When people talk about contributing to Symbian, they’re usually talking about making improvements or enhancements to the source code. But when we hung out our shingle in April, it was our goal and plan that Symbian become member-led in every area, from platform governance right through to member services and events.

And it’s happening much more quickly than we thought. For those who haven’t met me, I’m Lauren Sarno, and I look after member activity at Symbian.

As a non-profit, open-source organization, it is critical that members seize the opportunity to raise their visibility and create an expanding world by offering to develop services that benefit the overall community. You will continue to see more and more of these on our sites.

A recent example, the Collaborative Test Database is in the spec phase right now. This database, accessed through a Web front end, is intended to reduce test duplication, and hence everyone’s costs. We envision a number of variations, such as multimedia playability and Bluetooth interoperability testing. The database will help identify the highest priority tests to be run, and enable users to contribute both test definitions and test time. All this driven by the community.

The site, of course, will appear with “Powered by [members]” at the bottom of each page, and test suites will be identified by contributor. You can find out more about this project on Martin Webb’s multimedia blog.

And it doesn’t end there, as proven by the first member-sponsored event in Bangalore. Members are now organizing events in Poland and Beijing, and more regions are lining up to create events in the new year.

Symbian is not the staff – it’s you. Members will be staffing the Symbian booth at Mobile World Congress (while promoting their own products and services) and sponsoring the Symbian party. Members will be holding Birds of a Feather in Symbian conference rooms and representing themselves in the Symbian Press Lounge.

Come join the fun! Why? Because it makes business sense. The members who are the most involved with Symbian are seeing the greatest increase in revenue from membership. Because if members aren’t making more money than they did when Symbian was proprietary, we should all just take down the shingle and go to the beach.

And I, for one, am way too young to sit in the sun for more than two weeks a year.