North America Mozilla Reps
This year has been wonderful for me; with many opportunities to connect with some of the most brilliant people in the world while having discussions surrounding moving the open web forward and evangelizing products like Firefox and Firefox OS.
For me, there have been so many examples that I could offer of events or experiences this year that were touching. But I think nothing has been as exciting as my experience at Mozilla Summit, where I got to hear Mitchell Baker speak so passionately about the values Mozilla believes in.
Me and Mozillians from India
This year has been fast paced for me and nearly every month this year, I was traveling somewhere or organizing an event. While this meant withdrawing from some projects, I have historically had very large contributions too. It also gave me an opportunity to contribute in my new role on the Firefox Release Management Team and to expand into other areas I really wanted to dive into.
In December, I got to travel to San Francisco to take part in Mozilla’s Community Building Team Work Week where I got to meet Mitchell Baker and have dinner with her and many other awesome Mozillians. This also presented an opportunity to see familiar faces again and, most important, help build a roadmap for community building in Mozilla for 2014.
Me and Mitchell Baker, Chief Lizard Wrangler at Mozilla
One of the things I really look forward to doing in 2014 is making more connections with users of free and open source software and making more connections to open source projects by contributing to projects I have not yet contributed to. I’m proud to say that in 2013 I had contributed to 40+ Open Source projects which is a pretty incredible way to diversify the time I spend on Open Source.
Even more impressive, I gave talks at three major universities in 2013 which was really a neat experience because I’m a big advocate for Open Source being more heavily adopted in all levels of academia. My biggest hope for 2014 is to see continued increase in adoption of Free and Open Source Software by people worldwide who have not typically used it. I also hope to see OpenStack, Ubuntu and Mozilla continue to grow as they are all three communities that I love.
In closing, I want to wish all of my readers a Happy New Year and I hope to make a connection with you in 2014!