Pepper x Java (and a bit more)
So, Im just back from a week in Tokyo. The primary reason I was travelling was to attend Java Day Tokyo: a few months ago, Stephen Chin and the japanese Oracle team told us they’d be happy to welcome Pepper during the keynote to announce the release of the Java SDK to the japanese community.
Tuesday 7th was the rehearsal day. The conference was taking place at the International Forum, a huge venue close to Tokyo Station. It was about 3km away from my hotel in Akasaka, and the path to follow sounded great on Google Maps, so I decided to walk to it, though it was raining.
The view on Tokyo Station Area from the Imperial Palace
We met with the staff, other speakers, and did all the setup for our 10mn slot. Pepper would be on stage from the very beginning, hidden under a cardboard box, and revealed only once our speaker would enter and start his demo. We had to make sure Pepper would stay quiet for more than an hour, would stay connected to our wifi network (based on a smartphone) so as to allow us to easily start the demo from our laptop, connected to the same network. Needless to say we were all a bit nervous while leaving the room at the end of the afternoon.
I spent the evening with Lem Fugitt, editor of Robots Dreams. That was my 5th time in Japan, and I never had the opportunity to meet with him before. He came to pick me up at my hotel, and we went to a cool little restaurant 200m away from it. At first, I was a bit impressed. Im pretty tall myself, and Im not so used to meet with people who are taller than I am. But behind that first impressive contact, he’s a really warm and kind guy, with an impressive background with everything robots-related. I was really interested in hearing his views upon several topics.
You can live without a selfie? :)
As far as Japan is concerned, he’s got an interesting point of view about the potential categories of clients for Pepper on the consumer market: geeks and otakus of course, but also old women and parents.
Old women, because they tend to feel alone. They live longer than their husbands, but even when both are alive, men tend to live outside, spending time with other men, doing different kind of activities. Old men have no need a robot could fulfill. But their wives, assuming enough content is available to create a real connection over time, would clearly be ready to buy a robot like Pepper.
When talking about adults, Lem said he would target parents, with entertaining and educational contents for the kids. Just like old women, kids are looking for connections at home, and parents tend to work a lot, not being so present. If robots can engage with these kids, and at the same time help them learn, parents could also think about buying it. But he’s not sure they would buy a robot for themselves in the first place, though they could get used to it over time.
At 7.30 on wednesday, I was at the Starbucks in front of the forum, taking some fuel for the day after a short night.
At 8.00, all the team was backstage, preparing the robot and polishing the tablet. Laurent Lec, our speaker, did some last minute adjustements. And also, the CEO of Oracle for Japan asked to have a picture with Pepper for the 20th birthday of Java.
At 9.00, the conference started, and by 10.15 or something like that, our speaker was on stage. And everything went all right. No demo curse for us this time. He rocked it!
Laurent Lec on stage during the keynote
We spend the evening with the Java community and the JJUG. They were having some kind of party in a restaurant close to the venue, and invited us to attend. That was my first japanese party, and I don’t regret it. There are community events where you can feel some distance between people. They miss some kind of glue that turns meeting into memorable community meetings. And you have the other community events. Those where you can feel some magic. And that was the case here.
Contrary to the CEO cake, this one was real
On the last day, I visited our Atelier in Akihabara. That was my first time here since it opened. It’s set in an old school, and the space is shared with other smalls shops or places for artists. That’s a great place to visit, filled with robots <3
In a few weeks, they are going to hold their first Java workshop over there. It seems that the event is already sold out, but others should take place. If you’re in Tokyo and would like to try some Java on Pepper, best thing to do is to get in touch with them for next sessions.
And that’s it. Three days, and it was over. For some reasons, I was a little sad when came the time to fly back. It happens to me all the time when I leave California for instance, but that was the first time I felt that for Japan. I think it took me a while to start understanding a bit the culture. And it’s so delicate that it’s hard to resist it once you start!
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