One of our goals for this year’s BlackBerry Live conference is to integrate mobile technology not just in the discussions, sessions, and resources – but into the actual conference itself to help keep attendees closely plugged into all of the action.

Near Field Communication (NFC)

One of my all-time favorite technologies, Near Field Communication (NFC) will be integrated into BlackBerry Live in a big way. You’ll be able to scan into BlackBerry Live and BlackBerry Jam sessions and interact with aspects of the venue using the BlackBerry Live Conference App, but that’s just the beginning. You’ll also be able to share contact information with sponsors, scoop up links to resources and web sites, and take advantage of all that BlackBerry 10 has to offer when it comes to NFC.

BlackBerry Live Conference App

Shortly before BlackBerry Live the Mobile Conference Guide app will be available in BlackBerry World for you to download. This will be your ultimate conference guide, including a wide range of features:

• Find sessions, speaker, sponsor, and event details
• Receive event update messages
• View the conference agenda and floor plan
• Build and edit your conference schedule
• Scan into sessions using Near Field Communication (NFC)
• Complete conference and session surveys
• Share your information with conference sponsors using NFC

It’s not too late to register for BlackBerry Live!

Head over to www.blackberrylive.com to register for this year’s conference, and don’t forget that if you’ve attended a BlackBerry event in the past, you may be eligible for a $150 discount as part of the Alumni Discount!

Stay tuned for availability in BlackBerry World, and get ready for a seriously mobile conference! See you next week in Orlando.

Here’s your chance to get recognized! BlackBerry is now accepting developer nominations for the BlackBerry Achievement Awards.

The BlackBerry Achievement Awards (formerly the Wireless Achievement Awards) have been renamed to highlight the diverse BlackBerry community. These awards aim to recognize and reward exceptional developers, business leaders and entrepreneurs at the annual BlackBerry Live conference hosted in Orlando, Florida in May 2013.

With the rebranding of the BlackBerry Achievement Awards, a series of new award categories have also been introduced to make sure we recognize the wide variety of BlackBerry success stories.

Award categories include:

1. App of the Year
2. Putting Customers First
3. Mobile Innovation of the Year
4. Making the World a Better Place
5. Entrepreneur of the Year

To be considered for an award, nominations must be received by March 22, 2013.

Award recipients will receive a series of incentives for their participation. Prizes for first place award recipients include: travel and accommodations to BlackBerry Live 2013, conference passes, extensive BlackBerry training, BlackBerry 10 smartphones and more.

To read more about the BlackBerry Achievement Awards, recipient prizes and the selection process, please visit: http://www.blackberrylive.com/special-programs/achievement-awards

Check out the nomination page for more details or feel free to email achievementawards@blackberry.com

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Guest post from Marysia on our EMEA team – Ed.

We recently took a very short break from our mammoth BlackBerry® Jam World Tour to settle in London for two days at Apps World Europe. Now in its third year, Apps World has grown to become one of the leading multi-platform events in the mobile industry, with over 6,000 visitors through the doors over the course of the conference. And BlackBerry was there in force!

During the two days of the event, developers visited our stand in their droves to get a hands-on experience with the latest build of the BlackBerry® 10 software and to learn more about the opportunity with our brand new platform. Our team of developer evangelists were also on hand to give visitors more information about how to port their existing apps over to BlackBerry 10.

After heading to London directly from the BlackBerry Jam Americas event in San Jose, Alec Saunders held a standing-room only presentation on the latest developer updates for BlackBerry 10, including the news that BlackBerry 10 developer tools are now API-complete and that as of October 10, BlackBerry 10 apps can be submitted to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. He also talked in more detail about our new 10k Reasons to Believe campaign and how this can benefit developers.

It was great to see so many developers keen to hear about the new platform (some of whom shared their thoughts in the video above) and many of whom have already signed up to join us in Amsterdam for BlackBerry Jam Europe in early February 2013. Until then, it’s back on the road with the BlackBerry Jam Tour. See you there!

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

Fluxible is a new conference this September that brings user experience and design experts from around the world together for two days of workshops and talks. The team at Research In Motion® (RIM®) is especially excited that our own Dan Gärdenfors (Senior Concept Designer of The Astonishing Tribe) has just been announced as closing keynote speaker.

While I was making my way back from the BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour and @StartupFest in Montreal, I had the chance to speak with Mark Connolly, one of the organizers of Fluxible, about the origin of the conference, who should attend, and what the event means to the region of Waterloo.

Thanks for taking time to talk with us. Who should register for the conference?

Fluxible was conceived for UX practitioners and researchers – but it’s also a great opportunity for developers, product managers, and others who want to learn about designing front end interfaces and experiences.

I took a look at the agenda and you’re definitely taking advantage of the event spaces here in town.

Yes, we’ve had great support from Communitech. We’re starting at the Conrad Centre for the Performing Arts, which is where the main talks will be. We then move to Kitchener City Hall for a Saturday evening party, and then finish at the Communitech Hub on Sunday with the workshops. It’s very exciting.

What does Fluxible mean to the Waterloo region?

As you likely know, design has become crucial to the success of products and companies in the last several years, and the Waterloo Region has developed the same focus on design that has been visible globally. Bob (Bob Barlow-Busch) and I, as long time champions of uxWaterloo Communtech Peer 2 Peer (P2P), have seen this increased interest and awareness firsthand. To us, the awareness is another sign of the maturation of the region’s transformation into a digital economy. Fluxible is not only an opportunity to show what’s happening in Waterloo Region to the larger UX world, but also to bring the larger UX world to Waterloo Region. In addition to Dan as a keynote speaker, we have an amazing lineup of speakers who will be delivering terrific talks and workshops. Do check them out.

Definitely sounds like it’s going to be a great event.

We think so too! This is the first event of its kind in the area, and we’re really looking forward to attendees coming in from the region, the province, and around the world. It’s an opportunity to network and have a great time.

Early bird registration is open now and available until July 31. For information, check out the Fluxible site. The Fluxible conference takes place on September 22nd and 23rd, 2012.

Austin, Texas is one of the most important technology centers in the United States, and it was stop number three on our BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour. The excitement and enthusiasm was growing throughout the day, with attendees coming from various regions and even other states like Michigan, Oklahoma and Colorado. Many arrived early, even before we opened registration. We received many compliments for choosing Austin for the tour, highlighting local talent and opening doors of communication between Research In Motion® (RIM®) and developers.

It was clear to everyone that this is a new BlackBerry® smartphone with a clear strategy and innovative solutions, focusing on those who seek productivity and efficiency through the use of technology. Many good discussions were initiated, such as the real possibility of creating new BlackBerry Developer Groups in Texas, and also the interest to take our BlackBerry Academic Program to local educational institutions.

After our presentations in Native, Web and Enterprise, some of these attendees were ready to evangelize and promote our BlackBerry® 10 story. One of the developers I met said: “I can’t wait to show this to my colleagues; they have no idea what BlackBerry 10 is…”

We also found longtime BlackBerry fans, who continue to believe in BlackBerry as we face the challenges during the transition to BlackBerry 10. Within the audience, it was evident that the desire for RIM to succeed is there.

During lunch, we heard pitches from local developers showcasing their apps. Congrats to the big winner with an app to monitor diabetes through an external peripheral that connects to our device that collects information on blood sugar levels and can share the results.

It was a great start for the tour in the U.S. and the whole team should be congratulated; we were able to change many perceptions throughout the day. I can say that the day’s mission was successfully accomplished.

Some interesting tweets:

It was an awesome day at #BB10Jam in Austin! RIM knows how to treat their devs right! Thank you RIM! Can't wait for #BB10! @BlackBerryDev—
SDK Wireless LLC (@sdkwireless) June 06, 2012

In a world where there is a divide of iPhone vs Android, a new contender to blow them all away #BB10! #BB10Jam—
Mitchell Clay (@MitchellrClay) June 05, 2012

great session (Web Track) at #BB10Jam in Austin! @blackberrydev twitpic.com/9t5sxx—
Julio Rodriguez (@jhey) June 05, 2012

@demianborba #BB10Jam #bb10 #revolution I'm loving it!—
  (@djhankfresh) June 05, 2012

Cinematic, multitasking, content, Fluid and Charm defines what BB 10 experience all about #BB10jam—
Ritwik Bose (@ritwik1st) June 05, 2012

(I know this is Austin, but I found three surfers in the audience, and one of them from Brazil, from the same city I live in — can you believe it?)

Now let’s move on to our next sold-out shows here in the United States. We are building a good story and we plan on keeping this momentum going for our stop in Santa Clara on Thursday June 7th.

Happy Monday! We’ve got a recap of the most recent BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour event from Kamel – read on for all the good news from Barcelona. – Ed.

¡Hola Barcelona! We just completed our second BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour event in fantastic Barcelona, a mecca of mobile developers. This was our second time in Barcelona this year after our presence at Mobile World Congress, and we were happy to be back. The venue was fantastic and the weather was great, but that was nothing compared to the great developer audience we had actively enriching our presentations throughout the day.

We kicked off the day with talks about the BlackBerry 10 experience and a technical overview of its architecture, outlining the flexibility that developers have to work with HTML5, Adobe® AIR®, Java®, Android™, and Native C/C++ – giving developers a choice of technologies to use. The spontaneous applause after demonstrating the “flow, connect, extend” experience on a real BlackBerry 10 prototype (that fantastic BlackBerry device keyboard…) was exciting.

The afternoon was split in a rally of presentations and hand-on demos about our Native and HTML5 platforms. A very engaged audience managed to stay focused and stay with us through to the end (even with the fantastic weather outside and being only meters away from a wonderful marina and beach!). Aaron Ardiri, our new evangelist, presented his own experience porting his games from other platforms to BlackBerry 10. The audience enjoyed it – check the tweets from @ardiri at #BB10Jam.

We also organized the opportunity for developers to present 3-minute lightning pitches of their BlackBerry apps (whether finished or under construction) to the audience, who then voted for the best one. The winner was AparKarma — see happy winner David with myself after winning:

The Developer Relations team really enjoyed being in Barcelona, talking to the local developers and showing the capability and opportunities of our Native and HTML5 platforms. Although my hands-on demo of the powerful momentics IDE didn’t work as I expected (demo syndrome…) and I had to resort to Plan B (snapshots on slides), I was so surprised and happy about the applause I received from the audience anyway. Amazing BlackBerry developers in Barcelona!

Once again, thank you so much Barcelona! Looking forward to my next amazing stop in Paris on June 12th.

Here’s a quick guest post from Didiet to recap a recent Asia developer event – Ed.

Hello everyone – I’m Didiet Noor, a newly hired Developer Evangelist at Research In Motion® (RIM®). Recently I had the opportunity to attend Casual Connect Asia 2012 in Suntec City, Singapore, where RIM was one of the sponsors.

It was an exciting event with game developers from across Asia in attendance. The BlackBerry® booth featured games on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet such as Machinarium, Asphalt 6 HD, Cut The Rope, and of course Angry Birds Space. There were on-booth sessions, including one with our own Johan Kremer, Senior Manager, Alliances for SEA, who was joined by Marmalade, a C++ tool for cross-platfom game development which supports the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry® 10.

Developers were excited to show us their games and talk to us about the tooling and the prospects. They were delighted to share stories of quick and easy porting. We heard from Big Fish Games, Pop Cap Games (the maker and publisher of Plants vs Zombies), Anino Games, Yellow Monkey Studio, Masque Publishing, and iTreeWorks. The discussion topics varied from localization to art assets to the opportunities of the BlackBerry 10 platform.

Asia is definitely a growing market for games. I met several Indonesian game developers: Dien Wong, CEO of Altermyth, Fandrey and Willson from the Mintsphere, and Wimindra Lee and DW from Agategames to talk about the potential of mobile game growth. You can see all of us in this picture:

Throughout the show there was a lot of excitement for the strides we have made to support game developers on the BlackBerry platform. Our broad tools support includes Native C/C++, HTML5, AIR, and even Android Java (2.3); APIs such as OpenGL ES, Web GL and Scoreloop to access the gaming features available on the device; and the support from third party engine makers Marmalade, Shiva3D, Unity via Union, and open source libraries like Cocos2d-x.

It was a great show with solid feedback for our team, and we were thrilled to meet face to face with so many developers.

For the past several months, the Developer Relations team has been participating in numerous events and activities targeted at the tech start-up community. For example:

• Since last fall, we’ve held at least 19 Hackathons focused on innovating on BlackBerry® platforms with BBM™, and more recently gaming.
• We sponsored AppCircus pitching contests at BlackBerry DevCon EMEA, and at BlackBerry® 10 Jam in Orlando. In addition, we were sponsors and I was a judge at the Mobile Innovation Awards at Mobile World Congress, put on by AppCircus.
• We’re limited partners in Relay Ventures’ (formally BlackBerry Partners Fund) latest fund, and spoke at their annual general meeting to some of the entrepreneurs present.
• We sponsored the Golden Triangle Network’s LaunchPad 50K event in Waterloo, and I spoke briefly there on the subject of entrepreneurship.
• We sponsored the Canadian Venture Capital Association’s annual event in Montreal last week, and my colleague Martyn Mallick spoke there.
• Last week we also sponsored CHINICT, China’s annual entrepreneurship forum and I spoke there. In addition, we sponsored the CHINICT Hackathon, and saw many great new ideas being built on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet.
• This week in Jakarta, I’ll be speaking at Mobile Monday. On Wednesday, in Bangalore, I’ll be meeting local start-ups, and Thursday I’ll be representing RIM for the opening of the BlackBerry Innovation Centre (also known as Rubus Labs) at Startup Village in Kochi, India.
• In July, we’ll be sponsoring the International Startup Festival in Montreal. In its second year, the Startup Festival brings together entrepreneurs and ecosystems, for a three day event focused on (you guessed it) start-ups.

So why all this attention to startups when the press and customers are relentlessly focused on whether or not the next version of the latest hot game is available on the BlackBerry platform? One word — innovation.

Now, don’t get me wrong – we want the latest hot titles on BlackBerry as much as you do, and we have a dedicated team that does nothing but work to make that happen. But startups are where the excitement is. Startups are the companies that are going make a bet on BlackBerry 10. Startups are the companies that will take apart all of the amazing innovations we’ve built in BlackBerry 10 and conceive of something new that can’t be done on competitors’ platforms. They’ll be the ones who focus on the three key themes of flow, connect, and extend, and will build BlackBerry 10 experiences that the world has never seen before on any platform.

And that’s why we love startups so much.

Got a startup? Come to a BlackBerry 10 Jam session. We’d love to help.

Being an event organizer myself with events such as Adobe Camp Brasil and Hackathon San Diego, and also seeing in so many events the big need to:

1) keep track of talks duration

2) show big enough messages from a distance to the speaker (like “Go Faster, 5 minutes left”)

3) do very FUN raffles

In March of 2012 I set the last project for Action Creations under my administration, called “Talk Clock”, to have a very polished design, focused on being very functional. After tons of prototypes and usability tests, it’s finally ready! And I’m proud to show it to you now:

As event organizer, you can have someone holding the tablet (showing it to the speaker) so he/she can see the time left and see your messages. During the raffle, you can plug the tablet to the projector via HDMI and show its screen to the whole audience.

The Talk Clock App is available only for the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ (and soon BlackBerry 10 smartphones) and it can be found here. Hope you enjoy it!