I started working at Mozilla Corporation as a platform evangelist and was able to get up to speed fairly quickly, in a large part because of help from various community members. In my evangelism role, I really enjoyed getting to travel around and talk about Mozilla technology to anybody who wanted to listen. The Developer Day meet-ups were especially fun. I’m on the Mozilla Mobile team now, but still like to do evangelism work when I can.
One problem we had with Developer Days was trying to figure out where “concentrations” of Mozilla developers, or people interested in Mozilla development, were located. It made it hard to plan locations for Developer Day events. Recently, someone on IRC asked about Mozilla User Groups and if there was anyone located near him (Rayleigh/Durham area in this case). I couldn’t give him any definitive answer, but it did get us talking about how we could start collection information about where Mozilla developers are located and if they meet periodically. The only such group I know of is the NorthWestMozDev group.
What other groups are out there? Perhaps using Meetup might be a good way to can track of various Mozilla groups. There are already Mozilla and XUL categories on Meetup. Hopefully, this could help other interested developers meet people and get involved with Mozilla. It can also help Mozilla find great locations to have Developer Day events.
You don’t need to be a hard core Mozilla developer. Developer Days are focused on anybody with an interest in Mozilla projects, products or technologies.