Well this week Mozilla and Microsoft put on their Add-on-Con (add-on conference).  The conference showcases the latest and greatest for the browser extension and addon market.  The agenda covered talks from both a business and tech side…or as I like to refer to it, Suit’s and G33ks. :) Patrick, Mike Kaply, and I all attended this event.

Mozilla Open House:

We were lucky to attend the Mozilla Open House.  I felt pretty excited myself, as it was ‘my’ first time ever visiting California…and the infamous ‘Silicon Valley’.  I went with my friend and colleague Mike Kaply (http://www.kaply.com/weblog/).

The food-spread and drinks Mozilla put out was quite impressive.  They had Mediterranean cuisine, snacks, and plenty of beverages.  I was able to finally put a face to some of the names I’ve either met online, or heard of through the community. These included: Mary Colvig, Rey Bongo, & Mark Finkle.

And of course, a special thanks to Mary and Julie Deroche for helping me arrange the 2nd North West Moz Dev Group.

We were able to discuss our own interests in the mozilla community, as well as hear and understand the possible future of AMO.

I was also able to meet with some old friends from Dance Jam & Flock.

The Conference:

So the actual conference was pretty cool. It was hosted at the Computer History Museum in Mountain View.  We were able to establish some good network connections (business connections, stop thinking like a g33k ;) ), and meet some more folks.

We also met Joshua Allen and Matthew David Crowley.  They were both at the conference representing/evangelizing Internet Explorer.  It was enlightening to see how understanding and receptive these guys were towards IE development and its inherit complexity.

However, we both understood that IE still represents a very large market share, and it needs to be supported more by extension developers.

We also heard some more talks regarding AMO and other mozilla technologies.  Mark Finkle was able to talk more about various Mozilla technologies as well.

At the end of the day…

Overall, we all thought this event was quite a good investment.  We met some cool people, made some good business connections, and learned more about the Mozilla/Microsoft World.

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