I'm writing this evening to follow up my meetup event. For those of you who don't know, tonight I ran a meetup of Mozilla interns from Seneca College and anyone else who was interested in learning about the Mozilla internship program and teaching open source in general.

I'd like to first thank my co-presenters for their contributions to the meetup tonight:

• Armen Zambrano, Mozilla Release Engineer, Seneca BSD Graduate, 2008 Mozilla Intern
• Cesar Oliveira, PHP Developer, AMO Editor, Seneca BSD Graduate, 2007/2008 Mozilla Intern

I'd also like to thank the attendees who contributed a lot of great questions and provided much to the discussion tonight:

• Frank Hecker, Director of Grants and Programs, Mozilla Foundation
• Al MacDonald, Freelance Software Engineer, processing.js Developer
• Ezadkiel Marbella, Seneca BSD Student, RIM Intern, AMO Editor
• Moffat Sehudi, RIM Intern, Software Developer
• Darren Butcher, Seneca CPD Student

Last, but not least, I'd like to thank Chris Tyler, Open Source Professor at Seneca College for taking care of the administrative side of things. Without him, this event would not have had a venue. Thanks Chris.

So, how did the event go?

After a brief presentation of three peoples' journeys from college student to intern to successful and valued cogs of an open source project, we moved into discussion. This discussion ranged from the simplest of questions like, "What is an extension?" to questions which were harder to answer like, "What did you not like about your Mozilla internship?". It was really quite an enlightening process. I could probably write a blog post about each topic that came up tonight. Some of the topics which stood out in my mind were:

• The importance of being a proactive blogger
• A project cannot be singularly defined -- it is made up of a variety of subprojects requiring a wide range of skillsets
• The importance of personal connections and the collaborative aspect in open source
• How working for an open source company has benefited working in a proprietary environment
• Different ways to become involved -- turning perceived barriers of entry into opportunities
• Benefits of teach open source to students
• Benefits of a classroom to an open source project like Mozilla
• Likes/Dislikes of the Mozilla Internship program

I think the discussion was of high value to everyone in attendance; attendees and presenters alike. We all learned a little something tonight. Honestly, that's what is great about the meetup format. Often, when I'm blogging, it feels like one way communication; as if I'm preaching to an inattentive crowd. The meetup creates an environment of shared communication. I get immediate feedback on my ideas and I get to share in the ideas of others. I truly believe that everyone walks out of a meetup more informed and more educated than when they walked in.

All in all, it was a successful event. I've said this before, "it's the quality not the quantity that matters". This certainly rings true tonight. We didn't have many people show up tonight but those who did contributed so much to the conversation. Everyone who attended benefited in some way. It's nice to have come full circle from someone who could only see the barriers to someone tearing down those barriers for others.

Again, I'd like to thank everyone who attended tonight. I look forward to holding another event like this in the near future.