Nagi and other stories

The recent Mozilla Summit we held in Whistler was amazing to me for a lot of reasons, but maybe my favorite thing about the gathering was that we had so many of the localizers from around the world – dozens, I think. Each of them had an amazing, inspiring story, and every localized who I talked with left me excited about the future – not just of Mozilla, but of open software in general.

I got to spend a bit of time with Nagi, our Mongolian localized, in particular, and when he wasn’t toying with me at ping ping, he told me a bit of his story. He grew up in Ulan Bator, capital of Mongolia, and moved to northern Germany in 2001 for school and work. He wanted an e-mail client in Mongolian, so he decided to localize the Mozilla Suite, and has been involved since. It’s at once an amazing and characteristic Mozilla story – Nagi wanted to scratch an itch – so he started working on an open project, and as a result has made the Web more accessible to thousands of people. Inspirational.

And it’s impossible to talk about Mozilla inspiration without mentioning the wonderful accessibility work done so diligently and for so long by Aaron Leventhal (long supported by Frank Hecker). Again, underappreciated work that has a gigantic impact on the lives of thousands.

Anyway, I left the Summit with more stories than before, and the knowledge that there are still a lot more to hear, and to tell, and still to be written.