Steve Lee :: Blog :: Mozilla at the CSUN conference [Updated]

As Marco and Frank have already described, this year at CSUN we noticed a definite change in people's relationships with us. Will Walker was showing Orca over at the SUN booth and observed that last year we were really introducing ourselves but this year we were a serious proposition for users and exhibitors alike. By 'we' I mean the Open Source accessibility and assistive technology projects including Mozilla, Orca, GNOME, NVDA and the Open a11y group.

Having just watched Jim Fruchterman's keynote I was delighted to hear his endorsement of Open Source as one of the foundations for his 'raising the floor' theme for the future of fair technology access. Mobile platforms are another foundation and the Mobile Mozilla project is underway. He also specifically mentioned Mozilla as a successful Open Source business model and organisation that engages its users. What a great indication that we've arrived (actually I thought 'Whoo Whoo',).

Our  team was smaller this year and various circumstances meant we had a low key booth with just a few banners, a little swag and a laptop. But then Firefox 'sells' very well on its own strengths along with grass roots support and without any need for glitz.

We were primarily letting people know about the the new accessibility features in Firefox 3, due out in May with the Beta 4 available now. A version of the flyer can be found here on www.accessfirefox.org. We also had information and CDs of NVDA (Mozilla are funding James as developer for a year)

Frank Hecker joined us for one day and as always rolled up his sleeves, ordering networks and chatting to people. He treated us to a great meal at a French style restaurant selected for us by Christopher who is a local.

Many great conversations were had and some that stay with me include the councilor from Nigeria who left saying he was 'very happy', the chap who is developing a web application that uses ARIA, Chaarls of Opera, a Microsoft technical author and numerous everyday users who say they use and love Firefox or were very interested to hear about it and NVDA as high quality yet free products.

I had an excellent time with many contacts made or developed and thoroughly enjoy talking to people about Mozilla and open source accessibility, feeling right at home. The team are really easy going, friendly folks who are dedicated to a11y and I'm proud to be associated with them all. Shows are tiring but very rewarding and I'm sure improve our standing in the public's mind. I've done shows for proprietary companies and it has never been so rewarding, perhaps as we are now not selling anything, so the relationship with visitors is founded on a more equal basis. Having people proudly saying they are Firefox users and love it is unmatched in feel good factor. Two of my personal highlights were hooking up with the Project Possibility team and students (about which I'll blog later) and the conversation Mick and James of NVDA had with the technical manager of Jaws about Python, C++ and Open Source sustainability.

Joanie introduced us to Twitter micro blogging service and we plan to use it next year to help organise ourselves (note to self: get a triband mobile/cell phone). Joanie also work tirelessly on Orca and found a couple of interesting bugs on some web sites when accessed with Orca.

Charles and T.V dropped by to work on some issue with the Google Reader ARIA support and NVDA and Orca.

Some Firefox temporary tattoos that the marketing group sent us in the swag provided us some amusement. I put one on the back of my hand (like a night club stamp) on the first day and 7 days later it's still there. Marco also had one. My kids went to school today proudly wearing them as well (and no there was no pressure from me, or any leading as to what to say to people who asked about it, honest).

I only attended one session which was the well attended and informative IA2 session with individual talks from the various people using the latest accessibility API for Windows.

At the Inclusive Technology stand I chatted with Sukhjit GIll, Commercial director. Inclusive are the largest distributer of Assistive Technology and accessibility products in the UK and who also develop their own software. Sukhjit suggested that I visited them and met up with the developers which is an excellent idea and one I will follow up. Inclusive's web site and free publications are a treasure trove of useful information.

An interesting coda to the visit was that on the plane back I sat next to the European buyer of ingredients for the organic food range 'Seeds of Change' (part of Mars). We had a fascinating conversation about several topics that concern me but the real reason this struck me was that Mozilla's latest Marketing campaign is '100% Organic software'. My thoughts are along the lines that Firefox is great on it's own and is also perfect as the vital ingredient in 'recipes' like Songbird, Miro and accessibile web browsing.

Note I was tempted to title this post 'California Uber a11y' but I guess it's best that I didn't (that's a reference to Punk group Dead Kennedy's first single).