by Chanuke Senevirathne

Mozilla has a great party engine called mozilla party central (http://mozillaparty.com). With that the whole Firefox fan community can celebrate new releases of their beloved browser. People organize parties locally&share the experience with whole world through the party engine.

Among other releases, Firefox 3 release was a huge party element. Because it was not just another release. It was a world record. Firefox 3 holds the Guinness world record for the "Most software downloads in 24 hours". Hope you can imagine how much hype it has made at the time or better yet you may be a part of that world record.

Firefox has several fan communities all around the world, and they are all glued together by their web site, spreadfirefox.com. Firefox campus reps is a fan community made of Firefox loving University students all around the world. The campus reps of each country had a chance to grab a special Firefox party pack to add more fun to their local Firefox 3 party events.

Lahiru Priyadarshana (http://blog.soundofcode.com), also a contributor to digit magazine, is the one who brought the party pack to Sri Lanka. OK now it's obvious he is a Firefox campus rep I guess.

So the party pack was here almost right on time but unfortunately the community was kind of busy. Once we almost organized a party but the luck was not with us to take that "Beach Party" in to reality. Anyway the Firefox 3 launch party happened in Sri Lanka few days ...err ... maybe weeks back, Finally.

The major problem we had is finding a location for the party. We can't believe that it's really hard to find an open place to hold a free  event in Sri Lanka (or at least WE are not aware of such a place). Anyway the final destinantion for the Firefox party was The Linux Center, which is owned by that cool Linux guy Suchetha Wijenayake (http://raramimu.blogspot.com) fondly known as Such. We were lucky that The Linux Center rebooted recently so Such kindly provided the space&we were busy spreading the word about the event via Linux Users group mailing list, Facebook & Twitter etc.

Finally the event took place at TLC, Nugegode around 16:00 2nd may 2009. Even though some long time Firefox fans missed the event for several reasons the event was filled with fun. Such was kind enough to provide an excessive amount of wade&coke. And there were some cool friends who put some more coke in the event too. And ofcourse I should thank Seejay (http://seejay.net) (AKA Chanaka) for bearing the burden of organizing the event.

Techno&trance music filled the event while everyone had a chance to talk to other Firefox fans. Most of the crowd has never met before even though some were good online friends. So the Firefox party was a great chance for everyone to make new friends&actually talk to their online friends. While the geeky chat was on, everyone was given a *mysterious* number. Sounds like more of a horror movie?

Seejay had a special python script to randomly choose three gift items for each partygoer, who were already wearing Firefox party hats ;). Did I mention that the party pack was filled with Firefox Stickers, Tattoos, Lanyards, Badges & Wrist bands?. While everyone is getting their portion of gift pack according to the *mysterious* number, the chat was still on, the music was still rocking & some were hacking, the party was really startling.

I would like to thank everyone who dropped by & helped making the Firefox party a happening event & never let anyone feel we are late celebrating the thing. Hope we can have more of these more frequently. Am I becoming a party animal?