Briks Is 6

I meant to call out the 5 year anniversary last year but it slipped by as I was too busy. Six is better, it rhymes! I set up Briks Software this month 6 years ago. Briks is a Web Consultancy that specialises in all things Mozilla and sometimes beyond. We do Add-ons, XULRunner apps, bug fixes, mobile work, and more. We’ve worked on projects large and small, with big companies and startups. Briks is not a 1-person show, I like to call it a Mozilla Development Collective. I’ve had various folks come on board per-project over the 6 years and quite frankly Briks would not have been so successful without them. There are 2 people that I would like to give a special shout-out to. Chris Neale is the glue that keeps everything together, from the web site to design to graphics to listening to me ramble on Skype all day. David McNamara is a coder who can whip something up before you can say ‘digital drifter’. See his recent profile on Bonjour Mozilla!.

The Briks experience so far has been wonderful. Anyone who has ever done consulting will understand what I mean when I say that it has it’s ups and downs. I’ve been fortunate to have more ups. Some projects succeed, some don’t. Some clients come to you with a clear vision, others let you shape it. You meet many different people who become at best friends or at worst good contacts. Almost every day there is a new challenge, and each now project is a puzzle to solve. Hopefully I will get time to write more about this, it deserves a separate post.

However lately I’ve been thinking that I have got to the point where I am looking for a different challenge in my career. The obvious choice would be moving into management in a tech company. Another option would be to do a startup. Or another would be to move to a tropical island and set up a tourist resort. All of these sound great, everything is open. If you have any opportunities you think would suit me, let me know.

Mozilla in Slovenia

Mozilla Slovenija is trying to keep the momentum going for promoting Firefox and Mozilla this year. Our primary tool for doing this has always been localisation, and the team are doing a great job in keeping up with product and web. As far as events go, so far we had a Firefox 10 event and Dan Odporte Kode (Open Source Day), both organised by Reps. And I can’t finish this section without mentioning Matjaž Horvat’s heroic efforts in the ACTA debate here.

ReMo

The Mozilla Reps program is going great and my work on the council has been taking up a lot of my time. It has been a victim of it’s own success in the respect that we are still going through some growing pains and smoothing out many of the processes that will solidify the program going forward. We met in Athens to work through many of the issues and come up with a plan for the project for the next year. Shortly after the new Mozilla Reps website launched. If you haven’t seen it yet, check it out, it is a hub with profiles of all reps and will be a wonderful tool for reps and for the those looking for reps.

In general I have learned a ton over the last year while helping out with ReMo in the areas of mentorship and community building. It has been a privilege to help get the program started and to work with community members who feel so passionate about Mozilla.

FOSDEM 2012

For the first time in about 5 years I was not putting together the schedule for and running the Mozilla devroom at FOSDEM. And while I missed the hustle and bustle, let me tell you it was great. I could wander around other rooms, head over to the stands (in a new building this year), and listen to other talks. The show this year was run my local Mozilla Reps and the Belgian community. William Quiviger wrote more about this aspect in his recap. You can catch all the blog posts, slides, and picture on the Mozilla wiki.

WebFWD

I previously wrote about my motivation for getting involved in the WebFWD program. As a scout I’ve been seeing an explosion of startup activity recently in Central and Eastern Europe. While I have not (to my knowledge) directly influenced any projects to apply yet, I have certainly tried to raise awareness of the program. Much of the startup reading I have come across has been shared in the Scout Sightings blog posts compiled by Havi Hoffman. I’ve given an intro talk twice, first at FOSDEM and then at the Firefox event in Kiberpipa. The slides are on Slideshare.

Mozilla Croatia

I was in Zagreb in January for a meeting of the Mozilla Croatia Community. Also present apart from local community members were Ioana Chiorean from Romania, Oskar Ivanic from Serbia, and Matjaž from Slovenia. Up to about 9 months ago, the community was very much dormant with the exception of good work by Edo Huric and also the Firefox localisation team. Then a new force of nature entered in the form of Nikola Matosovic and he has already put together a team of about 40 volunteer members (yes, 40) to help with Mozilla Croatia.

Clockwise from top left: Ivona Haban, Niko Visnjic, Vedran Kovacevic, Satine Anais, Mislav Zorko, Denis Oswald, and Nikola Nikola Matosovic (middle)

The goal of the meeting was to get everyone up to speed with the latest projects and issues in Mozilla, and provide insights into Community building. Having already achieved much in outreach in 2011, the challenge in 2012 is to gain momentum and carry out the ambitious set of goals they have given themselves for 2012.

What Next?

In no particular order here are some things I want to achieve in the short-term:

• Get some crucial releases out the door for Briks clients
• Finish the ReMo add-on, currently a work-in-progress
• Help the Mozilla Ireland community to the next level. We now have hosting for mozillaireland.org and we have to put the site up and plan some events to get new community members up to speed and for Mozilla to get more coverage in Ireland
• Help out more in Mozilla Balkans, and hopefully attend the next meetup which is planned for Zagreb this time around
• Forge deeper links with the startup community and perhaps attend a couple of related events in my region
• Continue to dip my toes in the Dev Engagement project. I’ve been following the mailing list, and curating posts for the MDN Google+ page.
• Put some real thought into my next career steps and act on them

And so it continues.

• It smells of a gold-rush, a way to make a quick buck. I was brought up with an ethic to go and do your day’s work, work hard, get paid, and play your part.
• This is inter-twined with rush to commercialise the Internet. This is not new, but it is eroding into the idealism of the early days of the Web when it was supposed to be the great equaliser in society, the open information platform.
• To scale, you really need to get investment, which means compromising and handing over rights to your business and ideas.
• I’m a software engineer, and solve problems presented by others. I don’t see myself as an ideas person, or at least don’t have the urge to act on ones I do have.

To make an analogy, startups to me are like young footballers who dream of playing for Manchester United or AC Milan or Real Madrid. Or indeed, even to play professional football at any level. How many make it? I don’t know, but I’d say less than 1%. I suspect the number of startups who are successful comes in at around the same percentage.

But in the last couple of years my thinking has changed. To counter the points above:

• Startups are hard work, well if you are doing it right they should be.
• If we strive to keep the Web open, then making money is fine. We all need to, right?
• If you are smart, you can negotiate a good investment deal. The sheer number of investors out there means choice. Or, bootstrap and scale at your own pace.
• Sometimes engineers come up with the best ideas, because they understand some of the real-world problems that need solving and find opportunity in that.

Image by King Molan via Flickr

I could name other reasons, with their counter arguments, but you get the picture. A couple of weeks ago I attended the Dublin Web Summit, very much a startup event. After not living in Ireland for over 10 years and being completely out of touch with the tech scene, I was greatly encouraged by what I saw. The tech sector is one of the things keeping the Irish economy afloat. But it’s foundation is foreign investment by large companies, usually American. Companies like Microsoft, Dell, and Intel have had a presense there for a number of years. Newer comapnies like Facebook and Twitter have setup their European headquarters there. They do so because of a young, skilled workforce and incentives provided by the Irish government including a low corporate tax rate.

Yet now, there is a realisation that this is not a solid foundation for the future. Large companies can move out at any time, pulling the rug from under you. People are starting to do things for themselves, setting up their own companies more and more. Irish people have always been resourceful but there is nothing less than a culture shift happening. There is a real energy. Even the government, who have shown before to be notoriously short-termist, have many initiatives to help small and medium-sized businesses. Yet more work needs to be done. For example, the bankruptcy laws need a major overhaul to shield entrepeneurs more from risk. I definitely like the direction things appear to be going in however.

In this spirit, I applied to be a WebFWD scout and have been accepted. The application form posed the question “Why do you think you would make an awesome WebFWD Scout?“. Here is what I wrote:

I have been an Open Source enthusiast and supporter all my career. I speak at Open Source conferences. In Slovenia, we have a thriving Web and Startup scene, and I attend events and keep up to date. I have mentored at Seedcamp events. Moving further east, I am a member of a group called New Europe Startups that covers Central and Eastern Europe. There is a real hunger here, something that has been observed less in Western Europe. This is something that can be tapped into for the advantage of the Open Web. I’m a firm believer that our future economic health will be based on entrepreneurial talent that challenges and ultimately usurps incumbents who have a stranglehold on many industries. Last but not least, I have faith in people which drives everything I do, and have a knack for connecting people to do interesting and I hope great things.

So I urge you all, if you have a passion and think you have something that will make people’s lives better, go out and start something, work hard, and keep dreaming.

Related articles

• Eastern Europe’s Startups After the Seedcamp: Zemanta, Brainient, Codility and UberVU Revisited (goaleurope.wordpress.com)
• Y Combinator Challenged By Growing Seedcamp (forbes.com)

I’d like to invite you along to a Mozilla Meetup in Dublin, Ireland on November 2. Mozilla products have been translated into Irish for many years (thanks to the great work of Kevin Scannell and others). Unfortunately as Irish is spoken only be a small minority, this does not provide broad coverage country-wide. The majority would use English versions, and while there is a strong user base, the last time I checked the Firefox market share was much less than countries and regions in mainland Europe.

We want to move things to the next level, getting more active contributors on board in other areas of Mozilla and setting up a permanent community (aka Mozilla Ireland). See how you can get involved[1].

EVENT DETAILS

When: Wednesday, November 2 · 6:00pm – 10:00pm

Where: The Odeon, on Harcourt Street.

Description: Do you want to know more about Mozilla, the organisation behind the groundbreaking Firefox browser? Do you want to become involved in the global Mozilla movement? No coding skills required, though folks with them are of course welcome. Come along and find out more.

Format: It will be an evening of presentations and discussions, with drinks and snacks provided.

Sign up on the Facebook event page[2], or if you are not on Facebook just get in touch with me or drop a comment here. We need to get a feel for numbers attending. Note also the wiki page[3]. We’ll be updating these pages with more information in the coming days.

SPEAKING

The schedule is still open, so if you would like to speak about a Mozilla contribution you made or a project you worked on, let me know. If you are attending the Mozilla Festival in London, this is a great opportunity to hop across the pond beforehand.

DUBLIN WEB SUMMIT

I’ll be at the Dublin Web Summit the week before the meetup. If you want to meet me for more details, get in touch. Tristan Nitot of Mozilla Europe will be making a keynote speech on Thursday 27th.

GOAL

Plant the seeds for a permanent active community in Ireland.

See you there!

[1] http://www.mozilla.org/contribute/

[2] http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=249984621718594

[3] https://wiki.mozilla.org/Mozilla_Meetup_Dublin_2011

Next weekend I am privileged to be attending and speaking at (Keynote, Sunday 30th) the Software Freedom Kosovo Conference in Prishtina. The event aims to bring together local developers and decision making folks with international visitors, to encourage further adoption of Free and Open Source Software in the region. There is a lot of energy to be tapped into in the region, and I am excited to be going.

Speaking of energy, Mozilla community member extraordinairre Besnik Bleta has been working tirelessly on putting together Mozilla Service Week flyers in Albanian to distribute at the event. I received them yesterday and we were panicking with our lack of printing options in the run up. So I mentioned this to Mary Colvig, who came to our rescue and rushed to a local printers to do the job. Thank you Mary! Luckily I have ample room in my luggage to take them back. A few exta kilos is no price to pay for getting the word out in another valuable local community. Local is what matters after all.

If you want to find out more about the event, get in touch. In the meantime, some relevant links to find out more:

• Schedule
• About Prishtina
• FLOSSK – organising organisation

Source: Shutterstock

Come on over and see, or if you missed it find out more on how to be Irish for at least one day a year on Mozdev. If you are working on a Mozilla project and need some 1st class tools and great community support, join us!

Oh yeah, resist calling it Patty’s Day, real Irish never say that!

St. Patricks Day – Friday 17th March 2006

Šestica – Slovenska cesta 40

All friends of Å ola irskega plesa and Ireland are welcome to join us in our celebrations on St Patricks day in ‘Å estica‘ on Slovenksa c 40, from 8pm to 1am, Friday 17.03.06.

With live music from ‘FOLK etc.,’ (a Slovenian group who play traditional Irish music) together with Å ola irskega plesa students dancing, the ‘craic’ should be mighty, as they say!!.

SEE YOU THERE

St. Patricks Day – petek 17. marca 2006

Šestica – Slovenska cesta 40

Prijatelji Å ola irskega plesa in Irske ste dobrodoÅ¡li, da se nam pridružite na proslavi St. Patricks day v ‘Å estici‘ Slovenska c 40 ob 20.00 – 01.00, v petek 17.03.06.

Z živo glasbo, ‘FOLK etc.’, (slovenska skupina, ki igra irsko glasbo) in plesalci Å ole irskega plesa, zabava bo super.

SE VIDIMO TAM

… a Croatian based, Irish owned, real estate agency …

Among the list of attractions to come to Istria is plans for new golf courses in the region. That’s all the world needs, more golf courses! Anyway, regardless of your sporting preferences, it is a beautiful region. My mother said to me on a couple of occasions, only half joking, why don’t I buy a holiday home in Croatia, it being so close. Well the chance would be a fine thing, but I never saw the point of holiday homes. It seems like a waste of space/money if you are only going to be there for a few weeks in the year. It always seemed to me a lifestyle for the idle rich. Hrm, then again, if there was a high speed Internet connection and a balcony, I could be tempted.

More on the podcast…

I haven’t listened to it yet, but intend to soon as it looks like there are some interesting topics on current features in WordPress, upcoming ones, and blogging in general. And Matt likes Irish accents, apparently!

What things do you bring from Slovenia as Christmas gifts to friends and family in your home county?

You can find my answer here:
http://www.sloveniatimes.com/kontent.php?topic=7#1528

Interesting (though not surprising) that all respondants mention wine!

Croatia’s entry into the EU, despite having no fixed timetable, still seems to be on the rails despite some previous obstacles. It’s clear that Ireland is fully backing Croatia here. It could have something to do with a shared Catholic identity (though this is less relevant in modern Ireland), or not. I suspect though it might have something to do with the fact that holiday homes in Spain are drying up, so Irish holidaymakers will need to broaden their reach when the overcast Irish summer sets in!

Galway is one of my favourite parts of Ireland. I used to go there a lot in my student days when I had loads of free time. There’s aways a good time to be had, and it’s a good base point for exploring the wild atlantic coast, with worthwhile trips all the way from Clare up to Donegal, not to mention the wonderful Aran Islands.

The Piggy Bank team will be there showing off their app running in Firefox. And if you haven’t heard, they have released a complimentary extension called Solvent for writing JavaScript scrapers for collecting data from pages. There’s a very good turorial also for writing your own scrapers.

So Come On Ye Boys In Green, I’ll be cheering for you! You’ll need more than luck this time, but a mighty performance too. I doubt if I’ll find the game on TV here in Slovenia, so if anyone knows any sites streaming it, let me know.

I have some pals in Switzerland (Andreas, Chregu, Urs) and love it there, but this time around, I’m looking for a big Swiss loss. Sorry guys!