OSCON Wrap up report

Last week, Mozilla participated in the annual Open Source Conference hosted by O’Reilly in Portland, OR.  Mozilla has participated in the conference for several years now and had targeted it as a major open source community and developer relations event.  We also aimed to use it as a venue to garner more support for the Open Web platform.

Our activities included:

• Official OSCON sponsorship
• Booth presence
• “Office hours” with Mozilla employees that included QA, Bugzilla, The Mozilla Foundation team and more.  
• A Birds of a Feather session on “How to get involved with Mozilla.”
• A community party with Creative Commons at the Wonder Ballroom with the band Menomena.
• Several speaking opportunities:
• Beyond the Lock: Browser Security UI for the Distracted with Johnathan Nightingale
• Mozilla Firefox and the Internet as an Open Platform with Mitchell Baker
• Adventures in Localization - AMO Case Study with Wil Clouser & Mike Morgan
• O’Reilly Radar:  Executive Briefing with Mike Shaver
  

I asked the team that attended to provide feedback on our activities as well as the conference itself.  Here is a summary:

Mozilla Activities:

Successful:

-    Booth:  The setup with couches and size was great, and one of the most popular at the conference and very approachable.  We had an optimal location right near the main exhibit hall doors. It was very conducive to having people stop in and hang out, and continually busy.  There was also a very positive response to our community display.
-    Community Party:  Overall, the band Menomena was very well-rated and they were a pleasure to work with, and Mozilla fans to boot.  Everyone seemed to enjoy themselves and many of the party-goers commented positively on the photo stream.
-    Office Hours:  In concept, everyone was positive about conducting office hours and that we should consider doing this again.  The Bugzilla office hours were very well-attended due to promotion by Dave Miller.
-    Swag:  The Free Ride and Developer Kit shirts were overwhelmingly popular, as well as the Firefox plush dolls.

Needs Improvement:
-    Birds of a Feather:  We need to register our session earlier to secure a better time and promote it better, not only in the OSCON opt-in email list, but on our various blogs and with a flyer or signage at the booth.  We had a small turnout, but good conversations.
-    Office Hours:  These needed to be promoted better as well.  We had posted about them on SpreadFirefox and in the weekly project report.  Individual teams should promote them on their respective blogs next time.
-    Community Party:  We should consider a smaller, more intimate venue with a quiet seating area.  It was hard to have conversations while the band played.  Some remarked that it might have been a little intimidating to our community members.
-    Mozilla Foundation:  We need to loop the team in earlier on what we’re doing.  [Side note:  We’re syncing up on event calendars]

OSCON as a conference:

Successful/beneficial:

-    O’Reilly:  They continue to be very helpful at and prior to the conference, and continually checked in with us to see if everything was meeting our needs.
-    O’Reilly Radar:  Those that attended felt it was interesting and worthwhile.
-    Content and sessions:  Employees thought overall it was worthwhile and educational.

Needs improvement:
-    Conference costs:  The conference seems to get more and more pricey partially due to the conference center, not only from a registration standpoint, but also for things like wireless Internet access which should be de facto at this type of conference.
-    Fewer vendor booths:  The exhibit hall was pretty sparse, but the number of attendees still seems to be strong.
-    Vendor-focused sessions:  Many remarked that several of the sessions were really vendor soapboxes versus objective and educational.
-    Press:  There were fewer press in attendance at the conference.

Here's a summary of the show in pictures!