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"Mashable's Anita Li contributed to this report from Toronto.\nResearch in Motion, maker of the once-treasured but now beleaguered BlackBerry, is in trouble. RIM cut 5,000 jobs \u2014 30% of its workforce \u2014 this past summer. Its most recent earnings report beat expectations but still isn't much to celebrate, as subscriber numbers are down and the report shows nearly a 50% drop off in sales since the same quarter last year.\nRIM's only hope \u2014 its Luke Skywalker \u2014 lies in BlackBerry 10, which may or may not succeed against the mobile OS behemoths that are Apple's iOS and Google's Android platforms. \nBut even if BlackBerry 10 fails and RIM goes the way of the dinosaur, there's a silver lining for Ontario, Canada, the province it calls home: Ex-RIM employees are taking their resources and know-how to the local startup community.\nKalu Kalu is a former RIM employee who left the company this year to found MyShoebox, a photo-backup solution. While at RIM, he worked on the prototype team, which he said is responsible for looking at \u201Cnew ideas and new products that were not necessarily part of the traditional product roadmap.\"\n\u201CThere was a culture there at the time where you could \u2014 even as a student \u2013- there was the ability for you to come in and build and develop innovative ideas,\" said Kalu. \"I had the opportunity to present some of the ideas that I worked on to the executives, to product managers. For the longest time, I really enjoyed that aspect. It was almost kind of like a startup within a larger company. But then, with some of the changes \u2013- like the organizational changes \u2014 it became a bit harder to pursue ideas that were more ambitious.\u201D\nUltimately, Kalu decided it was best to strike out on his own.\n\u201CTo try and deliver a brand new product is very, very difficult, so it ultimately came down to [that] I felt like I wanted to sort of pursue something on my own, and actually try to build something and help keep cultivating and innovating in Canada, [in] Toronto.\u201D\nStories like Kalu's are found across the Ontario startup community.\n\"We're seeing a lot of the RIM talent doing startups,\" said Steve Currie, coach and mentor at Ontario's Communitech, a non-profit and tech incubator. \"We've had a number of the displaced RIM folks come in and work as mentors and coaches on a volunteer basis as well for our startup community. We're seeing them engage in a bunch of different ways. Many of the former RIM folks want to stay in the region, there's a lot going on in the tech community here so there are opportunities.\"\nKrista Jones, practice lead at Toronto-based incubator MaRS, agreed that ex-RIM employees are having a big impact in the local tech-startup community. \n\"Most people from RIM, what they do as they leave is go back into the startup community,\" said Jones. \"You see former RIM employees all over the place either as founders or as employees in the startup scene, which has been great for the startup community in Ontario.\"\nRIM's former talent may be staying in Ontario for a wealth of reasons: ties to the area or a desire to be a part of the booming tech-startup culture, for instance. But it's not an entirely organic phenomenon: Ontario's Minister of Economic Development and Innovation, Brad Duguid, is doing everything in his power to ensure former RIM talent stays in Ontario.\n\"RIM is a company built on innovation, and they're innovating every single day,\" said Duguid, who's more optimistic than most about RIM's prospects. \"They have incredible talent. They recognized the position they're in, they're transforming their company and I think people are going to be pleasantly surprised as RIM goes through that transformation.\n\"That being said, they've had to shed some talent,\" he added. \"Our goal has been to ensure that talent continues to participate in our [technology] sector. We've been successful with companies like OpenText. We've also been successful at funneling a number of those workers through business-startup opportunities like Communitech, where they've taken ideas and talent that have evolved from what RIM has provided to create new ventures.\"\nSEE ALSO: RIM Loses BlackBerry Subscribers But Grows Cash Pile\n\nJanet Ecker, president of the Toronto Financial Services Alliance, offered a similar sentiment.\n\"RIM's success was a role model,\" she said. \"They're a household name. I think that has motivated [Ontario] and they themselves have re-invested in the community. [RIM]'s investments and the infrastructure and the cluster they have built will succeed regardless of what happens to RIM. I think they've built something there that will continue regardless of what happens to the company.\"\nWill RIM survive? If it fails, what will rise from its ashes? Share your thoughts in the comments below.\nBONUS: 5 Things That Are Actually Pretty Cool About BlackBerry 10\n\n\n5 Things That Are Actually Pretty Cool About BlackBerry 10\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nGlance Back\nSaying BlackBerry 10 is all about the \"flow\" between apps, RIM CEO Thorsten Heins showed how users could quickly see other apps running by \"glancing back\" via menus that peek out from the side.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nTime-Shifting Camera\nThe cameras on BlackBerry 10 phones will be able to capture imagery before and after you take the shot, letting you \"go back in time\" in case, say, someone closes their eyes. In his keynote, Heins showed how it could be targeted by area.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nSmart Onscreen Keyboard\nRIM's known for physical keyboards, but the onscreen keyboard steals the show in BlackBerry 10. The phone predicts what words you want to type, putting them above the keys they start with. If you want to delete entire words, just start swiping backward.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nCascades\nCascades are a BB10 developer tool (in beta) that lets app creators easily add dynamic elements to items like buttons, check boxes and fields. They're compatible with multiple programming languages, and animations are built in: for example, a check box doesn't just appear, it \"springs\" into place, as RIM describes. There's also a Cascades plug-in for Photoshop.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nBattery Monitoring From Apps\nIndividual apps can check the battery status and either warn the user that the task they're about to start might result in data loss, or take precautions, like dimming the screen.\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\nImage courtesy of Justin Sullivan/Getty Images News/Getty Images"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
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