In November, more than 100 people met in Yokohama for a daylong "unconference" on technology and the Internet. Attendees addressed each other on topics of their choosing — the roster of speakers determined solely by whoever signed up fastest for time slots on a whiteboard.
This was Yokohama Barcamp, the latest incarnation in Japan of the international Barcamp phenomenon, a network of user-generated meetups that began in California in 2005 and have since been held in 350 cities worldwide.
It is also representative of a number of technology-centered networking groups in Japan that form the hub of a growing tech community starting to span different areas of knowledge and expertise and move past linguistic and cultural barriers.