The upcoming launch of Firefox OS in India needs the Mozilla India community to revisit the ways in which it has approached Firefox OS promotions till now. So far, Firefox OS has been promoted solely to developer audience. It made sense because we needed more apps and more code contributions for Firefox OS. Now we have to reach out to consumers as well. They are the people who would buy Firefox OS devices and will determine whether the OS will ultimately be successful in Indian market.
We have been successful with Firefox OS AppDays, and that event format served as a good platform to engage Indian developers. My plan is to extend that format and give a general outreach tone to it. This will let contributors across other pathways to participate in this event.
Target audience for the proposed event format
Any person or organization willing to contribute to the pathways around Firefox OS in India can benefit from this event format. As of now, we have the following contribution pathways for Firefox OS:
-
Engagement
-
Developer Relations
-
SuMo
-
User Centered Design
-
App development
-
B2G development
An event organizer can pick one or a combination of any of these pathways for their event. But, from an outreach perspective, a strong focus needs to be on contributors who can work with engagement. We will need all the help we can get for spreading the news about Firefox OS.
Format for the Engagement pathway in the event
Participants can hack on a marketing plan for specific milieus at the event. For instance, the engagement approach in sub-urban areas will differ from malls in the metros. A partipant’s experience with these environments will be highly valuable to carve out a marketing plan that people visiting those places can relate to.
At the event, participants can work individually or get in a group of two, three or four and come up with an action plan on how they can approach a specific region. This will include ideas for posters, kiosks, slogans in regional languages, an event agenda or any such thing which the people present at those places can resonate with.
This track can run parallelly with developer tracks, such as app development or B2G hacking or porting Firefox OS to other devices. In essence, we can bring the hackathon spirit to engagement!
Naming this event format
I don’t think continuing to use “Firefox OS AppDays” as the name format for this event will be useful. AppDays are known to address to the developer subset of the community. The target with the proposed event format is to be more inclusive in nature, but to retain the action-packed hackathon spirit alive.
We may call it “Mobilize India”, and any other country can reuse this format by replacing the country name. But I’m not sure whether we can use that name here.
My aim is to trigger a conversation around this idea. So, let the brainstorms begin! I’m all ears.