For the first time in five years I attended RubyKaigi. From 2007 to 2018, I attended every RubyKaigi, volunteering as staff from 2011 onwards. This time though, I participated as a sponsor via TokyoDev.
Sponsoring the conference was an experiment, but I figured there wasn’t a way that it could fail. Even if nothing came out of it business-wise, we’d still be supporting the community. It’s still too early to tell if we’ll get a direct return on our investment, but the extra motivation, camaraderie, and ideas I picked up from the event have made me glad I tried it.
Before the conference officially started, TokyoDev sponsored a Women and Non-binary Dinner & DrinkUp in collaboration with Rails Girls Japan and WNB.rb. Promoting gender diversity in Japan’s tech industry is one of TokyoDev’s goals, and so I jumped at the opportunity to support this event. As I was outside the target audience for the event, I didn’t participate myself, but throughout RubyKaigi I had attendees comment how great it was to have an event where they were surrounded by other women.
During the conference, I attended all the keynotes, and a couple of talks per day. I spent much of my time at our sponsor booth though. This was a lot of fun for me though. If anything, interacting with other attendees at RubyKaigi has always been my favourite part, and so being at the booth gave me lots of chances to do that. Catching up with many people I hadn’t seen in five years was a great experience.
On the second day, we hosted another event: a gathering that got together international attendees and Japanese Rubyists. Looking for a way to bring the international and Japanese developer communities closer together was what inspired me to start blogging on TokyoDev in the first place, and so doing it in such a first-hand way was very rewarding. I definitely want to continue to do this at RubyKaigi in the future.
Next year’s RubyKaigi will be held in Matsuyama, as part of the continuing tradition choosing the location based on Matz-related puns. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone there again!
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