We all know that Firefox Student Ambassadors (a.k.a FSA’s) are the voice of Mozilla and their goal is to spread the organization’s mission on the web to the people of the academe. Thus we at the Mozilla Philippines Community – Developers Group organized an event called: MozCoffee Firefox OS for Students last Saturday 27 July 2013 at the CBTL Two E-Com Plaza, Mall of Asia Complex, Pasay City.
The goal of the event is to simplify what Firefox OS really means, specially for the students. This includes why Mozilla made Firefox OS and why it’s a game changing platform not only for the benefit of the consumers, but for the sake of the spirit on an open web. And while most of them are Information Technology students, we made it clear for them about the frequently asked questions we usually encountered about the platform that they might also encounter when someone might ask them what Firefox OS is all about.
Though we gave the students some idea on what Firefox OS is all about, we also encouraged them to learn more about the platform during their free time.
An overwhelming number of audience was present, the event has reached 20 student attendees from different universities in Manila and in Northern Luzon.
Here are the event highlights …
The event was cheerfully started by Kemuel Domanog, who discussed what the Mozilla Philippines Community is all about, and explained briefly the Mission of the organization. He also discussed the different activities of the community like recruitment of new Mozilla Reps, the WoMoz initiative, WebMaker party, Firefox Flicks and a lot more.
Then I discussed what Firefox OS is all about and explained the basics of the platform. I also introduced the tools needed to make a Firefox OS app and explained the benefits of the platform not only for developers but also for the end users, as well. The session included a Q&A about the platform.
Attendees of the event had a chance to have a hands-on experience of the Firefox OS Developer Preview device (Geeksphone Keon), for them to learn more about how the platform really works.
The second half of the event is all about collaboration. We asked the attendees to group themselves according to their schools and think of an interesting app idea that will help their fellow students.
FSA’s from the University of Santo Tomas (UST) as represented by Marya Magno pitched about “MeBo” which stands for Message Bouncing. In this application, the sender’s device will have the capability to detect open Bluetooth devices and use them as path to send a message to the intended recipient.
An interesting app idea from the students of Adamson University named “Where u @” — a scheduler application which makes the use of geotagging. The user can tag their schedule on the places in the map in which they can set the frequency and time span of the tagged schedule. Ken Doneza was the spokesperson of their team.
A team of FSA’s from UE Manila and the Bulacan State University shared about an app idea called “TrackMe” where you can track your lost Firefox OS device in real time as discussed by Roger Duran.
Then finally the team from FEU-Makati thought of their ideal app for school productivity that focuses mainly on FEU students. It aims to help students keep track of their schedules and remind them of course requirement deadlines. Also, they haven’t thought of a final name but they have decided to call it: CODIGO. Gerard Taguigui volunteered to present in behalf of his team.
As judged by the Mozilla Reps present at the event, two (02) app ideas were selected as winners of the swag packs:
These swag packs includes a Firefox shirt! The other swag was given to Pauline Ponce, a randomly selected participant using the Raffle Hat app in Firefox OS.
Everybody came home a winner toward the end of the event, as everyone received cool Firefox swags!
We believe that students plays an important role not only in spreading the mission of Mozilla, but also to inform other people what Mozilla and it’s products is all about. More power to our awesome FSA’s! And we wish you success!
Maraming Salamat po! Mabuhay ang mga FSAs!
You can view the rest of the photos here.
