Running a Weekly Progress Report Event in VRChat for 1.5 Years to Boost My Personal Projects

What is the VRChat Progress Report Meeting?

It's a casual chat event held in VRChat where we share updates on the technologies we're working with and the projects we're creating. The goal is to boost motivation and encourage everyone to keep producing output. We hold it every Friday from 21:00-22:00 (JST).

We aim to create a welcoming event where you can casually drop by when you want to make progress in a VRChat world, or when you want to hear what other active creators are working on.

To get a feel for the atmosphere, check out the X hashtag #VRChat近況報告会.

Also, perapera-san, who has been attending almost every session since the early days, wrote an article about their experience participating, so please check it out.

How It All Started

I started getting seriously into VRChat around January 2023. At that time, as a working professional, I was caught up in various projects and tasks and couldn't find time to make progress on my personal projects.

While going through those daily struggles, I suddenly thought, "I need to build a habit of making even a little progress... Oh wait, I remember we used to have progress report meetings in my university lab..."

That memory inspired me to start this event.

Advent Calendar Retrospective

Some of the participants who attended this event this year contributed to an advent calendar!

It was a last-minute project suggested by participant sawa-zen around November 29th, but we got more contributors than I expected!

You can get a sense of who participates by reading the contributors' articles. Please check out any articles that interest you!

Future of the Event

Given the nature of the event where each participant takes turns speaking, having more people means less speaking time per person. So I'm not necessarily trying to grow the participant count.

Instead, I plan to continue running it casually as a personal event.

Areas for Improvement

Since perapera-san has written about the positives of this event, let me list some areas for improvement. I plan to address these in the coming year.

• Since there's no time limit for individual speakers, we sometimes run past the scheduled 22:00 end time.
  • I'll try implementing a speaking time timer.

Final Thoughts

Thanks to everyone who participates in this event, I'm able to maintain a good balance between enjoying VRChat and making progress on my projects.

The participants come from diverse backgrounds. While early on most attendees had similar backgrounds to mine, we now have VR artists, illustrators, VR video creators, shader developers, VRChat avatar outfit creators, VRChat world creators, Web3D developers, VTubers, manga artists, and many more. It's been incredibly rewarding to learn about fields I wasn't familiar with, and I'm really happy that the event has become so enriching.

We'll continue running this event in 2025, so I'd be happy if you remember us when you feel like making some progress. Let's work hard to be productive in 2025!

How to Join the VRChat Progress Report Meeting

Please join us at 21:00 on Fridays through the VRChat group "VRChat近況報告会" [KINKYO.7905].

Occasionally, we may skip a week due to personal circumstances, so if you'd like to participate, please check the Discord server for event updates.

Also, even if you're completely new to VRChat, I'm happy to help you get started. Feel free to reach out to me on nisshi's X.