Asiajin

On Monday, the first JUI (Javascript User Interface) conference was held at RECRUIT’s gigantic headquarters in Ginza, Tokyo. Although there was hardly any time to promote the quickly scheduled event, more than 100 hackers showed up at the venue!

The organizers managed to squeeze a total of 10 speeches into the 3 hour event. The conference was split into two parts:

I) Main presentations (between 20 and 40 minutes)

My friend and fellow German Paul Bakaus had the honor of delivering the first presentation. Paul is the lead engineer for jQuery UI. Since January this year, he works full-time on the development of the JavaScript library. Paul spoke about the current state of affairs and future of jQuery UI.

Rockstar look-a-like and JavaScript icon “amachang” talked about experiences he made while developing S6, the presentation tool offered by his employer Cybozu Labs. I must say the product is really cool!

“inucura” came from Sapporo to join the JUI 2008. He explained a total of 7 web services to be accessed via his site. For example, inucura talked about his wallpaper search engine “Kabegami saachi” and Smoothtube, a Youtube video viewer. Both services are available in English – this is always welcome!

Recruit’s very own “iandeth” concluded the main part of the conference with a presentation named “Fuss-free Mashup Development with Recruit Web Service UI Library”. The aim here is to make life for Japanese engineers considerably easier by accessing Recruit’s self-developed UI library.

II) Lightning talks (5 minutes each)

Following the main presentations, a total of six lightning talks were given by JavaScript hackers from Japan, the US and Taiwan. One examplary topic was the usage of jQuery for the development of a Twitter client.

Another quick talk was given by Taiwanese coder gugod (his presentation can be viewed here).

Videos from the event (recorded by the kind people at Recruit Media Techonoloy Labs):

Tags: Event Report, Japan by Serkan Toto
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Hiroyuki Oyama gave a talk on YAPC::Asia financial report (in JP). I’d like to show the numbers and key factors in this article to help who try to organise a big event.

YAPC::Asia handles 500+ attendees with all volunteer organising committee.

In 2006 and 2007, they used Lawson (convenience store chain) ticket system to sell the tickets. In 2008, they used their own customized system with Paypal payment system. Oyama emphasized that realtime payment of Paypal is really helpful. In 2006/2007, they had to make a loan for various payments, but not in 2008.

Actually Oyama lent his own 1,500,000yen ($15,000) to YAPC account in 2006.

Most of incomes are consisted from:
* Ticket sales (in 2008, 3500yen each)
* Sponsorship (paid in 1-2months prior to the event)
* Entrance fee for a conference dinner (if charge separetely)

Most of expenditure are consisted from:
* Venue (must be paid in advance)
* Giveaways (such as T-shirt or bag)
* Dinner/Lunch/etc
* Travel reimburse (paid only for invited few speakers)
* Ticket sales commissions

Also he mentioned to much smaller fees such as:
* Transaction fees (bank transfer, etc..)
* Communication fees (postage, etc..)
* Various fees

Oyama said that they are trying to not make a profit, because YAPC::Asia is not a registered tax entity. So, if profit was made, income tax will be included to someone’s tax ammount. They even rejected some offers of sponsorship.

http://spreadsheets.google.com/pub?key=p72_igITxlodY0hCrHW28LA

Tags: Community, Japan, New Service, Service by Shunichi Arai
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