september 7, 2026 · 1 min read · pyconjp, python, django, community
My first PyCon, in Hiroshima
Three days at PyCon JP 2026, a Django booth, and the strange feeling of finally meeting a community I had only known through code.
Every good story needs a first chapter.
Mine started with jetlag, a cap pulled low, and the strange quiet of a morning in a city I had never seen.
I flew in for PyCon JP 2026. My first PyCon. My first trip to Japan. Some really good conversations at the Django Software Foundation booth, for a project I have quietly built on since my first python manage.py runserver.
Three days later I walked out with a laptop full of stickers and the sweet, strange feeling of finally meeting a community I had only ever known through code. Two weeks in, there is still a sticky note next to my monitor with a line from Ben Allen's organiser retrospective: find your passion, and find the people who share it.
Carol Willing's opening keynote and Takashi Kitao-san's talk on the story of Pyxel both landed hardest. But what I keep coming back to is the smaller stuff. A Django contributor explaining ORM edge cases in the corridor. A first-timer nervously asking me which room the sprints were in. The still weight of the Peace Memorial Park. A late walk past Godzilla peering down from a rooftop in Shinjuku.
To Takanori Suzuki, Hiroshi Sano, the PyCon JP Association, and every volunteer who kept three days moving without a visible seam: thank you. The invisible work is felt.
And to Shinya Okano, Cheuk Ting Ho, Miki Makino, Apoorv Garg, Daksh P. Jain, Tushar Sadhwani, Indrajit Alex, Ai Matsushita, and everyone else I met along the way, whose names I remembered and whose names I didn't: thank you for making it feel like I had been there before.
Imagining a version of next year, in a new city, where all of this would mean something even more.
See you at PyCon JP 2027.
P.S. The Django booth stickers and banner were my first ever. Made with love and a lot of green ink, because Django. If one is stuck on your laptop right now, thank you.
Originally posted on LinkedIn.