A Visit to the Mothership
A Visit to the Mothership
Categories: Maemo, Nokia 770, Nokia N800, 957 words1 feedback •I tried to post this a few days ago, but the blog application choked on my post and refused to regurgitate it. Having finally recovered from my nuclear fit, I'm ready to give it another go (backing up the contents in a text editor, of course!).
As many who frequent the Internet Tablet Talk forums know, I've been riding the fence between Inside Defender of Nokia Tablet Business and Diehard Supporter of the Tablet User Community-- and occasionally taking shots from both sides. I knew it was a dangerous assignment when I set myself up for it though. However, the role had reached a stalemate prior to release of the latest OS and community frustrations were mounting much like a bad memory card (or a really sad analogy).
Eager to stimulate productive dialog between developers and community, I challenged anyone in Nokia to improve outbound communications (and by the same token, processing of feedback). In hindsight I can see that my approach lacked both a sense of timing and helpful finesse, but in the end the result paid off: the infamous Quim Gil stepped up to the plate, popped into the ITT forum and began what turned out to be, in my opinion, the single best exchange between the two camps. As the Big Bang waned and the talk entered Long Tail mode, Quim extended an invitation for me to visit his gang at the Nokia Research Center while I was in Helsinki recently. He claimed I had no excuse not to; my new manager in fact gave me her blessing, proving him prophetic and putting me squarely on the hook.
I showed up at lunch time, where Quim bribed me with a delicious meal of beef patty with gravy and mashed potatoes (arg, my weakness!). Lunch was followed by a stimulating discussion about Nokia's commitment to Linux, and I got to witness firsthand Quim's passion for open source. If the few community naysayers could have only been there, and seen the fire I saw, certainly some misconceptions could be handily struck down!
There are of course parts of the dialog I cannot share, but suffice to say the maemo folks are not the source of the aggravation that some express over priorities and lack of progress, real or perceived. Quim pointed out that any assumptions made alleging the team to be ambivalent or antagonistic toward open source are way off base. A safer assumption would be that perhaps, just perhaps, maemo developers just might have more involvement in open source development than some allege-- including, ironically, areas where Nokia is pointed toward examples to follow! That's all I'll say on the subject... surely you guys can fill in the blanks. ; )
Quim did acknowledge a need to improve communications in general. Given his extensive background in journalism, it's easy to credit him with understanding the need and benefit. What those on the other side of this equation need to understand is that the maemo experience is still new to an old monolithic company like Nokia, long used to fiercely guarding trade secrets and reluctant to share the sort of information involved in open source development. Maemo is thus an agent for change; the change is just not occurring fast enough to appease people eager to see the tablets' potential fulfilled. I also made sure to reiterate how grateful community members were to see the microb browser beta and other recent proactive moves to involve them more. It is like there is now a renewed interest among even many cynics!
After the lunch talk, I was taken on a tour of the organization and was not surprised to see a number of people hard at work on improving the tablet experience in numerous ways. As a developer myself, I know very well the sort of dedication one finds in that role. The only thing that can stifle a developer's output is corporate bureaucracy... which Quim is determined to keep out of the way.
I can't pass on much of what I witnessed on that brief tour, but if my word means anything to anyone, rest assured that what I did see supports Ari Jaaksi's statements regarding lessons learned after the rough transition from 770 to N800.
In summary, I was heartened by my visit. It was a pleasure to meet Quim in person (as well as some of his team) and observe for myself his strong desire to facilitate the success of the tablet platform, especially in the area of open source. These products represent the next mobile communications paradigm, and I'm newly encouraged that Nokia is highly committed to pushing the industry rather than passivley waiting for some other company to take the lead. At the same time, we users (yes I am still one!) must do our level best to provide thoughtful, objective, detailed input/feedback to maemo, especially through their bugzilla tool. Create, comment and vote on bugs! This is your opportunity to be more than simple users-- take full advantage of it!
Hopefully we can all put mistrust and contention behind us and come together in the sort of teaming spirit that has worked in so many open source projects. Rather than focus on negative aspects of the tablet development, let's accentuate the positives and use fact-based persuasion to drive necessary change. It CAN happen!
Comments very welcome.
Note: it turns out it was my link to an article on Dr. Ari Jaaksi's blog, 'We're getting some feedback .. and we've got a plan now' (Thursday, January 11, 2007) that caused the previous posting problem. I don't know why, but even the home page cannot be linked here! But you can visit Ari's blog at jaaksi dot blogspot dot com and hunt the article down in his archive.
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