Firefox 3.5 Launch: Events Workshop this Friday

William Quiviger and I have been busy dreaming up Friday’s workshop on how to host a Firefox 3.5 launch event.  It will be the first of many workshops to help ready our global marketing team for the launch.   Events have always been critical for Mozilla — helping to celebrate successes, such as a launch, garner awareness for Mozilla and Firefox, build community and draw in new members, and more!

We’ll cover the following:

• Why events matter
• How to participate
• What types of events to host
• How to find a venue
• How to promote an event
• What resources are available
• How to track your success

Here are the details on joining:

• Friday, May 1, 10:00 a.m. PDT/17:00 UTC
• The workshop will be held on air mozilla
• Dial-in Info: +1.650.903.0800, followed by 92# and then 7391#
• Or you can use our toll-free number: +1.800.707.2533, followed by 369# and then 7391#. If you’re outside the US, use Skype to call in with our toll-free number.
• If you can’t join the call — but want to ask questions — you can join us in #marketing on IRC (irc.mozilla.org).

Please sign up on Spread Firefox.  We’ll be archiving the Air Mozilla episode and sharing the presentation if you can’t make it.  Looking forward to Friday!

See the fun you can have?

Jumpstarting the Firefox 3.5 launch team!

We had an overwhelming response to our call for volunteers for the Firefox 3.5 marketing team.  In fact, over 130 people from Argentina, Bangladesh, India, Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Zimbabwe, Macedonia and more heeded the call!  Our truly worldwide team will jump in on several marketing activities including public relations, events, and testimonials.

What’s next?  We’ve set up a series of online workshops that will be held starting in May to discuss what we’re planning for each area, how you can contribute, how to go about it and of course, answer questions and brainstorm! The sessions will be held over Air Mozilla and archived if you can’t make it.

Here’s the line up:

• May 1st, 10:00 a.m. PDT/17:00 UTC – Events workshop

• May 5th, 9:00 a.m. PDT/16:00 UTC – PR workshop

• May 7th, 9:00 a.m. PDT/16:00 UTC – Creative workshop (Affiliate buttons + designs for the community store)

• May 13th, 9:00 a.m. PDT/16:00 UTC – Video workshop (Testimonials + the pending “Faster” campaign)

• May 13th, 10:00 a.m. PDT/17:00 UTC – Five for five (name TBD, but the program will focus on upgrading & introducing people to Firefox)

• May 14th: 9:00 a.m. PDT/16:00 UTC – Social Media workshop

• May 14th, 10:00 a.m. PDT/17:00 UTC – Campus Reps

• May 20th, 9:00 a.m. PDT/16:00 UTC – “Faster” campaign workshop

More details will be posted on each workshop in the next week. Looking forward to everyone joining us.   I speak for the whole team in that we’re really excited about the possibilities!  As Colonel John “Hannibal”  Smith would say, “I love it when a plan comes together! (Thanks Elliott for the reminder)

Spread Firefox: Go live update

Update: We’ll start our migration to the new design at 7:00 p.m. PDT on April 7th during our window of regular IT maintenance.  Again, Spread Firefox will be down for a few hours while we make this move!

We’re going live with the new Spread Firefox design (and a whole lot of fixes) on April 7th thanks to the hard work of an incredible team!  Alex Buchanan, our intrepid web developer, pointed out today that we’ve fixed over 200 bugs since January.   I’ve recapped some of the major changes you can expect here and you can still take the stage site for a spin. In the next few days we’re focused on final QA work, as well as fixing the Affiliates tracking issues.

When we launch on Tuesday we’re going to have to take Spread Firefox offline for a few hours beginning at approximately 8:00 a.m. PDT.   Bear with us — it will be worth the wait! If you need a Spread Firefox fix that day you can find the team in #spreadfirefox on irc.mozilla.org.

Let’s Get Personal!

Today Mozilla Labs launched a new and improved Personas site + a whole slew of new Personas or “skins” for Firefox.   It would be an understatement to say I am happy about this!  I’ve been an avid user of the experimental Personas since 2007 and have been dying for them to go primetime.   I do pretty much all my work from my browser so I really get a kick out of putting my own touch on it.

A few of my favorite things about Personas:

• Make your own:  When Personas first rolled out I had to enlist Fligtar to create a Persona based on my cat Ed — it was pretty darn fierce!  However, it’s rad (sorry, I’ve taken up mountain biking) to be able to make Ed 2.0 all on my own and easily.  I can envision a whole series…
• Change on a whim:  All I have to do is click the little fox mask in the lower left to select a new one to match my mood or better yet, improve my mood!  No restarting Firefox.
• Causes:  While I lean towards Personas that provide cute factor, it was great today to see new cause-related Personas such as the LIVESTRONG and Team-in-Training/Leukemia & Lymphoma Society (LLS) ones.  I really appreciate skinning Firefox to align with organizations that I have been supporting — I met my husband, a cancer survivor, through LLS
  

  A wardrobe for your browser!

That’s just a snapshot of Personas — they’re a ton of them to match different affinities and personalities.  Create your own if you don’t find what you’re looking for!