MozCoffee at the Embarcadero

Maray na Aga, Bikol! It's such a great morning in Legazpi City, especially after a good night's sleep on a proper bed. But as with all great mornings, there are great things to do. So off we go to another Mozilla event, just one floor down from the hotel.

As usual, our faithful Bikolano Community Manager met and greeted the participants from Bicol University and the tech community in Legazpi City at the La Mia Tazza Coffee of Embarcadero de Legazpi that overlooks the sea.

After the introductions, we got right into Engagement mode, introducting Mozilla products and projects, left and right, along with the generous demonstrations online and actual. We encouraged them to be web makers as well as to organize their own Mozilla events. Such a great discussion, so little time.

After the MozCoffee, some of the participants helped us find our way around Legazpi City to book our bus tickets back Manila. Such hospitable people. I'm looking forward to the next Bicol event!

What a Great Open Web Day at Naga!

Another awesome day was completed today!

We have just finished the first day of the Bicol MozTour--two grueling days of events across two different major cities in two different provices in the picturesque region of Bicol. We travelled to the Heart of Bicol in the dead of the night, some 389 km south of Quezon City.

The first day was held at the Fr. James O'Brien Library of the Ateneo de Naga University in Naga City, Camarines Sur (also known as CamSur). More than fifty attendees flocked to the computer research center of the library to participate in the Open Web Day, jointly organized by the Philippine communities of Mozilla and Wikimedia. As ever, Mozilla Philippines was lead by its ever-vibrant Community Manager Jun Barrun, and the Wikimedia team was lead by Jojit Ballesteros.

Most of the attendees were Library and Information Science students as well as Librarians from the local librarians organization.

The usual format for Open Web Day was followed, with Wikimedia PHL introducing how Wikipedia works, and how to contribute as well as an online workshop where the participants submitted new content to Wikipedia.

After the Wikipedia workshop, Mozilla PHL had its turn to tell the story of Mozilla, our advocacies and our products and projects. Unusual for Jun, he finished his long keynote in half the time he usually takes. Nice!

Next up, Jean Austin Rodriguez introduced the Boot to Gecko project (aka Firefox Mobile OS) along with the demo phone.

Lastly, I was asked to speak on localization. After my talk, I asked the participants to contribute 220 more strings to complete the strings translation. And they finished the translation in less time than I did to finish my talk! Great work, Naga City! :) Now it's up to the reviewers and approvers of the Tagalog translation to finish the job. :)

We capped off the day by traveling another 119 km to Legazpi City for the second leg of the Bicol MozTour.

Massive Firefox for Android Now Available!

Mozilla has just released a massive update to Firefox for Android, reflecting enormous contributions from all across the organization. Firefox for Android is for everyone who loves Firefox on their desktop, but now in their pocket. It is faster than the stock browser that ships with phones and has all the capabilities that our users love about Firefox and is available across lots of flavors of Android.

Firefox for Android continues the tradition of Mozilla to cater to the open web, and is responsive to the needs, choice, and privacy of Internet users.

If you have an Android-powered phone or tablet, get Firefox for Android now. And if you love it, rate it 5 stars on Google Play.

2nd Open Web Day

DLSU Manila will be hosting the 2^nd Open Web Day. This event is a joint project of the Mozilla and Wikipedia communities in the Philippines to improve content and localization from Filipino content.
Mozilla Philippines previously featured the 1st Open Web Day, held at Robinson's Place, Manila.  This event will be similar, but will be held in the Bro. Andrew Gonzalez Hall of the De La Salle University, also in Manila.

A laptop or tablet computer is a minimum requirement for joining this event, as unlike the first one, this is not going to be held in a Netopia store.

Should you be interested in joining, sign up at EventBrite. Don't forget to bring your tickets and ID's as security is quite strict at the DLSU.

See you there! =)

Update: 2^nd Open Web Day successfully done. More details on the Mozilla Philippines blog.

Campus Reps assignments for 1Q

Here are the assigned tasks for Mozilla Campus Reps.

• Renren
• Inquiry with NSTW folks regarding Mozilla involvement
• Mozilla Philippines Community t-shirt and badge design contest
• Jun
• Viral video channel
• CosPlay event/contest
• Joell
• Signage for Internet cafe and Jeeps

Other regular activities to participate include:

• Firefox Friday, post a Mozilla- or Firefox-related post on the blog or on Tweeter with a hashtag, #MozillaPH
  
• Mozilla Firefox on email signature
• Mozilla or Firefox logo spotted at... posts

You can do these regular events even if you're not a Campus Rep. If interested in joining, drop us a line in the comments and we'll get in touch with you as soon as possible.

Mozilla Campus Reps schedule of activities

The 2010 kick-off meeting of the Mozilla Philippines Community was held yesterday at the UP Ayala Technohub. A lot of items were discussed, but I will focus on the Mozilla Campus Representatives activities for the first quarter of this year. Most of these are simply to push Mozilla Firefox into schools, and establish Campus Reps in these campuses.

• IT Week, AMA Computer University, Quezon City
  The Campus Rep here is John Arce. The school term started late, and so the IT week has been moved as well to mid-February, hopefully not on Valentine's Day.
• IT Week, Colegio de San Juan de Letran, Manila
  There are no local campus reps, but they are currently represented by the campus reps from their sister school from Calamba. No dates have been set yet. Notice was given too late. It will be held tomorrow, Jan 28.
  
• IT Week, Colegio de San Juan de Letran, Calamba
  Local campus reps are Eusebio Barrun and Joell Lapitan. Tentative date is sometime in March.

If you want Mozilla Campus Reps to visit you, please get in touch with us through the comments.

Mozilla Campus Reps visit Angelicum College QC

The Mozilla Campus Reps Philippines participated in the IT Week of Angelicum College of Quezon City on Monday, December 14. This event is the first campus event conducted by the Campus Reps, and represents the first of the baby steps of the Campus Reps towards cross-campus event organization.

I accompanied Jun Barrun (shown in picture giving the Mozilla talk) from the Colegio de San Juan de Letran. We met at the Cubao MRT, where we rode a taxi to Angelicum College where we were met by Josie Santos, the adviser of the Computer Society that organized the IT Week. They were really supportive and helpful.

After the opening ceremonies of the IT Week, Jun spoke on the virtues of Mozilla Firefox and the Open Web Standards.

We were initially surprised at the size of the event, since was also a Family Day for the Angelicum College. Our Firefox booth consisted of two tables, two chairs and the Firefox tarpaulin from the "Fire Years of Firefox in Manila" event. The booth was positioned in front of the gym along with other booths, where we could receive a lot of foot traffic and eyeballs because of the ongoing events held at the gym. One of the most curious comments that we received was from a elementary school-aged girl who lingered about the booth, and told me, "Meron kami niyan sa bahay. Sabi kasi ni mama, mas maganda gamitin ang Firefox." "We have Firefox at home, because Mom said that it is better to use." She is one lucky girl who has a capable mom who can teach her how to use a secure web browser. I'll take a guess that her mom probably works in the IT industry.

We talked with the IT students on how Firefox helps with keeping the Internet free from non-open standards, as well as a possible "Firefox Installation Day" for their computer labs, which are currently using only IE.

We also received inquiries on how Mozilla is organized and operates, and how the Mozilla Philippines Community and the Campus Reps are able to participate in campus events.

We did run out of few Mozilla goodies that we had, and we even had to give away the ones that we were already using. For future events, we created a specific checklist to follow, in order to have a smooth operation of both the booth and the talk.

We are thankful for Josie Santos, and the Computer Society for having us in their event. We hope to attend future events in Angelicum College. We are also thankful for Regnard Raquedan for his support for the Campus Reps. Special mention also goes out to Campus Reps Myra Jill Siason and Joell Lapitan.

Update 2010-01-06: Josie sent a pic of Jun giving a talk on Mozilla Firefox and the Open Web.