the JEP Website

Last week-end, the Paris Mozilla Space has opened its door on both Saturday and Sunday for a special event: the "Journées Européennes du Patrimoine" aka "JEP" and "European Heritage Days". The JEP is an initiative encouraging people and organizations to open the doors of historical-interest places. It's now the 30th edition of the JEP in France, and it's now being organized in many countries in Europe.

Mozilla's Paris Space being located in the Hotel de Mercy-Argenteau, which was owned by the ambassador of Austria to the Queen Marie-Antoinette, it made sense to participate to the JEP initiative.

My colleague Jb Piacentino took the lead on this and organized the event. Employees and volunteers showed up to demo Firefox and Firefox OS while answering questions the public had (the most popular were "How does Mozilla make money?" and "when will Firefox OS be distributed in France?").

1250 visitors showed up on Saturday, and more than 2100 on Sunday, exceeding our expectations by far!

The Non-profit "Association 9eme Histoire" dispatcher volunteers historians who told the story of the building to visitors, with the help of the 9th Arrondissement city hall : Thierry Cazaux, Pauline Veron (who's also on Twitter!) and Nicolas Moulin.

Jb and I would like to thank all of the people involved in making this first participation of Mozilla such a huge success including non-paid staff. It was a fantastic opportunity for us to show the space we have in charge for future generations and also share excitement about Mozilla with people we rarely reach out to. I'm sure many people will try Firefox (desktop and Android) as a result!