Xperiancers

Xperia at Microsoft PDC 2008

// October 29th, 2008 // 11 Comments » // DEVELOPERS, X1 EVENTS

Throughout this year’s professional developers conference in LA, a group of 7 Swedish bloggers have been using X1 handsets to blog live from the event. Their collective offerings can be digested (if you can read Swedish) over at the pellesoft blog. There are also, a couple of webcasts talking about the Xperia SDK (again, only for Swedish speakers.)

According to the website, the PDC (professional developers’ conference,) is Microsoft’s premier gathering of leading-edge developers and architects. It’s a major event and was the setting for the launches of both windows XP and Vista. They will be blogging up until the end of the event tomorrow and if you speak Swedish I recommend you check it out.

Vildan

and that was the week that was…

// September 22nd, 2008 // 1 Comment » // X1 EVENTS

Hello, It’s been a couple hectic days here in London. We started off with the Johnny-x webcast which was seen live by almost 5000 journalists over the world! That was amazing in itself! After that, the phone started ringing…

Anyway, the week proceeded well and we have been active in our exhibition room at TENT London where we show the X1 in a very different way compared to what we are used to – being at a design fair and all.

Merran made a note of us being “outside of our comfort zone”, which was maybe correct since we usually talk to “techier” press and consumers, but why should it be so difficult, really? I think the X1 looks great in it’s metallic case! I use a silver one.

Magnus

XPERIA @ CTIA

// September 16th, 2008 // 1 Comment » // PANELS, X1 EVENTS, XPERIA X1

Just back from a hectic and successful week at CTIA event in San Francisco. It was exciting to announce the panel SDK and have analyst/media attend the group discussion on future of panels with partners like SPB, Microsoft & Handango and the excitement that panels brings to this world of personalization.

Having met enormous media it was good to realize how the mobile phone consumer today is missing the flexibility of making the phone his own in terms of the user experience. And how excited they were with Panels and how it gives a gateway to his/her mobile life – ability to customize his phone experience and information based on how he uses his phone at various stages in his life.

And the best part was everyone who heard my pitch on panels always came back with their own panel idea – eg: ‘can I have panel for my concert listing’, cookery panel, sports, social network panel, panel to access my company corporate assets, fitness panel and so on … this just proves the point that the possibilties are infinite with panels and this certaintly enables XPERIA to be the best and most adaptable mobile companion product.

XPERIA is definitely leading the real web 2.0 philosophy by keeping user at the heart of product and a first step in Open Innovation (through panels )products to follow on this subbrand starting this era of real ‘personalized device’

Webcast is over

// September 15th, 2008 // 8 Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS, XPERIA X1

Hello, just came out of the webcast session, which was very interesting. I just heard that over 1700 people watched it! cool. I will be looking into some of the questions posted shortly.

Xperia Webcast and Developer Q & A

// September 15th, 2008 // 10 Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS

The countdown to the Johnny X launch has almost run out, if you want to watch the webcast, it starts here in 15 minutes. We’ll be twittering the whole thing from an Xperia (yes, I’ve actually touched one,) and Paul from MoDaco and Matt from tracyandmatt are already here and running a joint CoverItLive session on their respective sites.

If you’ve got any questions, Twitter them, post them as a comment or Skype chat me with them and we’ll get some answers up here as soon as we can.

Enjoy!

Sam

Getting ready for the webcast

// September 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS

Hi, I’m Magnus and I’m the Senior Product Manager for Xperia X1 at Sony Ericsson. I would have blogged sooner, but I’ve been tied up in lots of launch meetings all week (I can guess what you’re thinking, why didn’t I blog from my Xperia X1 – simple really, I haven’t had time to catch up with the guys from Wolfstar to get my blog account set-up).

This week I’m in London. On Monday I’m doing a live webcast where I’ll be demonstrating the Xperia X1. You can ask questions through the webcast or by following Xperiancers at Twitter and asking your questions. We’ll get through as many as we can during the webcast and will follow up those we can on the blog later in the day. You can log-on to the webcast at www.sonyericsson.com/premiere.

On Thursday I’ll be at TENT London, which is part of the London Design Week. It’s the global launch news conference and it will be a great opportunity for people to actually get their hands on an X1. I’m really looking forward to hearing what people have to say about the X1 and our unique panel concept allowing you to personalise and choose from several active desktops.

See you later.

Busy week for the X1 team

// September 15th, 2008 // No Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS, XPERIA X1

Hi, just wanted to give you an update on what’s been happening with the Xperia X1 team. – Last week we’ve all been at CTIA IT & Entertainment in San Francisco showing the X1 to as many media and interested people as possible as part of the build up to the phone’s launch later in the month.  We haven’t announced a launch date for the North American market yet, but our US colleagues will be making their own announcement about the launch over here on November 3rd so watch out for that one.  Sony Ericsson held a Xperia X1 discussion panel breakfast meeting on Wednesday where Microsoft, Handango and SPB joined us to discuss the unique panel interface of the X1 and how opening the SDK to developers will enable us to build a rich panel eco-system for consumers to enjoy.

I also attended a Microsoft sponsored press mingle on Wednesday evening, the apple martinis were a bit on the sweet side, but there was some interesting people at the event.  Spent most of the evening chatting with Chris Davies and Vincent Nguyen from www.slashgear.com which was fun.  Seem to meet Vincent at every event I go to and he’s a lovely chap to have a drink with plus a big fan of the X1. Vincent managed to persuade Kei Kakoi one of the founding members of the Xperia X1 project based here in San Francisco to give him a full X1 demo.

We didn’t stay long at the Microsoft event as we had to head over to the Gracenote party – their parties are always pretty special and not to be missed.  This one was at Bong Su, a fusion Vietnamese restaurant and the food was delicious.

I’m now back in London for a very busy week – what with our Johnny X webcast later today and then the TENT launch Thursday to Sunday at the Truman Brewery, it really is going to be a bit of a week. I hope to see you at Tent as the exhibition space is going to look pretty special – we couldn’t just do a regular tradeshow set-up as we need to be able to hold our heads up among all the design and architecture companies that will be exhibiting.  We’ve really pushed the boat out on the space design and visuals so I hope you can make it down there and give us your feedback.

Get your dirty mitts on an Xperia X1 before the official launch

// September 12th, 2008 // No Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS, XPERIA X1

As my colleague Stuart announced on Wednesday, we are pleased to be able to offer a select number of bloggers the opportunity to test an Xperia X1 for yourselves.

Each blogger and one guest, will get their tentacles on an Xperia X1 before the official launch date (30th). Sony Ericsson will let you put the phone through its paces at your leisure, so you can make your own mind up. Not only that, but you will also be able to enjoy testing it in the fine setting of Tent London at the Truman Brewery. 

As this is an exclusive event unfortunately you have to be a blogger or micro-blogger. You also have to be able to get to central London off your own back by 6pm on Friday 18th September. To secure the chance to come and join in the fun, just send us an email, with a bit of information on you and your site.

So if you fancy a few Friday drinks with the Xperiancer’s team and a play with the Xperia X1 drop us a quick email and if you are one of the few selected, one of us will be in touch to sort your passes.

We will look forward to meeting you then.

It’s the final countdown to the Xperia X1 launch

// September 10th, 2008 // 14 Comments » // ANNOUNCEMENTS, X1 EVENTS, X1 NEWS

The Xperia X1 will launch on September 30, and that’s official.

It will initially be available to customers in the UK, Germany and Sweden, rolling out into other markets across Europe, Asia and Latin America later in the fourth quarter (Q4) of 2008.

In fact, we’ve now got a programme of events which we can talk about with loads of opportunities for those of you who want to get more acquainted with the Xperia X1 to do so.

First off, we’ve got a preview event and a free webcast on next Monday, September 15 at 13:00 UK time (GMT +1). This will include a live Q&A with Magnus J Andersson (the senior product manager for the Xperia X1).

You’ll also see actual production models of the phone. The webcast will also launch the phone’s marketing drive which takes the form of an online thriller split up into nine episodes. If you want to tune in to the webcast, you just need to log on to www.sonyericsson.com/premiere.

After that, the first public previews will take place between the 18^th and 21^st of September at Tent London as part of London Design Week. There will be the opportunity for some bloggers to attend the media preview for this in the early evening on September 18.

The North American, Chinese and Russian launch dates will be announced by the local markets in the coming months.

UPDATE: The official news release is now on the corporate site.

Welcome

// September 9th, 2008 // 4 Comments » // FEATURED, X1 EVENTS, X1 NEWS, XPERIA X1

Hi, welcome to Xperiancers.com, the Xperia blogger’s centre. We’ve created it so that Sony Ericsson can start to understand and engage in all of the conversations that are already happening about the Xperia.

It’s fair to say that up until now, apart from with the developer community, we’ve not done a great job of listening to and talking with the wider blogging community. This is our first step in changing all that. We’ve been inspired by some of the great initiatives by other companies, but this is very much our own idea and we hope we’ve learnt from what others have done.

To help us we’ve taken on Wolfstar, a public relations company that specialises in social media. Now I know that will worry some of you, but I promise it shouldn’t. This site absolutely isn’t about old-fashioned spin and marketing. It’s a genuine initiative to improve the two-way conversation between Sony Ericsson and you, our customers. Wolfstar are going to help us do that.

The reason that we’ve decided to focus on the Xperia is that we think it is such an exciting and powerful new handset and its already had an amazing amount of buzz and attention.

You’ll be hearing from lots of different people over the next few days and weeks. This post is a joint effort by Merran Wrigley (a senior corporate global PR bod at Sony Ericsson) and Stuart Bruce (the managing director of Wolfstar) and we’ll both be authors. Other authors will include several members of Sony Ericsson’s development team, as well as people from Wolfstar.

We’ve got lots of exciting news and ideas to talk about, so please subscribe to our feed and use the comments to let us know what you think.

Merran Wrigley and Stuart Bruce