Conduct

BlackBerry Developer Success Story - Conduct

With a tagline of online, mobile and creative, Conduct is always on the lookout for mobile and web technology that will provide its enterprise clients with the best user experience possible. The agency took notice when it first heard about the level of seamless integration possible with BlackBerry 10 and recently released its first BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha application. The app, Feather Duster, allows users to visually discover live Twitter streams and generated so much attention that Conduct was invited on stage to discuss it at a BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour session in Australia.

Conduct co-founders Simon Krambousanos and Charlie Pohl talked to us about why they are so excited about BlackBerry 10, why it's such a benefit to work in an open development environment and how important the level of support from RIM and the development community has been.

Q: Why are you looking forward to the launch of the full BlackBerry 10 platform?

Simon: We were lucky enough to be invited to BlackBerry World in Orlando and we were blown away by the hardware and technology of BlackBerry 10. One thing that resonated with me was the attention to detail and the fact that the devices seemed to be extremely user-oriented. The use of 'flow, connect and extend' that RIM is introducing really demonstrates great innovation and I think that BlackBerry 10 will shake things up in the smart phone marketplace. Even the quality assurance component in the review process is miles ahead of what other platforms are doing. We're definitely backing the brand and this platform and we look forward to future development opportunities.

Charlie: Our primary goal has always been to use the most advanced technology to provide the best mobile solutions for our enterprise clients. In the past couple of years we've seen incremental improvements in smartphones but I think the overall global community of phone users is ready for something new and exciting. I've had a good look at the NDK on the Dev Alpha device and I really believe that BlackBerry 10 will be the breakthrough in user experience that people are craving.

We also find the flexibility that we can build into the integration is really beneficial, especially in the combination of enterprise and personal use through something like BlackBerry® Balance™. That feature will allow people to use one device that will not only protect their corporate data, but also keep their personal information separate, which is extremely useful.

Q: How important is an open development environment?

Charlie: It's a huge benefit for any studio to be able to leverage existing skillsets to develop. We can choose to code in C++ or Java or any other web technology quite seamlessly and we can apply our coding skills and engineering patterns to the NDK. This app is a visualizer of a large volume of data so the fact that we can build something for easy transition to other platforms is great. We've had difficulty with other platforms in the past that run off closed systems, but this one is just a well thought out, open platform with a lot of opportunity for modifications. This openness results in cost savings that we can pass on to our clients.

Simon: Feather Duster was based on Gameplay, an open source cross platform C++ game development framework. This formed the basis of the particle interaction in the app and we found that it was lightweight, powerful and functioned seamlessly. It was the main approach for us to go the C++ route and it gave us great control over the hardware, which really enhanced the performance of the app. It's a great basket of tools that we've been able to use to plug in and play. We worked with this framework for the first time and the actual development process only took 10 days.

Q: How important has the openness of the developer community and partnership with RIM been?

Charlie: The openness of the development community, access to developers and support from the developer relations team has been a major benefit. The BlackBerry Jam event we attended was incredibly insightful and we've experienced a quick turnaround for any technical questions we've had. RIM treats us a proper development partner with a level of respect that we simply haven't experienced with other platforms. There's a strong feeling of community around you when you develop for BlackBerry devices and people want to help you create a better solution. The support comes from start to finish, whereas on other platforms the support is miniscule.

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