Mozillian brainpower and passion. Yay!

As the old saying goes: 'There's nothing like getting stuck behind a rockslide with 400 of your closest friends.' Okay, maybe it's not an old saying yet ... but it will be as people mythologize and remember the 2008 Firefox Plus Summit -- float planes, candles and all.

And mythologize they should. The brainpower and passion gathered at the Mozilla event was truly awesome. What's more, it wasn't just technology brainpower and passion (although it was certainly that in spades). Everyone I met to was just as stoked to talk about broader values like openness, the internet and community as they were about mobile browsers and data in the cloud. This is what drives it all. While this isn't really surprising, feeling this kind of passion emanate off 400 living, breathing human beings is waaaaaaaaaay more real than just thinking about it in the abstract. Amazing, really.

More concretely: there were many of great conversations at the Summit about both Mozilla's evolvingidentity and Mozilla Foundation 2.0. I will post in detail on these topics when I return from off-the-grid holidays in a couple of weeks. In the meantime, thanks to everyone I met for such a warm welcome to the Mozilla community. I am really hoping I have something useful to contribute.