@SteveLawson
Great point about “no mention of NDAs or contracts, no threats of legal action”. sure Nokia & Womworld won some fans for life time.

Thejesh GN’s most recent blog post.. Notes about Nokia Open Lab 2008

I was the guy trying to do the Second Life bridge for the first time in this format. I for one learned a lot from the event. This was the first time we put our teams 32″ montitor to use. I had problems with the signal, so I had to connect with my colleagues PC. Not being able to use my own machine seriously limited the capabilities.

But allthough we didnt get further than streaming live audio, and some brief “hello’s” we we were able to play the QIK video’s in SL and discuss further on the topic.

Over the course of the two days event, we had 160 unique visitors to the Open Lab Event at Nokia Island in Second Life. During the speeches, I was flying with attendants on an N800 through Virtual Nokia House on Nokia island, I believe Darla mentioned it. It was FUN! while we tried to have the same discussion topics.

But there was definate room for improvement here I totally agree and am personally working on improving those capabilities. Streaming mobile video into virtual worlds like SecondLife might help these type of events, but we’d have to try it to be sure. So this was an excellent opportunity to me personally to try out new things in practice.

The feedback that stuck most with me from one of the attentdants at the virtual event was this one: “Even though I can’t understand a word they say, I just love hearing that backgground noise, it almost feels like being there”.

We had a virtual Kick-Off Party, and were watching QIK video’s in Second Life until days after the event, some pictures here:

http://share.ovi.com/channel/digistar.openlab

Digistar Brouwer’s most recent blog post.. digistar: http://www.symbianone.com/content/view/5707/

and thx for joining!

Yes, you definitely have good points in your post and this kind of feedback is extermelly valuable for us. I agree with you in most of the points here.

As Matti mentioned above, this was the first time with this kind of setup. We will develop the concept and also take the learnings into other Nokia activities

There was a backchannel for everyone else at Tangler, too bad we didn’t know about it to post it to our blogs and Twitter feeds while we were there. But looking at it now, folks who were not at the NOL08 were using it and watching Qik:

http://www.tangler.com/forum/nokia-open-lab/topic/48261

Ms. Jen’s most recent blog post.. Nokia Open Lab 2008 – Days 3 & 4 – The Wrap Up

That’s a great way to put it. And if that was the intention, then hats off! Regardless, glad to see that it’s happening. And one thing that I didn’t mention in the post, and I probably should have, is that I’m sure raising awareness of what NOkia is doing throughout social media was a goal, and clearly that was a success. There was lots of buzz during the event, and has been since. And they certainly have plenty of new evangelists where they didn’t before. Prior to the event, Nokia was just one more company. Now when I think of Nokia, I see faces and have strong emotional ties. Before I just felt that I had a great cell phone. now I feel like I have a great Nokia. And that matters. Corny but it’s true.

I’d certainly have LOVED to hear more from you about the tech/edu stuff – I’m glad I’m now following you on twitter and have your blog feed saved. it’s a fascinating area… and I guess that in a big part where the magic of it will come for us – the extended relationships after the event.

For Nokia, there’s LOADS they got from it – my suggestion (I’m sure other made it, but I commented to Micki, Phil and Illico) that there was some internal ‘here’s what social media is’ aspect to it was in part due to that being an inevitable consequence. There are still so few people at high up corporate levels who understand the value of ‘conversation’ – because of the telephone-number sums of money they deal with, they tend not to granularise their perception of their market place down to the incremental increases in awareness of services and products that happen at a blogging/tweeting/podcasting/video level – they’re far more easily swayed by a million dollar ad campaign… perhaps understandably.

So whether or not it was intentional, the event will hopefully make it much easier for Jussi and the others to pitch social media related marketing and research ideas, having shown a bunch of great video of us talking about it in that way…

Given the heinous nature of most corporate ‘workshop’ environments, I think that WomWorld and the Nokia social media monkeys did an amazing job of putting together an event that was acceptable to us as geeks – no mention of NDAs or contracts, no threats of legal action for negative blogging. A very open event indeed, given it’s genesis, funding and environment… That’s not to say it couldn’t have been done better, but we’ll wait and see what happens over the next couple of years.

Looking forward to reading more from you and learning lots!

Sx

we had somewhat “back channel” in Jaiku, but as the event was so hectic I didn’t have really time to push everything there. But, agreed: as an irc-user I would have loved to have a common irc-channel for more discussion – it also could have been open for “all audience” and existed before the event and also after it. Damn me, they asked if I have any ideas before the event…

I actually think that this was more an opening of several interesting conversations than actually having the good ideas packed together. Now we just move into the virtual space.

I absolutely agree with your thoughts on the “fail” aspects of the setup. I really felt that we needed better ways to add value rather than brainstorming sessions at the workshops. The setup *did* seem to favour those who were loudest (and first).

I think it could benefit from a BarCamp (http://barcamp.org/) setup, and ask attendees to prepare something during/in advance. But I understand Nokia’s P.O.V.: it’s difficult given it’s very experimental to hold an event of this kind, and I guess Nokia is learning by trial and error.

I wonder, “What exactly is Nokia getting out of this event?” Whilst I was very happy to be there, to meet great people, sample delicious food, attend the parties, etc, but would have felt even better if I felt I’d contributed in some solid, tactile way (outside of pure conversations during the course of the event).

It was fantastic to meet you, by the way!

Rebecca

Rebecca Cottrell’s most recent blog post.. Twitter’s Social Net