Nokia at OSS 2007 keynote

The keynote speaker, Ari Jaaski, is from Nokia today and he's asking, "why on earth do you still have to get online right now using your laptop?" He's talking about the Nokia 770 and N800 tablets. I'm rather interested in these devices, so this is very interesting. He's talking about the various things he's running on his device, including Skype to turn it into a phone and Google docs for word processor. (Note: Google gave away shirts yesterday on a raffle and I did not win one.)

Why would Nokia want to use skype to turn a device into a phone.. why not just make it a Nokia phone? I mean, it IS Nokia, after all.

Because in the US there are all sorts of hoops to jump through as soon as you add phone capabilities to a device - hoops for the government, each individual carrier, etc. (Now I'm thinking about the iPhone and what they must be going through with the carriers on that.)

Now he's talking about their development model and how it includes grassroots developers from all the open source communities: gnome, debian, gtk, linux, gstreamer are specifically mentioned. They also include commercial product developers and their communities: skype, real audio, and 2 other logos I don't recognize.

Basically he's making the case that open source is a pragmatic way of developing software for commercial companies.

He discusses the values of stakeholders in the organization, and the different expectations between developers and managers. He goes through a periodic launch timeline for a product that uses open source methods for at least part of the product development.

blogging from OSS 2007 in Ireland

OSS 2007 is in Limerick, Ireland this year. We got here on Sunday, a little worse for the wear, pretty tired. All I could think about was sleep. We explored Limerick a while, following a nap. It doesn't get dark until about 10:30 to 11:00pm here which does not help with the jet lag.

I gave my talk this morning, and I think it was well-received. One guy said I talk too fast. I need to remember to slow down with an international audience.

Tonight was the conference dinner at Knappogue Castle. It was a nice place, but they had one of those medieval-style dinners with entertainment and stuff. Guess who got chosen to be King of all Ireland and sit at a special table? Yup, my husband. I had to be his "lady". He had several speaking roles throughout the evening, and had to brandish a sword at one point. It was a little crazy.

Anyhow, tomorrow is a debate panel and some more talks. Then on Thursday is our workshop, the Workshop on Public Data about Software Development.