People in the Smartisan fan group kept asking why the Jianguo launch viewing party was in Binjiang, which was inconvenient for people living in the west of the city. So I stepped up.

As usual, before his "comedy show" launch event, Luo Yonghao warmed up on Weibo with bright red posters. Offline viewing parties were being prepared everywhere, and Hangzhou was no exception. Following tradition, the Hangzhou group admins rented a huge movie theater in Binjiang for fans coming to watch. But that still couldn't keep up with fans' enthusiasm. People in the group kept asking whether there were seats left and why it was in Binjiang instead of the west side. So I stepped up. Rather than waiting for someone else, I'd do it myself. After a quick chat with the admins, I decided to set up a small satellite venue on the west side on my own, so more fans could watch.

The admins praised and supported the idea, but said they couldn't provide any materials, so I'd have to figure things out myself. That was fine; I hadn't expected anything anyway.

Choosing a Venue

The first thing to consider when organizing an event is the venue. You need to look at transportation, surroundings, space, on-site internet, and how easy the venue is to work with. After asking a friend at Dangtang Coffee and weighing everything, I chose Moke Coffee in Xixi Paradise.

During a break, I went to check it out. The café is inside Xixi Paradise, across from the movie theater. Rearranged, the space could hold twenty-odd people, which was enough. Then I started talking details with the manager, and we disagreed over prepayment versus purchases. I insisted on not charging a fee. This gathering was a community event, and I didn't want to charge per person. But since we were using someone else's space, and it costs them money, I proposed a purchase requirement: every fan who came to watch had to buy at least one drink. After a lot of back-and-forth, the manager reluctantly agreed, stressing again and again that the owner mustn't find out and that he was making a special exception for me. Of course, I knew this was just a tactic. My only worry was the internet. The café had a 4 Mbps China Unicom connection, and the manager kept promising that HD livestreams wouldn't lag. As it turned out, that promise wasn't reliable.

Preparing Materials

It was my first time organizing an event, so I had no experience and had to decide everything myself. I imitated the style of Luo's warm-up posters and made landscape and portrait posters in Keynote, then put them up outside the café. While making the posters, I also learned a bit about unit conversion: 1 cm = 25 px = 28.3 pt. I also printed a banner to hang at the venue. The total cost was under 50 yuan.

To liven up the atmosphere, I also bought Smartisan's latest power bank with my own money as a raffle prize.

Double-Checking

The day before the launch, to make sure the viewing party would go smoothly, I went back to Moke Coffee to check the equipment and internet. Unexpectedly, this visit made me furious. When I talked to the manager again, he had changed his mind. The agreed minimum of one drink per person had become a minimum spend of 100 yuan, or at least 50. I couldn't accept that condition, and even less his attitude. Going back on his word right before the event looked a lot like extortion. I firmly refused any minimum spend, and pointed out that, knowing Luo, the launch would definitely run long. Even without a requirement, people couldn't go that long without drinking or eating, so there was no need to worry about nobody buying anything. Besides, the café would stay open as usual, and other customers could still buy things. Our crowd might even draw more people in. I also laid my cards on the table: we were really only borrowing the projector. If he didn't agree, we could just watch on our own laptops. Seeing how firm I was, the manager reluctantly went back to the original plan.

Gathering People

This part took almost no work. I posted in the group and tagged people, and lots of them came to ask. In fact, more people wanted to come than I could host, so in the end I had to say seats were limited: first come, first served. If I'd charged in advance (around 30 yuan), the numbers would have been much easier to control, though I only realized that later.

Running the Event

On the day, I arrived 2 hours early to set up, put up posters, and hang the banner. Around 19:00, fans started arriving. At 19:30, the official start time, Luo was late again, as expected. So I started the raffle using a WeChat group red packet: whoever got the smallest amount won. There was a fun twist. Mr. Lu later saw my WeChat Moments post and said a colleague from his company had been there. When he showed me the post, it turned out that colleague had won the only power bank.

As soon as the livestream started, my biggest worry came true: the internet was too slow. It would play for two minutes, then freeze for dozens of seconds. The fans didn't complain, but I was anxious. After quickly switching stream sources and lowering the resolution, it finally stabilized and didn't freeze again until the end. I could finally breathe.

The day before the launch, Smartisan's Hangzhou retail partner contacted me and offered to bring demo phones for sale and gifts. Of course I welcomed it. Before the launch was even over, the partner's phones had arrived. When it ended, I immediately bought a 128 GB carbon black model so fans could take photos and try it out. After 23:00, the café was getting impatient because it was past closing time. Not long after, Luo finished, and the event wrapped up as planned (though not perfectly). I felt a lot more relaxed. My only regret was forgetting to take a group photo.

Afterward

By the time I got home, it was past midnight. I expected social media to be flooded with Jianguo Pro posts the next morning, so I decided to get ahead. That night, I shot an unboxing video and photos and posted an original review on SMZDM right away. It was probably the earliest illustrated unboxing online. It was later featured and stayed on the front page of original posts for three days. Within a week of the launch, it received 150 tips, over 100 saves, and over 500 comments, making it the hottest original post that week. My account earned more than 600 gold coins and over 800 experience points. Besides getting there first, the post's popularity owed a lot to Smartisan's polarizing reviews and the controversy around Luo himself. Consider it a small contribution from me, a half-rational Luo fan.

Link: My Jianguo Pro review on SMZDM

Thanks to this event, I became an admin of the Smartisan Hangzhou group :)
And finally, here's the Jianguo Pro.