Yesterday we came back from a super intense work week in Barcelona to show to the world Firefox OS at Mobile World Congress 2013.
A year ago Mozilla presented a OS proposal for mobile devices based on web technologies and this year we came back to show it’s a reality and we will have it in our pockets this summer.
In this article I want to show my personal experience at the event, not details about Firefox OS, which I’ve already talked about in this same blog time ago.
For this event Mozilla mobilized 100 people to Barcelona, including volunteers from Mozilla Reps program, among them Gloria (Colombia), Arturo (Venezuela), Willyaranda (Spain), Ricardo (Brasil) and me. A great opportunity to show that Mozilla is a non-profit organization where a multicultural group of volunteers and employees work together.
Our role as Reps was mainly in the demo team, so everyday from 8:30 in the morning we were in different demo stations, from the main Mozilla booth to the small stations at our partners booths (Telefónica, ZTE, DT…)
It’s important to mention the HUGE people attendance to Mozilla’s booth everyday, since the first moment in the morning it was crowded. When you ended showing a demo to a group, you had another one waiting. It was one of the few booths I saw with so many people from 8:45 to 19:30. In fact, we were asked about where did we get the models for the booth to be so successful, not realizing that we were part of Mozilla and that was the reason why passion for the project and its values was so present in each conversation we did.
Also, it was amazing to show how each day, more and more people were expressing their support to the project, adding from the initial ZTE, Alcatel and LG, also Huawei, or even Sony publishing a Firefox OS ROM for Xperia E. Developers who came, fell in love with the concept of webapps with the same power as «native» apps, and press from all over the world was talking about the news and came to know more about that OS created by a non-profit and that was in everybody’s mouth in such an important event.
For me it was a big personal satisfaction to see this big support for a concept and values that everyone in the community is working on for so many years in our spare time and something to be proud for being part of Mozilla community.
Despite the thousands of people that form Mozilla couldn’t be there, I believe that the ones that were there made a fantastic job representing all people that invest their time to make the web an open, participative and innovative platform for everyone.
All of us are Mozilla, and this week our work has been recognised globally again.
Update: All Mozilla Reps attending MWC this year recorded a video for you all to share our experience there.
[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHWwbxfMTbU&hd=1[/youtube]