The Mozilla Firefox localization sprint went well, with over 40 participants turning up for the event. As a community we are very grateful for having had Arky1 from Hanoi, Vietnam join us.
First I had a chance to meet Vinicius Andrade, from Thought Works3 together with Arky and shared a lot about the Mozilla Community in Uganda. He was very thrilled about what we are doing and is eager to engage Thought Works in our future activities to every way possible.
The next day, the community leads had a chance to meet with Arky to share their experiences and learn from him especially about community building. The discussions where mainly centered on building sustainable communities. The key lesson learned was that, it will help to hold very small and focused meetings that only concentrate on people who are active. Those then go ahead to recruit others slow over time and the community keeps growing. He also emphasized that, building a sizable, sustainable community, takes time and therefore requires patience. He was very impressed with work already on ground and encouraged us to continue with it.
Finally, on the 13th of July, we held the localization sprint. The event was held at Uganda Technology and Management University (UTAMU)4. We were welcomed by the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Venacius Baryamureeba and Manager of Spaces, Mr. Drake Mirembe. They opened up the event and then Arky carried on with introductory talks on localization and his experience. He enlightened the participants about the release cycles and phases such as nightly builds, aurora and then final builds as well as why we need to localize software. I shared with the management of UTAMU what we are doing as a community and they expressed interest in supporting us and asked that I draft a concept on how they support the community especially with a space to hold events which has been a major challenge for the community since its inception.
After the talks, we had everyone get their hands dirty, with localization. Originally we were targeting Acholi, Luganda, Chiga and Soga. But because, of the nature of turn up, we had expressions of interest for other languages. New localizations for Langi, Lugbara and Ateso were also started. We selected team leads for the new and old localizations who we will work with to ensure continuity. It was exciting to see the energy with which the participants were doing the translations.
A highlight in the translation session was when one person, asked “how to you translate Oops! to Luganda?”. Several responses to the tweet about this question by Arky, begun to came in. The event was well publicized on Twitter, facebook and other platforms.
I would like to thank, everyone who helped make this event come to pass. Of course it was a combined effort from the Reps Council, Arky, local community members and UTAMU. I must say, without y’all, this event would not have come through the way it did.
Below are links relevant to the event:
1 Arky profile on Mozillians dot Org
2 Vinicius’ posts on Rebel Mouse
3 More about joining ThoughtWorks
4 The Utamu Institution
And finally Link to the Event photos on Flickr and on Facebook. The Twitter Tags are #mozcomug, Arky’s Twitter stream on @playingwithsid, and #l10nug. The notes are also available on Mozilla’s EtherPad.
This article was first published on the Moz-Uganda blog.
