A Laravel Conference in Japan With Ryuta Hamasaki  ## Document Notes ## Highlights - **From First Impressions To Laracon Spark** - Ryuta discovered Laravel in 2014 and fell in love with the documentation and APIs. - He attended his first Laracon in Chicago (2018) which inspired him to pursue international work and speaking. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki It's a bit long story. If I start from when I started using Laravel, I started using Laravel in 2014. Like it was Laravel 4.2, I think. And the moment I saw the docs, I fell in love with it. Like, I really liked the APIs as well. But back then, I didn't know that Laravel had a community. Like, this Laravel community existed. But I watched some Laracon talks online. I thought it was really cool. I wanted to attend it. But, you know, Laracon, let's say U.S., is very far to attend from Japan. So I wasn't sure whether it's worth attending all the way from Japan. But I attended Laracon U.S. In 2018 in Chicago. That was my first developer conference in my life. Oh, cool. Wow. And you flew across the world for it yeah i hadn't attended any conferences in japan as well and that was my first visit to the u.s and wow i met taylor and i also remember your talk about Like wow i think you talked something about patterns that pay off yeah yeah i love your talk as well oh thank you and attending larcon you know was very inspiring and exciting experience To me you know meeting so many developers all around the world who are using the same framework and technology this experience made me think that i would like to work in an international Environment in the future okay yes and then the next year i applied for laracon eu i submitted a talk to laracon eu without expecting much and i almost forgot about it and a few months later I got an email from the Laracon EU organizer, like, are you interested in speaking at Laracon EU? And I thought it was them because it was so surreal. Oh my God, that's so funny. And then I had an opportunity to give a talk at Laracon EU, and that was in 2019. That was also my first conference talk ever. ([Time 0:01:05](https://share.snipd.com/snip/60e507d5-c538-483e-a127-cfdb33e048e8)) - **Moving Countries To Learn English** - Ryuta moved to Singapore to force himself to use English and work in an international environment. - His first Singapore job used Ruby on Rails, so he initially missed using Laravel but gained valuable experience. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki And I applied for a job in many countries, including some countries in Europe, Australia, Canada, and some other countries in Asia. And I got an offer from a company in Singapore. So I just decided to go there, even though I had never been there back then. And one of the reasons why I moved there, I mean, outside of Japan was my English was very bad and I struggled to improve it. And I was like, I should live in a place where I can't live without speaking English. And Singapore is a nature, but they have like four official languages, including English. And the company I joined was quite international. Like there were people from over 20 different countries and the work culture was quite, I would say, Western style. But unfortunately, they were not using Laravel. They were mainly using Ruby on Rails. And the only PHP thing they were using was WordPress blog. Yeah, so it was kind of disappointing. Because it was just after I gave a talk at laravel and eu and i had to stop using a lot of it in my day-to work that's rough yes i missed using laravel so much and i regretted my decision but The people in the company was so nice and i learned how to work in an international environment and a company. So if I look back, I think that I still made the right decision, even though I couldn't use Laravel. And I learned a lot. And two years later, I joined another company in Singapore that was using Laravel. So I got to use Laravel in my day-to work again. ([Time 0:04:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/0f762f61-05b0-46d0-af11-3af407306e96)) - **A Job Offer Soon After Birth** - After returning to Japan and attending more Laracons, Ryuta applied for a Laravel job and interviewed shortly after his son was born. - He joined Laravel to work on Nightwatch and cloud-related infrastructure, aligning with his DevOps interests. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki And the next year, 2024, I just saw that Laravan was hiring on Twitter and I gave it a go without much expectation again. And I forgot about it. And then we had our first baby son in April. And I almost forgot about the job application for Laravel. He's got different focuses. Yes. And a few hours after my son was born, I got an email from Andre, who is the VP of engineering at Laravel. That was the invitation for the interview. So again, I thought it was spam because it was so surreal again. Yes. And I had an interview, three interviews, including Andre and Jess and Tim. And the job application didn't say anything about any project I would be working for. So I just thought that I would be working something around open source side of things. Yes. But actually, so a lot of already started the project for cloud, a lot of cloud and Nightwatch back then. So they were looking for someone in APAC region who would be working for the Nightwatch with Jess and Tim. ([Time 0:07:24](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b0980797-d68b-4691-b413-9d0607328792)) - **A Large But Insular PHP Scene** - Japan has a large PHP community with many conferences, but the Laravel community lacked an international conference. - That gap motivated Ryuta to connect Japanese developers to the global Laravel ecosystem. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki Specific to Laravel, but the PHP community in Japan is huge, actually. Matt Stauffer Really? Okay. Ryuta Hamasaki Yeah, there are so many PHP-related conferences in Japan. And the biggest one is called PHP Conference Japan, where 1,200 people attended last time. Wow. It was held in Tokyo. And other than that, there are so many other regional PHP conferences in other areas in Japan. And almost each month, there's a PHP conference somewhere. Matt Stauffer Wow. Do you get a sense for what's most popular for people to be using? Is it more WordPress-heavy? Is it more Symfony, more Laravel, more Vanilla, something else? Ryuta Hamasaki I would sayavel is the most popular php framework in japan but there's no laravel specific conference in this country yeah got it yet there's none yet asterisk not ([Time 0:12:36](https://share.snipd.com/snip/04154f28-0c52-4dbc-86fe-007a407deebb)) - **Validate With Meetups First** - Start small and test before launching a full conference by running local meetups first. - Build an organizing team and use those events to validate processes and tools. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki My co-organizer, whose name is David Truller. So we attended Larkon last year, 2024. And then we started a conversation like, wouldn't it be cool if we had something like Laracon in Japan? Yeah. So that's how it started. But before putting a big conference, we wanted to start something small. So we started PHP this March, and then we have a few other members in an organizer team. Matt Stauffer Yeah. Yeah. That's very cool. So what stage are you at right now? You've announced that you've put out the website, you've put out a call for proposals. Do you have everything else figured out? Ryuta Hamasaki Do you have all the venue and the staff, or are you in the middle of a lot of active development of the conference? We're still actively working for, you know, to make it happen. We've secured the venue, we've secured the event agency and after party venue, but we're talking to some vendors, let's say for the venue Wi-Fi or we've been talking to potential sponsors. Yes. So still so many things to do. ([Time 0:15:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/3c48ccbd-e1ee-42cb-a102-86974e947b96)) - **Name Matters Less Than Impact** - Laravel Live vs Laracon naming matters less than community impact; local success can be meaningful without global branding. - A conference can be the de facto national Laravel event regardless of its official label. Transcript: Matt Stauffer And then also usually the lives were one day conferences and Laracons were often two day conferences. But I don't think there's anything keeping that the case. Like if you were like, you know what, we've got a Laravel live and want it to be two days. You just do it, right? Like that's perfectly fine. So that's, you know, that's a great point. I also know that historically the Laracons have been much larger continent wise, you know, and I doubt we're going to do a Laracon Asia. You know, it just doesn't make sense. So yeah, so it might, you know, I can imagine a world where it just, it can be the most successful conference in the world, but it never makes sense to call it a Laracon. So I like your kind of perspective of like, it's, it's what I want. It's doing the thing I'm looking for. I don't really care what the name says. ([Time 0:20:04](https://share.snipd.com/snip/2703c81d-3b1a-4fa7-8197-355185448747)) - **Lock Down Attendance And Sponsors Early** - Prioritize securing attendees and sponsors early because first-year numbers are uncertain. - Study other local PHP conferences' attendance and sponsorship models to set realistic expectations. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki What I am most nervous about is numbers right now. Numbers of attendance or numbers of finances or which numbers? Yeah, attendance and sponsors. Yes. Because this is the first conference in Japan. I'm not sure how many people we can expect. I mean, we can expect some numbers based on the attendance of other PHP-related conferences in Japan, but it's specific to Laravel. And most of the PHP conferences in Japan are free. The tickets are free because they are organized by volunteers and supported by sponsors. Matt Stauffer Yeah. Wow. Ryuta Hamasaki Yeah. ([Time 0:20:54](https://share.snipd.com/snip/cfe8d2e3-ddf7-4da3-bb03-aa77c96a274e)) - **Use Real-Time Text Translation** - Provide live text translation for mixed-language talks to include both English and Japanese speakers. - Use a real-time web app to display translated captions on screen or personal devices to reduce audio lag issues. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki So I think one thing unique about Latavita Live Japan is that because we have some talks in English and some talks in Japanese, we provide live translation. Yeah, across the talks. So you can see the live translation on the screen all the time or on your device. And I'm actually building something for this myself. Matt Stauffer Really? Is it purely just text translation? Is there any audio components as well? Ryuta Hamasaki It's text-based translation for now. Because audio-based translation has a bit, you know, challenge in terms of the performance and delay. Yeah, the lag. Matt Stauffer Yeah, exactly. Okay. So it's taking an audio, transcribing the audio, translating the transcription, and then sending it out to a real-time web app? Or is it actually a mobile app? Yes, web app. Okay. Ryuta Hamasaki That's potentially a mobile app. And we're already using this in PHP Tokyo meetup it's working pretty well ([Time 0:22:38](https://share.snipd.com/snip/c516743a-3626-40ae-9075-f250205d83b2)) - **Developer First Role At Laravel** - Ryuta spends most of his time coding for Nightwatch and occasionally contributes to other Laravel UX projects. - Working on Nightwatch leverages his background in infrastructure and observability. Transcript: Ryuta Hamasaki Would say most of my time are still coding. Coding for the features for Nightwatch. Yes. Yeah. Matt Stauffer Are you building internal tools to manage Nightwatch or are you usually working on Nightwatch itself? Ryuta Hamasaki Yeah, I'm usually working for Nightwatch itself. But previously this year, I worked on the frameworks except new exception page, which is basically a redesign from the previous one. That new design is inspired from Nightwatch UI and designed by our own Jeremy Butler. So it was, yeah, it was a fun project. Yeah. It's not really directly related to Nightwatch, but, you know, it's very fun. Okay. ([Time 0:26:52](https://share.snipd.com/snip/1d62d842-b82a-4deb-b978-b5ed25951218)) - **Why React + shadcn/ui Works For Nightwatch** - Nightwatch's user app uses Laravel, Inertia, React, Tailwind and shadcn/ui to speed UI development. - Ryuta values shadcn/ui for reusing JS logic while retaining full styling control. Transcript: Matt Stauffer React, yeah, React Inertia, and Tailwind, ShadCN UI. I was just going to say, is ShadCN UI one of the reasons why? Ryuta Hamasaki Actually, Nightwatch, the user-facing Nightwatch app, is also built with the exact same stack. Laravel, Inertia, React, Shotsian. The reason why we picked this stack is on the front-end side, basically because of Shotsian, because we didn't want to do the UI components from scratch, while we wanted to have the full Control over the customizability around the styling. And Shots in UI, you know, allows you to reuse a lot of, you know, the underlying JS JavaScript logic, while you can still customize all the styling as you want. ([Time 0:28:25](https://share.snipd.com/snip/b09dca1c-974b-41c4-bf9b-7824d3a27477))