BlackBerry DevCon 2011 Sessions Now Online and Available Free?!?

Usually RIM does a great job of posting up the sessions from DevCon online including audio and presentations along with sample code. The thing is that content is usually limited only to registered attendees of DevCon. Josep pointed out a thread on the forums where Adam Stanley from RIM confirms that the sessions are now up. The thing is it looks like they are available to anybody who wants to view them for free as long as you fill out a relatively simple registration.

I just went to this link and registered with a new username and password for free and now I can download and view all the sessions from DevCon along with downloading all the content to my BlackBerry. You can watch all the general sessions along with all the specific sessions on Java, Web, Native SDK, Adobe AIR/Flash, Android, Enterprise, and others. They even have some of the sessions offered in Spanish and some of them also have text transcripts!

I am not sure if this is a fluke that everybody can register but if you are interested I would recommend heading to this link and registering free so you can download the content in case RIM changes their mind… Let us know if it works for you!

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RIM Teaching Android PlayBook Development to BlackBerry Java Developers

 

For awhile now I (and many other devs) have had a feeling that RIM might try to push BlackBerry smartphone Java developers into developing Android applications. The Android runtime on the PlayBook will be the first Java runtime for the PlayBook (and possibly QNX phones) and I know Java BlackBerry devs are paying attention. RIM has promised a Java Player for the PlayBook that should emulate BlackBerry Java apps but they have been pretty quiet about it.

Now I noticed in their session catalog for BlackBerry DevCon this month they have a session titled: “Android Development for BlackBerry Java Developers.”

Here is how RIM describes the session:

This session is targeted to BlackBerry Java developers interested in developing Android applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Join us if you prefer to continue utilizing your Java skills, or you have a large codebase of an existing BlackBerry Java application that you want to port to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with minimum effort. A contrast will be made between the key BlackBerry and Android APIs, followed by break down of the porting process of an existing BlackBerry application.

This session is targeted to BlackBerry Java developers interested in developing Android applications for the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet. Join us if you prefer to continue utilizing your Java skills, or you have a large codebase of an existing BlackBerry Java application that you want to port to the BlackBerry PlayBook tablet with minimum effort. A contrast will be made between the key BlackBerry and Android APIs, followed by break down of the porting process of an existing BlackBerry application.

It seems like RIM is going to help developers in the process of porting their BlackBerry Java apps to the PlayBook using the Android player. That is an interesting move for RIM since it would require them in the future to expand the native APIs (advertising, analytics, push, etc) for the Android Player which they claim they do not plan on doing…

On the other hand RIM will be having two of their employees giving this session on porting to Android:

The key takeaways for the session are:

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