I love accessories. Period! It doesn’t really matter if we’re talking shoes, watches, curtains, throw pillows, or garden gnomes, I love them all and my technology is no exception. I’ve recently started using a BlackBerry Q10 and I have really enjoyed choosing my accessories. I get the feeling everyone else does too. The accessory booth is hopping here at BlackBerry Live with people itching to get their hands on this incredible line up of accessories that have been designed specifically for the BlackBerry Q10 smartphone.

Don’t worry if you weren’t able to join us this year. Head over to www.BlackBerry.com/Q10accessories or your local retailer to pick up these awesome accessories.

What’s the first accessory you’d buy for your BlackBerry Q10?

One of our goals for this year’s BlackBerry Live conference is to integrate mobile technology not just in the discussions, sessions, and resources – but into the actual conference itself to help keep attendees closely plugged into all of the action.

Near Field Communication (NFC)

One of my all-time favorite technologies, Near Field Communication (NFC) will be integrated into BlackBerry Live in a big way. You’ll be able to scan into BlackBerry Live and BlackBerry Jam sessions and interact with aspects of the venue using the BlackBerry Live Conference App, but that’s just the beginning. You’ll also be able to share contact information with sponsors, scoop up links to resources and web sites, and take advantage of all that BlackBerry 10 has to offer when it comes to NFC.

BlackBerry Live Conference App

Shortly before BlackBerry Live the Mobile Conference Guide app will be available in BlackBerry World for you to download. This will be your ultimate conference guide, including a wide range of features:

• Find sessions, speaker, sponsor, and event details
• Receive event update messages
• View the conference agenda and floor plan
• Build and edit your conference schedule
• Scan into sessions using Near Field Communication (NFC)
• Complete conference and session surveys
• Share your information with conference sponsors using NFC

It’s not too late to register for BlackBerry Live!

Head over to www.blackberrylive.com to register for this year’s conference, and don’t forget that if you’ve attended a BlackBerry event in the past, you may be eligible for a $150 discount as part of the Alumni Discount!

Stay tuned for availability in BlackBerry World, and get ready for a seriously mobile conference! See you next week in Orlando.

This year’s BlackBerry Live will give you our most mobile conference experience yet. We have some very exciting news: conference attendees will receive a BlackBerry Z10 smartphone, courtesy of Brightstar, our premier mobile sponsor!

Your BlackBerry Z10 smartphone will be a valuable tool throughout BlackBerry Live. The Mobile Conference Guide application has been designed to leverage features unique to BlackBerry 10, making it easy for you to:

• Build and edit your conference schedule in the Session Catalog while on the go
• Scan into breakout sessions using NFC functionality
• Interact with sponsors
• Complete conference surveys
• Much more

Quantities are limited, so register for BlackBerry Live today! To learn more about Brightstar, head over to www.brightstarcorp.com.

The time has come to cast your ballots for the 2013 BlackBerry Achievement Awards! Using BlackBerry technology to help power innovation, the awards celebrate ideas coming to life. Everyone is encouraged to vote, so visit the website before April 15^th at 5pm ET to help us determine this year’s winners.

A special category that is near and dear to our hearts is the App of the Year award. This year, Cine Hoyts Argentina, Cooklet, and PriceCheck Pty Ltd have been nominated as finalists. Make sure you check them out before voting for your favorites.

The full list of 2013 nominees is as follows:

App of the Year:

1. Cine Hoyts
2. Cooklet
3. PriceCheck Mobile

Putting Customers First:

1. ING DIRECT Canada
2. LoyaltyMatch Inc.
3. MMMOOO

Mobile Innovation of the Year:

1. DIRECTV Latin America
2. Mippin (Refresh Ltd.)
3. Waytag

Making the World a Better Place:

1. e-Cycle Solutions
2. Sussex Police
3. University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust (UHB)

Entrepreneur of the Year

1. EducationApps Limited
2. Nobex Technologies
3. SkyPark Café

This year’s winners will be announced at BlackBerry Live in Orlando, Florida. The award recipients will receive a series of incentives for their participation. Prizes for first place include: travel and accommodations to BlackBerry Live 2013, conference passes, extensive BlackBerry training, BlackBerry 10 smartphones and more.

For more on the BlackBerry Achievement Awards and BlackBerry Live, make sure you visit our landing pages at http://www.blackberrylive.com/special-programs/achievement-awards/about and http://www.blackberrylive.com/ respectively.

Do you have a nominee that you’re rooting for? Let us know who your favorites are in the comments below!

As we continue counting down the days to BlackBerry Live 2013, we’ve enjoyed providing you a picture of what to expect at the conference. In the meantime, we’ve also been hard at work on planning the conference breakout sessions. These sessions will be a great opportunity to engage directly with BlackBerry experts and to gain valuable insights especially tailored to your industry or expertise.

Today, we’re thrilled to highlight the official BlackBerry Live Session Catalog Preview to help you get started with your planning. This year, we’ve redesigned the Session Catalog to make the session planning process for attendees as easy as possible: users can search for specific sessions by track, audience, subject matter, or key word. With sessions ranging from Managing BlackBerry 10 Devices to Understanding BlackBerry Balance to Understanding Secure Work Space for iOS and Android Devices, there’s something for everyone looking to learn more about incorporating the BlackBerry 10 platform into their business’ mobile strategy.

We’ve also organized the BlackBerry Live Sessions into several tracks based on the IT vertical or industry attendees are working in. Here are a few of the tracks that will be available:

• BlackBerry Products and Deployments: For IT Administrators managing the Blackberry Solution, messaging systems, and telecom systems
• BlackBerry In Action – Case Studies & Solutions for Your Organization and Industry: For Business Leaders, IT Architects and Senior IT Managers
• BlackBerry Jam Americas – App Development: For Consumer and Enterprise Mobile App Developers
• BlackBerry & Beyond: Trends Shaping the Future of Mobile: For BlackBerry Channel Partner Audience, including carriers, wireless operators, carrier affiliates, dealers, national retailers, distributors and IT resellers

Whether you prefer the structure of a session track or the flexibility of designing your own schedule, take a look at what’s available on the session catalog preview. More sessions will be added regularly, so check back frequently!

In the meantime, we’ve also provided some tips to help convince your boss to let you attend BlackBerry Live 2013, and are offering an Early Bird Rate, which ends tomorrow (March 22!)

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Did you attend last year’s conference? What was the most helpful breakout session you attended?

With only a few days left, we want to make sure that you have one last chance to submit an application for this year’s BlackBerry Achievement Awards, which will be presented at the BlackBerry Live conference in Orlando, Florida in May 2013.

If you haven’t yet completed your application, the deadline to do so is March 22, 2013.

Award recipients will receive a series of incentives for their participation. Prizes for first place award recipients include: travel and accommodations to BlackBerry Live 2013, conference passes, extensive BlackBerry training, BlackBerry 10 smartphones and more.

Below are this year’s award categories:

1. App of the Year
2. Putting Customers First
3. Mobile Innovation of the Year
4. Making the World a Better Place
5. Entrepreneur of the Year

A BlackBerry selection committee will be carefully reviewing each application and identifying the top 3 finalists shortly after the call for nominations end.

For those interested in being a part of the voting process, you will soon be able to cast your vote for your favorite BlackBerry Achievement Awards candidate beginning on March 28, 2013 until April 15, 2013 at 5pm EST.

What are you waiting for? We want to hear from YOU!

So far we’ve enjoyed a truly exciting start to 2013, which has included the BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 and BlackBerry 10 launches, the BlackBerry Experience Forum events, and partnerships with businesses that are upgrading to BlackBerry 10. We can’t wait to bring this excitement with us to this year’s BlackBerry Live conference kicking off in Orlando, Florida on May 14, which is less than 8 weeks from today! (Can you believe it?)

To help you save on registration fees, we’re offering an Early Bird Rate which includes $150 USD in savings on a Full Conference Pass. This pass gives access to both BlackBerry Live and BlackBerry Jam Americas and includes:

• BlackBerry Live 2013 Keynotes
• BlackBerry Jam Americas Keynotes
• Breakout Sessions and Hands-on Labs
• Admission to the Monday evening Welcome Reception in the sponsor showcase
• Admission to the BlackBerry Appreciation Event
• Admission to the sponsor showcase during open hours, Tuesday – Thursday
• Breakfast, breaks and lunch, Tuesday – Thursday
• Access to the Jam Space in the conference area
• Complimentary access to Wi-Fi internet in the conference center
• Access to BlackBerry Live On-Demand, the online portal for conference content, until the start of the 2014 conference
• Registration gift upon check-in onsite

You’ll want to act fast to take advantage of this offer before it expires on Friday, March 22. In addition, if you’ve attended some of our past BlackBerry events you may be eligible to save an additional $150 USD through the Alumni Discount.

We’re also pleased to announce that a session catalog preview is now available! Start preparing your trip by using the BlackBerry Live Budget Planner, submit your nominations for the BlackBerry Achievement Awards, and convince your boss to let you experience BlackBerry Live 2013!

Did you attend last year’s conference? What tips or advice would you share with a first-time BlackBerry Live attendee? Share in the comments below.

There are countless reasons for you to attend BlackBerry Live, and this year more than ever! But I know that many of you are looking to have your company send you as a representative, and that this takes a business case and solid reasoning. We’re here to help. Read on for tips on how to convince your boss to let you experience BlackBerry Live 2013!

1. The mobile and MDM landscape is more complex than ever. Learn about industry trends and how you can solve challenges – and what the benefits are of a mobile strategy.

Mobility can be leveraged by a business to increase productivity, automate processes, drive down risks and inaccuracies, increase efficiency by allowing employees to be connected, and open up the world of enterprise apps. Coming back with ideas, tools, and resources to increase the return on investment that your company has made in mobility, and to suggest new ideas, makes the trip well worth it. See what an attendee of last year’s conference had to say:

“Technology is what drives our business, we have a passion for it and BlackBerry World [BlackBerry Live] gives us a glimpse into that future. For us it’s a platform to build upon, to engage with like-minded people and test theories and ideas which in turn help us to shape our business strategy.”

2. Managing multiple platforms, smartphones, and tablets doesn’t need to be costly or insecure. Learn more about how to enable your IT department to confidently support what’s being brought into work.

Sure, “BYOD” is a buzzword being thrown around left and right. But that doesn’t mean that it isn’t a real challenge that businesses are facing – or an opportunity, depending on how you look at it. BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10 provides secure and functional management of a wide range of mobile devices, and all from a single unified console. Heading to BlackBerry Live to get hands on with the solutions and hear from BlackBerry experts helps you to come back with insightful answers to solve your BYOD challenges, or to take advantage of the BYOD trend to enable your business’s productivity.

3. The sessions rock. Seriously. Learn more about solutions for your particular industry, find partnership opportunities, and get a glimpse into the future of mobile computing.

Every business wants to stay ahead of the curve as well as be both scalable and ready for challenges that are coming around the corner as we continue into 2013 and beyond. The BlackBerry Live sessions hold serious in-depth value and should be a major part of your proposal. Find opportunities to grow your business and see where mobility and your industry are headed. Check out the session tracks to call out specific areas that are valuable to your business or industry. The session catalog will be posted in detail shortly, and will be updated as we approach May 2013.

4. Need proof points? Here are some quotes and survey results from past attendees.

We’re constantly measuring and tweaking the BlackBerry Live conference, content, run-of-show, and so much more – all towards the goal of providing the most relevant and valuable experience possible for attendees. Here’s what we heard from last year’s conference:

“A great forum to meet and discuss [with] enterprise mobility professionals”

“Having access to senior and also technical people from RIM [BlackBerry] is a major reason I come to this event. No other platform does this as well.”

“BlackBerry World [BlackBerry Live] keeps us up to date and allows us to keep our customers informed.”

“I can use this event to better build my organization’s strategy.”

To add to the outstanding feedback that we received, over 91% of respondents noted that the session catalog covered topics that they wanted to hear about. The majority of attendees also stated that the conference increased their knowledge of BlackBerry products and services, rated the overall experience as “excellent”, and would attend again as well as recommend the conference to a colleague.

5. There’s a ton of buzz around BlackBerry 10 and BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10. Find out what it’s all about, get hands-on experience, and see where BlackBerry is headed.

BlackBerry 10 is re-invented, re-engineered, and launching in market after market around the world. The feedback has been fantastic and we’re already seeing businesses leverage this new mobile computing platform in amazing ways. Find out what all of the buzz is about, get hands-on experience with the smartphones and tools, and learn about our vision for the future of mobile computing and enterprise mobility.

6. We’ve built a budget planner for you

On the BlackBerry Live web site you’ll find a budget planning tool that walks through your registration, hotel, training, airfare, transportation, and packages to help give you a clear look at your overall costs. Use this to bring specifics to your internal conversations as the investment that you’ll be making. The tool even creates a PDF that you can attach to an email – makes you look pretty good if you ask me!

7. And finally, here’s a sample email to start you off!

Hi (boss),

In looking for ways to help fine tune our mobile strategy, I’ve identified an opportunity to attend BlackBerry Live 2013 – the largest BlackBerry enterprise mobility conference of the year. The session tracks look relevant to our work and industry, there may be partnership opportunities, and it’s a chance to get ahead to look at where we’re headed in the future when it comes to enterprise mobility management. Here are a few ways that I think we’d see a return on the investment:

• We’ll get a head start on industry trends when it comes to mobility, and a look at the tools that can help us stay sharp, secure, and productive
• By networking, discussing, and meeting with my peers, I can gain insights into the challenges that others are facing and how they’re tackling them in their organizations
• We can better leverage our existing investments in BlackBerry solutions and look to identify new ways to increase productivity
• New partnership opportunities can help us to grow the business and identify efficiencies with our vendors

If we register before March 22nd, we’ll save 25% of the cost. Additional details can be found here. I’m more than happy to expand on the benefits or discuss further.

Get all of the details at www.blackberrylive.com. What are your tips to help others convince their boss to send them to BlackBerry Live 2013? What was the most valuable benefit of last year’s conference? Share in the comments below!

So far 2013 has been one serious year. We’ve launched BlackBerry Enterprise Service 10, renamed our company from RIM to BlackBerry, launched the BlackBerry 10 platform, held BlackBerry Jam Europe 2013, and kicked off the BlackBerry Experience Forum events. Well, guess what? We’re not done yet!

There’s a fire and a passion here at BlackBerry that’s palpable. We’re on our feet and firing on all cylinders as we provide demonstrations of our powerful new mobile computing platform, present enterprise mobility management for the future of business, and begin to launch the BlackBerry Z10 smartphone in market after market around the world.

What has me excited at this point is that we’re well into planning for this year’s BlackBerry Live conference, and there’s no question that it’s going to be one that you won’t want to miss. Here’s just a taste of what we have in store:

BlackBerry Live is our largest conference of the year where BlackBerry community members like you – users, partners, business leaders, IT professionals, enterprise developers, and more – come together to experience the latest BlackBerry innovations. It will be a great opportunity to network with industry experts, to discuss mobile strategy, and, of course, to get some hands-on time with the new BlackBerry 10 devices.

We’ll be providing updates on the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog as we approach BlackBerry Live in May. Sneak peeks of sessions, speaker spotlights, how to convince your boss to send you, and a few more tidbits are on the way to keep the energy high as we approach one of our top events of the year.

What are you most looking forward to at BlackBerry Live 2013? Share in the comments below.

The BlackBerry Achievement Awards (formerly the Wireless Achievement Awards) are just around the corner! These awards bring together the exceptional business, entrepreneur, and developer communities, and recognize those who have taken advantage of all things BlackBerry. Designed for those using BlackBerry technology to help power innovation, the BlackBerry Achievement Awards celebrate where ideas meet execution.

Award Categories

Along with a brand new name, we’ve expanded the award categories to reflect our diverse BlackBerry customer base:

1. App of the Year
2. Putting Customers First
3. Mobile Innovation of the Year
4. Making the World a Better Place
5. Entrepreneur of the Year

To be considered for one of these awards, submit your entry on the BlackBerry Live (formerly BlackBerry World) conference web site. Consider nominating your business, your app, or send in a nomination for a company that you think we should know about.

Awards and Prizes

Five first place winners will receive, each: 1 plane ticket to BlackBerry Live 2013, accommodations for up to 4 nights, 3 full conference passes to BlackBerry Live 2013, and 5 BlackBerry 10 smartphones. Further details on prizing for the runner up (and prizing in general) can be found on the web site (conditions apply).

The Awards Ceremony will take place in Orlando, Florida during BlackBerry Live 2013.

Questions? Please contact achievementawards@rim.com.