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Rex St. John
Jun 2018Armroadshow

Arm Innovator Asia Tour

Five cities in three weeks, taking the Innovator Program to the regional developer communities that manufacture this hardware. Taipei, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen.

Numbers

2,000+
Developers
5
Cities

Problem

Most of this hardware is built in Asia, and the developer communities there were being served in translation, months after the fact. They had the documentation already. What they did not have was anybody from Arm in the room.

Solution

Five cities in three weeks. Taipei on the 8th, Tokyo on the 20th, Beijing the 25th, Shanghai the 27th, Shenzhen the 29th. Hackster.io ran it with us alongside a long list of regional co-organisers: the Global Innovation Exchange, the China Software Industry Association, and supporters from Alibaba and AWS through to the City of Seattle.

Innovators travelled with the tour, so every stop had somebody who could answer a question in the local language and a board people could hold.

Analysis

Five cities in three weeks meant five sets of co-organisers, five venues and five rounds of customs paperwork for the hardware. A bad stop stays bad, because by the time you know it went wrong you are in the next country.

I would spend it again. An engineer in Shenzhen asking a question and getting an answer from someone standing in front of them is worth more than any number of webinar registrations.

Result

More than 2,000 developers across five cities.

Photos

  • The tour programme open to the schedule page, listing Taipei, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen, beside a page of co-organiser and supporter logos
    The schedule, and the two pages of co-organisers it took to get there.
  • A speaker presenting a slide headed Community to a full room at the Shanghai Mushroom Cloud Maker Space
    Shanghai, at the Mushroom Cloud Maker Space.
  • A speaker addressing a seated audience of roughly fifty developers in a bright open maker space
  • A speaker holding up a development board to a packed room seated on the floor and on sofas
    The format that worked: hold up the board, pass it around, take questions until people stop asking.
  • About fifty attendees in a group photo beside an Arm Innovator Program banner, several holding signs including one reading Join our community! hackster.io
  • Two men talking in front of an Arm Innovator Program banner, beside a wall of maker-built instruments including a drum kit and a custom guitar
  • A seated audience of about sixty in a maker space, facing a table with a projector and a laptop
  • The bilingual event flyer for the Shenzhen stop, listing nine speakers from Seeed Studio, Alibaba, Arm, HAX, Auterion, Hackster.io, Arm Accelerator and Silicon Labs
    Shenzhen, at HAX, June 29.
  • About twenty people in matching black tour T-shirts posing in front of an Arm and Hackster.io backdrop

Sources

SemiconductorsAIoTRobotics