NOTE: This blog post includes notes for myself and for others who will be traveling to Taiwan from the Philippines soon. Thank you for taking time reading.
I submitted a proposal to talk about WebVR in this year’s COSCUP (Conference for Open Source Coders, Users & Promoters) and was accepted. This will not be the first time for me to talk at the conference. For this edition of COSCUP, my talk has been scheduled on the second day of the conference, which was held at the National Taiwan University of Science & Technology (NTUST).
The Travel Experience
From Manila, Philippines travel to Taipei, Taiwan is just a 90-minute plane ride. Total travel distance is 730 miles, Taiwan is the next country north of the Philippines.
A China Airlines (CI) flight out of Manila (MNL) to Taipei (TPE) was the only one fitting my schedule. The flight left 1035H (there is no time difference between MNL and TPE) and landed minutes before 1300H (1250H to be exact). After queuing at the Immigrations for an hour, I was finally out to secure my luggage. For the first time, not a single question was asked from me by the Immigrations Officer at TPE. To add, the government of Taiwan is kind enough to grant visa-free entry to all Philippine Passport holders for more than a year now (will go on until July 2020).
Place of Stay
I normally stay at the Westgate Hotel at Wanhua District, right outside of the Ximen Taipei Metro Station. The AvGeek in me kicked in a I decided, for a change, to booked at a cheaper (cost) hotel named Ximen Airline Hotel (next building to Westgate). It is more of a place to just sleep in — an inn. Located at the 8th floor of a building with other commercial spaces (which included a church, another inn/hotel, and a disco pub + videoke joint with lots of local food options at the ground floor), the reception will give you the feel of being in an airport check-in counter. After checking-in, the reception staff told me that the disco pub (videoke joint) upstairs operates up until 2200H and I might be able to hear some “noise” before it closes down.
This hotel is comparable to a Low Cost Carrier (LCC) — amenities aren’t free. If you want to use the dental kit provided at the lavatory, it will cost you something like NT$20. Bottled water inside the fridge is like NT$30. And so on. Good thing, there is a Family Mart and 7-Eleven near the place.
The Conference
The conference venue, National Taiwan University of Science & Technology (NTUST) is five (05) train stations away from my hotel. From the train station, it is a good 900m walk to the International Building of NTUST.
COSCUP is the name when it comes to Open Source conferences in this part of the globe. Local tech communities and vendors capitalizing on Open Source and Open Technologies have their respective booths outside the session halls.
Topics ranging from general discussion of Open Source to Web Technologies and IOT are jampacked scheduled in this two-day conference. I stayed in some of the tracks, but too bad, most of them are delivered in Mandarin.
The conference also utilized an app (which is also open source) called OPASS, which pretty much handled (effectively) the check-in, swag, schedule and announcements all throughout the 2-day conference.
My Speaking Slot
[slideshare id=165296025&doc=buildwebvrwitha-framecoscup2019taipei-190821015132]
Day 02 of COSCUP 2019 started with an announcement as early as 0700H that the conference venue has moved to another building due to electrical power problem at the International Building.
It was so awesomely handled by the organizers, thanks to the app and other communications channels of COSCUP. Both speakers and attendees were able to find where they should be next on the dot.
I delivered a talk about A-Frame, the open source web framework for building virtual reality experiences. After the talk, one participant asked about performance between a native VR application and that of something created using A-Frame. Will have a separate blog post about that after this one.
Sidelines
The night of Friday the 16th, a welcome reception was hosted by the organizers for all speakers and volunteers at a place called Zhangmen Brewing. It was at a rooftop of a mall with an amazing view of the Taipei 101 building.
Stayed until around 2200H with Mozillian friends from Taiwan, Hong Kong
The following night, after Day 01 of COSCUP 2019, I went to the Mozilla Community Space Taipei to attend their local community event.
Now, I am more inspired to organize the Philippine Open Source Summit. Hopefully, it will push through this 2020.