With just over a month to go until the first ever BlackBerry Developer Conference, I thought it was a good time to have a quick look at the BlackBerry Developers' State of the Union and how it's about to undergo a significant change in October.

The BlackBerry platform has always been an extremely powerful platform for developers - I'm often surprised how hard developers on other mobile platforms find tasks such as peer-to-peer networking, implementing custom Bluetooth discovery/integration or even simple things like building a mobile application that doesn't ask you for five separate permissions before you can even display your UI. There's a reason for my surprise though - in the past the platform hasn't had the airtime it deserves - either on the documentation/communication side or the all-important community side. This is changing rapidly though - a brand new Developer Relations team at RIM have already launched a Developer Video Library, Developer Forums and new public betas over the past couple of months. However, it's DevCon 2008 that will be the annual highlight of this new initiative.

I'd strongly encourage all of you involved (or aspiring to be involved) in the BlackBerry developer community to not only check out the Keynote Speakers, comprehensive Session Catalog, Hands-on Labs and BlackBerry Partners Fund's Developer Challenge, but to also consider that for the first time ever, the worlds' leading technical minds focused on developing for the world's most powerful mobile platform will be in the same building for four intensive days of networking, sharing and learning - why wouldn't you want to be there?! The bonus - it's also in San Francisco.

DevelopIQ are proud sponsors of the first ever BlackBerry DevCon and I'll also be presenting a session in the Java Development track entitled Lessons Learned: Working with Advanced Java APIs for BlackBerry, aiming to highlight some of the most powerful features of the platform and how to get the best out of them. There will also be other excellent sessions from many seasoned 3rd party developers sharing their experiences as well as exciting interactive sessions with the RIM developer teams themselves.

So, what are you waiting for - register now using discount code DG3XNW and save $150 - I'll see you at the bar...