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What comes to mind when you hear yellowtail meeting? Many people imagine a conference where experts get together to discuss something related to yellowtail, but it is an IT event in Toyama, Japan.
In this blog, we will introduce why that IT community event BuriKaigi (“Yellowtail Meeting” in English) is named after a fish, and the reason why it attracts a lot of attendees.
Toyama is in the Hokuriku region in Japan and a famous city for cold yellowtail. Local technical community leaders in Hokuriku have been working together to organize this annual event at the best timing for that seasonal gourmet every winter, and they organized the in-person event in January 2023. More than half of the attendees joined this event from outside of Toyama.
“We have been hosting community events, where each after party provided an opportunity to event attendees from various cities to eat yellowtail. Therefore, we started this annual event under the new name BuriKaigi since 2017 which enables attendees to learn modern technologies and enjoy the local seafood,” one of co-organizers Developer Technologies MVP Fujio Kojima explains its history.
As mentioned at the beginning, this event does not look like an IT community event. However, that is why it did not limit the target products, services, and audience, and grabs attendees’ hearts who love to learn about technology, network new connections, and eat delicious yellowtail. For example, the latest event featured more than 25 sessions ranging from a wide range of technical sessions without being biased towards any vendor, such as app development, open source, database, web technologies, and low-code development to soft skills sessions which encourage attendees to output share their knowledge. After learning a lot, attendees enjoy delicious local foods, spa, and chatting with new community friends. This is the main purpose of this event.
Co-organizer, Developer Technologies MVP Takaaki Suzuki, says this event provided a sense of unity as a community. “We spent almost six months for prep and successfully created the joy of meeting people by hosting this event which looks like a school trip where we gather in the local city and stay at a Japanese-style hot spring hotel. Removing specific brands from event name worked well to attract diverse attendees and demonstrated a new face-to-face community experience with new community peers.”
Fujio hopes this kind of event will empower more community members, “Attendees can reach delicious food after sharing knowledge and/or learning technologies. Would be happy if this event will be organized in various places.” Takaaki wrapped up with a positive vision for their next event, “We will continue to provide this opportunity. See you next winter!”
There are as uncountable unique local specialties around the world as there are regions. We have introduced one of the best practices of successful community activity which focused on regional diversity.
If you are interested in eating delicious Buri (yellowtail), find how the event went on Fujio’s event recap blog and visit Toyama and join the next BuriKaigi.