The BlackBerry DevCon Asia 2011 was held on the 7-8 December at Suntec City. This was supposed to be held in Bangkok, Thailand but due to unforeseen circumstances, it was moved to the Singapore. The DevCon series is a conference for developers or developers-wanna be have a more insightful content on creating apps as well as information on the path in which BlackBerry will be headed to.
The conference started with the breakfast provided for the attendees and fortunately, not many were attacking the food, as they were all anxious to get into the ballroom and listen to the general keynote session 😀
First general session kicked off at 10am, where the Regional Managing Director for the East Asia, Gregory Wade started with his words about blackberry market, how big the market is, the usual stuffs to boost how good the technology itself is. To date, there are 70 million users, up 20 million from last year.
The first keynote speaker, George Staikos, VP of the Web Technologies, RIM, introduced the BlackBerry 7.1 new APIs that is the NFC which is integrated into their new range of phones, Bold 9900 and Torch 9860. And this is interesting as he showed us how it works when NFC is on. It is interesting, like the new concept of scanning the QR.
Next year they will be introducing the BlackBerry 10, which links up PlayBook, BlackBerry phones, and cloud services. Also new runtime environments for BlackBerry as they are moving into Html 5, Cascades to bridge all the three platforms together.
The second keynote speaker, Alec Saunders, VP of the Developer Relations & Ecosystems Development presented their new community, the BlackBerry Jam for the developers where many can be recognized and helped under this community. He showed the developers zone on screen to show where developers can build their apps on and the ready tools that developers can tab on for the apps. Also the community that has the leading apps developer groups like the S4BB Limited, MMOOO, then the partners for the developers. Alec Saunders also listed out what are the market tools readily available for developers and the market size to assure developers that there is a huge demand for apps. And with the new app world 3.1, consumers has more choice of payment and receiving apps which benefits the developers as BlackBerry is creating more platforms to reach out to the consumers. The interesting part about Alec Saunders speech was the myth and fiction part where he presented statistics to prove those myth and fiction wrong.
The last keynote speaker is Christopher Smith, VP for the Application Platform and Tools, RIM. He introduced the various apps that are hits in the market right now and getting the developers on stage to present the apps on how it works and what is the main idea behind the apps. First up was Philipp Nagele, creator for Wikitiude. He showed us how we can find other BlackBerry users using Wikitude or what the nearest places around the area are. Next up was Sandy Colondam, Senior Product Manager for Elasitas Technologies Ltd, introducing Menoo. He showed us how Menoo works and it is amazing to see the menu on the app even before you get to the restaurants and the best part is you get to use the coupons that are provided through the app by just doing simple task required like posting on Facebook or share on BBM.
Then, Christopher talked about the integration of apps with BBM which is one of the market revenue for developers as there are over 50 million active users on BBM. Risto Mobile shared two apps with the audience, Gift & Take and PicStory. Gift & Take is an e-card app where you can send e-cards to friends through bbm and PicStory is sharing pics with your friends on BBM, and if they even miss out the pics, they can access PicStory and look through your timeline.
Besides integrating apps with BBM, Christopher introduced BlackBerry 7.1 SDK which can extend apps integration with NFC. He invited Kendro Hendra, owner of inTouch Wireless Serivce, who showed us how BlackBerry 7.1 can work with the use of NFC, redeem coupons through participating fast food restaurants.
Next, Christopher presented the BlackBerry 10 SDK and the open source initiative that can be used. Design Technology, Anders Larsson, introduced apps that are built on Cascades, like the Cascades cookbook. Jeff Heifitz, Software developer for RIM, introduced Rogers Cup, which is built on HTML5 , it is interesting to see how the animated transition works on the app itself. As the keynote session gets longer with all the different developers invited up on stage, I couldn’t get myself to sit in any longer with my stomach growling and side note, my Bold 9900 ran into software error 102. With that I conclude my general session for the devcon. More pics available @ HWZ BlackBerry Support FB
Moved from:
http://reviews.ourberries.com/?p=141
