A Story of Satellite Hub Operations by a Regional Developer Community

This article is published as the entry for December 16th of the DevRel Advent Calendar 2021. Last year, I posted on the 8th and 10th of the same Advent Calendar 2020, and for some reason, I also wrote one for the 26th, but because I forgot the basic rule that it only goes up to the 25th, that article never saw the light of day. This time, I am also using this as a way to pay tribute to that lost piece.

My name is Jun. I run study sessions for the Hokkaido MotionControl Network (#DoMCN), a community for people who love HoloLens and VR technology, to promote the exchange of developer knowledge. I also make it a point to find young researchers at research institutions who are interested in xR, get them to try on a HoloLens, and act as a bridge to the developer community. Since there is no job title that appropriately describes these activities, I have taken the liberty of calling myself a Scientist/Developer Relations.
As an exploration of how to conduct activities based in a developer community in Sapporo, I will introduce practical examples of our satellite hub establishment strategy.

Target Audience: Those who are running or thinking of running a regional community.

The readers of this article are assumed to be engineers who do not live in Tokyo and are interested in community management but do not know what to do. However, I myself do not really know either, and I think about three times a day that it would be absolutely more rational to go to Tokyo if I just wanted to be involved in study sessions. Nevertheless, since the chance to leave Hokkaido at the time was crushed by the COVID-19 pandemic and there was nothing I could do, I have ended up here, thinking I should steadily do what I can locally. I am trying to create a different kind of value.

Since this is a process of trial and error without a correct answer, I leave it entirely up to you whether you use this article as a reference to do something similar, or treat it as a cautionary tale and do something completely different. Even so, if you are able to take some kind of action, the purpose of this article will have been achieved.

I am speaking in the archived video of the event above. My thoughts as of 2020 were quite well summarized there. This story is about what happened next.

DoMCN's 2021: Energy-saving, multi-hub collaboration, and support for other genres.

Due to various circumstances, the number of XR people who can move freely on social media has decreased locally. In other words, the number of tweets that serve as an indicator of a lively community has decreased, and as an organizer, it has been difficult to incorporate feedback from participants into the management of study sessions.

However, I decided to simply give up on macro events that I personally cannot control and face the realistic challenge of how to continue in a small but sustainable way. I set my basic stance for the time being to be an operation that does not push too hard, while still trying to ensure that both the stakeholders and participants can enjoy themselves. Also, I avoided things that companies should be doing as much as possible (because the coordination work is difficult).

So, what I tried were these three things: 1) energy-saving, 2) multi-hub collaboration, and 3) support for other genres.

i) #OsakaDriveDevelopment XR Meeting held regularly

The XR Meeting, held on the third Wednesday of every month, continued this year. The style is that representatives from each area create event pages for five cities across the country, and everyone joins a single shared Zoom meeting. By setting up the Hokkaido area in pace with the main stream of #OsakaDriveDevelopment, I left a foundation where developers close (physically and mentally) to the Hokkaido area could easily present.
Since there are hubs in Kanto, Fukuoka, Sapporo, and Kobe in addition to Osaka, the window for general engineers to give lightning talks is five times larger. With this method, we do not have to organize talk topics only in Osaka, so we can easily maintain a pace of about once a month. There is no sense of burden at all with this format.
As for the Hokkaido area, I do not have the technical skills to create main content every time, so it is quite difficult to hold events independently. I can only post things that are easy to summarize in tweets during the stream or help with daily public relations activities. Even so, amazing individual creators sometimes found in the Hokkaido area liven up the meeting, so I feel that engineers from other hubs are accepting of us.
Currently, in addition to the Osaka and Tokyo hubs of Osaka Drive Development, the Fukuoka XR Club, DoMCN, and Kobe Drive Development have joined, and we are operating with five hubs.

ii) #HoloHack : Setting up a satellite venue in Sapporo for the Osaka HoloLens Hackathon

The online HoloLens 2 hackathon hosted by #OsakaDriveDevelopment (i) was held from March 6th to 14th. Other regional communities that play in the XR meetings also thought about what they could do, so the #FukuokaXRClub formed a local team to participate in the main competition, and #DoMCN proceeded with a plan to hold a small offline gathering for engineers on the same day as a 'whim' slot, and if we could make something, we would crash the presentation.
During the idea-thon on the 6th, when there was time to introduce cooperating communities, I said, 'If there are any hackathon participants living nearby, I will lend them a real HoloLens device before the presentation, so feel free to deploy it,' not expecting much. To my surprise, there was one person, so I hurriedly prepared a venue for real-device testing and held a private gathering for a total of 3 people.

Naturally, we all played with gadgets unrelated to HoloLens as well. In the field of xR, engineers only get motivated when they have the opportunity to touch the actual hardware, so if this way of participating (shouldering some of the operational functions in a local area) is allowed, it seems we can cooperate easily. As with the hackathon, if we operate on a small scale, it is easier to control risks, so I hope to continue this format as well.

iii) #AR_Fukuoka : Expanding online hands-on sessions to local events, creating two hubs

I have been able to interact even more in an online environment with the Fukuoka AR content creation study group, which I have been involved with since 2019. I have been participating in online hands-on sessions (app-making workshops) via Zoom and YouTube, as well as cross-disciplinary LT meetings.
In November of this year, a local hands-on session was held at the Fukuoka Engineer Cafe, and at that time, at the invitation of Mr. Yoshinaga (@Taka_Yoshinaga), I decided to open a local venue in Sapporo as well. Fukuoka streamed the local event via Zoom and YouTube to make it a hybrid, and the local venue in Sapporo received that stream while providing follow-up support for local participants' development (plus a window for online participants in Sapporo). We did it in a form that combined two types of hybrids.
For DoMCN, this was our first public event for the general public in about two years, and I am glad that the first-time participants who joined us were able to successfully build their apps.

As I learned the methodology of online hands-on sessions, I also understood the benefits of having no geographical constraints. Since people can now participate in hands-on sessions that were previously too far away and touch on technologies they are interested in, as long as they have the actual hardware, it is sufficient as an XR hands-on session. If we provide opportunities to experience the actual hardware, we can utilize the functions of the community. Like the hackathon, if we operate on a small scale, it is easier to control risks, so I hope to continue this format as well.

Summary of Initiatives

　That concludes the introduction of our 2021 activities. During 2021, the two members who hosted events for #DoMCN were myself and Satte-san (@s_haya_0820). At this scale, it is almost impossible to conduct hands-on sessions or hackathons from scratch with zero operational know-how. However, I found that by leveraging the nature of online platforms to provide support, and by positioning ourselves to be integrated into the operations side of remote events through actions that can be done even with few people (such as publicity or boosting tweets), it is surprisingly fun to continue community activities. In the latter half of the year, we also began to be able to hold local, in-person events.

　In local regions, the partners we collaborate with often lack sufficient operational staff as well, so if we can successfully create a structure where we cooperate with each other, I believe the gains (mainly in terms of trust) are greater than trying to force an event to run on our own.

　Readers might think that's easier said than done, but setting up a satellite is actually simple: once you have consulted with the organizer and relevant parties, you just create an event page on connpass and invite your followers. In the extreme case, the strength of a satellite is that it doesn't matter if there are zero participants, so you can start small. And the trick to maintaining a relationship of trust is not to just leave it at that, but to leave behind materials for feedback.

Advanced Part 1: Giving Back Knowledge to Other Fields

　Now, while I am exploring ways to keep the community going in a thin and long-term manner as described above, I am using my spare time to explore other genres. Since we often share common challenges, sharing our approaches to those issues has allowed me to make friends even outside of the xR field.

① Local communities in Hokkaido
　One day, I was invited by .@tomio2480, who organizes events like Open Source Conference Hokkaido, and I talked about the multi-hub collaboration I had been practicing until spring.

② Jointly operated LT session with the VRChat community

　I held the VRChat study session that I have been continuing since 2018 again this year. I was in charge of arranging speakers from the xR side and supporting the venue setup to coincide with the time when .@Tnohito1, who had been hibernating for a while, wanted to hold a joint LT session for the xR and VRChat groups.

③ VR Poster Session at the Japan Society of Applied Physics

　The first VR poster session was held at the annual meeting of the Japan Society of Applied Physics, to which I have belonged since my days as a researcher. It was a very moving event for me, as the VR events that students from the KOSEN Chapter, led by Mr. Nakayama (@Zhongshanxiont) and Mr. Nakamura (@TakamoriIMP), had been continuing were officially recognized by the headquarters, so I stayed almost permanently at the local VR venue and also spoke with Professor Akinaga, who was in charge of planning and operations.

④ DevRel/Japan CONFERENCE 2021
　The national conference for the Developer Relations (#DevRelJP) study group series, which I frequently attend to learn operational techniques, was held. I was invited by the organizer, Mr. Nakatsugawa (@moongift), to join the support team.
　The format involved panel sessions for each theme, and I became the owner of the XR session, where I took on the role of gathering moderators and panelists and using the one-hour slot to introduce the activities of the entire xR community to the DevRel circle. I received gracious acceptances to speak from Professor Yumura of #NT_Sapporo, Mr. Nakamura of #HoloMagicians, Mr. Yamaji of #OsakaDriveDevelopment, and Mr. Yoshinaga of #AR_Fukuoka, and they introduced various initiatives to lower the hurdles for touching the xR industry, which resulted in drawing several people into the xR swamp of DevRel.

　People in xR tend to engage in activities to spread technology relatively unconsciously, and they don't really know that this activity is called DevRel, so I personally think this session was also good in terms of mutual technical exchange.

⑤ Others
　Other than that, I went to help out with various LT hack LT communities, participated in CMC_Meetup to liven things up, and even joined as an extra performer at a live concert for my violin teacher, all while starting to interact with people in other genres who might be interested in xR technology. It was a very fun year.

(A list of contact clusters that I always include at the end when I do an LT at an xR meeting.)

Advanced Part 2: Hands-on sessions that DoMCN members can now do on their own #ProviStudySession

　There was another evolution in community operations that I am happy about. Satte-san, with whom I co-organize study sessions, obtained a job from an external source, starting with AR technology that he learned and gained inspiration from at AR_Fukuoka. Furthermore, he started hands-on sessions last month using other AR utilization technologies he cultivated in that project.
　First, there is the joy of seeing something that started from a novice state turn into a job, and second, the joy of seeing the circulation of knowledge from community to work to community. I am happy that he is also able to devote time to activities that stimulate the next generation.

Mr. Yoshinaga (@Taka_Yoshinaga), the mentor for hands-on operations, also participated.

↑ The next one is on 12/20 (blatant promotion).

Summary of this year's activities

I have written at length about community and individual DevRel activities, but to put it bluntly, I have been continuing to operate by riding on the coattails of others. Knowing that the number of participants in the local area is small, I do not force myself to hold events that would attract 100 people, but I have resigned myself to the idea that it is enough if information and connections reach the engineers who need them. I think local engineers who start receiving information through community activities will first want to move to Tokyo. I think that is a rational career plan, so I am completely in favor of it. I believe the key to running a local community is to plan actions based on the premise that existing members will eventually leave.

I believe the most common pitfall in running local or niche communities is the excessive workload due to a shortage of staff, and the resulting burnout. Therefore, let's increase our achievements by cutting corners to the extent that the essence of the club is not lost, while devising ways to build a system with everyone in other regions that still manages to work ('ω'). Deciding what not to do remains important, and in my case, I am still continuing the content I mentioned in the second half of my lecture at #NTSapporo2020 at the beginning.

I feel like I have drifted quite far from the path of becoming a typical engineer, but since the act of producing the spread of people's curiosity is fun, I sometimes think this path is also acceptable. However, holding study sessions has never been a cash point, so I do not recommend trying to make a living solely from this in a local area (I hope that a way to make a living through community management will become common someday). Since those living in local areas are required to find further ways to utilize the unique opportunities gained through this, I will write about that on another occasion.

I wish you a happy New Year ('ω')

(2021/12/15 First draft 5623 characters 180 min
2021/12/16 Added diagrams and made various corrections)

---DevRel Advent Calendar 2021 ---

I also posted an article on the 8th. This one is a summary of online event venues.