Nokia Developer Summit 2009: Prologue

I have just arrived at Fairmont Hotel in Monte Carlo, Monaco today to attend the first Nokia Developer Summit 2009 with Boon Kiat (Journalist from Business Times and a blogger on TechGoondu) and Wen Dee (Senior Manager, Communications, Nokia - Southeast Asia & Pacific). Of course, without elaborating further, we have quite an adventure during our transit to Nice via Frankfurt airport. The event will be held in the Grimaldi Forum in Monte Carlo from 28 to 29 April 2009. As far as talking to various people, Over the next few days, I am will be covering this from the social media angle and hope that you will catch me via the blogs (SGEntrepreneurs and this blog) and twitter (and also Jason Goh's twitter as well) over the course of the next few days (you can view the agenda for the event here):

• Announcements of new initiatives for developers on the Ovi Store and hopefully new gadgets: From tracking most of the content out there: one of the central themes for this coming conference will be the Ovi store which is Nokia's portal for consumer content and how developers can work with Nokia with the developer resources available and several initiatives that will benefit new companies and leading edge corporations to be involved.
• Singaporean entrepreneurs who are involved with demos of their applications for the Nokia Developer Summit: Dannie Francis from "The Cell City" and Darius Cheung from TenCube will be present from the developers for southeast Asia and Pacific. I will try to grab them down for an interview if possible. Dannie's team in The Cell city has developed widgets for N97 and Ovi Store and licenses Digital Conceirge content via DC2Go for Singapore, and has particled the Developer Summit Hackathon. On the other hand, Darius' team in TenCube specializes in phone backup and security software and it will be interesting to see how their product interfaces with Nokia phones in this event.
• A Hackathon in the Developer Summit: There will be a "Calling All Innovators" hackathon going on during this event. The competition is for all developers to submit the best ideas for home screen widgets for the new Nokia N97. You can see the teams involved for this 24 hours hackathon. By the way, CellCity is in the hackathon competition.
• Quick chats with various Nokia Executives: Through the help from Wen Dee, we have arranged short sessions with the Nokia executives for the event. Among the executives on my list, I have Mark Ollila (Director, Nokia Games Publishing) and Lee Williams (Executive Director, Symbian Foundation). I hope to speak to Bo Ilsoe (Partner, Nokia Growth Partner) for the event, since my intention is two-fold: (1) to find how Symbian will be evolving for the developers and (2) how new companies (including those I have invested and incubated in Thymos Capital) can work with Nokia in the realm of games publishing or worked with Nokia with regards to Ovi Store. 

As I will be covering the event over the next two days, I will also be turning up at Tech65 podcast this Saturday to talk about the whole event. So, if you have any burning questions on Symbian and Ovi Store, drop me a twitter at @bleongcw and the tag for the event: #nds09. 

Here are the first picture I have taken along my trip before the summit starts:

Pre event Dinner in Restaurant, Maison Du Caviar, Monaco with the representatives from Singapore and Malaysia and Wen-Dee (Senior Manager, Communications) who hosted us for this trip. From the left: Boon Kiat (Correspondent, The Business Times), Kelly Goh (Assistant Editor, the Star) and his spouse, Jason Goh (blogger who writes on design, food, travel and Symbian), Wen Dee (Nokia) and myself.

Author's Disclosure: Truth be told, Nokia has kindly sponsored my travel and accommodation for this event and I should also thank Text-100 (Stella and Supriya) for the opportunity to go for this trip. Of course, I am given full editorial freedom to write about the event over the course of the next two days (28 and 29 April 2009) and after that.

Comments

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is there any online video streaming availble?