For the last couple of years, RIM’s official BlackBerry show may have scared off some more consumer-oriented partners by virtue of its name alone: the Wireless Enterprise Symposium. That’s about to change as next year, the show will be named BlackBerry World instead of WES. This is in an effort to appeal to anyone interested in BlackBerry, not just the enterprise partners who had historically been RIM’s bread and butter. All of the same tracks will be there, and as such RIM is explaining the transition as “WES is now a part of BlackBerry World”.
Although there’s something to be said for RIM trying to appeal to as broad of an audience as possible, there’s two things that strike me as awkward about this move. For one, why not just axe the WES name altogether? Is RIM worried about estranging their hard-core enterprise market, or do they just have too much leftover WES-branded swag to let it go to waste? I’m not sure what putting a conference within a conference entails from a practical standpoint, but it seems like a needlessly complicated message to deliver instead of just “Thing A is now named Thing B”.
Secondly, why BlackBerry World? That’s way too similar the BlackBerry App World on-device software portal and will quickly confuse folks who are only on the periphery of the BlackBerry ecosystem. Why not BlackBerry Universe? Or the BlackBerry Show or BlackBerry Conference, or BlackBerry-a-ganza 2.0? The duplicate branding just strikes me as wholly unnecessary.
Whatever the hell it’s called, you can find out more information about the show and register at www.blackberryworld.com.
[via Inside BlackBerry]