October 13, 2004
Ericsson Mobility World Developer Day
Today Yesterday (pfft.. is it 3am already?!) marked the first Ericsson Mobility World Developer Day in Bulgaria. "It happened at the Hilton", and it was actually the first conference-type event dedicated solely to mobile technologies that I've ever been to. This probably explains the fact that there were only three people I knew there - and of those, one was a former classmate from the 7th grade whom I hadn't seen since high-school, and the other works at MobilTel, so I wonder if they really count :)
It was pretty interesting, though - maybe the most interesting part was that I seemed to actually understand everything being said, and even managed to slip in a couple of questions and pass for a connoiseur ;) Of course, there was quite a bit of marketspeak and the usual amount of question-dodging, but still there were things to learn - or at least to note for later consideration - in all the presentations. Ericsson's Mobility World program looks like it could indeed help people write things to run on their phones, things to run their phones, and things that make other people run around holding phones.
I'm not exactly sure whether the two presentations from the Bulgarian government employees actually had something to do with Ericsson, but that was probably for the best - the focus of the conference was on mobile technologies and application development in general, I think, and both talks were probably interesting to foreigners looking at Bulgaria for investment or outsourcing. Still, the organizers had subtly rigged the schedule so that people would *want* to stay for the afternoon session - that's where the technical discussions were, after all! Pity that the 'application development' talk didn't happen - the speaker couldn't make it to Bulgaria, apparently - but the mobile positioning and location-based services one was great. Of course, Ericsson are not the only ones to have come up with the products and services shown in the various presentations, but at least they gave me something - several somethings, in fact - to think about, and some ideas about Things I Just Might Do When I Find The Time(tm). The CD's helped some, too - and some of them even have software that may run on OS's other than Windows!
The cancelled talk meant that I was actually able to get to work during office hours after all, and fancy me catching up on blogs and coming across the not-so-new-now news about Google SMS - a genuinely useful mobile service, albeit limited to the US operators :) I do hope that Russell Beattie changed his original opinion about the service, since exciting as they might be, smart phones are still a minority, and not just in Bulgaria, either. The results may not be perfect, but then what is, in this world? I know I've often found myself wishing for a quick search, away from a computer, much less an Internet connection... Of course, I cannot use the Google SMS service too, but here's hoping that some Bulgarian companies wake up now that yet another giant has made yet another move towards mobile content. More discussion on kasia's and John Battelle's blogs - and be sure to check out the 'Trackback' link on John's blog for even more opinions!
Posted by roam at October 13, 2004 04:16 AM
