I’ve just seen Miyagawa announce on Twitter that he has received a White Camel award at this year’s OSCON. I have not seen the official announcement yet but I imagine that he has been awarded this for his work in being a key organiser of YAPC::Asia and for his work with Shibuya.pm. Well done!
Having to speak at YAPC::NA first thing in the morning meant that I was completely stressed out for the start of the conference. I don’t remember much about the registration process but it must have been really straight forward or I would remember. (Actually I’ve just remembered something about being given a glass which I no longer seem to have…).
I really like the venue so far - though I have only seen the main auditorium. It’s an easy room to speak in and the mikes and projectors work really well.
The only good thing about giving the first talk is that I can now enjoy the conference. It did mean that I didn’t attend the pre-conference dinner last night because I didn’t think I would be able to cope with meeting people. The people I did meet up with for breakfast and before the conference were all great and did help to calm me down.
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.
I’m thinking about Perl related things tonight. I’ve recently joined TPF and volunteered to be part of the crew at YAPC::Asia. I’m considering submitting a talk for YAPC::NA as they have extended the deadline.
I am not coming up with any decent talk ideas this year. I’ve been reading a lot about organisations and communities and considered putting together a semi-serious talk called “The Bluffers Guide to the Perl Community” - but I can’t decide if anyone is interested in organisational theory and whether I want to put together a talk that will need to use humour to get the point across. I also considered writing something about the reasons why we hate managers but really need them - this would be based on the writings on Charles Handy and an analysis of the sort of people who are involved in open source projects.
Hopefully I get inspired soon.
I am reading Gods of Management by Charles Handy. I am just over half way through and so far I have found it both fascinating and depressing. He adequately highlights the differences in culture within organisations and then complicates this by pointing out that knowledge of the culture surrounding the organisation, such as the country it’s in, is also important.
I have just read a section on voluntary organisations:
“…it needs to be emphasised that voluntary groups are always harder to run well than more ordinary organisations.”
He describes three different types of voluntary cultures and the problems that they face. The first type of organisation is fellowship. In the Perl community an example would be a Perl Mongers’ group. It’s a group of people who come together for mutual support and enjoyment. Anyone is welcome to join and management would never be spoken of - even though there is management involved in organising meetings and the group may have a leader.
The second type is service. This happens when people realise that it isn’t enough to organise meetings and that more community needs could be met. It gives rise to structured organisations like The Perl Foundation. This is a natural progression but can be a problematic one. The service will be run much more like a standard company as it needs to be managed, controlled and directed.
Why is this problematic?
Handy states that the biggest problem is a change in ethos. Anyone was not only allowed to take part in the fellowship - they were encouraged to do so. But the service only wants specific people with specific skills. In the case of Perl anyone can join the Perl Mongers but not everyone can become part of The Perl Foundation.
The Perl Foundation is looking for new members and I am applying for the role of Steering Committee Chair. Over the next few weeks I will discover whether I have the specific skills required to manage a group of culturally diverse volunteers.
The deadline for talk submissions for YAPC::Asia is tomorrow. I won’t be submitting a talk. Usually at a YAPC I talk about communication or management - things I don’t have any experience of in an Asian context. I did think that Marty would submit a talk but he doesn’t use Perl much anymore and doesn’t think he has anything to talk about.
I am considering not speaking at any conference this year. Part of me loves to speak but the part that hates it is stronger tonight.
I am also interested in collocates of “Perl” that come from sources outside the Perl community. Google Suggest aims to make a best guess as to what should come next in a search and it doesn’t tailor these results based on my previous searches.
I wasn’t surprised that people are searching the web looking for help on how to use various functions and data structures but I was really surprised that their highest search is “perl for windows”.
Marty has started to analyse the blog data he retrieved from use.perl.org.
At the minute we are just looking at the collocates for “Perl”. Unsurprisingly “use perl” came out at the top but given the data source we are going to ignore that.
The results for “Perl community” are being skewed because nearly 60% of the occurrences are from acme’s blog. I have no idea what “Perl Horrors” refers to and Marty is postulating that the occurrences of Perl 5 are low because that’s what people usually mean when they refer to “Perl” on its own.
There is still lots to do before I have a sensible way to display the results and also before I can graph their development over time.
I haven’t forgotten my earlier post where I stated that I wanted to find out what collocates of “Perl” were being used by the Perl community. Stray posted a comment asking me how I planned to define “community” in this context.
“How do you define the perl *community*? Those with the loudest voices? The self-aggrandising, self-publicising, sell-appointed spokespeople?”
At this stage I don’t plan to try to define the community and I am not just looking for those with the loudest voices. But they do need to have a voice as I want to analyse what they have written.
I have decided to start with the blog posts on use.perl.org. Once I’ve done that I may take a look at the archives of some of the Perl mailing lists.
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