WordCamp Fukuoka was a huge success; total of 230+ people participated and there were 26 speakers for 3 tracks. It was amazing how smooth it went, considering that this was the first event organized by the Fukuoka team.

I got to go there along with Mark and Noel from Automattic.

The main hall presentation opened from a talk by Ned Watson. He was funny and really enthusiastic. He’s already planning for WordCamp Fukuoka 2011 🙂 I liked what he said: “Bring a friend, and we’ll have 400 people next year”

I went to watch Yasuhiro Yamada talk about the difference between WordPress and Movable Type.

In he afternoon, I presented on a topic about the power and appeal of WordPress, covering its openness, expansibility, and community. My slides are in Japanese but it’s on Slideshare.

I really enjoyed Takayuki‘s presentation a lot. It was only for 30 minutes but I wish he kept talking! It was about how he got involved in WordPress and how his plugin Contact Form 7 grew to become one of the most popular ones. It was nothing about big promotion or even a well-planned strategy. He just kept making it better for users, and provided a way for others to help him in areas like translation.

Later on, I got on the stage to interpret Noel’s “Directed Design” presentation and Mark’s lightening talk on the official Plugin Directory. I heard a lot of good feedback about both of their talk.

There was an after-party with 100+ people at a nearby hall. There were some mini-presentations, sushi, beer, shochu and WordCamp cake 🙂

Local bakery Strawberry Fields did an amazing job with the logo. Tasted great too…

WordCamp Fukuoka seemed to have inspired many people in Fukuoka as well as visitors from all around Japan. I was certainly impressed with the WordPress user & web developer community in Fukuoka. Now the organizers of WordCamp Yokohama (scheduled for May 29th this year) are getting busy planning for an even better one!

Awesome organizer/facilitator/babysitter 😉 Masanori Hashimoto of Nulab had written a report w/ photos: WordCamp Fukuoka 2010 finished!

You can see more photos on Flickr tag #wcfukuoka2010.