Jolla Community Manager: a self-introduction

door James Noori · 13 april 2016

Dear everyone!

You might already know me if you have been with the mighty Jolla community for a while. In this post I am going to introduce myself to all the old and new members of this community, thank the amazing people who are no longer in the company, and also share some pictures from my first day at work which was this year’s Mobile World Congress (MWC) in Barcelona.

To be honest, I knew it is going to be a fun ride and what would be a better way to start working with a company that provides exciting mobile services than doing it in the middle of Mobile World Congress? Although it was my third time attending MWC in Barcelona with the sailors (Third time lucky?) and despite the lack of presentation and personnel compared to last year, it surely went smooth and turned out to be a successful one.

As you might (or might not!) have heard already, my role in the company is to be the Community Manager. Jolla lost many capable hands handling the oars during the unfortunate financial situation last year. Among them was the previous Community Chief, Carol Chen (cybette). Her various responsibilities fell by the wayside, even though many Sailors, such as Jolla’s Head of Communications Juhani Lassila and Hardware Adaptation/L10n Engineer Simonas Leleiva, chipped in to help and even Carol continued as much as she could to take care of the community while not being officially a part of the company any longer. Fortunately, she still is an active member even though she is now employed elsewhere; she always makes time to take care of us as I am sure, her love for the community doesn’t fade away.

Photo Credit: Marko Saukko

Photo Credit to Alexandro Lacadena Gómez from JollaES

Photo Credit to Alexandro Gómez from JollaES

I personally see the opportunity here to thank Carol Chen for everything that she has done over the years at Jolla for the community, looking after us and making the magic happen, as well as all of the other sailors who have made it possible for Jolla and Sailfish OS to live through the thick and thin. I also would like to thank the wonderful Jolla community that are supporting the ones who are trying to make a change. Thank you for sticking with us through and through.

I am honored to step on the boat now and reinstate activities and processes for the wonderful Jolla and Sailfish OS Community.

Back to my first days at work, the MWC 2016, I can admit that it was a fantastic show to begin with. The traditional selfie (group selfie… groupie!) in Barcelona’s metro was there, as it has been over the past 4 times:

The community members, although fewer than last year, were among the sailors closer than ever, wishing the rest of the community members were there like last year so we could have more fun and get more things done! But, maybe next time? I have hope that by next year we will be making huge progress and will definitely be more visible to the world of smartphones, more so than ever, ready for us and vice versa.

The new Intex Aqua Fish was finally revealed to the public, made it into the hands of many journalists and came off with flying colors, a bright example being Engadget writing beautifully about it. I was there to do as I did during the previous years; cover community events, handle a number of journalists with demos such as Nitansh Rastogi from 91mobiles one of India’s biggest Smartphone reviewing websites, and also helping around with other new duties that I was introduced to. From now on, I will also be handling community engagement and hosting, communications in social media channels and managing community related tasks.

We have always said at Jolla that community is the heart of Jolla and we would not be able to be anywhere on the map without our community, and we have thankfully received a ton of support from our community over the years, so let it continue for the better!
Here I present you with a gallery of this year’s Mobile World Congress with a special thanks to Alex from JollaES for most of the beautiful photos:

And that brings me to the end of my first ever post on the official Jolla blog. It all started from a cheeky Twitter account and a big dream! Never thought it would take me to actually working for Jolla. But now I’m here. Remember to dream big!