This is a quick report on the AAS pub meet that took place tonight. I'm not likely to have internet access for long posts for the next 2 days and so here is a quick story to keep you going. If you were at the meet and took some photos, leave a comment and let us know about them.

The meet was first and foremost great fun. It was nice to finally be able to put some face to people who I have talked to through the forums or by e-mail. A BIG thank you to everyone one who came.

I arrived early to find that the rest of the AAS admin was already in attendence. Jordan was probably already on his thired pint by then. Also present early on were Andy, Robin (Dazler), Ewan and a couple of others. As 7:00 approached more and more people turned up. By about 8:00 we had about 50 people around in various parts of the pub.

Oz Zechlin (sorry if thats spelt wrong) from Siemens gave a short talk about the SX1, including some interesting points about the usability. Basically it is easier to use and the keypad is probably not going to be a problem. Like the 3650 you will get use to it. It looks like a really nice phone. I'm starting to lust after one....

Next was Ewan who talked about OPL and it going opensource, you can read the details in some of the other news post (thanks to SwitchBlade for doing that). There was a big cheer as it was announced. OPL is back and judging by the people at the meet it has a very rosy future. If you're interested in contributing check out the OPL site. OPL is the community's language.

We then had a prize draw giving away numerous prizes (I think everyone in the room got something or other). Malcom Bryant (abp) got the secret star prize from Siemens. I hope he has a sweet tooth...

So who was there - well lots of people, but from my very weary memory here are a few of the people I spoke too:

Dag Olav from Opera was shwoing off Opera for the Series 60, it works both on the 7650 and on the 3650. It is really impressive. I've been playing with it for a while now, and the browsing experience is unsurpassed on smartphones. This is a killer apps if ever there was one. Opera will be releasing the program from tomorrow and you will be able to download a 14 day trial from http://www.opera.com

There were lots of developers there. One of the first too turn up was Simon from Simkin Scripting. I cant remember his URL but he's just released a scripting language for Symbian.

Developers of MobiMate were also in attendence. Later Andrey from Epocware turned up and it was great to meet someone who been a key developer for the Symbian and EPOC world for so long. Also there was a (the?) director from Iambic software who turned up despite only hearing about the meet at the last moment. Iambic software are well knwon for their Palm and POcket PC stuff and will be bringing some software to Symbian.

Several Mobitopians were there. I'm sure there'll be reporting via www.mobitopia.com. It was great to them in the flesh too.

This is just a quick tatser of what was going on, I already picked up lots of business cards and I'm sure the next few days will be no different. So it on the the Exposium. The buzz about Symbain in the meet was great, someone compared the buzz around the Exposium to JavaOne confernece back in 97 when Java was about to go mainstream.

and yes Ewan did wear a kilt, lots more will be revealed by the (incriminating) pictures.