[Music]
that is hard to follow thank you
I'm Alex and I do a bunch of things in
this world as you can see some we're
serious some not so serious
amongst the serious things I do as I'm a
volunteer for Mozilla I'm a Muslim
representative animal attack speaker and
I want to tell you all a story about the
t-shirt it's basically how I got
involved in open-source about nine years
ago I was freshly out of college in
Romania and I was looking for a job now
in Romania there's only one kind of tech
job and that's outsourcing if you're
lucky enough to not know what
outsourcing is it basically means you
get rented out you get rented out by the
hour by the day to other companies and
when I started out I was doing this
sauce it was a trip I was working for a
trip planning company kind of like
TripIt and about three months into my
job my boss came to me and said you know
what we've got this project called
Mozilla and I need someone to fill a
role still gonna do that I don't like
change I really really don't like change
and on top of that I had no idea what
Mozilla was what open-source was what
the pole meant I was fresh out of
college volunteering wasn't in my
vocabulary how do you mean I work for
free and I enjoy it so we made the deal
with my manager he was like look I need
to fill this role for three weeks I'll
find someone else to replace you in
those three weeks but you have to take
it I was like okay there were several
problems with this the team was a tester
team I wanted to be a developer when I
grew up
testers weren't really my friends on top
of that then so I joined the team around
Firefox 4 and they had this t-shirt that
said Firefox 4 beta tester and I joined
a week after they got the t-shirt so I
have the t-shirt I stood out I don't
feel like I was welcome welcome that I
don't feel part of that team and I hated
my life
of course my manager was an [ __ ] and
he didn't keep the bargain so a month
later I was still working for this
project and every morning I read this
thing called the Missoula planet which
is kind of like a blog aggregator and
everything it happens in the Missoula
world and I read it because it helped me
with my job all the road maps were there
the release notice says everything
and something kind of popped up the
mazhab documentation network was holding
a documentation sprint over the weekend
for 48 hours and the kicker was if you
participated you got the t-shirt and
that's when I had my great idea
I'm gonna go participate for like two
hours get the t-shirt and my master plan
it's a developer t-shirt they have
tested t-shirts I'm gonna get the
developers that t-shirts
not only will I fit in that team I'm
gonna be better than everybody else so
my plan also included because I was
fresh out of college and I had money my
plan also included to go get wasted with
my friends over the weekend and I joined
Saturday morning and then something
changed as soon as I joined I joined an
IRC and everybody was welcome everybody
was nice everybody tried to help me help
them and compared to my normal
day-to-day work that was mind blowing
and instead of staying two hours with
those people
I stayed for 48 because apparently you
don't need that much sleep when it's
fresh out of college now the sense of
belonging that happened over the
Internet on IRC was the thing that kept
me going
I felt like my job I hate my job I hated
everybody I worked with but I love this
people part of this project this little
you can call it this little tangent to
my work and in those 48 hours my my
friends kept calling me and calling me
where are you were at the club what are
you doing why don't you wanna come have
fun with us I was like you don't
understand I'm having fun with strangers
I met over the Internet yeah my friends
call me crazy another names but I stayed
for 48 hours I like contributed to him
the end I think to this day some of the
CSS examples I've put into mdn still
exist and that makes me also proud I did
this all for a t-shirt the t-shirt I
don't have the t-shirt anymore it's been
nine years no t-shirt lasts for nine
years but what I got at the end of this
experience as I got a sense of belonging
and a sense of community that I didn't
get anywhere else
going back to my work I had so many
ideas just because I knew the right
people I knew who to connect with and
who to talk to if I wanted to do
something outside of my work had this
network of people to help me out if I
had two three hours in my day and I
wanted to give back to something I had
this opportunity to be involved with
everything from teaching codes from
teaching kids to code the writing
documentation in my pajamas on a weekend
it was all available and I feel like I
finally find the missing piece in my
puzzle I finally found a way where I can
fit in now nine years later I still do
this I still contribute to the Missoula
community and the reason behind that is
I strongly believe in was last mission
if you don't know what my last mission
is please google it it's beautiful
and I think I'm running out of time and
I don't have anything else to say but
thank you
[Applause]
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