DroidKaigi 2023 Activity Report
Note: This is an English translation of the original report published on 29 Dec. 2023.
This is DroidKaigi Organizer mhidaka.
This activity report summarizes the DroidKaigi Committee’s annual activities in 2023 and the trends in attendance of DroidKaigi 2023.
DroidKaigi 2023 event outline
- Dates: 14–16 Sep 2023 (Thu-Sat)
- Sessions and slides: Timetable
- Videos: Uploaded to the Official YouTube channel (Free)
- Pre-registration: Approx. 1,500 people (via Doorkeeper)
For inquiries about the conference: info@droidkaigi.jp
A note about statistics
This article is compiled with data from the DroidKaigi 2023 pre-registration questionnaires and YouTube Studio analytics. Though the data has been handled with extra attention, we do not guarantee the accuracy and completeness of the contents of this article.
Unless noted otherwise, the results are compiled from data gathered from the 90-day period between 14 Sep 2023 and 13 Dec 2023. We have changed the period due to two reasons: because the session recordings were uploaded 30–60 days after the conference, and because in recent years, we have been providing content throughout the year. Although this is a divergence from past activity reports, we have confirmed through our own verifications that there are no differences in trends.
In this year’s activity report, since there are more statistics that are difficult to understand by only looking at the values, we have added explanations and comparisons with past results in the [What we can read from the statistics] section. We hope this will help your understanding.
Online attendance
The unique viewer count is from data provided by YouTube Studio (1 user is counted as 1 unique viewer, no matter how many devices the user has viewed and no matter how many times the user has stopped/resumed watching the video. For details on definitions, refer to the help page).
DroidKaigi 2023 was held both online and in-person (at an offline venue). Past DroidKaigi’s have been held exclusively online in 2021, and both online and in-person in 2022.
[What we can read from the statistics]
In comparison to DroidKaigi 2021, which was held as an online-exclusive event, the view count and viewed hours have decreased by 2,000 times and 12,500 hours respectively. This is a significant change.
Because of the significant growth to 1,000 in-person attendees at DroidKaigi 2023, we understand that the reduced viewing time was in turn consumed at the offline venue. (12,500 hours / 1,000 attendees / 2 days worth of sessions = 6.25 hours/day, per attendee)
These are the trends in viewing the livestream via YouTube Live, session videos and archives. We can observe that the 25–34 age group are the most active viewers, accounting for the majority of views. Also, the 18–24 age group has exceeded 10%. We can see that the online content viewership is becoming younger.
[What we can read from the statistics]
Two of the online attendance indexes, unique viewers at 5,200 and view count at 18,000, are comparable to past conferences (only the viewed hours have significantly decreased). Impressions have also risen by 25%.
This is also affected by DroidKaigi’s unique circumstances. A hybrid conference of both online and in-person puts a considerable amount of stress on the volunteer staff, and uploading 50 sessions worth of videos usually takes approximately 1 month after the conference. In light of these circumstances and our results, we read the online viewership trends as follows:
- Online and in-person experiences are separating: The DroidKaigi channel is gaining recognition as a learning platform. The videos are viewed other than when the conference is held, and is being utilized for learning.
- A zapping-type consumption trend has become the mainstream, in which a session is not watched in its entirety, but rather a specific scene is viewed (reflecting the wider trend of video content).
DroidKaigi 2023 questionnaire results
The following statistics are generated from the questionnaire at the time of pre-registration. Even though all questions were voluntary, the valid response rate was over 96%. Thank you for your valuable contributions. We will use these as a basis for improvement and research for future events.
The questionnaire includes questions that ask about sensitive background information about attendees. Because of this, we have prepared a D&I Statement and Privacy Policy, and will manage these responses accordingly.
There were approximately 1,450 responses to the survey this year. Though this is a slight decrease compared to DroidKaigi 2021’s 1,500 responses, this is due to the fact that there were no questionnaires in the registration process for the approximately 150 people from sponsor companies (These include, among others, engineers, HR, and DevRels who support the community).
The impact of this change is visible where there are decreases in the following questionnaire results (We do, however, believe that the overall trend is consistent with past results).
Percentage of mobile app developers
91% of the attendees who responded have app development experience. The results were evenly distributed at about 10% for all experience groups. We can see here that there was a good balance of new developers and experienced developers attending.
[What we can read from the statistics]
We can see that, consistent with past results, DroidKaigi 2023 was a conference dedicated to mobile app development. Some characteristics of attendees are worth mentioning, but they will be described in the questions about occupation below.
Developers with 10 or more years of experience have risen to 16% (compared to DroidKaigi 2021’s 10%). This is because there is no distinction between 12 or more years, etc.
Questions about attendees’ occupation
The majority of respondents (950) answered that they currently work as an Android Engineer. Since this question allows for multiple answers, we can see that some attendees work in multiple roles, and are not limited to a single area of expertise.
This shows the expansion of the mobile app industry, and that the attendees of DroidKaigi are becoming increasingly diverse.
[What we can read from the statistics]
In understanding the reality of engineers, it is important to note that there is a surprisingly large segment that works in multiple roles. For example, there were 100 attendees who work on both Android and iOS, and even in the case of cross-platform engineers, there are over 180 engineers (out of approximately 220 responses) who have knowledge of either Android or iOS.
These examples support our understanding that engineers come from a wide variety of backgrounds (work experience and skills), and we believe that it is important to create a place where technology can grow and develop by embracing this diversity.
In addition to job roles, the DroidKaigi Committee also tracks the ratio of new attendees. For example, groups with newer development experience (e.g., up to 2 years) account for approximately 31%, and we consider it a favorable trend that this number has not changed or decreased from past events.
Opinions and statistics are gathered from a variety of perspectives, including this questionnaire, to analyze whether a broad range of participants are able to participate and whether newcomers feel welcome. These research policies are developed in accordance with our DEI policy, which seeks to ensure unbiased participation by attendees with diverse backgrounds.
We believe that an expanded influx of human resources, not only in app development, but also in the industry itself, will help improve the status of engineers. At DroidKaigi, we are working daily to promote retention in the community and create learning opportunities.
About yourself
Attributes of attendees, such as gender, are sensitive information. At DroidKaigi, we manage these under our D&I Statement (background of establishment) and Privacy Policy.
There are currently no plans to additionally release information on the number of responses or details other than the statistically processed results in this article. Furthermore, when volunteer staff utilizes this data to improve operations, they use data that has been processed similarly as in this article so that individuals can not be identified.
This questionnaire item is intended to review the commitment to D&I at the conference. Compared to the previous DroidKaigi 2021 questionnaire, the percentage of female attendees has changed from 10% to 12%; compared to the questionnaire at the DroidKaigi 2019 in-person event, the percentage has increased from 5.4% to 12%.
The 30–39 age group was the majority, followed by 20–29. Compared to the previous questionnaire, the proportion of the 20–29 age group has changed from 35% to 38%.
These values represent the place of residence at the time of answering the questionnaire. They do not reflect nationality. There were attendees participating from overseas, and the results were diverse, including Asian countries other than Japan, Europe, North America, and South America.
The majority of respondents answered Asia as their place of residence, and 78% of those who answered Japan answered Kanto region as their place of residence. This is the largest proportion of attendees in Japan, but was a 3% decrease from the DroidKaigi 2021 questionnaire results.
[What we can read from the statistics]
Fundamentally, DroidKaigi strives to ensure that each and every participant, regardless of their background, can enjoy the event. For this reason, we believe it is important to have a DEI-secured environment (in this case, an environment where there is diversity among participants and everyone can comfortably participate). As attendee demographics are sensitive information, we handle it with the utmost care as we compile and evaluate results.
Compared to DroidKaigi 2019, the percentage of female attendees at DroidKaigi 2023 has more than doubled, changing from 5.4% to 12%. The number of attendees surveyed was 700 in 2019 and 1,500 in 2023, so we realize that the changes over the past few years have been significant. We do not believe that this is sufficient at this point, but we understand that this is something we will work on steadily over the long term.
In terms of age groups, the 40–49 age group was 9.8% at DroidKaigi 2019; at DroidKaigi 2023, it increased to 16%, while the 20–29 age group decreased from 39.1% to 38% and the 30–39 age group decreased from 46.7% to 41%, balancing each age group. In particular, the total ratio of 80% for the 20- and 30-year-old age groups reflects the current state of mobile development. Note that although this report is written in terms of percentages, the overall number of participants has been increasing, so all age groups are on an upward trend in absolute values.
The DroidKaigi Committee promotes free scholarships for students (roughly two age groups in this category: < 19 and 20–29). We are working to help the community to build its future and to make the profession of engineering a career choice.
Conclusion
DroidKaigi 2023 was a mix of online and in-person events. Thank you very much for your participation. We hope you enjoyed the event in various ways, be it online, in person, or through our official YouTube channel after the conference.
At this time, no future plans have been determined. We are currently in a period of rest and preparation for DroidKaigi 2024.
DroidKaigi 2024 will be a conference celebrating its 10th anniversary, but the demand for live, online broadcasts has subsided, and we are still considering how to solve the emerging challenge of providing value as online content. As for the event held at the in-person venue, if we aim to welcome more than 1,000 attendees, volunteer staff will need to become even more proficient and this will still take some time to accomplish.
We would like to make the most of the advantages of both online and in-person events, as we consider various options to contribute to the developer community. In addition, DroidKaigi has started monthly events such as DroidKaigi.collect from 2023. In order to build relationships with developers throughout Japan, we are holding these events not only in Tokyo, but also in Fukuoka, Osaka, and Nagoya. We feel that these events are different in good ways from the annual conference. We will try to find an opportunity to share about these events as well.
DroidKaigi 2023 was very fortunate to achieve 1,000 in-person and 5,000 online attendees, but there were many things we could have done better. However, with the contributions and warm support of attendees, speakers, those who submitted talks, and sponsor companies and those in related departments, the conference was a great success. The DroidKaigi Committee would like to take this opportunity to thank all of you for your tremendous support.
DroidKaigi Association, Organizer, Masahiro Hidaka
