Hi! as I am writing this, I am in Shanghai. I am in a book store that is open late and has a cafe inside. It's just 9:06 PM here (9:06 AM on the EST timezone).
I decided to rejoin hack club to organize adventures. I had nothing but ideas that felt sort of bland. Idea after idea felt not super inspiring. Then I woke up one morning (was staying at Steve at that time) and it was really early (probably 5am) and I was super cold (i had not realized how to use the heater). I went downstairs Steve and just wrote to my laptop a sort of wild idea. Imagine we take 30 teenagers to Shanghai China and we run a popup cafe together.
I met someone from Shanghai and they told me a few months prior that if I ever visit Shanghai it will "blow my mind". I had always been curious about China, and I've always wanted to see what it is like. I think I am more curious about China in comparison to other asian countries because it seems western media has such a negative outlook on the country, so I figured the only way to get to the truth was to go see it for myself. I also do not like doing touristy things (that's all lies), so I wanted to go and live like a local. I had the idea of opening a popup cafe and running it with 30 other hack clubbers in Shanghai. I thought it would be really neat if we all make something to share with the local people and that they can enjoy even though they speak a different language and have a wildly different life. I decided it would be awesome if everyone running the popup cafe made their own game and then we present the games in the cafe.
When I had this idea for a popup cafe (i hadn't thought about the juice part), Zach shared with me this video about how to make games satisfying: Juice it or lose it - a talk by Martin Jonasson & Petri Purho. I liked the lens through which they looked at making games satisfying, so in order to make it a core value and to have this little nugget not get lost in the noise, I decided to name the event after this video. To tie it into the cafe, that's when I had the idea of us making Juice instead of other beverages like coffee and tea.
I had this idea and started putting together a very scrappy and ugly version of the site. Here it is:
FILL IN UGLY VERSION OF THE SITE
then I went to team sync at HQ (it's every tuesday at 11am) and presented that I am doing this idea. I think most people in the room thought: this is too crazy & is defintely not happening, so it was up to me to prove everyone wrong. I talked to Estella and she was one of the first people who really liked the idea. She decided to join the organizing team (first team member) and she helped me design the site. She made an awesome animated background for the Juice site and then made the desktop icons too.
We launched in 1.5 weeks from when I first had the idea. When we launched, we had no venue, no visa, no real plan, and then 2,000 people signed up!
We built the plane as we flew it. I met Ryan from AdventureX through Malted's friend's roommate. I hopped on a call with AdventureX and they decided to be our distribution partner for the event. They made post on WeChat promoting the event and bringing in signups from China. They later went on to issue visa invitation letters for all of the attendees (they were a critical part of making Juice possible).
They introduced us to BottleDream which was our first venue. A person I know from Shanghai who lives in SF introduced me to Ryan from Spark Lab (different Ryan from the one from AdventureX). SparkLab was our second venue.
I remember at kickoff call we had 300 people come. I was really surprised. & then some crazy number went on to make PR of their game idea to the Juice repo.
We had a juiceathon call the following week and everyone worked on their games together on a 24hr long call. I was sort of a wild time of my life, and I really enjoyed it.
Midway through running the program, I got an morning call from Dev. It was at about 7am my time (PST). He said: "do you want to come to Scrapyard?". I said "sure!". I then came to Scrapyard that weekend (a few days after receiving that call) and there I met Kai Ling and Tongyu! I saw the game that they made for Counterspell (they were the global winners) and thought they seemed like really kind people (plus they spoke both English & Mandarian). I invited them to join staff team for Juice and come to Shanghai to help us run the cafe. This was a good decision as they were two of the most crucial people to the in-person Juice experience. I have no idea how I would've done it without them and they were amazing.
They worked with a group of people in the #juice-merch channel and designed all of the merch for the program.
As I am writing this, I am realizing I am making it sound like everything was smooth for organizing Juice and this was an easy process. This wasn't the case. There were many points when it seemed like Juice wasn't going to happen. I remember when I got a call from the Chinese embassy saying they were delaying my visa results... this was intense and brought into question how we were going to run the program if they rejected my application. We also had times where Juicing dipped and we needed to find ways to bring back the energy (example would be the 10 days of tamagotchi program to help bring everyone back). We also at launch and after kickoff call had two slack-wide protests of Juice. The first was a protest because people didn't like the event being in China, and the second was because people did not believe the stipends were enough. I saw that one core person from our Juice team turned and said they were abandoning Juice because the stipends were not enough. When they said this, suddenly a bunch of people abandoned too. Instead of addressing everyone and trying to change everyone's minds, I got a call with the core Hack Clubber who was the first to abandaon and I tried to understand where they were coming from. We came to the conclusion that we will find a way to make Juice happen even if the stipends are less than people want. Once they publicly changed their opinion, a wave of optimism came and everyone changed their mind on Juice. This was a turning point moment for us.
This document doesn't go in quite a chronological order I am realizing. That is okay though! This is mostly for myself to look back on one day or to share with a hack clubber curious about making their own event :)
OKAY ONTO JUICE IN-PERSON! Way more people showed up than we expected. We had about 100 people show up. We split people into 5 groups of 20. Leading the groups was really intense for the staff and I could have done a much better job making sure my staff team felt confident in their ability to make decisions irrespective of what other teams were doing and that they didn't feel so much responsibility for the well-being of their team members who had a freedom waiver. I think for some of the team members, the early half of the event was an incredibly intense time and they worked incredibly hard. I am super grateful for them and I think they did a fantastic job.
a turning point for the team was when we had a team meeting and then a member of our team had some tears because of how intense this was for them. in this moment, I felt quite bad and tried to understand where they were coming from. I learned that by not trying stick to the schedule, I wasn't doing right by them. Following a schedule strictly isn't important to me, but if it's important to my team then I should make it a priority. Once we started sticking to a schedule, I think things got much better. I saw that team member become much less stressed and I saw the members in their group be happier too. I think that respect is such an important thing in working with teams and if something matters to your teammate then you should make it a priority (this is something that I learned).
we had several birthdays over the Juice in-person experience and those moments were super special and they brought everyone together. i also remember how when we had our first customers, everyone was so excited to show off their games and make juice for the customers. it was a really special time.
we also had a ship party where we got everyone together, put on a big board the people who haven't shipped, and we went from ~34 who haven't shipped down to 0. Because it was so public who hadn't shipped, people felt social pressure to ship asap to get their name off the board. We then gave everyone cake and ice cream to celebrate the ships.
I remember when I first realized we would have nearly 100 people at Juice. I had a call with Zach and he was happy to hear the news. He helped me reframe it from this chaotic situation that we needed to figure out to instead a design problem. We looked at it from Maslow's Hierarchy of needs. First we needed to make sure everyone had the basics (housing, food, etc). Then we needed to make sure everyone had things to do. Next that everyone would make a friend. Next that everyone got to show off their project. And finally that they would have a great adventure. I had a call with our team and we approached it from the bottom up. For the housing and food, we decided to figure out all of the hotel rooms and roommates before the event and made a programatic pdf where it auto-generated for every attendee the information of who their roommate was, where they're staying, how to contact us, etc. It made it so when they land, they have a doc that has all of the information they need. Nailing the bottom layer of the pyramid the next layer of the pyramid possible. Tongyu and Kai Ling then made schedules for all of the groups so people had things to do. & from there each layer of the pyramid made the next one possible.
with Juice the biggest thing was every step along the way saying: this is happening no matter what. I'll come back and add more another time. This book shop is closing now.