DevCon5 social event planning guide
Introduction
Last year, we created a social event planning guide which was one of the most read articles. Some of the tips still apply for planning events in general so I highly recommend you take a quick look.
We also collaborated with several well known crypto organisations to handle their RSVP using our platform Kickback, resulting nearly 500 RSVPs. While talking to multiple event organisers, they expressed that the finding the right venue is the hardest part. To help you securing the right venue from the maze of Osaka, here is a quick guide which includes an offer to help you secure finding your event venue.
Quick guide from downtown Osaka to DevCon5 venue
Osaka is the second largest city in Japan with 19 million people in the metropolitan area so it’s huge. There are two main city centres, Kita (北, “north”) and Minami (南, “south”). While major hub stations are within Kita (such as Umeda 梅田 and Shin-Osaka 新大阪), Minami has Namba (難波), Shinsaibashi (心斎橋) area know as “Tenka no daidokoro” (天下の台所, “The nation’s Kitchen”) or “Kuidaore” (食い倒れ, “Eat until you pass out”). If you want to enjoy the Osaka culture and street food such as Takoyaki, you should base around Minami area.
On the other hand, ATC hall (where DevCon 5 locates) is on an artificial island mainly used for big events(G20 was recently held in the area) .
I recently visited the venue and made a Tweet storm which gives you the gist of how the DevCon5 venue looks like.
The main transportation between the downtown and venue would be via underground. Uber does operate in the area but it will be a bit pricy to use it every day.
If you are thinking about sharing AirBnB among your team, I highly recommend that you book somewhere between ATC hall and Universal Studios Japan. There are some affordable listings aimed for families visiting Universal Studios Japan theme park.
Venue candidates around ATC hall (where DevCon5 is)
If you want to host evening events capturing participants before they head to downtown Osaka, your choice is either hire the venue within ATC commercial area or approach surrounding hotels. ATC hall has detailed venue list and brochure in English (though event rooms are mostly likely booked by the DevCon5 event itself ). Hyatt Regency Osaka is the closest hotel from the venue and the staff there is aware of DevCon5 (I actually went to hotel and had a quick chat) . Alternatively the following hotels are on the island.
Venue candidates around downtown Osaka (Minami)
If you extend your venue candidates to downtown (where most participants end up dining and drinking), there will be a lot of options. The challenge is more of the fact that there are too many and hard to find venues with good English support.
To help you bridge the gap, we partnered with Mayato Hattori , ex-community manager of Neutrino (crypto co-working space based in Tokyo), Singularity Hive (one and only crypto co-working space) and The DECK (hardware tech focus co-working space). They have been talking to multiple local co-working spaces, universities and start up companies which are kind enough to open up their space (some commercial space may charge fee). Currently we have multiple venues which capacity ranges between 50–300. Even if you are looking for bars and pubs for social events, Mayato and co can give you some recommendations as a true Kansai jin (関西人 “Osaka local”).
Kickback Event calendar is coming!
In addition to the partnership with Osaka locals, we are planning to open up an event calendar, a fork of the one made by Josef Jelacic last year for DevCon4 (which was a fork of the one made by Carlos E. Salazar for 2018 Berlin blockchain week) to give you the best combination of local venues, calendar exposure, and “No no-show” reservation system (aka “Kickback”, though the use of Kickback is not compulsory) to stand out from the pack.
If you are interested, please fill in the form here.
