Symbian is holding a Partner Event in San Francisco on December 4th. Traditionally these been restricted to Symbian Ltd licenses, but now they are open to the mobile community without charge. This comes after Nokia purchased Symbian Ltd earlier this year and turned its assets over to the new non-profit Symbian Foundation which will open source the entire OS under the Eclipse Public License. Current plans are for an initial release of substantial parts of Symbian in the first half of 2009, with full code release by June 2010.
The agenda looks interesting with speakers from AT&T, Symbian, Nokia and Mozilla, a panel on “Succeeding in the US”, something that has so far alluded Symbian, and technical presentations on symmetric multi-processing, multimedia and Symbian’s new “Freeway” connection management architecture. Plus there will be a “Fast Pitch” session where start-ups have a five minutes to pitch their product or services to a panel of device OEM and carrier representatives.
Attendance is free but limited. If you are interested sign up today at symbianpartnerevent.com. I plan to attend so look for me and say hi or use the contact form to arrange a meet-up.