“WebNow! - Straight Talk from the Web Industry Frontlines” Event Report

On 28 September, we hosted the “Web Now! - Straight Talk from the Web Industry Frontlines” event in our Shinjuku Head Office's seminar room.

In recent years the number of students interested in web development has been on a downward trend, therefore, this event, planned in cooperation with faculty staff at both the Japan Electronics College and the Tokyo Electronics College, aimed to convey to students the attractiveness, fun and sense of fulfilment of working in the web industry. Collaborating with us for the successful delivery of this event were KINOTROPE, INC., Daishinsha Communication Design Inc., and FORK CORPORATION.

Participants at this event were first year students from the Japan Electronics College and the Tokyo Electronics College. To promote a more relaxed atmosphere and enable the students to speak more freely, the host on the day was a second-year student, from one of the participating schools, who'd already accepted a job in the web industry.

In the first half of the event, representatives from participating companies took the podium. The speakers shared the appeal of working in the web development industry whilst intertwining their stories with information on the type of work they undertake and the strengths of their respective organisations etc. Representing our company were Mayumi Endo, a senior art director, and Kazuhito Kidachi, our CTO and a corporate director, who told stories about their entry to our company as well as discussing the continued appeal of working in web design in addition to future web development themes etc.

In the second half of the event, during a roundtable discussion, representatives from each company answered pre-collected student questions. Questions such as “what's the most important thing when working in the web industry?”, “what kind of work has been rewarding and left positive impressions?”, “what were the reasons for choosing to work in your current companies?”, “is there anything you'd like to ask us, the students?”, “will the web industry lose to AI?” were answered in an honest, straightforward manner by our company's Mayumi Endo and Kazuhito Kidachi. Even after switching to a free Q&A session, the students continued to proactively ask questions and the enjoyable, lively discussions meant that the event closed after its scheduled finish time.

After closing, students could be heard commenting that their perceptions of the web industry had changed and that their interest in the field had strengthened. This was very reassuring. From now on, Mitsue-Links will continue to actively support such industry-academia collaboration activities to promote further development of the web industry.