In this blog post, I want to give a quick overview of this year’s Agile conferences in Japan.
In recent years the Agile community in Japan has grown steadily and so have more and more conferences popped up all over Japan. The Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo (RSGT) was one of the first conferences but it is not the only one anymore and almost every month you can join an event somewhere in Japan.
It’s a great opportunity for networking and learning from first-hand experiences of industry experts. The community is very open, warm and welcoming. You can have a lot of fun. For me, the highlight is always the networking and Nomikai sessions, because then you have a chance for deep conversation and build meaningful relationships.
Proposing a session and getting accepted gives you usually free entrance to the conference. Furthermore, most of the conferences nowadays also have an OST (Open Space Technology) part, so you can pitch your favourite topic even without the hassle of sending in a session beforehand.
And don’t worry if you don’t speak Japanese or your language skills are not that great, in recent years the community has become more open to English speakers, especially the RSGT.
Many of those events are organized via Confengine. So, keep an eye on that platform to stay up-to-date with the conferences in Japan. Confengine is also used for the management of the proposals:
https://confengine.com/#conference-list
Here is my list of the recommended conferences (no guarantee for correctness or completion):
- January: Regional Scrum Gathering Tokyo 2024
- February: Women in Agile Japan
- March: Scrum Fest Fukuoka and
Scrum Fest Kanagawa - April: DevOpsDays Tokyo and
ふりかえりカンファレンス (Retrospective Conference) - May: Scrum Fest Niigata
- June: Scrum Fest Osaka
- August: Scrum Fest Sendai
- September: Scrum Fest Mikawa and XP Matsuri
- November: Scrum Fest Niseko and
Agile Japan and
Rakuten Tech Conference and
Product Manager Conference (both conferences are not Agile related but still recommended) - December: Scrum Fest Okinawa
Some of those events are selling out quite quickly and some of them sell the tickets in monthly chunks, so be Agile and fast in getting those popular spots.
Enjoy the community and maybe we meet at one of those events 🙂
And last but not least, check out our community events and workshops. We have a variety of topics going on every month, from Agile Leadership to Psychological Safety, Change Management and Worker Happiness. They are much smaller but also a great way to dive into the dynamic Agile world of Japan.
