A story about a very long journey...

 

 

i cannot sleep during the flight, so i decided to write down some things like a small recap of my first trip to US and SXSW.

 

 

first i was amazed, then anxious, then thrilled. it was like a dream to get such a opportunity to meet interesting people and to get in contact with them. i think, i i've made some new friends in Austin and i am really greatfull for that. thanks to the guys from WOMWorld who put a lot of energy and really crazy ideas, like racing with some Segways while filming it with the N8's. Donna, Riccardo, Simon, Tim.... you rock!

 

 

i was surprised and can't still believe it what Julian has done with his Idea to build a Mobile Game Rig, play with it on the streets (Angry Birds) or during some of the events. after the Airline did not take his baggage at first time, he bought some new hardware and built another one (a light version). well done, i wish i would have so much patience not to give up so easy.

 

 

...back to the main subject: SXSW Austin, TX

 

 

10 days of crazy people, good music, nice food and the knoledge, that whatever starts in Austin, can change pretty much everything.

 

SXSW (South by SouthWest) is Interactive, Film and Music. those are the three parts, but the music part is the biggest: 1500 bands were playing last year in 5 days. The Interactive part is growing fast, 30% bigger then last year. the fact, that there are so many new ideas brought by all thr new start ups, who are looking to be founded works like a magnet for innovation. and this is what we need these days. twitter, foursquare and wordpress are the best examples for how it can be done.

 

so, how exactly does Nokia fit in that big picture? i think, the fact, that Nokia keeps changing itself and leads in quite a few areas. their innovation is based on a philosophy that every employee can start a project with a great idea. they simply connect people with technology.

 

 

one thing Nokia was presenting, besides those awsome phones and services,

they showed: IdeasProject. there are so many people wich ideas, that Nokia is trying to collect them and share it to the world, by helping to realize those ideas. atm the chinese people are leading with over 200.000 ideas and there are more to come. Nokia was showing off, that they care about the environment, by building the hardware out of well sorted materials and by releasing some intelligent and usefull things. remember that hamster in the wheel? we could charge up our phones by ourself running in a giant wheel aswell at the Green Zone (features a water re-filling station, a solar pump, and a recycling transfer center) Nokia keeps mobile weird :-)

 

 

Rovio committed itself to Nokia aswell by supporting MeeGo and Windows Phone platform in future. They showed us a really huge 3D video, which was projected on a wall of a house and released a new Angry Birds Seasons game: St. Patrick's Day. Nokia is still in focus of Rovio and they will release new stuff for Nokia first, even when they do really great on Android and iOS. Thanks Rovio for that, i'm really curious to seen what will come next.

 

 

 

what else besides some really awsome panels at the SXSW? we watched some upcoming movies (world- and US premieres), could be part of the Pepsi event with Big Boi, listened to Chriss Cornell and collected lot's of swag by checking in via foursquare (sorry for that)... and the Music stuff was not even started!

 

one of the weirdest moments for me was the huge line to get one of those iPad2 and there were a man sitting in front of it collecting money for one. i could not ressist it, to be honest. i hope someone will stop to be mad at my because of that.

 

 

our hotel was in San Marcos (between Austin and San Antonio), so we drove evry morning to Austin and stayed downtown as long as we could. 3-4 hours of sleep a day was everything i could imagine. not much time for writting some posts or reading the news though. but, i hope, you could follow me and the rest of the famous Nokia 8 on twitter, fourquare, facebook and flickr....

 

 

 being on a plane and writting that on the new iPad2 makes me think about how do i share my 2 Nokia N8 with the people, which i won during a treasure hunt based on Nokia Find & Connect. you should try it, it's a great idea to get in touch with people and share the business cards or plain contact informations with that app. while it's still in Beta, i hope we could point the developers around Alvin to the right direction.

 

 

this is the first recap of  our week in Austin Texas SXSW. but first: i have to get rid of the jetlag. so, stay tuned and keep Austin weird :-)

 

 

Big Up to Mike, Juan, Vaibhav, Clinton, Andrew, Glen, Mark, ... :D