Finally I’m finding time for doing a quick blog about the last MeeGo conference in San Francisco. All in all it was a great conference with awesome people. I had a really good time in San Francisco and enjoyed the conference very much. Now basically all is said, but if you want some more details, please read on. Oh and the pictures in this blog are not in any ways related to the surrounding text – so don’t confuse yourself 
Conference warm up
The conference officially started on Monday, but I’ve already arrived on Friday morning. I thought it might be a good idea to have some extra time to get rid of a possible jet lag and have a look around the city. I took a nap in the afternoon and went out to have Sushi and Beer with Tim and Cosimo in the evening. Nice start!
The next day there was official conference warm up program where I attended a couple of sessions. Not too many people yet, but already quite some known faces. On Sunday morning I went for a long walk around San Francisco and in the afternoon I attended an Intel AppUp lab. There I’ve got an ExpoPC tablet that I already put to good use (see below).
Keynote
On Monday the conference started with a keynote by Jim Zemlin. Initial expectations were high, but after realizing that the keynote had been renamed from “The Future of MeeGo Starts Now” to “Monday morning with MeeGo” I got the feeling the something is not quite right…
As other have stated already, I also think the keynote was a big disappointment. It was hardly MeeGo related at all. Instead it was very generic about the success of Linux. Whenever there was a reference to mobile Linux, he talked about Android and WebOS. There even was a slide with about 7 Linux handsets on it. None was a Nokia phone. None was running MeeGo or Maemo. That really sucked.
After the keynote it was clear that we can’t expect any big announcements regarding MeeGo on handsets – that reminded me of Dublin.
People were quite disappointed, but that’s a usual state in Maemo/MeeGo land. After half an hour of mourning everything was back to normal. From there on the conference went on with a lot of good sessions and interesting conversations with other community members. Maybe they should have simply skipped the keynote and made clear (before the event) that there will be no hardware announcements.
Nokia
Besides the Qt guys there were only very few Nokia people visible. Also Nokia as a company was barely visible. After the strategic shift I didn’t expect them to put lots of energy into MeeGo, still they were one of the two hosts, so I thought it will be the last conference with a lot of Nokia people and advertisement, etc. But it was more like they were sneaking away silently and only fulfilling their duty.
I was looking forward to meet some particular Nokia employees – unfortunately they couldn’t make it.
Harmattan
Who ever decided that Harmattan has no place on MeeGoConf – I think it was a mistake. Even if Harmattan is not MeeGo, it shares many technologies like Qt/QML and it could be used to show what MeeGo is capable of. I mean, really no one is impressed by the current reference UXes (tablet and handset), they are just too basic and limited. I understand (but don’t approve) the idea that vendors will put on their own UX. But as long as there are not productized MeeGo instances there is only the reference UX. Here the Harmattan device could have made a real difference and actually impress people.
Then again, I do not really understand Nokia. I’m sure there was enough time to switch Harmattans base system from a Maemo to a MeeGo. This would have given them the opportunity to actually call it MeeGo and to be compliant with the rest of the eco system.
It’s odd that “time to market” was one of the main topics on the conference with people claiming to get a product from zero to market in only 5 month. So why not Harmattan? Or are these numbers maybe a little over optimistic?
Organization
The organization of the conference was amazing. Everything just worked(TM). Also it was nice to have most people at the conference hotel. That way it usually was easy to find and meet people. Also the hacker lounge was (once again) fantastic to have. The best place to connect names to faces, plan new projects, code, talk or simply for having a beer.
Only one thing was not that well organized: Many people registered for the conference, but didn’t show up. I suspect that led to quite some wasted money and resources (welcome gifts, room sizes, food, etc.). Also it resulted in a relatively empty conference party. (BTW the party venue was amazing!)
I’d suggest, that the next time, the organizers should add a small registration fee. Not much, just enough to make people think about whether or not they really want to go. Also I’d like to have lightning talks back.
Mong
After Intel handed out ExoPCs to AppUp lab attendees, I wanted to do something using multi-touch. Since doing stuff in QML is so easy I thought about a small multi-touch tablet game. Thomas promptly joined the effort and Tim created some amazing graphics. We only had a couple of hours between sessions but still managed to produce a simple but working game. Currently it’s available as Mong 1.0.2 but hopefully we’ll find some time to implement all those cool power-ups and features we have in our heads. The good thing is, Mong will probably also run on the new Harmattan device. Depending on the screen resolution, we might have to adjust the graphics. The rest should be fine.
BTW, if you think the name “Mong” (MeeGo & Pong) is offensive, please raise your voice in our renaming-contest.
San Francisco
Since this was the first time for me visiting the USA, I was positively surprised. Probably San Francisco is not representative for the whole USA – still, I like most of what I’ve seen there. People are friendly, the city and its inhabitants are very colorful and open. Many different neighborhoods, nice climate, great country side, working public transport, etc. Interestingly it didn’t feel like I traveled almost 10.000 kilometers. Europe and the USA are cultural very close – even if some people sometimes argue differently. I guess traveling the same distance towards the east, the culture shock would be slightly bigger
Thanks!
A big thanks to Nokia, Intel and the Linux Foundation for sponsoring my trip to San Francisco, paying the hotel and having the conference! Awesome! Thank you!
Also thanks to everyone who talked in a session, chatted with me in the hacker lounge, had lunch/dinner/beer with me, and so on. I won’t list you here, because I certainly will forget someone. You know who you are anyways!
Hope to see you all again some time!