Part V and Conclusion of CrackBerry's Interview with RIM's New CEO

As we concluded our first Q&A with RIM's new CEO, I quit with the questions and opened things up for Thorsten Heins to address CrackBerry Nation directly. For all our longtime members, readers and BlackBerry fans around the world, this is for you... an address to CrackBerry Nation, from the CEO of Research In Motion himself:

First, I want you to be our #1 Fan Club, that's for sure. Second, give us feedback. I want you to be with us, I want you to help us to always get better, and give us credit for what our people are doing. Understand how much and how hard the people here are working and I think you're doing a good job of this. I'm ready to stay in touch with you Kevin and your base. We will make this a journey together, and it's going to be fun. 

Honestly, it's hard for me not to get emotional reading those words. When CrackBerry.com went live in February 2007, I really didn't know what the future would hold for us. All I knew was that I was hopeful and excited for the future of BlackBerry and CrackBerry. As Resesarch In Motion enters a new era, I'm having the same feelings again as I did five years ago. Hopeful and excited. Let's Rock & Roll This CrackBerry Nation!!

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Part IV of CrackBerry's Interview with RIM's New CEO

Let's face it. Delivering products to market on time has never been one of Research In Motion's strong points. When we asked CrackBerry readers for questions to ask RIM's Nnw CEO, an overwhelming number of you wanted to know exactly how will RIM change their ways to become a company that can deliver products to the market on time.

RIM's Thorsten Heins acknowledged that the company was not disciplined enough in the past, spending too much time tweaking products already set for production. Heins put the blame solely on the management structure and was clear "that has nothing to do with our people, they have worked day and night and are totally enthusiastic." Heins intends to keep the start-up mentality and innovation coming, but in a more scalable way, "by putting small teams together, assigning them dedicated tasks, making them accountable, and giving them funds to fulfill their tasks rather than being distributed over 3-4 programs. That happened in the past, and that led to programs getting omitted frankly."

On the people front of the transition from BlackBerry OS to QNX, Heins says RIM "figured out pretty fast that those [QNX] resources are not sufficient enough", so the company has been working to realign their Waterloo-based BlackBerry OS coders over to the new platform. It's definitely a challenge for those programmers who have worked on one platform to learn something new and Heins noted that he is really happy to see people taking it on. "We have now rearranged all the resources properly, all the leadership is clear, all the team's tasks are clear, and people work together, so we have achieved a different level of efficiency now in that part of the platform development."

I'm hoping this new structure works for RIM. I'm jonesing for a BlackBerry 10 phone! You can listen to the audio above and read the full Q&A below for more details. 

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Part III of CrackBerry's Interview with RIM's New CEO

Continuing along in our interview series with RIM's new CEO Thorsten Heins, we asked the question that so many smartphone users have been asking for a long time now. Will we ever see BlackBerry Messenger on other Platforms? The BlackBerry Chief said "you should never rule this out" adding "there is a time where this might make sense".

The topic of cross-platform BBM has been debated often on CrackBerry. Our last poll on the subject put the community at 71% in favor of RIM putting BlackBerry Messenger onto other mobile operating systems, but with BBM being such a strong hook keeping users tied to BlackBerry it's definitely not a clear cut business case. At least we now know this is something RIM is definitely looking into.

On the hot topic of licensing out the BlackBerry OS, Heins says people should not put this into a black or white category. Heins is "open for licensing if it makes sense". Heins made it clear that he "was not hired to build a licensing company" but rather was "hired to take BlackBerry to new heights" and plans to do just that with his team.

Listen to the audio above, read the Q&A below and let us know in the comments where you weigh in on this one!

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Part II of CrackBerry's Interview with RIM's New CEO

After breaking the ice and throwing a couple of straight forward questions at RIM's new CEO in our Part I Interview,  we tackle some of the hot topics surrounding Research In Motion and their current BlackBerry strategy. 

You'll want to listen to the interview above and/or read the Q&A below as we get passionate straight talk from Thorsten Heins. Seriously, if you haven't been won over by the new BlackBerry Chief yet, this may be the interview that does it.

We really are entering into a new era for Research In Motion here. This is a CEO who admits RIM has missed on commitments in the past, admits RIM is choosing the harder way (as compared to building upon Android), but 100% believes in the strength of the company and the current strategy they have chosen to execute on. 

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Part I of CrackBerry's Interview with RIM's new CEO

Just as the news became public Sunday night that Thorsten Heins was named the new CEO of Research In Motion, I received a phone call from him letting me know personally that he won the leadership race and it wouldn't be CrackBerry Kevin and a Ham Sandwich at the reigns of RIM in 2012. It was a classy gesture and a clear signal that RIM moving forward will be more engaged with its user community. On that call Thorstein promised he'd give us a few more minutes of his time this week so we could actually throw a few questions his way (as you can imagine, I was completely unprepared for the first call!). RIM's new CEO delivered on his first promise to CrackBerry Nation and on Wednesday I was able to connect with Thorsten again.

Between Monday's RIM conference call, the official BlackBerry youtube videos, and the various television interviews Thorsten has given this week to other media outlets, we've already seen and heard a lot from the new BlackBerry Chief. A lot of the things said have given us plenty of reason to get excited for this new era of BlackBerry, while some of the messages making their way out into the media seem to already be shooting the new leadership direction down before it has even had a hint of a chance to execute. So I took this opportunity to get clarification on some of the mixed messages that have been making their way out there and dig deeper into other topics that have been covered this week. We cover a lot of things and found Thorsten to be great to talk to -- personable and a straight shooter with a sense of humor. In true CrackBerry fashion we will be be bringing the goods to the blogs here in a series of posts, so you'll want to keep it locked to CrackBerry. 

But before we get to the heavier hitting questions we start with a couple of easy ones... listen above or keep reading as we break the ice and get the ball rolling on CrackBerry's first interview with the CEO of Research In Motion. I've been waiting five years to do one of these, so yeah... we're going to rock and roll this!!

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With titles like Angry Birds and Cut the Rope finally hitting the BlackBerry platform, we're really starting to see evidence that the app gap on BlackBerry is starting to close and things are gaining momentum. There are now over 50,000 apps available for BlackBerry and App World has passed 2 billion downloads. Not bad!

No doubt there is still a lot of work to be done, and at CES 2012 we caught up with Research In Motion's new VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders, who caught us up on the progress and plan. The focus for RIM right now is on making sure everything is in order for the launch of BlackBerry 10 Smartphones later this year. Between now and then it's all about getting out there and making sure the BIG NAMES are on the platform at launch that people expect to be there, and also getting the native tools into the hands of developers who can really set an example for what can be done on the platform as well. It's also about spreading the word, and the BlackBerry evangelist program has gone from concept to reality - we had the pleasure of meeting one of the evangelists at a RIM Meet-up on Tuesday night (we'll follow up with more soon on that).

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Turning back the clock a few years to the first mobile conference I ever attended (WES 2007), one of the first people I met at the show who welcomed me with open arms was Rob Kao. Over the years we've kept up with Rob through his various endeavors in the BlackBerry space, including the launch of SmrtGuard, which was a big hit with the CrackBerry community. With CES 2012 in full swing, I caught up with Rob who brought us up to speed with the status of where things are at. As it turns out, SmrtGuard has actually been sold and is now Snap Secure. Keep reading for the full Q&A!

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Following Jane McGonigal's featured speaker presentation at BlackBerry DevCon, she sat down with @berryvic to answer a few questions. I didn't have a chance to attend her session, but talking to a few of the people who did attend they said it was really awesome.

So if you've got 12 minutes, sit back, relax and check out the video above. You'll be glad you did! And if you like what you hear, be sure to check out Jane's book, Reality is Broken: Why Games Make Us Better and How They Can Change the World.

Alec Saunders, VP of Dev Relations for RIM

It's going to be a very different experience for the CrackBerry Team at Blackberry DevCon next month as many of the faces we are used to seeing on the keynote stage are no longer with the company. Jeff McDowell, RIM's SVP of Platform Marketing and Alliances is no longer with RIM. Mike Kirkup, the Sr. Director of Developer Relations gave his notice and is no longer with RIM. And the word today is that Tyler Lessard, VP of Global Alliances and Dev Relations, gave his notice to RIM and won't be at DevCon this year (or if he does make it, it'll be his last event before departing).

On a personal level it's been a confusing and sad thing to watch, but I think the story is now getting a lot clearer to me as to what's been going on here thanks to an interview today posted on the official BlackBerry DevBlog (read the interview below), featuring RIM's new VP of Developer Relations, Alec Saunders.

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It's a sad day for CrackBerry Nation. To say I was shocked when I saw word that one of our absolute all-time favorite Research In Motion employees, Mike Kirkup, tendered his resignation today would be an understatement.

If you've been a CrackBerry reader for a long time, you'll know Mike well as he's made a bunch of appearances on the site over the years (heck, he was the first RIM employee to ever get his own article tag!). An early proponent of treating BlackBerry as a platform, he has been one of the main faces of the BlackBerry Platform for almost a decade, first starting as a Security Software Developer before moving to the Developer Relations team (formerly ISV/SI Technical team) in 2004.

Since first meeting Mike a few years back, I've seen him progress from Manager to Director to Senior Director of Developer Relations as he's helped grow the BlackBerry developer community to 400k strong and spearhead, along with his team, three BlackBerry Developer Conferences. Always exuding passion whenever he's joined us on a podcast or video interview, Mike truly is a BlackBerry fan.

Wanting to get to the bottom of Mike's impending departure from the company, I reached out to him for an over the phone interview. Keep reading for our exclusive Q&A with Mike Kirkup as we find out why he's leaving, where he's going and whether or not he's lost faith in RIM.

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If you're not up to par with your Major League Baseball history, you might not know the name Joe Carter. And if not, you should! He's best known for his amazing walk-off home run that gave the Toronto Blue Jays the 1993 World Series Victory. Suffice to say he is a Toronto hero, which is where the BlackBerry 7 Fan Night was held and Joe was on hand at the event to talk BlackBerry! Joe was in heavy demand all night, but I managed to grab a couple minutes of his time. Check out the video above - he is an uber cool guy.  Thanks for the time Joe!

One of the highlights of my recent trip to Waterloo, the hometown of BlackBerry, was the afternoon I spent at the Communitech Hub (which technically is next door to Waterloo, in Kitchener). The Communitech Hub is in the beautifully restored Tannery building, a massive complex which in addition to housing Communitech startups, is also home to many other companies, including Google's local offices.

Between Communitech and the Accelerator Center, two organizations which work together addressing the same mission, they really are doing great things to to foster innovation, encourage colloboration and get new tech ideas commercialized in the region. Walking through the hub we saw tons of startups hard at work on their tech projects, and we even stumbled into some app developers who we are now working with to put together an AWESOME CrackBerry contest based on their app, GooseCha.se. Yep, we'll announce the details soon, but let's just say next week is CrackBerry GooseChase week. It's going to be awesome! 

A little unexpected but fun, Communitech's PR man turned the blogging tables on me and wired me up for an interview, asking me some pretty direct questions on my thoughts about RIM and some of the challenges they're facing today (part 1 above is mainly about CrackBerry - the bigger questions get addressed in parts 2, 3 and 4 below). Be sure to check them out!

Huge thanks go to the Iain, Anthony and the crew from Communitech (and Andrew from the Accelerator Centre) for showing me around. My words won't do their endeavors justice, so be sure to check out their sites for more info at the iinks below.

Learn More about Communitech
Learn More about the Accelerator Centre

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It was an action packed Monday and Tuesday in Orlando at BlackBerry World 2011, and things proved just as busy on Wednesday (lots of BB World posts in the hopper for us to get up). Following up our video look at how RIM plans to make TAT tools available to 3rd party developers, we sat down with Chris Smith and Mike Kirkup from RIM to do a deeper dive into the BlackBerry app development story.

The podcast clocks in at 38 minutes, and we cover a lot of topics here. We clear up some of the questions surrounding the myriad of development options available for the BlackBerry PlayBook, talk NDK for the PlayBook and also talk about Android app support for the PlayBook and what it means. There are a lot of great bits of info in this show, so definitely tune in whether you're a developer or just want to be on top of the BlackBerry game.

And stay tuned... we'll be recording our BlackBerry World 2011 recap podcast THIS FRIDAY with the whole CrackBerry crew, and we'll sound off on all of the news of week. In the meantime, enjoy this show. It's a good one! 

We had a chance at the 2010 BlackBerry DevCon to sit down with Marty Mallick, who is a Senior Director of Business Development within the Strategic Alliances division of Research In Motion (say that three times fast!). When you see BlackBerry apps come out for the big boys in the space (eBay, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Marty's team is involved. We'll let Marty do the talking, so sit back and hit play!

At WES 2010 in Orlando last week I had the opportunity to sit down with the CrackBerry.tv camera rolling and talk shop with Alan Brenner, who is the Senior Vice President of the BlackBerry Platform for Research in Motion. As you can imagine with a title like that, a LOT of stuff in the BlackBerry-realm falls under Alan's management, from RIM's core of "delivering the mail" (BES/BIS) to things like BlackBerry MVS, App World and even RIM-built apps like the new Twitter for BlackBerry.

I tossed a lot of questions at Alan during our time together that were things I figured the CrackBerry community would want to hear. We cover topics like App World and BlackBerry app development, gaming on BlackBerry (I was curious to know how high of a priority games on BlackBerry is for RIM - aka how soon we'll see OpenGL on GSM BBs) and touch on the growing need for increased memory on BlackBerry. HUGE thanks to Alan for taking the time to speak to CrackBerry. Enjoy the show!