Choose Opera

A presentation for NTNU students visiting Tokyo

By 市川恵貴. Friday, 14. March 2008, 08:42:27

embassy, excursion, tokyo, norwegian, ntnu

This Wednesday afternoon, Opera Tokyo office did a presentation for 60 students and two professors from the NORWEGIAN UNIVERSITY OF SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (NTNU - Norges Teknisk-Naturvitenskapelige Universitet) at the Norwegian embassy in Tokyo, Japan.

The students are in the third year their studies to get a Master of Technology within Computer Science. They have not yet decided in which field of computer science we want to specialize, as this is chosen after finishing the third year which they are in now.

Before the decision making, they have an excursion to travel abroad which is a part of the Master's degree program at NTNU. It is a tradition that the Computer Science students themselves get to choose where to go, and this is the second year in a row that Tokyo and Japan is chosen as destination for the excursion.

The purpose of the visit was for them to get new technological impulses and visiting companies leading the development of new computer systems and solutions. They also hope to learn about, and get to understand, a culture that in many ways is different from their own. It is also a goal to motivate the students and raise the spirits before they go into the last part of the study.

Opera Software in Tokyo was then asked to give them a presentation during their stay here to learn more about why Opera as such a small Norwegian software company have been able to succeed in the Japanese market, far away from Norway.

First on the agenda was a speech by Brent Mori (Japan office Manager), about the business cases and the local market conditions. Then there was a presentation about the technical advantages in addition to coming new features by Andreas Bovens (Web Evangelist). Last, one of the Norwegians working in Opera Japan did a presentation on how it is to be living and working in Tokyo and Japan.

For photos you can check the link below:
http://my.opera.com/chooseopera-Japan/albums/show.dml?id=489509

We were really impressed the students' good manners and genuine interest in our presentation. That being said, we actually have more than 10 colleagues in Opera who graduated from NTNU. Meeting these students reminded us why the Opera staff who graduated from NTNU are such excellent co-workers.

Anyway, we are always happy to meet prospective computer scientists and software developers. Please feel free to contact us if you'd like to have such a lecture for students. We will do our best to arrange it.

MATANE!

( Ciao! in Japanese )

Software All Saddled UpVideo: Snorre Grimsby about Opera QA

Comments

Tor Odland # 14. March 2008, 08:57

Nice! I wish I was a student again...

Lawrence Eng # 15. March 2008, 07:26

Thanks, Keiki!

市川恵貴 # 21. March 2008, 08:19

Following is the article in Norwegian. What does it write?
http://www.universitetsavisa.no/ua_lesmer.php?kategori=nyheter&dokid=47de944c8a81b4.63834817

Haavard # 25. March 2008, 11:15

It talks about how studens at NTNU have a lot of skills that are important to Opera due to a good theoretical foundation for coding. It then talks about Opera's success in Japan with customers like KDDI and Nintendo. Some general info on the Japanese office (number of employees, when it was established, etc.). Tokyo got the most votes (all votes as a matter of fact) when the students chose where to go due to it being on the bleeding edge of technology. The students visited several other companies as well, such as Google and Sun. The students were very impressed by the computer labs at the Tokyo university. They think that some of these students will probably end up in Tokyo in the future. Experience from other companies and cultures will be very valuable to IT studends in the future, especially if they decide to start a company of their own.

raistlin1985 # 27. March 2008, 07:00

Konnichiwa!

I'm one of the opera fanboys who were there(but I'm not in any of the photos). I really enjoyed the presentation and the opera video demonstration.

Opera is definitely the most interesting company I had a chance to talk to in Japan, even though none of the employees present would divulge anything secret about Kestrel or Peregrine.

I use Opera because standards matter. I just read that a test build of Opera passes the ACID3-test; another reason to keep on using the best browser on earth.

That said: please tell the developers to keep on improving the mail client. I'm still missing signing- and encryption-support.

Gambate ne!

sincerely
Mats Andreassen

Ole Markus With # 27. March 2008, 07:31

I really want to thank Opera for the presentation they gave us. It was probably the best presentation we had during the excursion and I think a lot of the classmates I travelled with would agree with that.

While I fell in love with Japan in other matters I would say that actually working in Japan, facing the Japanese work culture, scares me a little. However, after seeing the presentation and learning about how the Tokyo office of Opera tries to combine the best parts of Norwegian and Japanese work culture, working for Opera in Japan is something I really would consider.

holgerl # 27. March 2008, 07:38

I am also one of the students who had the pleasure of attending this lecture. I think it was very interesting. I also really enjoyed the lunch box!

Opera seems like an interesting company that is really dedicated to what they do. I like that! Also, Tokyo is great!

Greetings from Norway
Holger Ludvigsen

peow # 27. March 2008, 07:50

Thanks for the presentation. The demo of the videotagging was pretty cool.

Seems like you people have a pretty great time working in Japan, and woke up my interest for working in Tokyo post-studying.

While I'm at it; have you guys ever considered releasing a lighter-weight opera without the mail- and torrentclient?

Greets from Opera fanboy,
- Kåre Blakstad

Tor # 27. March 2008, 09:41

Thanks for an entertaining and interesting presentation.

As a long-time user of Opera Mini and the Opera desktop browser it was nice to get a little insight into the Opera Software corporation.

Greetings from Norway,
Tor Lye

(I'm of course writing this message using Opera Mini on my cell phone, and wrestling a Norwegian polar bear at the same time...

)

yngvark # 27. March 2008, 14:16

Thanks for an interesting visit, a great presentation, and the jan-ken-pon games!

Best regards
Yngvar

Haavard # 28. March 2008, 10:52

Originally posted by peow:

While I'm at it; have you guys ever considered releasing a lighter-weight opera without the mail- and torrentclient?

Since these re-use a lot of resources from the core that are also used in the browser, this probably wouldn't have a great impact. These parts of Opera are tiny in themselves, and don't affect browsing if you don't activate them/use them actively. You could perhaps strip a few KB off of the download size, but overall there wouldn't be much of a noticeable difference.

opera-shacho # 31. March 2008, 05:39

Hi,

It's Brent, Country Manager at Opera Japan.

I appreciate the positive comments. I also appreciate how knowledgable and enthusiastic the NTNU students were. They had very good and detailed questions. I work with a lot of NTNU students and hope that Opera can continue to collaborate with NTNU--but I still won't divulge confidential information about Peregrine.

See you again,

Brent