One year being a Mozillian

Recalling my work as a Mozillian in 2016

4 min readDec 16, 2016

Changes in life are unpredictable. It may come in any form. In this digital era, a Facebook friend request, a mail, even a whatsapp message from your friend may make a huge impact in your life.

My boring life turned into something interesting when I filled a Google form and when an unknown guy commented in my facebook post.

TL;DR version

In the 2016, I have filed 8 bugs, triaged 10 bugs, made 105 localisation suggestions, attended 4 Mozilla events, conducted 2 events in my college, hosted 8 testdays, organised 2 online events, helped around 30 contributors to work in QA. Best of all I made new great friends and got amazing mentors.

Full version:

Getting into Mozilla TN community: Before 2016

It all started on September 2015, when I filled up a Google form for Firefox Student Ambassador Program ( It is now called as Mozilla Campus Club program ). I received a mail that I am a student ambassador for Firefox, I was happy ( Though I had no idea what that it meant ) .

Later I joined the Official Firefox Student Ambassadors facebook group. After some days, One guy in that group, asked the new people to introduce themselves. I too posted in the group, at the end I mentioned that I am from Madurai.

Then to my surprise , a guy named Gowtham Venkat commented that he is going to conduct an event in Madurai.( I did not realize that this unknown guy will become my close friend. ) I attended his event. There I met Amar and Gowtham. I have made a blog on my learnings.

After the event , he added me to the telegram group of Mozilla TamilNadu community. It was new to me, to be in a group of people .. actively speaking about contributions, events and of course Mozilla.

With each passing day, I learned new things. I interacted with Mr.Karthick and Mr.Vishwaprasath. They were very informative and solved my basic doubts to regarding the program. They conducted many online events like Contribution weekend , Train the Trainee. I did not miss even a single event. They were both informative and funfilled.

2016 at a glance:

January:

January was the “Privacy month”, FSA program called for Privacy campaigns. The topic attracted me. I made a blog on the same. The Community members appreciated me and It boosted me to work more.
I made two privacy campaigns, One in my college and another in Madurai.

February:

The program attracted me, I felt that my friends also should join the program and learn new things. Thus I conducted an introduction event in my college — check out the blog for more details.

March, April and May:

These months were like learning pace for me. Speaking with fellow contributors and observing their ways of conducting events were my primary work. I learned about QA contributions through Mr.Mohammed Adam.

June:

QA contribution attracted me a lot. I read documents about the contribution in the quality assurance site of Mozilla. It was mentioned that, participating in testdays were the primary means of QA contributions. So I decided to jump in.
Thus I participated in the testday for the first time.
Later, in the mid of June, I heard about Weeks of Contribution — a Mozilla TN initiative. I was ready to participate. here is what I did in the event.
In the next testday, I asked contributors from Mozilla TamilNadu group to participate. Thus we participated as a team. Results can be found — here

July:

In July, there came a post about “Mozilla IOT meetup series”. Since IOT is an emerging technology, I got excited. It was easier for me to participate , as the event happened in Coimbatore ( I am doing my BE CSE degree in SKCET, Coimbatore ).
I met Paartipabhalaji club lead of SNS Firefox club and Mr.Vigneshwer, member of Mozilla TN community. I admired the immense knowledge of Mr.Vigneshwer and continued to get along with him in his events.
I started inviting people from Mozilla India group to participate in the testdays and also started writing blogs in Mozilla TamilNadu website.

August:

It is the most memorable month for me in 2016. Because, I was selected to participate in Mozilla India meetup which held for 2 days at Pune.

Have a look at my experience.

September:

As the Firefox student Ambassador was changed to Mozilla Campus program, I thought of conducting an event in my college so that fellow students will learn about the positives of attending them.
On Software Freedom Day , Mr.Vishwaprasath and Mr.Karthick visited my college and motivated my friends to contribute to Mozilla.
Along with that, I continued to host the testdays and help contributors.

October:

A new campaign called MozActivate was announced by Mozilla, to promote new contribution areas.Like anyother Mozillian in the planet, I too got excited.
I expressed my thoughts to Mr.Vishwaprasath. He suggested me to have a look at Featured Add-ons e10s compatibility testing. As per his suggestion, I called contributors to participate in the sprint. And it had a good response. Though, It was planned to be a single day sprint, the sprint was extended to a week-long activity. We verified around 70 unique add-ons. Here is the results.

November:

I started interacting with my college juniors and mentoring them to new contribution areas.
Continued to host testdays.
Became member of AMO’s Featured board.

December:

Wrote Mozilla TN QA contribution blogpost
Applied to Mozilla TamilNadu meetup 2017
With Gowtham Venkat started Mozpython Sprint
Had a meetup in Madurai to bring in new contributors.

Thanks for reading 😃

what’s next?

That is all for 2016!!! Looking forward to work in 2017 .

Also read: how my open-source contribution helped me to get QAE internship @ Amazon. https://link.medium.com/EYwXtoL7aZ