Just uttering the name of Mozilla has always seemed to get the attention of the entire IT crowd around you. Throughout the years which followed ever since its conception back in 1998, the brand name of “Mozilla” and their flagship web browser “Firefox” has turned into some kind of a heart throbbing Rock Star for everyone related to the computing community, or even to those people who have at least once sat in front of a computer to browse the web.
Having an even organized dedicated to Mozilla here in Bangladesh was truly something of which our country should be proud of! 20th and 21st of the month of May were the two historic days when the event called “Bug Marathon Dhaka” was organized by the Mozilla QA Community of Bangladesh at the Independent University. The contributors of Bangladesh who are constantly working hard in order to help Mozilla polish their software were the only lucky ones who got invited to this event. The whole purpose and the main motto of organizing this event were to help these voluntary contributors of Mozilla to sharpen their skills so that they are able to help Mozilla improve the various features of their products and clean out all the bugs in them. Please bear in mind that when I say “Bugs”, I am definitely not referring to ants and spiders 😜
“Dude, I am very much excited about the upcoming gala event!” Those were the exact words of a friend mine who was sitting in front of me, almost out of breath in excitement telling me about the event, around 2 months ago from now. At first, things were sounding very confusing to me and the information which got inside my head from his blabber blabbers was absolutely zero. I told him to calm down and relax, after which he slowly started to shower me with every single detail of the event. With each of the information which he shared with me, the size of my eye started to get a little bit bigger and eventually I too got supremely interested in it and wanted to go participate in the event no matter what! The overwhelming curiosity was making it hard for me to pass the days, until finally on the 18th of May, our great lead Hossain Al Ikram gave me a phone call and invited me to the event. And that was it, momentarily I almost felt as if the whole world was now within my grasp! Seeing crazily happy I was, a friend of mine became started and asked me if this was going to be the last even of my life. I gave him a smile because, at that moment, I was unable to find any suitable words, even after going through a huge dictionary which would’ve fully expressed my emotions, and so I just told him and wait and then finally when the event was over, I made him feel jealous by showing off all the pictures which I had taken on that day 😜
The event fired off its first day on the 20th of May at around 9:30 AM. All of us were thoroughly instructed to bring a laptop with us, and as such, all of us carried a heavy backpack that held our glorious laptops. The highly honorable Ikram Vaia initiated the program with his wonderful speech and gave a very warm and hospitable welcome to us and all those who were present at the event.
The Initiation has followed some workshops and sessions which were conducted by some of the most experienced people in the field. Maruf Islam Vaia took charge of giving us instructions on how we were supposed to work and participates in the Test Day; he was kind enough to teach us how to create new profiles while also giving us a brief of why it was important. Rezaul Haque Nayeem Vaia, Khalid Saifullah Zaman Vaia, and Nazir Ahmed Sabbir Vaia spearheaded the second session of the even where they talked about various other important topics, covering even more information regarding the Test Days, Bug Days, Verification Days, The Life Cycle Of Bugs and also about Bugzilla. The main objective of the workshops which took place was to further encourage and sharpen the skills of the contributors and Beta testers who were voluntarily devoting themselves in order to further enhance and improve the products and software of Mozilla. The sessions covered a wide array of troubleshooting topics, including the basics of how to tackle unexpected bugs, how to make new files and how to comment on the solutions. The sessions held were very elaborate and were guaranteed to help the contributors, including me, to improve my skills and contribute more efficiently to the Mozilla community.
I won’t lie, prior to this day, I had absolutely no idea what one was supposed to do on “Bug Day”! But the sessions held here made me realize that Bug Day was not simply there to celebrate the birth of a new species! It was there to help Mozilla exterminate all of the bugs in their programs! 21 May, the second day, was the day of getting the recognition. Since the morning of that day, the weather was really bad, which almost made me decide not to get up from the bed and go to that event. But suddenly, when I closed my eyes and imagined that all of my friends were there, stealing all the fame! I jumped up from the bed and went forth towards the events against all odds. And I am glad that I did that, because, if I skipped that day and kept lazily sleeping on the bed, I would’ve missed an opportunity of a lifetime. The mentors and active contributors were recognized by being presented with KitKats, bag, mug, glasses, pen, and many more things. It was a great source of encouragement for the people who got that swag :D. I got a bag and 3 KitKats which made my participation significant and worth every moment spent. I had a dream that I would get any swag from Mozilla, which came true. While joining this Mozilla QA community I was highly curious to know about the details of Mozilla and wanted to contribute here. I am very much thankful to our community lead Ikram Bhaia and mentors for helping me fulfill my thirst tirelessly. Very big thanks to them and also the Mozilla Bangladesh QA community where I found many friends and more importantly got to know a whole lot of good people. I would like to conclude with great news stating that the Mozilla Bangladesh QA community is now the largest community all over the world!
Loved the experience and proud to be a #Mozillian.