Tokyo Tech Talks #2: Encoding the World
How does the real world become data — and what can we do with it? Join us March 31 at Build+ in Ebisu for talks and conversation about turning reality into something software can understand.
We’re excited to announce Tokyo Tech Talks #2. Join us for an evening of talks and conversation about how the real world becomes data — and what becomes possible when we get that translation right.
Event Details
- Date: Tuesday, March 31, 2026
- Time: 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM JST
- Location: Build+, 6F, MARIX Ebisu Bldg., 4-4-6 Ebisu, Shibuya, Tokyo
- View on Google Maps
Schedule
- 7:00 PM - 8:00 PM: Talks — Short presentations from people building new ways to work with data
- 8:00 PM - 9:00 PM: Drinks & Networking
The Theme: Encoding the World
Before software can do anything useful, the real world has to become data. A photo becomes numbers. A distance becomes a value. A face becomes a pattern. Every app, every search engine, every tool you use is built on top of these translations.
Most of the time, we don’t think about them. But the way we turn reality into data determines what we can actually do with it. Encode a photo the right way, and you can search thousands of images by describing what you’re looking for. Give a programming language an understanding of measurement units, and a whole class of bugs simply disappears.
What We’ll Explore
This event brings together people who are rethinking how we capture, structure, and use data from the world around us.
Turning the Real World into Data
How do you take something physical — an image, a measurement, a location — and turn it into something a computer can work with? And how do the choices you make in that process open up (or close off) what’s possible downstream?
What Good Data Makes Possible
The interesting part isn’t just the encoding — it’s what it unlocks. When your data captures the right information in the right way, you can build things that feel like magic: search engines that understand meaning, languages that catch errors before they happen, tools that reason about the physical world.
Building Better Defaults
We tend to reach for whatever’s familiar — strings, numbers, JSON. But some of the most impactful work in software comes from people who asked “what if we represented this differently?” We’ll hear from builders doing exactly that.
Who Should Attend
- Engineers and developers curious about new approaches to working with data
- Researchers working at the intersection of software and the physical world
- Designers and product people who think about how information is structured
- Anyone interested in how software makes sense of reality
Join Us
If you’re interested in attending, register here.
Come spend an evening with people who care about how we turn the real world into data — and what we can build when we do it well. Talks will be short, conversation will be long, and drinks will be cold.