Our open source projects with university students from across Canada have been going superbly this term with many excellent contributions to the BlackBerry Open Source community. This is our second post this term, the first one being about the kickoff sprint at Facebook headquarters. First let’s hear what Amritpal has to say about what he’s been up to.

“Being a part of the Blackberry team through UCOSP has been a world of firsts: contributing to an open source project, bbUI.js, and developing my own mobile application.

In the first month of UCOSP, I was contributing to bbUI.js with bug fixes and features. About three weeks ago, I learned that BlackBerry extended their limited edition device upgrade. From that point, the race was on to create fully functional and entertaining application (who needs productivity!). I chose to create a 2D game in HTML5. Having not created a mobile application before, the entire process was a learning experience that encompassed the canvas element to using bbui.js in real life applications.

During the process, my go to resource was the BB10 Sample apps repository. With a variety of applications that make use of a diverse set of BB10 elements, it provided helpful launch pad and reference. I was able to use code to get my application set up (config.xml and index.html examples specifically), and see examples of API calls, and bbUI.js use cases.”

Here are some helpful tips for a new BlackBerry 10 WebWorks developer:

1. Set up your development environment such that you don’t have to recompile after every modification. (See http://devblog.blackberry.com/2009/12/update-your-blackberry-widget-without-recompiling)
2. Test your application on device frequently! Don’t assume Ripple is an exact replication of the BlackBerry 10 experience. From my own development experience, I had my biggest ‘oh-no’ moment when I tested my application on device after hours of development time and it was not functioning properly. After dreading the hours of reverts I would have to make, I was able solve the issue through a quick search on the WebWorks forum.
3. Finally, use the Web and WebWorks Development forum! Tips, helpful developers and an archive of other issues faced by developers

Since this posting is somewhat delayed from when Amritpal initially wrote it, his application has actually been approved so you can download it to your BlackBerry 10 device and check it out. Another student, Willie, had this to say about his work so far:

“Since the code sprint in mid-January, I mostly focused on getting myself acquainted with BlackBerry WebWorks and the bbUI.js components. Working on bbUI.js allowed me to get my feet wet with mobile web development, and the entire project is a great resource to get acquainted with Blackberry and developing web applications on the platform.

I’ve been mainly focusing on developing a mobile application using HTML5 and jQuery Mobile with PhoneGap to test and deploy on BlackBerry 10 (a health activity tracker). This has been my first experience with mobile development and in the past month it’s been extremely rewarding. Working with the various PhoneGap plugins that is provided allowed me to access the Blackberry camera functionality easily and the built-in Ant build and deploy scripts make it very easy to test on an actual device. The next step is to add bbUI.js elements to give any application a native look and feel, which is all easily accessible on GitHub.

As the technical lead at a mobile health technology startup, it’s been challenging to navigate through the mobile space and its fragmentation. BlackBerry 10 WebWorks has provided an easy and logical way to develop for the BlackBerry 10 platform while also giving the flexibility to use web frameworks that can work on a variety of platforms. BlackBerry has made the development process smooth and seamless for even people inexperienced with mobile development to jump in!

For the rest of the term, I’m looking forward to completing/refining my application and also continue contributing to bbUI.js”

As you can see, the students are doing some great work. In our next update we hope to showcase some achievements in WebWorks Extension development. Until then, maybe you’d like to get involved in Open Source at BlackBerry?

(Our Hackathon space at Facebook)

This is our second term working with the UCOSP organization, with a team of students from across Canada. This term we have 8 students, and I’m thrilled with what they’ve been able to accomplish already. First let’s hear from Karan Khiani, of the University of Ottawa, who is a returning student from last term:

“This past weekend has been a great mix of work and play. We were a huge group of people coming together from all around Canada to hack together for a whole weekend. We all gathered for a weekend in Palo Alto, CA and got to do our hacking at the Facebook Campus. From the moment we got to the campus for the first time (I learnt that Facebook is located on 1 Hacker Way) right to the time we left the campus (I learned that 82% of traffic on Facebook.com comes from outside USA) it was a weekend of discovery.

“Apart from having the opportunity to experience the work culture at Facebook, we managed to get quite a bit of work done ourselves. By happy coincidence, BlackBerry was hosting its final port-a-thon for the BlackBerry 10 platform. This was great timing for me as I was just about ready to get my first BlackBerry 10 app into the app store. By the time I finished my first app (a bucket list app), I had become quite familiar with the development process for the platform. This enabled me to spend another few hours to also come up with a second app (“Clock of Death”). The fact that BlackBerry 10 apps are developed using web technologies made things really convenient for me as I have a fair amount of experience working as a web developer.

“The folks at BlackBerry have done a great job with all the frameworks they have published to make things easier for app developers. That, combined with the power and flexibility of HTML5, makes the entire journey quite smooth! I can’t wait to come up with a killer idea for my third app.”

With 8 students, including 2 returning from last term, we are able to work on a few different areas at once. As a top contributor to bbUI.js, and now with a couple of applications developed using WebWorks, I’ve asked Karan to work on a new template for bbUI.js applications so that new developers have quick starting points for applications using bbUI.js. Two other students with strong C++ experience will be working on WebWorks Extensions using the new Template, and the other four are each contributing to the bbUI.js framework. Now let’s hear from one of those students, Haixuan Chen of Simon Fraser University:

(Team members join a BBM group on their new Dev Alpha devices)

“It was a great experience to meet with a bunch of new faces from other Canadian universities, to work on a new mobile platform (BlackBerry 10), and to use a new version control system (GitHub). Everything is new, but a lot of fun too!

“I have had some experience of building web applications using various frameworks, and basic experience with jQuery for front-end UI. But using HTML5, CSS3, and JavaScript to build mobile application is a brand new wonderland to me.

“Thankfully, Tim has a magic handy Ant build script, which greatly simplifies the process of building and deploying applications. I have already tried the bbUI.js samples at home. So on the first day of the hackathon, I started with the WebWorks extension sample. But I’m more interested in HTML5 and CSS3, so I spent the rest of the weekend working on bbUI.js. We have two students, Karan and Hidaya, who have already worked on bbUI.js for one term. They transferred a lot of valuable experience to newbies like me during the event. By the end of the weekend, I had submitted two pull requests regarding two bug fixes in bbUI.js. More importantly, I had gained a clear picture of the complete workflow of developing a new feature in bbUI.js, and the relationship between WebWorks framework and the underlying native device APIs.”

The students have already been hard at work with coding over the last few weeks and it’s exciting to see their progress. You can see what the students and our other open source developers are working on by checking in on our open source repositories, and perhaps you’ll find a project that you’d like to contribute to as well.

Near the end of 2012, the BlackBerry Jam Sessions were held for developers around Latin America. There was plenty of intensity and a lot of knowledge to be absorbed by all of the participants. For these events, we gathered different experts from all over the region to take part as competitors, mentors and jury members promoting the development of the BlackBerry 10 platform.

The last of the 2012 BlackBerry Jam Sessions took place in Mexico City. We broke all attendance records with more than 150 developers gathering to share their passion for BlackBerry 10!

Check out the highlight video below:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Winner – Best Red Bull App

Awarded to: Red Bull Mini Games

Different mini games for your BlackBerry 10 – it is worth noting the level of completeness the developers achieved for an event that only lasted one day.

Winner – Best Game

Awarded to: A volar con Red Bull

A very addictive action game which uses the accelerometer to control the main character to advance across different levels – flying with a little help from Red Bull.

Winner – Best e-Commerce App

Awarded to: BB10 Tax Call

A very practical app, developed to help you organize taxes from your mobile device.

Winner – Best Hackathon App

Awarded to: Bits Destroy

The winners of the event were Bits Destroy team, very young enthusiasts of BlackBerry 10 that developed a game in HTML5. The game had an outstanding performance despite the lack of a JS framework.

This past week has been a busy one for BlackBerry® and BlackBerry developers in South Africa, with our BlackBerry® Jam Super Hackathon and the opening of a brand new BlackBerry Apps Lab taking place.

On November 2nd, we opened our second South African BlackBerry Apps Lab in the innovation hub of Cape Town. This followed the launch of the first BlackBerry Apps Lab at the University of Pretoria (UP) this past May.

RIM® collaborated with Bandwidth Barn, a fully-owned subsidiary of The Cape IT Initiative (CITI), to open the new BlackBerry Apps Lab in Cape Town. The BlackBerry Apps Labs will accelerate mobile application development in South Africa as well as create new economic opportunities and jobs in the mobile space. The facilities provide local developers – including students, start-ups, entrepreneurs and others – with development, marketing, sales and training resources to help them make their apps commercially successful.

Developers describe the labs as a dream come true. “RIM has eliminated the cost that my startup company would have incurred by providing resources such as the latest BlackBerry devices for testing and high performance development machines,” said Blessing Mahlalela, a student at UP and a developer. Fellow UP student Leon van Dyk added, “My programming abilities for the BlackBerry platform have increased monumentally – and so has my interest in mobile development as a career choice.”

BlackBerry Jam Session

On November 3rd, South Africa’s first ever BlackBerry Jam Session was hosted at the BlackBerry Apps Lab in Cape Town, with a smaller satellite event at the University of Pretoria lab. This Super Hackathon event was one of many hosted around the world ahead of the launch of the next-generation BlackBerry® 10 platform.

The Hackathon was an intense 10-hour programming session where developers could start planning their apps, create the business model and develop their apps. Developers came up with some cool apps that show just how much potential there is in our next-generation operating system and platform. The winners included:

• Best App – ReserveMe – Flying Solo (Leon Van Dyk)
• Best E-Commerce – BizFinder – BrightLabs (Kehiloe Sereo, Dintle Sealetsa)
• Best Design – Snap Menu – Backspace (Ndivhuwo Nthambeleni, Vulthari Rikhotso, Eugene Masinga)

Alexandra Zagury, MD for South Africa and Southern Africa at RIM, said: “These events form part of our strategy to foster mobile innovation and help grow South Africa’s next wave of mobile app developers. We are extremely excited by the talent and enthusiasm we see in the country’s thriving BlackBerry developer community and the apps they are developing for BlackBerry 7 as well as BlackBerry 10.”

Pictures from the BlackBerry Apps Lab in Cape Town opening on November 2nd:

Blessing Mahlalela and Leon van Dyk, students at the University of Pretoria	Alexandra Zagury, Managing Director for South & Southern Africa at RIM
Lanie Visser, Marketing Director for South Africa at RIM acted as MC for the event	Glenn Stein, the lab manager at the new BlackBerry Apps Lab in Cape Town
The event was attended by media, developer partners and customers

Pictures from the Hackathon at the BlackBerry Apps Lab in Cape Town on November 3rd:

Technical Partnership Manager, Michael Weitzel, addressing the ‘hackers’	Luca Sale from the Dev Relations team taking developers through the basics of developing for BlackBerry
Developers busy turning their app ideas into reality	The hackers had lots of fun
Developers at the BlackBerry Apps Lab at the University of Pretoria also took part and shared in the action

It may have been the warm weather, the great food or the inspiring scenery but the developers of South Africa couldn’t have a picked a better time or place for the first BlackBerry® Jam Session Super Hackathon in Africa!

It was truly a remarkable event with people flying from Botswana, Tanzania, Zimbabwe and different parts of South Africa. To make the event even more challenging we decided to hold a multi-city hackathon: with the help of our two BlackBerry Apps Lab Managers in Pretoria and Cape Town we established a video call session so that attendees and technical resources could interact and share experiences.

The event kicked off early in the morning when, after some caffeine and calories, everyone had enough energy to function and start the brainstorming.

There were 11 teams with one team, @NegatronDev, working on two apps at the same time!

And at the end of the day, only three teams could put their hands on the prize. I had the opportunity to spend some time with all the teams and got to know them better

Best App – ReserveMe – Flying Solo (Leon Van Dyk)

Since joining our BlackBerry Jam World Tour back in July, Leon’s involvement with the BlackBerry platform has grown and he has actively participated with the activities in the BlackBerry Apps Lab in Pretoria.

“I registered for the hackathon to support the local community of developers, not only within Cape Town but also Southern Africa. The opportunity to meet local developers and network was a huge bonus with a few friendships being made before I left. I also wanted to test my BlackBerry skills and to partake in the first Jam Session Super Hackathon in Africa!” says Leon who has become quite familiar now with BlackBerry development -  “I have developed one app that involves managing events and is heavily integrated into the BlackBerry 10 experience. I intend on continuing to develop ReserveMe and refine it a bit more until it reaches my personal quality requirements as well as BlackBerry’s . I plan to have both apps in the store before launch”.

Best Design – SnapMenu – Backspace (Ndivhuwo Nthambeleni, Vutlhari Rikhotso, Eugene Masinga)

Backspace is a team based in Pretoria who decided to create a menu app for students who have a tight budget and want a wide choice of fast food.  Vutlhari told me “I get all my app ideas from problems that I face, so the idea came from a constant irritation of having to look at the display menus in restaurants.”

Coding is their passion, “I love coding, I love designing, I love apps and I love people. I subscribe to the school of thought that believes software should be free unless it makes the receiving party money. I joined because I want to aid in enhancing the experience of using a BlackBerry 10 device”.

Vutlhari is currently working on a BlackBerry 10 application that will be released soon and he’s finding the BlackBerry Apps Lab in Pretoria to be extremely useful “Yes, the lab for one has been one of the greatest things about developing for BlackBerry, along with the people, the access to tools and internet. They all have been a major help in learning BlackBerry development”

Best e-commerce – BizFinder – BrightLabs (Kehiloe Sereo, Dintle Sealetsa)
BrightLabs came all the way from Botswana to represent their development studio. They are already familiar to the BlackBerry platform having developed an app for BlackBerry OS devices called ‘ekse!’.  They decided to attend the hackathon as that was “…an unmissable opportunity to have our first ‘live’ BlackBerry event experience and join in on the fun” says Dintle.

So how do they feel about being one of the winners?

“Winning app? We still can’t get used to the sound of that! We were more than happy to just submit anything really. We brainstormed some ideas – some crazy, some colorful – until we settled on the idea we thought was easy and quick to hack, usable and of value to the user”

And it’s a pleasure to hear that they think “the BlackBerry developer community is what makes the platform fun to develop on. And BlackBerry has done great in offering these developers top-notch support and development, and a robust set of tools to work with. Happy developers are a result of a happy and fun platform and ecosystem – KUDOS!”

And when the sun was down it was time to pack everything up and head home.  The adrenaline was still high but some devs had a long way to go before being able to reach their bed.

And to sum this up “One can see huge amounts of effort was put into the event and I would like to thank everyone who participated into making it a reality and I hope to see them soon”

Not our words but we could say exactly the same!  Big thanks to the BlackBerry Apps Lab Manager of Pretoria, Jacques Du Toit, and Cape Town, Glenn Stein, for supporting us throughout the event.

And last but not least, Lany Sommers, Senior Business Development Manager, whose mastermind is responsible for building the state-of-the-art BlackBerry Apps Lab facilities across the region says ‘The talent in South Africa is overwhelming.  A HUGE thank you to all who made the event happen and for all those who participated.  What a way to inaugurate the launch of our lab in Cape Town!’

Next African stop: Nairobi, Kenya (Nov 17)
See you there!

Luca (@BlackBerryLuca) & Michael (@mweitzel)

Last weekend was a smashing weekend for developers in Asia Pacific – almost 500 developers in India, Singapore, Malaysia, and Philippines got together and hacked their way through Friday evening to Sunday morning!

Yes, I am talking about BlackBerry® JamHack 2012, the first simultaneous Asia-Pacific-wide 40-hour BlackBerry hackathon. This weekend’s five simultaneous JamHack events were organized by Rubus Labs DevGroup (Bangalore), BlackBerry Developer Group India (Delhi), BBMYCoders (Kuala Lumpur), and PinoyBBDev and BBDevSG (Singapore)! While the 500 JamHackers were hacking in five different cities, their spirit and goal was admirably unanimous – hacking their way to the best app on BlackBerry® 10.

On Friday evening, participants started their 40-hour with registrations, networking and a series of RIM® -designed sessions, including local market insights session called “Country Vibes”, a “JamBytes” session on BlackBerry 10 design and user experience, and an introduction to the Built for BlackBerry program and the 10K Developer Commitment.

Each developer group helped participants to help form teams to ensure the best-rounded pitch on Sunday.

The hackathon started around midnight, and the dev groups had planned various icebreaker activities to wake up their contestants. If I had to pick my favorite icebreaker, it’d be the BBMYCoders Gangnam Style kickoff! Check out the video:

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

A great start is always important, but what’s better than that? Solid support and non-stop energizing activities to keep awake! Throughout the 40 hours, developer group leaders, co-managers, partners, business development teams and RIM Developer Relations were present to motivate and help our hackers. But it didn’t end at that: Our experts in RIM Canada didn’t want to feel left out, so they offered virtual help-desk hours for our hackers through Twitter® (#BBJamHelp) which saw over a hundred questions and tweets! Special thanks to @Naveenan5, @PratikSapra, @RSSessantotto, and @WaterlooErik for staying up through the weekend to support our APAC developers.

Other than providing support, the developer group managers were also busy keeping the teams entertained (and awake)! If the participants were bored of coding, needed a breather, or just wanted an excuse to have fun, there were exciting activities that kept them up. Let’s take a look at what tactics were used by our group leaders to keep their participants awake:

Massage Corner by PinoyBBDev
Tired from hacking? Teams in Philippines were rewarded by one of the best break activities they can get – a spa treatment onsite!

Quiztions by PinoyBBDev
Quizzes are fun, and even more so when they are done over Twitter. PinoyBBDev planned a social media quiz with small giveaways for the quiztion winners.

Pen in Bottle by BBMYCoders
While the Pinoy Devs were busy getting massages, the KL JamHackers were tasked by BBMYCoders team to complete a task — but what are they doing?

Photo courtesy of BBMyCoders

The deal is that they had to untie a pen from their back and drop the pen into a bottle behind them, with a paper bag over their head. Sounds fun and simple, but they were definitely trying hard to get the special prizes given out!

Some other fun activities:

Game on at the Gamezones

Best DJ

Singing Competition on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet

Of course, it wasn’t all fun and games — the teams had to work hard on getting the apps done within the 40 hours, and their hard work and efforts were all worth it! It absolutely showed during the pitching sessions – more than 100 apps were showcased across the five cities. Here were the teams from the pitches and their winning apps:

Bangalore, India

Winner: Team QEDGE
App: Story Board, a presentation and slides creation HTML application on BlackBerry 10

Delhi, India

Winner: Team Fukraaas
App: UnTANGLED, a complex puzzle game built with HTML on BlackBerry 10

Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia

Winner: Team Websmith ATP
App: 1BB, an augmented reality application on BlackBerry 10
For more event highlights, check out BBMYCoders’ post: http://bit.ly/BBMYCodersJamHack

Manila, the Philippines

Winner: Team Rain Creative
App: Realm of Elysium, a strategy game inspired by Battleship

Singapore

Winner: Tiam Yang, Tyler Projects Ptd Ltd
App: Drop Zone, a HTML game on BlackBerry 10

All in all, the participants had loads of fun, were rewarded with giveaways, and walked away with awesome prizes even if they didn’t win. Teams walked away with a bag of great goodies such as water bottles, t-shirts, stickers, and more. Also, all participants who attended BlackBerry JamHack received a BlackBerry JamHack rewards badge on BlackBerry JamZone as well as a free pass to BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012 in Thailand! Spirits were definitely sky high when the events ended and everyone walked away a winner.

This series of JamHacks would not have been possible without the BlackBerry developer groups. To find out more about the developer groups behind the scenes of the awesome JamHacks, check out:

• Bangalore: Rubus Labs DevGroup
• Delhi: BlackBerry Developer Group India
• Kuala Lumpur: BBMYCoders
• Manila: PinoyBBDev
• Singapore: BBDevSG

Registration for the next five cities is still open – so don’t miss your chance to be jammin’ with us on October 19-21 (5-city simultaneous hacks):

• Indonesia – Jakarta by BBDevID
• Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City by BlackBerry Viet Nam Dev Group
• Thailand – Bangkok by @BBDevThailand
• China – Shanghai by CNBBDev
• Australia – Melbourne

All ten winners from BlackBerry JamHack city events will be walking away with an all-expenses paid trip to the BlackBerry Jam Asia in Bangkok, where they will be vying with nine other teams to be crowned Asia Pacific champions and receive the grand prize of an all-expenses paid trip to BlackBerry 10 global launch, amongst other great prizes!

Follow the hashtag #BBJamHack to find out more about the JamHack events – here are some tweets we were pretty proud to see:

Interested to learn more about some program or events mentioned above? Click to learn more about:

• BlackBerry JamHack 2012
• BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012
• How to form a Developer Group in your region
• BlackBerry Jam Rewards program

New York City is the city that never sleeps, and next week will be no different! From Friday October 19th to Saturday October 20th, the New York City BlackBerry® Developers Group will be hosting a hackathon. Starting at 6:30 PM on Friday and running through to 5:30 PM on Saturday night, local NYC developers are invited to come and develop applications and games using the best mobile tools available.

This event will be super exciting. I’d like to personally challenge everyone to come out, create a stellar app and get it ready for submission to the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. I’ll extend the challenge even further: The first 3 teams/individuals that create an app and get it ready for submission to BlackBerry App World in the time allotted will receive a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha Device. Create an app, get it ready for submission, and you’ll get a device. Plain, simple, awesome.

Finally, I (@party_pat) will be on hand to help navigate the waters, give a presentation on Cascades™, and to help out where I can. This should be an awesome event, and I can’t wait to see everyone out there.

We’re having a Super Hackathon in NYC. Two Days. BlackBerry Experts and more: bit.ly/PXZ73y cc: @blackberrydev

— BlackBerryDevNY (@BlackBerryDevNY) October 10, 2012

If you’ve registered already, invite a friend. If you haven’t registered yet, there is no time like the present. The details of the hackathon can be found at http://www.meetup.com/BBDevNY/events/85940442/

Be a part of the first simultaneous Asia-Pacific-wide BlackBerry® hackathon! Hack your way through 40 hours of non-stop coding. From ideation to creation, together with our experts, make it all app-en to win cash, devices, trips and more. Indulge on an endless supply of food, drinks, activities and giveaways. Go head-to-head in ten major cities and advance to BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012 to represent your team and country. Whether you are an experienced or aspiring developer, designer or an entrepreneur, you can bring your skills and ideas to turn your ideas into reality. It’s going to be a blast!

Organised by ten Developer Groups & Communities in Asia Pacific, each 40-hour JamHack event will provide an opportunity for four-member teams of developers, designers, marketeers, entrepreneurs to work on an awesome app for BlackBerry 10.  To ensure that each team is properly equipped for the challenge, RIM is providing round-the-clock Global Technical Helpdesk support, by the tech experts from Developer Relations Asia Pacific team onsite, as well as platform experts streaming live from North America.

Don’t miss the great opportunity to hack with the subject-matter experts and fellow brilliant minds, across continents! On each weekend, there will be five simultaneous JamHack events happening:

Jammin’ on Oct 12-14 (5-city simultaneous Hacks):

• India – Delhi (by @skjsaurabh)
• India – Bangalore (by Rubus Labs DevGroup)
• Singapore (by @BBDevSG)
• Malaysia – Kuala Lumpur (by @BBMYCoders)
• Philippines – Manila (by @PinoyBBDev)

Jammin’ on Oct 19-21 (5-city simultaneous Hacks):

• Indonesia – Jakarta (by @BBDevID)
• Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City (by @Louis_Keeper)
• Thailand – Bangkok (by @BBDevThailand)
• China – Shanghai (@immmooo)
• Australia – Melbourne (@csaunders_ca)

Over each of the weekend events, RIM will also be sharing market insights tailored to the respective cities so developers can develop market-relevant applications. Beyond that, the two days will also include sharing sessions aptly named as JamBytes. During these sessions, participants will have the chance to understand in-depth developmental tips and tricks on BlackBerry 10 platform, how to enhance their BlackBerry 10 applications, as well as go to market strategies for their new apps.

The ten winning teams from the JamHack events will receive an all-expense paid trip to BlackBerry Jam Asia, where you will represent your city and compete at the Asia-Pacific Finals.

Final winning team of the “Asia-Pacific Finals” will win the grand prize of:

• Cash Prize of US$10,000
• BlackBerry App World™ marketing for 2 months for BlackBerry 10 launch in Asia, Middle East and Africa (where applicable) & one  week marketing in North America, Latin America and Europe (where applicable)
• App marketing with launch campaign of BlackBerry 10 in market
• Dedicated technical & Business Consultancy for up to third month after launch of BlackBerry 10 in team’s market

Don’t hesitate! Sign up or find out more at: www.blackberryjamhack.com!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

On August 25th, an event of particular awesomeness happened in Recife, Brasil — the inaugural BlackBerry® Jam Sessions Hackathon. Fuelled by pizza and energy drinks, over 80 developers had 10 hours to create their apps for BlackBerry® 10, using HTML, C++, Cascades™, Adobe® AIR® or Java®/Android™. Once the dust had settled 10 hours later, there were 16 apps ready to be showcased, as well as many happy and satisfied developers.

Our very own Demian Borba was on the scene, and captured some great photos to boot. Check out his recap of the event, and while you’re at it, have a look at the BlackBerry Jam Sessions calendar to see if one will be happening in a town near you.

Here’s Rich from our Enterprise Mobility Architect team reporting on the recent BlackBerry® Dev Day and Hackathon in Washington, D.C.!

A few weeks ago, I had the opportunity to welcome a group of developers to the DC office of Research In Motion® (RIM®) for a BlackBerry Dev Day and Hackathon focused on HTML5. We had a great turnout for the full day event, with attendees from federal government agencies, government contractors, and intergovernmental organizations in the Beltway region. Developer skill levels also varied greatly in terms of previous coding experience. Many had never worked web technologies before and were surprised at how easy it was to code using the HTML5 and BlackBerry® WebWorks™ tooling. Participant Darrion Beckles, a contractor for the NIH, said, “I definitely want to learn more about programming! I’m interested in it now – now that I’ve gotten to meet some other programmers.”

I started the day by giving an overview on developing BlackBerry applications, and I didn’t neglect to mention the continued growth of the BlackBerry App World™ storefront over the past year. I also talked about the importance of HTML5 in building cross-platform experiences for both the BlackBerry® 7 OS and BlackBerry® 10 platforms. The Hackathon was a great opportunity for the attendees to gain some hands-on coding experience with tools such as BlackBerry WebWorks, bbui.js, AliceJS, the Ripple emulator, and BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablets.

I was very impressed by the apps the various teams were able to produce in just one afternoon! Considering again how many participants were working with bbUI.js for the first time, the developers seemed comfortable with the tooling. They were excited to present their apps, which included one that allowed you to challenge and compete against other BlackBerry users to become the “Titan-Berry” or the “Wack-Berry.”

Our winning team was from the World Bank’s International Finance Corporation (IFC), who used bbUI.js (with no previous experience) to build a GPS-based app that displayed the air quality index. “It gives the air quality for today, tomorrow, and the day after…so that [users] can decide whether to stay indoors and what activities to do,” said Desmond Andrades, a member of the winning team.

The winning app!

In the end, I definitely thought the day flew by, and it was a good balance of high productivity mixed in with lots of fun moments. It is exciting to see the enterprise developer community in the Washington, D.C. metropolitan area diving into our latest tooling, and I look forward to seeing more custom apps in the future!

RIM Team and the winning app developers! From left to right: Rich Balsewich, John Mutter, Deepak Srivastava, Desmond Andrades, Hyunjun Jung