BLOG

2017.5.1 Report

IPA Discusses IT Innovation through Innovative IT

IPA opened its 17-year running “Mitou Kaigi,” an event that combined the intimacy of a live event with the ease-of-access of live internet streaming.

An annual conference on the “unexplored” areas of IT talent and training, IPA’s “Mitou Kaigi” (roughly translated, “conference on the unexplored”) aims to support the discovery, development, and success of “unexplored” talent by introducing young IT creators and engineers to wider audiences.
This year’s Mitou Kaigi 2017 placed the spotlight on start-ups and self-initiative, welcoming 6 young inventors, innovators, and company owners to the stage to discuss challenges in their field.

 

IPA’s “Mitou Kaigi”: an innovative conference

Held at Ebisu’s Act Square Venue, the conference’s main discussion panel had the dynamic of an amphitheater with the intimacy of business over dinner. The venue’s wooden banisters and floors lent a refined touch to a circular hall with a 360-degree screen overhead. The main screen in front served as the grand presentation display, as pictures, text, and video (including discussant profiles) danced along the top portion of the inner wall. It was truly stimulation for the information generation.

While the live venue was intimate, welcoming guests of honor from CEOs to politicians, live streaming of the event on Niko Niko opened the event to interested participants from all over. Live streaming allowed viewers to view and interact through comments remotely. During the questions and answers segment of the event, discussants also took questions from viewers at a remote café.

After receiving a request from a speaker to readily see this streaming video from stage, our own president’s iPad even made a guest appearance on stage. The Bigbeat site-manager, thinking on her feet, requested to borrow the iPad in our president’s hands, opened the live streaming footage, and sent the iPad on its way to the discussant tables and into Bigbeat folklore.

"Challenge yourself and invest in ideas for the future"

The discussion panel itself was riveting, covering innovations such as a device to sense sound vibrations for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, an algorithm system to ensure a more balanced news feed, and design technology for privately landing crafts on the moon. It called for young people to challenge themselves and invest in “unexplored” ideas for the future.

Guest speaker Ms. Kyoko Yonezawa from HAKUTO had a particularly encouraging message to share in this, urging young women to never be discouraged when pursuing research or careers in IT fields. She invited the girls watching to make their own daring ideas a reality, and to increase the female presence in discussions like these.


Overall, it was an invigorating conference. Cleverly incorporating new technology as it discussed it, the event also capitalized on its atmosphere for heightened participation.