An Introduction - Julien Fourgeaud from The Symbian Foundation

Posted under Editorials on Sunday, 30 August 2009 by jack

symbian If like me, you were smitten with the Nokia N97 when first announced at Nokia World 2008, then you would of possibly also viewed many of the videos that surfaced from Nokia World, CES09, CTIA09, and the Nokia Developer Summit, showing the N97 in action. One, or two of these very popular videos showed Julien Fourgeaud demonstrating the N97 to Press members, and of course, Bloggers, who in turn, all asked Julien many questions about the N97, and what it could do. You can still watch these videos here, and here.

After personally watching these videos, I took it upon myself to track down Julien, and find out more about him, and his position at Nokia, which I found very very interesting. I mean, working for Nokia, and showing off a prototype device to the public at an event such as Nokia World has to be a dream job no? It certainly had me interested in finding out more.

I managed to track Julien down, on Facebook, and then Twitter, where we started engaging conversation. I had to reasurre him of course, that I was not a stalker, but a Nokia enthusiast! Over the months up until the actual launch of the N97 to the public, myself and Julien had formed a friendship, which to me is invaluable, and has put me in contact with the likes of David Wood Futurist and catalyst, The Symbian Foundation, and Executive Director, Lee Williams.

Now, having never even met Julien face to face, I was really excited to find out that myself, and Julien would both be attending Nokia World 2009 in Stuttgart, Germany next week, so now I could finally meet the one person who has the job at Nokia that I admired so much. Actually, Julien moved from Nokia quite recently, and started working for The Symbian Foundation, as Technology Catalyst, Roadmap & Platform Propositions.

I will be interviewing Julien whilst at Nokia World next week, so if you have any questions you want me to ask him, please let me know in the comments below, and I will do my best to put them to Julien.

Ok, what now follows is a little background information on Julien Fourgeaud.

As Technology Catalyst for the Symbian Foundation, Julien’s primary role is to help define and communicate the future of the Symbian platform. Prior to moving to London to take up this position, he worked at Nokia, initially joining the E-Series division in 2007 before moving into the newly formed Devices Organization. During his time at Nokia, Julien developed his productization expertise on devices such as the E71, contributed to key projects such as the transition from keypad to touch interface, and led the major effort behind third-party integration for the N97 in 2009.

Julien’s earlier experiences in the mobile industry include participating in leading research projects in the field of Micro and Nano Sensor Networks, conducted by the Tampere University of Technology in 2004, and working to develop a mobile platform at PurpleLabs in 2003. He also holds an MSc in Computer Sciences, Telecommunications and Networks from the Ecole Francaise d’Electronique d’Informatique (EFREI), in France.

Now, as mentioned earlier, Julien no longer works directly for Nokia, although still has that all important bridge of course, and now works for The Symbian Foundation. Regarding his role there, I will be finding out more about this during my interview with Julien, so just to remind you, if you have any questions you want me to put to Julien at Nokia World, please let me know in the comments below. Thanks.!