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With more than a million user submitted recipes and an active user base of 15 million monthly unique users, cookpad.com is the world's largest recipe website, and an essential tool for the 50% of all Japanese women in their 20's and 30's who use the site regularly.

The Cookpad.com service is built on Rails and is running entirely on AWS in Tokyo, where more than 30 engineers are working in small agile teams to bring more value to users every day.

As you know, Japan had a huge earthquake and tsunami last year, and some of those affected didn't have cooking facilities, water or basic foods for long time. Many Cookpad users immediately uploaded simple recipes that could be made without the basics in adverse conditions, and helped those in hardship immensely allowing them to enjoy food with their families at that difficult time.

In this session, I'll talk about the COOKPAD way of creating services and the technologies behind them, and how we improve peoples lives through cooking every day.

Help us caption & translate this video!

http://amara.org/v/FGiy/

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The video titled "How Rails helps make cooking more fun in Japan" presented by Masahiro Ihara at Rails Conf 2012 discusses how Cookpad.com, the world's largest recipe website, leverages Ruby on Rails and AWS to enhance cooking experiences for users in Japan. The main mission of Cookpad is to inspire happiness through cooking, which it pursues with a dedicated team of engineers and employees. The company, founded in 1997, has evolved its services based on user feedback and systematic development practices.

**Key Points Discussed:**

- **Company Overview:** Cookpad is headquartered in Tokyo and employs around 100 people, including 40 engineers focused on improving development speed and services.
- **Development Philosophy:** Emphasizes a user-centric approach, continuously gathering feedback to create valuable services. Engineers conduct interviews and build minimum viable products to validate ideas early.
- **Culture and Values:** The company promotes principles around user empathy, the practical application of technology, continuous improvement, and honest communication. This helps engineers to focus on features that genuinely benefit users.
- **User Engagement:** Cookpad serves approximately 15 million unique users monthly, primarily Japanese women in their 20s and 30s, with a vast library of over 1.1 million user-submitted recipes.
- **Technological Framework:** The platform is built on Ruby on Rails, using agile methodologies to develop features swiftly. They employ open-source software and tools like a remote specification testing framework to optimize development and deployment.
- **Response to Crisis:** After the 2011 earthquake and tsunami in Japan, Cookpad quickly adapted by creating a category for recipes that required minimal resources, allowing users without cooking facilities to prepare meals. This initiative highlighted the platform's role in helping communities during times of crisis.

The primary takeaway from the session is that technologies such as Ruby on Rails can significantly enhance user experiences by enabling rapid development and systematic feedback loops. Cookpad's example illustrates the impact of combining technical infrastructure with a strong community-driven mission in making cooking enjoyable and accessible in Japan.

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