Communication, conversation and collaboration: Lee Williams SEE09 Keynote
Published by Ewan Spence at 12:43 UTC, October 27th 2009
Taking to the stage in an open necked shirt and faded blue jeans, Lee Williams, Executive Director of the Symbian Foundation, opened this year's Symbian focussed show, the Symbian Exchange and Exposition. With a nod to British sensibilities, he did throw on a casual sports jacket, but Williams was in an animated mood.
“I've heard other companies stand up and say the have the world's most powerful operating system,” he countered. “I think they're wrong.”
“If it took me six months to add cut and paste,” he confessed “I'd be embarrassed.”
“And anyone who says we are standing still....” a chilling pause, “is so wrong.”
It's clear that the press coverage and recognition that the Symbian Foundation has or has not picked up during the last year is not to Williams' liking. Although Symbian as an operating system has been around since 1999 (or earlier depending on how you classify the days of EPOC and SIBO), he sees the Foundation as a start-up. Admittedly a start-up that was conceived at the heart of a rich and robust community, but a small and agile start-up that licensed a trademark and has made huge advances in the last year.
From a blank canvas at launch, the Foundation now has 165 member companies working with the community towards a common goal; 16 packages are now open sourced under the Eclipse licence, including the microkernel (which was opened ahead of schedule); a solid roadmap from where they are now to the drive forward with Symbian^3 and Symbian^4.
A lot of the detail of the roadmap has been driven by the community, and Williams has spent much of the last year talking to Foundation members. “Every meeting I have builds up a tiny part of the roadmap. Everyone is willing to have a conversation that talks about the future. That's quite rare for an Open Source movement.”
Is that a touch of paternal pride on stage? No matter the language used, the numbers involved show that this is one of the largest Open Source projects, with 40-50 million lines of code and 11 years of work behind it. The model now is one of collaboration and co-operation, and Williams' focus in the keynote, and indeed for the whole show, is to share the roadmap and gather community ideas to keep the project moving.
One of the most intriguing slides of the presentation was the number 466 – that's the number of features currently under development for the next versions of Symbian (^3 and ^4). Williams went on to highlight three of them – near field communications (which seems to have been hanging around the fringes of the mobile industry for a very long time); a new conceptual user interface (although unfortunately just a mock up, there are no new products being launched by the Foundation at this show); and the addition of Social Media API's, which will allow the moving of social interactions away from the existing isolated application model to a full and holistic integration with the platform.
One area launched in the new Symbian web site is the Ideas section (http://ideas.symbian.org/), an area where the Foundation is inviting everyone to come in and discuss its views on the mobile world, and specifically where Symbian OS is going and what they want to see on the platform in the future. In exactly the same way as Williams has been talking to the existing members, the conversation is now opening up to a much wider audience. There may be a natural hesitancy to put up revolutionary ideas here, but this could prove to be a useful tool to help guide (or confirm) future direction.
As a Foundation that acts as a clearing house for ideas and provides direction under the advice of its members, it would be difficult for Williams to come out on stage at Earl's Court this morning and give a “One more thing” style of presentation. But that's not the style of the Symbian Foundation. Williams has built up an organisation that is driven by the community and is discovering new ways of aligning with it and how to work together.
Whether that's enough in the consumer market remains to be seen – but the Foundation continues to fulfil its mission to provide members with the best mobile operating system possible for every use case.
-- Ewan Spence, Oct 2009.
We'll have more from Lee Williams and the Symbian Exchange and Exposition in the upcoming All About Symbian Insight special podcast.
Categories: Industry
Platforms: General
News Discussion
Honestly, I hope that my ideas come up to the surface. I think that some of them would be a breath of fresh air for the platform, and most device users.
Here's hoping Williams and others rock this out.
| Sure, there can be some competitive loss here by folks from other OS/platforms coming in and seeing those ideas. |
That's the true spirit of sharing. Then I can use those great ideas on a UI that doesn't suck.
It took them 6 months to implement copy paste, implementation of these ideas would take an eternity.
2. System upgrades for the whole platform, such that users of a specyfic model are not left stranded.
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Originally Posted by Hardeep1singh
@unregistered, they'd read those ideas and do what?
It took them 6 months to implement copy paste, implementation of these ideas would take an eternity. |
Hardeep, your blog URL resolves to:
http://mobileindia.shop.tm/thoughts/...in/install.php
Implementing WordPress seems to be taking you an eternity
As pointed out, Copy and past is dismal on the S60 phones. It's really difficult to execute on my E75 and there is no support in the browser...
As an example I can't copy a phone number from a web page and dial it. I invariably write it down on a piece of paper and type it in from there.
Apple's copy and paste just works at you would expect.
Symbian said it would open source the technology - ok, so it's not that exciting that the kernel and a few other packages have been made available. I think it's a stretch to say that the kernel itself is years ahead of anything else - given the number of configurations that Linux comes ready to run with, claiming the Symbian kernel is more portable than a monolithic architecture seems a silly comparison - sure it might be, but someone has to actually do the port.
Symbian just seems so confused. They seem to be marketing to developers? If so, why so much horse shite. Symbian's
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Hardeep, your blog URL resolves to: http://mobileindia.shop.tm/thoughts/...in/install.php Implementing WordPress seems to be taking you an eternity |
Symbian just seems so confused. They seem to be marketing to developers? If so, why so much horse shite. Symbian's
Yesterday 09:24 PM"
I'm sorry if you think it's unexciting that the microkernel of the most widely used mobile software platform on the planet is open-source, freely available to play around with. Maybe that's just you? And the definition of 'portability' has nothing to do with whether or not something has been done, it's how easy it is to do and a microkernel naturally lends itself to portability. You wouldn't call Everest 'climbable' just because it has been climbed a lot would you?
I think you're more confused than anything. What the hell is wrong with Symbian marketing themselves to developers? Isn't the reason why there's been so much criticism of Symbian of late is because developers are a bunch of crybabies who want everything their way and if they don't get it then they're straight on their blogs bitching about it?
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
1. Copy and paste in all applications, including browser
2. System upgrades for the whole platform, such that users of a specyfic model are not left stranded. |
Will every Android phone out there be able to go Android 2.0 Eclair..... if they have a Sense UI enhancement or Moto Blur ?
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Originally Posted by Serious60
As an example I can't copy a phone number from a web page and dial it. I invariably write it down on a piece of paper and type it in from there.
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It's good to be able to leave the browser and go to maps, and then to the office app, and then the camera with its flash.
No developer who is aware of Symbian roadmap believes the OS is stagnating. Work is going into Android whilstwating for the QT and the ^n stuff to kick in. I am currently training on Android Eclair whilst picking up the QT stuff. As someone who is doing OK on Symbian app sales, I appreciate the massive number of devices out there cannot be ignored.
In fact, as the whole world and his wife dives into Android and dilutes the market with a million crapps (as happened with iPhone) Symbian development is proving very lucrative for those sticking with it.
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Originally Posted by Unregistered
Celios suckers for every piece of crap journalism on the web.
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