What a week! We’ve had an amazing time here in beautiful Barcelona; showing off BlackBerry® OS 7.1, BlackBerry® PlayBook™ OS 2.0, and meeting with developers excited to build apps for BlackBerry!

On Monday, our BlackBerry DevZone section of the BlackBerry Booth was teaming with developers looking to get some last minute passes for our Developer Day sessions. All three sessions were fully booked by the afternoon but we were able to squeeze a few more developers in.

By 7pm we headed out of the Fira and on to the PocketGamer party all the while checking in with Alec Saunders who was judging at the Mobile Premier Awards. Congrats to the winner – BearCare.

We were excited to kick off the Tuesday with three booked solid sessions covering BlackBerry 10 development and BlackBerry App World™ monetization tips and tricks. All of the attending developers left with their very own BlackBerry PlayBook tablet loaded with BlackBerry PlayBook OS 2.0 so they could get started developing right away.

Wednesday was my favourite day of the conference as developers came by to ask advice about developing apps and some came to show off their HTML5 and Android apps that they had ported over to their new BlackBerry PlayBook tablet overnight!

Thursday is a typically the easiest day at this show, but this year it was one of our busiest as we manned an expert table at the WIPJam event. James Dreher, from Developer Relations hit it out of the park with his lightening round BlackBerry Development pitch to the main audience and his pitch to the Barcelona GTUG group on repackaging their apps for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet.

Thanks to all that came out. Looking forward to seeing you all again soon.

Ciao!

All Week

Come by the BlackBerry DevZone (@ 7B42, Hall 7) where, in just a few minutes, developers can port your existing Android™ app to the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet or transform an existing web application into a full-fledged app for both the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet and BlackBerry® smartphones. The BlackBerry App World™ storefront team will be here too, available to speed up the vendor approval process and help you get your app posted up on BlackBerry App World right away.

Monday, February 27th

• Mobile Premier Awards– Alec Saunders, RIM’s VP of Developer Relations and Ecosystems Development, is on the judging panel
• PocketGamer Party – Meet us there!

Tuesday, February 28th

• BlackBerry Developer Day at MWC
• Session 1: 10:00 – 12:30
• Session 2:  13:00 – 15:30
• Session 3: 16:00 – 18:30
• http://www.mobileworldcongress.com/blackberry

Thursday, March 1st

• WIPJam – BlackBerry Dev Expert table

Stay tuned to @BlackBerryDev for updates from Mobile World Congress 2012!

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Update: AppCircus Spotlight on BlackBerry video recap is now available! Check it out via the link below.

BlackBerry Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2011 was a jam packed development party. Each bootcamp and speaker session was filled with eager developers looking to learn more about BlackBerry development. I was able to meet up with Mike Kirkup, Director of Developer relations, at the end of the day and get his thoughts on how things went, as well as the rundown of his BlackBerry Development Roadmap session (highlights: Near Field Communications, OpenGL 2.0, Magnetometer and Digital Compass support are all coming in BlackBerry 6.1).

We also were able to talk briefly about the AppCircus Spotlight on BlackBerry event. The event was streamed live on our BlackBerry Mobile World Congress 2011 page, but if you missed it, don’t worry! We have a full video recap of the event available by clicking the link below. Make sure to also check out these BlackBerry App World download links for the event winner, Gbanga and honorable mention, UrbanStep.

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

The development bootcamp sessions comprise a good chunk of BlackBerry Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2011. I was able to get some time with Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog blogger, Prosanta, and Adobe Developer Evangelist, Renaun (whom you may remember from our CES 2011 coverage), right after their BlackBerry PlayBook Adobe AIR bootcamp to see what it was all about. Below are the useful resource links Prosanta and Renaun mentioned in the above video.

Prosanta’s BlackBerry Tablet OS SDK Overview (VIDEO)
BlackBerry Tablet OS Development Resources (SDK, Simulator, Webcasts)
Adobe Developer Connection BlackBerry Tablet OS Resource Page
Renaun’s “The RIM BlackBerry PlayBook Difference” Article
Renaun’s BlackBerry PlayBook Blog Content

[ YouTube link for mobile viewing ]

Mobile World Congress 2011 is a pretty interesting event from a BlackBerry developer perspective, because it actually contains a mini-DEVCON inside it: BlackBerry Developer Day. With BlackBerry Developer Day taking place tomorrow, we sat down with Director of Developer Relations, Mike Kirkup, to get a high-level overview of what attendees can expect. For those developers in Barcelona, make sure to read our previous BlackBerry Developer Day post for detailed session schedule information. If you’re not attending, don’t worry! The Inside BlackBerry Developer’s Blog will be uploading videos tomorrow with each of the BlackBerry Developer Day session leads, so you can get the info you need to build the next great BlackBerry Super App.

I am excited to announce that we will again be holding a BlackBerry® Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. This one-day event will take place on Tuesday February 15th as part of the MWC App Planet Application Developer Conferences.

We will be holding general sessions in our main auditorium to get you up to speed on the latest and greatest information on the BlackBerry development platform with special focus on how to best monetize your apps on BlackBerry App World™ and integrate with the BBM Social Platform. We will also be hosting a number of hands-on-labs covering BlackBerry® WebWorks™ and Adobe® AIR® development on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. You can attend sessions either in the morning or afternoon – and don’t forget to bring your laptops to get the most out of the bootcamp sessions!

Also, don’t miss our special AppCircus Spotlight on BlackBerry between 13.30 and 14.30. This event is a unique chance to showcase your BlackBerry app and win a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet! If you’re a developer with a BlackBerry app, you can submit it here to do a 3-minute pitch at this AppCircus Spotlight. Deadline to apply is February 4th 2011, midnight CET!

During the rest of the week, you can come by and meet with BlackBerry development experts in the BlackBerry® Developer Zone area of our booth in Hall 7. If you already have a ticket to MWC, please drop by BlackBerry Developer Zone on Monday February 14th between 9am and 6pm to register your place. We also have a number of tickets available – register here.

If you’d like to get BlackBerry at Mobile World Congress info from your desktop or directly from your smartphone while at the event, please visit BlackBerry MWC 2011 here:

• BlackBerry at Mobile World Congress 2011 – Desktop
• BlackBerry at Mobile World Congress 2011 – Mobile

Looking forward to seeing everyone in sunny Barcelona!

I am excited to announce that we will again be holding a BlackBerry® Developer Day at Mobile World Congress 2011 in Barcelona, Spain. This one-day event will take place on Tuesday February 15th as part of the MWC App Planet Application Developer Conferences.

We will be holding general sessions in our main auditorium to get you up to speed on the latest and greatest information on the BlackBerry development platform with special focus on how to best monetize your apps on BlackBerry App World™ and integrate with the BBM Social Platform. We will also be hosting a number of hands-on-labs covering BlackBerry® WebWorks™ and Adobe® AIR® development on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. You can attend sessions either in the morning or afternoon – and don’t forget to bring your laptops to get the most out of the bootcamp sessions!

Also, don’t miss our special AppCircus Spotlight on BlackBerry between 13.30 and 14.30. This event is a unique chance to showcase your BlackBerry app and win a BlackBerry PlayBook tablet! If you’re a developer with a BlackBerry app, you can submit it here to do a 3-minute pitch at this AppCircus Spotlight. Deadline to apply is February 4th 2011, midnight CET!

During the rest of the week, you can come by and meet with BlackBerry development experts in the BlackBerry® Developer Zone area of our booth in Hall 7. If you already have a ticket to MWC, please drop by BlackBerry Developer Zone on Monday February 14th between 9am and 6pm to register your place. We also have a number of tickets available – register here.

Looking forward to seeing everyone in sunny Barcelona!

Who are you and what is your role at Adobe?

I am an Adobe® Platform Evangelist and longtime Flash enthusiast. For more than 10 years I’ve been working with Flash to develop award-winning online experiences, including projects for Belgium’s largest media company in support of numerous TV shows such as Idols, Big Brother, and Miss Belgium. I became an Adobe certified freelance Flash designer/developer in 2004 and joined Adobe in 2007.

I believe you can do virtually anything with Adobe Flash®, and I’m eager to prove it. Born and raised in Belgium, I currently live near Antwerp when I’m not traveling all over Europe, the Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) to spread the word about AIR, Flash, and Flex.

Tell us a little about what you previewed at the App Planet BlackBerry Developer Day keynote…

At App Planet we demoed some of the new workflows between Adobe’s creative tools and both the BlackBerry® and Adobe development environments. With the new BlackBerry plug-in for Adobe Illustrator® version X, it’s incredibly easy to create assets for different screen sizes. It also simplifies the designer’s communication with the developer as he only needs to import one file in to the BlackBerry application development environment he’s comfortable with. We’ve also demoed how you can soon build Flash based applications for BlackBerry® smartphones. With Flash Player support coming to BlackBerry smartphones later this year, this opens up a whole new world for Flash Developers and for BlackBerry users. With Adobe Device Central, developers can emulate their Flash based applications without even owning all the different BlackBerry smartphones. They can also use Adobe Device Central to test and tweak different screen resolutions and test the application as if it was running on the smartphone. A future version of Adobe Device Central will even allow you to test features like the accelerometer and multi-touch.

Tell us why this exciting for developers and designers. How will it make their lives easier?

Designers speak in pixels and developers speak in code. By providing tools like the ones we showed at App Planet, designers and developer almost speak the same language. The tools also make it easier for the designer to create graphic assets that look great on all BlackBerry smartphones and make it easier for developers to use those creative assets in the environments they feel most comfortable in. I’m also really excited to see the Flash Player coming to BlackBerry smartphones later this year. This is going to open up a whole new market for Flash Developers.

The BlackBerry App Planet developer stand was bustling with people yesterday. While I’m sure that yesterday’s announcements and the BlackBerry developer experts on hand were the main draw, I can’t help but feel that our little LEGO robot friend played a part. Nicknamed “Johny 5″, our motorized companion – controlled by a BlackBerry® Storm2™ smartphone – entertained the crowd outside the stand and tried not to get into too much trouble. Click the link below to see another video on how “Johny 5″ is controlled, as well as a slideshow outlining how the robots and courses were built for the Developer Day Robot Challenge at the BlackBerry Developer Conference in November.

[ichc-flickr-slide width="400" height="300" username="blackberryimages" set_id="72157623314509459" player_r="71649"]

Since we updated the BlackBerry Support Community Forums a year and a half ago, we have watched both the number of posts and participants increase dramatically.  In just 18 months, our community has created over 95,000 posts on the forums across all of the different topic boards.  One of my favorite features of the forums is giving kudos, which we report on the blog to highlight the key contributors.  Developers have given out over 7,000 kudos to recognize these key forums contributors for a job well done!

One of the key aspects to a successful community forum is ensuring that experts from Research In Motion (RIM) are on the boards answering questions, capturing feedback and helping to kick start conversations. We’ve had some really phenomenal employee participation on the forums.  Mark Sohm in particular has done a fantastic job in all three of these areas and I know that many forum participants will know his name well.

However, with the number of posts continuing to increase dramatically, we are looking to the community to help us better participate in the conversation.  To that end, I am very pleased to announce that we have created a new mechanism in our Developer boards to allow existing super users to “escalate” key posts that they feel need a response from RIM.  This provides RIM with an opportunity to recognize the contributions of these super users but also helps to ensure that RIM is responding to all of the important posts.

Please join me in thanking each of our top contributors for their help in the forums and their willingness to help ensure that continued success of the BlackBerry Support Community Forums.