"There is only one 1.0 launch", as we agreed with Bart a few weeks ago. How can we make sure that 1.0 is going to be unforgettable and that we reach a huge audience with a strong message?

The excellent New York Times campaign is impressively successfull, but is limited to the USA. At Mozilla Europe, we wanted to work on a European event that would reach IT professionals. I was already invited as a speaker on the Interop 2004 Paris Trade Show to discuss Firefox and the Mozilla Project, when we had the idea to do more than just a 45 minutes talk. We had the idea to demonstrate Firefox and Thunderbird, and let people put their hands on the product. We also wanted to talk about open formats and Web standards, which are so important for the future of the Web. A 45mn slot in a conference was good, but a booth on the tradeshow would be better.

There are often open-source community booths at trade shows, but they would not enable us to reach our goals of mass demonstration, because of their small size, usually 4 to 6 sq. meters (40 to 60 sq.ft.). So I discussed with Mozilla Foundation the possibility of some funding for the launch. Mitchell and Bart agreed. Then I discussed with the Interop director in order to get a nice booth. I don't know if I have super powers or anything like a voodoo doll, but we ended with a huge booth (54 sq.m., that's right, around 540 sq.ft.), right in the middle of the Networld+Interop trade show!

But having a big booth was not enough to make sure that it would draw the crowd, so we have been working on having a nice theater where the Mozilla products and related technologies would be demonstrated.

Here are two mock-ups to explain what we will be doing in Paris, on the 3rd, 4th and 5th of November.

Mock-up showing the theater, the big screen and the place where the speaker will stand:

mock-up of the interop Mozilla booth, theater side

Mock-up showing the place where laptops are to be placed for hands-on sessions:

mock-up of the interop Mozilla booth, hands-on side

Among featured products and talks will be:

  • Firefox;
  • Thunderbird;
  • Mozilla 1.x;
  • NVU;
  • Web Standards;
  • Open Formats;

We are also considering demos of OpenOffice.org and Bugzilla. Oh, and before you ask, the ladies on the mock-up are not likely to be on our booth, but I promise that we expect smart, charming youg ladies to demonstrate the products!