The 1st international NoTA conference held June 11 in Helsinki was a success. We had participation of almost 200 participants from 14 countries and over 50 companies. All the main players of the current NoTA community were present. We had excellent presentations, state-of-the-art demonstrations, and an interesting panel and discussions. We had great facilities at the Hotel Kalastajatorppa in Helsinki and highly enjoyable programme and dinner at the end of the conference.
The most important result was however the positive atmosphere among the participants. The potential of NoTA was widely recognized and open licensing models published in the event were greeted with pleasure. Open availability eases the adoption of NoTA both in the industry and in research organisations.
The technical potential was highlighted in many presentations and also demonstrated with prototype implementations. NoTA as a modular service based system architecture aims at making effective horizontalisation possible via eased integration. Time-to-market is faster because responsibility and drivers of the development of sub-system functionality and the use of best technologies belongs to the vendors instead of integrators. Product companies can do fast cost-optimization and product differentiation without major R&D effort due to NoTA interfaces. Reduced sub-system adaptation work benefits the vendors. These issues were demonstrated for example by Hitachi, NXP and Taiyo Yuden. Very promising early results were also described related to application development and testing against NoTA interface.
The core of the NoTA is currently device interconnect protocol (DIP) that is in between applications and communication, for example between Kronos and MIPI. However, there were also presentations taking the next steps. The interdeviceNoTA concept was demonstrated by Nokia and VTT. The idea is to use services across device boundaries and to enable the possibility to use for example better quality external sound system with enhanced features together with mobile device. Currently a wireless keyboard service based on NoTA interface was demonstrated showing that the possibility to extend NoTA into smart spaces and smart environments exists.
The big question after the conference is how the ecosystem around NoTA will be born. It was pointed out in the panel: NoTA will not fly unless it makes money to all partners in the ecosystem. The first steps were taken. NoTA is now available as a technology for improving the products and product development. The product roadmaps based on NoTA have been sketched. The routes to sub-system innovations have been opened. The possibility to extend the customer base is here. The next steps are also clear. NoTA must be kept open and independent from business interests of single companies. NoTA must be kept alive and evolving. The main requirement is to support open innovations as it was expressed in keynote speeches.
The NoTA conferences and events will continue. It was decided that the NoTA2009 will be organised next summer. It was also decided that the conference must as open as NoTA itself. Tommi Mikkonen, visiting professor at Sun Microsystems, and Risto Suoranta, research fellow at Nokia, were selected as research and industry chairs of next year’s event. We also decided to look for possibilities to organise some kind of a status check workshop after six months. The idea was to have it jointly with some larger event, but the details remain to be seen.
The first NoTA conference was a success. Great thanks belong - in addition to our sponsors - especially to the participants.
