Deb's Blog

I'm not much of a new year resolution kind of person. I do what is needed, when it's needed, to get to where I need to be. But of late, I've found myself in an incredibly privileged position of having time, energy AND resources to do not only what I need to do, but also the things that I want to. I can play the video games I like, buy the things I like, travel the places I like - all these things I want to and more - without negatively affecting any of the things that I need to do (responsibilities of various forms). It hit me with a massive realization, that not many people - not only the ones alive in modern era, but even the ones that are now part of history - regardless of their power, riches or fame - have had this much amount of degrees of freedom & learning/growth opportunity in their lifetime. For that, I find myself to be incredibly fortunate, and that also makes me restless. Cause if I don't turn this opportunity into something useful, something worthy, wi...

12:30AM last night, gotten done with the meetings & calls - almost worn off - I was about to get my dinner & call it a day (for such long of a day it was). But what do you know! Got summoned by my Ingress faction for a call of duty - awkwardly eccentric, insanely probabilistic, extremely difficult, and yet immensely confidential task that needs to get done exactly at 4:30 in the morning, at a place 3hrs by road. Hence, I grabbed my gears & rushed for the pick up (with a couple of bread-slices in my pocket; because, Dinner) - and there's no looking back. In simple words - it was a covert operation of ~16 Ingress Agents, to transport an artifact (#2) from the origin portal in Bangalore to the destination portal at Mahabaleshwar (then undisclosable) - lots on XMs were spilled in the process & to defy the Resistance's effort to... well, resist - the process... & keeping it under Enlightened-control, strategically (12hrs) & effectively (4hrs). ...

I woke up quite late today, and as usual found myself in the flood of device-notifications. Swimming through, I couldn't help but notice that there's one recurrent theme against many of those conversations - actively, or passively; which is, me being termed as the "Co-founder of Mozilla India" in my FOSDEM talk's introduction. Some congratulations, some giving justifications, some asking for justifications, some efforts to clarify the situations, some smug comments & inquiries etc. And I realized, the issue is not as innocent as it first appeared, and something is needed to be done to fix it. For what it's worth, I am not the one who scripted the introduction. I've had very little to do with it. Clarista is such a nice person, it seemed rude to stop her on stage. I made a little hand gesture, "Please, let it go... I'm not that guy." but anyway, that message didn't pass through. I've been anonymously volunteering for Mozil...

TL;DR : Now, anyone can register & post on Mozilla India Blog . Let me be straight here : It's nothing new. It has always been there - but general feedback from the community implies, it isn't always obvious to get... Okay, point taken. JUST. PUSH. THE. BUTTON. Dammit! From the very moment of configuring the Mozilla India blog, the new user registrations was set open (OFF, by default) - so that the community members can contribute to it. The default WP configuration puts the SignUp/LogIn links at the bottom of the sidebar - which may be difficult to notice. Although, if someone searched, would've found it - we needed to make it more vivid to the community, that it's not a obfuscated fine-text sitting there just because it has to. We had to make it more prominent, that if community members have a good point to share & need to have their voices heard - they can use this platform. After all, that's what it's for - right? So, there you go... The...

WIP title: Releasing Krakens... an entire army of them! Peek-a-boo: New visual identity of Mozilla India... Yay! Well, the idea of Foxy hugging the Ashoka Chakra as the logo had to be thrown into the gutter - too many objections about potential abuse of the country-emblem. Though, I fail to see how hugging your mother can be considered a nefarious act! Now, to the main topic; TL;DR: The new Mozilla India websites is live & kickin', also it has got some new platform-integration (& underlying infrastructure upgrade). The Mozilla India developers have been at work for a while now & things have started to shape up. The Platforms & the Infrastructure I'll be mentioning these two terms way too often below, so I'd rather give a brief: Platforms : a software stack on an OS, allowing us to achieve some task in particular. Some lose examples would be blogging, content management, documentation, API, content serving etc. Infrastructure : the hard...

Yes, you heard it right. No, there's no sad story behind it. Also, the decision is not made in a hurry. In fact, I've been trying to figure out my purpose & impact as a council member the moment I took up the duty — and soon after, I came to the conclusion that it's not really my thing. Being in the Council empowered me as a Rep & I'm glad to have helped in the Mozilla community activities globally, and especially in South Asia. So, there are lots of reason why not to, but there are a couple of reason for me to retire; and here's why: Focus I can be more effective at my other parts of Mozilla contributions (mainly around Developer Community Building in South Asia), if I step out from some of all those things I'm involved with. There will be another blog, listing them down & delegating responsibilities accordingly, where applies. Time Being in the council means dedicating a huge amount of time reviewing/approving budgets - a continuous i...

August 1st, 2013: I've got 178 actionable emails in my inbox. A partial snap of my inbox of this evening with the emails which dodged all the 50+ filters, headed directly my way & need quick attention — it's not a sudden spike, and there're some emails missing inbetween, which I've replied to, archived, before thinking of taking the screencap — but you get it, right!