Part I of CrackBerry's Interview with RIM's new CEO



Just as the news became public Sunday night that Thorsten Heins was named the new CEO of Research In Motion, I received a phone call from him letting me know personally that he won the leadership race and it wouldn't be CrackBerry Kevin and a Ham Sandwich at the reigns of RIM in 2012. It was a classy gesture and a clear signal that RIM moving forward will be more engaged with its user community. On that call Thorstein promised he'd give us a few more minutes of his time this week so we could actually throw a few questions his way (as you can imagine, I was completely unprepared for the first call!). RIM's new CEO delivered on his first promise to CrackBerry Nation and on Wednesday I was able to connect with Thorsten again.

Between Monday's RIM conference call, the official BlackBerry youtube videos, and the various television interviews Thorsten has given this week to other media outlets, we've already seen and heard a lot from the new BlackBerry Chief. A lot of the things said have given us plenty of reason to get excited for this new era of BlackBerry, while some of the messages making their way out into the media seem to already be shooting the new leadership direction down before it has even had a hint of a chance to execute. So I took this opportunity to get clarification on some of the mixed messages that have been making their way out there and dig deeper into other topics that have been covered this week. We cover a lot of things and found Thorsten to be great to talk to -- personable and a straight shooter with a sense of humor. In true CrackBerry fashion we will be be bringing the goods to the blogs here in a series of posts, so you'll want to keep it locked to CrackBerry.

But before we get to the heavier hitting questions we start with a couple of easy ones... listen above or keep reading as we break the ice and get the ball rolling on CrackBerry's first interview with the CEO of Research In Motion. I've been waiting five years to do one of these, so yeah... we're going to rock and roll this!!