Conducting IIITA'S First Mozcafe

You may be most probably wondering now what the heck is Mozcafe. Even tough it sounds something like a restaurant it’s not. Mozcafe is an event conducted with the help of Mozilla foundation around the world for FOSS lovers to come and interact with each other. Recently a Mozcafe was conducted in IIIT Allahabad with the support of IIIT Allahabad Firefox Club. I was a member of the Firefox Club so I got chance to be a part of the organizing team of Mozcafe along with my super seniors Rahul, Aditya, Jatin, Ankit, Charul, Atul, Ashoka, Pawan and fellow batch mates Anurag and Abhishek.

It all started for me when Rahul sir called me and told that Firefox club is going to organize Mozcafe on February 24, 2014. I didn’t knew what Mozcafe was at that time so he told me patiently about the whole event. I was so excited about the idea and decided to be a apart of the event. Soon there was a meeting regarding the event where duties were assigned to each memeber. I Agot the task of making intro videos for the event along with Abhishek. My only prior experience on this field was with Pinnacle Videospin software. I was asked to make a video regarding Firefox club along with one on Open Source and Mozilla. The best part of all was that mid semester exams were 2 weeks away and like most of the IIITians I haven’t touched any my course books so far. We decided to not think about mid sems for a couple of days and started experimenting video making. Since we didn’t had much time we used Powtoons for making the videos.

After 1 day we came up with our first video. We were very proud of what we made.

Update: If you are someone who contribute to open source and watched the video you must have realized that the video is not much informative. What else can you expect from the video made by two first year students who has never contributed to open source :p

After the completion of the first video we began to work on the second video. This time it took us only 2 hours to complete the video. Even tough this video was only a minute in length it was the best of the two videos we made.

Along with the task of making videos I was also assigned to prepare some Quiz questions for the event which means I have to go to the stage to ask Questions. The very thought of facing a couple of hundred people alone on the stage made me nervous. So Abhishek told me that he will come to support me on Quiz. Soon the posters were placed all over the campus and the coundown for Mozcafe started. We did many mock runs on the auditorium and was all set for the event.

February 24 came faster than expected. Many professors came to attend the event along with students. Audio Lightning Club(Thunderbolt) took over the control of the sound and lights of the auditorium. The event was officially kick started at 3.30 PM IST. Shahid Farooqui gave a speech on Mozilla. After the speech I and Abhishek were called on the Stage to show our video. We presented the video and the crowd accepted it wholeheartedly. We were called once again to conduct the Quiz which turned out to be a fun session. We started off the quiz dramatically by taking the Question of the Quiz from the seat of a student.

Many other talks followed and some of the best ones were talk on GSOC, introduction to Github and Blogging. We were once again called to present our 2nd video. During the event we asked the audience to write about some cool inventions which they have in their mind. We collected all the idea and made an idea board. The best ideas were rewarded with Parker pens. We also managed to give the audience snacks along with fruity and chocoate. Mozcafe organized by Firefox club was able to bring many changes in the campus. Many of my friends contacted me on on Facebook asking for help to get started on Google Summer Of Code. Some of them had doubts on IRCs while some had problem with MDN and GitHub. A wiki media club is also to be launched in the coming semester by some students.

I am happy to be a part of the change which is now taking place in IIIT Allahabad. More over doing good not only feels good. It also leads to better good.