Hi everyone, my name’s Sarah and I’m a member of the Corporate Marketing Group at Research In Motion® (RIM®) – you may have read my past post on the Inside BlackBerry® blog. I’ve seen a lot of changes over the years and been part of many great projects, but my current role – leading the BlackBerry World marketing team – is perhaps my most exciting role as I get to connect directly with customers like you.

It’s been a fun and busy few months ramping up to open registration. For those of you who were familiar with our Wireless Enterprise Symposium (WES), you will be interested to know that we have decided to move forward with a new conference, BlackBerry World, which will contain the WES content.

Read more at the Inside BlackBerry for Business Blog »

Please welcome a new addition to the Inside BlackBerry Blog, Sarah Burt! Sarah works on the Corporate Marketing team at Research In Motion® (RIM) and will be providing updates on our new conference, BlackBerry World, going forward. Post a comment and say hi! Ed.

If you’re an IT administrator, developer, or BlackBerry® partner, then you’ve probably attended WES at some point in the past 9 years. WES has been our flagship BlackBerry conference held in Orlando, Florida each spring. We have attracted over 5000 customers and partners annually to come network and get an in-depth view of all things BlackBerry.

Now there’s a new conference taking its place – BlackBerry World. The BlackBerry World conference is the best place to get all the necessary news and information related to BlackBerry, with a ton of hands-on and interactive content. This is truly the place to come and get an in-depth, 360-degree view of all things BlackBerry. You’ll still get all the WES tracks and sessions you’re used to, and we’re also adding tracks exclusively for BlackBerry Channel Partners. We’ll have over 100 sessions on topics ranging from supporting individual-liable smartphones in your environment to getting up to speed on the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet. Over 150 sponsors will take part in the Solutions Showcase, where you’ll find apps that make your job easier and apps that make waiting in line easier. And of course, we’ll continue to present insightful keynote speakers and the very latest in BlackBerry announcements.

Registration opens in January, but you can find out more about the BlackBerry World conference now by checking out www.blackberryworld.com. Continue to watch the Inside BlackBerry Blog for more conference posts from me in 2011 – I’ll keep you up to date on the latest conference details. We’re excited for the next phase!

BlackBerry® Mobile Voice System 5 (BlackBerry® MVS 5) was one of the many announcements during WES 2010. During the show I had the chance to speak with Andrew from the Voice and Collaboration Platform team about the voice over Wi-Fi® calling capability of BlackBerry MVS 5, use cases and security features. Check out the video above demonstrating Wi-Fi calling and call transferring using BlackBerry MVS 5, then click the link below for my interview with Andrew.

Q: So what are some specific use cases for BlackBerry MVS 5?

A: People are increasingly working from home at least a few days a week, so in this scenario with BlackBerry MVS 5, you wouldn’t have to do any call forwarding, and you wouldn’t have a need for a separate business line at home. You just take your BlackBerry® smartphone with you, connect to your home Wi-Fi and it’s like your office phone comes with you as well.

Being at home and being able to sync my BlackBerry smartphone to my Wi-Fi router and make secure calls through my work extension – just as if as I was at the office – is an absolutely fabulous use case for a growing number of people in their work lives.

Another great use for BlackBerry MVS 5 is on campuses. You could be in a hospital or manufacturing plant, away from desktop phones, but with access to a voice grade Wi-Fi network – now you can make calls over that Wi-Fi network from your BlackBerry smartphone using your enterprise/work number versus your mobile number.

BlackBerry MVS 5 is a great way to optimize the use of your cellular voice plan, address coverage issues and maintain privacy of your cell phone number when working away from the office.

Q: What does the end-user need to do to be able to use BlackBerry MVS 5?

A: If your organization already has BlackBerry® Enterprise Server and BlackBerry MVS 5, then you just need to contact your IT group to get your BlackBerry account added to BlackBerry MVS 5. Your IT administrator can then push the software update and the VPN credentials to your BlackBerry smartphone – no user interaction required! After that you can simply connect to an available Wi-Fi network and choose to make calls from your work line, over Wi-Fi, from your BlackBerry smartphone. You’ll love how easy it is, and IT will rest easy knowing that your mobile work calls are routed through the corporate PBX and have the ability to help maintain corporate compliance regulations.

Q: Then, as a user, you just have to make sure that you connect to an available Wi-Fi network from your BlackBerry smartphone, and everything is taken care of for you?

A: Correct. Once your Wi-Fi is turned on and you’re connected to a Wi-Fi network, the administrator will have set it all up for you – you just have to start making calls.

Q: Anything else users need to know about BlackBerry MVS 5?

A: Your company needs to be running a supported IP PBX for BlackBerry MVS 5 (Cisco or Mitel to start, with other vendors to follow). Note that our BlackBerry MVS 4.6 version is available to customers with other vendors or legacy (TDM) PBXs and provides similar functionality over carrier mobile networks but does not support Wi-Fi calling.

If you’re looking for more info, be sure to check out the BlackBerry MVS 5 announcement and the BlackBerry MVS 5 product page on BlackBerry.com.

Wow — WES 2010 came and went in a flash! We hope everyone enjoyed their time here and learned a lot…we certainly did.

We look forward to seeing everyone next year. Until then, here’s what you had to say about show:

A great big thank you to all of our friends who attended our WES 2010 Tweetup. It was a blast and it was great to put some faces to Twitter account names! We are grateful for your continued support! Special thanks also goes out the the WES events team and the BlackBerry Support Community Forums team (@BlackBerryHelp!)

For more Inside BlackBerry WES 2010 Images go to our Inside BlackBerry Flickr Page.

Yesterday WES 2010 General Sessioneers were treated a panel discussion featuring will.i.am – futurist, Ben Silverman – CEO and Founder of Electus, and Steven Berlin Johnson – author of The Invention of Air and Creator of outside.in.

The topic: The importance of connecting with the new generation of mobile users.

In the spirit of being plugged in to your audience and developing content with their feedback in mind, the Inside BlackBerry team wanted to know what you took away from the session – stay tuned for some highlights after the jump!

Key panel takeaways:

Don’t underestimate the transferable skills that people develop in their gaming lives.
Stephen likened the skills involved in coordinating groups in the game World of Warcraft® to the skill sets required for workplace collaboration.

Being constantly plugged in isn’t really a bad thing.
Everything may be instant, but it also now lives in perpetuity – and in a public space to be shared.

Technology allows us to be both individuals and part of the collective simultaneously.
Ben described how the BlackBerry® smartphone was a good example of this – it allows us to assert our individuality through aspects such as themes and apps, and at the same time it provides tools that foster collaboration.

Engage. Period.
will.i.am discussed how he checks Twitter when he DJs to gauge the crowd’s response and then adjusts accordingly. (This may explain some of the fun throwbacks to 80’s tunes at the WES 2010 party!) Similarily, Ben mentioned the importance of storytellers engaging with their audience to help drive the stories forward collectively.

To me, this scope of ideas proves that the conversation is just getting started, and there are a lot of great ideas out there that people are itching to share. We’d love to continue this conversation, so please let us know your thoughts on the key questions discussed in the panel:

- How do we manage the next generation’s expectation of wanting to be engaged?
- How should we break the rules for creating content?
- Has mobility and on-demand changed the way we experience national events?

And for a slightly adjusted final question:

- How can BlackBerry users change the technology in a similar way that Twitter users have helped to evolve Twitter?

Looking forward to reading your responses!

The Inside BlackBerry team can’t believe that WES is already half over! Here are the highlights from yesterday’s activities.

During the Tuesday General Session Keynote at WES 2010, the Wireless Leadership Awards winners were announced. For those not in attendance (or not following the @BlackBerry Twitter account), you can click this link to read about the winners or watch the videos embedded in this post. I also had a great opportunity to speak with Lisa from the WES events team about the history of the Wireless Leadership Awards and details about the process of selecting winners, so click the link below to learn more!

When was the first Wireless Leadership Awards?

This is the fourth year, so 2006 was the first year.

And you’ve worked on all of them?

Yes!

So how did the Wireless Leadership Awards start?

Other teams at RIM wanted to showcase the great and innovative work on the BlackBerry® platform by some of our key customers. So we came up with three different categories to best recognize which specific sector the work excelled: the Private Sector category, the Public Sector category, and the Business Impact category. Originally, there was just one winner for each category, but we’ve expanded each to two finalists and one winner, because it was hard to recognize just one company or solution.

Who were the winners the first year of the Wireless Leadership Awards?

Bank Inter, a Spanish bank, won the Private Sector category for building a mobile banking app long before other people were thinking of doing that. The West Yorkshire Police won the Public Sector category for their work with mobile criminal database lookup, and EMC won the Business Impact category for a wireless antenna solution they had developed.

Earlier this week we announced the 2010 Wireless Leadership Awards nominees on Inside BlackBerry. What was the process to becoming a potential nominee or winner?

A few months prior to WES, we publish a web entry form where companies can be nominated or nominate themselves for entry into the Wireless Leadership Awards. Nominees must upload a business case outlining the wireless challenge to be overcome with their BlackBerry solution, details on their solution (how it was developed and deployed, backend functionality, development partners involved… etc.) and how it has improved their business.

A WES selection committee comprised of RIM employees and past winners then judge all the entries. This is the first year we’ve had industry analysts join the selection committee. It’s a long process of sifting through entries (we receive so many!) and reaching consensus, so we’re really grateful for the hard work of everyone on the committee.

Other than the high honor of being mentioned on the Inside BlackBerry blog, what are the perks of being a Wireless Leadership Awards finalist or winner?

Both finalists and Wireless Leadership Awards winners receive free travel and accommodations to WES 2010, as well as BlackBerry® smartphones and BlackBerry Solution Services packages featuring BlackBerry Training and the BlackBerry Certification Program. The awards winners’ prize package is valued at $30,000 USD, and the finalist packages are valued at $10,000 USD. Any of your readers that are interested in learning more can head to
http://www.attendwes.com/wla
for more information.

The value, however, isn’t simply in the prize package. The biggest thing is really the recognition at WES. From the Wednesday General Session Keynote to the exclusive awards reception featuring RIM executives and key partners, becoming a Wireless Leaderships Awards winner or finalist is a great spotlight to shine on your company.

For our friends unable to attend WES 2010, and for our fellow attendees looking to relive those special moments, we’re posting all the images taken by the Inside BlackBerry team to the WES 2010 photo set on the official BlackBerry Flickr account. What we have so far (Monday night’s Welcome Reception and the Tuesday General Session Keynote) is in the slideshow above, but make sure to keep checking back for new images!

We’re super excited to be able to share the above video – shared during the WES 2010 Tuesday General Session Keynote. Post a comment and tell us what you think about BlackBerry 6.