I was at WordCamp Kyoto 2009 on Oct. 17th. I don’t think there is any other English blog about it so I’ve written a report to share information with other WordCamp organizers and future attendee (better late than never; I was waiting for the survey results but that will be coming later).

Quick Facts:

• WordCamp Kyoto was the third WordCamp in Japan, first one outside of Tokyo
• 150 attendees total + about 15 staff + 15 sponsors
• Kyoto is the 7th largest city by the population, and is close to Osaka (3rd)

This event was organized in a month or so (which isn’t all too bad – I found that the more time you have, the longer it takes). Kyoto Research Park (KRP) hosted the 1st day & gave a pretty good discount for the venue on the 2nd day. Having sponsors also helped covering the cost. Many of past WordCamp Tokyo volunteers helped out preparing and as staff on both days.

Day 1: “Business Day”

• Ktai Style (mobile plugin) presentation by Yuriko Ikeda was highly anticipated and appreciated as always.
• Contact Form 7 author Takayuki Miyoshi talked about using WordPress as a customer support tool (he’s working on a new plugin called Support Tickets).
• There was an instruction of real-time collaborative drawing tool “Cacoo“, which just opened up for closed beta testing. It lets you create charts and wireframes. Its WordPress plugin is coming soon.
• “WordPress Business Community” WPbiz was also introduced. It’s going to be as site with business directory & forums for Japanese business users.

Day 2: “Community Day”

We made event polo shirts for the staff & as door prizes. This is because of the time/price constraints, but everyone got a bag with the WordCamp Kyoto logo 🙂

I did a presentation on brief history & current state of WordPress. Other topics: DB backup, search/content filtering plugin, Thematic theme framework, GPL commercial theme, server optimization, and Q & A session.
We tried to pick topics based on the past WordCamp survey (Organizers: after-event survey is important! You can get a better bigger picture from this than random feedback).

We did a “video letter” of Matt on both days (Thanks to Matt, Michael P & Ryan M!).

Lightening talks

Each speaker had 5 minutes to talk about various topics: NPO & WordPress, backing up WordPress files with uuenview + Gmail, introducing new WordPress book (by the author), CakePHP & WordPress integration, & Generating Flash xml using custom fields.

It was good to have this kind of mini-presentation (Ignite/lightening talk) open for everyone. Attendees and speakers felt they are welcomed in the community.

After-party

We held the after-party at a banquet hall in the same building. That was a good choice because people had time to hang out at the lounge after the main event & didn’t have any trouble finding the place. It was easy for the staff as well. Everyone seemed to enjoy the layout of the hall.

You can check out Flickr photos for WordCamp Kyoto (for some reason, Japanese WP users also love photos & cameras. This seems like a worldwide trend?).