MeeGo Network Finland has been around for about 7 months now. MNFI was born in Helsinki MeeGo Network meetup in December 2010, where I presented the idea of national network. This MeeGo networking in Finland has grown to be bigger than I ever anticipated. Remember that all this started from one off-topic line in hackerspace IRC channel. We have come a long way from there. A lot of marvelous events and activities have been organized.

MeeGo Summit FI

MNFI has organized (first in the world) 2-day developer oriented community driven MeeGo Summit FI. Summit was a great success: around 250 participants, awesome speakers, support from several companies (thanks again!), great open source spirit, lots of fun and a chance to get faces for IRC nicks. Without the efforts and contribution of our members, Summit would have been something else. People were enthusiastic and things just happened.

Plenty of local meetups, apps and activities

MNFI has also organized 18 local meetups in Helsinki, Tampere and Oulu. Most active networks are without doubt Helsinki (7 meetups) and Tampere (10 meetups). The amount of participants in meetups has been rather high, (estimated) average around 30. Based on the above facts, it’s easy to say that:

Our community has created several applications for different purposes. Some of those apps were related to Summit and some were part of Intel’s AppUp. Here’s a few examples. Sandst1 took the lead in creating mobile app for Summit program, Riussi created awesome timing app for Summit speakers and organizers, timoph took lead in developing app for generating bagdes for Summit participants and many more that I can’t remember now. Big thanks goes to Jarrrgh who is our Art Director and was responsible for all graphics (except logo which was tailored by paid designer) and layouts. Several members have started projects and many more are preparing to get started.

Let’s keep in mind that our experiences about creating regional/national community and about organizing community driven Summit have been used in defining practices for others to follow.  This was ‘confirmed’ at SF2011 by Dawn Foster. Latest effort to nurture hacker spirit is local device program, which is about to kick off in the following weeks. Again, Finland is acting as a pioneer. We have reason to be proud of our community.

Step down gracefully

Stepping down gracefully is the last ‘rule’ in MNFI’s Code of Conduct, which was adapted from Ubuntu community. It is time for me to step down as community manager. At the same time I find that hard and easy. I feel a bit sad, because my time as MNFI community manager has been so full of energy and fun. I just love being part of this community. Of course I continue in the community although with less responsibilities (we’ll see about that). My focus will be in my PhD research about how power(influencing decision making etc) is used in MeeGo project. Still, stepping down is easy since we have a lot of talented people to step into community manager’s boots. Besides, manager is not the source of ideas and activities, community is. Manager just does the best he or she can to make things come true. I will not just ‘drop the gloves’ and let new manager survive with the transition by him/herself. New manager might not be aware of all the things that are going on and might need some advices or insight on various matters. Therefore I am planning “to hold new manager’s hand” for a month or so. I hope that new manager will also use blog to give members a view to manager’s head and thoughts.

Again, thanks to all of you. You rock. We rock. MeeGo rocks!