We have accomplished so much in Brazil since my last update that I thought it was time to report on the latest news and activities.
The community is vibrant and involved in all the current projects, and Firefox usage is increasing! Net Applications reports that market share was 38.6% in March 2009, up from 19% in November 2007 when we started increasing our activity level in Brazil.
Here are some highlights of the exciting projects that have taken place over the last few months:
LAN Houses:
LAN houses are the cybercafes of Brazil, they are a very popular way to get access to the Internet.
- Mozilla held a LAN house workshop in Rio with 33 in-person participants and 42 via live video stream. The conversation with LAN house owners is now ongoing. Restults can already be seen with a recent change in regulations that now allow for LAN houses to be more easily incorporated, reducing informality, improving their conditions, and contributing to increase the number of people online in Brazil.
- Check out pictures from the events
- Read the full meeting notes on the LAN house wiki (in English and Portuguese)
Video testimonials
- Launched testimonials campaign, gathering over 300 testimonials at campus party.
- Campus party pictures
- Watch the resulting video highlights (with english subtitles)
PR
- Launched the Mozilla Brasil Blog
- Started the Mozilla Brazil twitter account
- Ongoing proactive outreach to press, response to inquiries
- Recent articles: Mozilla at Campus Party (Jan 22, 2009) Lan Houses (Feb 3, 2009) Firefox market share (March 2, 2009) Mozilla releases Firefox 3.1 beta 3 (March 12, 2009) ** Firefox add-on: Greasemonkey (April 5, 2009)
What's next?
- Video project: submit your own video explaining why you love Firefox"
- Planning for FISL 2009 in Porto Alegre from June 24th to June 27th. See the wiki. We're having a public call to plan for FISL on April 22nd at 2pm PDT. Contact Alix (alix at mozilla dot com) to get the call info.
- Community meetup in Sao Paulo on April 18th with Mitchell Baker - contact Alix (alix at mozilla dot com) or Bruno (bmagrani at mozilla dot com) and sign up on the wiki if you would like to participate. Everyone is welcome to join.
- Continue working with lan houses and press
- Increase Mozilla's involvement with campuses
If you would like more frequent updates on Brazil, check out the Mozilla Brasil blog and follow firefoxbr on Twitter. You can also join the moz/br community.