New Year, New Direction

I want to thank WordPress for the very cool blog stats job they did for the 2011 summary.  Saved me a lot of work!

Which is especially good since I’ve been working hard on something new (I know, I know: what’s new in that, right?).  But bear with me!

Gary Birkett: A Community Heart

Some of us like to think that systems and data and processes are the bones, brains and blood of any venture.  And for the most part that’s true.  But what body can thrive without a heart?

This isn’t just rhetorical.  The question came up for me a few days ago when I received the devastating news that a very good friend had passed away. 

Achievement Badges: Not Just for Gamers

A friend of mine in the MeeGo community brought my attention to an interesting concept he calls MeeGoVerse, which translates common gaming elements to real-life work as a sort of “massive multiplayer” endeavor.  One important aspect is the use of achievements to reward people for attacking necessary community evils, like bug reporting.  I can envision Meegon badges for each achievement.  People love to contribute, and especially be recognized for it.

Badges can be found in unusual places and contexts.  While updating my LinkedIn profile recently I took stock of a couple of icons I had not really thought much about before.

Right there beside the YOU indicator you’ll note an in and, next to it, a circular array graphic.  The first indicates  a Premium account, meaning for one that you get to harass potential connections with InMails.  Very valuable when I was searching for a new job two years ago.  The circle of circles shows profile viewers that I’m a member of an OpenLink network and thus open to said harassment.  Fair, after all, is fair.  

Blogging at AppUp, too

Intel’s ever-popular Bob Duffy asked me to do some blogging for their AppUp community and even as busy as I am lately, I could not turn down the opportunity.   As I say in my intro there:

Here I’ll narrow it down to mostly MeeGo-specific stuff with some general software development along with relevant hardware topics.  Just about everything will have a heavy community slant.

Bob was gracious enough to let me echo articles over here.   When I do so, I’ll wait a day or so after initially publishing there before republishing here, and also include a reference to the original post.  Note that most of my writing will continue to originate here.

It’s actually funny that I’m doing this for Intel, given that I have been a largely AMD customer for years.  More on that in a future article.

Oh, and Cosimo Kroll has also started writing at AppUp, too, so make sure to check him out as well!

A Personal Note on the New Nokia

Ever since last Friday’s monumental announcement (do I have to say which one?) I have wrestled with Nokia’s new direction.  I admit to being skeptical of its success, and I’m very disappointed in what I see as a significant retreat from open source… but I’m going to try really hard to be objective.

I see a lot of very polarized reactions and people forming into two distinct Pro and Con camps.  This is understandable; Nokia’s new clothes signify a very different empire than the one to which many of us have grown accustomed.  Because we’re looking at so many unknowns, I have to lean toward the doubters on this one, and Nokia is going to have to work harder than it ever has to prove itself in my view.  Too many words from the past unmatched by action.  Not that the past need dictate the future, but after repeated bumps and potholes one begins to distrust the road.  The one Nokia has been on requires much more than simple patching, to be sure, but the jury will be out on the shotgun wedding to Microsoft for some time yet.

As an (unpaid and often gonzo) journalist I often walk a fine line here between opinion and strict reporting, but I will always make it clear which is which.  In the same vein, I will work at not letting my personal opinion get in the way of highlighting the positive aspects of Nokia’s new developments.  That won’t be easy though!  But I was recently reminded that being a Forum Nokia Champion means supporting the communities, whatever form they take.

I do think some of my peers have been far too eager to radically embrace Nokia’s abrupt shift, but then, I can understand it– especially from employees concerned about their future.  On that note, I left a post at forum.meego.com about showing understanding toward Nokia employees and I hope it’s heeded.  They certainly don’t need any grief right now.

So expect me to cover this subject some more, maybe at times in an aggravated tone but perhaps with some hopeful accents as well.  I don’t want Nokia to fail… far too much at stake that goes beyond the success of Stephen Elop.

Disclaimer: author is a current stockholder and customer as well as former employee of Nokia, and a longtime developer with Microsoft Visual Studio.

Marketing MeeGo: Introduction

One of the biggest challenges facing the MeeGo venture will be creating tangible interest around its (eventual) offerings.  iOS and
Android enjoy the buzz right now, the latter now benefiting more than the former.  At some point MeeGo as a product (or family of products) needs to establish the same sort of excitement if it is to seize significant market share.

It’s only natural to assume that any corporate entity utilizing MeeGo in some manner would craft unique marketing campaigns for their implementations.  But grassroots or community-led marketing is something else entirely.  

Developing the MeeGo community

A great deal of useful conversation during Linux Foundation Collaboration Summit 2010 (LFCS2010) earlier this year revolved around what a MeeGo community should look like.  There are of course numerous aspects to this but for now I want to focus on three only: what sort of constituency would best benefit MeeGo, how could the website structure reflect, support and encourage that constituency, and what might this mean for maemo.org.

It might be helpful for the reader to browse through threads under Community Matters at the MeeGo discussion forum, as I will be referring to points raised there.  However, that won’t be necessary for a high-level perspective.  Regardless, a community is actually taking shape so I think it’s time to discuss a few subjects. 

maemo.org council election Spring 2010

I’m going to take a brief break from the MeeGo cheerleading to rally support for a related and more immediate need: electing the next maemo.org community council.  The bad news is it means there’s gonna be a lecture… and it’s liable to stick to some readers.

Transitioning to MeeGo

As most readers already know, Nokia’s Maemo operating system for handheld devices and Intel’s Moblin for netbooks are merging into MeeGo.  I’ve already covered the introduction to MeeGo and what I think it means for the future of mobile devices, so it’s time to delve into what’s going on to make that future happen.

There are numerous aspects to cover, but I’ll highlight a few big ones.

maemo.org growing pains

Nokia’s launch last year of the N900 mobile computer introduced a bit of disruption to their normal business model.  The ripple effect naturally propagated down to the lowest levels and had a huge impact on the semi-independent community, maemo.org.

Before subjecting you to an epic article, I want to point out that change was anticipated, but have to admit with some embarassment that when talk of adding cellular capability to Maemo devices gained traction, I was one of those naive souls downplaying the potential impact.  I assumed two things, both unfortunately proven incorrect:

1. the consumer cost of a phone-capable tablet would be fairly low
2. Nokia would platform the product and continue offering “slate” form factors with no cell phone embedded along with cell-enabled models

But others more prescient grasped very early that even if either or both of these played out (which they sadly didn’t), adding that GSM/UMTS radio introduced the devices to a largely different demographic… one that could significantly shift the priorities of maemo.org.