The RubyWorld 2009 conference was held at Matsue’s own conference center, Kunibiki Messe. It’s a cool place and I couldn’t resist taking a bunch of pictures.
(For context, see 島根 September — RubyWorld.)
Here’s a picture of the outside, courtesy of Wikipedia.
The main conference room was that big bulge at the right; it’s not obvious in the picture that it’s semi-circular. In my last write-up there’s a picture of Matsue Mayor Matsuura standing with his back to that window you can see stretching around it.
Anyhow, in that picture you can see that the building has a large transparent section in the middle; I got stuck in there taking pictures in every which direction. Here they are.
It’s graceful and elegant and also fun, something architecture too rarely even tries for.
Practically speaking, the rooms worked just fine; decent acoustics and lights and A/V. If you happen to want to run a conference in off-the-beaten-track Japan, you could do a lot worse.
