From Events to Relationships: Building Connections Across Asian Open Source Communities

COSCUP 2026 slide
https://coscup.org/2026/en/session/KLUB3Q

Transcript

1. From Events to Relationships: Building Connections Across Asian Open Source Communities Shinji Enoki shinji.enoki@libreoffice.org in COSCUP 2026 2026-08-08 This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License.
2. Shinji Enoki ( 榎真治 )  Based in Osaka, Japan  LibreOffice Japan Team Member (since 2011)   Main Organizer: LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025  Local Organizer: GNOME Asia Summit 2025 (co-located, shared local team) Wikimedians of Japan User Group Part-time Staff (since 2025)  Logistics (COT): Wikimedia ESEAP Summit 2027  Kansai Open Forum Committee Staff (since 2006)  COSCUP Speaker (since 2018) 2
3. Luck, or Design?  At conferences, strong relationships often seem to happen by chance  But part of that is not chance. It can be designed 3
4. Not a Theory, Just What I've Seen  This isn't a general theory — just some things I've noticed, over 20 years of organizing events, and more recently, working across communities in Asia  There's still a lot I don't know 4
5. LibreOffice Asia Conference 2025 / GNOME Asia Summit 2025  Dec 13–14, 2025, Tokyo (IIJ HQ, Iidabashi Grand Bloom)  Co-located, shared local team  About 80 participants combined  Asian open-source community — LibreOffice/ODF + GNOME topics  International speakers, technical + community talks 5
6. LibreOffice Asia Con / GNOME Asia 2025
7. Wikimedia ESEAP Summit 2027  Osaka, Japan  About 70–80 participants from the ESEAP region  Details still in planning 7
8. ESEAP Strategy Summit 2025 8
9. COSCUP  Speaker since 2018 9
10. COSCUP 2024 / LibreOffice Asia track
11. Kansai Open Forum  Since 2002, in Kansai, Japan  Started by volunteers from different communities, who formed an organizing committee  Open source, open hardware, open data — broad "open" community  I've volunteered on the organizing committee since 2006 11
12. KOF 2024 staff group photo
13. Who Does What?  AsiaCon: At AsiaCon, I made most of the decisions, with advice from someone more experienced than me. I broke work into pieces — some small, some large — and asked people with the right time or skill to take them on. 13
14. Who Does What? (2)  KOF: The group is flat. There's no boss. People choose their own role. Some roles are big, and it's hard for new people to raise their hand for those.  ESEAP COT: The team is split by job — Program, Logistics, Finance, Scholarship. Some people do more than one job. This is common in bigger event teams. 14
15. Who Does What? (3)  There's no single right way. It depends on your community, and who is available to help  Big tasks give people freedom, and they can work at their own pace. But they're also heavier. For some people, that freedom is motivating. For others, it's just a burden. So it depends not just on the situation — but on the person 15
16. Who Does What? (4)  What I'm trying now: pairing people up, so knowledge gets shared, not stuck with one person  It's not working as well as I'd like — it costs more time, and the idea itself is hard to explain to people 16
17. How Connections Form  There is more than one path.  Connections can form through structure, small regular touchpoints, personal relationships, or necessity. 17
18. Structure    LibreOffice AsiaCon happens almost every year. It gives people a reason to meet again. ESEAP has one big Summit or Conference each year, plus a monthly online call, plus a newsletter. One big event, plus small regular touchpoints in between. The lesson: even if the event itself doesn't continue in the same form, having repeated chances to meet still strengthens relationships. 18
19. Personal Relationships  I met Wikimedia community members around 2018, at openSUSE Asia, colocated with COSCUP. This relationship grew stronger after I joined Wikimedians of Japan User Group in 2025.  During this trip, I'll join a couple of meetups, a dinner with Wikimedia friends, and a dinner with friends from LibreOffice and AsiaCon. 19
20. Personal Relationships (2)  This isn't just my story. Wikimedians who met at Wikimania later collaborated on edit-a-thons, like a Japan-Korea one, or one with Bolivia.  The lesson: relationships don't grow all at once. They start small, in one place, and grow over years, in different places. But small, deliberate actions — staying for dinner, keeping in touch — help that growth along. 20
21. When You Need Each Other  Meeting face to face, and getting to know each other, can build trust. Trust makes many things easier — working together, negotiating something difficult, or just asking a small favor. CJK-related discussions are one example. The effect is slow, but it is real. 21
22. When You Need Each Other (2)  One thing that seems to help: asking what someone is good at, and what they care about. Knowing that first often makes things easier later.  Before AsiaCon, I helped at other conferences myself, and learned a lot from it. Then, at AsiaCon, people from other open source communities helped us in return 22
23. Other Challenges    At AsiaCon, we had no interpretation system for talks. It's a hard balance — not just about people, know-how, or budget, but also about trade-offs. Interpretation can also change how directly people communicate Not enough volunteers is a common problem. It happens everywhere, not just in one community If you have a good idea for the language barrier, please tell me — I'd love to hear it 23
24. Other Challenges (2)  Food matters too. We arranged Muslim-friendly and vegetarian options — hard to find in Japan, but we could use what another conference learned the year before  This made the party more expensive. Some participants, from countries with a weaker currency, were not happy about the cost 24
25. A Warning About Visas  Some people apply for a visa at the last minute. But visa review takes time  If you apply late, and it's rejected, there's no time to try again  Documents need to tell one consistent story. In one case, someone applied as a student — but had already graduated by the time of the conference 25
26. Takeaways    For everyone: An event is just one moment. But small things after it — staying for dinner, saying hi online later — can lead to more For organizers: How you break down and assign roles — small tasks, or big roles, top-down, or flat For organizers: How you keep connections alive between events — through structure, small touchpoints, and personal relationships 26
27. Thank you  Shinji Enoki  Email: shinji.enoki@libreoffice.org 27