FSA program is beyond the benefits listed in the wiki pages and website. It helps you to explore yourself and Learn a lot about Community participation.It motivates you in every way to be a leader of your community and It helps you to learn about Creative thinking and Critical Thinking. It gives you an opportunity to involve in Real time projects and motivates you every time.
The Past two years with FSA Program have been so amazing.It helped me to be a person which I always wanted to be.It gave me so many Opportunities, Challenges and amazing initiatives where I can learn and participate.It Introduced me to many amazing people and showed me what openweb should mean to me.
My First Interaction with Mozilla was in July-2012.As a computer science student i was interested in exploring technologies and attended a session by Mozilla Rep Srikar Ananthula in my college. There was an app of the month contest running on at that time and since I was a web developer I made an app and participated in the contest.I participated twice but never won.In the process of learning,making an app and participating in the contest I came accross many interesting people in the Mozilla India community. This is one incredible community filled with enthusiastic and energetic contributors who always love to help if you want to contribute. That spirit in Mozilla India made me interested in joining the Community and immediately I created my Mozillians Profile. From then on there was no Stop.
It has been wonderful being a part of Many Campaigns, Initiatives, Organizing Events, Learning, Contributing and Participating.Here goes few happenings in my journey with Mozilla
- Rep of the Month in January 2015
- 2 Years of Amazing Journey from a Firefox Student Ambassador to VP of Contributions at Executive Board of FSA Program
- Mozilla Tech Speaker from pilot run-2
- Privacy Campaign in January 2016
- Hive Pop up at Vizag
- Community India Meetup,Hyderabad in 2014
- Mozilla Beta Camp, Bangalore in 2014
- Firefox OS App Days in Indore(Needs a mention cz My first talk outside my state B-|)
- Speaker at Womaniya-2015, Warangal
- Organized Women in Technology being a part of ETF(Event Taskforce)-Mozilla India to encourage Women Participation in the Community
- Organized Womoz App Sprint in Hyderabad to Empower Mozilla Hyderabad women community.
- Mozilla Presence Organizer at Maker Fest 2016(Largest Maker Festival in India)
- Participated in Maker Fest 2015 as Mozilla India Representative
- Gave two talks about Webmaker Project and Webmaker tools at FOSSASIA-2015(First talk outside India \o/)
- Managed FoxYeah Campaign in India as a part of ETF Team.
- Organized 20+ Webmaker events at Schools, Colleges, Maker Spaces and Community Spaces.
- Launched 15+ Firefox Clubs in Various Colleges in Hyderabad
- Organizer and Speaker at 20+ Overnight Hackathons around India Including VIT University App Days, BITS Hyderabad Firefox OS Hackathon, IOT Hackathon at JNTU University
- Co-organizer of Firefox OS Stall at International Gadget Rush, Hyderabad
- Participated in Whistler Workweek and Orlando Workweek being a part of #FSADreamTeam
- Pariticipated in Leadership Summit at Singapore as a Participation Cohort
- Co-organizer of Firefox 10 bus in India
- Participated in Mozilla Taskforce Meetup 2015 representing Event Taskforce team and FSA Taskforce.
- Gave about 80+ Talks at various Educational Institutions, Community Spaces, Maker Spaces, Industrial Organizations and few Conferences.
And Yes, I still microblog everything here even if I don’t get enough time to blog everything.
It has been an incredible journey with Mozilla for 2+ long years and this June I will be attending Mozilla workweek at London #Mozlondon to plan the future of Mozilla on Campuses along with Campus Campaign team, Mozilla Foundation, my FSA Team and many other super fantastic people.
My Organizational Goals are
- To help Participation team in Shaping the future of Mozilla on Campuses.
- To help the Campus Campaign team in creating a Successful, full stretch Impactful Campaign in campuses.
- To discuss with Connected devices team about how the volunteers with different domains of Knowledge can contribute to Connected devices project.
- To discuss with Tech speakers team in setting the goals and vision in launching Local Tech Speaker volunteer groups.
My personal goals before heading to Mozlondon are
- To learn and explore the design thinking approaches which the participation team generally follows in solving many major critical issues.
- To learn about Creating Impactful initiatives with Communities and maintaining the sustainability in communities.
- To learn about various parameters that empower communities and How to Ignite the spark in the inception of Community.
Mozlondon is 10 days away and I m so excited about the Experiences I’m going to have at workweek.
Thank you for reading this.
Santosh Viswanatham 