S60 Open to new features

The Evening with S60: Boston was a hit. Being Bostonians, we had a special interest in making this one a success, and if we measure by number of attendees, number of connections made between customers, overall atmosphere, and of course most importantly our Net Promoter score, the Evening in Boston was indeed a success.

Of course, we had our challenges: For one, we were going up against the 1st game of the NBA Finals, and the Boston Celtics were representing for the 1st time in 21 years (hard to believe but true). So we knew attendance would be a challenge. A couple of my own friends bagged out on me in order to watch the game. The other wild card was the venue: In NY and Chicago we were able to hold the “Evening” in the Flagship stores, but there is no Flagship in Boston so we had to rent a room. The Living Room in Boston was OK, but a lack of VGA in on their TV, and some other hiccups made the venue a challenge.

Like David St. Hubbins, we are professionals tho, and we rise above.

Two things we try to enable at these events:
1) Connect our fans to the people who make, market, and sell S60 software and S60 based devices. On that front we were good. Lots of folks from the S60 Browser team came to the event: Chris Ramos was there to show some of his homemade widgets, and newbie Michael Daitzman (new head of S60 Browser Product Planning) was there to get to know our customers and hear their concerns. We also had Oren Levine in the house showing off some of the accelerometer-based apps that are now coming to market, and his now-famous S60 truck. Dean Andrews, Line Manager in S&S was also in the house talking up various innovation initiatives.

2) Show S60 enthusiasts what’s coming down the pike
We were good on this front as well, with more than 4 different S60-powered Samsung devices in the house, plus the LG KT-610, plus the N78, N96, 6210. Our fans got to see, hold, touch and feel the latest and greatest we have to offer.

The other thing that’s fun about these events for me is the chance to meet people in the industry who are creating things for the S60 Platform or are using S60-based devices in ways I hadn’t thought of using them before. For example, David Pitkin from HP gave me this tip: When you are using your S60 browser and that annoying “Web: Connection Timeout” message comes up (happens more often with my N95 8GB than it did with my N82 for some reason) just go to Options:Tool:Disconnect and then reconnect the browser. You won’t lose your page or even the info you were typing into it. Nice!
3rd party developers also showed off there wares. The guys from Zeemote showed off a cool bt game controller. KeyNetik were especially impressive with an accelerometer-based application that basically allows you to answer the phone just by picking it up, and silence the ring tone by turning it over. Early returns from Oren are good as well….he’s installed it already and tells me it works as advertised.
Also in the house were S60 Ambassador Extraordinaires Erick Macapagal and Alan Chu. Alan has been at 4 of the 5 S60 events we’ve held in the USA, quite an impressive showing.
Most fun of all for me tho are the somewhat random connections I make at these events. Jeff Ziegler is not involved in the mobile industry at all, he works at Wheelworks, a bicycle shop that happens to be my favorite in the Boston area. Why was he there? He used to live in Europe and has been a fan of Symbian phones since. He keeps up on the technology through the internet and heard about the Evening through one of the forums. Without putting ourselves out there in the real world, Jeff is one of those fans I never would have known was out there. Looking forward to meeting more of you at the next Evening with S60.