Reflecting on Developers Summit 2024 KANSAI

Introduction

Hello! I am high-g (@high_g_engineer) from the New Car Subscription Development Group at the Osaka Tech Lab.
In this article, I reflect on the Developers Summit 2024 KANSAI, held on September 18, 2024.

What Is Dev Summit KANSAI?

The original Developers Summit (hereinafter, Dev Summit) is a conference-type event for software developers that has been held annually in Tokyo and online since 2003.
Dev Summit KANSAI has been held since 2011 as a spin-off event of that, and is a much-loved festival for IT engineers in Kansai.

The theme for 2024 was “Let’s create the new standard together.”
The sessions covered a wide range of topics, including security, AI, development methods, development productivity, DevOps, and engineer careers.
On the day, all the sessions were virtually packed, and with those and the sponsor booths combined, the whole event was really bustling.

https://event.shoeisha.jp/devsumi/20240918

Osaka Tech Lab’s First Time a Sponsor

Our company participated in the event by setting up a sponsor booth and taking the podium for a sponsor session.
Starting this fiscal year, KINTO Technologies has been sponsoring a variety of events, but this was Osaka Tech Lab’s first foray into sponsoring an event (that’s how we call KINTO Technologies’ Osaka office.) So we needed to think about:

• What kind of booth to set up
• The novelty items to prepare
• How to guide attendees at the booth

To that end, we had meticulous discussions to make sure we were fully prepared in time for the big day.

The Sponsor Booth

Here is our completed booth!
I would like to take this opportunity to touch on a few items in particular.

The Osaka Tech Lab Seen through Data

First, I will talk about the board with all the graphs and figures on it in the center of the image.
This is a visual representation of information gleaned from talking to Osaka Tech Lab’s members.

An interesting feature is how the overall design mimics the parts of a plastic model kit!
Our company’s designers created it quickly, but the final product is very polished.

Survey board

Next is the Survey Board on the right of the photo.
This is a board for getting survey responses from booth visitors.
We gave each visitor a sticker and asked them to place it on the job categories on the board that applied to them, helping visualize the IT domains they belong to.

Survey Results

The survey results revealed that many visitors are somewhat familiar with KINTO and KINTO Technologies, but there are still numerous target groups that we need to engage with

Regarding occupations, many people placed stickers between 'back-end' and 'front-end.' While the nature of the event may have influenced this, it also highlighted that many engineers in Kansai tend to be more generalists than specialists.

I believe we gathered valuable data to help expand awareness of the Osaka Tech Lab Thank you to everyone who cooperated with our survey board!

Kumobii Stuffed Toy

There is a white, fluffy toy sitting on the left in the photo.
This is KINTO’s official mascot character, Kumobii. Absolutely adorable, right?

It was a huge hit with booth visitors, and Findy and KIKKAKE even posted it on their X accounts.
Thank you so much!

Novelty Item

On the day, we gave the first 100 visitors to our booth a freebie multi-card tool (a tool set consisting of an aluminum card that can serve multiple roles).
We also handed out Kumobii-shaped clips made of paper to people who came along to our sponsor session.

Sponsor Session

The speaker was Okita-san, who has been a member of the Osaka Tech Lab since it was established.
The session theme was “Pursuing a Dual Career as a Project Manager and a Mobile App Engineer to Create the Future of Mobility from Osaka!: Challenges the Osaka Tech Lab and I Get to Take On in the Toyota Group.”

The following is an overview of the session.

• An introduction to Okita-san’s career to date
• Carving out a career as a project manager who doubles as a mobile app engineer, something unprecedented in the company
• Sowing seeds for launching, developing, and operating products at Osaka Tech Lab

The phrase “never forget your passion” left a big impression on me, and it struck me that the career Okita-san currently has is the fruit of always having soldiered on instead of just giving up and quitting, even when motivation was low.

Closing Thoughts

This was our first time taking part in Dev Summit KANSAI, and I was truly amazed at how many people were there despite it being a weekday.
I got to go along to some of the sessions myself in between helping out with our booth, and I learned a lot, got lots of ideas for my next steps, and enjoyed the whole event very much indeed.

Large-scale conferences that encompass a wide range of technical fields are rare in Kansai, so I hope this level of passion continues indefinitely.
I would like to express my gratitude to all the staff involved in running Dev Summit KANSAI. Thank you very much.