Maemo Summit 2009; Recap

I thought I ought to sum up the Maemo Summit 2009 conference. It has been an intense three days with lots of new interesting stuff. It was about 400 participants here in Amsterdam.

Overall the conference was a very very good one, with lots of good speakers and what I really thought was great was to get a more wider view of developing for Nokia's Maemo-platform using different technologies like Qt, Python, Web Runtime Widgets. Left it full of new energy and compelled to try out numerous new technologies. Update the address book with those new contacts and new friends.

I’m very glad that this event was timed with the release of Nokia N900, so people were actually allowed to talk to each other. As matter of fact I decided to go to Maemo Summit 2009 just because of the release of Nokia N900.

Some of the hot mobility topics at this Maemo Summit 2009:

• Of course the Nokia N900. Thank you Nokia for lending those 300 devices to all participants
• Nokia announced that Qt 4.6 will be supported on the Nokia N900, and published an initial Qt Technology Preview release. Q1 2010 will it be ready for N900.
  
• Qt and WRT are Nokia's primary supported technologies for the Maemo platform, no Java, perhaps the community could add it? Read more about possible solutions in the future to add Java support here.
• WRT support will come soon (in 2-3 months) , it was demonstrated here at this conference and it look very nice.
  

Conclusions:

• Nokia N900 is so great, I love it. Big big improvement since Nokia N810. Of course Maemo 5 and N900 will be improved during the time, Nokia made this clear. But I think it is good enough for me, it is even better than I thought. One thing I would like to see soon is support for PIM synchronization with Mac OS X, read more here and here.
  
• Nokia has big plan for the fifth step, Maemo 6. It will be very interesting to see next version of Maemo and all new Maemo devices.
• I think it is bad for Nokia if Maemo 5 or 6 will not get support for JavaME in the future, every Java developer I talk to say they will move to Android instead. I can understand them I have also application I have develop/use that would like to run also on the Maemo platform, and of course it would be great if I also could use my Java knowledge.
• Qt for Maemo 5 is already available and there is intense work to improve tools and support, I will go for the Maemo SDK Virtual Image when I develop application for Maemo 5, it look very nice. It will save me time.
  
• I plan to learn more about Qt and WRT, it will be important in the future for mobile application development for the Symbian and Maemo platform.
• I decided today to go to Maemo Developer Day and Forum Nokia Qt for Mobile Developers training November 18-20, 2009, Copenhagen, Denmark. I feel so excited of develop for the Maemo platform.

I am looking forward to a next Maemo Summit, I will surly go!!!!