. It contains many links on how to get started making extensions, GM scripts, SDK add-ons, Personas, Themes, and even mentions language packs, search engines and dictionaries. They include a trivial add-on that translates a string on a webpage, developed as a GM script, as an SDK add-on, and as an extension. Then I compare code complexity, flexibility, the security framework and other characteristics, trying to give developers a balanced view and good information on how to choose any of the above when building an add-on. Of course I can only gloss over the details during a 40-minute presentation; hence all the links. In the end of the presentation I briefly cover publishing on AMO, add-on monetization, and the plans for an add-on marketplace. I tried to personalize it a bit for the Chinese audience, so some things may not make as much sense.

The Q&A session was surprising, in that the developers who asked questions were very knowledgeable in add-on development and had very specific questions. Some had very well-established products and demoed some really advanced add-ons. There’s such great add-on development happening in China that I wish we had a much better communication channel with developers over there. That’s something we need to work on.

Overall, the trip was excellent. The presentation went well, I got in touch with a number of developers in the area, and most importantly we had plenty of time to talk to the Mozilla Online team. I discussed our add-on performance initiative with them, which is specially relevant for them given that the default Firefox install for China includes about 10 add-ons preinstalled. A number of them also joined the AMO Editors team, which is actively looking for new members. I’m really happy because there are many add-ons that are only testable in China, by people who understand the language and local websites.

And, of course, the food and the sights we managed to squeeze into one day of touring around were all fantastic. I’d like to thank the Mozilla Online team again for the invitation and organizing this very successful event. Special thanks to 张羽 (Rachel Zhang) for taking care of us. I’m sure she feels like on holiday this week

Random anecdote: I’m riding the subway by myself on the way to meet a friend who lives in Beijing, pointlessly trying to appear as if I do this all the time. Then some guy approaches me and starts speaking in what I assume was Mandarin, pointing to a cellphone he has in his hands. While I’m deciding how to react to this, I look at the phone and see a picture of me at the conference. Heh. It was just an attendant who was really happy to run into me in the subway. We managed to talk a little bit during the subway ride. Very friendly guy. So, there

Firefox 4 for Add-on Developers

For now, this is a pretty good reference if you want to start supporting the Firefox 4 betas in your add-ons. I’ll be elaborating on this subject through the following weeks, in the Add-ons Blog.

I did the first part of the workshop, explaining extension development.

I learned from this experience that it’s not a good idea to cover all of the boilerplate parts of extension development in a presentation with such limited time. For future events I think it’s a better idea to have some sort of required reading before attending, so that it’s easier just to dive into the actual juicy parts and get stuff done. I still managed to cover several topics surrounding extension development, and the slides were full of references that people can follow to continue learning about the topic.

The second part of the event was about Jetpack development, and was presented by newly appointed Jetpack Ambassador Hernán Rodríguez, from Agentina:

Hernán did a fantastic job. I also should give Jetpack some credit because it is incredibly easy to get started in a few minutes. The attendees had a chance to play around and do more experimenting than on my presentation. We had some fun playing around with Hernán Twitter slidebar and messing around with CSS transformations.

The event was a great success, and this was all thanks to the great work of the Mozilla Perú community. I was pleasantly surprised of how well organized they are, and the great deal of large-scale technology events that are held in Perú that could be good platforms for Mozilla to attract new community members.

Much more details about this event can be read (in Spanish) in the Mozilla Perú blog and Hernán’s blog:

• http://mozilla.pe/resumen-del-maow-lima-2010
• http://www.malditocrc.com.ar/peregrino/2010/03/lima-mozilla-y-addons/

Thanks again to Percy and Mozilla Perú community for organizing this event. I hope to see you again soon!