Hosting Frontend Conference Kansai 2025

This article is for Day 6 of the KINTO Technologies Advent Calendar 2025 and Day 6 of the Tech Event & Conference Management Know-how Advent Calendar 2025🎅🎄
 IntroductionHello!

I'm high-g (@high_g_engineer) from the Master Maintenance Tool Development Team, KINTO Backend Development Group, KINTO Development Division, also working with the Developer Relations Group, and based at Osaka Tech Lab. I work as a frontend engineer.
Frontend Conference Kansai 2025 (hereafter referred to as FEC Kansai 2025) was held on Sunday, November 30, 2025.

I participated as a founding member of this conference, serving as the leader of the Speaker Team, which handled CfP, various speaker-related matters, timetable creation, and session management on the day of the event.

In this article, I'll share the story behind how FEC Kansai 2025 came to be and the significance of hosting a conference in a regional area, while reflecting on my own experiences with tech community activities.
 Results of FEC Kansai 2025First, regarding FEC Kansai 2025, we had over 200 participants on the day. The keynote had standing room only, networking party tickets sold out, and sponsor booths were a huge success. While we had some challenges to address, as an inaugural event, I believe we achieved a successful launch without any major issues.
KINTO Technologies was also a sponsor!!
 Frontend Conference and Me2025 was a great year for Frontend Conferences, with events held not only in Kansai but also in Hokkaido and Tokyo.

I also attended Frontend Conference Hokkaido 2025, where I learned from the presentations and enjoyed meeting people from the Hokkaido community at the networking party.
Now, about Frontend Conference; it's not something that just started recently. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, it was held annually in Kansai as well, serving as a yearly festival where attendees could catch up on the latest frontend trends and gain practical knowledge about new frameworks and libraries.
I can honestly say that Frontend Conference played a significant role in launching my career as a frontend engineer.

However, after the 2019 event, the Kansai Frontend Conference went on a 6-year hiatus.
As someone who loves frontend development, the absence of this annual festival left me feeling like something was missing.
 How FEC Kansai 2025 Got StartedLast year, TSKaigi Kansai 2024, a Kansai regional version of TSKaigi, Japan's largest TypeScript conference, was held in Kyoto. That was my debut as a conference staff member.
https://note.com/highgrenade/n/nde9f7e059e2e
Riding that momentum, I organized the Kansai Frontend Year-End Party 2024 at our company.
https://kinto-technologies.connpass.com/event/337002/
The event was a hit, and afterward, I went out for drinks with some TSKaigi Kansai 2024 staff members and Vue Fes Japan staff who live in Kansai.

There, we discovered we all shared the same desire to bring back Frontend Conference, and FEC Kansai officially kicked off in 2025.
https://fec-kansai.connpass.com/event/339864/
 The Journey to FEC Kansai 2025Of course, since this was a first-time event, we started from scratch with no rules, no budget, no staff, and no name recognition.

Naturally, we had to handle everything ourselves: recruiting staff, securing sponsors, booking the venue, managing the call for proposals, building the website, creating merchandise, and placing orders.
I optimistically assumed that securing staff and sponsors would be easy thanks to the name recognition of past Frontend Conferences, but in reality, it wasn’t nearly that simple.

Since this was our first event, we focused on ensuring a smooth and successful launch. We avoided aiming too high, yet still made sure not to lose sight of delivering a satisfying experience for participants.
Despite these circumstances, I'm incredibly grateful to all the staff who joined us and the companies who sponsored us.
To help shape our vision for the conference, I personally attended various other conferences:
February 1: BuriKaigi 2025 (Toyama)
May 23-24: TSKaigi 2025 (Tokyo) *Participated as staff
July 19: PHP Conference Kansai 2025 (Kobe)
July 26: Kinoko Conference in Kansai (Kyoto) *Not a conference per se, but memorable enough to mention
September 6: Frontend Conference Hokkaido (Sapporo)
September 17: Developers Summit 2025 KANSAI (Osaka)
 The Significance of Hosting Conferences in Regional AreasWhat struck me when attending regional conferences like BuriKaigi and Frontend Conference Hokkaido was the extraordinary feeling of gathering in places I would rarely visit otherwise, surrounded by people who share the same purpose, and experiencing talks with a live energy you can only feel on-site, an excitement shared exclusively among those who came together on that day. It felt like giving up my day off was completely worth it, and to go even further, it was the kind of experience that made me genuinely grateful to be an engineer.
It's similar to the feeling of attending a music festival and experiencing moments of pure joy that only exist in that time and place. (For anyone who has never been to a music festival, just imagine everyone sharing that same excitement while enjoying incredibly delicious yakiniku together.)
Reflecting on it, I realized that back when I attended Frontend Conference before the pandemic, I wasn't just going to learn—I was going to share in that collective experience.
I believe that if regional conferences can consistently create this kind of excitement, they can truly energize the local engineering community.
I want to enjoy this myself, and I want others to experience this excitement too, so we can all have fun with technology while working together.

If we can create something truly great through collective knowledge, strengthen the local pool of engineers, and generate a positive cycle in the hiring market, I don’t think there could be anything better.
 Closing ThoughtsGoing forward, I want to continue expanding my knowledge, engaging with more conferences and tech communities, and refining FEC Kansai. I hope to help attendees feel that engineering is fun! and frontend is amazing!! while contributing to the Kansai tech community in any way I can.
I really do love frontend development!!
Thank you for reading to the end.