Smartphone Show, London, 2006

The Smartphone Show in London. I have already heard lots of things about it, but never been there thus far, so I was glad to have the chance to visit it. I've decided to be there for both days (Tuesday and Wednesday) so that I would have enough time to talk to everybody, try out/listen to everything. I mean, everybody and everything I'm interested in.

My feelings? Mixed. The good thing is that everybody was there who really counts in the Symbian world. Okay, I mean those that I'm aware of. :) Symbian, Nokia, Sony Ericsson, SysOpen Digia, ARM, Wiley (Symbian Press), BlackBerry, etc. Hey first: sorry for not mentioning everybody, but it's most probably thanks to my limited memory. Second: I have not mentioned Google on purpose. They have not yet contributed to Symbian so significantly that I should mention them, imho. Nevertheless, their cookies (I mean, the real ones, not the digital) were good. :)

Why are my feelings mixed then? Well, even though I'm from Hungary, a small country, I've already seen a few big shows, let them be trade or technical ones. This one was not one of them, at least not in my opinion. To my disappointment, I could wander through the area of the show in the first half an hour and pick up those boots that I decided to pay my attention to. Then I spent the first day with visiting those boots, talking to people, listening to others talking, etc. I've even attended a few seminars on Tuesday. Briefly: it was smaller than I had originally expected.

Okay then, what made me stay there for Wednesday? Well, besides the fact that I could have cancelled my hotel reservation and changed my flight schedule only for a horribly high amount of money, it was definetely the party that followed the first "working day". I mean, that was GREAT! Very good music (does anyone know the name of the band?), drink, food. The place had been a secret until we got transported there: it was called "The Container City", not too far away from ExCel London, where the show took place. At the end of the party, we got even taken near to the city center so that didn't have to think too much of how to go and where.

To my biggest surprise, there were even more people visiting the show on Wednesday. At least it seemed to me so. As I had already seen what I wanted to by that time, I decided to listen to keynote presentations in the morning and attend some technical seminars in the early afternoon (my plane left in the evening, so I had to leave early). It turned out to be a good plan and I could do what I had originally scheduled. For example, I was wondering what the heck BlackBerry could be looking for on the show, but after listening to their keynote speech (the lady was _very_ convincing) I could hardly stand to go to their boot and ask for a quote for my company. I was also interested in David Wood's speech, his vision of the next few years in mobile space was very impressive.

All in all, I'm so glad that I have visited the Smartphone Show. I've enjoyed it very much and I think I've gained much experience of it, too. Nevertheless, I might opt for a one-day trip in the future - that will be enough. Including the party, of course. :)

Migrated from Forum Nokia Blogs.

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Forum Nokia Champion Day, London, 2006

As a Forum Nokia Champion, I was invited to attend the aforementioned event on 16 October in London. In addition, Symbian arranged their annual Smartphone Show so that it took place on the upcoming days, Tuesday and Wednesday so that I could stay in London for a few more days. This posting is about the first day, Monday, but I'm going to write another one with my remarks about the show.

Here you are. I'm so grateful that I could attend this event and meet other fellow champions. We were accomodated in Hotel Le Meridien (wow!) for two nights, Sunday and Monday. After having an excellent breakfast, we walked across Regent Street to Cafe Royal, a venue perfectly fitted to host meetings and events - like ours. First, we all had a brief introduction of ourselves and I can tell you that it was very nice to meet all of you and associate the faces, voices with most of the names I've already read here and there. There came some technical seminars, where we were presented some insights about the new Carbide.C++ Dev & Pro versions, Python for S60, got some hints on documentation and S60 3rd Edition update, etc. By the way, we had a traditional English pub lunch at noon - it was excellent not only because the food was good, but we could get to know each other, have a chat with anybody.

After the seminars, we were invited to build the team (i.e. teambuilding :). It turned out that we were spies (I knew that Tom Cruise was kicked out from Mission Impossible, but was surprised to see that we're gonna replace him:) and we had to accomplish a spy mission. We were split into 5 teams, each had to do the same tasks: explore places nearby, answer tricky questions, scavenge items from various places in a fixed amount of time. Khhm, we were so much filled with empathy that we thought it would be nice to be the fifth among the five teams and let others feel a little bit better. None seemed to be effusive in their gratitude. :) By the way, the winner team got Nokia 9500 Communicators, one per each member.

Finally, the last event on Monday was a coctail party held in Albannach, UK's second biggest whisky bar (as I learned). It was not only us, FN Champions, who were invited, but PRO members were also there. It was good to see so many people filled with enthusiasm about mobility - unfortunately, the place was so small that it was basically overcrowded. Nevertheless, the food was excellent as well as the drinks so we (at least I) enjoyed the whole party.

In fact, the whole day! So I'd like to thank Sanna, Elina and the rest of the team who arranged the whole thing so that I was (and still am) both proud and grateful that I'm a champ. Besides that I'd like to encourage other fellows, you, mobile geeks, do your best in the mobile community and become a FN Champion. It's worth, believe me!

Migrated from Forum Nokia Blogs.

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Ps.: one of my colleagues has also flew to London to attend the Smartphone Show. As he is not a champion, he couldn't attend those events that I could, but what he could do, however, was that he went to the pub event arranged by Symbian on Monday evening. There was a draw during the event and he won an N93. Simply just because he was there. I'm so jealous. Everyone could win a mobile phone, except me? :)