We’re extremely excited to let you know that we have just launched the BlackBerry® Elite program for our developer community. This is an exclusive program that recognizes, empowers and rewards our most influential and passionate BlackBerry developer advocates around the world.

In the initial launch wave, we are inviting 100 developers from around to become members of the BlackBerry Elite. What do they all have in common? Whether it’s someone who consistently ranks as a top contributor in the BlackBerry developer forums, brings together the community by leading local developer groups, is regarded as a subject matter expert on BlackBerry development, or is a code contributor to BlackBerry open source projects – every individual has and continues to show their commitment to our platform and the community in their own unique way.

Some of the cool and exclusive rewards that BlackBerry Elite members receive are opportunities to travel to regional BlackBerry® Jam events, priority access to developer SDKs, among the first to receive new BlackBerry products, meetings with the RIM® senior executive team, and so much more. We realize our BlackBerry Elites do a lot for us, and we want to ensure they are well rewarded.

If you know amazing people who should be considered for the BlackBerry Elite program, please make sure you nominate them — and yes, you can nominate yourself! We are always searching for the best candidates and want the community to tell us who you think stands out.

Congratulations to all our 2012 BlackBerry Elite members and make sure to check them out in our Hall of Fame!

Is it all about the choice of development languages and runtimes? New tools that help you develop apps more quickly and easily? Clever integration with HTML5 systems? Or is it something else entirely? Your reason can be anything you want it to be.

What’s my reason? It’s the 55,000+ followers of @BlackBerryDev who inspire me.

Share your reason with like-minded developers all over the world and be part of something great.

Whether you’re a Native, Web, AIR or Android developer, BlackBerry Jam Americas will be a fantastic opportunity to dive into our open platform. This event is a great opportunity to continue, or start, building outstanding apps for BlackBerry 10. Like our previous developer conferences, BlackBerry Jam Americas will feature a broad, compelling mix of content for beginners and experts alike. A high-level overview of BlackBerry 10 for each platform is just the beginning: attendees can choose from dozens of sessions that dig deeper than ever into the BlackBerry 10 platform, exploring the opportunities it presents for differentiation and revenue generation.

At BlackBerry Jam Americas, you’ll have the opportunity to learn from and collaborate with RIM experts and developer leaders alike. Through deep dive sessions and hands-on labs, we’ll help you realize the creative and business potential of your ideas. We’ll teach you how to engage users with beautiful UI and compelling user experience. We’ll show you how enterprise apps on BlackBerry 10 can change the conversation and take advantage of the BlackBerry architecture. And we’ll connect you with fellow developers and BlackBerry partners to network, collaborate and innovate.

Best of all, BlackBerry Jam Americas is our most affordable developer conference yet! Register by August 31st to take advantage of our Early Bird pricing. The Main Rate is $449 (an Early Bird discount of $150). Alumni – including developers who attended previous Developer Conference events, this year’s BlackBerry 10 Jam event in Orlando, or any of the stops on the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour – can register now for $299 (an Early Bird discount of $150). And we welcome those of you in academia: faculty can register for $299, and students can attend for just $199!

This is an amazing opportunity to get in-depth information and hands-on guidance before the launch of our upcoming BlackBerry 10 devices.

What do you think? Are you as excited as I am?

Where will the next generation of BlackBerry® developers come from? Thanks to the efforts of some of my colleagues responsible for the BlackBerry Academic Program, the answer, in part, is from universities around the world – including those in Colombia.

A few weeks ago, Research In Motion® (RIM®) partnered with the Universidad Nacional de Colombia in Bogotá to sponsor a train-the-trainer session for local academics on BlackBerry® 10 development.

The university, the largest in Colombia, hosted a session with their own faculty and representatives from neighboring Universidad Javeriana and Universidad de los Andes. The two-day session focused on WebWorks™ HTML5 development for BlackBerry 10. The aim is to help faculty members set up a development environment in their labs and to teach others how to design, build and deploy a BlackBerry application for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and future BlackBerry 10 smartphones.

Representatives were invited to the session based in part on their willingness to teach others within their schools how to build mobile apps.

According to Chris Jones, a RIM University Relations Manager, the session in Bogotá was a success. “Participants said they are excited about developing for the BlackBerry 10 platform and have expressed interest in attending more sessions like this one.”

This session is only one part of RIM’s efforts to encourage the next generation of developers. It complements the BlackBerry Academic Program, which provides free curriculum and devices to help academic institutions build stronger programs in mobile computing.

Over 2000 people, representing nearly 695 schools in 112 countries around the world, have registered for the BlackBerry Academic Program, receiving the support and resources they need to train the next generation of mobile developers.

You’ve seen us commit to you in a way that many have remarked upon, starting last year with initiatives including BlackBerry® DevCon Americas, the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet and BlackBerry® 10 Dev Alpha seeding programs, hackathons, BlackBerry® 10 Jam in Orlando, and the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour that we’ve been running across 23 cities. Some of you have even said that this “new” Research In Motion® (RIM®) is the best platform company for developers to work with today.

Earlier this year when Thorsten Heins took the reins as our new CEO, he was very open about the approach the company would be taking to this new platform launch. Yesterday, he delivered some tough news: a shift in timeline for the launch of the BlackBerry 10 platform until the first quarter of 2013.

When we in the Developer Relations group were informed of the news, our first thoughts were with you – our development community – who are continuing to work with us to build great new applications for BlackBerry 10. You’ve got businesses to run, rent to pay, and investors to answer to. You are the folks who have skin in the game now, and aren’t just waiting for a new phone personally. We know this delay affects you, and we’re sorry.

Despite yesterday’s announcement, I want you to know that we remain strongly committed to you. While RIM continues to work towards the launch of BlackBerry 10, our engagement levels and plans for our joint success have not changed.

The BlackBerry 10 platform is designed to offer developers the tools they need to drive a successful business, including simplified rich development; the ability to create, deliver and share powerful visually stunning content, quickly; and multiple paths toward monetization. We are committed to this launch, and to continuing to work with you to make this launch a success. We will work to ensure that the launch is executed brilliantly, with a complete platform that delivers the best experience for our customers.

Over the last few months, the level of excitement, dedication and pride from our developer partners and from our employees has been both gratifying and humbling for me.

My pledge to you is that we will continue to work with you, to invest with you, to create opportunities with you, to be successful with you, and to be worthy of the trust and support you have given us.

Alec Saunders, VP Developer Relations
Research In Motion

BlackBerry® evangelists met with Android™ developers last week at AnDevCon III in Burlingame, CA to talk about the cool development options of bringing Android apps to the BlackBerry platform, and how to publish them on the BlackBerry App World™ storefront to reach a global audience. The word of how easy the process is started to spread out quickly among conference participants at two full-house events on day one of the conference – the Lightning Talk presented by Larry McDonough, Head of Developer Evangelism Americas at Research In Motion (who talked about bringing existing Android apps to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet), and at the class taught by Rajeev Mohindra, Director, Handheld App Architecture (about running Android applications on BlackBerry).

More BlackBerry development action was happening at the RIM booth, where developers signed up as vendors to BlackBerry App World and learned from BlackBerry experts how to use some of the tools for BlackBerry Runtime for Android apps to convert their Android “apk” files into BlackBerry-compatible “bar” files. Those developers who completed both these steps became the happy recipients of a free BlackBerry PlayBook tablet on which to continue their development work. That they were all excited to convert their Android apps for the BlackBerry platform is an understatement — not to mention how pleasantly surprised they were to see how easy it was to make their apps work on the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet without having to change any code. The BlackBerry team saw all kinds of interesting apps – ranging from games to educational – all successfully ported to the BlackBerry platform.

To top it all off, a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet was in the mix for the AnDevCon III Winner’s Circle Prize, and was won by Erol Yesin from Navman Wireless. Congratulations to Erol and to all the other developers from whom we are waiting to hear back soon with progress updates.

You can catch up with us again in a couple of weeks, as the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour will be making a stop in Santa Clara, California.