Communities in the Land of the Rising Sun – JAPAN

Communities, Communities, Communities!!!

I had an extremely eventful week in Japan last week, meeting lots of user group leaders who are doing awesome work for their user group communities.

The first meeting I had was with 4 leaders , starting from the left you have Chica Sato(Community Manager Culminis (Japan)), then Mr. Keiichi Hara from codeseek user group(he also calls himself tatsugoro), followed by yours truly, then Hideshima-san from Quality Corporation, this company has an extremely unique user group, more on that later, followed by Kodama-san from the Wankuma user group who’s also part of INETA JAPAN, and next to him is Ohtsubo-san from E-Powder she’s all for Women in IT, followed by Numaguchi-san Country Manager Culminis(Japan).

Ok the question you might ask is why am I writing about groups in Japan, what is the big deal right? Read On.

Corporate Culture

Japanese corporate culture is a very serious working environment. Employees are supposed to devote their entire time and energy for their work. IT is stressful, corporate’s don’t necessarily look up to user group related activities or consider them worthwhile in fact at times it is looked upon as taking away from the Corporation the time which could instead be devoted to working for the corporation.

Hmm, there are a few companies though which are the exception. However, In the environment which they are, these are the rising sun’s helping their country and communities to thrive. If there was one bunch of people who are passionate about the community this was one sure fire bunch of people. There are so many more passionate leaders I met there, it was just an amazing experience. The first meeting itself was an adrenaline dripping energy blast.

The next meeting I had was the user group meeting of Quality Corporation. In the picture from left to right is Numaguchi-san, then followed by Kunio IIJIMA, an extremely interesting person who kicked off the user group concept in his company, followed by me again and on the extreme right is Kiyoharu “Kirk” URA.

Quality Corporation a corporate entity has a user group which consists of internal employees and external people as well. It is the exception rather than the rule in Corporate JAPAN. It conducts unique study groups where it invites members from the community to participate and discuss about various issues. It’s approach is unique as in it uses the user group platform to spread IT Knowledge and it also helps the company to increase it’s product awareness in the IT Community in an un-obtrusive way. This is clearly a working next generation model for companies to evolve. The time for hard selling products to consumers has it’s place, however, this model enables one to establish solid relationships with the community. I expect a video interview/transcript with the key Directors to be available soon. I’ll share as soon as I get it.

Next I attended the meeting of International Computer Association’s Tokyo Chapter (ICA), this is a group where surprise I attended an English speaking session. You had a number of people who were primarily English speaking people, the presentation was interesting and insightful, and was about Customer Relationship management(CRM) in Japan, the 9 to 5 culture and how the ATM’s most of them are not available post 5 or 7 as support people are not available to answer customer calls as organizations don’t typically have staff to man calls after that. It was an interesting experience knowing and understanding about CRM in JAPAN, another interesting insight was about how Interactive Voice systems are almost non-existent in Japan. It was interesting learning more about IT and how it is evolving in JAPAN.

I also caught up with Andrew Shuttleworth, who’s involved with a number of groups in Japan, including ICA here is a list of sites he’s currently running.

Windows Mobile in Japan – News, views, community and support site related to Windows Mobile and Japan/Japanese

Japan Events – Interactive calendar of business and community events.

Tokyo2Point0 – Web site for the monthly event for the international internet community in Tokyo.

The Japan Job Search

Google News and Link Clearing House

Mind Map News and Link Clearing HouseHe’s based out of Yokohama in Japan and and as he says on his website “IT and social media enthusiast & business connector in Japan”. You can catch Andrew here. He runs a company called CVP a business he established with the goal of helping people and companies in Tokyo connect with each other.

INETA Japan

Lastly I rounded up my trip by attending an INETA Japan event. Btw this was the first INETA Japan owned & conducted event.

They firstly had a rocking party at the event besides some really cool technical events, where there were speakers from various user groups, the last picture on the left, shows Naka-san from Wankuma user group speaking at the event.  Top left picture contains Kodama-san on extreme left, followed by Toru Koido of INETA who was MC at the INETA party, followed by Matsui-san who is the Microsoft Manager for Technical Audience Marketing Group in Japan and lastly me again. Picture in the middle is community members enjoying the post event party.

Some other insights were that most user groups in Japan have their members pay for entry into meetings to cover costs such as food and drink etc. This is certainly not the norm in other countries and is interesting to note.

There were so many other interesting people I met, Kawabata-san, Kitabata-san, totally 30 people, who I had intense conversations and have so helpfully shared so many insights about communities in Japan.

Photo on the Right shows Satoru Kitabata(Sam) and  Ohtsubo-san from E-Powder at the INETA registration desk.

It is always such a pleasure to visit this rocking country! Viva JAPAN.