Last week, I had the pleasure to participate in the first Plone symposium held in Asia.
It started already on Friday, when we (Eric Steele, Alexander Loechel, Sven Strack and me) were invited into the CMScom offices by the organizers, Takeshi Yamamoto and Manabu Terada.
There, we met other people, like Masami Terada (whom I first met at the Bristol conference) and were treated to some great cakes. All the while having an inspired conversation on the Japanese Plone community, Pycon JP and Pycon APAC.
Later, at a rather nice restaurant, we were joined by more people, including Tres Seaver and several of the other speakers and staff of the Symposium.
The following morning we headed for Ochanomizu University, who had not only supplied the meeting space, but thoughtfully also some cute turtles and a sleepy red cat to enhance the breaks.
The Symposium itself was astounding, especially when you consider it was the first time it was held. With 67 people participating from as far away as Osaka and beyond and a wide range of talks, both in Japanese and English, there was something to be found for everyone.
Personal highlights:
- meeting the energetic Chiaki Ishida. Apart from effortlessly chairing the high-quality panel on Plone in higher education, she has been instrumental in using and promoting Plone as Learning Management System at her university and beyond. She also works with professor Toru Miura, whose talk on using Plone for improving his lecturing programme impressed with a nice mix of experience and evidence.
- Max Nakane, a developer who is dependent on assistive technology, gave a great speech on why accessibility matters and where the accessibility of Plone and other systems stand, and what should be improved. Not only that, the next day I had the chance to work directly with him on the Sprint, and identify issues still open for Plone 5.
- Tres gave what he described as “the least technical talk I ever held”. Yet still, after it, I finally understand where bobo_traverse comes from… I shudder to think what happens if I see more of his technical talks ;-)
With some good storytelling, it emphasized the community values of our tribes.
That was also the feeling that ran through the day. Not only in lovely details like hand-made Plone cookies but mostly in the talks and in the hallway conversations, this is a community aimed at helping each other. Nice touch also to include talks on other Python frameworks and technologies.
After Lightning talks (always fun, even in a foreign language!) most of us headed for the afterparty at a nearby Izakaya. Where that curious phenomenon happened again: people trying to tell you that their English is not so good, and then conversing with you in super good English…
It was fun to meet such a diverse group of people, and see that the “put a bunch of Plone people in a room and good conversations happen” principle is universally applicable.
Next day was Sprinting day. Despite knowing that sprinting is not yet as popular as it should be within the Japanese community, a pretty nice number turned up, and we all set out on our various tasks.
As said before, I mostly worked with Max Nagane on accessibility issues. The good news: Plone 5 will be a massive step in the right direction. But obviously, there is still room for improvement. If you want to help, join the Anniversary sprint in Arnhem/NL when you can, or just start working on the relatively small list in the metaticket.
The next day unfortunately it was time already to fly back, feeling a bit sad to leave but very happy to have met the vibrant, kind and knowledgeable Plone Japan community. Of whom I hope to see many again in the future, both inside and outside Japan.
And who knows, apparently “Tokyo 2020″ is a thing now ;-)
