A Heartfelt Welcome to Our Global Organizers

2025-05-18

This is a personal daily report by PyCon JP 2025 Chair @nishimotz.

Today, here at PyCon US 2025 in Pittsburgh, I had the distinct pleasure of meeting one of our PyCon JP 2025 organizing members in person for the first time. We talked, and we shook hands. I am truly grateful for their initiative in suggesting a meeting via Slack.

This wonderful moment made me reflect on the fact that, for many of our organizing members, I won’t have the chance for such a personal interaction until we all meet in Hiroshima at the end of September. It’s a thought that weighs on me. However, we are connected online, and I strongly desire to overcome these barriers of distance and language, even if just a little, to foster deeper understanding.

It is with this sentiment that I want to share a special message today, particularly for our organizing members who reside overseas or are native English speakers.

First, I would like to express my sincere gratitude to everyone who has already joined the PyCon JP 2025 organizing team. Your enthusiasm and dedication are truly inspiring!

Today, I want to extend a special welcome to our English-speaking members and those living overseas. Your participation brings invaluable perspectives that enrich our community and help make PyCon JP 2025 a truly international event.

Why This Message Now?

I firmly believe that the strength of PyCon JP 2025 lies in the diversity of our organizing team. Our slogan “Pieces of Python, Coming Together” reflects this core belief - that each person brings a unique piece to complete our puzzle.

Some of you have reached out with questions about language barriers and travel support. I want to address these concerns directly and emphasize how much we value your contributions, regardless of where you are located or what language you speak natively.

And to be frank, we, the organizing members, are also facing some challenges. Specifically, regarding our goal of “appropriate information dissemination in English,” as preparations intensify and members become busier, we’re finding it difficult to dedicate sufficient resources, leading to delays or a lack of timeliness in our information sharing. To effectively convey the appeal of PyCon JP 2025 not only domestically but also to our international audience, now, more than ever, we need your help. We want to reach out to those of you reading this who are proficient in English, interested in communication, and above all, passionate about making PyCon JP 2025 a success together.

Furthermore, we aspire for PyCon JP 2025 to be a truly comfortable space for a diverse range of individuals. However, with our knowledge and experience alone, we might inadvertently include biased perspectives or inconsiderate expressions. Therefore, beyond just English accuracy, we would be immensely grateful if you could lend us your diverse perspectives to check whether the information we disseminate and the content we plan are genuinely inclusive for people from various cultural and technical backgrounds.

And one more significant theme is that we want to explore, together with you, ways for us organizing members to collaborate more smoothly and enjoyably across time zones and language barriers.

Our Commitment to Communication Support

We are taking concrete steps to ensure everyone can participate fully:

Zoom Translation Feature: As Chair, I will provide a Zoom license with real-time translation capabilities for our meetings, helping to lower language barriers during discussions.
Bilingual Documentation: We will continue our efforts to provide important information in both Japanese and English.
English Communication: We actively encourage and support communication in English within our teams.
Your Ideas Welcome: Do you have suggestions for other ways we could improve communication? Please share them! We want to create the best possible environment for collaboration.

We’ve had successful online meetings for English speakers in the past, where translation tools helped facilitate smooth communication. If the current hybrid general meeting format isn’t ideal for you due to timing or finding opportunities to contribute, please let me (the Chair) know. We are eager to actively hold online meetings specifically for our English-speaking members if there’s a desire for them. This isn’t about accommodating my English skills, but about ensuring you can participate actively and comfortably in shaping PyCon JP 2025.

For more information about our organizing member guidelines and expectations, please refer to our Organizing Members Training Materials.

Diverse Ways to Contribute

There are many ways to contribute to PyCon JP 2025 based on your skills and interests, regardless of language proficiency:

Program Team: Help review talk proposals, coordinate with international speakers, or assist with content translation
Public Relations: Contribute to social media outreach, especially for international audiences
Attendee Support: Help create a welcoming experience for international attendees
And many more: Every team can benefit from diverse perspectives!

Specifically, we would be incredibly grateful if you could lend us your skills in areas such as translating blog posts into English, creating or reviewing English SNS posts (translating from Japanese or creating new content), and disseminating information to international communities.

We wholeheartedly welcome your candid feedback on the information we disseminate (blogs, SNS, website, etc.) and the content of the events we are planning. For instance, “From my cultural perspective, this might feel a bit off,” or “This technical expression might be hard for people with this background to understand.”

Additionally, we are eager for collaborators who can think with us and experiment with concrete ideas, tool suggestions, and operational improvements for better teamwork, such as, “Using this tool could make information sharing easier despite time differences!” or “Wouldn’t operating meetings this way make it easier for more people to speak up?”

Active English Communication Within Teams

We Encourage Active English Communication Within Teams: To make PyCon JP 2025 a truly international event, we encourage the active use of English in all team activities. We see this as both a right for our native English-speaking members to participate smoothly, and a collective effort (or responsibility) for all organizing members to incorporate diverse perspectives and co-create a better event. Let’s support each other, utilizing translation tools and other means.

A Note on Travel and Participation Costs

As mentioned in our April recruitment post, we are working to expand our travel support program. While specific details are still being finalized, I want to emphasize one crucial message:

Regardless of whether financial support is available, you are an irreplaceable and valuable piece of our team.

We understand that travel costs can be a concern, especially for those coming from overseas. We will share more information about travel support as soon as decisions are made.

What This Initiative Means for PyCon JP

By strengthening support for our organizing members, we’re not only building a better team - we’re also laying the groundwork for a more inclusive conference experience for international speakers and attendees.

The communication tools and practices we develop now will help us create a more welcoming environment for everyone at the conference itself.

A Final Encouragement

If you have any questions, concerns, or just want to chat about how you might contribute, please don’t hesitate to reach out to me directly.

We are still recruiting organizing members! If you know anyone who might be interested in joining our team, please share our Organizing Member Application Form with them.

PyCon JP 2025 will be held at the Hiroshima International Conference Center from September 26 to 28, 2025. The third day (September 28) is planned for development and community sprints. Organizing member activities will begin with preparation on September 25.

Update History

2025-05-18: First version published