Manila Plays Host to Mozilla Firefox OS App Days

Manila, Philippines became part of Mozilla‘s history by being one of the 24 cities worldwide to host Firefox OS App Days. The event aims at:

• Demonstrating grassroots developer momentum worldwide, especially in launch markets and places where Mozilla has strong a community;
• Educating and inspiring developers to work on apps and submit them to the Firefox Marketplace;
• Creating opportunities for local developers to showcase their apps;
• Driving some buzz in tech press in advance of the Mobile World Congress (MWC).

The Manila leg of Firefox OS App Days was held at the Boracay and Balesin Rooms of the Alphaland Southgate Tower, strategically located at the corner of EDSA and Pasong Tamo adjacent to the MRT Magallanes Station in the country’s financial district capital: Makati City. We initially planned for the registration counter to open by 0830H, but since there was already a line of attendees as early as 0745H, we decided to start accepting people to the venue by 0810H. Attendance at the end of the day counted to 113.

We are honored to have Mr. William Reynolds from Mozilla Mountain View (California, USA) to join in this celebration.

It was at this event where my Firefox sneakers made its first public appearance:

The day formally started with our Community Manager Eusebio “Jun” Barrun, Jr.‘s talk about “Mozilla in the Philippines“. His slide deck can be viewed here.

After Jun, it was my turn to be on stage for my “Firefox and the New Web Challenge.” My slide deck (HTML5) can be viewed online here.

Monique Almario, the country’s very first WebFWD Scout gave an overview of what the program offers to aspiring technopreneurs. Her slides are here.

Fellow Mozilla Rep Kevin John Ventura gave the attendees an overview of the Firefox Marketplace. His slides can be viewed online here.

Just before lunch, William was up on stage to give his presentation entitled “Apps are Boring; Games are Fun!” — originally created (and presented) by TofuMatt (get well soon, buddy). His slide deck can be viewed here.

After the sumptuous lunch provided by Osio’s Catering, the attendees were given time to hack on their web apps.

Prior to this day, I had already received several emails from attendees showing their willingness to demo their apps during the program. All-in-all, there were eight (08) apps presented on stage (will have a separate blog post about them later).

And just before we started the app demo on stage, the crew from ANC (The ABS-CBN News Channel) arrived! They shot footage to be used in their tech show Future Perfect. This is also William’s debut on national TV!

Back to the celebration of the Open Web and Open Source Apps. Any Filipino gathering will not be complete without a photobooth … thus, we had one!

If you want to download a softcopy of your photobooth pic during the event, please get it from here.

Everybody went home with a swag bag (with awesome stuff inside) and a “limited edition” Firefox OS App Days shirt courtesy of Mozilla:

And that concludes the first part of the celebration that day. Did I mentioned that we had an after event socializing at the National Sports Grill (NSG) Greenbelt 3 later that day?

We would like to thank the following for supporting the Manila leg of Firefox OS App Days:

• Ms. Michelle Santos of Globe Labs & Globe Telecoms for providing faster wireless internet connectivity all throughout the day. Maraming salamat po!
• Ms. Ruby Santos of Alphaland for a worry-free venue. You guys are awesome! Maraming salamat!
• Alma, Archie, & Maiko of Osio’s Catering Services for the sumptuous food, awesome free-flowing beverages, and worry-free services. Maraming salamat! Sa uulitin.
• National Sports Grill (NSG) for the awesome after event socializing venue, great food, and awesome booze. Maraming salamat!
• Emerson Factor Leonor Photography for the awesome shots! Sa uulitin. Maraming salamat!
• To our friends at ANC (The ABS-CBN News Channel) Future Perfect: Ms. Melissa, Sir Tony, Claire and her crew … maraming salamat po!
• To all Mozilla Reps in the Philippines: Jun, Joell, Kevin, Kemuel, Jean, Chor, Allan, Faye, Aaron, and RJ — you guys (and gal) are as awesome as always!
• To the Student Reps and volunteers — thank you very much! Until our next big event. Study hard 🙂
• To our awesome hosts Joyce & Rafael: awesome job! Sa uulitin.

[All photos used in this article are courtesy of KJDomanog Photography & Emerson Factor Leonor Photography.]

[This blog post was originally posted at TurfSite Manila]