Mozilla @Stanford University for an Open Source Bootcamp - April 23, 2011

Mozilla will be participating in Stanford Open Source Bootcamp on April 23, 2011. The event is organized by ACM and has for objective to initiate the students with open source projects.

Mozilla will have 4 workshops, 2 Q&A sessions and 1 keynote. The event will kick off at 1pm PST and will continue until the early evening (7.30pm).

Below is a summary of the workshops offered by Mozilla. The goal is to truly engage with the students and make those workshops as interactive as possible (hence the pre-requisites for each session).

We'll monitor and answer questions on Twitter using #MozStanford starting Friday morning (PST). We have a Facebook event page for the occasion so feel free to check it out and leave comments there too.

Agenda for Saturday:

* Keynote - 7 Lessons from Mozilla - Pascal Finette & Todd Simpson, Mozilla Labs

* Workshop #1 - Scaling a Web Application, Jeff Balogh

Synopsis:
“We'll take a naïvely built web app and turn it into something that can handle millions of users. Initial code will be provided and we'll evolve the design into something that scales using Amazon's EC2 for deployment and load testing.
We'll be working on a webapp with Python and Django. Experience helps
but isn't necessary. The code is simple.”

Requirements:
• You'll need git if you want to check out the code locally.
• Jeff will provide cloud servers with everything loaded up, so students should be comfortable working the command line if they want to write code.
• Writing code is optional. Jeff can drive with suggestions from participants or they can send patches.


Workshop #2 - Frontend Development Foundations, Matthew Claypotch

Synopsis:
“Every great web site needs a public face. Structuring your pages correctly will win you points in accessibility and maintainability, and win you points with search engines, In this session, we'll turn your resume from a PDF to a Pretty Dang Fine webpage. Learn to appreciate beautiful (and semantic!) HTML, classy CSS, and a splash of JavaScript.”

Requirements:
None

Workshop #3 – Web Security, Hands on Learning, Michael Coates
**************

Synopsis:
“The web is a dangerous place with talented criminals looking to destroy the apps that you spent so much time and effort creating. This workshop will be a hands on learning experience covering current threats to web applications. We'll use a vulnerable test application and perform hands on testing to understand these attacks and how to properly defend against them in our applications.”

Notes: Students can listen and follow along to Michael’s presentation or they can participate in hands-on learning on their own workstations while Michael works through some exercises. Issues are discussed at both a high level to cover overall impacts and also a detailed technical level for those interested.


Requirements (for hands-on exercises)
• Windows or Mac OS
• Download VMware player (free for Windows, vmfusion is available for mac but not free)
• Download vulnerable web demo
o http://sourceforge.net/projects/owaspbwa/files/0.93rc1/
o This is nearly 1 gig and must be downloaded ahead of time (we will have the demo on flash drives too on Saturday)
o More info here: http://people.mozilla.org/~mcoates/stanford.html


Workshop #4 – Hacking the Firefox UI, Shawn Wilsher & Frank Yan

Synopsis:
“The firefox team will be providing a set of bugs, and will help the students implement them. Come contribute to the release of Firefox 6.0!”

Requirements:

1. Skills needed (this is an or list, not an and)
- basic JS (JavaScript)
- CSS/HTML
- C++
2. Things to have before you arrive
- Have a bugzilla account already created so you can upload your patch. You can create one here: https://bugzilla.mozilla.org/createaccount.cgi
- To ensure you get the most time possible to work with an engineer on a patch, please have successfully completed a build (https://developer.mozilla.org/En/Simple_Firefox_build).
- We’ll be have 2 or 3 laptops setup as backups, but students should have their build and bugzilla account set up beforehand if possible.


Workshop #5 – Managing Software at Internet Scale, Christian Legnitto

Synopsis:
“Talk about releases, project management, software updates, managing open source releases (Mozilla/Firefox) vs corporate releases (Apple/Mac OS X), etc. Targeted at junior-level engineers with people skills looking for something different for a potential career than coding all day. Can likely be combined with other Firefox team talks.”

No requirements needed for this workshop/talk.


Workshop #6 – Lessons learned from starting a top 2% open source project, Alex Limi

Synopsis:
“Starting your own open source project comes with its own set of challenges and (at times) counter-intuitive decisions to be made. Alex Limi will talk about what to watch out for if you're starting your own open source project, how to build a successful community, and even how to make money off your open source project.”

No requirements needed for this workshop/talk.



If you're part of a CS students-run organization and would like this type of workshops at your school, please get in touch with our College Recruiting team. We'll be happy to hear your thoughts and suggestions!