The Event - Front in Maceió

The big day finally arrived, with a marathon of talks split across two tracks — Learn and Code — running from 9am to 7:30pm. It took place at Maceió’s Convention Center alongside other events like Nerd Legends, which was great because we had an audience of all ages. As Mozillians (me, Marcus, Panaggio and Melissa), we had a booth showcasing our activities and swapping ideas with attendees from both events.

We ran a few activities with the crowd: a “treasure hunt” where vouchers hidden around the venue could be traded for swag or stickers. We also applied Firefox temporary tattoos to anyone who stopped by to talk about Mozilla’s technologies.

After lunch we kept the activities going, getting ready for the talks scheduled at 6:40pm. One downside was that Mozilla’s two talks were happening at the same time in different auditoriums: one on “Get Involved” with Panaggio and Melissa, and another on Firefox OS with Marcus Saad, which I attended as an audience member. In the first few minutes, while we were still setting up, there were only about 5 people in the room — which worried us, thinking everyone had gone to the “Get Involved” talk instead. But people kept trickling in over the next few minutes, which lifted Marcus’s spirits. We passed a few devices (Alcatel and Flame) around the audience so people could try Firefox OS firsthand. The talk lasted only 40 minutes, but given how much Marcus knew about the platform, it could easily have run much longer. Right after, we rushed to set up the games for “Game Night,” which kicked off at 7:30pm following the hackathon awards and the event’s closing.