“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!

Organized by Apstrak Studio, a partner in Thailand, BlackBerry Jam Sessions Thailand provides Thai developers in Bangkok and Chiangmai insights into app development for BlackBerry® 10 platform — its strengths, vision, and how to make BlackBerry apps that stand out and get downloaded. Join us as Justin Lee (@triplez82), BlackBerry Application Development Consultant, and Johan Kremer, Senior Manager, Alliances and Business Development from Research In Motion® (RIM®), tell you more about BlackBerry 10 and how to make money on the platform.

Jam Chiangmai
Tuesday September 18, 2012
18.00 – 22.00
Centara Duangtawan Hotel
Registration: http://www.blackberryjamthailand2012.com/blackberry-jam-thailand-2012-chiangmai/

Jam Bangkok (SOLD OUT!)
Wednesday September 19, 2012
18.00 – 22.00
Dusit Thani Hotel

Following hot on the heels of the Thailand sessions, there are two more mini BlackBerry 10 Jam sessions in Vietnam, organized by BlackBerry Dev Group Viet Nam. Happening in Ho Chi Minh and Hanoi, the Jam Sessions bring to Vietnam developers a localized version of the BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour series. Vietnam developers will hear from Justin Lee at these events too. To register, send your details to the group’s manager Louis Tang at louis.keeper@gmail.com! For more details, check out BlackBerry Dev Group Viet Nam’s post here: http://blackberryvietnam.net/threads/blackberry-10-mini-jam-viet-nam-2012.12427/

Ho Chi Minh City
Thursday Sep 20, 2012
6pm-10pm
Café Tinh Tế, Hồ Chí Minh

Hanoi
Friday Sep 21, 2012
6pm-10pm
Café Amigo, Hà Nội

And that’s not all! We’re not forgetting our dear friends in Indonesia. BBDevID is holding a series of BlackBerry 10 Jam Sessions in Indonesia! Named “BlackBerry 10 Mini Jam Indonesia,” the series also brings snippets from BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour to the Indonesian developers in six cities. They have already kicked off the first event last weekend in Yogyakarta and there’s more to come. Look out for the BBDevID and RIM troop in the following cities and dates:

Saturday September 16 – Yogjakarta
Tuesday September 18 – Semarang
Saturday September 22 – Malang
Tuesday October 2 – Bandung
Saturday October 6 – Denpasar Bali
Monday October 8 – Jakarta

For more details: http://bbdevid.tumblr.com/post/31129297043/bb10minijam

It’s non-stop action here in Asia, and the developers simply can’t get enough. If you’re in the region in the cities above, you must not miss the action here!

The BlackBerry® 10 Jam World Tour visited the beautiful city of Jakarta, Indonesia on July 10th. Over 300 developers attended the event at the JW Marriott hotel in Mega Kuningan Area of Jakarta. The attendees were a combination of independent developers, students, startup developers, and enterprise developers – all coming together to learn about BlackBerry 10 development.

Local BlackBerry Developer Groups were well represented, including BBDevID and IDBerry as well as regional startup communities like Fowab from Bandung, Bancakan from Jogjakarta, RotiFresh from Semarang, and Stasion from Malang. We were also proud to have government officials in attendance.

The event started with an opening welcome address from our MC: Hasting Singh, Managing Director of South Asia. After that, we continued with speeches from Pak Djoko Agung, the representative from Ministry of Information.

The event continued with the famous video featuring Alec Saunders, Martyn Mallick, and Chris Smith singing “Waiting Is the Hardest Part” in which we even localized the lyrics. Then Alec came to the stage doing his favorite thing: myth busting. The energy and excitement was high!

After that, Sarim Aziz, the Team Lead of Developer Relations in APAC, talked about the user experience on BlackBerry 10. He explained about the cinematic experience and emphasized the moments of charm in the BlackBerry 10 application flow.

Following Sarim, I went on stage to deliver the introduction of BlackBerry 10 architecture in Bahasa Indonesia, doing demos about Cascades™ and HTML5 cross-platform development using bbUI framework.

After that, I introduced our partners: Ibnu Maksum AKA Ibnux; a freelancer calling himself Petani Digital (Digital Farmer) due to his living location on countryside; and NuxRadio, which is already available in for BlackBerry® smartphones and will be available on BlackBerry 10 using BlackBerry® WebWorks™. Ibnux then demoed the advantage of BlackBerry WebWorks on BlackBerry 10, including Adobe® Flash® Support.

After Ibnux, we had our partner, Faizal Adiputra from Ristomobile, showcasing Picstory. The picture-sharing app (which is already available for BlackBerry® OS 5, BlackBerry® 6 and BlackBerry® 7 OS) and the winner of BlackBerry Hackathon Jakarta had been remade from the ground-up for BlackBerry 10 using Cascades, our brand new UI framework. He demoed how Cascades handles animation within application UI very smoothly.

Oscar Kurniawan from Tanoshii Studio then went on stage with his game Room of Disaster, which was easily ported to BlackBerry 10 from Symbian S60. He explained that due to Qt and C++ support, porting to BlackBerry 10 only needs minimal time investment.

Johan Kremer, the Head of Alliance APAC, took the stage dressed in batik and shared tips and tricks on monetizing on the BlackBerry platform.

We had eleven apps showcased during lunch, with Record-It – an application to record voice while talking on your phone, created by Igo – won the lightning pitch!

During the event, QuizHore used their @quizhore Twitter® account to hold a BlackBerry 10 Jam Jakarta quiz by using the hashtag #BB10JamHore. The winner was @dausgonia, a developer from Bandung, who was eligible for a BlackBerry® 9230 smartphone.

All in all, we had a very exciting and successful BlackBerry 10 Jam World Tour event in “BlackBerry Nation” Jakarta, with many developers in many cities around Indonesia willing and excited to come onboard with the BlackBerry 10 open platform.