Quick thoughts from WES 2008
Today marks my third day at WES 2008 (arrived on Sunday) and despite the lack of sleep and inevitable jet-lag I don’t feel tired at all. It’s all too exciting. There have been a raft of interesting announcements such as the launch of the BlackBerry Bold, the announcement of the $150M BlackBerry Partners Fund, and the announcement of the BlackBerry Developer Conference in October, all of which have huge implications for developers.
Several brief thoughts I’ve had walking around and talking to people:
- More people than I thought read this blog! I’ve had a hard time introducing myself to most people in the BlackBerry development space without them asking about it.
- Despite talk about the growth in the consumer third-party software market, the majority of companies demonstrating their products at the Solutions Showcase are B2B oriented. This market is still not conducive enough to sustain a large consumer-oriented ISV with the kind of revenue sufficient to engage in mainstream sponsorship, marketing, etc. This needs to change.
- RIM employees are young, energetic, and extremely passionate about the product. Having a single product focus is going to pay huge dividends for RIM.
- Talking to many of the guys who run BlackBerry oriented websites (hung out with Kevin from CrackBerry last night downing a couple of beers) a clear picture is painted that a similar situation exists for them as what us developers have felt for years. RIM has failed to positively engage enthusiast websites for marketing or PR efforts. Rather than encourage the growth in community websites - which are hugely beneficial for users - RIM has a clear history of neglect. Extremely disappointing and spectacularly dumb from a marketing point of view. Can you imagine how much sites like CrackBerry have decreased support for carriers & RIM through their thriving “user help user” forums? Also think about how much BlackBerryCool, CrackBerry, and BerryReview have through product reviews driven sales of BlackBerry software and accessories so that RIM’s ISV’s can succeed. And yet, RIM does absolutely nothing to help these sites survive and grow. Heck, they don’t even send them free devices just to say “Thanks”. Sad.
- I’ve decided I’m not going to chase down any of the the $150M funding. For one, I don’t need it. Our business is successful right now and will be even more so when we launch some of the great applications we’ve been working on over the coming months. Secondly, I don’t want venture capital hooks in to my business. I’ve heard way too many founders discuss (off the record) how their biggest regret was ever getting involved with vulture-like VCs. I don’t need that. I’m not desperate.
- One thing that surprised me was the number of Australian companies at WES. Having said that, pretty much every one that I did meet was service-oriented and I didn’t see any with any real BlackBerry development power. Acting as “guns for hire” in the Australian market is a huge opportunity for us and one that I have been seriously investigating over the last couple of months, making many local contacts. WES provided me with the perfect opportunity to sit down with these companies, and what I’ve taken back from these meetings so far has been extremely positive.
That’s it for now…no doubt much more to come in what has already been an extremely exciting and informative experience.










