I Participated as a Speaker at Droidcon Boston 2018

On March 26th (Mon) and 27th (Tue), I participated as a speaker at Droidcon Boston 2018, an Android engineer conference held in Boston.

There were:

• 3 Keynote speeches
• 24 Sessions
• 6 Lightning talks
• 5 Workshops

My presentation content was mostly the same as what I presented at DroidKaigi, except for the summary and minor changes. Here are the slides.

TL;DR

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Here is a rough summary of this article in bullet points.

• Speaking at an overseas conference for the first time was difficult and I have some regrets, but more than that, everyone was kind and I want to go again.
• During the presentations, no one was looking at or writing on Twitter; they asked a ton of questions after the presentation.
• People from overseas use wonderful, joyful words generously to praise you genuinely.

Things I asked others and heard:

• MVVM, MVP, etc. are mainstream.
• Many people had only done “Hello World” with Flutter.
• I got the impression that more people are interested in MVI (personal impression).

Below, I summarize the flow from finding the CFP, submitting it, departing, and speaking in chronological order. After that, I write about what I felt through the conference.

🔦 Trigger

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AndroidStudyGroup/conferences

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The AndroidStudyGroup/conferences repository lists information on Android-related conferences around the world. A while after submitting the CFP for DroidKaigi, I happened to look at this list and found Droidcon Boston.

Although I always had a desire to “speak at an overseas conference,” I only felt that “the competition must be high and I probably won’t pass.”

However, since I was planning to present about Flux in English at DroidKaigi, I decided to apply with the same CFP, thinking I had nothing to lose.

⏰ Waiting but No Contact

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As expected, when I didn’t hear anything from the conference organizers, I thought “I didn’t make it.” However, no matter how long I waited, there was no contact from the organizers. I assumed I would be notified even if my CFP was rejected, so when nothing came, I started to wonder, “Huh?”

🐦 Prodding Them Myself

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To dispel the feeling of “Huh? Maybe my CFP wasn’t viewed for some reason?”, I decided to contact the conference side. There was an inquiry form on the conference website, so I inquired from there.

When I didn’t get a reply after about 2 business days, I decided to contact the Organizer individually on Twitter. The conference website listed information about the Organizers and Volunteers, so I contacted them, thinking I had nothing to lose.

As a result of contacting them individually, I received a reply like this:

“Can you tell me a little more detail about what you plan to present? We want to reconsider whether to accept it based on understanding the details of the presentation content.”

It seems they would consider it.

Then, I poured out my thoughts and the details of the presentation I intended to give if accepted, and finally, it was accepted.

🎒 Preparation

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After being accepted, I gradually prepared for the trip to the US. Roughly listed below:

• Booking flights (loosely searched on Expedia and chose a direct flight)
• Obtaining ESTA (Since my previously obtained ESTA was still valid, it was not necessary this time)
• Booking Airbnb (First time using Airbnb. I was quite excited)
• Researching local information

Also, during this preparation period, I was invited to the Droidcon Boston Slack team by an Organizer, and we introduced ourselves to other speakers on Slack.

The organizers were also using this Slack to communicate and proceed with preparations. Until the very last minute before the conference, there were hurried reports flying around like updating website information, “The Wifi seems to be over capacity as it is, what should we do!?”, “Is the recording setup okay? Should we add more volunteers!?”, and I felt that running a conference is really tough work. (Thank you again to everyone at DroidKaigi! Thank you for your hard work checking and uploading videos even now. m(__)m)

On the other hand, there were many exciting messages like “T-shirts arrived!! YEAH! AWESOME!!” and “Speaker Party is happening!!” the day before the conference. Speakers and organizers were reacting to each other, and I could witness the conference being built in real-time, which made me feel elated.

✈️ Departure

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Finally departing from Japan. Actually, I left a day early and first went to New York on a Japan -> New York flight for sightseeing. I visited a friend’s house and did some sightseeing.

After that, I moved from New York to Boston taking about 3-4 hours on something like a Shinkansen called Amtrak.

I attended the Speaker Party on the day I arrived at the hotel in Boston.

Speaker Party

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Speakers, Organizers, Co-Organizers, and volunteer staff attended the Speaker Party.

Since I was the only Japanese speaker, I was very anxious about being alone at the Speaker Party. However, one volunteer spoke to me immediately, and that person brought another person, so I was able to talk to several people right away and communicate with various people until the end.

It seems that most of the volunteer staff were locals, and most of the people I talked to at the Speaker Party lived in Boston. (I want to live in Boston.)

me: Is Flutter popular?

Boston Engineer: I wrote Hello World!, but haven’t done more than that~

me: In Japan, engineers’ salaries tend to rise when they change jobs, is it the same overseas? Is it common to change jobs for that reason?

Boston Engineer: Not everyone, but there certainly are a certain number of people who do.

I had conversations like that. I felt that there might not be such clear differences just because it’s America.

Conference

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Venue

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The venue was The Calderwood Pavilion at the Boston Center for the Arts, a tasteful place usually used for performing arts.

Sessions

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Although session videos will be released eventually, I personally listened to the following sessions:

• Tips for Library development (Keynote)
• Design + Develop + Test (Keynote)
• Common Poor Coding Patterns and How to avoid Them - Pinterest
• Why MVI? - Fueled
• Optimization Strategies at Instagram - Instagram

I won’t look back on individual sessions, but personally, Keynotes were often emotional (like stories about what to do when told to make the design the same as iOS!). Also, there were stories about how data inconsistencies occurred in existing MVP + Event bus projects, realizing state management wasn’t working well, and how they improved from there or how to prevent it, and stories about MVI.

There was a presentation about MVI at DroidKaigi as well, but at Droidcon Boston too, the audience was large, and I got the impression that awareness is increasing and more people are interested in this architecture.

However, according to several people I talked to after the MVI presentation, the impression was that MVVM and MVP are currently mainstream.

Realizations

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Here I will write ramblingly about some things I realized about the overseas conference itself and what could be called American culture by speaking at an overseas conference.

Active Audience

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First of all, at overseas conferences, most people do not open or look at smartphones or Macs. My impression was that most people were looking at the speaker’s eyes and listening. This might depend on the scale of the conference, but I think it is certain that there were clearly more people listening while looking at the speaker’s eyes compared to Japanese conferences.

And during the Q&A time, at least one person always asks a question. Usually, 2-3 people asked questions. This might also be because the scale was small, but even so, many people asked sharp questions at times, and I felt they were listening carefully and never thought their questions were not worth asking. And actually, many questions were helpful, contents I wanted to ask myself.

I felt that the audience’s attitude towards the speaker and the feeling of everyone asking questions one after another is something rare in Japan.

Using Wonderful Words Generously

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I wrote earlier that audience members sometimes ask sharp questions, but when the Q&A session ends, they praise you tremendously.

You are awesome!

You are more than awesome!

You changed my life!

Many people call out and tell you genuinely, things that might be embarrassing to say in Japanese. This might partly be because I am Japanese and came all the way from far away, but since many people were conveying similar sentiments to other speakers as well, it shouldn’t be just me. lol

Anyone would be happy to be showered with such wonderful words. I was also very happy. Even if it’s flattery, I’m happy.

Also, at the end, I received a card like this:

Summary

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It was my first time speaking at an overseas conference, but it was more fun than I imagined and everyone was kind and awesome. This is my personal impression, but I think Droidcon Boston had a particularly homely feel and close distance to the organizers compared to larger conferences like Droidcon NYC.

Speaking in English is always full of reflections, and of course, there is no end if I start reflecting on how I could have done better this time too, but believing that actually asking questions and speaking is the shortest way to improvement, I want to devote myself again. I’m wondering if there’s any good way to improve together with everyone happily, but I feel like gaining experience might be the best for this, so I can’t say for sure.

That’s all!