USA Tour 2008

Upon arriving to Mozilla offices in Mountain View, we were pleasantly surprised over the company's simplicity and a relaxed working environment. Employees are supplied with free drinks and snacks, as is actually a custom in many such companies. We were hosted by Mozilla's marketing team, who sat us on their couches and we had a pleasant conversation regarding Mozilla as a corporation, a foundation, and Firefox's market share in Slovenia. Since it's recently risen to more than 44%, which is second place worldwide, just behind Finland's 45%, they wanted to know the reasons behind the high popularity of their browser, even though they don't have much activity of the Mozilla community in Slovenia.

When we return, we'll leave Finland behind


We also talked about spreading the word about Firefox's next release in Slovenia. Apparently, none of the univesities in Slovenia have a Campus Representative, who would organize events, such as the upcoming Firefox 3 Launch Party, and helping student colleagues adopt Firefox.

Another interesting fact is that most of the contributors to Mozilla are volunteers - Mozilla employs about 150 people, which means they have one million users per Mozilla employee.

They also let us see their offices and their QA lab, where they tested performance between various browser to ensure that the next Firefox version is as quick and responsive as possible.

5th March 2008



It’s 3:16 am (or it was when we started writing this, now it is already 3:45 am) and after two days of adventures we are exhausted. We also had problems with internet access, that’s why the blog is not up to date, as it should be.
In telegraphic style only a couple newsflashes:
- the flight to Paris was pleasant;
- the flight to Paris had a delay;
- we successfully overcome all complications at AVIS and got desired cars;
- we got the GPS navigation running, thanks to Gregor, who kindly lent us the GPS receiver and the smart phone;
- found Good Nite Inn in Camarillo;
- ate our first burger;
- gone shopping for the first time;
- visited Santa Barbara Community College;
- we drove almost the whole day to Motel 6 in Sunnyvale;
- bought Verizon Wireless card for wireless internet access;
- the weather was wonderful;
- the atmosphere is good;
- “jet lag” is a dreadful thing.
Details of the first day and some photos can be found here. We will write more when we get some sleep.