In a nationwide call for all developers in Kenya to bring their app ideas to life, Blackberry has organised a Super Hackathon event to be Kenya’s first ever BlackBerry® Jam Session Saturday, November 17 simultaneously as those hosted around the world ahead of the game-changing launch of the next-generation BlackBerry® 10 platform.
The event will give developers an opportunity to turn their app ideas into reality and follows the very successful BlackBerry® Mini Jam in Nairobi held in August, where Kenyan developers had their first experience of learning to develop apps for BlackBerry 10.
The hackathon is an intense 10 hour programming session where developers can start planning their apps, create the business model and develop it. It is also a great opportunity to meet people, have fun and even earn some great prizes.
BlackBerry experts will be on hand to provide guidance, give advice on topics from coding to design to marketing, share ideas and support developers as they bring their apps to life.
At the end of the day, developers will get a chance to present their apps to a panel of judges for a chance to win prizes in the following categories: Best App, Best Game, Best E-Commerce App, and Best User Interface Design.
This event will make way for the January 30th BlackBerry 10 Launch announced in multiple countries around the world. This day will mark the official launch of its new platform – BlackBerry 10, as well as the unveiling of the first two BlackBerry 10 smartphones.
“In building BlackBerry 10, we set out to create a truly unique mobile computing experience that constantly adapts to your needs. Our team has been working tirelessly to bring our customers innovative features combined with a best in class browser, a rich application ecosystem, and cutting-edge multimedia capabilities. All of this will be integrated into a user experience – the BlackBerry Flow – that is unlike any smartphone on the market today,” said Thorsten Heins, President and CEO of Research In Motion. “Thanks to our strong partnerships with global carriers and a growing ecosystem of developers, we believe our customers will have the best experience possible with BlackBerry 10. We are looking forward to getting BlackBerry 10 in the hands of our customers around the world.”
BlackBerry 10 will offer a large catalog of the leading applications from across the globe and across all categories, including Games, Productivity, Social, Lifestyle and Leisure, Multimedia and Published Content, as well as applications designed for business and enterprise use.
The BlackBerry® 10 platform has recently achieved FIPS 140-2 certification, which means that government agencies will be able to deploy BlackBerry 10 smartphones and BlackBerry® Enterprise Service 10 as soon as it is available. This marks the first time BlackBerry products have been certified ahead of their launch. In addition, RIM recently announced that BlackBerry 10 smartphones have now entered more than 50 carrier labs with many more entries expected in the coming weeks.
Some key features of the new BlackBerry 10 devices already unveiled recently include: BlackBerry Flow, a new user experience that allows seamless navigation across open applications and the BlackBerry® Hub where all messages, notifications, feeds, and calendar events come into the BlackBerry Hub and no matter what the user is doing with the device, with a simple gesture, they can peek into the Hub at any time.
The BlackBerry Keyboard learns how you write and adapts to how you type so you can write faster and more accurately, giving you the kind of legendary typing experience that only BlackBerry can deliver while the BlackBerry® Balance™ offers the most elegant way to satisfy both customer and corporate needs without compromising on either. With BlackBerry Balance, personal apps and information are kept separate from work data, and the customer can switch from their personal to work profile with a simple gesture.
