I’m actually sitting on the plane from London to Dallas at the moment, writing this on the last few minutes I have on my laptop’s battery power. I’ve spent the past 3 days in Amsterdam at the Nokia World 2007 event, courtesy of Nokia, Nseries, and WOM World, and I’d like to share my thoughts.
First off, if you listened to the most recent episode of Chatting with the Guru, Rafe Blandford was able to give us an idea of what to expect from Nokia World, and what it is typically about. If you’re too lazy (or legitimately unable) to listen, it’s basically an event that Nokia puts on to connect with their partners around the world. It’s really more of a business-to-business event, with *lots* of ‘meeting spaces’ for conducting business, and presentations geared more to that sort of crowd than the press. I didn’t go in really expecting any sort of product announcements at all, and was thus not disappointed like others might have been. I did, however, expect them to actually launch (or open, or whatever) Ovi, rather than just talk about it more, but I can get over that.
I took my box of 250 business cards, and I’m only slightly ashamed to say that I brought home probably 230 Symbian-Guru cards. I was able to exchange cards with a handful of Nokians and other people, though. I say I’m only slightly ashamed because I’m incredibly excited about the cards I did get. I’m glad I didn’t just run around thrusting cards into everyone with a Nokia nametag’s hand. That’s not what Nokia World, or I’m, about. I got to spend a few moments with these people, finding out what it is that they actually do at Nokia, and what they get excited about. I was also flattered to discover that most of them are Symbian-Guru readers, and it was awesome to be able to elaborate on things that I’ve said here, and get their immediate feedback to a few of my rants.
That’s what Nokia World is all about, in my opinion. I met with Jukka and Jorma with the Mobile Web Server, and have some things I want to do with that. I also got a personal demonstration of the new S60 Touch UI from Minna Karvonen, whom Phil interviewed on Voice of S60 recently. I spent some time with the product manager of the 7900 Prism device, which I still want – badly. I also chatted with the creator of the new 8800 Arte series, while fondling the handsets, of course, and it’s so cool to see these guys’ eyes light up when you ask about what’s obviously their baby.
I had a killer chat with Boaz Zilberman, cheif architect at Fring. Boaz told me the story of how Fring came about, shared some of the exciting things they’re working on, and also shared a few fascinating statistics about the service. I also, of course, got to hang out with some of the bloggers that I already knew, and met a few new ones as well. It’s so awesome to be able to build these sorts of relationships with people.
There were some really awesome opportunities at Nokia World 2007, as well. The coolest thing that I saw displayed was an Interact by Gaze product from the Nokia Research Center. They had this hat outfitted with a pair of goggles, hooked up to a laptop. When you put the hat on, the goggles would track where your gaze was, and translate this into digital data. For the demo, the team had a rather large image of a statue square, with people and buildings all around. Keeping my head completely still, I was able to navigate the photo and zoom in on particular areas, simply by staring at them. It was actually quite accurate, and I spent a while thinking up different mobile handset implementations of the technology. How neat, if in a few years, you could merely look at your mobile phone to navigate the menus?
The Nokia Research Center was also showing off the Mobile Journalism Kit that they developed for Reuters. The kit itself consists of the SU-8W BT Keyboard, the DT-22 Tripod, a solar-powered charger (need to look it up, they said it was currently commercially available), and a microphone, so that you can do all of your journalism needs directly from an N95, for example. The 2 coolest parts of this setup, however, are the S60 application that connects to Reuters (and potentially WordPress) and the custom-made connector that allows the N95 (and other handsets with a 3.5mm audio jack) to use a plug-in microphone! Currently there aren’t plans to mass-produce this little converter, but I’m bothering as many people as I need to so that I can get one to use.
I got my first hands-on experience with the Nokia N810 Internet Tablet, which is a HOT little number! Definitely a must-see if you’ve been considering a Tablet.
Nokia World 2007 also featured a ton of speeches that you could choose from. Most memorable are Rory Sutherland’s speech on Nokia and Porn, as well as Rob Wells’ chat about music. David Sifry of Technorati also spent some time covering blogs and social media, and I really enjoyed that. I don’t know if these are available for you to watch online (since I’m sitting on the plane), but if so, you DEFINITELY need to set some time aside to watch these. DO NOT WATCH THE MOVIE GUY’S SPEECH. IT WAS DISGUSTINGLY DEPRESSING AND HAD NOTHING TO DO WITH MOBILE AT ALL. STAY AWAY.
All in all, I’d say it was a hugely successful trip, and I’m looking forward to the next one.
