For the past few years I have attended a YAPC in North America, Europe, and Asia.  All three conferences are very enjoyable but also very different.  YAPC::Asia has been held in Tokyo for the past few years.  The Japanese culture obviously impacts the conference but I can’t always find ways to express these differences.  This year they have helped me out by adding a couple of items to the conference bag that I can’t imagine being given in America or Europe.

The first is a plastic bag that I assume is an advert for one of the sponsors.  Other conferences have given attendees plastic bags and advertising material but the image on this bag is typically Japanese.

Advertising Plastic Bag

The second item was a fan.  Paper fans are very common in Japan and I have been given one at a number of different events.  The image on this fan is a cartoon of two Japanese authors, one of these is Yukihiro Matsumoto, sitting in a Japanese bath with their laptops.

Japanese Fan

I think the image is strange but not as strange as being given a PHP and Ruby advert at a Perl conference.

I realised this afternoon that this time next week YAPC::Asia will be under way.   Last year I was much more aware of the conference as I volunteered to help out.  This year I’m not planning to do anything other than attend.  The spare room is ready for the guests we know about and I do have another futon or so just in case some of the other foreign visitors decide they want to stay with us.  (With only a week to go it’s possible to imagine that everyone has sorted out things like accommodation but I know from experience that this isn’t always the case in the Perl community.)

Last year YAPC::Asia had more attendees than any other dedicated Perl conference.  With 524 people it was the biggest YAPC ever.  This year the numbers appear to be down (378 the last time I checked) but this may simply be because the other 100 or so who have registered their interest haven’t gotten round to paying for their tickets yet.

As always I’m looking forward to catching up with friends more than attending the actual talks.  But, since the hallway / bar track might be in Japanese, I’ll probably attend more technical talks at this conference than the number I attended at YAPC::EU and YAPC::NA combined.

The Japan Perl Association (JPA) launched today.  This is the latest organization created to promote and support the use of the Perl programming language.

There is no doubt that there is a thriving Perl community in Japan.  YAPC::Asia has been held in Tokyo for the past few years and it has become the largest Perl conference in the world.  It’s actually difficult to get a ticket to attend as it usually sells out in under two weeks.  I believe that the success of this conference is one of the driving factors behind creating JPA.

The local Perl Mongers groups are also very popular.  When Shibuya.pm holds a technical meeting they expect to have more than 100 attendees.  This contrasts with the technical meeting I attended in Sydney that had 10 people.

There are other organizations that promote Perl, The Perl Foundation (TPF), YAPC Europe Foundation (YEF), Enlighted Perl Organisation (EPO), to name a few.  Since I am involved with TPF and YEF I will be interested in seeing how JPA  progresses and what it does differently than the other organisations.

According to Nob Seki’s twitter stream from the press conference the main activities of the organization will be:

1. documentation,
2. education,
3. YAPC::Asia Tokyo and
4. endorsement for next generation Perl technologies.

I’m not sure exactly what some of that will entail but their first educational event will take place on the 21st April.  This will feature Jay Shirley who will be speaking on Better Perl Practices (giving advice on the latest development methods) and Catalyst Guts.

It’s nearly 2009 and I’m starting to plan my conference travel.  I need to find a balance between conferences I want to go to and realistic amounts of travel.  I am tempted to attend Frozen Perl at the start of February.  I’ve read the schedule, looked at hotels, the city, and even checked the price of flights.  But I will be travelling in January and the conference is much too close to my return to Tokyo.  It would exhaust me to go.

I really like living in Japan but it’s so far away from most of the conferences I want to attend.  I have actually fallen asleep at conferences because I was suffering from jet-lag.  I didn’t expect it to be so difficult for me to travel when I moved here but I am going to try to be realistic in my future travel plans.

I will attend YAPC::NA and YAPC::Europe.  I will probably attend YAPC::Asia but at the minute I’m not sure when it will be or if it will be in Tokyo this year.

One thing that often gets neglected at YAPC conferences are signs showing the attendees where the venue is and where the relevant rooms are inside the venue.  This year at YAPC::Asia they had the best signs I have ever seen at any conference.  They were placed at the entrance of the university and in front of each building that was being used.  They were large, full colour, professionally printed, and contained a map of the venue and the conference schedule.

Signs used in YAPC::Asia 2008

(Image copyright HisashiToday)

At YAPC::Europe, however, it was difficult to work out what building the conference was being held in.  I did eventually notice the following sign on a piece of A4 paper stuck to the inside of a door.  I really hope it’s the last time I see a hand drawn sign like this at a YAPC conference.

Sign On Door of YAPC::Europe Venue

(Image copyright Jon Allen)

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!

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!

One of my friends pointed out that I haven’t blogged much recently. With YAPC::Asia, my house guests and not feeling well at the weekend blogging hasn’t been a priority. I have a couple of draft posts regarding YAPC::Asia that I am still working on and I really hope that I get these finished before I arrive in Portugal for the Portuguese Perl Workshop next week.

I also need to get the apartment ready for the next set of guests who arrive before I get back from Europe.