This is my account of the experience that Andrew Flegg and I had while at Nokia World 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany. Both of us were able to get an insight into what Nokia is currently up to as well as some of the future endeavors of the Maemo Devices team. Likewise, we both tweeted a lot during the conference. But, tweets...? Well, they’re not always the best format for others to get a summary of everything was reported. That’s what this article is all about. Lastly, if you’d like a much more in depth look at the Nokia N900, please view Alan Bruce’s account here.
Planet maemo: category "feed:0ffd60645267b49419c542bd55f461df"
The Maemo Summit 2009 is quickly approaching, and we've been busy processing the sponsorship requests we've received so far. For those of you who haven't registered, now is the time to do so. September 9th is the last day to register for sponsorship. So if you require financial assistance to attend, that will be your final chance to apply.
Many of the requests have already been processed and some of you will already have received emails indicating your sponsorship status. For those of you whose sponsorship requests have been accepted, details about travel arrangements will follow. For those of you have been rejected, we apologize, the sponsorship budget was not unlimited so, sadly, there simply wasn't enough cash to bring everybody. If you're attendance was not hinging on sponsorship approval and you'd still like to come to the Summit, then you'll need to re-register on the Summit page. Apologies for the inconvenience.
If you are still waiting on a response to your sponsorship request don't worry! We're still working our way through the list of requests and some requests simply haven't been reviewed yet.
Any questions should be mailed to council@maemo.org.
As part of the official launch of Maemo 5 and the N900 at Nokia World 2009, I have been given a brief hands-on time on the N900, and now I can relate some of my impressions of the device and operating system as a tablet owner and maemo.org community member.
This isn't a Nokia World update - you'll have to wait for tomorrow for that (well, later today!)
The monthly maemo.org sprint meeting was held today (first Tuesday of the month). The committed tasks, and meeting actions, are now published in the usual location:
The main themes of the sprint are:
- Packages being usable (and used) for Fremantle testing by people with devices in hand
- Some automatic checks to prevent duff packages getting into -testing
- SSO: accounts sync API between various systems
- Published documentation on server upgrades
- Council election held and results published
- Community days of summit finalised
- Sponsorship rejection/approval requests sent for everyone
- Capacity planning for Fremantle
Each task in the sprint is assigned a MoSCoW prioritisation: one of must, should, could (or won't). The following people have committed to organise tasks in this sprint:
- Ferenc Szekely (1 MUST, 1 COULD)
- Jeremiah Foster (1 MUST, 2 COULDs)
- Quim Gil (1 MUST, 1 SHOULD, 1 COULD)
- Tim Samoff (1 MUST)
- Andre Klapper (1 MUST)
- Andrew Flegg (2 MUSTs)
- Niels Breet (1 MUST, 2 SHOULDs, 1 COULD)
- Dave Neary (2 MUSTs, 1 SHOULD)
- Valerio Valerio (1 MUST, 1 action)
- Jamie Benett (1 MUST)
- Carsten Munk (1 SHOULD)
- Daniel Wilms (1 COULD)
Day-to-day activities will be reported on the Qaiku #maemork channel.
The next sprint meeting will be held under a new Maemo Community Council on Tuesday, 6th October 2009 at 13:30 UTC.
As many of you know, Andrew and I will be traveling to Stuttgart, Germany this week to attend Nokia World. We are very excited (and appreciative) that Nokia has placed such importance on having some Maemo Community members present for the unveriling of Maemo 5 and the new N900. There has been quite a lot of buzz since the Maemo 5 site launched this past week and even more visitors to the site than imagined (maemo.nokia.com had over 12-million page views in the first 24-hours that it was live). There have also be many new visitors to maemo.org. It's pretty amazing all the way around.
Andrew and I aren't just going to Nokia World for fun, though. We will be microblogging the entire event. Rather than creating an entirely new Twitter hashtag, I figured it would be a good idea to just use #maemo5. I'll also be taking photos and posting them for everyone to see.
Lastly, I don't know about Andrew, but I've already received a number of emails from people who had questions about the Maemo 5 and the N900. This is fine, but we're not going to be able to tell you much until after we see everything at Nokia World. There have been some great questions so far -- keep 'em coming -- but don't expect any answers until after Wednesday or Thursday.
Maemo Summit 2009 is free. Aside from travel and lodging, if you can get to Amsterdam during October 9-11, you can come... If you register.
Here are all of the people who have registered so far:
http://maemo.org/news/events/maemo_summit_2009/#participants
There are currently 104 registrants and 300 slots. Please help us out by registering as soon as you can -- it would be beneficial for us to be working on actual Summit responsibilities the few weeks before the Summit instead of scrambling to approve last-minute registrants.
But, what if you can't afford travel and lodging?
That's the interesting part. If you go to the link above, you'll see a section on the right called "Sponsorship" with the value "Requested" under it. Like last year, Nokia has generously offered some budget for sponsoring community contributors to attend the Summit -- especially if you would like to lead a presentation. Got an idea? Submit it here. View the current draft schedule here.)
If you are granted Sponsorship, it means that you get travel and lodging paid for by Nokia.
October is quickly approaching and the open slots for registration (Sponsorship or not) will fill up soon. Please take some time to register so that your place is set.
* All Maemo Summit graphics are still works in progress. Go here to see all of the different versions that have been created.
As current chair of the Maemo Community Council, I'm announcing that the third council election will conclude on: Sunday, 27th September 2009 23:59 UTC. This will give the incoming council about two weeks to nominate a chair; prepare for the first sprint meeting of the new term (Tuesday, 6th October) and get ready for the kick-off of the community days at the Maemo Summit 2009.
As current chair of the Maemo Community Council, I'm announcing that the third council election will conclude at:
Nokia and Fronteer Strategy, an Amsterdam-based innovation shop, are going to be holding a series of "co-creation" events during the Maemo Summit and are looking for people to attend and help shape the long term future of Maemo-based devices.
The first will be held the day before the summit (Thursday, October 8th) with a small group of volunteers from within the Maemo community and beyond. The second will be held on the second day of the summit (Saturday, October 10th) in Jussi Makinen's Maemo Co-Creation workshop and is open to as many people who will fit in the room!
For more details, see this talk.maemo.org thread. You can get involved in a number of ways:
- Volunteer, or nominate someone, to take part in the first session (by replying to the thread).
- Attend the workshop on the second day of the summit.
- Take part online, if you're not attending the summit.
- Talk to people at the summit informally!
This is a really exciting shift in how Nokia are dealing with the community: not just software roadmaps, but device and use-case brainstorming. Hopefully everyone involved will take something positive away, and Nokia will continue to seek the community's input.
The Maemo Summit is a free get together of anyone interested in Maemo- and Mer-powered devices. It is being held in Amsterdam on October 8th-10th. Register now to reserve your place.
The monthly maemo.org sprint meeting was held today (first Tuesday of the month). The committed tasks, and meeting actions, are now published in the usual location:
Each task in the sprint is assigned a MoSCoW prioritisation: one of must, should, could (or won't). The following people have committed to organise tasks in this sprint:
- Ferenc Szekely (3 MUSTs, 1 COULD)
- Niels Breet (1 MUST)
- Jeremiah Foster (1 MUST, 1 COULD)
- Alexey Zakhlestin (1 MUST)
- Daniel Wilms (1 MUST)
- Quim Gil (1 MUST, 1 SHOULD, 1 COULD)
- Andrew Flegg (2 MUSTs, 1 SHOULD)
- Tim Samoff (1 MUST)
- Valério Valério (1 MUST)
- Dave Neary (1 SHOULD)
- Andre Klapper (1 SHOULD)
- Carsten Munk (1 SHOULD)
The following people have actions following the meeting:
- Andrew Flegg
- Tim Samoff
Day-to-day activities will be reported on the Qaiku #maemork channel.
The next sprint meeting will be held at 13:30 UTC on Tuesday, September 1st.
If there are any errors or omissions on the page, please let me know on this talk.maemo.org thread.
Please have a look at this thread at Maemo Talk and help us finalize the design and items that will available at Maemo Summit 2009! We'd love to have your input and ideas -- and come up with some merchandise that all of us will really want.
If you know HTML, CSS or have a penchant for design; there's an opportunity to help finish off the packages interface for its intended audience of developers, maintainers and community testers before Fremantle's released.
To get involved, start posting your ideas in this talk.maemo.org thread.
So, you're a Maemo Device user and you've got some ideas about how to make it better, don't you? And, you've always wondered where to voice those ideas, right? But, even if you did, Nokia would never listen to you, would they? Well, all of that has changed.
Introducing: Maemo Brainstorm*
Brainstorm isn't just another bug reporting tool (we still have Bugzilla for that). No, Brainstorm is a place where you can post ideas (any ideas), comment on yours and others' ideas, and even offer solutions to ideas, all with an understanding that Nokia is actually listening.
So, what's the big idea? Anything.
If you have an idea about how an application could be improved -- or even an application that should be developed, Brainstorm is where you should post it. If you want to tell us about that cool widget that you always use on some other competitor's device, tell us at Brainstorm. If you'd like to submit that dream of putting a 72-megapixel camera and a high-performance ultra-small single crystalline silicon microphone on the next Maemo Device, submit it at Brainstorm.
Brainstorm is where you can interact directly with various departments of the Maemo Devices team at Nokia. This is where you will be heard.
As with other brainstorming-type systems (see the Ubuntu Brainstorm as one example), this system will have a number of moderators who will try to help out the process. They are:
- Andre Klapper (andre__)
- Niels Breet (X-fade)
- Quim Gil (qgil)
- Tim Samoff (timsamoff)
- Andrew Flegg (Jaffa)
- Stephen Gadsby (sjgadsby)
- Ryan Abel (GeneralAntilles)
- Sanjeev Visvanatha (eipi)
- Murray Cumming (murrayc)
- Andrew Zhilin (wazd)
- Neil MacLeod (milhouse)
- Eero Tamminen (nakkebar)
As you can see, a few of these people are Nokians. Others were selected from the current Maemo Bugsquad. Finally, there are a couple of frequent Maemo contributors. If you'd like to help out, let us know in the Community section of the Talk forums.
We're looking forward to seeing your submissions!
* maemo.org account required.