ScalaMatsuri blog

This blog is about ScalaMatsuri preparation, and sponsored by Hatena, Inc.

ScalaMatsuri 2020 guide: Tips on making the online conference experience 120% better

Hello, everyone.

This is OE (@OE_uia), the ScalaMatsuri chairperson.

ScalaMatsuri 2020 is just around the corner. Ticket registration is open until the last minute.

scalaconfjp.doorkeeper.jp

Now, I'm going to show you how to enjoy the first ever online ScalaMatsuri 2020!

TL;DR / Summary

-Install Zoom and Discord client apps, create a Discord account, and set up your icon beforehand. - Prepare a headset or earphones. - Check our timetable. We'd encourage you to post your session ideas to Unconference GitHub repo! - Revisit our code of conduct.

Venue

For ScalaMatsuri 2020, Day 1 will be the conference day on Saturday, October 17th (JST), and Day 2 will be the unconference day on Sunday, October 18th (JST).

We will use Zoom Webinar and Discord throughout these two days.

Read more

ScalaMatsuri 2020 T-shirt shops open now!

Hi, I'm OE (@OE_uia), the ScalaMatsuri Chairperson.

I'm thrilled to announce ScalaMatsuri 2020 t-shirt shop opens today!

We are opening two stores at BASE and Shopify, to bring our products to participants around the world.

f:id:oe_uia:20200827170421p:plainf:id:oe_uia:20200829192530p:plain
ScalaMatsuri official T- shirt shop ( left: BASE, right: Shopify )

The e-commerce shop will hold only ScalaMatsuri 2020 t-shirts and will CLOSE around the end of 2020.

TL;DR / Summary

  • This time, we are producing and delivering t-shirts on demand. Please choose your favorite color and pattern.
  • If you live in outside of Japan, please use Shopify. It will take 1-2 weeks to arrive depending on where you live.
  • If you live in Japan, we recommend ordering from BASE for quick delivery (usually 1 week to 10 days).

Shopify

Buy it at ScalaMatsuri Official Online T-Shirt shop @Shopify.

It is available in 7 colors, and the base fabric specification varies depending on the color. The price is around US$21~27, plus an additional shipping fee. You can order the one you want.

They are manufactured in various parts of the world, and depending on where you live, it usually takes about 1-2 weeks for the product to arrive.

BASE

Visit ScalaMatsuri Official Online T-Shirt shop @BASE to purchase your t-shirt.

There are 7 colors and 2 types of T-shirts: the standard T-shirt (4300 yen) and the slim T-shirt (3300 yen). Please choose your favorite color and shape for your order. All prices include shipping and handling.

Notes.

We are not aiming to make this T-shirt for profit, so the selling price is the sum of the manufacturing cost and the sales commission of the e-commerce shop.

Due to the on-demand production and delivery of the T-shirts, the production cost is higher than in typical years, and there are some individual differences.

Also, there may be some glue on the garment. Please wash it before wearing it.

If you want to receive before ScalaMatsuri 2020, we recommend you order by the end of September.

Read more

ScalaMatsuri 2020 will be an online-only conference.

This is a post written by ScalaMatsuri chair Taisuke Oe (@OE_uia).

We would like to inform you that [ScalaMatsuri 2020] (https://scalamatsuri.org/en), scheduled on October 17th and 18th, 2020, has been an online-only conference.

See: ScalaMatsuri 2020 is postponed to October 17-18, 2020 - ScalaMatsuri blog

Due to the continuing spread of COVID-19 throughout Japan and all over the world, we have decided that going online is essential to ensure both the safety of participants and social interaction. We hope that all Scala enthusiasts will be able to enjoy this opportunity to interact with each other, since these opportunities for interaction have been greatly reduced in the wake of the corona outbreak.

Considering this will be the first time for ScalaMatsuri to be held online, on August 30th, we'll be holding a pre-ScalaMatsuri ,intended to be also a rehearsal, which is an online Lightning Talks meetup. We'll be accepting applications for both speakers and participants by the end of next week.

Edited on August 7th: Now the event page is published.

Pre-ScalaMatsuri LightningTalks online meetup

ScalaMatsuri 2020 Online Overview

At this time, we plan to use Zoom Webinar (sessions) and Discord (announcements, interactions, booths, and party).

The dates and times will continue to be October 17 and 18, 2020 (Japan time).

We will also be holding a pre-ScalaMatsuri event on Sunday, August 30th, with an online Lightning Talks meetup.

Official ScalaMatsuri online shop

This year's T-shirts will be available on the official ScalaMatsuri online shop, which will be open to the public in August. For the first time, we will have multiple colors of T-shirts available for you to choose from, so we hope you'll be able to buy one in your favorite color and use it to celebrate the event.

We will be shipping to both domestic and international destinations, but due to logistical constraints, the colors and specifications of the items may differ slightly. Thank you in advance for your understanding.

Ticket Price Revisions.

Due to major changes in online logistics, we will no longer be providing food and drinks, and as mentioned earlier, we will also be distributing attendee T-shirts separately in our online shop. We are still working on the details of simultaneous interpretation, but it will be provided during the conference part of Day 1.

Therefore, we have decided to reduce the ticket prices as follows

  • Online Regular Admission: 3,000 yen
  • Online Student Admission: FREE
  • Online 2nd day-only Admission: FREE
  • Online Ninja sponsorship: 15,000 yen

Online tickets are available from Doorkeeper:

scalaconfjp.doorkeeper.jp

We apologize for the inconvenience caused by this major change in the specifications for ticket holders.

Therefore, we are accepting cancellations if you wish, but please notify us by August 15 23:59 AoE (August 16 20:59 JST) using the form below. If there are no cancellations by the deadline, we will refund the difference in price.

Refund for ScalaMatsuri2020 ticket

Speaking Environment for Speakers

As communicated separately, we will be arranging the timetable according to the time zone in which the speakers live. Other confirmation and support for the online speaking environment are provided separately.

Thank you for your cooperation and response to the change in speaking arrangements.

Sponsor Benefits Modification

We have already sent out a separate notice to sponsors about how to offer benefits online.

For those sponsors who have already applied for a booth, we are taking questions, concerns, and consultations with them, especially as the specifications of the permanent booths will change significantly with the transition to virtual booths.

Lastly, I'm sure all of you reading this article have been affected by the corona outbreak in a large or small way. We would like to thank you again for your support of the event.

We look forward to seeing you all online!

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.

f:id:oe_uia:20181209220413p:plain
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.

f:id:oe_uia:20200212230509p:plain
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.

f:id:oe_uia:20200212231138p:plain
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.

f:id:oe_uia:20200212231113p:plain
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!

f:id:oe_uia:20191111235749p:plain:w480
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.

f:id:oe_uia:20181209220413p:plain
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)

f:id:oe_uia:20190219192016p:plain
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.

f:id:oe_uia:20190219192453p:plain
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.

f:id:oe_uia:20190219193022p:plain
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!