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Last week I was invited to attend a Blackberry function for a “key few” top clients in the country. I accepted reluctantly as others from my employer couldn’t make the event. I guess I had written off Blackberry and on the day of the event our organisation announced that employees for the first time had the choice of getting iPhone’s or Galaxy SIII’s instead of Blackberries.

I have been using a Blackberry for almost as far back as I can remember, for probably the last 10 years at least. The first was a rather clunky device with a physical scroll wheel on the side, a version 7200 or something like that. Since then I have been through many versions, from the diminutive phone-like Pearl through two version of the Bold (9000 and 9900) with an 8520 for a 4 month period in-between the last two.

Blackberry has always served me well when it came to “business” functions like email, contacts and calendar. Over the last 3 years it has also significantly improved in the “social” area as BBM took off like wildfire to replace the increasingly unstable MXIT and as Twitter and Facebook were integrated. Even as I have carried an iPad and various Nokia and Windows phones the Blackberry was still my favourite twitter client as it worked so much better in low signal and erratic signal areas.

In the last 6 months Blackberry has been in a lot of trouble per the global press. The devices were no longer cool, the network had it’s fair share of problems, the Blackberry 10 was delayed. The Playbook tablet was released prematurely with buggy feature deprived software, and looked clunky in comparison to the iPad and Galaxy tablets.

On the way to the event I even tweeted out to my few hundred followers that I was going to this event, using what I though would be my last Blackberry.

The event was at the DaVinci in Sandton. Nice venue. It was in the evening and started a little late. A simple affair, some cocktail tables set up in a room with food and drinks being served. The event started a little late as the key guests were delayed at their previous engagement. The opportunity was taken to catch up with some old acquaintances and make a few more. The mood was a little downbeat with people just wanting to get home.

The entourage arrived. The global executive team. Thorsten Heins (President and CEO), Frank Boulben (Chief Marketing Officer), Carlo Chiarello (Executive Vice President), supported by the South African team, including newly appointed Southern Africa CEO Alexandra Zagury.

Frank came across to our table, introduced himself, pulled a Blackberry 10 all touch device out of his pocket and without much fanfare proceeded to give us a very hands on half hour demo of the device and what it can do. This was so much more effective than any Powerpoint video or presentation and was a masterstroke.

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