Mozilla All Hands London - The journey
Mozilla All Hands is the bi-annual meeting where Mozilla’s staff and volunteer can work closely together. Formerly called as Mozilla work week, the first Mozilla All Hands this year was held in London, in 3 different venues. I’m so excited as this was my very first Mozilla All Hands experience, which turn out to be very loud, crowd, and super exciting.
We arrived at the London Heathrow Airport (LHR) on June 13 at 4 AM. And that was the longest flight that I’ve ever experienced. Which turn out to be quite boring because I can’t really fall asleep and the Malaysia Airlines in-flight entertainment was not enough for me (sort of). Huhuu. Well, maybe it just my body who doen’t get used to fly long hours. Can’t really imagine if the event is in US which mean, that the flight will be longer than this. Thankfully, it’s London.
Well, I’ve been invited by the Marketing team, while the 3 other contributors from Indonesia was under the Participation team. Sessions in the first day of MozLondon was start from 4 PM, so we have a few hours to wander around London. Mbak Rara was so kind to take me to the Mozilla Space London that was located in St Martin (near Covent Garden). Aaand, turns out that they are in the middle of preparation to move to the new office near Tower of London. The good thing is that because of the moving, they’re throwing their remaining swags to the community space’s manager. And Irvin (that turns out to be the only one who replied to get the swags) was kind enough to share the swags to us. Yay!
So, after that brief visit, we get to look for lunch and went to see Big Ben in
After the photo hunting, we went back to London Hilton Metropole Hotel to join the volunteer registration and volunteer orientation session.
South East Asia gank + Rarita.
Then in the evening, there was the opening session that was loud and intens. 1317 people were gather around in Monarch room, Hilton Metropole. The session is all about food, people, and conversation.
And here come my most favorite section of the rest of this party. The Chinatown!
Then in the second day, we kicked off the day with the plenary session with the concept of the reborn of the Dr.Who. I was not familiar with western serial when I was kid. So, I can only google it when people laugh on the Dr.Who jokes. ((:
After lunch, we then separated into parallel session in 3 different hotels. The Hilton Paddington was mostly for Participation team’s sessions, the Hilton Metropole for the other sessions that were more general, and The Landmark for marketing & dev team. The cons about this parallel schedule is that we can’t attend more than one session that happen in the same time. Because seriously, there are many interesting sessions that actually make me feel like want to clone myself.
Birthday of the Miss Bugzilla aka Konstantina in 17th July
And thank God it was summer so the sun sink a few hours longer than it does in equator. We basically can hang out on 8 PM and the sun still up high. We went for sight seeing in Wednesday to Big Ben, Tower of London, and some other places that I forgot then end up our journey on Picadilly Circus.
A week full of ideas & discussions, we end up MozLondon with closing party in The Brewery.
The first 2 days in London was the hardest for me. I can start sleepy from 6 PM and I can only eat a little because I haven’t get used to the food. That’s, even with the help of my survival kit that I brought from Indonesia. Which then I lost on the second day. Huhuuuuu.
Only after the missing of my survival kit, then I force myself to eat the food as it is. Which then turns out that it’s actually yum. Especially the lunch menu in The Landmark. :9
Full experience of A380. Got the lower deck from KUL to LHR, and then got the upper deck (plus the compartment) from LHR to KUL.
For me myself, MozLondon was about of SUMO, Rust training, Tech Speaker, and Community Space meeting. But I should say, being able to participate in MozLondon was open my view on how things actually work in Mozilla. It’s also intriguing to see how a big community driven organization, evolve and trying to reach its community to get involved in that process. What we’re doing here in Mozilla is something that we can’t get any clue from another organization. So, I’m fully understand the super-changing situation that happening right now.
Picture courtesy goes to my private collection, Mozilla’s, Yofie’s, & Christos’s.
More MozLondon post by another Mozillians: Elio Qoshi, Andrzej Mazur, Anjana Sofia Vakil, Daniele Scasciafratte, Rabimba Karanjai, Community’s blog.