I just came back from the first of six international Nokia N900 meetups. The Helsinki event took place in none other than the Nokia Flagship Store, a shop that I used to visit quite often during my usual daily strolls down main street, but have lately been ignoring due to Nokia (NYSE: NOK)’s present uninspiring portfolio of devices. I’m still on the fence as to whether or not it was a success, but I know that has something to do with the former financial analyst in me who would like to see some hard numbers. A success, by my definition, would be recuperating the costs of these events, with Nokia N900 purchases from the people in attendance. I’ll never know if this event, or the five similar events coming up are actually cost effective, but I did discover something just by showing up. Nokia employees working on Maemo have hearts.
There are four types of Nokia employees. You have the majority of employees, who do their job just so they can pay the bills. They’ve established a mind numbing routine and are indifferent about their role, but they know that working for Nokia allows them a gracious amount of time off, flexible working hours, and a healthy severance package should they become fired. Then you have the people who are actually into the mobile industry and really do care about where Nokia is heading, but unfortunately they’re in roles that have little to no impact towards the future device or service portfolio. There are a healthy number of these individuals, I used to be one of them. Next you have the people who actually work on the future devices and services Nokia will be releasing, the people who get their hands dirty, the people who use an IDE more than they use PowerPoint. These people care about what they’re doing, developers love solving problems and seeing a project rise from concept to product, but they may not exactly care about Nokia or the wireless industry as a whole. Finally you have the people who are in the right place, at the right time, and doing the right thing. These people may or may not have technical savvy, but are in a position to change things and are really excited about the things they’re working on, what their work will mean for Nokia, and the mobile telecommunications as a whole. Few of these sort of people exist, but I was fortunate enough to meet a few at tonight’s event.
Maemo employees, and I’m not going to name names since I don’t want to get people in trouble, know what they’re up against. They know the iPhone offers a fantastic consumer experience, but deep down they really do care that it is a locked down platform where developers play by Apple (NSDQ: AAPL)’s rules. They know Android is on the tip of everyone’s tongues, but they oppose the fact that Google (NSDQ: GOOG) worked to build something that is open on paper, but in reality is just Google saying “we know there is stuff out there in the open source community that does what we want to do, but we’re just going to write, from scratch, the bits and pieces we want to make so they can be exactly how we like them; to shut the community up we’ll just open source everything”. They know that the N900 will be what the technology media people will be talking about when it hits stores next month, but they’re humble and admit that internally their judgement day, when all Maemo employees receive self vindication, will be when the device after the N900 running Maemo 6 will be on store shelves.
The enthusiasm Maemo people have about open source software is astounding. They don’t want to build something from scratch, open source it, and call it a day. Instead Maemo people look at the best at what open source offers today and then takes from all those projects whatever it can to combine it into what you and I call Maemo. I never really understood that until tonight. To me “open source” has become such an overused phrase that I’ve associated it with filthy marketing talk. One Maemo employee whispered to me “notice how there are no marketing people here tonight?” and at that point I realized the whole concept of these events was not about pushing the Nokia N900, but pushing Maemo and the concept of open source to a greater audience.
I may not agree with open source people. They probably hate the fact that I use Windows 7, that I don’t give a shit as to whether my software is open or not, and that I constantly bring up the fact that going to an open source event is like waking up in a world where females never existed. That being said, open source people are free thinkers, and the people who talked to me today did not spew the well rehearsed Nokia corporate communications quotes, they actually started their sentences “well … personally I think …”; unheard of since Nokia marketing people are not allowed to have their own opinions when speaking to a public facing audience.
The Maemo guys have heart, and people with passion get far in life, but can this team execute on a mission to bring the best open source software device to market? I’ll just have to wait and see. I can’t offer anything else that that.
Just wait and see.
Oh and one more thing: congratulations to my mate Henrikki for winning a Nokia N900 tonight.
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