OTTAWA—Every now and then in the nation’s capital, political reporters willingly submit to something called a “lock-up.”
The deal works like this: in exchange for an advance view of large, complicated documents — budgets, auditor-general’s reports, StatsCan releases — journalists agree to cut themselves off from the world for several hours.
Ever since BlackBerry technology landed with force in the capital less than a decade ago, these lock-ups could more properly be called detox sessions.
If you want to see the picture of BlackBerry addiction in Ottawa, post yourself outside one of these lock-ups as it is ending. Watch the reporters and political aides stampede to the tables where they have been forced to surrender their gadgets; hear the sighs of relief when they plug themselves back in to their life-support of constant information.
This is a cultural revolution less than a decade old in the capital, but it’s also a powerful, transformative one.
Even though the consumer world has increasingly been migrating to snazzier smartphones — iPhones especially — the political culture in the capital remains largely wedded to the BlackBerry.
So when the BlackBerry folks came to Ottawa this week to give a sneak peek at their new “10” model, due out sometime before March next year, the addicts (including yours truly) turned out in force.
The Chateau Laurier ballroom was packed with people keen to see BlackBerry regain its place at the top of the instant-information game. We Ottawa folks feel, with some justification, that we helped put the technology on the map in the first place. We don’t care that the New York Times recently ran a story about how it’s now socially embarrassing to be using a BlackBerry.
Patriotism is a factor in this ongoing loyalty. The BlackBerry, unlike all those brazen competitors, is a home-grown Canadian marvel, invented by Research in Motion in Waterloo, Ont.
Security of communication is also a big factor. I’m no expert in this aspect of technological gadgetry, but I take it that the BlackBerry is still far superior in offering secure channels for sensitive conversations.
But if you ask many of us in Ottawa why we’re still sticking with the BlackBerry, willfully ignoring its troubled fortunes of late, you get one, prosaic answer: the keyboard.
That wee, tiny keyboard on the BlackBerry is its chief, competitive advantage, as far as many of the stalwarts are concerned.
No matter how fancy those iPhones get, we still can tell the difference between emails typed out on those flat, onscreen keyboards and the touch-friendlier BlackBerries. The iPhone messages are riddled with errors and autocomplete embarrassments. A BlackBerry missive, on the other hand, is painstakingly typed letter by letter — using thumbs trained in new, 21st-century arts of dexterity.
If you’re tapping out news stories or conducting interviews through rapid-fire BlackBerry exchanges, the accuracy thing is no small matter. The keyboard counts for a lot.
The new BlackBerry 10 model, judging from the preview at the cocktail reception this week, is impressive. It works a lot like your normal desktop or laptop, allowing you to “seamlessly” switch between the various applications you use, at home or at work.
There’s also a neat feature that gives it a dual personality — one BlackBerry system for work, one for when you leave the office, all in the same device.
And the new chief marketer for RIM, Frank Boulben, said all the right things at the Ottawa reception, telling us he had been eager to join the Research In Motion team six months ago because of the chance to be part of a historic “comeback.”
He said that a BlackBerry revival depended on spreading the word among folks like the political crowd, who had been early adopters and evangelists for the technology. (Full disclosure: I believe I may have been the first political reporter in Ottawa to write a story on a BlackBerry, all the way back in June 2002.)
Boulben then said the magic word: “keyboard.” Now he had our attention. He assured us we were going to like it.
But as we soon learned, the initial rollout of the new BlackBerry won’t have the tiny keyboard that’s so firmly attached to the thumbs and hearts of the original fans in Ottawa.
Instead, the first wave of BlackBerry 10 will have an onscreen version of a typing pad, which cleverly offers suggested words based on a couple of letters. It seems a step up from the iPhone keyboard, but it’s not the keyboard we know and love. For that, we have to wait another couple of months into 2013, when RIM will unveil a keyboard-equipped BlackBerry 10.
So the people who helped lead the stampede to BlackBerry are at the back of the line for meeting consumer demand in 2013. An odd way to reward that loyalty, but perhaps a fine way to cure an addiction.
Susan Delacourt is member of the Star’s Ottawa bureau.