So what can you do at the Symbian Exposium? Let's have a look at the seminars - these are a multitude of self contained sessions designed to take you through various sections of the Symbian OS platform and enviroment, with people who really know thier stuff. In a few cases, the person who designed a certain component of Symbian OS will be hosting the seminar.
Now, these aren't for everyone, but it's a great way to get a leg up in anything you're interested in. The seminars are organised into four tracks. Let's look at these individually, before we suggest some highlights...
Developer Seminars
This is probably the core seminar track, taking you from a tour of the essential Symbian OS elelments that a Developer needs to know from Colin Turfus of Symbian. John Pagonis then movs up to look at the architecture of the OS, how everything relates to each other, and how this can be used to your advantage. The smooth progression then switches to Martin De Jode talking about Java development on Symbian OS, before the Symbian employees give way to Sander van der Wal's seminar on porting software to Symbian OS. Given that Sander and mBrain software have ported over the Adobe PDF standard into mobile phones, so he knows his stuff.
After a short break, you'll be taken through the process you do after completing the main coding of an application. Kimmo Hoikka of Digia will talk about the best ways to test an application (very important, especially in a device that's designed not to be rebooted every 18 hours). Localisation is another issue, given the global nature, and Dave Robinson of Sony Ericsson will be leading that talk. Finally, Phil Spencer from Symbian will talk about the Symbian Signing process, and Orange will go through their compatibility testing they use.
All that's on Tuesday. Wednesday starts to look at some more advanced things you can do with Symbian OS, starting off with 3D applications for Symbian OS (Lane Robertson) and making your applications 'more entertaiing.' That's hosted by Paul Werp of Macromedia so lots of graphics and sounds would be my guess! Then the track turns to the more serious side, with IDM's Keith Carter looking at the IBM Client Technology in Symbian OS. After lunch, you can learn about the Symbian Developer Network fromone of its managers, Colin turfus. Peter Wikstrom talks about the dediated UIQ Developer Program, while you can get a full overiew of the workings of Orange Partner Program - Orange are featuring heavily at the Expo in case you haven't noticed. The Developer Seminars finish up with "Lighting Up Mobile Data Services" from Rob Woodford (Macromedia).
Enterprise Seminars
Using smartphones in business doesn't have the whizz-bang rock and roll appeal of games design, or the big killer internet applications, but it's these applications that are the bread and butter of Symbian OS. After all, if you can convince a single company to outfit themsleves with, say, 200,000 smartphones world wide, that's a lot of profit in one deal. Simon Garth of Symbian leads the big introduction on Tuesday morning, with IBM's keynote speech, and a product launch from Visto, and a walk through of the Oracle system to follow. Nokia and Sony Ericsson talk about their enterprise programs in the afternoon, before all the day's speakers get involved in a Panel discussion to close off Tuesday.
Wednesday sees a lot of real-life examples. Cap Gemini are a Reseach firm, and Kieran Sheedy takes an indepdent view of the Enterprise marketplace to open the day. Intrinsyc's Parm Sandhu demonstrates some web services, and a joint talk from Rob Davis (Intuwave) and Syed Hasan (Response Tek) promises a number of case studies of smartphones in Enterprise.
Writing those applciations is the focus of the afternoon, with Visual Basic Kings Appforge, Research in Motion's Blackberry software, and the Polycomm system all being explained. Finally, the hardware drivers, Texas Instruments and Intel, close off the day with a more holistic view.
Marketing Applications
Sponsored by Open Bit, this track basically brings together some of the most succesfull application houses and retailers to give you practical advice for your own applications. Openbit, TeliaSonera and Dangaard Telecolm are the morning session on Tuesday, along with Jason Wells from Handango, who's talking about the future of on-line distribution. Wednesday sees discussion on the three new perspectives you'll need to remember to consider when devloping - the handset manufacturer (Jason Day, Nokia), digital rights management (Eero Tunkello, Openbit) and distribution challenges (Nadav Gur, Mobimate).
The afternoon finishes the track, with a look at the Symbian Signing process (Geoff Preston), Fast Tracking your thoughts in to application development (Mikael Nerde, Sony Ericsson), preparing your applications for market (Clint Patterson, Appforge) and finally going to market with orange (with Orange providing the speaker, obviously).
Symbian OS User Interface
Tuesday morning in this session starts with a handful fo Series 60 seminars, and then switches to UIQ. The Series 60 is up first, with Nokia's Matt Volpi looking at some efficient programming technques, and Mark Naddell talking about the Series 60 software success stories. Switching over to UIQ, we have Craig Senick from iGo (who make QuickOffice) talking about UIQ from an outsiders perspective. Clint Patterson from Handango looks at the selling process, and an overview of the UIQ products will be supplied by UIQ's Peter Molin.
How are Symbian devices put together? Peter Siljerund from Intel and Doug Knabe from Texas Instruments talk about the Software Solutions for the Symbain platforms to come, and the Texas Instruments OMAP Virtual Platform respectivly. The final track ends with a walk through some developer tools. Ronnie King looks at Metrowerk's Codewarrior (and, I assume, will deftly parry any questions about the Nokia acquisition of Codewarrior), Jason Vokes talks about the Borland Toolsm and Hody Crouch wraps things up (at least for this preview) with the Appforge suite.
Our Recommendations
Phew, that's a lot of talks to consider - but even in that mix, for the casual Symbian OS fan, there look to be some seminars that All About Symbian reckon you shouldn't miss. So if you're just down for "the experience" we'd recommed that you make sure you don't miss the following talks...
Tuesday 5th October
13.00: Symbian User Interfaces
Speaker tbc, part of the Symbian OS User Interface Track.
16.00: On-line Application Distributor Perspective - The Future of On-line Application Sales
Jason Wells, Handango, part of the Marketing Applciations Track.
17.00: How to Get Your Applications Symbian Signed
Phil Spencer, Symbian, part of the Developer Track.
Wednesday 6th October
10.15: Application Developer Perspective - Developer Challenges in Distribution
Nadav Gur, Mobimate, part of the Marketing Applications Track.
13.30: The Symbian Developer Network Program
Colin Turfus, Symbian, part of the Developer Track.
14.15: Tools for Symbian OS
Martin Tasker, Symbian, part of the Symbian OS User Interface Track.
Part Three of our Expo Preview looks at the Training Courses offered.