Following the huge success of the BBM™ Hackathons across North America earlier this year, we’ve got a few upcoming events for our BlackBerry® developer communities across the world! If you’ve ever wanted to come and hack with BlackBerry and you have not won a place at a previous BBM Apps Hackathon event within the last 60 days, here are your chances:

• Bangkok: November 17th and 18th, 2011
• Amsterdam: November 24th and 25th, 2011
• London, England: November 28th and 29th, 2011

With more than 50 million users worldwide, BlackBerry® Messenger (BBM) has become one of the largest mobile-centric communities in the world. During each two-day Hackathon event, you can learn how to incorporate BBM into your application as well as tips to drive viral adoption of your app through the BBM community. The workshops are fast-paced, free of charge (!), and will give you a great opportunity to network with other developers. BlackBerry product experts will be on hand throughout the two days to answer all your questions.

If you’re still not convinced, check out this blog post for a recap on previous BBM Hackathon events – they’ve been well received by developers, and we’re thrilled with the good vibes that have been shared. To find out more and apply for a place at the upcoming Hackathons, go to http://bbmappshackathon.com/.

Also, be sure to bookmark the recently launched BlackBerry Developer Events Calendar to keep track of any upcoming events happening near you! If you have questions or comments, please share them below.

Wow! BlackBerry® DevCon Americas 2011 was one heck of a busy week for the Developer Relations team, and we’re sure the same thing can be said for attendees. BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 featured: an action-packed general session keynote; oodles of announcements (see below); App Express stations for Android™ developers to quickly get their apps ported to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet; recognition awards for outstanding BlackBerry developers; Breakout and Ask the Experts sessions for one-on-one time with BlackBerry development experts; special BBM™ Hackathon events just for BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 attendees; and our biggest BlackBerry DevCon TweetUp ever! Oh, and did I forget to mention we gave every attendee a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with the option to load the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Developer Beta build?

For those who were unable to attend BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 in person, here’s a brief overview of some of the DevCon-related announcements you’ll want to catch up on.

Announcing BlackBerry BBX – The Next Generation BlackBerry Platform – BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 introduced BlackBerry BBX, the next generation mobile platform for BlackBerry smartphones and tablets. Development environments supported by the BBX platform include HTML5 with BlackBerry® WebWorks™, Adobe® AIR®, Native C/C++, and the BlackBerry® Runtime for Android™ Apps. Click the link above to learn more; BlackBerry developers will also want to read this outlining the developer roadmap for BlackBerry BBX and the BlackBerry® Java® SDK.

Announcing Cascades: UI Development for BlackBerry Apps – In addition to BlackBerry BBX, BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 also showed Cascades, a UI (“user interface”) framework built by RIM TAT to help developers build fluid and compelling UI into their applications.

BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Developer Beta: Android Runtime, WebWorks, Adobe AIR – Developers who didn’t attend BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 are still able to download the BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 Developer Beta at the link above. In addition to the BlackBerry Runtime for Android Apps, the Developer Beta also includes support for the latest BlackBerry WebWorks and Adobe AIR SDKs for developers to test their latest and greatest apps.

Introducing BlackBerry Jam – No matter if you’re a BlackBerry WebWorks, Java, Adobe AIR or native BlackBerry PlayBook tablet developer, you’ll want to pay attention to the new BlackBerry® program, designed to help developers collaborate and innovate together. Victoria wrote a great post about the BlackBerry Jam program, which you can check out at the link above, but don’t hesitate to stop by the BlackBerry Jam developer page.

Key BlackBerry Development Tools Updates – In addition to the announcements above, tons of new and updated tools are available to BlackBerry developers to get building. Check them out below!

Native SDK for BlackBerry Tablet OS General Availability Release
BBM Social Platform SDK v1.0 for BlackBerry WebWorks General Availability Release
BlackBerry WebWorks SDK for Smartphone v2.2 Now Available
BlackBerry Java SDK and JDE v7.0 Maintenance Release Now Available for Download
Open Source and the BlackBerry PlayBook OS Platform

If it’s a cool visual overview you’re looking for, check out this BlackBerry DevCon Americas 2011 highlights video:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Like I said before, wow! So what’s next? Well, BlackBerry DevCon Asia and BlackBerry DevCon Europe are right around the corner, so stay tuned for more blog posts on the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog. We hope to see you there!

• Two runtimes: BlackBerry WebWorks for BlackBerry smartphone OS and the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet
• Corresponding API Documentation for each runtime
• A growing number of Code Samples, including the code for Aura, the BlackBerry WebWorks based demo shown at BlackBerry Developer Day at this year’s Mobile World Congress
• Alice, a micro-library focusing on fancy visual effects using CSS3 2D and 3D facilities – to see it in action, point your modern browser to the demo page
• A community owned repository containing JavaScript Extensions for BlackBerry WebWorks
• Two repositories for our Ripple Emulator: one for the UI, and one for the Framework.

Open Source is changing how we interact with the BlackBerry WebWorks community in many ways, including:

• The samples are now directly usable, with a clear, well-known (ASL2) license, and in a location we can update easily – our plan is to take all existing useful samples, currently in places like Knowledge Base articles, mail threads, forums, or posts, and post them as Open Source.
• When we wanted to add BlackBerry WebWorks support to Nitobi PhoneGap, Ken and the team travelled to Vancouver and leveraged that both projects are open source. This is especially useful to us now that Nitobi is contributing PhoneGap to start incubating Apache CallBack.
• When Laurent and Jim want to add new features to Alice, they can change the repository directly… and the demos are available right then. And all the GitHub features are available from Fork-me to Watchers.
• Tim, Ken and the team can make new experimental features available via the BlackBerry WebWorks Community APIs
• And we can have a continuous release for both the runtimes and the tools. You can even check our Roadmap.

Year two is just beginning and we will continue our commitment to providing more source code to the community, contributing to other OSS projects as well as a focus on performing our daily development in the open.

Do you believe that support for open source projects is important? Share your thoughts in the comments.

Here’s what the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog (IBBDB) learned.

IBBDB: Congratulations, Alec, and welcome to the RIM team.

Thank you. I’m thrilled to be here.

IBBDB: Tell our readers a little bit about yourself.

I’ve been in technology for over 20 years now. I’m a University of Waterloo graduate (1987) and I’ve spent most of my time working with software developers in various roles throughout my career – first at Microsoft, and then as VP of marketing of QNX Software Systems – which is the embedded operating system company that created the OS for the next generation of BlackBerry devices. In 2002, I went to Versatel Networks, a company that built a platform that allowed software developers to create compelling voice applications that ran in telephone networks, and in 2003, I struck out on my own with a friend and mentor, Howard Thaw, to build a company called iotum inc., which we conceived, financed, staffed, and launched successfully. At the beginning of this year, I went to my board and asked them to find a new CEO. After eight years I wanted a change, and I felt the company needed a really strong sales oriented CEO. So I offered to help find a new CEO, and in June we brought in the new guy, and I started looking for something new. I went looking for something that would allow me to return to what I love doing most, and that is working with developers.

And of all the opportunities I looked at, RIM was the most exciting to me.

IBBDB: What makes it so exciting for you to join RIM?

I’ll take you back to the late 90’s for a second, my first encounter with BlackBerry, or at least, what would become BlackBerry. It was Las Vegas, CES, and there I was in the back of a cab trying to get a press release edited … on a RIM pager. It was cool. I’d never seen anything like it and the promise of being able to do email wirelessly was mind blowing. Pretty soon tons of people on the Microsoft corporate campus were carrying one. And over the last decade, since that time, RIM has expanded to 175 countries, and its products are distributed by over 600 carriers across the globe and all from that start with the RIM Inter@ctive Pager. Despite the intensely competitive market out there, RIM continues to pull down huge numbers: 150 million devices RIM has shipped to date, 70 million subscribers on RIM’s network today, over 1 billion app downloads (increasing at 120 million per month) since BlackBerry App World launched.

All of that adds up to a huge opportunity for our partners, for developers … There’s no reason why developers shouldn’t be able to make a great living just by serving BlackBerry customers. And my team’s job is to make it as attractive, easy and fun as possible for developers to build for the BlackBerry platform – smartphones and tablet alike.

IBBDB: How are you planning to accomplish this?

Good old fashioned elbow-grease, as my Dad used to say.

Developer evangelism is all about personal contact, listening, responding, and educating. We’re going to work very closely with the developer community, expand on support and programs that make it easy and rewarding for developers to create apps, be in the midst of developers to understand their needs and secure a great developer experience, and identify and remove the barriers developers face in supporting our platforms and doing business with us.

IBBDB: In terms of direction what would you tell developers – should they invest in BBOS or QNX?

It’s not actually an either/or question. Although we’re not making any secret of our move to QNX, BBOS will be in the market for many years to come. I’m always telling developers that there’s a great business opportunity in the BBOS market. Think of the companies that made millions supporting Windows XP when Windows 7 was already on the market! We are in the midst of a major global launch of BlackBerry 7 and we’ll have customers on BBOS based smartphones for years to come, and they’ll continue to want to buy software too. And, we’ll have other customers who want to migrate to the latest and greatest devices as soon as they are available. It all depends on the customer. And the best part is that with our HTML5 solution – BlackBerry WebWorks HTML5 – developers can build great applications that target both environments.

IBBDB: DevCon Americas 2011 is coming up …

I’m excited and looking forward to the conference. It’s a great opportunity for us to discuss our development platform with our partners, get their valuable input and engage for future collaboration. We will have lots of updates to share with developers including about the QNX development platform for PlayBook and smartphones, about our plans for a global roadshow – be where our developers are – as well as our educational campaign, which we will be kicking off at the conference itself … I won’t divulge more but I do encourage developers to check out the DevCon Americas sessions catalog and sign up to hear first hand from RIM and other BlackBerry experts and contribute their ideas …Oh, and not to forget, those developers who don’t yet have a BlackBerry PlayBook, here’s their chance to get one at DevCon and kick start the development of their next app directly on the PlayBook …

IBBDB: There are lots of things happening today in the mobile space, where do you think the industry is going?

One of the most exciting stories in the industry today is the rise of HTML5 for mobile applications. Developers everywhere are looking for a solution to the cross platform problem, and they seem to be landing on HTML5. The best part of that is that we’re so well positioned to compete on HTML5. With BlackBerry WebWorks HTML5 you can build awesome high performance applications using web technologies, and you can do it in days instead of weeks or months. I encourage everyone to check out WebWorks HTML5 if you haven’t already. I think you’ll be surprised by the rich quality of the applications created with WebWorks.

IBBDB: Anything else you’d like to share with our readers about yourself?

I’m a Waterloo Math grad (class of 87), married with 5 sons, an outdoorsman, amateur photographer (check out my flickr stream!), music lover, wine enthusiast and an avid blogger. In fact, one of the things I’m really looking forward to is starting to blog about what’s happening at RIM… I’m really hoping that blogging and social media are tools that we can use to further connect with developers.

IBBDB: Thank you, Alec, for sharing your thoughts with the Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog. We are looking forward to our next conversation.

BlackBerry® DevCon Americas 2011 is coming up fast – October 18-20 in San Francisco. We’re just putting the finishing touches on the session catalog and we’re so excited about the quality and quantity of the sessions this year, we couldn’t resist giving you a sneak peek.

More than 100 sessions will be led by experts from Research In Motion® (RIM®), our partners, and app-focused companies from around the world. It’s a great opportunity to take away tips, advice, instruction and even code that can make your development work go faster and smoother!

The session categories featured this year cover the hottest BlackBerry development topics, including:

• Java® Development for BlackBerry® 7
• WebKit and BlackBerry® WebWorks™ Platform Development
• BlackBerry® Tablet OS Development, including Native SDK, Adobe® AIR® and Adobe® Flash® and Android™ Player
• BlackBerry® Platform Services and the BBM™ Social Platform
• Tips and tools for debugging and optimizing your apps
• User interface and user experience tools and best practices
• Developing quality enterprise applications
• Marketing and distributing your applications

Make sure you check out the full session catalog when it’s ready in a few weeks. And don’t forget to register for BlackBerry DevCon Americas by August 26 to receive the early bird rate!

As we plan excitedly and build passionately towards BlackBerry® DEVCON Americas, BlackBerry DEVCON Asia and BlackBerry DEVCON Europe, we’re taking the opportunity again to ask you about your highlights from 2010 and requests for BlackBerry DEVCON Americas – the first stop in our world series of developer events.

My top three personal favorite moments from 2010 were:

• Meeting with BlackBerry Developer Group Managers from around the world at a special reception in The View lounge on the 39th floor of the Marriott Marquis. The managers also shared their experience and tips for launching groups at a special community session.
• At a special evening event, we highlighted some of our favorite Super Apps from the 2010 BlackBerry Partners Fund Developer Challenge (go here to enter the 2011 challenge!)
• Mike Lazaridis welcoming an excited and passionate Dan Dodge of QNX on stage to talk about the ultra-powerful BlackBerry® Tablet OS. So much energy on stage and in the crowd!

Check out the BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 highlights photos and videos section for even more!

Your feedback from BlackBerry DEVCON 2010 is embedded in every aspect of the BlackBerry DEVCON Americas plan. One significant way we’ve implemented your feedback is that the conference is now three days instead of four – although we’ve kept the very best of the fourth day’s content in special community sessions throughout the event. That said, what else do you want to see at BlackBerry DEVCON Americas 2011? Let us know your ideas in the comments below!

We’re committed to making BlackBerry DEVCON Americas 2011 the biggest and best yet, and are excited to be offering great deals on our conference access, as well as alumni and hotel discounts. In order to give everyone the opportunity to register at our early bird rate (only $699 plus tax) we are extending this offer until August 26th – register now!

See you in San Francisco!

In May at the BlackBerry World™ conference 2011, we announced the launch of the first ever BlackBerry® DevCon Europe and the second BlackBerry® DevCon Asia. We are now pleased to tell you the dates and location of these events – BlackBerry DevCon Asia will be held in December in Bangkok, Thailand with specific dates to be announced shortly. BlackBerry DevCon Europe will follow in Amsterdam, February 7 & 8, 2012.

We are excited to expand these events as this gives us an opportunity to talk to you about the latest in BlackBerry development, as well as giving you the opportunity to share your experiences and showcase your applications with your community. As such, there is no better way to share your story than to answer the Call for Papers. If you haven’t submitted a paper yet, we want to hear from you – in fact, we are extending the deadline to Friday July 15th for BlackBerry DevCon Asia and Friday September 16th for BlackBerry DevCon Europe. Stay tuned for details on registration and pricing for both of these events.

Remember to visit the BlackBerry DevCon website to learn about these events and to register for the upcoming BlackBerry DevCon Americas!