ScalaMatsuri 2020 is postponed to October 17-18, 2020

This is a post written by ScalaMatsuri chair Taisuke Oe (@OE_uia), translated by Eugene (@eed3si9n).

Due to the situation of coronavirus disease COVID-19, we are postponing ScalaMatsuri 2020 to October 17th (Saturday) and 18th (Sunday), 2020. I'll go over the details and future outlook in this post.

Summary

• The conference is postponed to October 17th (Saturday) and 18th (Sunday), 2020. Depending on the COVID-19 situation in August, we might to switch this year's edition to an online-only conference.
• We will accept ticket refund requests until March 31st. Please submit refund request form by March 31st.
• We are continuing to raise support from personal Ninja Sponsors and corporate sponsorship.

Details

ScalaMatsuri is an annual international conference since 2013 ran by non-profit community organizers as a matsuri (festival) of technologists who love Scala. We consider two major values for hosting ScalaMatsuri.

First is various serendipity at the venue. It provides opportunities for participants to find new technology, new finds through talks and discussions, and meet new people, open source projects, companies, and services.

Second is making chances to distribute knowledge. Speaking at the conference creates an opportunity for the speakers in and out Japan to put their thoughts into a technical presentation (ScalaMatsuri staff provides Japanese subtitles for English slides). This could become a trigger for new technical knowledge to be distributed in the Japanese Scala community, or technical knowledge exchange with the communities overseas.

As a means to efficiently realize those values, we have been renting large event spaces and hosted talks, unconferences, and hackathons as ScalaMatsuri. We think it's essential to provide these spaces for the continual growth of the Scala community worldwide.

However, due to the concern over COVID-19 outbreak, many counties and local governments are requesting to refrain from large-scale events. As a result, companies in and outside of Japan, including our sponsors, are discouraging or prohibiting their employees to attend large gatherings.

Unfortunately expert opinions do not allow for optimism in the trajectory of COVID-19 in May, when we originally scheduled ScalaMatsuri 2020. Even if we could host it in May, we expect many people won't be able to attend, and/or we'd need drastic measures to ensure the safety of participants, which would directly undermine the values we wanted to provide with ScalaMatsuri.

We have considered hosting an online-only conference. We are aware of multiple conferences that have switched to online-only at the last minute and succeeded to some degree. However, given the current ScalaMatsuri resource and our broadcasting knowledge, our call is that two-month preparation might not be enough to host an adequate online conference.

As the result, we determined that the optimum answer for participants, sponsors, speakers, and community would be to postpone ScalaMatsuri 2020 at this point. The postponed dates are October 17th (Saturday) and 18th (Sunday), 2020.

In case the COVID-19 situation does not improve by mid August we are planning to switch this year's edition to an online-only conference. We will prepare for the contingency in parallel. Therefore, we advise participants from overseas not to make travel arrangements until the August announcement.

Minimizing the effect of postponement

ScalaMatsuri is made up of participants, speakers, sponsors, and volunteer staff members who organize the event. We sincerely hope that we can minimize the effect of the conference postponement.

Ticket holders

Some of the ticket holders may not be able to make it to the postponed date. We're sorry that we'll miss you and we would accept refund requests until the end of March, 2020.

If you would like a ticket refund, please submit the refund request form by March 31, 2020. If you can attend on October dates, the ticket will carry through without further actions.

CFP applicants

We apologize for the delay in announcing the speakers. We are determining the acceptance based on the voting results and the recommendations from the selection committee.

We hope to send the acceptance notice in the next 2 weeks. We will confirm with the speaker if they can attend on October 17th and 18th, and will be accepted upon confirmation.

Corporate sponsors

We would like to extend our thanks for supporting ScalaMatsuri.

ScalaMatsuri will provide the same benefits

How to support ScalaMatsuri

We would like to extend our thanks to many who have reached out to support ScalaMatsuri. For individuals, we've created personal Ninja Sponsor; and for corporations we have sponsorships.

Ninja Sponsor

Ninja Sponsor is a sponsorship plan for individuals. You can attend the conference with Ninja Sponsor ticket, and in addition we're planning to create a small token of appreciation for your patronage.

You can apply for Ninja Sponsor from the Doorkeeper page.

It's possible to upgrade a regular ticket to a Ninja Sponsor. In that case, please use the refund request form and cancel the regular ticket.

We also welcome Ninja Sponsor from the speakers.

scalaconfjp.doorkeeper.jp

Corporate sponsorship

If you're interested in corporate sponsorship, please send your inquiry via below form.

ScalaMatsuri inquiry form / 問い合わせフォーム

Future outlook

Even looking back to 8 years of organizing ScalaMatsuri, this is a highly unusual situation that we have never experienced. There remains various uncertainties, and (although we have evaded critical hits) the budgetary burden too is higher than usual.

On the other hand, we stand in a rare situation where we are given extra time to prepare for the conference after the heavy lifting of CFP is over. We hope to use this to improve the conference and to energize the local Scala community.

In particular, in addition to the regular ScalaMatsuri 2020 conference preparation we are planning the following actions:

• Preparation for online-only conference by October.
• Planning and organization of a smaller online subevent before October.
• Call for additional lightning talk speakers.

How to contact us

ScalaMatsuri organizer is available to discuss any questions and concerns by the following contact form.

ScalaMatsuri inquiry form / 問い合わせフォーム

Summary

ScalaMatsuri 2020 will be postponed to October 17th (Saturday) and 18th (Sunday), 2020. Depending on the COVID-19 situation in mid August, we might switch to an online-only conference, so we advise participants from overseas not to make travel arrangements yet.

We will accept ticket refunds until the end of March. We hope to send out CFP notices in 2 weeks.

Individual Ninja sponsorship and corporate sponsorship are welcome.

Stay healthy, and thanks for your continued support of ScalaMatsuri!

ScalaMatsuri 2020 tickets registration and ranked voting sessions open now!

Hi there! This is @OE_uia, the ScalaMatsuri chair.

Summary

TL;DR. Here are the summary of this post.

• Tickets are available now on ScalaMatsuri 2020 event page.
• The voting will be conducted by ticket holders, sponsors, and staff. It will close at Saturday February 22th, 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).
• The voting will be ranked voting style this year. The voting UI will be available directly from the ScalaMatsuri website after logging in.

Tickets & registration

ScalaMatsuri 2020 will be a two-day conference, held on Friday May 15th, Saturday May 16th.

• On Friday May 15th, it holds mainly Conference, which timetable will reflect on your voting!
• On Saturday May 16th, it holds Unconference and OSS Hackathon.

Today, we've launched the ScalaMatsuri 2020 event page and started the registration of tickets for two days and only second-day.

ScalaMatsuri 2020 - Doorkeeper

Please note that those who've submitted the talks do not have to register for the tickets yet -- if your proposal is accepted, you can participate without tickets.

As always, we thank Doorkeeper for sponsoring event registration system!

How to vote.

Participants who bought a ticket, sponsor companies and ScalaMatsuri staffs are eligible for voting. This article covers how participants can vote. Reception numberss for voting will be provided with Sponsors and ScalaMatsuri staff separately.

1.) Confirm your reception number.

Confirm your e-mail address that you used to buy the ticket, and the reception number in the e-mail you have received from DoorKeeper.

Doorkeeper reception number

The email you have received from Doorkeeper contains the QR code with your reception number (your 6 digits number below the QR code). You will be asked to enter the reception number when you sign in. We will verify this code later to match up with your Google, Twitter, or Github account that you use to sign in.

If you haven't made the purchase yet, there are some tickets available from the following page: https://scalaconfjp.doorkeeper.jp/events/103550

2.) Sign-in on proposal list page.

From the top right of the proposal list page, press the “Sign-in” button and sign in using your Google, Twitter, or GitHub account. (This will pop up an Authorize application dialog). Google Chrome is recommended.

How to SignIn.

When you sign in, please enter the DoorKeeper reception number. This is it for the preparation.

3.) Ranked voting.

You can vote by clicking on the Vote button. The number of votes per person is limited to 5.

How to vote or pin proposals

As we do previous year, we have ranked voting so that you can choose and place in an order up to five proposals. Your order will also be considered to select proposals. Since ranked voting is tolerant for vote splitting so that we could reduce the number of votes per person and make that easier.

You can drag & drop and put in an order proposals as shown below.

How to put in an order proposals.

The voting will close on February 22th 23:59 AoE(Anywhere on Earth). As long as the voting opens, you can change which proposals you vote, or which order you place in. Any votes afterwards will be invalid, so please be sure to vote early.

Timetable announcement.

Timetable will be public in early March, while we send the results to each candidates who submitted their proposals at the end of February or the beginning of March.

Timetable will be determined by not only voting results but a board of program committee.

Voting FAQ

Q.)How will the voting result be announced?

A.)We will announce the result at the ScalaMatsuri website. We will also announce on the Twitter, so this might a good chance to start following us.

Q.)Is there any extra chance to talk what if my proposal is not accepted?

A.)You can propose your talk for our Unconference, which will be held on the second day of the conference (May 16th). The talks are proposed and assigned on the day of the Unconference in the morning. We tend to have more sessions during the Unconference, so please bring your talks. We will also have Lightning talk sessions, which details will be announced separately.

Please remember to vote!

Submit your talks! ScalaMatsuri 2020 will be on May 15th (Fri) and 16th (Sat)

Howdy, Taisuke (@OE_uia) and Eugene (@eed3is9n) here.

Save the dates for ScalaMatsuri 2020!

ScalaMatsuri is the largest Scala event in Asia. We're excited to announce the dates ScalaMatsuri 2020 dates to be May 15th (Fri) and 16th (Sat)!

ScalaMatsuri 2020 | The largest international Scala conference in Asia

We are increasing the number of tracks to four tracks on the day 1 to total of 4 tracks. With the increased track, we are hoping to accept more talks geared towards Scala beginners.

On May 16 (Sat), we plan to have some conference track, "unconference" track that determines the talks on the day of, and the annual open source hackathon.

The beginner workshop was well received in the last conference. As a new experiment, we are thinking about hosting beginner workshops throughout the year, instead of a one-time workshop during ScalaMatsuri. The details will be announced at a later date.

CFP is now open!

Come speak at the largest Scala event in Asia with over 600 attendees.

• Great way to promote your current project.
• Spread your favorite technique.
• Let the world know your skill set beyond your work circle.
• Discuss with other participants and speakers.
• Socialize with other experts at the speaker dinner.

Personally speaking, becoming a speaker is one of the best ways to enjoy a conference. If you're on the fence, please submit your talk.

Session category

Any topic that might be of interest to Scala learners and Scala community members are welcome. As a reference, take a look at last year's schedule for the accepted talks.

ScalaMatsuri 2019 | The largest international Scala conference in Asia

For this year, we've created a new category called "Scala beginners", but due to the fact that the two-way interpreters are available in two main halls only, we will not accept English talks ONLY for the new "Scala beginner" category. However, we welcome foundational talks explaining some concept from the basics, which can be also relevant for Scala beginners.

Other details

For this year, we will have 40 min sessions and 100 min sessions (of which 20 min are recess). Feel free to submit lecture style talks or workshops.

The talks are determined by both the program committee and voting by participants.

ScalaMatsuri wants diverse speakers from all over the world. To help break down the barriers, we're excited to offer travel grant ranging from USD 500 to 1500, depending of whether you're a student and the point of origin. Please see the following page for more details:

http://scalamatsuri.org/en/cfp/

CFP will close at February 1st, 2020 23:59 Anywhere on Earth (2/2 20:59 JST)

ScalaMatsuri 2020 Call for Proposal

New Web site!

Starting this year, we've redesigned the ScalaMatsuri web site. What used to be built using Twitter Bootstrap + Jekyll are replaced with Nuxt.js (Vue.js) based site.

This has been an on-going effort since before ScalaMatsuri 2019. Kudos to ScalaMatsuri website maintainers!

ScalaMatsuri 2020 website contributors graph

Looking forward to your talk submissions!

ScalaMatsuri 2019 tickets registration and ranked voting sessions open now!

Hi there! This is @OE_uia, the ScalaMatsuri chair.

Summary

TL;DR. Here are the summary of this post.

• Tickets are available now on ScalaMatsuri 2019 event page.
• The voting will be conducted by ticket holders, sponsors, and staff. It will close at Tuesday February 26th, 23:59 AoE (Anywhere on Earth).
• The voting will be ranked voting style this year. The voting UI will be available directly from the ScalaMatsuri website after logging in.

Tickets & registration

ScalaMatsuri 2019 will be a three-day conference, held on Thursday June 27th, Friday June 28th, and Saturday June 29th.

• On Thursday June 27th, it's called Workshop day with free tickets. Its detail will be announced later.
• On Friday June 28th, it's called Conference day. As we hold on Saturday in ScalaMatsuri previous years, it will conducted in conference style.
• On Saturday June 29th, it's called Unconference day. As we hold on Sunday in ScalaMatsuri previous years, it will conducted in unconference style (with few conference-style sessions).

Today, we've launched the ScalaMatsuri 2019 event page and started the registration of Conference & Unconference day (June 28th - 29th). Since Conference day will be held on a weekday, Unconference day only tickets are also available.

ScalaMatsuri 2019 - Doorkeeper

Please note that those who've submitted the talks do not have to register for the tickets yet -- if your proposal is accepted, you can participate without tickets.

As always, we thank Doorkeeper for sponsoring event registration system!

How to vote.

Participants who bought a ticket, sponsor companies and ScalaMatsuri staffs are eligible for voting. This article covers how participants can vote. Reception numberss for voting will be provided with Sponsors and ScalaMatsuri staff separately.

1.) Confirm your reception number.

Confirm your e-mail address that you used to buy the ticket, and the reception number in the e-mail you have received from DoorKeeper.

Doorkeeper reception number

The email you have received from Doorkeeper contains the QR code with your reception number (your 6 digits number below the QR code). You will be asked to enter the reception number when you sign in. We will verify this code later to match up with your Google, Twitter, or Github account that you use to sign in.

If you haven't made the purchase yet, there are some tickets available from the following page: https://scalaconfjp.doorkeeper.jp/events/66684

2.) Sign-in on proposal list page.

From the top right of the proposal list page, press the “Sign-in” button and sign in using your Google, Twitter, or GitHub account. (This will pop up an Authorize application dialog)

How to SignIn.

When you sign in, please enter the DoorKeeper reception number. This is it for the preparation.

3.) Ranked voting.

You can vote by clicking on the ☆ icon. Since there are many sessions, you can first pin some of the candidates first using the pushpin icon.

Select the sessions you would like to see. The number of votes per person is limited to 10. The remaining votes will be displayed at the top of the proposal list page. There are toggles to display only the voted and/or pinned sessions.

How to vote or pin proposals

In this year, we introduce ranked voting so that you can choose and place in an order up to five proposals. Your order will also be considered to select proposals. Since ranked voting is tolerant for vote splitting so that we could reduce the number of votes per person and make that easier.

You can drag & drop and put in an order proposals as shown below.

How to put in an order proposals.

The voting will close on February 26th 23:59 AoE(Anywhere on Earth). As long as the voting opens, you can change which proposals you vote, or which order you place in. Any votes afterwards will be invalid, so please be sure to vote early.

Timetable announcement.

Timetable will be public in March, while we send the results to each candidates who submitted their proposals in early March.

Timetable will be determined by not only voting results but social impact and a board of program committee.

We'd recommend spreading your favorite proposals in SNS as well as voting so that those sessions might get more chances to be accepted.

Voting FAQ

Q.How will the voting result be announced?

A.We will announce the result at the ScalaMatsuri website.

We will also announce on the Twitter, so this might a good chance to start following us.

1. Is there any extra chance to talk what if my proposal is not accepted?

You can propose your talk for our Unconference, which will be held on the third day of the conference (June 29th). The talks are proposed and assigned on the day of the Unconference in the morning. We tend to have more sessions during the Unconference, so please bring your talks.

Please remember to vote!

Session voting begins!

Hi. This is @eed3si9n, one of many ScalaMatsuri organizers.

Summary

tl; dr. Here are the gist of this post.

• The voting will be conducted by ticket holders, sponsors, and staff. It will close at Monday, December 25st, 23:59 JST.
• The voting results will be interpreted more like a public opinion poll. In that, instead of picking the speakers purely based on the number of votes, ScalaMatsuri selection committee will pick up the mix of popular sessions, sessions with the most buzz on social networks, as well as hand-picked sessions.
• The voting UI will be available directly from the ScalaMatsuri website after logging in.

A regional tech conference that's also global

ScalaMatsuri 2018 will continue to uphold the two major goals in a sustainable way:

• Providing a space for Japanese Scala community to socialize, and present ideas to the international audience.
• Make a global technical conference with the universal access, where people from various background such as languages, gender, or ethnicity, can be comfortable.

The concrete actions taken for these goals are documented in my last year’s post A regional tech conference that's also global, but here are the hightlights:

• Establishing Code of Conduct, and making an intro video for it.
• Public CFP, travel grant, and translations of the submitted session abstracts.
• Public voting of the sessions.
• Subtitles on the slide decks and professional two-way interpretation.

My thoughts on how these went are written up in ScalaMatsuri as a lifestyle.

Uncategorized voting

To research “what the audience wants to see on the day of the conference,” ScalaMatsuri 2018 will adopt uncategorized voting. In other words, we will remove the categorization of English/Japanese 90/40/15 minutes, and you can pick whatever you want to see from all the proposals. One of the reasons we are even able to consider this, is because we have successfully implemented two-way interpretation. We no longer have to be nervous about the language barrier issue.

Public opinion poll

One point I want to clarify before we begin the voting this year, is that this year’s voting will be considered a public opinion poll.

In 2016 we observed that when hundreds of people try to select 22 sessions, the selected talks end up forming a cluster of similar topics. This is actually an obvious outcome because the voters did not talk to each other to coordinate “hey, let’s pick that talk for intro to fp.”

Instead of picking talks from the top mathematically, we think the conference would be far more enjoyable if we treated the voting more like a public opinion poll to infer topics and trends. ScalaMatsuri selection committee will pick up the mix of popular sessions, popular topics, as well as hand-picked sessions with some degree of subjectiveness.

SNS impact

As an additional data point to measure popularity and the trend, we will take SNS impact into the account. The SNS impact will be calculated by quantifying the buzz (or share) on Twitter, Facebook, Hatena Bookmark etc to measure the excitement about the session.

We are planning to tally the number of times a session was shared to Twitter, Facebook, and Hatena Bookmark via the social buttons placed on each proposal page of the official ScalaMatsuri website.

Voting program

We will continue with the voting program made by Tech to Value. After logging in, you can now vote from the ScalaMatsuri website’s session proposal list.

You can vote by clicking on the ☆ icon. Since there are many sessions, you can first pin some of the candidates first using the pushpin icon.

How to vote

Participants who bought a ticket, sponsor companies and ScalaMatsuri staffs are eligible for voting. This article covers how participants can vote.

1.) Confirm your e-mail address that you used to buy the ticket, and the reception number in the e-mail you have received from DoorKeeper.

Doorkeeper reception number

The email you have received from Doorkeeper contains the QR code with your reception number (your 6 digits number below the QR code). You will be asked to enter the reception number when you sign in. We will verify this code later to match up with your Google, Twitter, or Github account that you use to sign in.

If you haven't made the purchase yet, there are some tickets available from the following page: https://scalaconfjp.doorkeeper.jp/events/66684

2.) From the top right of the proposal list page, press the “Sign-in” button and sign in using your Google, Twitter, or GitHub account. (This will pop up an Authorize application dialog)

When you sign in, please enter the DoorKeeper reception number. This is it for the preparation.

Select the sessions you would like to see. The number of votes per person is limited to 10. The remaining votes will be displayed at the top of the proposal list page.

There are toggles to display only the voted and/or pinned sessions.

The voting will close on December 25th 23:59 JST. Any votes afterwards will be invalid, so please be sure to vote early.

3.) Get psyched waiting for the voting result!

Voting FAQ

Q.How will the voting result be announced?

A.We will announce the result at the ScalaMatsuri website.

We will also announce on the Twitter, so this might a good chance to start following us.

1. Is there any extra chance to talk what if my proposal is not accepted?

You can propose your talk for our Unconference, which will be held on the third day of the conference (March 18, 2017). The talks are proposed and assigned on the day of the Unconference in the morning. We tend to have more sessions during the Unconference, so please bring your talks.

Please remember to vote!

ScalaMatsuri 2018 CFP is now open!

Hi, ScalaMatsuri organizer Kasuya (id:daiksy) here.

We are excited to announce that the fifth ScalaMatsuri will be held on March 16th (Fri), 17th (Sat), and 18th (Sun), 2018 at Tokyo International Exchange Center. Please submit your talk for the general sessions that will be held on 17th (Sat) or 18th (Sun).

Nakamura-san, who got voted the most last year

Here are the overview of the CFP:

• CFP will close at December 16th 23:59 JST.
• We are looking for topics that you think Scala community or new learners of Scala would be interested.
• Session length: 10, 40, or 90 minutes.
• You are allowed up to three submissions.
  • We'll ask you to select one talk even if multiple talks qualify.
• Speakers will be decided using survey and SNS impact as references.
• For those who request it, we have fixed-amount travel grants for speakers with most votes.
• We require all participants to respect our Code of Conduct
• See http://2018.scalamatsuri.org/en/cfp for more details.

Your talks make ScalaMatsuri a great event every year. Let's do this again for 2018!!

Here are some more details.

Session lengths

We've created 10, 40, and 90 minute sessions. Pick the length that fits your content the best -- from lighter talk to more involved lectures.

The new addition this year is the 90 minute length. This is intended to cover workshop and other formats different from lecture-style sessions that would have been difficult with the conventional 40 minute session. Conventionally these were covered by the Unconference, but we can now plan ahead for these types of sessions.

Of course, if you would have something to lecture using the whole 90 minutes, that is welcome as well. Surprise us with your new ideas.

SNS impact

Speakers will be decided by a selection committee using participant's voting as the primary reference, but we will take SNS impact into the account. The SNS impact will be calculated by quantifying the buzz (or share) on Twitter, Facebook, Hatena Bookmark etc to measure the excitement about the session.

We are planning to tally the number of times a session was shared to Twitter, Facebook, and Hatena Bookmark via the social buttons placed on each proposal page of the official ScalaMatsuri website.

This is intended to create buzz around ScalaMatsuri up front, and also to attract people to your proposals. Once your proposals get on the official ScalaMatsuri website, please share it on various media to advertise your proposal.

Travel grant

ScalaMatsuri wants diverse speakers from all over the world. To help break down the barriers, we're excited to offer travel grant.

Here are the only categories that can assist (because we are a non-profit):

1. Airfare and other transportation to Tokyo.
2. Other transportation during ScalaMatsuri
3. Hotel fares during ScalaMatsuri general sessions. (three nights for March 16th, 17th, and 18th)

Any other expenses, including ones incurred from sightseeing or hotel fares (priced per person in Japan) for accompanying travellers, cannot be expensed by us. Please note that we expect hotel fees to be covered either by the speakers or from the travel grant. In other words, you must book the hotel and air travel on yourself.

The maximum amount of the travel grant is fixed by the origin of your travel:

• Japan $800 USD
• East Asia and Southeast Asia (China, Korea, Philippines etc) $900 USD
• Other Asia (India, Turkey, Israel, etc) $1500 USD
• Oceania $1300 USD
• Europe $1500 USD
• Africa $2000 USD
• North America $1500 USD
• South America $2000 USD

Note that the amount offered as travel grant will NOT exceed the actual travel expense. Suppose you've been approved for the grant and the travel expense was $1000 from Europe, the maximum amount the ScalaMatsuri will reimburse will be $1000.

All items must have either an email forward from an airline or scans/photos of a receipt. Please read http://2018.scalamatsuri.org/en/cfp/#Travel-grant for more details.

Session voting begins! (and about uncategorized voting)

Hi. This is @eed3si9n, one of the ScalaMatsuri staff. Although, I am a member of the Translation team, I like to participate in anything interesting from scheduling to swag items.

Summary

tl; dr. Here are the gist of this post.

• The voting will close at December 1st, 23:59 JST. Based on the submitted sessions, we are going to change the previous voting system to an “uncategorized voting.”
• The voting results will be interpreted more like a public opinion poll. In that, instead of picking the speakers purely based on the number of votes, ScalaMatsuri selection committee will pick up the mix of popular sessions, popular topics, as well as hand-picked sessions.
• This year’s voting will be available directly from the ScalaMatsuri website after logging in.
• If you’ve submitted a talk, and want to switch to another category, please let us know in the next few days via cfp2017@scalamatsuri.org.

A regional tech conference that's also global

As ScalaMatsuri made a huge progress in 2016, 2017 will continue to uphold the two major goals in a sustainable way:

• Providing a space for Japanese Scala community to socialize, and present ideas to the international audience.
• Make a global technical conference with the universal access, where people from various background such as languages, gender, or ethnicity, can be comfortable.

The concrete actions taken for these goals are documented in my last year’s post A regional tech conference that's also global, but here are the hightlights:

• Establishing Code of Conduct, and making an intro video for it.
• Public CFP, travel support, and translations of the submitted session abstracts.
• Public voting of the sessions.
• Subtitles on the slide decks and professional two-way interpretation.

My thoughts on how these went are written up in ScalaMatsuri as a lifestyle.

Revisiting the public voting

The ideas of public CFP and voting were adopted with inspiration from nescala, but for ScalaMatsuri that has many sessions over multiple tracks, we don’t think pure ballot yields the best result.

As it was the first trial, we first determined the number of sessions per each category of Japanese and English - sessions of 15 and 40 minute length. As we were too focused on making the language ratio 1:1, I think we ended up missing many of the 15 minutes talks that were popular.

Till date, there are 43 of 40 minute English proposals, 16 of 40 minute Japanese proposals, 9 of 15 minute English proposals, and 13 of 15 minutes Japanese proposals. I don’t think it would be best to fixate on picking eight 40 minute sessions and three 15 minute sessions.

Instead of determining the number of sessions up front per category, we might be able to schedule six 40 minute talks and eight 15 minute talks for Japanese given there are almost equal number of proposals. Really, the criteria that matters is “what the audience wants to see on the day of the conference.”

Uncategorized voting

To research “what the audience wants to see on the day of the conference,” ScalaMatsuri 2017 will adopt uncategorized voting. In other words, we will remove the categorization of English/Japanese 40/15 minutes, and you can pick whatever you want to see from all the proposals. One of the reasons we are even able to consider this, is because we have successfully implemented two-way interpretation. We no longer have to be nervous about the language barrier issue.

Because we reused the session proposal list from the last year, the page contains the “About voting” section, which states “The voting will be done for the following categories separately.” If you’ve submitted a talk, and want to switch to another category, please let us know in the next few days via cfp2017@scalamatsuri.org.

Public opinion poll

One point I want to clarify before we begin the voting this year, is that this year’s voting will be considered a public opinion poll.

Last year we observed that when hundreds of people try to select 22 sessions, the selected talks end up forming a cluster of similar topics. This is actually an obvious outcome because the voters did not talk to each other to coordinate “hey, let’s pick that talk for intro to fp.”

Another observation we made is that there was a pack of 6 or 8 talks that clearly got more votes than the others, but then the curve flattens to one or two votes difference.

In short, there was a clear top cluster of a few sessions that everyone wants to see, and the rest spread out widely. Combining these points, instead of picking talks from the top mathematically, we think the conference would be far more enjoyable if we treated the voting more like a public opinion poll to infer topics and trends. ScalaMatsuri selection committee will pick up the mix of popular sessions, popular topics, as well as hand-picked sessions with some degree of subjectiveness.

Voting program

One of the things we couldn’t do last year due to lack of time, was creating our own voting program. This year we commissioned Tech to Value to make the voting program. After logging in, you can now vote from the ScalaMatsuri website’s session proposal list.

You can vote by clicking on the ☆ icon. Since there are many sessions, you can first pin some of the candidates first using the pushpin icon.

How to vote

Participants who bought a ticket, sponsor companies and ScalaMatsuri staffs are eligible for voting. This article covers how participants can vote.

1.) Confirm your e-mail address that you used to buy the ticket, and the reception number in the e-mail you have received from DoorKeeper.

The email you have received from Doorkeeper contains the QR code with your reception number (your 6 digits number below the QR code). You will be asked to enter the reception number when you sign in. We will verify this code later to match up with your Google, Twitter, or Github account that you use to sign in.

If you haven't made the purchase yet, there are a few more tickets available from the following page: https://scalaconfjp.doorkeeper.jp/events/53530

2.) From the top right of the proposal list page, press the “Sign-in” button and sign in using your Google, Twitter, or GitHub account. (This will pop up an Authorize application dialog)

When you sign in, please enter the DoorKeeper reception number. This is it for the preparation.

Select the sessions you would like to see. The number of votes per person is limited to 10. The remaining votes will be displayed at the top of the proposal list page.

There are toggles to display only the voted and/or pinned sessions.

The voting will close on 1st, Dec. 23:59 JST. Any votes afterwards will be invalid, so please be sure to vote early.

3.) Get psyched waiting for the voting result!

Voting FAQ

Q.How will the voting result be announced?

A.We will announce the result at the ScalaMatsuri website.

We will also announce on the Twitter, so this might a good chance to start following us.

1. Is there any extra chance to talk what if my proposal is not accepted?

You can propose your talk for our Unconference, which will be held on the second day of the conference (February 26, 2017). The talks are proposed and assigned on the day of the Unconference in the morning. We tend to have more sessions during the Unconference, so please bring your talks.

Please remember to vote!