BlackBerry opens doors to developers

Research In Motion (RIM) has opened the first of its global BlackBerry Tech Centres at its EMEA headquarters in Slough.

The new centre will be open weekdays from 9am – 5pm, offering a dedicated workspace for developers looking to create applications for BlackBerry 10. The BlackBerry developer evangelist team will be on hand on a daily basis to provide expertise and guidance to attending developers. Each day will have a specific focus so that developers can attend on a day that guarantees the support that is most relevant to them. On Mondays, the team will focus on helping developers with Native/Cascades/Qt, while Wednesdays will provide guidance on developing with BlackBerry WebWorks/HTML 5. Tuesdays, Thursdays and Fridays, meanwhile, will be centred around helping Android, iOS and Windows developers respectively bring their apps to the new BlackBerry 10 platform, using a range of tried and tested porting strategies.

In addition to the regular stream of activity, the global BlackBerry Tech Centres will also provide a space for a wider range of developer engagement activities, while serving as an open, collaborative forum for developers to share their experiences with, and learnings from, developing for BlackBerry 10.

Alec Saunders, VP Developer Relations at RIM said, ‚”The opening of this first BlackBerry Tech Centre underscores our ongoing commitment to actively engage with and support the efforts of our developer community. This new centre in our EMEA headquarters designates space where developers can draw on the resources and skill set of our experienced developer evangelist team to help them create compelling apps for the new BlackBerry 10 platform. As of October 10, developers can now submit their BlackBerry 10 apps to the BlackBerry App World‚Ñ¢ storefront and I’m looking forward to seeing the apps that will come from the UK developer community over the weeks and months ahead.‚”

The opening further exemplifies the strong developer momentum behind BlackBerry 10. Since May this year, more than 5,000 BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha test units have been seeded with developers, enabling them to build and test applications for BlackBerry 10.

To register to attend the BlackBerry Tech Centre, click here: https://developer.blackberry.com/devzone/jamcommunity/techcenters.html

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