It was a fast paced week for me where in I had to catch all the buzz around the Symbian ecosystem and the mobile industry as a whole. There were a few hiccups initially but as we approached the D-Day everything was eased off. Going in as a solo can be a real tough job to keep up with things. But with the power of social media I was able to channel my time to all major developments on and off the Fira grounds.

With all the coverage below, a few people need a special mention: first and foremost thanks to Nokia India for sponsoring my trip (this does not give any editorial right to them). Bhaskar Roy the Co-Founder of Qik application for providing me with live embed codes to stream all the keynotes live to you. Katie from WomWorld/Nokia for providing me with the Nokia Booklet 3G and finally but not the last Norman editor at SymbianWorld & Jeb from A Brilliant Blog on helping out with the 3G Prepaid sim-card issue in Catalonia. There are a few others that deserve a personal note which has been dispatched.

13th Feb. 2010; 1000 Hrs (It Begins)

I left home in a hurry since it was vaccination day and our Pediatric unit required me to administer Polio & DPT to neonates before I made a dash. Things went well and all was done. I was on way to the airport and just before I was to go through the security, it flashed that I was missing something and while I boarded the plane it came up with fiery bang; My Tripod. I was missing my tripod, well things happen and this was anticipated. It’s very hard to have a 100% efficiency rate. Thus, off I went on my way to Delhi. It was a clear day and the fight was scheduled on time which I so wished to be late (more on that later).

At Delhi I had a transit time of bloody 10 hrs and had no clue how to go about it. Lucky enough there was free wi-fi which kept me going for a few hours and finally I caught up with a few fellow bloggers and friends. In the picture below are Songita (middle) and our very popular Cj (right) editor of ZomgitsCj. It was great fun hanging out with them.

Me, Songita & Cj (left to right)

About 2 hrs before my flight I went through the terminal and sat at a charging dock station to charge my laptop, this is when I met a team of Physicians from US, funded by Bill Gates to help India eradicate Polio. I had a great time talking to them and we shared great insight on the present health situation in India. They were amazing people and I can’ thank them enough for helping us fight this health menace.

14th Feb. 2010; 0100 Hrs (Hola Barcelona)

Just as our boarding was about to be announced I met with a few key people inside Nokia and sensing their level of enthusiasm I got the notion that we aren’t gonna see any new devices this time. Any how we all were boarded and took off at the right time. After a small flight time of about 7 hours we were in Amsterdam and in about 3 we grounded at Barcelona.

approaching Barcelona

14th Feb. 2010; 0945 Hrs (The Case Of The Missing Tripod)

We were at Barcelona Airport and were looking through the glass windows to see what was not good, a cloud flooded sky. On my way to the luggage collection belt I met Rajiv Makhni, technology correspondent for NDTV India along with his camera man. As i said not everything is 100% smooth so was the case here. We were missing an important piece of our luggage; Mursalins Tripod. Mursalin was the camera man for all the ground breaking news that NDTV went live with and without the tripod it was impossible to go around. With help from the airport authority we located his tripod, which was still in Amsterdam and thus we were assured that it would reach at our hotel by noon.

Las Ramblas

I got hold of a taxi and got myself to the hotel. There was time to kill since my room was being prepared so I decide to hit the streets. Being at the epicenter of the town – Gothic Quarters, I quickly got along on Las Ramblas, a popular tourist street to check out. In the back of my mind I did have a few things cooking up. There were two very important events taking place today, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, but both were at the same time so had to let one go. In the end I decided to hit SE. We also did a quick tour of the city’s main attractions, which was totally amazing.

Sagrada Familia

14th Feb. 2010; 1900 Hrs (Sony Ericsson Press Event)

I got off at Opium Mar for the Sony Ericsson event and honestly I was a bit disappointed. There was no new revolutionary device rather a dismal show of Vivaz and Xperia X10 re-dos with mini and pro series. The only two things that were of note were the HD 720p auto focus video recording and the new Infinity key. There were other announcements regarding the open market solutions for content publishers as well. We caught up with a few people to showcase a few products to us.

Sony Ericsson Vivaz Pro

Press Conference

Demo Zone

Live Twitter Feed Display

(Note: Samsung Press Event was taking place alongside and Wave was the new device lanched with Super AMOLED and Bada OS.Video Below)

After the event I went on to have dinner which was organized by Nokia at an amazing place called La Fonda where I got in touch with some amazing people which manage Nokia behind the scene and have worked hard to make it the Top brand name in India. It was great to share ideas and interact with them. All I can say is that we are sure in for a surprise as I could sense something on way towards the Indian market. After our dinner (there’s a bit story behind it as well) we came back to our hotel. It was time to prepare for the next Big day.

15 Feb. 2010; 0930 Hrs (Nokia & Intel – Joint Press Event)

I was all set for the big press conference which Nokia was holding at Once, near Fira. With my Yoigo 3G working I logged into qik and got my act together to stream the conference live. Not a happy day for present end consumer but sure a great move for the publisher and developer community. Sitting next to Chris and Rajat, it was time to get started. We saw Intel’s Moblin and Nokia’s Maemo unite to MeeGo and New Ovi services (Nokia Money) for the Emerging Markets like India. A special phrase that caught me was, “No Smoke Coming From the Engine Room.” More on that later. Catch the video’s of the keynotes below.

Nokia Intel Press Event

After the press conference was over, there was a mad rush to the Microsoft Press event and before you know it, there were more than thousand people trying to get in. Luckily I had a few friends to cover the event for us. Thus, I stayed back at once to get my act together to interview people from Yes Bank, Obopay and Nokia on their pilot program Nokia Money in Pune, Maharashtra.

The team looked really optimistic and were happy with the one week inaugural run. They did not disclose the business model but they did mention that soon the service would go nation wide. The service would enable people to do financial transactions where there is no provision of banking service. More info can be glanced here and we will detail out more of it in detail in the coming days. We caught a demo at the Nokia event but it Failed miserably.

15th Feb. 2010; 1630 hrs (Back to Hotel & Nokia Party)

After a few interviews I went to the Fira to get my Pass and came back to the hotel to get some much needed rest. We were Off to the Nokia Party at night where I met a few cool Nokia people and the Free Ovi Maps Video duo of Justin and Richa Amazing people. Not one of the best parties. Hard to locate with a smoky atmosphere. It featured an Art wall with the famous pic of MeeGay.

16th Feb. 2010; 0800 Hrs

I was looking forward to this day as I had scheduled all my meeting with key Nokia spokespersons at Once. I had to rush as I got up late the contributing factor to which was me sharing my files & event pictures with my team back in India. After reaching 400 Gran De Via I was escorted by Nokia Corporate team and was told about my schedule of meeting for the day. They were to take place upstairs in the meeting room. We started off right on time and our first meet was with Purnima Kochikar, Vice President, Forum Nokia and Developer Community.

“Forum Nokia is 12 year old open organization which looks towards third parties as an integral part of their ecosystem. In the recent times we have seen a change in the ecosystem in three main fields: 1. Retail (Ovi store) 2. Independent Software life cycles 3. Democratization Of Software. This puts Forum in the front line. It offers developers the ability to write their code in different environments like Qt and WRT and possibility to market them as well. We are changing the structure of publisher access to our store so that even garage developers can take part and benefit from this.”

Purnima shared great insight on how the Ovi store was shaping up and what possibilities it holds for the future. She loved the E72 as it keeps her sync’d with her emails and enjoys listening to Kanada Music in her free time. I wanted to interact a bit more on the developer situation in India and how bootcamps can help in troubleshooting various road blocks but we were running out of time and had to hit our other set of interviews, but I got a positive response on this and we might just see more developer camps in India.