While russhing from Paris by Thalys to Amsterdam to arrive in time to iStrategy pointed out to me by a collegue, as a leading online media conference. Indeed the lineup looked impressive and interesting.
In the morning off to the Rai Conference Hall to iStrategy. First appearance is a lot of people in blue suits. Meeting Seven Advertising Agency, I caught their talk about the iPad and their experience with user stats. Then over the Facebook Advertising by Paul Ducray. Across the hall into the SEO optimization, and into mobile strategy, with a last stop at evian baby booming about a viral marketing campaign.
I found the statistics by seven advertising company interesting that most people ipad from their couch, and most users are 1 ipad per family so 1 ipad=4 eyes/5 eyes. Adds interactivity to the family.
Facebook advertising session was finished by the time I arrived, but I got to meet Paul Ducray, who wrote the book, Facebook for Dummies together with his co-author Rich. We had a great talk about facebook ecommerce and it’s future, the space, and what the concerns are for the merchants (will marc z take a cut?) and technical questions (is paypal blocked by marc z?). So far not solution that really is blazing ahead in techniques and only about 7 serious players in that space.
Phillips was a main sponsor, but no wonder as they are so social media saavy that you could trip over it. With 3 main online social sectors in the company: lighting, healthcare, and consumer goods. We had a great o’le talk about their awesome cooperation with Swarovsky–truly an innovative company Phillips. The lighting department is now working on the fabrics for large walls and screens. Healthcare is booming. They told me that their company uses an internal twitter software for corporations so that the entire company can see more and more what the global company is doing. So if people in India are working on something, Philips NL can join that project instead of having duplicate projects running with people internally developing the same things. Saves budget to have them join forces internally rather than run two teams that dont know about eachother. Very innovative.
I met a woman who was a TV remote company, there for the first time and just getting to know what can be done with social media to help their company. She attended the first steps training course at the istrategy conference. I missed that because I was in the ipad–I would have liked to join to see what they thought were the first steps (and make sure I was doing it all!).
I enjoyed the talk about SEO as the American lady handed out beers and talk about the evolution of search in time. She showed some great features on SEOMoz, and talked about symantics. I esptically found her Q&A in the end enlightening as she highlited a problem that my site had been having. She said I could email her about it. I am waiting to follow up as I had to run on the last day over to another venue to catch the Creative Amsterdam Conference.
The Evian campaign was brillian blend of fashion and water and france. The videos and the baby t-shirt inspired them to be sold in Colette concept store in Paris. It was an all-out atach on every media front!
The Mobile Marketing Man was interesting, and boy can you guess my disapointmnt when I saw that he wasn’t going to talk about tools and techniques and QR codes. I was totally disspointed. However, I did get a lot of information and ideas about how to include it in marketing. Valuable information for a techy. I asked how developed mCommerce was and where did he see it going. He said that it’s got a 300% increase in 2010 from ebay. Good news for Fashion Industry.
In total, the conference was pleasant, only a few pointers:
Somehow make it more clear on your website about the networking software–many people found out too late (including me and the remote woman and seven). I found it hard to network at this event.
Have people wear color coded tags so that you can quickly identify people in the room that you may want to meet.
More women speakers. I’m happy to recomend some to you.
A valuable conference and well worth attending for the ligher side of technology talking about marketing.
While russhing from Paris by Thalys to Amsterdam to arrive in time to iStrategy pointed out to me by a collegue, as a leading online media conference. Indeed the lineup looked impressive and interesting.
In the morning off to the Rai Conference Hall to iStrategy. First appearance is a lot of people in blue suits. Meeting Seven Advertising Agency, I caught their talk about the iPad and their experience with user stats. Then over the Facebook Advertising by Paul Ducray. Across the hall into the SEO optimization, and into mobile strategy, with a last stop at evian baby booming about a viral marketing campaign.
I found the statistics by seven advertising company interesting that most people ipad from their couch, and most users are 1 ipad per family so 1 ipad=4 eyes/5 eyes. Adds interactivity to the family.
Facebook advertising session was finished by the time I arrived, but I got to meet Paul Ducray, who wrote the book, Facebook for Dummies together with his co-author Rich. We had a great talk about facebook ecommerce and it’s future, the space, and what the concerns are for the merchants (will marc z take a cut?) and technical questions (is paypal blocked by marc z?). So far not solution that really is blazing ahead in techniques and only about 7 serious players in that space.
Phillips was a main sponsor, but no wonder as they are so social media saavy that you could trip over it. With 3 main online social sectors in the company: lighting, healthcare, and consumer goods. We had a great o’le talk about their awesome cooperation with Swarovsky–truly an innovative company Phillips. The lighting department is now working on the fabrics for large walls and screens. Healthcare is booming. They told me that their company uses an internal twitter software for corporations so that the entire company can see more and more what the global company is doing. So if people in India are working on something, Philips NL can join that project instead of having duplicate projects running with people internally developing the same things. Saves budget to have them join forces internally rather than run two teams that dont know about eachother. Very innovative.
I met a woman who was a TV remote company, there for the first time and just getting to know what can be done with social media to help their company. She attended the first steps training course at the istrategy conference. I missed that because I was in the ipad–I would have liked to join to see what they thought were the first steps (and make sure I was doing it all!).
I enjoyed the talk about SEO as the American lady handed out beers and talk about the evolution of search in time. She showed some great features on SEOMoz, and talked about symantics. I esptically found her Q&A in the end enlightening as she highlited a problem that my site had been having. She said I could email her about it. I am waiting to follow up as I had to run on the last day over to another venue to catch the Creative Amsterdam Conference.
The Evian campaign was brillian blend of fashion and water and france. The videos and the baby t-shirt inspired them to be sold in Colette concept store in Paris. It was an all-out atach on every media front!
The Mobile Marketing Man was interesting, and boy can you guess my disapointmnt when I saw that he wasn’t going to talk about tools and techniques and QR codes. I was totally disspointed. However, I did get a lot of information and ideas about how to include it in marketing. Valuable information for a techy. I asked how developed mCommerce was and where did he see it going. He said that it’s got a 300% increase in 2010 from ebay. Good news for Fashion Industry.
In total, the conference was pleasant, only a few pointers:
Somehow make it more clear on your website about the networking software–many people found out too late (including me and the remote woman and seven). I found it hard to network at this event.
Have people wear color coded tags so that you can quickly identify people in the room that you may want to meet.
More women speakers. I’m happy to recomend some to you.
A valuable conference and well worth attending for the ligher side of technology talking about marketing.
Yesterday Forum Nokia delivered the first significant update to the Wiki in a number of years.
One of the most important changes is the new Wiki Editor, which makes it a whole lot easier to work with the wiki. It offers toolbar items for the most common wiki operations, including marking up text as bold, italic, superscript, subscript, bigger and smaller, inserting links, galleries, files, tables and lines, and search/replace.
When you’ve finished editing the page, you can preview the new text in place, and even review the changes against the current revision. In addition, the editor provides more comprehensive help on the syntax behind a "Help" toggle (as shown below) and also a section for inserting special characters.
The upgrade also added other functionality of immediate value to wiki users including:
Toggle text - allows you to hide and display text by toggling a link
I have seen many users complaining Ovi Store app not working at all after they Hard Rest their Symbian^3 device, such as Nokia N8, E7, C7 etc.
Ovi Store app is developed using Qt and it requires the Qt runtime on device to work properly. When a user Hard Rests his device, the runtime is gone. And unfortunately, Nokia is unable to tackle this issue so far when installing Ovi Store again on device.
I have to reset my Nokia N8 once, and I got hit by the same issue. I knew what was missing, so I just installed the Qt runtime (4.6.3) SIS from the Qt SDK 1.0 folder to my N8 and it started working just fine.
Normal users don’t have Qt SDK, which is ~1.3GB download. So, I thought it would be a good idea to put the Qt runtime SIS files on my server and let the users having issues with Ovi Store, download and install the Qt runtime without downloading the Qt SDK.
I created a special mobile friendly page on our SWF2Go website, where any user can just go directly using his mobile and download and install the Qt runtime.
I uploaded Qt 4.6.3 as well as Qt 4.7.3 runtimes. You just need only one of them. I’d recommend the later as the most of the new apps such as LinkedIn for Symbian is based on it.
Update: Based on feedback I have also added Qt Mobility 1.1.3 SIS along Qt runtime. Some users have reported Ovi Store app uses Qt Mobility as well. I guess this will fix Ovi Store always loading issue after installing Qt.
Update 2: I have now added Qt Notifications APIs SIS on the download link above. The new version of Ovi Store uses these new APIs as well.
Update 3 – Recommended for Symbian ^3: Nokia team has finally made available a standalone download of the Ovi Store client app. Just visit the following link to download the latest version. Read more about this at official blog.
Update 4 (26 Oct 2011) – Download new Qt QML based beta Nokia Store app. 18mb download contains Qt runtime and the client. No need to install Qt. Get it from here.
My suggestion to Nokia / Qt Team: There should be similar Qt runtime download page optimized for mobile devices, for end users. Who disparately search on internet when Ovi Store stops working.
My impression has been radically changed after MIX11. Microsoft have done a 180-degree and started listening, started caring; they have created an exciting new platform where I feel very welcome and included and have possibilities.
However, when I first looked in my inbox and saw an invitation from Nokia
to attend the MIX11 conference in the USA, I thought it might be a mistake, so
I asked several questions before accepting the invitation. I made a mistake,
thinking it was a Nokia conference where I was going, and groaned when I found
out that it was actually a Microsoft developer conference. The impression I had
of Microsoft was one of stern, strict, non-creative business people. Everywhere
I had ever been in the world and met Microsoft people, I always got the hand
held up saying, “We don’t fund apps.” And “We are not interested in fashion.
It’s too small of a niche market.” Not only that, but I discovered that the
conference was being held in Las Vegas—the city of sin—quite
fitting for a male orientated geek company. Although I knew that Nokia were in the midst
of creating an agreement with them, I was lamenting the lack of development of
Meego, thinking QT may be a wasted time, and the death of symbian.
As I waited in the airport of Chicago O’Hare working on some
projects, an African-American American Airlines baggage collector man sat at my
booth and we began talking. I told that I was off to meet Microsoft people and we talked about how was Microsoft going to turn around
the mobile industry and their "big corporate" brand image. The man said that he loved Google,
and Apple–he positively glowed when he talked about Google as if it were a religious experience. I asked him what his impression of Microsoft, he said they
were a big corporation that didn’t listen to what people wanted–they did not care about the user and he didn’t feel that they would listen to him or talk to him. He said that
that was their mistake: they didn’t listen to what the people wanted and they
gave the impression that they didn’t care. I continued on, wondering why Nokia was partnering with them when Forum Nokia was all about listening and interacting and supporting their developers.
On the 11th April was the opening of the
workshops and I attending the HTML5/CSS3 stream taught by Stephanie Sullivan.
Not only was I totally struck by the number of women in the audience who
clearly were web developers, Stephanie Sullivan was a brilliant presenter
giving a clear, practical breakdown of what HTML5 is and what CSS3 is capable
of, along with mapping out the possibilities of where it is all moving toward.
She gave code examples, tips, and reality checks. Everyone in the audience was
thrilled and asking to have a copy of her slides. When she announced she would
post them online I finally stopped snapping every one. The slide that was most
gripping for me was her five screen breakdown of the different layouts she
created for the one site. She recommended starting from the mobile up because
the mobile HTML5 site is the most simple and building up from nothing is easier
than trying to pair down from everything. Made total sense. She talked about
what were the HTML5 web standards that were not yet accepted by all browsers
and how to get around IE6 problems: she just tells the client that if they want
an exact copy they have to pay more, otherwise they are going to get something
paired down and simple. When I asked her after her workshop: web app or mobile
app, she said that she believed that a native web app was the way things were
going to go. And she said it really depends on the situation and where you are
designing geographically. The most thrilling fact that I found out from
Stephanie Sullivan is that she was a fashion model in the 80’s and modeled in
Italy and USA before she became consumed by coding. She is thrilling and a
great inspiration for me. Meeting her (besides windows 7 phone environment
which I will get to) was indeed the most thrilling event at the MIX11
conference. At 38 she decided to teach herself to code and she would never have
considered it if she had not been exposed to it by chance through a week course
she had to take for a job she was working on. I recorded her whole story here
along with her opinions of how the web and mobile are going forward.
Invigorated and after a great vegetarian marked lunch (such
a great surprise to have everything clearly marked with ingredients) I marched
off to the windows 7 phone workshop feeling a bit better. I had even found a
new friend who flew in from Perth, Australia to be at the event and was super enthusiastic.
The windows 7 phone workshop set it clearly in my mind that
Microsoft was indeed the best choice Nokia could make. I believe that it will
become a dominant phone operating system should they be able to work out their agreement. Microsoft has indeed taken their very
bad experience from windows mobile and turned it into a very unique, data
driven, user interface. Small details that set it clearly apart from the pack,
such as “the tilt” (when you press a button, it tilts at a corner), “the active
tiles” (they gave an example of the Quantas app which updates you and alerts
you that you’d better get a move on to the airport if you want to make your
flight, along with one touch to see your itinerary), “the panoramic scroll”
where the next items you can scroll horizontally to peek out at your giving a
little hint to the user that there’s more to see, and “the flip” where the
items wipe away one by one in a page turning effect. Sexy. Smart. At first I
was confused by the speaker saying, “If it’s not glass why try to make it look
like glass. If it’s not 3d why try to make it look 3D.” Later I understood that
he was talking about why the interface is flat 2D tile like instead of rounded
and button-ish like iPhone.
I left the workshop totally mind boggled and already
starting to dream up apps but perplexed as to how to start. It all seemed a bit
complicated compared to Adobe Flash Lite environment. You need at least three
programs to make any app: Visual Studio, Blend, and Silverlight. Later I found
out that you can do simple apps in Blend, but the sad part is you can’t buy
Blend separately. I think that this is a mistake on the part of Microsoft. If
they were to separate out the Blend/Sketchflow into a lower cost application
development zone, they could easily convert over Flash Lite programmers and
light weight web developers. They could open themselves up to not-so-techy application
developers who could easily create apps to compliment their websites, which is
of course the Adobe offering to web developers to create mobile applications
easily. I think that Microsoft would do well to appeal to people on this level.
I was invited to the Nokia VIP reception, which was a nice
networking event for Nokia Champions, Nokia administrators, and Nokia vendors.
I had the pleasure to meet Purmina from Forum Nokia, another great woman
shaping the face of technology. I think the way she is taking the situation in
hand with developers by creating a direct dialog with us. I greatly admire her,
not only for being one of the brilliant women in technology, but also for how
she keeps so calm in the face of this tremendous storm to turn the ship around
and calm the cabin crew. I met some new Nokia Champions whom I had not had the
pleasure to meet before, and found another friendly face to hang around with
for the next days and bounce ideas off of from a company called xxxx. It was a
great opportunity to talk directly to the head of Nokia China and set up a
meeting for when I returned to China to talk about Fashion and mobile. The way
Nokia is making it possible for the Nokia Champions to touch the decision
makers is helping to bring opportunity to these select developers.
The next day was abuzz with the Keynote speech anticipation.
Indeed, a Microsoft conference is very different from Le Web, Nokia World, and
other conferences and developer events. One could feel that the crowd was
excited and full of anticipation. The most interesting announcement in the
Keynotes, besides the windows 7 phone was the Microsoft Kinect. That really
sparked my attention as I see a lot of fashion application for this tool. They
even gave away a free Kinect to anyone attending the conference. Let’s see what
can be done with it.
On the Wednesday was a lunch set up for Women in Technology,
which thrilled me because I thought it was very forward thinking of Microsoft
to have such an event at the MIX11conference. I of course sat at the table with
my new icon, Stephanie Sullivan. The theme was to create Leggo depictions of
the problems involved with attracting Women to technology. I loved the Leggo
depictions—some of which were very involved. I write a longer post about the Women
and Technology lunch here.
Finally, there are some things that Microsoft could learn
from Nokia, in terms of improving their developer conference. They could have
more booths to showcase the host of talent at the conference. They could have a
better networking tool (the Silverlight tool on the website did absolutely
nothing: not one Microsoft emloyee had any contact information on their
profile—what is the point of that?), a mobile website with the streams and
schedule, a live running flickr stream, twitter stream, facebook connect mobile
website (maybe Stepanie could help you out with that for next year). They could
have more experts on hand (when I went to the Blend booth twice they had people
there that did not know the tool), and make connecting to Microsoft developer
community clearer. I only met them thanks to Nokia. They could have the Connect
Lounge working more to connect people and get discussions going by creating
PODS where a Microsoft employee would start a discussion. They could have more
coding games (I saw the one they had was very popular and even had a line in
front of the door—I think a lot of developers enjoyed that activity) which they
would then announce the winners publicly and give notoriety to in the
community. They could have booths where you could take the “mobile challenge”
or the “web challenge” or the “Kinect challenge” and win the software for
example. I think they need more notoriety events. I know everyone loved the
Open Source contest for example. It’s always great to get noticed by the
community and showcased for innovation along with winning some prizes.
Microsoft, take note from Purmina and Forum Nokia.
Overall, I left the MIX11 conference totally happy with
Nokia’s choice to go with windows 7 phone platform, the impression that the
winds of change are coming and Microsoft is on an upswing. Judging from how
many times Microsoft said “we listened to your requests and implemented this
feature and that feature. It still leaves me with doubts as per how fashion and
women will fit in with both Nokia and Microsoft relationship—so far it is
indeed iPhone which is the leader in that arena with the most fashion
applications than any other platform and a app store that is very sensitive to
respecting women and not having illicit or sexy content in their store. Still
the iPhone remains the “fashion gadget” and “feminine phone”. Both Nokia and
Microsoft do not have a very fashionable image or inclination. However, maybe
that’s why Nokia invited me there—to see what could be done in this new
exciting era we are approaching. I see a lot of potential and agree that this
is the right direction for Nokia.
My impression has been radically changed after MIX11. Microsoft have done a 180-degree and started listening, started caring; they have created an exciting new platform where I feel very welcome and included and have possibilities.
However, when I first looked in my inbox and saw an invitation from Nokia
to attend the MIX11 conference in the USA, I thought it might be a mistake, so
I asked several questions before accepting the invitation. I made a mistake,
thinking it was a Nokia conference where I was going, and groaned when I found
out that it was actually a Microsoft developer conference. The impression I had
of Microsoft was one of stern, strict, non-creative business people. Everywhere
I had ever been in the world and met Microsoft people, I always got the hand
held up saying, “We don’t fund apps.” And “We are not interested in fashion.
It’s too small of a niche market.” Not only that, but I discovered that the
conference was being held in Las Vegas—the city of sin—quite
fitting for a male orientated geek company. Although I knew that Nokia were in the midst
of creating an agreement with them, I was lamenting the lack of development of
Meego, thinking QT may be a wasted time, and the death of symbian.
As I waited in the airport of Chicago O’Hare working on some
projects, an African-American American Airlines baggage collector man sat at my
booth and we began talking. I told that I was off to meet Microsoft people and we talked about how was Microsoft going to turn around
the mobile industry and their "big corporate" brand image. The man said that he loved Google,
and Apple–he positively glowed when he talked about Google as if it were a religious experience. I asked him what his impression of Microsoft, he said they
were a big corporation that didn’t listen to what people wanted–they did not care about the user and he didn’t feel that they would listen to him or talk to him. He said that
that was their mistake: they didn’t listen to what the people wanted and they
gave the impression that they didn’t care. I continued on, wondering why Nokia was partnering with them when Forum Nokia was all about listening and interacting and supporting their developers.
On the 11th April was the opening of the
workshops and I attending the HTML5/CSS3 stream taught by Stephanie Sullivan.
Not only was I totally struck by the number of women in the audience who
clearly were web developers, Stephanie Sullivan was a brilliant presenter
giving a clear, practical breakdown of what HTML5 is and what CSS3 is capable
of, along with mapping out the possibilities of where it is all moving toward.
She gave code examples, tips, and reality checks. Everyone in the audience was
thrilled and asking to have a copy of her slides. When she announced she would
post them online I finally stopped snapping every one. The slide that was most
gripping for me was her five screen breakdown of the different layouts she
created for the one site. She recommended starting from the mobile up because
the mobile HTML5 site is the most simple and building up from nothing is easier
than trying to pair down from everything. Made total sense. She talked about
what were the HTML5 web standards that were not yet accepted by all browsers
and how to get around IE6 problems: she just tells the client that if they want
an exact copy they have to pay more, otherwise they are going to get something
paired down and simple. When I asked her after her workshop: web app or mobile
app, she said that she believed that a native web app was the way things were
going to go. And she said it really depends on the situation and where you are
designing geographically. The most thrilling fact that I found out from
Stephanie Sullivan is that she was a fashion model in the 80’s and modeled in
Italy and USA before she became consumed by coding. She is thrilling and a
great inspiration for me. Meeting her (besides windows 7 phone environment
which I will get to) was indeed the most thrilling event at the MIX11
conference. At 38 she decided to teach herself to code and she would never have
considered it if she had not been exposed to it by chance through a week course
she had to take for a job she was working on. I recorded her whole story here
along with her opinions of how the web and mobile are going forward.
Invigorated and after a great vegetarian marked lunch (such
a great surprise to have everything clearly marked with ingredients) I marched
off to the windows 7 phone workshop feeling a bit better. I had even found a
new friend who flew in from Perth, Australia to be at the event and was super enthusiastic.
The windows 7 phone workshop set it clearly in my mind that
Microsoft was indeed the best choice Nokia could make. I believe that it will
become a dominant phone operating system should they be able to work out their agreement. Microsoft has indeed taken their very
bad experience from windows mobile and turned it into a very unique, data
driven, user interface. Small details that set it clearly apart from the pack,
such as “the tilt” (when you press a button, it tilts at a corner), “the active
tiles” (they gave an example of the Quantas app which updates you and alerts
you that you’d better get a move on to the airport if you want to make your
flight, along with one touch to see your itinerary), “the panoramic scroll”
where the next items you can scroll horizontally to peek out at your giving a
little hint to the user that there’s more to see, and “the flip” where the
items wipe away one by one in a page turning effect. Sexy. Smart. At first I
was confused by the speaker saying, “If it’s not glass why try to make it look
like glass. If it’s not 3d why try to make it look 3D.” Later I understood that
he was talking about why the interface is flat 2D tile like instead of rounded
and button-ish like iPhone.
I left the workshop totally mind boggled and already
starting to dream up apps but perplexed as to how to start. It all seemed a bit
complicated compared to Adobe Flash Lite environment. You need at least three
programs to make any app: Visual Studio, Blend, and Silverlight. Later I found
out that you can do simple apps in Blend, but the sad part is you can’t buy
Blend separately. I think that this is a mistake on the part of Microsoft. If
they were to separate out the Blend/Sketchflow into a lower cost application
development zone, they could easily convert over Flash Lite programmers and
light weight web developers. They could open themselves up to not-so-techy application
developers who could easily create apps to compliment their websites, which is
of course the Adobe offering to web developers to create mobile applications
easily. I think that Microsoft would do well to appeal to people on this level.
I was invited to the Nokia VIP reception, which was a nice
networking event for Nokia Champions, Nokia administrators, and Nokia vendors.
I had the pleasure to meet Purmina from Forum Nokia, another great woman
shaping the face of technology. I think the way she is taking the situation in
hand with developers by creating a direct dialog with us. I greatly admire her,
not only for being one of the brilliant women in technology, but also for how
she keeps so calm in the face of this tremendous storm to turn the ship around
and calm the cabin crew. I met some new Nokia Champions whom I had not had the
pleasure to meet before, and found another friendly face to hang around with
for the next days and bounce ideas off of from a company called xxxx. It was a
great opportunity to talk directly to the head of Nokia China and set up a
meeting for when I returned to China to talk about Fashion and mobile. The way
Nokia is making it possible for the Nokia Champions to touch the decision
makers is helping to bring opportunity to these select developers.
The next day was abuzz with the Keynote speech anticipation.
Indeed, a Microsoft conference is very different from Le Web, Nokia World, and
other conferences and developer events. One could feel that the crowd was
excited and full of anticipation. The most interesting announcement in the
Keynotes, besides the windows 7 phone was the Microsoft Kinect. That really
sparked my attention as I see a lot of fashion application for this tool. They
even gave away a free Kinect to anyone attending the conference. Let’s see what
can be done with it.
On the Wednesday was a lunch set up for Women in Technology,
which thrilled me because I thought it was very forward thinking of Microsoft
to have such an event at the MIX11conference. I of course sat at the table with
my new icon, Stephanie Sullivan. The theme was to create Leggo depictions of
the problems involved with attracting Women to technology. I loved the Leggo
depictions—some of which were very involved. I write a longer post about the Women
and Technology lunch here.
Finally, there are some things that Microsoft could learn
from Nokia, in terms of improving their developer conference. They could have
more booths to showcase the host of talent at the conference. They could have a
better networking tool (the Silverlight tool on the website did absolutely
nothing: not one Microsoft emloyee had any contact information on their
profile—what is the point of that?), a mobile website with the streams and
schedule, a live running flickr stream, twitter stream, facebook connect mobile
website (maybe Stepanie could help you out with that for next year). They could
have more experts on hand (when I went to the Blend booth twice they had people
there that did not know the tool), and make connecting to Microsoft developer
community clearer. I only met them thanks to Nokia. They could have the Connect
Lounge working more to connect people and get discussions going by creating
PODS where a Microsoft employee would start a discussion. They could have more
coding games (I saw the one they had was very popular and even had a line in
front of the door—I think a lot of developers enjoyed that activity) which they
would then announce the winners publicly and give notoriety to in the
community. They could have booths where you could take the “mobile challenge”
or the “web challenge” or the “Kinect challenge” and win the software for
example. I think they need more notoriety events. I know everyone loved the
Open Source contest for example. It’s always great to get noticed by the
community and showcased for innovation along with winning some prizes.
Microsoft, take note from Purmina and Forum Nokia.
Overall, I left the MIX11 conference totally happy with
Nokia’s choice to go with windows 7 phone platform, the impression that the
winds of change are coming and Microsoft is on an upswing. Judging from how
many times Microsoft said “we listened to your requests and implemented this
feature and that feature. It still leaves me with doubts as per how fashion and
women will fit in with both Nokia and Microsoft relationship—so far it is
indeed iPhone which is the leader in that arena with the most fashion
applications than any other platform and a app store that is very sensitive to
respecting women and not having illicit or sexy content in their store. Still
the iPhone remains the “fashion gadget” and “feminine phone”. Both Nokia and
Microsoft do not have a very fashionable image or inclination. However, maybe
that’s why Nokia invited me there—to see what could be done in this new
exciting era we are approaching. I see a lot of potential and agree that this
is the right direction for Nokia.
With my trip to Kenya only hours away I am happy to say that eSign Kenyan has officially been added to AppCRAFT’s list of supported Sign language early learning apps available freely in Nokia Ovi Store.
eSign Kenyan has only been live now 3days and has already clocked over 1700 downloads from 61countries.
AppCRAFT is currently the only publisher in Ovi to have any Sign Language content available and we look forward to adding more languages and more advanced features in the near future. We current support the following Sign Languages Alphabets:
American (ASL),
Canadian (CSL),
South African (SASL),
Zambian (ZSL)
Kenyan (KSL)
British (BSL)
Both free & premuim versions are available & work on all S60,5th & Symbian3 handsets.
If not yet live, then coming next week
I am happy to announce that we have been working around the clock this week and that two handed British Sign Language aka BSL is currently in QA and will be available in Store early next week.
Looking forward to hearing your feedback on our early learning Sign Laguage apps.
With a slew of Tech events in the last month, CHINICT is set to reach a high benchmark for it’s May 26-27th Beijing Conference. CHINICT is the largest conference on China tech innovation & entrepreneurship. It takes place in Beijing on May 26th & 27th 2011 – for the 7th consecutive time. China is becoming bigger than Silicon Valley, both as a hotbed for innovations of global impact & as a magnet for entrepreneurs from all over the world. At CHINICT, we showcase this silent yet on-going revolution.
I talked to the founder, Frank Nazikian about China, what CHINICT has to offer, and the problem facing foreign companies wanting to enter China.
Frank, we met so long ago, when you started, how has CHINICT grown in the last years since the first one? What have you learned?
Since we met CHINICT has become the largest conference on China tech innovation and entrepreneurship. And I learned that you should trust your vision with patience and integrity. I love this quote from "The" Michel Angelo: "I saw the angel in the marble and carved until I set him free". This is what we have been doing every day at CHINICT: work hard to evangelize the rest of the world on the silent yet very real tech innovation & entrepreneurship revolution China is undergoing that will soon position China as the leading powerhouse in global tech innovation and entrepreneurship – as Silicon Valley is still today..
I see there’s a big roster of speakers and guests, in particular CEO of Kaixin001–he’s so hard to get! How did you convince him!? He’s the only other guy I know in tech and fashion! I cant wait to meet him.
Kaixin001 has been coming to CHINICT since their very humble beginning when Cheng Binghao was still looking for raising his series A… We have always been very supportive in showcasing the birth of a Rising Star company and I think that Rising Star companies such as Kaixin001 as well as their investors (Qiming Ventures in the case of Kaixin001) have been trusting CHINICT as the leading brand in China tech innovation and entrepreneurship for quite some years now – and that’s why they are always happy to join.
What are you bringing this year to the attendees that is so special? What’s the theme or the message you want to convey / inspire?
CHINICT is special every year as the situation and the speakers are new. The message we want to convey to everybody is that China is the new powerhouse for tech innovation and entrepreneurship and we want to entice more foreigners to come to China and start their own company. We also want Chinese tech companies to gain more confidence in their global potential and start expanding internationally – which a few are already doing with success (Huawei, Tencent…).
Where are you based now?
Exceptionally for the past year and a half, I spent most of my time in China going back to school to study intensively Chinese… Otherwise, I generally share my time between China, the US, Brazil and France.
At GMIC there was a pannel warning foreign tech companies to be very very careful when choosing to enter the Chinese market? They warned that the Chinese are ruthless and that you need to really really find a partner you can trust–and not to trust anyone! It was a tough message. What has been the key to your success and what advice do you have for the foreign companies attending the conference?
All this type of easy propaganda is crap in my opinion and that’s a shame that some embrace this consensual yet absolutely false way of thinking. If you come to China with stupid attitude and behavior, and many foreign companies do, you should not be surprised and accused the so-called "bad Chinese" for hurting or taking advantage of you. From what I have seen and done myself here in China, I think that one key element to be successful in China is to re-invent your company as a true Chinese company (and not a copy/cut from the West with Chinese translations and a few minor adaptations – which anybody could do). Instead, you should use your own "ingredients" and "recipes" and make sure you keep control of them at all times and that you still the best cook in your own kitchen! This is easier to say than to do and this is closer to an art form rather than a methodology to follow. That’s why, it makes no sense to read trendy books about how to make it in China; better would be to read History books in order to at least start creating your own opinion about the Chinese idiosyncrasy.
What do you think a foreign company can expect or define as "success" in the China market?
Being able to create long-term ties and deep roots in China, while making enough money to keep on progressing and – more importantly – while contributing to the development of a harmonious society in China. This is fundamental in a country where you don’t want to piss 1.4 billion people off.
Which speech should we definitely not miss?
All of them are going to be great – because the CHINICT format is short carefully prepared on-stage interviews so people have no time to get bored and really learned something or get outstanding inspiration – unlike many other conferences. Now, I am impatient to talk on-stage to Baidu’s #2 Haoyu Shen – who will be creating Facebook in China and Baidu chose CHINICT to share its first in-depth insights regarding this outstanding news (probably the most exciting news in the past few years regarding the China tech scene). But I am also always very curious to understand straight from their founders and leaders the stories of such incredible companies as Qunar, Qihoo, PPlive, Linkedin, Groupon or Wukong – all led by incredibly talented and already prestigious entrepreneurs.
The truth is that not one foreign tech company has been successful in China, not Google, not Ebay, not one. In fact they were run out of town and their copy counterparts, Baidu, Alibaba, etc have all thrived. How can you say that the Chinese tech industry is not ruthless? If that were so, then why do you think not one foreign tech company has been successful in China?
All the companies you mention such as Google, Ebay and many others are mainly from the US (still the mecca for tech innovation) and came to China – without re-inventing themselves as I was saying earlier. As I mentioned, they copied their US model and pasted it onto the China market adding a few translations and very minor adaptations – and hoping it will miraculously work as it did in highly US-friendly markets such as Europe – but it did not obviously. What they should have done instead would have been to re-invent themselves in China using their own know-how acquired in Western markets but applied to China in a different way. Such an approach takes much more efforts than the copy/paste approach – as it implies generally that the company’s leaders/founders do have a genuine interest in China and invest most of their time and energy to re-invent themselves as a Chinese company. Google, a late comer in China, with limited resources, has not made such efforts and yet, with over 20 % of market share in China, Google is a billion dollar company in China – and highly profitable, so we could definitely considered it a success compared to the amount of investment made. Other tech successes in China include companies such as Cisco or Nokia – very efficient in their Chinese operations but also very discrete about their Chinese success. The idealized perfect Chinese local partner that will help a Western company thrive in China is definetly a myth: as the leader of your tech venture, if you want to be successful in China you have to come to China and make it hapen by yourself with the help of different partners and employees. An alternative may also be to find the right M&A target. Indeed, acquiring or merging with an existing Chinese company, when it is done properly, can definitely help foster a Western company’s operations in China – but it also requires a lot of time and efforts from the top management of the Western headquarters. Amazon, after initial failure in China, finally acquired Joyo and seems to be on the road to success; more recently Zynga’s acquisition of XPmedia seems to put Zynga’s operations in China on the right track. Other tech companies, in particular in the gaming industry, have started highly successful operations in China – such as Ubisoft, EA, Playfish (now part of EA) – using the drastic or more cautious approach I have just described.
