“Port-A-Thon” is now a popular term among Asia Pacific developers. Developers have heard good stuff about BlackBerry GotGame virtual Port-a-thon in November, participated in the All-Aboard Port-a-thon on December, and then went nuts about the BlackBerry Got Game Port-A-Thon LIVE series that was held in eight cities in Asia Pacific.

When this weekend’s Port-A-Thons were announced, we got a really enthusiastic responses from APAC BlackBerry developer communities. They want to make sure quality apps will be ported, and a lot of them volunteered to host offline events across Asia to support developers to successfully port their apps. RIM Developer Evangelists, experienced BlackBerry developers and our BlackBerry Dev Group leaders will all be onsite all over Asia to support developers.

For the lucky developers who live in the below cities, be sure to pop by and get porting with us in the flesh!

Note: all date and times stated are based on local cities’ timezone.

China

Beijing – Pre Port-a-Thon tech seminar

(Organized by Iberry dev group)

Date/Time: January 11, 6:00PM to 9:00PM

Location: Monica’s café (北京市朝阳区大望路万达广场4号楼806)

Registration and more details: http://bit.ly/13j6bRw

Beijing – Android to BlackBerry Port-a-Thon Tech Seminar

(In collaboration with Iberry dev group)

Date/Time: 12^th 10:00AM to 1:00PM

Location: Monica’s café (北京市朝阳区大望路万达广场4号楼806)

Registration and more details: http://bit.ly/13j6bRw

Shanghai – Android to BlackBerry Port-a-Thon tech seminar

(organized by CNBBDevGroup, China)

Date/Time: January 12, 10:00AM to 1:00PM

Location: 上海市杨浦区淞沪路270号创智天地广场(KIC)3号楼B1层InnoSpace

Registration and more details: http://bit.ly/13j5kjB

India

Kochi, Kerala – Android Port-A-Thon for BlackBerry 10 Tech Support

(organized by Rubus Labs at Start-up Village)

Date/Time: January 12, 09:30AM onwards

Location: Rubus Labs, Startup Village, Kinfra High Tech Park, Kalamassery, Kochi-683503, Kerala

Enathur Kanchipuram, Tamil Nadu – Android Port-A-Thon for BlackBerry 10 Tech Support

(organized by SCSVMV BlackBerry Developer Group)

Date/Time: January 12, 09:30AM onwards

Location: SCSVMV University, Dept. of CSE, SCSVMV University, Enathur Kanchipuram-631561,

Indonesia

Jakarta – BlackBerry 10 Android Port-a-Thon live Support

(In collaboration with ID Android and BBDevID)

Date/time: January 12, 10.00AM to 8.00PM

Location: Mercantile Athletic Club, Penthouse Floor (18th floor), World Trade Center 1, Jl. Jenderal Sudirman Kav. 31 Jakarta 12920

Registration and more details: http://bit.ly/13iJblF

Philippines

Manila – PinoyBBDev Port-a-thon Meetup

(organized by PinoyBBDev, in conjunction with Globe, Android and Web Communities)

Date/Time: January 12, 8:00AM to 6:00PM

Location: Globe Valero, Makati City

Registration and more details: http://bit.ly/13iLIvX

Vietnam

Ho Chi Minh – BlackBerry 10 Portathon Live Support Session

(organized by BlackBerry Developer Group – Vietnam)

Date/Time: January 11 & 12, 9:00AM to 8:00PM

Location: Cafe Dâu: 1E Nguyễn Văn Thủ, F. Dakao, Quận 1, T/P HCM.

More details: http://bit.ly/13iMMA9

Singapore

BlackBerry 10 Porting Clinic in Singapore

(In collaboration with PlugFest organizers)

Date/Time: January 12, 10:00AM to 6:00PM

Location: “Green Room” in Plug-in@BLK71

More details: http://bit.ly/VTUbzw

Be a part of the first simultaneous Asia-Pacific-wide BlackBerry® hackathon! Hack your way through 40 hours of non-stop coding. From ideation to creation, together with our experts, make it all app-en to win cash, devices, trips and more. Indulge on an endless supply of food, drinks, activities and giveaways. Go head-to-head in ten major cities and advance to BlackBerry Jam Asia 2012 to represent your team and country. Whether you are an experienced or aspiring developer, designer or an entrepreneur, you can bring your skills and ideas to turn your ideas into reality. It’s going to be a blast!

Organised by ten Developer Groups & Communities in Asia Pacific, each 40-hour JamHack event will provide an opportunity for four-member teams of developers, designers, marketeers, entrepreneurs to work on an awesome app for BlackBerry 10.  To ensure that each team is properly equipped for the challenge, RIM is providing round-the-clock Global Technical Helpdesk support, by the tech experts from Developer Relations Asia Pacific team onsite, as well as platform experts streaming live from North America.

Don’t miss the great opportunity to hack with the subject-matter experts and fellow brilliant minds, across continents! On each weekend, there will be five simultaneous JamHack events happening:

Jammin’ on Oct 12-14 (5-city simultaneous Hacks):

• India – Delhi (by @skjsaurabh)
• India – Bangalore (by Rubus Labs DevGroup)
• Singapore (by @BBDevSG)
• Malaysia – Kuala Lumpur (by @BBMYCoders)
• Philippines – Manila (by @PinoyBBDev)

Jammin’ on Oct 19-21 (5-city simultaneous Hacks):

• Indonesia – Jakarta (by @BBDevID)
• Vietnam – Ho Chi Minh City (by @Louis_Keeper)
• Thailand – Bangkok (by @BBDevThailand)
• China – Shanghai (@immmooo)
• Australia – Melbourne (@csaunders_ca)

Over each of the weekend events, RIM will also be sharing market insights tailored to the respective cities so developers can develop market-relevant applications. Beyond that, the two days will also include sharing sessions aptly named as JamBytes. During these sessions, participants will have the chance to understand in-depth developmental tips and tricks on BlackBerry 10 platform, how to enhance their BlackBerry 10 applications, as well as go to market strategies for their new apps.

The ten winning teams from the JamHack events will receive an all-expense paid trip to BlackBerry Jam Asia, where you will represent your city and compete at the Asia-Pacific Finals.

Final winning team of the “Asia-Pacific Finals” will win the grand prize of:

• Cash Prize of US$10,000
• BlackBerry App World™ marketing for 2 months for BlackBerry 10 launch in Asia, Middle East and Africa (where applicable) & one  week marketing in North America, Latin America and Europe (where applicable)
• App marketing with launch campaign of BlackBerry 10 in market
• Dedicated technical & Business Consultancy for up to third month after launch of BlackBerry 10 in team’s market

Don’t hesitate! Sign up or find out more at: www.blackberryjamhack.com!

It feels like the BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour stop in Beijing just happened yesterday. Over 300 developers attended at the Grand Millennium hotel on July 6th, including those who made the effort to travel all the way from Korea and Singapore. I would like to extend a special thanks to Bill Jiang, Junyi Ding and the rest of my colleagues from RIM China’s Technical Solutions Management team for making this event a great success.

The event in China was unlike any other, as the RIM team worked hard to localize the content and demos for our Chinese developers.

The event was kicked off by Daniel Tan, Sales VP of RIM Greater China, who drew long applause from the crowd when he said, “The future of BlackBerry 10 in China is in your hands!” It was definitely the highlight of his speech.

Some of you have probably heard of Alec Saunders’ presentation style. Watching his performance for the first time was really something — you could feel the energy and the excitement skyrocket in the room as Alec rocked the crowd. Developers further expressed their passion as they waited patiently for an opportunity to speak face to face, take pictures, and even request autographs!

For those who couldn’t wait to learn more about the BlackBerry 10 user experience, Bill Jiang’s presentation covered some interesting design principles, such as the new intelligent keyboard as well as the intuitive glancing gestures.

During the BlackBerry 10 Architecture session, Jonah Lin, MMMOOO’s CEO, showcased some new games built entirely in Cascades™ on a BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha prototype device. The first game was a dice game that provided a fun and interactive way to deal with daily chores. The second one was my favorite, a Chinese Chimes instrument called Bian Zhong.  It beautifully mimics the ancient Chinese instrument experience at your fingertips. Jonah went further and even demonstrated some of his source code through the UI preview feature of the Cascade plugin on stage. Jonah and his team received lots of compliments.

MMMOOO has been one of the most active partners of RIM – they’ve developed over 300 apps and reached 50 million downloads in the BlackBerry App World™ storefront. Check out their apps if you haven’t already done so! I am sure you will find some apps to suit your needs.

The lightning pitches held during lunchtime were another highlight of the day. Each developer was given three minutes to present their apps and the audience voted for the best app. The winner would receive a BlackBerry® PlayBook™ tablet, $500 voucher on ShopBlackBerry.com, and best of all, a free pass to BlackBerry Jam Asia! Most developers came fully prepared with slide decks and demos, while others sketched out their ideas on a piece of paper. It was also exciting see the participation coming from young university students who wanted to pitch their ideas. In the end, the lightning pitches were very well received, and the winner by people’s choice was PinBook, from S4BB which allows you to connect with people who have the same interests with you over BBM™.

The afternoon sessions had two parallel tracks. There was much interest in the Native Track presented by Alan Wong and Ramprasad Madhavan, and a sizeable number also attended the Web Track presented by Demian Borba and myself. Developers were extremely delighted to see the Cascades demos in the Native sessions. During session breaks, a few of them came to chat about ideas or apps they developed on other platforms. Developers were also thrilled by the power of BlackBerry® WebWorks™, especially the wide range of open source frameworks it allowed developers to build with, coupled with the smooth hardware-accelerated CSS animations and the ability to integrate with C/C++/Adobe AIR.

Next it was time to give away the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices, and a good event never ends without a bang! Yes, the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour Beijing ended with an exciting offer to the developers: Submit a BlackBerry 10 app before the official launch and RIM will swap the Dev Alpha device with a limited edition BlackBerry 10 device!

I hope the BlackBerry 10 Jam event and the BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha devices will encourage the developers to produce some great apps for China and the world. I will certainly be sure to follow up and guide the developers should they need any help with their development.

I’d like to sign off by sharing several tweets from Weibo (a popular Chinese social media tool) with translations below. Go BlackBerry 10 developers!

After BB 10 JAM world tour Beijing, we have set up BB 10 Dev alpha discussion board. Provide alpha device test, software installation and usage discussion. Hope everyone can come and share…

Sharing after coming back from the Jam, so much surprise, the entire intro, sharing information showed RIM is confident to use BB10 to change the history, continue the success! Expecting RIM raise again and the perfect apps for BB10!

Three of our BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour Asia Pacific stops sold out quicker than we expected – and we’re excited to re-open with more seats for Bangalore (July 2), Delhi (July 4), and Jakarta (July 10).

These spot sare still limited, so don’t wait any longer! Register now.

Don’t forget, we still have a few seats open for Beijing on Jul-6 and Sydney on Jul-12. If you’re a developer up-north or down under, head on over to the registration pages now!

CHINICT is one of China’s largest tech innovation & entrepreneurship conferences. This 8th edition the conference officially starts on May 24th, but the doors opened a day early for the dozens of developers and designers competing for a chance to pitch alongside high-profile early-stage startups a the conference.

Franck Nazikian, the Founder of CHINICT kicked things off with platform sessions from Pearson who talked about their content APIs that offered applications free access to premium content. Everything from Jamie Oliver’s recipes to exclusive travel guides was opened up to participants to integrate into their applications. It was also quite refreshing to see the UN World Food Programme as a main supporter of the event promoting the message of Hackers Against Hunger to enhance hunger awareness in China and throughout the world.

On his first trip ever to China, Alec Saunders was up next to provide the final inspiration and encouragement to developers for the next 24 hours. Mike Zhou from the RIM China team then took the participants into a deeper dive into their platform options for building amazing applications on BlackBerry. The room erupted into excitement when they heard Mike mention the BlackBerry® PlayBook™ prize for all participants. Several came up to me and the team just to check if they had heard it correctly.

Historians say that the Chinese worked on the Great Wall for over 1700 years. It is the longest fortification ever built in history and has left its mark on not just China, but the world. As I sign off it’s hard not to notice the air of dedication and focus in the room as these developers work against time to make their mark on the world.

Alec will be speaking during the main conference as well and you can watch his interview live at 2:30 am UTC.(10:30 am EDT) at the CHINICT website.

Winners of the Hackathon will also get front seats to the BlackBerry Jam World Tour in Beijing on July 6th.