May 18-19
Melbourne, Australia

May 25-26
Sydney, Australia

June 1-2
Bangkok, Thailand
Seoul, Korea
Singapore

June 8-9
Jakarta, Indonesia
Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia
Manila, the Philippines

June 15-16
Bangalore, India

At the events, meet our local evangelists to find out how BlackBerry can help to kick start your app development and get your app on the BlackBerry 10 platform. For start-ups that look into developing on BlackBerry, you can be sure of the support we will provide onsite, not to mention the prizes that we will be bringing to each of the events! AngelHack participants who plan to build on BlackBerry 10 stand a chance to win awesome prizes like BlackBerry Z10 smartphones, cash, passes and trips to Jam Asia 2013 to pitch for the AngelHack Start-up Asia Pacific Challenge!

Just register your interest onsite and you have up to two months to submit your app. One winning team from each city will fly to Jam Asia 2013 for the AngelHack Start-up Asia Pacific Challenge. AngelHack mentors, BlackBerry tech experts and business development folks will prepare the teams for the pitch at Jam Asia. And the best pitch walks away with the grand prize of $10,000 USD!
Didn’t I say cartloads of goodies? Attend the BlackBerry mini talks at the event, and we will also give you a surprise giveaway!

Don’t wait; sign up for AngelHack in your nearest city now at: http://angelhack.com/

For more information, check out: http://blck.by/16aGOpb!

Voting for the 2013 BlackBerry Developer Community Awards is now open! We’ve been overwhelmed with the positive reception from the community this year and are proud to announce the finalists below.

Having a hard time deciding who to vote for? Well, the awards seek to honor those that have gone above and beyond to actively engage and help fellow BlackBerry developers so make sure your choices reflect that. You’ll have until May 12, 2013 to cast your ballots for a winner in each category so start voting for your favorites today!

The 2013 BlackBerry Developer Community Awards finalists in each category are:

Must Follow BlackBerry Developer on Twitter

1. @jcarty Jerome Carty
2. @johnbiibs John Bibal II
3. @flashinstructor Joel Ortíz
4. @TheMarco M van Hylckama Vlieg

Must Follow BlackBerry Developer Evangelist on Twitter

1. @demianborba Demian Borba
2. @jorgecasar Jorge del Casar
3. @edgarparada Edgar Parada
4. @filos Luca Filigheddu

Most Helpful Developer Community Forum Member

1. peter9477 Peter Hansen
2. Zmey Andrey Fidrya
3. Jtegen John Tegen
4. peter_strange Peter Strange

Most Helpful Developer Relations Team Member on Twitter

1. @n_adam_stanley Adam Stanley
2. @bzubert Brian Zubert
3. @WaterlooErik Erik Oros
4. @PBernhardt Paul Bernhardt

Best Built for BlackBerry App

1. Blaq
2. SayIt
3. CB10
4. Gadget Box

Best Open Source Project for BlackBerry

1. bbui.js
2. OpenDataSpace
3. GoodCitizenCascades
4. Endare / ParkInGhent

Best Scoreloop Integrated Game

1. WordsPlus
2. Run in a crowd
3. Jetpack Joyride
4. Super Hexagon

Users can vote and follow along with the award’s progress through our online page. This year’s winners will be announced at the BlackBerry Jam Americas TweetUp on May 15, 2013 in Orlando, Florida. If you want to get a feel for how the awards will work, check out this video below from last year’s ceremony.

Now that you know who’s up for the vote during this year’s BlackBerry Developer Community Awards, who are you hoping will win? Let us know who your favorites are in the comments below.

We are looking to honor those that have gone above and beyond to actively engage and help fellow BlackBerry developers. Now it’s up to you to decide who is nominated and ultimately who will win in each category!

This year’s categories are:

• Must Follow BlackBerry Developer on Twitter
• Must Follow BlackBerry Developer Evangelist on Twitter
• Most Helpful Developer Community Forum Member
• Most Helpful Developer Relations Team Member on Twitter
• Best Built for BlackBerry App
• Best Open Source Project for BlackBerry
• Best Scoreloop Integrated Game

You can nominate fellow developers from now until April 28th. The top 4 nominations in each category will be put up for a vote between May 1, 2013 to noon on May 10, 2013. This year’s winners will be announced at the BlackBerry Jam Americas TweetUp on May 15, 2013 in Orlando, Florida.

Now get to it! You can start nominating through our online form or via Twitter (Just send a tweet to @BlackBerryDev that mentions the category, the person, and the #BBDevAwards hashtag).

If you want to get a feel for how the awards will work, check out this video below from last year’s ceremony. Also feel free to browse 2012’s winners here.

If there are any categories you’d like to see for our next BlackBerry Developer Community Awards, leave them in the comments below. See you at BlackBerry Jam Americas!

BlackBerry has partnered with e27 for the Echelon 2013 event, which will be held from June 4-5 in Singapore. Echelon 2013 will be a great platform that will allow startups to be seen and heard by attending entrepreneurs, innovators, investors, government organizations, and tech companies. The conference promises to be the best stage for anyone in Asia that is looking to build an innovative business and a more vibrant tech ecosystem.

And, if you didn’t know already this is the second year that BlackBerry is showing our love for the Asian Start-up community. This year, we’re coming with an awesome offer that BlackBerry developers simply cannot refuse. If you are a BlackBerry start-up in Asia who wants an opportunity to exhibit with us at Echelon 2013, BlackBerry will sponsor your booth costs and accommodations* for the event! To pitch your app to us, click here!

Only Asia Pacific developers will be eligible for this offer. Don’t miss the opportunity to be seen and heard in the startup scene in Asia!

Your BlackBerry 10 application must be already on sale in BlackBerry World. The selection of exhibitors is at the discretion of the BlackBerry team. You will be contacted by May 31, 2013 if you are selected for the funding. For the selected developers, BlackBerry will sponsor your local accommodations in Singapore during Echelon 2013 for up to 2 people on your team, for up to 2 nights, as well as the booth space at the event.

Usually, people hate Mondays, but not Indonesian game developers! We proved it this past Monday during our live game port-a-thon in Bandung. The event was attended by more than 50 attendees from various game studios across the country. I kicked off the event by outlining the rewards and benefits of joining a live Port-A-Thon, including the chance to get $100 in apps, devices, and BlackBerry accessories, to name a few. I also spoke to the 10k Developer Commitment. Our gaming experts, Pratik Sapra and Ramprasad Madhavan followed, explaining how to port the games to BlackBerry 10, be it Native, Adobe Flash/Adobe AIR, HTML5, or even Android.

At Maxi’s Resto in Ciumbeuleuit, Bandung attendees began to port their applications with guidance from our gaming experts. It was great to be able to meet up with and assist on Indonesia’s top talent, and it is our hope that the number of mobile game developers in Indonesia continues to grow.

Ram, Pratik, and myself introducing our game development tools and rewards

The porting begins!

Over 100 games were ported during the live Port-A-Thon event, and we awarded BlackBerry PlayBook tablets to the developers with the best games ported on site. This was a very difficult decision, given the number of high-quality apps being ported!

Altermyth porting MajuMaru to BlackBerry 10

Mintsphere porting Trigger Knight

After much deliberation, the PlayBook tablets were won by Mintsphere and Zanuzawa. We also gave out seven BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha B devices to studios that had successfully ported their game on site: Agate Games, Altermyth, Own Games, Tempa Labs, Hompimplay, Tinker Games, and Cupcorn.

Media Session with Developer Relations and Business Development

Congrats to the winning team, and lastly I’d like to thank the PR team, @BlackBerryDev, BBDevID, and GameDevID for promoting the event!

Here are some highlights for the 48-hour event that you won’t want to miss:

Tuesday, November 27th and Wednesday, November 28th | 9am to 6pm ICT

Training, workshops, labs, whateveryou want to call it – learn the BlackBerry 10 fundamentals before hitting the BlackBerry Jam Asia sessions! Check it out here.

Thursday, November 29th | 9:30am to 10:45am ICT

Hear from Alec Saunders, Chris Smith, Marty Mallick and Urpo Karjalainen as they bring us through the exciting BlackBerry 10 platform. No one should miss this!

Thursday, November 29th | 6:00pm ICT

Are you ready for the next app sensation? Coming hot from winning last month’s BlackBerry JamHack – a series of 10 simultaneous Asia-Pacific hackathons across ten cities – the ten winning teams go head-to-head to pitch for the fame, the glory and the grand prize of $10,000. Attendees get to vote for their favorite to win the Dev’s Choice Award! Details here.

Thursday, November 29th and Friday, November 30th | All Day

Jam Space has something for everyone! Head over to Jam Space for some activities you shouldn’t miss – Ask the Experts area, BlackBerry Booth, 10K Reasons to Believe booth, App Generator corner, Social Lounge, Coding Lounge, BlackBerry Store, Gaming stations, and more.

Also, our very own BlackBerry App World™ team is running an onsite contest – come by the BlackBerry App World booth and tell us why your app deserves a feature on BlackBerry App World. If we are convinced, you will be featured on BlackBerry App World for two weeks! Check out the BlackBerry App World booth at Jam Space for more details.

On Day Two, you can have some fun with your BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha testing device by competing in the Code Hunt. Visit the Social Lounge or the Porting Lounge in the Jam Space to download the Code Hunt app, and then start collecting pieces of code using the NFC functionality on your device.

Friday, November 30th | 4:45pm ICT

It may be the last slot of the entire conference, but the session to look out for at this conference is JAM867 – Market Insights – Perception vs Reality. The session will be invaluable for developers who want to target the right audience with the right app! Let us bring you through what are perceptions of app usage are versus the actual usage patterns, and how you can use that knowledge to shoot for the best app.

As you can see, there’ll be loads to do at BlackBerry Jam Asia – pack your bags and be prepared for the action!

Haven’t registered yet?

There’s only one week left to register online for BlackBerry Jam Asia, 29-30 November in Bangkok, Thailand. Register by November 28th to secure your spot among the game-changers of the mobile developer community.

This week we caught up with RIM’s Gregg Ostrowski, Sr. Director of Technical Solutions, and Jeff Holleran, Sr. Director of Enterprise Product Management to chat about both enterprise app development and deployment. Check out the video below:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

We’ll be sharing more details about the Enterprise BlackBerry Jam events in the coming weeks, so stay tuned by checking back regularly on the BlackBerry Developer blog and the BlackBerry for Business blog.

Do you develop apps for business? What need are they designed to fill? Share in the comments below!

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.

Imagine if you permanently placed NFC SmartPoster tags on every seat in a stadium. With just a hover of your BlackBerry® smartphone over that tag, a huge array of content and services could be available to your event attendees.

Two pieces would build the deployment, NFC tags and a web server. The tags would be mounted on or near the seat and they wouldn’t have to hold much data. A URL containing the venue and the seating information would be enough. For example:

http://www.stadiumboss.com?ven=yyz&sec=521&lev=4&seat=36

The web server would contextually redirect or fulfill a user’s browser’s request, depending on events that were currently underway. The content of that URL would be in no way static!

If you visited this URL when there was no event occurring, you could show a map highlighting where that seat is. Who is mayor of this seat? Famous people who’ve sat here? How often do fly-balls get caught here? You would even be able to see the view that seat offers. Interactive 3D graphics from the correct point of view related to the game could be shown to a user. (Anyone familiar with the cricket infographics showing where each 4 and 6 was hit during an inning? You could bring it to a whole new level of involvement.) During a sporting event, information as typical as roster information could be a basic offering – but you could alter the content to make it seat specific.

Do you need a drink or assistance to leave your seat? Those could be requested from the same web page. (Steps taken to ensure event participation or attendance would be needed here – but if you used NFC ticketing to enter the event, you’re already done!)

Your BlackBerry smartphone has your exact location – but where’s my buddy Kev? I was sure he was sitting in section 6… If Kev allowed his seating information to be shared when he buzzed in, your smartphone could show you where Kev is seated in relation to you, or even guide you there. The venue could also have way-point tags mounted in the aisles and hall ways – perhaps a ‘convention center’ mode for easy stall mapping?

Back to the 50k Pixel TV

Everything above is dependent on the smartphone screen being aimed at you. People at concerts already hold up their phones – the web page you hit from buzzing into the concert via NFC could be just a single color. And when 50,000 people hold out their phones, those colors will merge into something visceral. The whole crowd could be glowing purple, or those screens could form a giant image.

There’s nothing stopping you from making that image dynamic. (OK, maybe the available bandwidth of the neighboring cell network is a limitation — you don’t want everyone in the stadium trying to access the web at the same time!) Making the color change in sync with the concert to form pictures and video will give you an immersive, living and dynamic 50k pixel TV!

For Users Without NFC

Static information like a seat number doesn’t need to be presented with NFC. Scanning a bar code could achieve the same result. Entering your seat number into your device manually would do the same. Hovering then hitting the web is a smoother user experience.

What Can YOU Build?

If you know exactly where a user is in a large 3D space and all that they have to do is hover their phone to engage with you – what can you build for them? Let us know your ideas in the comments.