In our continuing efforts to promote VAddy internationally, we travelled to Washington D.C. on November 16 to attend php[world] 2015 as a sponsor. If you, too, have considered attending a conference to promote your service, I hope that this article will provide some useful information for you.
We are building VAddy for web application developers around the world. Though we can interact with Japanese developers directly at local meetups and conferences, this approach to explaining how VAddy works and collecting feedback doesn’t scale well to an international audience. There’s only so much information you can glean through social networks and email alone.
From the beginning, we were keenly aware that we would need to actively reach out to developers immediately after we launched VAddy as a service, and that the quickest way to do this is via direct customer conversations.
With web application developers from across the U.S. in attendance, php[world] 2015 was a perfect opportunity for us to meet more developers abroad. The conference brings together a scattered group of regional PHP development communities, regardless of their preferred frameworks or other minor barriers between them.
As is common in Japan, php[world] had multiple sponsorship levels. We chose to be an Exhibitor-level sponsor, which entitled us to one conference ticket and a sponsor booth with a table. I won’t reveal exactly how much we paid because sponsorship rates aren’t public, but after purchasing an additional conference ticket we ended up spending somewhere in the ballpark of ¥500,000 for two people.
Space was reserved for sponsors in the lobby of the hotel that served as the conference venue. Each booth’s table was approximately six feet long; we also brought our own free-standing banner because there were no available walls for hanging up posters.
We didn’t have to worry about a lack of foot traffic because the sponsor booths were set up between conference rooms; attendees passed by them on their way to and from sessions.
Attendees were also given “passports” that they could use to collect stamps from sponsors for a chance at winning a prize during a drawing at the end of the conference. This was a very thoughtful gesture on the part of the conference organizers to encourage attendees to stop by the sponsor booths!
You can see VAddy’s stamp in the upper-right corner of the photo above. If you look really closely, you may even notice that it contains a small easter egg: “HND” is actually the code for Tokyo’s Haneda Airport.
Scenes from the conference
I hardly attended any sessions because I spent most of the conference at our booth. (We probably didn’t need that second conference pass after all...) If you’re interested, you can find video recordings of some of the sessions on the php[architect] YouTube channel.
Nearly 100 developers stopped by the VAddy booth during the conference. As far as I could tell with my (admittedly) stilted English, very few of those developers were already running security tests—just like their Japanese counterparts. This leads me to believe that we’re on the right track with VAddy.
However, many people didn’t appear to understand our service at a glance. Some asked if our company is a security auditing firm; others (not mistakenly) considered VAddy to be a continuous integration tool. We may need to adjust our posters and pamphlets to clear up these misconceptions.
All of these conversations allowed us to come away from the conference with a more concrete impression of how VAddy is being perceived outside of Japan.
We were delighted to have CakePHP’s lead developer, Mark Story, grace us with his presence. :)
Each day at the conference ended with a party—complete with an open bar! For many attendees this was a rare chance to meet each other in person; the hotel lobby was always abuzz with lively conversations.
On the evening of Thursday, November 19, a party was held to celebrate the release of Drupal 8 during the conference.
The conference provided complimentary refills of Starbucks coffee for attendees. At some point my stomach told me that I may have had a few cups too many...
Both breakfast and lunch were catered.
Some employees from JetBrains—whom you may know as the creators of PhpStorm—even came to the conference from Germany.
There was no shortage of WordPress swag at the Automattic booth. (I managed to snag a t-shirt!)
Some attendees focused on Capture the Flag (CTF) contests.
I had a chance to show a friend’s book to Taylor Otwell, the creator of Laravel.
All in all, we found php[world] 2015 to be a fun, laid-back event!
While we were in the U.S., we decided to stop by Philadelphia to see Nate Abele! Nate came to Lithium Tokyo in 2013, so he may be somewhat famous in Japan, too?
We showed Nate what we’ve been working on recently and received some advice on how to promote VAddy more effectively. It turned out to be a very fruitful and enjoyable visit!
You need to summon up some courage to attend your first international conference. The trip can be expensive, and it isn’t guaranteed to directly affect your company’s bottom line. That being said, you can’t really understand what people are thinking half a world away just by staring at your computer screen, so I would recommend going abroad to attend a conference if you can. Even though my spoken English still has a lot of room for improvement, all of the php[world] attendees I met were friendly and listened patiently to what I had to say. I’m incredibly thankful to everyone who stopped by the VAddy booth; I may not have always explained myself as well as I would have liked, but I hope that you’ll give VAddy a try!
We’re currently discussing plans to attend our second international conference sometime early next year. Watch this space for more details, and thanks for reading!
-- Katsuya Nishino (@vaddy_support)
