Symbian pathways

I’ve had some ups and downs with the articles on the main Symbian blog site, blog.symbian.org.

Asking readers for suggestions can easily be misconstrued.

Here’s an example.  Back in April, an idea emerged inside Symbian that perhaps we should change aspects of the annual ecosystem get-together, previously known as the Symbian Smartphone Show.  Various aspects of this idea were discussed internally.  I decided to surface aspects of this discussion in a blog posting, Redesigning the Smartphone Show.  I wrote,

The date and venue for the 2009 event has already been set: it will take place on 27-28 October, at Earls Court 2, in central London (the same venue as the 2008 event).

But there’s a lot that is not yet set for the 2009 event:

• The name
• The principal themes and content
• The event branding…

If you have views on what you’d like to see at the 2009 event, please speak up!

For example:

• Which aspects of previous events would you like to see carried forwards, and which changed?
• Which speakers would you like to see at the event?
• What features of the show would make it more likely (or less likely) that you would take part?
• And – last but not least – What should the event be called?

These questions resulted in lots of useful feedback – in blog comments, and via email.  But the questions also resulted in some ridicule.  Bill Ray from The Register (“Biting the hand that feeds IT”) wrote a good-humoured but biting piece called “Symbian show struggles for identity – Just needs name, theme and branding“.  To quote from the article:

This year’s Symbian show has a date; October 27th, and a venue; Earls Court, but is looking for suggestions from the crowd when it comes to a name, theme, branding and content.

The news comes in a blog posting from David Wood, who … explains that the new Foundation has no idea what to call the show-formerly-known-as-the-Symbian-Smartphone-show, or what kind of content would most attract the open-source community that’s going to be vital to Symbian’s future.

Openness in conversations means avoiding reaching and locking in conclusions prematurely.  Even if you’ve already got a good answer in mind, the open approach will push for better answers.  The fourth and fifth answers may well be much better than the first and second answers.

That was the thinking which led us to widen the discussion about the naming and the contents of our annual show, to accept input from the community as a whole.  As we reflected on the feedback and comments we received, we realised that the theme of “Symbian Exchange” was particularly strong .  This eventually turned into SEE – Symbian Exchange and Exposition – with the tagline of “come to SEE the future of mobile”.  It’s a name with a great potential.  And it can be traced to comments to the original blog posting (here and here).

Ridicule is just one of the hazards of an open conversation.  Another risk is that you hurt people, who think that a matter should already be decided, and there’s no need to keep the conversation going.  You can also hurt people by failing to censor comment responses that have all the appearance of being destructive, spiteful, trolls.

Yet another risk is that, in adopting a brainstorming approach, you will say something tentatively and/or provocatively that gets (wrongly) interpreted by readers as a new statement of corporate policy.  For example, a statement such as “if xx and yy don’t happen, then it might be best that zz happens” can be taken out of context and mis-interpreted as “Symbian official spokesperson wants zz to happen”.  Woops.

Given these hazards of open conversation, here are two possible responses:

• Take great care in everything that’s written – to avoid all chance of misunderstanding, but at the cost of slowing down the conversation;
• Seek to explain to the wider audience that a new mode of conversation is happening.

There’s a role for both response.

One reason for creating this new blog – Symbian pathways – is to separate off some writing that is more personal, tentative, opinionated, and provocative; and to generally keep the main Symbian corporate blog for shorter and less contentious items of news.

I’ll continue to try to be clear in my writing, but no doubt I’ll fail from time to time.  That’s a price that’s worth paying, in my view, if it encourages a quicker and fuller exploration of innovative possible pathways to a better mobile future.