I (Arun Nagarajan, Pyxis Mobile) am typing this from our company headquarters here in Waltham, MA. What a great show by RIM! My team and I are excited to install all the new tools (Eclipse Plug-in!), try out the new ideas and get back to work!

The ball is now in our court!

Arun Nagarajan

I (Lance Obermeyer of Digby) sat in on J05 (Making Connections, Managing Network Connectivity). One important thing the presenter announced was the availability of the Network Diagnostic Tool. This is a new tool that tests a user’s connectivity. I think this is fabulous. I created a similar tool in the past to give to customers that were having trouble, but my tool isn’t nearly as rich as this one. Further, the tool is delivered as open source, so a developer can integrate it into their program or add their company branding.

Details of the tool are available in the Developer’s KB here: What Is - Network Diagnostic Tool

Lance

In one session yesterday (birds of a feather I think) there was a question asked about if or when we would see full J2SE on the BlackBerry. The answer was basically never (though Mike Kirkup says “never say never”) which I think is probably true. But one of the reasons given was that it would be better to have the best solution for a mobile device rather than just implement a desktop VM.

I’m sitting in Mathew Bell’s session on the UI infrastructure on BlackBerry. He’s covering them in great detail and explaining what is new with them. The fact that the APIs are moving more and more towards features seen on J2SE is interesting. The most recent example is using a BorderFactory to get a border style you can pass on to the field to render a custom border. It’s been a while since I wrote J2SE UI code but that seems eerily familiar.

Now I know that we’ll see common design patterns on widely different platforms but it seems like the more powerful devices get the easier it is to implement desktop level features on them. Why re-invent the wheel? RIM has had their own UI classes for a long time because MIDP UI classes, frankly, suck. But another common theme on new APIs is that it’s much easier to implement some Java standard then come up with a new design that’s unique to BB (obviously) which is why you see so many JSRs being implemented. At what point is it easier to implement Swing or AWT or another full featured desktop UI set then to continuously make incremental improvements on the custom RIM UI?

Jeff Bacon

Sr. Smartphone Product Manager

Magmic Games (bplay.com)

The Birds of a Feather and Panel sessions have always been a favourite of mine at WES and DevCon has continued this tradition with some excellent interactive sessions yesterday.

B06 on ‘What Makes a Great Mobile Application?’ allowed the audience to get a great external perspective on the key constituents to a commercially successful application.

The JB01 Java session also highlighted the different viewpoints in the development community and is always a great forum to throw new ideas in front of a combined audience of peers and RIM team leads.

My ‘hidden’ highlight of Tuesday at DevCon? Alexis from the Alliances team on stage playing Guitar Hero at the DevCon party last night - she easily won the competition on style!

James Shannon
CTO, DevelopIQ

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I (Denver Coneybeare) have been hearing the term “application center” around the office for quite some time, but until now I never really knew what it was.  For those of you that missed the announcement by RIM President and Co-CEO Mike Lazaridis in his keynote on Tuesday morning, the application center and application storefront are two new initiatives to improve the distribution channel of third-party BlackBerry applications.

The application strorefront will be a web site that will provide a standard way for BlackBerry users to purchase third-party software.  I am particularly excited about this offering because of its mutual benefit to RIM and application developers alike.  I expect that it will become the first place BlackBerry users will go to get their beloved applications and find exciting new ones.

One of the neat things about BlackBerry is that it hasn’t been plagued with low-quality applications.  We have all experienced the pain, or even loss, on our desktop PCs that comes from spyware, viruses, or just plain annoying applications that you regret installing within minutes.  I’m sure there are annoying ones out there too for BlackBerry, but I haven’t seen any.  Since RIM will control which applications are available on the application storefront this will further allow BlackBerry to maintain its high-quality reputation by filtering out those that defame the platform.  For ISVs this is fantastic because it means that customers will continue to feel comfortable using and relying on your applications in their day to day lives, as well as try out new ones.

I’m curious to see how it will address licensing.  It has to be difficult for application vendors to find a balance between flexibility and profits when deciding how to sell their software.  For example, some applications are “activated” for a single device by using its PIN number.  But if the user upgrades to a new device or loses their device do you really want to make them pay again?  That would be nice, but leaves the end-user feeling ripped off.  Maybe it’s then better to use an email address.  But then what if they change that?  Maybe it will be based on their login to the storefront, allowing them to re-download any applications they have previously purchased.  But then what if they login and download it for all their friends?  Maybe give them up to 5 re-downloads, but that has the same problem still.  I am very interested to see how RIM addresses this.

Here is a link to a press release about the application center and application storefront.

–Denver Coneybeare

After a little over 2 days of sessions and meetings I have to say that this is the conference I always wished WES would be. Marketers and Sales people beware, these sessions are highly technical in nature. While I’m quite familiar already with the features and functionality in the tools and APIs prior to OS 4.6, the many sessions on APIs, tools changes and device functionality available now on OS 4.7 and being worked on for future software and device releases have been fantastic.

Let no one say that you are not provided the opportunity to make your feedback known to those product managers and developers at RIM that are responsible for setting priorities and implementing features at RIM. The 90 min Birds of a Feather session late on Tues was the place to be. If you have ever been to the equivalent session at WES, I would say this one was one of the best yet and people probably could have kept the panel chained to that desk for twice that time given the opportunity.

Naturally, the morning session on BlackBerry Game Development Challenges was of course dope (un-biased as I am of course). We’ve had a lot of good feedback on it so far and appreciate all of it.

In the mid-afternoon, W04 was more popular than I expected. There were some great questions on Web Signals and the BlackBerry Wallet which showed how interested people are about these two new RIM products. I hope anyone engaging consumers or individuals in the BlackBerry market checks out these products/services and provides feedback to RIM to help continue to improve them.

Jeff Bacon,

Sr. Smartphone Product Manager,

Magmic Games (bplay.com)

The excitement and anticipation of all the keynote participants from behind the big curtain at the General Session was awesome.  You could just feel the energy from everyone being so excited to have our first annual Developer Conference and how we were all so eager to let everyone know of the great new announcements.

There were lots of us back there ranging from developers and companies from our developer community, to top level RIM executives, Will-I-Am, and those of us doing some tooling demos hoping and praying we wouldn’t trip and fall during that long walk across the stage

The amount of audio/video equipment, production people, camera people and organizers can make you feel a little bit overwelmed with the amount of work that goes into making a production like that work like clockwork.  I don’t think that spinning red light on the ceiling, that you typically would see inside a diving submarine that was just caught by someone’s radar, was helping my nerves all that much. But when your turn rolls around, you get mic’ed up and out you go.

From the applause during the session it sounds like we are on the right track to provide the BlackBerry community with the tools, technology and support needed to create and sell great applications.   We continue to look to you in the development community to pop by the Ask the Experts, participate in the Q&A portions of the sessions and book those one-on-one meetings to make sure your voice is heard.

The amount of transparency, feedback and sharing of ideas and information has been incredible.  And it has only been 2 days!!  It was great to look out at the crowd during the General Session and witness the looks of genuine passion, willingness to share and eagerness to create great applications on BlackBerry.

Lets keep those ideas and questions rolling!

Now its time to re-charge and get ready for the last jam packed day.

Tim Neil
Manager, Web Development & Content Platform
Research In Motion

For all you Firefox users out there, I (Denver Coneybeare) want to let you know about a fantastic way to improve your experience browsing javadocs.  I’ve used this utility for more than 3 years during my BlackBerry development at RIM and feel very limited when I try to browse javadocs without it!  It’s called “Javadoc Incremental Search” and is a user script for the “Greasemonkey” extension.  Here is a screenshot of what it looks like:

Basically, it adds a textbox in the bottom-left frame.  When you start typing in it the list of classes below is dynamically filtered to only show those that match what you type.  The search is not case sensitive.  If you type a ‘#’ character then you can also search the methods and fields of the top class in the list.  Pressing ENTER in the textbox opens the class javadocs in right frame as if the top element in the list below was clicked.

How to Install:

1. Launch Mozilla Firefox and browse to the Firefox Add-ons page
2. Install the “Greasemonkey” extension and restart Firefox
3. Browse to http://userscripts.org/
4. Type “javadoc” in the search textbox at the top-right of the screen and press ENTER
5. Click the link for “Javadoc Incremental Search”
6. Click on the “Install This Script” link in the top right of the screen
7. Follow the prompts to install the script

Now when you browse to any javadoc web page, such as the BlackBerry JDE 4.5.0 API Reference, you will get that cool textbox.

–Denver Coneybeare

I (Lance Obermeyer of Digby) sat in on session W03 (Inside the New BlackBerry Browser).  Two things caught my attention.

First, the new browser in 4.6 has JavaScript off by default, which got a poor reception from the audience.  The presenter went into the reasons for this decision.  At the root is RIM’s belief that most JavaScript does not provide value for users.  He gave an example of pages that are normally 70k growing to over 400k once all of the JS is processed and dependent content fetched.  Further, the extra content is usually stuff the user doesn’t care about, like advertisements.  While this is bad for developers trying to create mobile specific sites that include JS, I admit that this is probably the correct decision in most cases.  It is frankly hard to argue with reducing page size from a user perspective.

Second, the new browser is not used as the embedded browser (aka browser field).  The reason is that in a sufficient number of cases the behavior of the new rendering engine is different from the old one, so existing applications running on 4.6 applications might break.  That makes sense.

Lance

That’s a variation of a quote that I (Arun Nagarajan) heard at Tyler’s Web Signals and BB Wallet talk. It was eye-opening to learn that RIM is approaching the 50%-50% split between enterprise and consumer users within its 20 million subscribed users. Tyler’s point gets at the fact that 50% of users that are actually enterprise users still want to have lifestyle and personal apps… something that can’t be ignored.  I suspect more and more BES admins are opening up the ability for verified 3rd party consumer apps to get on a company BlackBerry.

My company (Pyxis Mobile) is in the Enterprise Software business but we recently posted an internally configured application to provide mobility for Netflix (SmartFlicks - if you have Netflix, you want this!) and were impressed by the number of people that downloaded it right away and started using it. And most of the users are not on a BES. These users are sophisticated and they truly enjoy a good mobile application. They were also not shy about letting us know about some of the the apps shortcomings.

Gone were the days of expecting that consumers need handholding when it comes to downloading and using a mobile applications. Also gone are the days when a corporate user can’t have Google Talk or SmartFlicks. The worlds are merging and the mobile needs are increasing.

Arun Nagarajan. Pyxis Mobile.

Here are the steps to enable the preprocessor in the JDE Plug-in for Eclipse, as presented by Ken Wallis on Tuesday:

To use the pre-processing function of the plug-in, you need to add the following property to eclipse/configuration/config.ini file and restart Eclipse:

osgi.framework.extensions=net.rim.eide.preprocessing.hook

–Denver Coneybeare

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Just came out of session J15, presented by Magmic, covering off game development and optimization.

They spoke to the advanced buffering mechanisms they employed to improve frame rates, repaint strategies, and a few gotchas that they discovered through their many years of experience. All in all, they did a great job of providing current and future game developers with best practices for their applications. If you weren’t able to attend this session (maybe you were in a session covering off the touch APIs on Storm), I highly recommend that you check out this session after the conference.

- Brian Zubert

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Phew… My head is spinning after all the announcements made at the general session this morning. The loudest applause seemed to arise from will.i.am talking about the Band in Hand solution which showed how the Plazmic CDK 4.6 blurred the lines of where theming stops and Java begins. Second to will, Jeff McDowell’s announcement of free devices for all attendees was also very well received. No big surprise in either case.

After those two, there were some very interesting responses to the various announcements. The big winners? SQLlite, Gears, enhanced documentation, and preprocessor support. SQLlite allows developers to leverage a relational database in their applications, Gears is a nice win for web developers, enhanced documentation benefits everyone (in JDE 4.5 and above you can report poor documentation directly from the javadoc), and preprocessor support finally solves the problem of supporting multiple codelines.

- Brian Zubert

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One of my favorite announcements in the keynote today came from Ken Wallis and David Yach which may have flown under the radar of many in the audience.

One of the biggest pain points for mobile developers on BlackBerry is the difficulty associated with using the latest and greatest APIs based on the limitations of what devices and handheld software versions are available in market. RIM initially adopted a very pragmatic object oriented approach to solving this problem which ended up adding complexity for developers who never used it.

Today, Ken and David announced and showcased the introduction of preprocessor support in the new BlackBerry JDE Plugin for Eclipse. This product is available for download from our website today. By using preprocessor support, developers can maintain a single codeline for their entire product and simply compile in (or out) based on the handheld software version.

And if that wasn’t enough - if you attend my session tomorrow at 2pm (B08) I will show you exactly how you can leverage this in your existing JDE.  A big step forward that I am personally very excited about!

Mike Kirkup
Manager, Developer Relations

It never ceases to amaze me what developers do with our technology once we release it out into the wild. Not sure about you, but the apps showcased in the keynote and the contest winners announced by the partners fund just blew me away: personal radio, connecting music artists to their fans, live ball games in a browser, media and social networking brought together, rich, animated interfaces all seamlessly integrated with the device experience! I can only image what will be coming after the announcements we’ve made today, exposing even more of the end-to-end BlackBerry Platform to the community.

-Chris Smith

Senior Director, BlackBerry Development Platform

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Here are a few more useful tidbits that I (Denver Coneybeare) picked up from Jeremy Weber’s “Web Development 101″ seminar on Monday:

GPS Available to Web Pages: It is possible to find out the GPS coordinates of the device using JavaScript in web pages.  I’m pretty sure, though, that it is disabled on devices by default for security reasons.  To enable it go to “Browser -> Options -> General Properties” and checkmark “Enable JavaScript Location Support” (steps followed on my Bold 9000 device running 4.6 software). There is a Knowledge Base article titled “What Is - JavaScript methods to use location-based services” about this feature.

Source IP Address using BIS-B: When a BlackBerry user browses the internet using the “Internet Browser”, a.k.a “BIS-B”, then the connection is opened by one of only a few MDS-CS servers operated by RIM.  As a consequence, examining the source IP address of the request will show the IP of the MDS-CS server and not the BlackBerry device.  As a consequence, no useful information about the geographic location of the remote client can be deduced from the IP address.  Moreover, if many BIS-B Browser users are all browsing to a web site then each one will appear to the HTTP server to be coming from the same IP address.

Browser Enhancements in 4.6: The browser engine has been largely rewritten debuting in 4.6 software to provide a much richer user experience compared to previous software versions.  The new browser includes full support for HTML 4.01, CSS 2.1, SVG, DOM level 2, AJAX (XMLHttpRequest), JavaScript 1.5, and ECMAScript 262, and others.

–Denver Coneybeare

I’m Lance Obermeyer, the CTO of Digby.  Digby is a consumer focused ecommerce application.  So, my interest is the consumer market.

The Alan Brenner session was very useful.  At a high level, his basic message was that there are two first class developer platforms, Java and Web.  While there is certainly investment in the Java side, it seems to me the real emphasis was on the web side.    The real highlight was the upcoming support of Google Gears including worker pool and database storage.  These will definitely enable some new applications.

My question, though, is the rollout schedule for this technology.  As a developer of consumer applications, the existing device population is the focus since existing devices are, by definition, 100% of the total available market.  It will be important to learn over the next two days the release vehicles for these new technologies so that I can properly lay out my development plan.

It is hard to believe the first day is already over but with all of the sessions, Ask the Experts questions, and impromptu meetings it didn’t take much for the day to go quickly.

All of my sessions were very well attended and what I found even more exciting was the level of questions being asked by attendees. There is a passion by many in the audience to soak up as much information as possible during the conference. I love the enthusiam and share that passion about the BlackBerry platform.

Mike Kirkup
Manager, Developer Relations

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The session highlight for me yesterday was J12 covering the forthcoming L rendering engine. It’s a classic example of how RIM can take an existing API and not only improve it, but leverage their hardware platform to yield even higher application performance. If you’ve used BlackBerry Maps then you’ve already seen it in action - soon we’ll also be able to use this impressive new vector-based rendering acceleration in our own apps. If you didn’t get to this session I’d highly recommend downloading and listening to it after DevCon.

My ‘hidden’ pick of the day was the BB Cool 15 event after the bustling welcome reception. This was a great example of how RIM and the BlackBerry Partner Fund are embracing the blogging and development community to really stimulate and reward innovation whilst sharing new ideas in a fun and creative way.

So Monday was the warm-up and was an amazing day - today’s keynote and annoucements are going to take this to the next level. Hang on tight!

James
DevelopIQ

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Hello! Arun Nagarajan here. I am a Wireless Architect at Pyxis Mobile. I have been building BlackBerry applications for over 5 years now (since the C++ days!). I am very excited to be here at the BlackBerry Developers Conference and I look forward to meet some of you.

As a Blackberry developer of 5 years I expected few things at the conference to be new to me. I was pleasantly surprised today as I sat through the Plazmic Theme Builder session. I was truly amazed at some of the items and capabilities exposed for themeing. The session was also well demo’ed by Dale from RIM who pretty much built a new Halloween theme for the Bold from scratch. I am definitely going to playing with the Theme Builder and SVG Composer on the plane ride back!

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Hello everyone, my name is Brian Zubert and I work on the Developer Relations team alongside Mike Kirkup and Tyler Lessard.

It’s been an action-packed day. From the standing room only sessions to the constant flow of developers in and out of the Ask The Experts and Hands on Labs area… the welcome reception certainly offered a nice change of pace. With hip hop dancers, pounding beats, open bars, and an exhibition hall chalked full of development opportunity, the atmosphere is electric. Today’s been a great day for connecting with developers that I normally only “see” over email. It’s amazing what a difference it makes to get a little bit of face time!

Tomorrow’s keynote is sure to bring some serious wow factor, so for now, it’s off to get some rest and then brace myself for another day full of collaboration and learning opportunities.

“There are 10 types of people in this world: those that understand binary and those that don’t.”

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I’ve been biting my tongue all day long wanting to answer many questions around the future of web and Java development.  This is because of the great announcements that will be delivered during tomorrow’s keynote, and I didn’t want to be the one to spill the beans.

My canned answer to many of your great probing questions today have been “make sure you get to the keynote, you are going to like what you hear there”.  You won’t be disappointed!!

I myself have also been getting ready for a quick demonstration during the keynote of some software that we have been working on back in the labs.

It’s going to be an eye-opening experience… lots of great speakers, lots of great software and lots of great tooling.

Tim Neil
Manager, Web Development & Content Platform
Research In Motion

Today was a great day to catch up with my various contacts and friends at RIM as I walk around. Too many to list but I’m sure they will get tired of me by the time the conference is over but for today they’ll still stop in the hall when I pass and lend an ear to my concerns.  Most of the day was spent in various conversations and a couple of great meetings to discuss my selfish needs and requests to improve the APIs on the BlackBerry that will help facilitate great games and themes.  Dale and Mark gave a great presentation introducing the theme builder. If you have any interest in how to create a BlackBerry theme you should really check it out.  I left the BlackBerryCool 15 event early so I could get one more practice for my presentations in. I hope to see everyone crowded into sessions J15 and W04 tomorrow (Tuesday).

- Jeff Bacon

Actually, you don’t.  They is only 1 browser, with many names.  Each one uses the same rendering engine and supports the same features.  So what’s in a name?  The route that the data takes between your device and the HTTP server is what.  But what difference does it make?  After all, there is only one “Internet”, right?

The truth is that there is a lot that can happen to electrons and the data they carry as they flow through the wireless abyss from BlackBerry to HTTP server and back.  These different paths can have pronounced impacts on your web browsing experience… or lack thereof if you’re using the wrong one!  Today in Jeremy Weber’s presentation titled “Web Development 101″ the difference between the oddly-named browsers was demystified.

5 browser names and their various aliases:

1. BlackBerry Browser (”Corporate MDS”, “MDS”, “Enterprise”)
2. Internet Browser (”Public MDS”, “BIS-B”)
3. WAP Browser
4. Hotspot Browser (”Wi-Fi Browser”)
5. Unite Browser

1. BlackBerry Browser

• Only available if device is connected to a BES at your company
• All traffic goes through the MDS-CS component of your company’s BES server
• Can access resources inside your company’s firewall, such as intranets and desktop PCs
• However, it’s also restricted by that same same firewall, just like the PC at your desk
• All of the other browsers are outside the firewall

2. Internet Browser

• Virtually every device has this browser; no corporate BES connection or email setup required
• All traffic goes through one of a few MDS-CS servers hosted by RIM
• Sometimes requires that an APN be setup in order to work (on GSM networks)

3. WAP Browser

• All traffic goes through the WAP gateway hosted by the carrier
• This is the only route where no RIM-owned servers or RIM-produced software are used during communication
• WAP gateways vary from carrier to carrier, making problems often difficult to resolve
• No MDS-CS present to perform content optimization; entire web page is sent to the device

4. Hotspot Browser

• Uses Wi-Fi network to route traffic
• Sometimes goes through the BES’s MDS-CS and sometimes just on the local network
• Device setup makes this route somewhat unpredictable
• Generally very fast throughput, making pages load more quickly than all other browsers

5. Unite Browser

• All traffic goes through the MDS-CS server running on the Unite server on your home computer

Common Problems When Using the Incorrect Browser

1. The web page won’t load
   • web site is inside the firewall and you’re not using the BlackBerry Browser
   • web site is blocked by your company’s firewall and you are using the BlackBerry Browser
   • web site is carrier-specific and you’re not using the WAP Browser
   • web site is hosted on your home PC and you’re not using the Unite browser
2. Far more data than required may be downloaded
   • when data flows through MDS-CS it is optimized for the device, including reducing image sizes, compressing text, and optimizing the HTML DOM tree
   • using the WAP Browser the entire web page must be downloaded, even if images are 30x the size of the screen
3. Slow page rendering
   • data flowing through MDS-CS also undergoes optimization, such as pre-compiling JavaScript and modifying the HTML layout for a smaller screen size, increasing layout speeds
   • using WAP Browser forces the device to do this work, which takes longer
4. Larger financial cost
   • since more data is transmitted when using WAP, plans that pay per megabyte will be more expensive
   • Wi-Fi is generally free, so using it instead of cellular network saves money as well

–Denver Coneybeare

Chris Smith here, Senior Director of the BlackBerry Development Platform.  Seems like just a few short months ago that a BlackBerry developer event was but a gleam in our collective eye.  Yet here we are!

BlackBerry bean-bag chairs full of laptop-toting developers, massive, snaking queues for box lunches and giant blocks of code dropped smack in the middle of the hotel lobby. It’s not every day you are greeted with public static void main(String Args) while you wait to check-in at an upscale hotel. Feels like a developer conference to me! 

With jurisdiction over R&D for many of the elements of the BlackBerry platform being showcased this week, I am tremendously excited about the prospect of connecting with the developer community. Of course I am excited to show-off our platform and unveil our latest innovations and vision for the future, but I am also looking forward to hearing what amazing things are happening in the community, what pain points are being felt, what barriers and limitations need to be removed and how we can help developers deliver great mobile experiences. I had the luxury of getting a sneak peek at some of the fantastic presentations being delivered by our partners and independent developers this week and I have to say I am double and triple booked trying to squeeze them all in!

I intend to focus my blog posts this week on providing additional colour (note Canadian spelling) and context around our announcements and vision for the end-to-end platform, mixing in what I am hearing in the hallways, labs, at the booths, and providing my perspective on questions and feedback coming in. So please look for me around the show, engage, let me know what you think. I’m looking forward to the dialogue.

Welcome to the BlackBerry Developer Conference! It certainly has started at a fast pace!

Let me first introduce myself. My name is Tariq Tahir and I am an Application Development Consultant at Research in Motion UK. In my role, I support BlackBerry Alliance Partners in the EMEA region. I’m particularly excited to see some familiar faces who have come to this conference from Europe!

During the next few days, I’ll be presenting a couple of sessions as well as spending time at the Ask The Experts Area. Feel free to come by with any questions or just to say hello!

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Wifi available in the convention center. SSID “BlackBerry Developer Conference”

Hi folks! Day 1 of the first BlackBerry Developer Conference. This is Balaji Gopalan from RIM’s Consumer Services Product Management team, so my bent here is definitely around what our amazing Developer community is doing with BlackBerry in the social, entertainment and personal productivity spaces.
5 things are really exciting me right now:
1. Santa Clara is awesome beautiful! (but you already knew that)
2. Lots of familiar faces
3. Even more new faces
4. Lots of buzz in the lobbies and corridors on the sessions people are excited for, from business model discussions to technical best practices to frameworks for Web development and building on the BlackBerry Storm.
5. Well, I can’t tell you this one.

People are still arriving via taxi now, and things are kicking into high gear - definitely looking forward to talking Consumer business so book some time with me via 1:1 sessions or just tap me on the shoulder.
Ta, Bal

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And we’re off! The first BlackBerry Developer Conference is about to get under way. Registration is hopping, the bean bag chairs are full and I can’t wait to kick it off with my first session at 10:00am PST called “BlackBerry 101: A Practical Guide to the BlackBerry Solution Architecture”. Time to help the developer community understand what makes BlackBerry tick under the covers - and more importantly, how they can take advantage of all that good stuff under the covers. Let the games begin!
- Tyler

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I’m just getting prepared to start the first day here at the BlackBerry Developer Conference and I’m excited to get going.   My name is Tim Neil and I’m the Development Manager for the Web Development & Content platform here at RIM.  My groups include the BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio, the Plazmic Content Developers Kit and our new web tooling initiatives.

One of the reasons I’m so excited about the Developer Conference is that we are releasing new versions of all of our tooling!!  So this means there is something for new for everyone.  We have new releases for:

• eJDE Beta 2 for our Eclipse Java Developers
• Plazmic Content Developer Kit 4.6 RTM for all of our Theme creators out there
• BlackBerry Plug-in for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.1 RTM for our Microsoft Developers
• BlackBerry MDS Studio 2.0 RTM for our Eclipse based MDS Runtime Developers

With all of these releases there are tons of great new features and capabilities that you can leverage to build some exciting BlackBerry applications and Themes.

Another reason that I’m excited is that we are about to show you a bunch of great new tooling that we are working on, as well as sharing some great new announcements.  Particularly around new functionality and tooling for web developers.  We have an entire track for web developers as well as a futures track to show where we are heading on all of our platform technologies.

I myself have 4 session presentations, a demo in the keynote, Birds of the Feather session for web developers and a bunch of one-on-one meetings with those who want to sit down and have a chat.  It’s going to be a fun jam packed three days and I’m itching to get started.

Those of you particularly interested in new tooling projects we are working on for web developers should be sure to check out my following sessions:

• W02 - BlackBerry Tools for Web Developers (Mon 5PM)
• W08 - Standalone Web Applications for BlackBerry Smartphones (Wed 10:15AM)

My other sessions are about leveraging Visual Studio for building MDS Runtime applications and then also talking about the future of the next generation rich user interfaces on the BlackBerry.

•  E02 - Introduction to the BlackBerry Plug-In for Microsoft Visual Studio (Mon 3:45PM)
• F07 - Looking Ahead: Advanced Graphics and Seamless User Interface Integration (Wed 3:15PM)

Now lets get started

Cheers,

Tim Neil
Manager, Web Development & Content Platform
Research In Motion

Welcome to DevCon 2008!

Not sure it’s good to write on an empty stomach, but the breakfast queue on Day 1 seems like an appropriate ‘fly-on-the-wall’ moment to write my introduction. It’s a great sign that so many of you are here so early on Day 1 and clearly pumped to immerse yourselves into the BlackBerry development ecosystem - it should be an exciting week.

My name’s James Shannon and I’m the CTO of DevelopIQ. Some of you may know us for our PaperIQ digital pen solutions, but we also develop custom enterprise and consumer applications for BlackBerry - feel free to swing by our booth #308 in the Mobility Pavilion. I’m also presenting session J16 (Lessons Learned: Working with Advanced Java APIs) at 3.15pm on Wednesday.

I’m going to try and dig up some of the more ‘hidden’ elements of DevCon and report them back to you here, as well as highlight some ‘must-have’ sessions you should download after the conference if you missed them here.

Stay tuned - my waffles are ready!

James

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My name is Denver Coneybeare and I work for RIM as a developer in the Public APIs team.  My day-to-day work consists primarily of heads-down development, working on new features and maintaining existing ones.  I’m very excited to be here at the BlackBerry Developer Conference and plan to take this opportunity to ever-so-slightly remove my head from the sand and open my eyes to the rest of the development platform.  If you’re like me, in that you’re quite familiar with BlackBerry development using the JDE and are curious about what can be done with other BlackBerry development tools, then you will likely find some interesting tidbits in my posts.

Each day of the conference I will have a shift in the Hands-on Labs for JDE Plug-in for Eclipse. When I’m not there I will be wandering around between seminars and making a few stops at the “Ask the Experts” booth to help answer questions.  The APIs about which I am most familiar are the PIM API (JSR75), SMS/MMS Messaging API (JSR120/205), and module/application management.  So if you have questions or comments about these specfic areas feel free to direct them my way.  But I also have a broad knowledge of many pre-4.6 APIs from my previous role at RIM performing automated testing of the Public APIs, so can maybe help with them as well.

Regardless, I’m always up for a good technical challenge so feel free to grab me to brainstorm solutions to your unique challenges with BlackBerry development using the public APIs and/or the JDE Plug-in for Eclipse.

Well technically the BlackBerry Developer Conference has not started yet but I am, and by looking around I see many people are already, here settling in. I was happy to be asked by RIM to share some of my thoughts on the conference (henceforth to be referred to as devcon) and the sessions.

My name is Jeff Bacon. I am the Sr. Smartphone Product Manager at Magmic Games. You may be more familiar with our BlackBerry website: bplay.com. You also may have read some posts I have written on BlackBerryCool.com as “Bacon on BlackBerry”.

In addition to sharing my experiences at devcon, I’m also co-presenting in two sessions. The first is on Tues right after the general session where I’m sharing the spotlight with our Smartphone Services Team Lead at Magmic, Simon Dale. We will be sharing our experiences developing games on BlackBerry and giving some tips on how to squeeze the most out of the platform. This session J15: BlackBerry Game Development Strategies.

The second session I’m presenting at is Tues afternoon. I’ll be taking part in a session orchestrated by Tyler Lessard called “Creating Interactive Web Applications for Consumers with Web Signals, BlackBerry Wallet and Other Advanced Features” (W04).  I’ll be talking about our experiences at bplay integrating with the BlackBerry Wallet.

Make sure to check those sessions out so all my time improving my PowerPoint skillz does not go to waste

Jeff Bacon

I want to welcome everyone to the inaugural BlackBerry Developer Conference. We are very excited about the keynote, all of the sessions, the labs, and many other opportunities to learn more about development on BlackBerry.

As the lead for our Developer Relations team, I want to ensure that each and every one of you enjoys yourself during the conference. If you have any questions about the event itself please do not hesitate to contact our helpful staff at the registration desk. If you have any technical question, big or small, do not hesitate to visit the Ask the Experts area where knowledgeable developers will be on-hand to help you.

Please use this opportunity to network, learn, socialize and have fun! I hope to see you at the sessions and events.

Mike Kirkup
Manager, Developer Relations
Research In Motion

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