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My First Tech Conference: Attending TSKaigi 2026
I Attended TypeScript Kaigi 2026
I would like to write about my experience and what I learned at TSKaigi 2026, which took place from May 22nd to 23rd, 2026!! The venue was Bellesalle Haneda Airport.
I am currently a second-year university student, and while this was my first time attending a conference, I had a very meaningful time.
TSKaigi 2026 implemented a "Student Travel Support Program" to cover up to 50,000 yen for accommodation and travel expenses, making it easier for students living far away to participate. I used this program to attend. Thank you to all the supporting companies.
[TSKaigi 2026 Student Support Companies]
istyle Inc., ASSIGN Inc., SmartHR, Inc., SoftBank Corp., DWANGO Co., Ltd., PLAID, Inc., LayerX Inc., Leverages Co., Ltd.
Thoughts on the Pre-event and Scholarship Lunch
In the pre-event, we held company introductions and networking sessions for student support recipients online.
During the online networking session, we were divided into small groups to introduce ourselves and discuss various themes. The topics varied by group, and I discussed "AI utilization methods" and "how the people from the companies in my group work." I was able to learn more about how advanced the use of AI is in the field and the specific ways in which professionals work.
At the scholarship lunch, I had the opportunity to talk directly with company representatives while having lunch. I was able to interact with other students who were also participating using the Student Travel Support Program and with engineers from the companies. It was a very meaningful time, as I could hear a wide range of stories unique to the field, such as what projects they are involved in, what technologies they use, performance issues they have encountered and their solutions, and recommended development environments.
Experience and Learning at TSKaigi 2026
Sessions I Learned From
Day 1
This session carefully explained functional programming concepts such as immutable variables, pure functions, continuations, and monads under the theme "Setting constraints increases the freedom of those who use them."
What impressed me most was the relationship between constraints and freedom. Because pure functions have the constraint of not having side effects, callers can rest assured that "this function will not cause any side effects." I was not very familiar with functional programming, but this session helped organize concepts I had only known in fragments.
Two things I want to be conscious of based on this session are:
- Thinking about whether a function with implicit inputs/outputs can be made into a pure function.
- Viewing monadic types like Promise or Option uniformly as "mechanisms for composing sequential processes."
Day 2
Since I am currently doing personal development using Next.js, this session had many connections to my own activities and I learned a lot from it.
Three things I want to be conscious of in the future from this session are:
- If there is a props type definition where many things are optional, consider using a discriminated union type to explicitly branch based on state.
- Separating component responsibilities.
<ErrorBoundary fallback={<ErrorMessage />}>
<Suspense fallback={<Spinner />}>
<HogeList />
</Suspense>
</ErrorBoundary>
Representing UI states with JSX structure like the above.
The presentation materials are also published, so please check them out if you are interested.
Experience at Company Booths
At the company booths, I was able to talk directly with company representatives. It was a very meaningful time to hear directly from them about technical challenges and solutions in the field, as well as reasons for selecting adopted technologies, delving deeper than the content of the presentation materials.
There was also a corner to try quizzes about TypeScript, and a corner to share problems others are having with AI utilization, which was very exciting!!
Experience at the Networking Party
At the networking party, I was able to interact with company representatives and other participants. There were many professionals, and I was able to hear real-world stories about what technologies they use at work and how they work. I had just started learning about Next.js recently and thought that state management libraries were heavily used, but I was surprised to learn that many companies actually use TanStack Query and the Context API.
Summary
TSKaigi 2026 was a very fulfilling two days for my first conference participation.
In the sessions, I was able to gain knowledge that I can immediately apply to my daily personal development. In particular, the session on React component design prompted me to review my own code.
Also, the opportunity to speak directly with field engineers through the pre-event, company booths, and scholarship lunch was a venue for real learning that cannot be obtained from documents and articles. The connections with other students who used the same Student Travel Support Program are also a major takeaway.
I am very grateful to have been able to participate without economic anxiety thanks to the Student Travel Support Program. Without such support, the hurdles for students living in regional areas to participate in such valuable settings would be high, and I felt the significance of the system once again.
Since the next TSKaigi will be held in Sendai, I definitely want to participate next time too!
If you are interested in TypeScript, please check out TSKaigi.
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