MeeGo Summit FI 2011 was held at Finlayson area Tampere. Keynotes were at Plevna movie theater and rest of the program - three tracks, MeeGathon competition and Intel AppUp at New Factory. Friday evening party was at Gloria restaurant, which is well-known for cougars and table-dancing opportunities ;)

This Summit was possible because we have a very active MeeGo community in Finland (MNFI) which includes nearly 300 members. Big thanks goes to Hermia, COSS and other partners and sponsors as well. On Friday we handed out 259 badges. Some appeared to venue only on Saturday. Still over 100 did not come, which is bad and good. Bad because a lot of those who really wanted to come were left out (there was over 140 still queuing). Good, because the venue was not too crowded.

Overall impression that I have is that both sponsors and attendees were happy and enjoyed the Summit. Add your opinion as comment to this blog. Some verbal feedback was even flattering. Unfortunately I did not have time to follow sessions due to several responsibilities. Fortunately all sessions were recorded, so I will have a chance to look those after Summit. Those videos and session slides will be put available to summit.meegonetwork.fi as soon as possible. Pictures from Summit can be found from Flickr (search for meegofi).

People were quit eager to tweet about Summit since I counted over 500 tweets referring to Summit (hashtag #meegofi). Some blogs wrote about Summit too, for example MeeGoExperts.com. Our event IRC channel, #meego-summit-fi, had over 70 participants. Normal community channel (#meego-fi) was reserved for organizers during the summit. Even local radio “Radio 957″ had two news about the Summit in their website. Local newspaper did call me couple of times during the Summit, but I did not have time to see if Summit ever was mentioned in Aamulehti(.fi).

Some web stats:

It is not a surprise that program was most popular just after web root. A positive surprise is that visitors do check out sponsors too.

I don’t have the world map indicating browser origin before the summit, but I remember that just before the summit (about 2 weeks or so), just US, Germany, Britain and some other countries were included as origin. After the Summit, visibility is global.

Some tweets:

Feedback from participants

We are gathering written feedback from the Summit participants and deadline for that is 30th Apr. I have taken a preliminary look at the feedback (19th Apr) and below are some parts of it. Feedback form includes 5 selection questions and two free-form fields (topics were: Improvement ideas, Additional feedback). Citations below are from those free-form questions. The amount (N) of respondents was at this moment 64.

Overall impression

Nearly half of the respondents graded overall impression as ‘great’. Slightly under 1/3 felt that event was at least satisfactory and same amount saw it as ‘excellent’. One feedback sums this pretty good: “Venues used could be a little more convenient in general, but overall, you guys did a great job making sure everything clicks from day one.”

Program

Nearly half considered Summit program great. Nearly as many felt that program was satisfactory. 5% were possibly slightly disappointed. The numbers/opinions looks good since program is often the most criticized part of any summit/conference. Some participants did not see any need for long breaks between sessions: “A 45 minutes break between each and every session was maybe a bit overkill and extended the event late into the evening“. Some considered long breaks good. Opinions about facilities divided too. Some saw that “Seminars were nicely spaced so there was also plenty of time for networking and stand-browsing, which is important.”

The content was too shallow to some participants. Some would have liked to  ”see more in-depth presentations, since there definitely were a lot of very competent people who could’ve shared some of their wisdom.” “More technical and detailed presentations“. Of course these comments represent part of the participants view. Those who were happy did not give feedback and say “Ok, content was technical enough“. Nevertheless, we will take this under consideration when planning the next MeeGo Summit FI.

One great idea found in feedback was demo corner: “demo corner for participants to show off hw hacks or apps they have developed“. This was partly the idea of Hacking space at 4th floor, but it could have been emphasized a lot more.

Summit program was packed with different topics from mobile development and OBS to IVI and embedded solutions. Intel’s AppUp was the last part of official program. More than 190 developers gathered to 4th floor to learn about application development with Intel’s tools. After the session participants (190 lucky ones who had registered on time) were directed to hacking space where they received ExoPCs. This device was given for 3 three year loan, after which…well you know :) The smile I saw on people’s faces made me almost cry. My hacker heart was very pleased. Hopefully most of them will register to AppUp developer program, join our organization (meego-fi) in developer program and publish a lot of new kewl apps! That would make another AppUp in Finland more than likely.

Location & premises

Most of the participants were happy with location and premises. Most of the critique was about the arrangements on the 4th floor: “The North and South halls were too close to each other, and the presentations disturbed each other somewhat.” There were two tracks in one big hall. The tracks were separated only with curtain and that did not obviously stop the sounds coming from one track to the other. This is something that can be said to be sort of failure, but that was the best we could do with the given opportunities. Perhaps the best comment was related to weather: “Wish really hard for even better weather next time round.” We should move Finland to better location…that would need a few more sponsors though :)

And what about next Summit?

We did not fail with this Summit, instead we exceeded the expectations of several participants. This two-day Summit is in my opinion a good example (if not reference) for others to follow. I guess it would make sense to arrange Summit again 2012. If you would like to see that happen, join Meego Network Finland (more info #meego-fi) or support us otherwise for example by blogging and tweeting about us.

Oh! Don’t forget to join our organization at Intel AppUp Developer program. Our organization is (for the sake of consistency, dm8tbr loves this;) ) meego-fi and we have over 30 developers already.