Third keynote - Michael Chasen unveils Bb NG

In shock that no-one else has blogged the main event yet. Here is my shaky camera phone picture of Michael Chasen at BbWorld Europe (oh yeah, and some guy on stage, boom! boom!)

Seriously though, the classic Bb set piece aka product roadmap actually had a lot of meat in it this year. The new user interface for Bb9.0 looks great, it will be much easier for people to use, have a more modern look and feel, and, I think, set us in good stead for the next few years at least. There will be a LOT of decisions to make - institutionally and by staff designing sites and we will need to think a LOT about how to manage that effectively, but overall it will be worth it. We just need to help staff get past the *gulp* "this looks really different" moment and it will make a big difference. Of course, Michael's enthusiasm is infectious, of course, you feel concerned that he will run out of breath before the runs out of sentence (and at one point possibly also run out of stage) but it was a good keynote, it had substance and the way the audience were lapping up the screenshots and and drag and drop demos was fascinating. Not gonna comment too much here on some of the "coming soon" oddities: multiple vles, opt back to CE4 etc but overall with focus on the UI stuff we are reasonably confident to see before the year is out - things are looking good. Others attending the keynote might add more.

Oh and here's an extra picture...really just as a....sorry, no words, just picture