Geraldo, Participant and Site Host: A Global Sprint 2017 Story
Geraldo is a front-end coding instructor who works on community-based web literacy programs in São Paulo, Brazil. He’s passionate about discovering emerging technology and learning design skills.
I’ve been contributing to open source projects since I was about 15 years old. I joined Mozilla’s Global Sprint because there were so many exciting projects about web literacy. For the 2017 Sprint, I was a participant, contributing to a game design project. I also hosted a site at a space for entrepreneurs in São Paulo, Brazil.
To prep for the sprint, I browsed through all the projects to find one I was most excited about. Every open project should have Contributor Guidelines that explain how to get involved and what help is needed — that’s the place to start. I brainstormed a few game ideas in advance, so on the day of the Sprint I was ready to go.
The project I picked was the Mozilla Privacy Arcade Offline Game Challenge. At the sprint my job was to invent offline playground and tabletop games for young people that encourage strong online safety habits. We worked to create fun and inviting games so players of diverse backgrounds could participate.
During the sprint, people from all over the world were connected online — some contributors were at their homes and workplaces. At the Campus São Paulo site, familiar faces were present — members of our local Mozilla community came to collaborate. We met, exchanged lots of game ideas, checked in online to see what other Privacy Arcade contributors were doing, and practiced using the code and content sharing platform GitHub, the collaboration tool for this project.
We took a lunch break together, worked all afternoon and finally submitted work on our games: Privacy Board Game (in English, Spanish, and Portuguese) and CryptoMadness! Collaborators at the Sprint site in Brooklyn, New York, in the USA took a break to playtest our game, so we got users and feedback right away!
The work wrapped up at the end of the event, but great conversations have continued beyond the Sprint!
The 2018 Global Sprint is May 10–11! Host a site, lead a project, or pitch in as a participant — learn more!
