A few weeks ago I was lucky to finally meet the CEO and Founder of Hedone Design, Branko Nikolic. Branko took the opportunity to create a BlackBerry Developer Group in his home region of the Balkans. Branko worked with our Developer Relations team to setup the first event for BlackBerry developers in the Balkans: a “mini” BlackBerry 10 Jam in Maribor, the second biggest town in Slovenia.

Why “mini”? Well, there is a reason for that… but it turned out to be everything but “mini”! The event took place at Feri, a local university, and everything was organized perfectly – from the invitations for developers, to the badges, to the video interviews, the sessions… everything. Over 170 developers were there to listen to our sessions about BlackBerry 10 architecture and development tools. A few local devs also showcased what they developed already, with also a presentation by a local dev company, Codeten. Also, it’s worth mentioning the great (and funny!) presentation made by Dennis Reumer, who runs another BlackBerry Developer Group in the Netherlands.

Last but not least, Branko organized a party for us and for the developers, transforming a popular club in Maribor into a fully-fledged BlackBerry club. Everything inside, from the waiter’s t-shirts to the DJ console (using a PlayBook, of course) was branded BlackBerry. Devs were more than happy and the first surveys demonstrate that now devs in Slovenia (mostly Android developers) are more willing to develop for the BlackBerry 10 platform than ever before.

In short: praises to Branko and his team for the incredible job! I am looking forward to looking at apps from developers in the Balkans showing up in BlackBerry World.

Following the huge success of the BlackBerry® 10 Jam event in Cape Town, South Africa in July, Research In Motion® (RIM®) held a BlackBerry 10 ‘Mini’ Jam roadshow in Lagos, Nigeria at the CcHub and in Nairobi, Kenya at at the Ole Sereni Hotel in late August.

BlackBerry continues to grow from strength to strength in Africa, and both BlackBerry® 7 OS and BlackBerry 10 represent a massive opportunity for African mobile developers. BlackBerry is the number 1 smartphone vendor in Africa (Canalys Smartphone Data, Q2 2012) and is the top-selling smartphone in South Africa, Nigeria and Egypt. As well as a huge local community, African developers have the opportunity to reach a global audience of over 78 million BlackBerry customers. Africa is in the midst of a smartphone revolution, and BlackBerry is leading the charge, creating huge opportunities for the African mobile development community and students aspiring to new opportunities.

The events, which gave mobile developers a chance to learn more about the unique capabilities of BlackBerry 10, underlined the importance of the African developer community to RIM. Collectively, around 130 developers participated, learning about the BlackBerry 10 experience, architecture and the tools and resources available to create locally relevant apps for the BlackBerry platform. Some attendees were new to mobile development, so the sessions also provided a great opportunity to learn about skills and job opportunities in the African mobile industry.

Waldi Wepener, Regional Director for East, West and Central Africa at Research In Motion, said: “The enthusiasm and excitement at our BlackBerry 10 events in Africa was palpable, especially during the app competitions where we rewarded the winners with some very innovative app ideas. The technology hubs in Kenya and Lagos are a hotbed of talent and we are pleased to support the growing mobile development communities here. Africa is part of a growing list of regions around the world creating apps for our new platform.”

There is already a very established BlackBerry developer community in Africa. In Kenya, Avallain Africa just launched a mobile health app for BlackBerry smartphone users, which allows users to quickly and easily find trusted health information and resources from any location in Kenya. In Nigeria, local developers have designed a number of apps for current BlackBerry models, including the Nigerian Constitution App by Pledge51 for access to important constitutional information; SeeAm, to find the location of all ATMs throughout Nigeria; and the EssentialApp, a free-to-download BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM™) integrated app that provides a useful guide for entertainment and day-to-day life in Nigeria. (Hear more from Nigerian developers about why they develop for BlackBerry!)

Nigerian developers queue for BlackBerry 10

Some 70 Nigerian developers attended the BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam in Lagos and the excitement about the new BlackBerry 10 platform was plain to see. They were queuing up to share ideas and mingle with other BlackBerry developers.

Delegates choose “Make We Bet” as the most innovative application in a competition, with the creator winning a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype device for mobile development, and a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. William Ukoh (@williamukoh), the creator of “Make We Bet” said: “For years, BlackBerry has been an appealing platform for my colleagues and I. The experience of meeting with my peers and learning more about the BlackBerry platform has been worthwhile.”

Femi Longe, a Co-Founder of the CcHub added: “We were impressed after seeing what BlackBerry 10 has to offer, and we are excited by an even closer look at the platform and its capabilities at the BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam sessions in Lagos. At CcHub, we have strong ties with the developer community and encouraging development is our goal. We’re eager to start using the updated user interface features offered by Cascades™ in BlackBerry 10, and we look forward to enriching the user experience to ensure our BlackBerry-based solutions and applications remain attractive and cutting-edge.”

High interest in Kenya

The BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam developer event in Nairobi drew more than 50 developers. The keen attendance, interest and eager interaction by the developers showed that the Kenyan developer community is excited about and ready for BlackBerry 10.

Developers at the event praised BlackBerry 10 and the Mini Jam event. George Murage, Business Developer and Blogger for Juuchini, said: “The one-on-one expert guidance on creating BlackBerry 10 apps from the RIM team will enable local developers to build better mobile apps in various languages, and more importantly, help build an ecosystem to support Kenyan consumers when BlackBerry 10 launches.”

“I am thrilled the BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam has offered me the opportunity to interact and know more about BlackBerry 10 experience. It has been one of the most inspiring experience and learnings for me,” added Eric Omondi, from the Africa Solidarity Volunteer Foundation.

Grace Kihumba, Business Developer at Strathmore University iLab, said: “The experience has been an eye-opener for me. A few years ago, when I was developing apps for BlackBerry they didn’t have many applications and it’s quite fascinating to see how far they have come with the new platforms. I have been deeply motivated to develop more apps for BlackBerry.”

One of the most exciting recent developments for the Kenyan developer community, the iAfya app, created a lot of buzz at BB10 Mini Jam Kenya. Dr Allan Makenzi, MD of Avallain Africa, attended to talk about the iAfya app and the importance and opportunity for developers in the mobile health sector. He praised BlackBerry for providing a platform that is bringing services such as healthcare information closer to African consumers.

Here’s Dr. Makenzi addressing developers at the Nairobi event:

We can’t wait to see what comes from our Kenyan and Nigerian developer communities in the coming months. To see more of the BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam event in Nigeria, click here and for Kenya, click here.

Organized by Apstrak Studio, a partner in Thailand, BlackBerry Jam Sessions Thailand provides Thai developers in Bangkok and Chiangmai insights into app development for BlackBerry® 10 platform — its strengths, vision, and how to make BlackBerry apps that stand out and get downloaded. Join us as Justin Lee (@triplez82), BlackBerry Application Development Consultant, and Johan Kremer, Senior Manager, Alliances and Business Development from Research In Motion® (RIM®), tell you more about BlackBerry 10 and how to make money on the platform.

Jam Chiangmai
Tuesday September 18, 2012
18.00 – 22.00
Centara Duangtawan Hotel
Registration: http://www.blackberryjamthailand2012.com/blackberry-jam-thailand-2012-chiangmai/

Jam Bangkok (SOLD OUT!)
Wednesday September 19, 2012
18.00 – 22.00
Dusit Thani Hotel

Following hot on the heels of the Thailand sessions, there are two more mini BlackBerry 10 Jam sessions in Vietnam, organized by BlackBerry Dev Group Viet Nam. Happening in Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, the Jam Sessions bring to Vietnam developers a localized version of the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour series. Vietnam developers will hear from Justin Lee at these events too. To register, send your details to the group’s manager Louis Tang at louis.keeper@gmail.com! For more details, check out BlackBerry Dev Group Viet Nam’s post here: http://blackberryvietnam.net/threads/blackberry-10-mini-jam-viet-nam-2012.12427/

Ho Chi Minh City
Thursday Sep 20, 2012
6pm-10pm
Café Tinh Tế, Hồ Chí Minh

Hanoi
Friday Sep 21, 2012
6pm-10pm
Café Amigo, Hà Nội

And that’s not all! We’re not forgetting our dear friends in Indonesia. BBDevID is holding a series of BlackBerry 10 Jam Sessions in Indonesia! Named “BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam Indonesia,” the series also brings snippets from BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour to the Indonesian developers in six cities. They have already kicked off the first event last weekend in Yogyakarta and there’s more to come. Look out for the BBDevID and RIM troop in the following cities and dates:

Saturday September 16 – Yogjakarta
Tuesday September 18 – Semarang
Saturday September 22 – Malang
Tuesday October 2 – Bandung
Saturday October 6 – Denpasar Bali
Monday October 8 – Jakarta

For more details: http://bbdevid.tumblr.com/post/31129297043/bb10minijam

It’s non-stop action here in Asia, and the developers simply can’t get enough. If you’re in the region in the cities above, you must not miss the action here!

The BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour visited the beautiful city of Jakarta, Indonesia on July 10th. Over 300 developers attended the event at the JW Marriott hotel in Mega Kuningan Area of Jakarta. The attendees were a combination of independent developers, students, startup developers, and enterprise developers – all coming together to learn about BlackBerry 10 development.

Local BlackBerry Developer Groups were well represented, including BBDevID and IDBerry as well as regional startup communities like Fowab from Bandung, Bancakan from Jogjakarta, RotiFresh from Semarang, and Stasion from Malang. We were also proud to have government officials in attendance.

The event started with an opening welcome address from our MC: Hasting Singh, Managing Director of South Asia. After that, we continued with speeches from Pak Djoko Agung, the representative from Ministry of Information.

The event continued with the famous video featuring Alec Saunders, Martyn Mallick, and Chris Smith singing “Waiting Is the Hardest Part” in which we even localized the lyrics. Then Alec came to the stage doing his favorite thing: myth busting. The energy and excitement was high!

After that, Sarim Aziz, the Team Lead of Developer Relations in APAC, talked about the user experience on BlackBerry 10. He explained about the cinematic experience and emphasized the moments of charm in the BlackBerry 10 application flow.

Following Sarim, I went on stage to deliver the introduction of BlackBerry 10 architecture in Bahasa Indonesia, doing demos about Cascades™ and HTML5 cross-platform development using bbUI framework.

After that, I introduced our partners: Ibnu Maksum AKA Ibnux; a freelancer calling himself Petani Digital (Digital Farmer) due to his living location on countryside; and NuxRadio, which is already available in for BlackBerry® smartphones and will be available on BlackBerry 10 using BlackBerry® WebWorks™. Ibnux then demoed the advantage of BlackBerry WebWorks on BlackBerry 10, including Adobe® Flash® Support.

After Ibnux, we had our partner, Faizal Adiputra from Ristomobile, showcasing Picstory. The picture-sharing app (which is already available for BlackBerry® OS 5, BlackBerry® 6 and BlackBerry® 7 OS) and the winner of BlackBerry Hackathon Jakarta had been remade from the ground-up for BlackBerry 10 using Cascades, our brand new UI framework. He demoed how Cascades handles animation within application UI very smoothly.

Oscar Kurniawan from Tanoshii Studio then went on stage with his game Room of Disaster, which was easily ported to BlackBerry 10 from Symbian S60. He explained that due to Qt and C++ support, porting to BlackBerry 10 only needs minimal time investment.

Johan Kremer, the Head of Alliance APAC, took the stage dressed in batik and shared tips and tricks on monetizing on the BlackBerry platform.

We had eleven apps showcased during lunch, with Record-It – an application to record voice while talking on your phone, created by Igo – won the lightning pitch!

During the event, QuizHore used their @quizhore Twitter® account to hold a BlackBerry 10 Jam Jakarta quiz by using the hashtag #BB10JamHore. The winner was @dausgonia, a developer from Bandung, who was eligible for a BlackBerry® 9230 smartphone.

All in all, we had a very exciting and successful BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour event in “BlackBerry Nation” Jakarta, with many developers in many cities around Indonesia willing and excited to come onboard with the BlackBerry 10 open platform.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Guest post from Georgina – Ed.

BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour arrived in Warsaw on a sunny Tuesday, attracting developers not only from Poland but from all over Europe, including Germany, the Czech Republic, and Italy. About 100 students from the BlackBerry® Academic Programs at Gliwice, Katowice and Bielso-Biala universities were among the 500 registered participants. There are now five universities that have the BlackBerry Academic Program (BAP) as part of their curriculum, which provides resources and training courses for administering and supporting the BlackBerry solution, in addition to developing apps for the BlackBerry platform. This large group of students joined hundreds of Polish developers from around the country to learn about developing for BlackBerry® 10. The event attendees included developers already enjoying success on the BlackBerry platform, such as the creators of Cooklet, a globally popular recipe app for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet which was awarded best Adobe® AIR® app at BlackBerry World™ 2012.

We are excited by the passion and enthusiasm of the Polish students about BlackBerry 10. David Keane, Senior Country Manager in Poland commented: “The response to BlackBerry 10 in the Polish developer community has been amazing and we are glad that so many students are interested in developing applications for the new platform. We are already very proud of our cooperation with these academic institutions from different parts of Poland and we are looking forward to developing the program further with new partners this year. We believe that among the students participating in BlackBerry 10 Jam, there are future leaders of successful and globally popular apps for BlackBerry.”

The students see BlackBerry 10 as a strong platform that provides them with different tools for creating powerful applications that appeal to local and international audiences. Adam Cholewa, a coordinator of BAP at Gliwice University, explained why they decided to get up at 3 a.m. to attend BlackBerry 10 Jam Warsaw: “We have been running the BlackBerry Academic Program for over one year, enabling our students to not only get resources and support from RIM, but also participate in important events with other developers. In February we attended BlackBerry DevCon in Amsterdam, and today we are in Warsaw. These events give our students a chance to gain knowledge about BlackBerry 10 and learn from developers already creating apps for the BlackBerry platform, providing hands-on experience and important skills for the future.”

The students attending the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour event in Poland gave very positive feedback on the event: “The Jam was very successful”, said Olek Sławiński, a student from Silesian Technical University. “During the conference I learned a lot of interesting tips that might be useful in the future, and everything was presented in a clear and understandable way, from the initial state of developing to uploading an application in BlackBerry App World.

“BlackBerry 10 is incredibly interesting, especially because it enables to develop in different ways, such as in Cascades™ and BlackBerry® WebWorks™. When using native SDKs, QT4 is very useful and enables achieving our goals in a simple way. Another thing that I like a lot about BlackBerry 10 is its graphic features – it automatically creates animations linked to particular elements of our application. And in case of any problems, we can always count on the support of the BlackBerry developer community.”

It is difficult to believe, but what these students are most looking forward to is the end of holidays! They want to start the BlackBerry Academic Program in autumn so they can get started on building their apps for BlackBerry 10. Truly inspiring. Thank you, Poland!

The BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour rolled into Cape Town on July 31st, attracting more than 250 developers from around South Africa. The excitement about the BlackBerry® 10 platform among developers in attendance was palpable, with many eager to start developing apps for the forthcoming operating system.

Developers were excited to get together to exchange ideas and hear about the various projects their peers are working on. Many were seeing the new features of the BlackBerry 10 with their own eyes for the first time and they were keen to hear about what other developers were already doing with the platform.

Master of ceremonies, Lelany Sommers, Senior Operations Manager for Africa at RIM®, kicked off the event by welcoming developers in attendance.

She then introduced Alexandra Zagury, MD for South and Southern Africa at RIM, who reaffirmed the strength of RIM’s vision and debunked many myths about the BlackBerry® ecosystem. She spoke about the investments, incentives and programmes we are rolling out for our developer community.

Next up was Rui Brites, Director Product Management for Africa, who talked about the user experience of the new BlackBerry 10 platform, and how it will help customers to be more productive and efficient. He and BlackBerry Developer Evangelist Luca Sale then demonstrated key new features of BlackBerry 10, such as the new intelligent keyboard and intuitive glancing gestures.

During the BlackBerry 10 Architecture session, Michael Weitzel, Technical Partnership Manager for Africa at RIM, showed the audience some new games built entirely in Cascades™ on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype device. He also demonstrated some source code through the UI preview feature of the Cascade plugin on stage.

One of the highlights of the jam was a series of lightning pitches held during lunchtime, where each developer was given three minutes to present an idea for an app. The audience voted for the best app, and Glenn Stein (@GlennTheStein) won with PhraZApp, a multi-lingual phrasebook for South Africans to easily chat to each other in different languages. He won a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, a $500 BlackBerry App World™ voucher, and a meeting with a key developer representative from RIM.

The afternoon sessions had two parallel tracks: the Native Track, which covered the basics of building a BlackBerry 10 app, and a Web Track, all about building BlackBerry 10 apps using the BlackBerry® WebWorks™ development platform. Both tracks were very well attended by the developer community.

BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices were given to selected qualifying developers at the Jam, equipping them to test their BlackBerry 10 applications as they build them.

The audience included five students from the recently launched BlackBerry apps lab at the University of Pretoria, which forms part of the BlackBerry Academic Programme (BAP). As part of their curriculum, RIM provides these students with resources and training courses for administering and supporting the BlackBerry solution, as well as developing apps for the BlackBerry platform.

Commenting on the students’ obvious passion for mobile app development, Alexandra Zagury said:  “The response from South African developer community – the students especially – has been amazing. We are proud of our cooperation with the University of Pretoria. Among the students participating in BlackBerry 10 Jam, there are certain to be some who will create future killer apps for BlackBerry.”

It was RIM’s pleasure to host developers and share the direction that BlackBerry is heading. We are excited to see what local developers produce for BlackBerry 10 in the months to come.

To see more about the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour in Cape Town, check out this video:

BlackBerry Jam Americas – Sept 25-27, San Jose CA
BlackBerry® Jam Americas 2012 is a showcase for the bold, new direction BlackBerry is heading with the upcoming BlackBerry® 10 platform. The event attracts developers and industry leaders who understand the power of BlackBerry and want to build their success with the platform. Whether you’re a Native, Web, or Android™ developer, don’t miss this opportunity to explore the powerful, game-changing BlackBerry 10 platform.

Join us, September 25-27 in San Jose, California. Register by the August 31 Early Bird Deadline for some incredible savings.

It feels like the BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour stop in Beijing just happened yesterday. Over 300 developers attended at the Grand Millennium hotel on July 6th, including those who made the effort to travel all the way from Korea and Singapore. I would like to extend a special thanks to Bill Jiang, Junyi Ding and the rest of my colleagues from RIM China’s Technical Solutions Management team for making this event a great success.

The event in China was unlike any other, as the RIM team worked hard to localize the content and demos for our Chinese developers.

The event was kicked off by Daniel Tan, Sales VP of RIM Greater China, who drew long applause from the crowd when he said, “The future of BlackBerry 10 in China is in your hands!” It was definitely the highlight of his speech.

Some of you have probably heard of Alec Saunders’ presentation style. Watching his performance for the first time was really something — you could feel the energy and the excitement skyrocket in the room as Alec rocked the crowd. Developers further expressed their passion as they waited patiently for an opportunity to speak face to face, take pictures, and even request autographs!

For those who couldn’t wait to learn more about the BlackBerry 10 user experience, Bill Jiang’s presentation covered some interesting design principles, such as the new intelligent keyboard as well as the intuitive glancing gestures.

During the BlackBerry 10 Architecture session, Jonah Lin, MMMOOO’s CEO, showcased some new games built entirely in Cascades™ on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype device. The first game was a dice game that provided a fun and interactive way to deal with daily chores. The second one was my favorite, a Chinese Chimes instrument called Bian Zhong.  It beautifully mimics the ancient Chinese instrument experience at your fingertips. Jonah went further and even demonstrated some of his source code through the UI preview feature of the Cascade plugin on stage. Jonah and his team received lots of compliments.

MMMOOO has been one of the most active partners of RIM – they’ve developed over 300 apps and reached 50 million downloads in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. Check out their apps if you haven’t already done so! I am sure you will find some apps to suit your needs.

The lightning pitches held during lunchtime were another highlight of the day. Each developer was given three minutes to present their apps and the audience voted for the best app. The winner would receive a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, $500 voucher on ShopBlackBerry.com, and best of all, a free pass to BlackBerry Jam Asia! Most developers came fully prepared with slide decks and demos, while others sketched out their ideas on a piece of paper. It was also exciting see the participation coming from young university students who wanted to pitch their ideas. In the end, the lightning pitches were very well received, and the winner by people’s choice was PinBook, from S4BB which allows you to connect with people who have the same interests with you over BBM™.

The afternoon sessions had two parallel tracks. There was much interest in the Native Track presented by Alan Wong and Ramprasad Madhavan, and a sizeable number also attended the Web Track presented by Demian Borba and myself. Developers were extremely delighted to see the Cascades demos in the Native sessions. During session breaks, a few of them came to chat about ideas or apps they developed on other platforms. Developers were also thrilled by the power of BlackBerry® WebWorks™, especially the wide range of open source frameworks it allowed developers to build with, coupled with the smooth hardware-accelerated CSS animations and the ability to integrate with C/C++/Adobe AIR.

Next it was time to give away the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices, and a good event never ends without a bang! Yes, the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour Beijing ended with an exciting offer to the developers: Submit a BlackBerry 10 app before the official launch and RIM will swap the Dev Alpha device with a limited edition BlackBerry 10 device!

I hope the BlackBerry 10 Jam event and the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices will encourage the developers to produce some great apps for China and the world. I will certainly be sure to follow up and guide the developers should they need any help with their development.

I’d like to sign off by sharing several tweets from Weibo (a popular Chinese social media tool) with translations below. Go BlackBerry 10 developers!

After BB 10 JAM world tour Beijing, we have set up BB 10 Dev alpha discussion board. Provide alpha device test, software installation and usage discussion. Hope everyone can come and share…

Sharing after coming back from the Jam, so much surprise, the entire intro, sharing information showed RIM is confident to use BB10 to change the history, continue the success! Expecting RIM raise again and the perfect apps for BB10!

Guest post from Chris Saunders – Ed.

Wrapping up the Asia-Pacific leg of the 2012 BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour has left many of us with bittersweet feelings. It’s been an incredible experience to meet so many excited and accomplished developers across the region, to visit new cultures, and to see new sights. For me, it has been especially rewarding to host the final stop in the region out of my home base here in Australia.

For our experts who travelled across the world to arrive in region – the two weeks of trips, multiple red-eye flights, late nights and early mornings – everyone still had their enthusiasm and energy like it was the first stop. Pre-registrations for the Sydney stop took up every available seat, and the excitement and interest was palpable. For many in attendance, they had not had the chance to see the new direction BlackBerry® is undertaking and the exciting new features of the BlackBerry® 10 experience. It was also a great opportunity for them to see the work their peers are actively doing with the platform, and vicariously live through that excitement until they were able to get their hands on their very own BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha testing device later in the day.

The obvious highlight for me was the privilege of having several local developers join me on stage during the technical keynote to discuss their developments. The Voxel Agents (of Train Conductor fame, @TheVoxelAgents) had a great demo and discussion around how easy it is to port existing content and leverage the power of the platform, thereby creating new channels for deploying their games to a whole new global market. Gruden (@GrudenDigital) was able to show us how easy it was to create high-profile, compelling applications on-time and in-budget with the Adobe® AIR® runtime, and we discussed the ease of targeting the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ with their fully integrated news and video portal for Fox Sports. But I have to admit it was Conduct (@conduct) who stole the show and wowed those in attendance with a real-time demo of an application they created to push the limits of the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha testing device. You really need to see it to understand it, but in a nutshell it parses a feed of tweets in real time, and creates a visual display of this information based on the paths that particles take from various keywords (each particle is a tweet and there are emitters that push particles out, and attractors that the particles are drawn to). You can add, delete, drag and move both emitters and attractors, and all particles on the screen are gravitationally pulled towards where they need to be. It makes for a fascinating visualization of an immense amount of data and the subsequent relationships.

The demo was written using the new GamePlay initiative, which is an Open Source library designed to allow users to create visually compelling games and applications that stretch the capabilities of mobile devices (http://www.gameplay3d.org/). And for this demo, it worked wonders — such an incredible way of visualizing the data-mining of a real-time feed, and determining non-obvious and emerging patterns within a massive data set. Exactly the kind of work that would make Edward Tufte (@EdwardTufte) proud!

On behalf of everyone from RIM® in attendance, it was our pleasure to host and share with you the direction that BlackBerry is heading. To finish, I would just like to say thank you for joining us and being a part of such an exciting series of events across the region. We’re all eager to get back on the road, and see you again soon.

All the Best,
Christopher Saunders (@csaunders_ca)
Developer Relations, Australia and New Zealand

Continuing with our reports from the BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour in Asia, I’m writing from the beautiful city of Singapore. We had the opportunity to bring the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour to my home city, where we rocked the house.

We had over 300 registered developers and a completely filled room, with developers coming from Thailand, Vietnam, Philippines, Malaysia and Singapore.

For me, the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour was a day of meeting old friends, making new friends, catching up with all the developers from around South-East Asia and  making their visions, ideas and dreams into reality with BlackBerry 10.

It was a day where developers from various parts of Asia got together to exchange ideas, learn about the new BlackBerry 10 platform, and share with their friends the various projects that they are working on.

We started off the show with Sarim Aziz, Team Lead Developer Relations, APAC, RIM being our Master of Ceremonies, officially kicking off the event – welcoming the excited developers to BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour in Singapore.

There was an astounding round of applause to kick-start the entire day of BlackBerry 10 goodness.

He introduced Charles Dufourcq, Director, Singapore, RIM, who shared about the Singapore perspective on developers, and the benefits of being on building on our BlackBerry platform.

After that, Alec Saunders, VP Developer Relations, RIM, came on stage with a roaring applause from the audience. Alec did his myth-busting presentation, “BUSTING” various myths about the BlackBerry ecosystem. This got the entire crowd clapping and cheering. He also expressed our support towards developers working on the BlackBerry ecosystem by introducing the various investments, incentives and programs RIM is rolling out for developers.

Next up, Sarim went back on stage to talk about the user experience of the new BlackBerry 10 platform, and how we are creating an entirely new experience that will increase productivity, efficiency, and get the job done.

After that, it was my turn – Justin Lee, Application Development Consultant, APAC Developer Relations, RIM – to take the stage and talk about the new BlackBerry 10 architecture, emphasizing the three core principles – Flow, Connect, Extend – and how to start developing for the new platform.

Everyone was focused and eager to get started. I showed the “astonishing” UI that we’ve come up with, and how easy it is to use the Cascades™ UI framework to develop for BlackBerry 10.

Then I introduced our partner, Wvgen Wong from Ristomobile, to the stage to showcase two applications that he created for BlackBerry 10 in less than three weeks. First, PicStory. It lets you create a story out of your pictures and it has been ported to BlackBerry 10. They also ported LogoMania, a logo recognizing game specifically created for BlackBerry 10 – each showcasing the capabilities of our native platform and flexibility of our Cascades UI.

After me was David Patterson, Senior Alliances Operations Manager, APAC, RIM, who explained the various tips and tricks and valuable insights to monetize on our platform.

He also explained that developers can work together with RIM to launch their applications, and offered various avenues to gain visibility on our platform.

During lunch, we showcased 12 applications and ideas that developers have came up with during our lightning pitches. The “Urban Cook” app by Ong Tze Wei took the winning spot with the most votes as the best lightning pitch. Urban Cook is a mobile application utilizing geolocation and crowd-sourcing to help urban shoppers find recipes based on products they scan with their phones.

We also had Team Malaysia, a group of over 20 developers from the ICON2 program in Malaysia, who took a chartered bus just to be at our BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour in Singapore. How amazing is that?

We had a successful BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour in Singapore, with many developers excited to start developing on our new BlackBerry 10 platform. I hope you had a great time, and we’ll be back in Singapore before you know it!

The BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour arrived in Dubai today, attracting just over 100 developers from across the Middle East region and providing them with the opportunity to learn more about the unique capabilities of the new BlackBerry 10 OS.

Sandeep Saihgal, Managing Director, Middle East at RIM®, said: “We are proud of our strong connections with the talented community of developers in the Middle East region and believe this cooperation will be taken to the next level by the powerful programming tools that BlackBerry 10 offers.”

Mohamed Ali, Co-CEO of developer partner ZeroWire Labs, said: “There is growing excitement in our company for BlackBerry 10. We have already experienced great success with the launch of our BlackBerry apps in this region, and with the growth in demand for Arabic apps and the high penetration of BlackBerry smartphones in the Middle East, we expect BlackBerry 10 to create a significant opportunity for developers.”

Some of the tweets from the day:

Wonderful event @BlackBerry Jam dubai #bb10jam—
Jesse J Ode (@TechCircleDxb) July 10, 2012

Queue of devs waiting to get their hands on the dev BB10 device… #BB10Jam http://t.co/74hhDgXF—
M.Saleh Esmaeili (@dot1ne) July 10, 2012

You can build a more beautiful UI with @BlackBerry 10 Cascades UI elements. #bb10jam #Dubai @BlackBerryDev—
Maher Al Jendasi (@maherj) July 10, 2012

And some additional quotes from developers at the event:

Aman Ali from Insomniac Dev: “BlackBerry10 means everything to me right now! The keyboard and the camera will exceed all other platforms. BlackBerry 10 will be absolutely massive! It’s something I’ve never seen before and I’m really looking forward to develop apps on!”

Kessienda D. Majemiif, Coo FastFindIt Solutions: “I think BlackBerry 10 is the future of user experience. BlackBerry 10 will make development faster and easier. I’m really looking forward to exploring and developing with the BB10 device! It is really going to add prestige to BlackBerry.”

Hamza Nasir, LiveAdmins: “I’ve been a BlackBerry hard-core fan since the inception. It’s not about the software, it’s not about the hardware…it’s the experience you get. BlackBerry10 will give developers a lot to work with. The cascade functionality and camera functionality is state of the art, plus more. I am looking forward to getting my hands on a BlackBerry 10 device!”