The registration process at YAPC::Asia made use of QR codes that Japanese mobile phones can scan and read. The attendees were supposed to print their unique QR code from the website and bring it with them in place of tickets. Last year tickets for the conference could be bought at a Lawson convenience store. I have never needed a ticket for the European or American YAPCs. I usually give my name to the person at the registration desk and they check this off a list or find a badge that contains this name. But YAPC::Asia makes good use of technologies that are common in Japan. I have bought tickets at Lawson for everything from flights to concerts. And QR codes are found even on the wrappers that McDonalds use for their burgers.

Although the registration process was very well organised I do think it should be possible to improve it as I thought it was a bit slow. Not because of the QR codes but because the codes related to a name badge that was filed by number in a box. You would get to the desk and someone would scan the code and then find your badge. This was done in a small area limiting the number of people who could help with registration. And even if the area had been bigger only so many people can look through a couple of boxes of badges at any one time.

One way to speed up the registration process would be to limit that number of things that need to be given to a specific person. If attendees printed their own badges with QR codes on them then these could have been scanned but no badge search would have been required. The conference bags were generic so handing these out was easy. The badges, however, were not the only things tied to a specific attendee. Each attendee was given details of how to access the wifi system and because of security reasons the wifi access accounts and passwords were connected to the userid of the person registering. They also were the property of the university and this information could not have been given to attendees via the web-site.

There was enough space, however, to allow more people to help with registration. And there were certainly enough people on the conference crew to do this. It should be possible to find a way to split up registration. For example speaker registration could have been done separately. Sometimes registration of a large number of people is set up alphabetically. This would have been hard to do though because the attendees queuing at the door wouldn’t have been able to see these signs and it could have caused quite a bit of confusion in the entrance hall – to say nothing about the fact that the attendees names wouldn’t all use the same alphabet…

As well as registration on the first morning a pre-conference registration took place the night before. I suppose I’m just worried about what would have happened if 400 people had all turned up 15 minutes before the conference started. Mind you, there is probably no fast way to deal with that.

One of the most important things about running a successful conference is the suitability of the venue. This year YAPC::Asia was held at the Tokyo Institute of Technology. I believe that this was the best venue that has been used for a Japanese YAPC::Asia – and not just because it’s within walking distance of my apartment!

The venue was easy to get to as it was beside a train station. I always prefer conference venues that can be reached by public transport. I don’t drive and I have had to use taxis in America to get to conferences that were held in hotels that weren’t close to anything. Last year at YAPC::NA I didn’t get to see any of Houston as the venue was outside the city and it wasn’t obvious how to get to anywhere without calling for a taxi. I understand that at the American YAPCs it’s important to have access to University Halls for cheap accommodation and that this restricts where a conference can be held. This doesn’t seem to be an option in Tokyo nor does it seem to be a requirement. As Tokyo has such an amazing public transport system YAPC attendees can stay in most parts of the city and given that so many of them come from Tokyo they probably just go home in the evenings.

Registration took place outside the main auditorium. This area was big enough to allow registration without blocking entry to the room. The auditorium comfortably held the full conference. It was a tiered room which I always like as I’m small and find it hard to see over hundreds of people in a room that isn’t tiered. Each chair had a small table though most people weren’t using these. I used mine as I needed somewhere better than my lap to balance my laptop when I was typing up the talks. The only problem that I can think of was that the seats were quite close together and I don’t know how comfortable they would have been if you had been quite large.

The other rooms were smaller but seemed adequate for the number of people going to them. The DeNA room did appear very packed at one point but not uncomfortably so. Additional chairs were brought in and more space could have been made by laying the room out without tables.

The venue was close to a variety of restaurants and coffee shops providing options if you didn’t want to eat the lunch provided. The beautiful weather probably also helped. The rooms for the talks were in three separate buildings and I don’t know what it would have been like to move between these in torrential rain – though umbrellas were provided in the conference bag. But as the weather was beautiful it was possible to sit under the trees and eat lunch in the sun. And the walk between buildings was really pleasant.

The conference dinner was also held at the venue. This did cause a problem as it couldn’t hold all the attendees. I’m not sure, however, if there is anywhere suitable in Tokyo to host a dinner for 500 people. In the end 300 people got to attend based on a variety of criteria such as how far you had travelled to get to the conference. I didn’t hear anyone complain about this but then given my limited Japanese this isn’t really surprising.

I suppose I should say something about the wifi. This was difficult to use and even though I have a Macbook I wasn’t able to set this up myself. Some of this was because the instructions were in Japanese and some of it was because of the security required by the university. It also didn’t appear to support the number of people trying to use it in the main auditorium. When I finally got connected on the first morning, after both Marty and Emerson had played around with my computer, I wasn’t able to stay connected for long. I needed to be connected as I wanted to help with transcribing and eventually the problem was fixed by asking people who didn’t need to be connected to log out. I didn’t have any problems using this on the second day of the conference.

Marty has pointed out that since I am writing something that resembles a book more than a blog post about the YAPC::Asia conference that I should split my thoughts up into multiple posts. He believes that this will have two benefits: 1) I’ll actually post what I have already written; and 2) someone might actually read it!