I was pretty excited to get something going there, so I got the Blackberry IDE and actually got a tiny hello world going, then tried to install the Verizon 8830 emulator so I could build for my exact phone. The entire thing went bust. Now I can't get it to launch anything or revert to another emulator. This was really annoying.
Hello, RIM: Build on ECLIPSE!!!!
Anyway, I'm sorry to say I haven't yet burned down and rebuilt the IDE.
But here's the thing. If you know any other languages such as AS3, Python, etc. You can scope out some of the demos for them. No, it won't tell you a thing about Blackberry's stack, but it will get you up to speed on the role of the framework. That is pretty invariant across platforms. And also read the Best Practices doc. Yes, examples are Flex/AS3 but again platform and language focus are minimized in the discussion in favor clarification of the general concepts.
You'll need to learn more about the Blackberry platform itself from that community. From this community ask things like the role of the mediator to the view component, and tell us about the specific behaviors and capabilities of that view component. We'd love to get the BB community using this. You can be our emissary.

-=Cliff>