At CES this week, Nokia CEO Stephen Elop said this about the new Lumia smartphone:

 “We believe the industry has shifted form a battle of devices to a war of ecosystems. Across our portfolio Lumia is engaged in the heart of our strategy, and our need to engage with this war of ecosystems. Where clearly, there are strong contenders already on the field.”

A war of ecosystems? Is Elop talking about community? Oh man, get this guy to MonkiGras!

MonkiGras – now that’s a name for an event. It’s being hosted by the RedMonk crew on February 1 and 2 in London. Get it? Mardi Gras starts in February and so thus….Monki Gras. The official name is really “RedMonk Brew London: The Monki Gras.” Yes, this is not your ordinary analyst event.

But what is it? To answer that, first you need to know more about RedMonk. RedMonk calls itself the first and only developer focused analyst group. They love beer. They love geeks. And they know the two go very well together.

So they’ve done that with Monki Gras. At an IDC, Forrester or Gartner Research event, analysts take the stage to discuss product. At Monki Gras, the discussion will center on communities of people, not products. RedMonk analysts believe that developers (defined quite broadly, maybe “practitioners” would be more appropriate) are the kingmakers, the most important constituency in the technology world.

“The event is not about us,” said James Governor, co-founder of RedMonk. “It’s about our community. This is not the event to get RedMonk view of the world. You come to this event to get RedMonk community view of the world.”

In October, RedMonk hosted Monktoberfest in Portland, Maine. It became clear that people wanted more of this kind of event, where good food and drink is mixed with discussions from leaders in their field. Monktoberfest featured people like Cloudera CEO Mike Olson and Bit.ly’s Matt LeMay.

Monki Gras will feature speakers such as Dave McCrory, senior architect for VMware’s Cloud Foundry and Mike Milinkovich, executive director of the Eclipse Foundation.

Here’s my take. Increasingly, we are not in a world of products but of services. The server used to be a product. Now it is part of a mesh of services. Big and small technology companies are seeking answers to this shift from a product centric world to one of apps and services, where increasingly everything is connected. SAP is building developer communities. So is IBM. Small companies have to do the same.

Monki Gras plays to this shift.

Rarely do we preview events on our blog. But the developer movement is the most important and powerful one of the technology world.  Monki Gras is that kind of event that helps define what is happening during this shift and what we can expect in the future.

So, Mr. Elop, get yourself to Monki Gras. I am sure you have something to share.