First look at SaaStr Annual 2024's Sponsor Expo

speed, and if you're maybe thinking about sponsoring still, kind of give everyone a first look at the SASTRA Annual 2024 Sponsor Expo, as we call it. So with all that being said, there is a fair amount to cover, so I'm gonna go ahead and get started. So let me share my screen here. And, well, if you guys have any questions, leave them in the chat. For after. I'm sure we'll have some time to cover off questions, or at any time you guys can feel free to email us. We'll, we'll share our personal emails at the end, but also the— we'll also share the— if at any point you need to email just like the broader events team, you can email us events@saastrinc.com. So that one works too. If you have like a specific question for your particular sponsorship, that's usually the closest. We try and answer questions that might be applicable to multiple parties on this kind of thing. But with all that, let me try and restart the screen share. Let's see. Let's see. Okay, come on. All right, I think you can, you can do this. Right?

Loving 3D clouds.

Yeah, it looks good. I know. We just, Matt just made this. It looks great. It looks, it's fun. We're, we've like done some 3D stuff over the years and then we're finally like, all right, we're just gonna 3D everywhere. Yeah, it's fun. No, I like, I like the, the look and feel for this year's event. So yeah, hopefully you guys know. So Staffster Annual this year is September 10th through 12th in the SF Bay Area. More specifically, we're at the San Mateo County Event Center. And like I said, we're going to use this time to really give you guys an overview and kind of look at the booths in particular and kind of the, and how that will flow into the expo. The sponsor portal does go live on Monday. So I've seen a few folks ask for access. Just as a reminder, we did send out a couple weeks ago now and ask for who your main POC should be for that sponsor portal. Many of you did it, some of you didn't. So if you haven't, please do that so we can make sure the right person gets access to that portal. I'm sure we'll find you either way. But that'd be super handy just so we can get it to the hands of the right person and then you can like browse and browse all the materials there for what you need to get started on SAS or Annual. So with that, let's dive into it. And then, you know, we can always go back to do any sort of, again, kind of high-level questions that apply to anyone. So yeah, we'll, we'll chat about booths. So there's a few things I want folks to keep in mind as they're coming into and start starting to think about designing their booths for SAS. Let me actually flip to another slide if it'll let me here. That kind of has a bit more of this. So I'm gonna actually start, I think I put at the end of my deck, but I'm gonna start there and then I'm gonna go back. So yeah, actually let me start here. So, all right, so there's a few like overall tips and tricks. I'll, I'll let Waylon chime in too on his 'cause he's been to a few SaaStr events now. And then we'll show you guys the actual booth 'cause I do think these are helpful. In the deck you'll see, which I'll drop into the chat so you guys can access this now. These tips are at the end, but I'm gonna start here since we're doing it on our presentation. So, One thing to keep in mind at SaaStr, and I think this is feedback we've gotten a lot lately from like last SaaStr Annual and then the SaaStr Europe that we just did in London, the majority of our sponsors do an activation or giveaway at SaaStr. So I think that's really important to know cuz if it's, again, not that you can't just show up and exhibit at your booth and still drive a lot of ROI out of it, just bear in mind that other people are pretty much gonna have something going on, right? So I always like to preface that. I know we do have a fair amount of new sponsors this year cuz there's a lot of AI sponsors who are maybe newer to the scene or folks who've been doing AI that, you know, are, are now exhibiting at something like a SAS Annual. And it might be their first time at a SAS Annual. So whether you're a returning sponsor or a new one, it's always good to keep in mind that a lot of folks do some sort of something to get people to come to their booth in particular. So the main ways people have done this historically for our last 3 huge at-scale in-person events is, I will say, a lot of people do both now too. Activation or a giveaway, right? So, a lot of folks have started to do both if they can swing it. I also know folks who have now aired on the side of like sending less staff and just being able to like fully give that staff everything they might need to rock the booth, right? Like maybe send a few less reps, but send those reps with everything they need to, to make an impact at the show. So that's always kind of where I start is, you know, before we get into the nitty-gritty of, of specs and guidelines and bleeds and all that, like just from a first principle, always keep in mind that, you know, SASHA is a very creative, very branded event as we've noted on our 3D clouds. But yeah, it's, you know, everyone's very creative in what they do and what they bring to the show. And these, these can be, we've seen this at all varying levels. Everyone's had success with them in either way. So this can be as easy and turnkey as ordering something via us if that's something that your sponsorship level allows for. Or we've seen folks like that already have something that's a little bit more turnkey. That's like a game or an activation that they've branded previously. Bring it to SaaS or, right, just work with us to get it there and, and get it all set up and all that stuff. And we've now seen— actually, I think Will and I have probably seen this the most— kind of a later trend now of folks tying their product or their company back into whatever one of those two things is, right? So I think when we've all gotten better at events too, right? I think that's part of it. Like, you know, post-2020, we've all gotten a lot better at doing in-person events and making them count in a number of ways, right? Like, we'll touch on some of those in a later series of how to maximize bring your team and like your customers and all that stuff. We've gotten a lot better at that, but I would say I wanna spend time on the booth in particular because I think some people kind of treat it as an afterthought when it is your main hub once you actually get on site. So it is one of those things to spend some time on. And so we wanna spend some time on it today. And so yeah, that's where we've seen this trend of folks kind of incorporating either their company or their product into an activation or a giveaway. So I've seen some folks do this as like, you know, if you do like a turnkey giveaway, let's say it's a food or a game or something like that, like they'll tie it into their branding or their, or like a tagline that has to do with their product. Like something like that, right? I've seen folks do full-blown, like our tech is running this game that we're bringing to the show, or our company overall is like Sponsors of this other cool thing and the consumer are like just, you know, just out in the world and that's how we want to tie it back in. Like I'll give you guys a good example of that one. Like Oracle brought some of their like Red Bull Racing F1 swag to Saastr London and people thought it was really cool. You know, it still has to do with Oracle and something that they're doing overall as a company and it's something that only they could do. So I think the point is it is like, you know, once you start to look at these booth specs, yes, it is important to get them designed and like Submit them on time, but maybe more important to think about holistically how you want to activate people at Saastr. So I want to start there, Waylon. I want to open up to your thoughts because I know you've seen a lot of activations now too.

Yeah. So one thing I'll say is that there's, there's a huge bump in lead volume for people who do activations and do them well. Even just the turnkey food activations from Saastr where it's just a pass-through cost. It's not something we profit on. You know, people who get a food activation get 50% more leads. Than those who don't. So it's your cheapest incremental spend to get a lot of additional leads. That's only available for Super Gold sponsors and above just from the space requirements. And then yeah, there's some cool things. I mean, we were talking to someone who's likely to become a sponsor yesterday and they're an AI video company and they're gonna do a green screen with some cool stuff in the booth. So think about like different things you can do. One of our sponsors does tech for Wimbledon and they're hoping to do like a ping pong using the same sort of tech at Saastr. So there's some really Full-blown tennis court. But yeah, we're gonna bring a tennis court to Saastr. So I think there's definitely some cool stuff that you can do. And the other thing is giveaways. You know, everybody's got enough t-shirts probably at this point from tech companies. So that's great. It's not necessarily high impact for you at Saastr to give away t-shirts, but you know, everybody likes a tablet or a new phone or a PS5 and doing a draw for an item like that can be a lot more impactful. You don't even have to bring it on site, ship it afterwards. A good way to drive some additional interest. You got to get into a raffle or something through a lead scan. So just some ideas, low cost to increase your leads at SaaStr.

Yeah. And again, all, all, all, I think it bears repeating that, you know, they can be as simple as something like, as Waylon mentioned, like turnkey is, you know, once the list comes out of activations, picking one off of there, again, tying in your tagline or something that you do in the booth to whatever that activation is. That is clever. That does help. But the other thing I put on these slides, hopefully you'll go back and read this too. But one thing we only touched on, and I, I have seen this trend a lot over our last maybe 3 or 4 events, is the amount of swag people bring has gotten fewer, which I actually think is for the best. Our, us ourselves, we've gotten a lot better at ordering the right quantity of swag. And, and that's actually reduced over the years. Like it used to be like we had to get, you know, roughly 2 items per person, right? If you're looking at this from a data perspective. Now I do, I think about like 0.5 per person because not Everybody will take everything now. I think that's a big change in just how people are thinking about, you know, sustainability stuff that they have. As Wella mentioned, we all have a lot of t-shirts. One thing I'll say on that is like, you know, I know Vendor last year did like a screen printing t-shirt that worked well, right? Because it was like on demand. You had like, you could pick your design, you could pick like what shirt it was on. And people did like that because again, it's not just like, okay, you literally took a t-shirt out of a box. Cool. We all do it. And like, you know, I like our Saster World Tour shorts and those always go first now, and people do like those. But again, you only need so many of those. So again, as much as you could tie it back into your product or your company and make it cool and something unique to you, that's what really will stick out to people, right? Yeah. Like, yes, having food is great and that will stick out. But if you could tie it back to your product, that is what will make an impact. I think the other trend we've seen, as Waylon mentioned, is, yeah, you know, this trend in folks maybe doing fewer, better items for giveaways, doing things like raffles. People have done that a lot over the years. It's asked pretty much every event we have, yeah, doing like the lead scan to win, you know, XYZ thing. People have given away Pelotons, they've given away— I haven't— I don't know if I've seen anyone give away a Tesla yet, but, um, they've, you know, and the sky's the limit on those because you're really doing one, right? You do have to give it away. I mean, that's, that's kind of, you know, fair play. But, um, yeah, so we've seen that. So again, bear that in mind, again, because things like that too, if you're a Gold sponsor and you're like, I don't really have the space to do an activation, things like that could be great because you just do like, just you just bring a roll-up banner, you say, you know, what you're giving away, you do the lead scan for it, and then you just ship it to them. Like that literally takes up no space. So yeah, there are things you can still do if you are at that goal level that don't take up space, things like that. But again, so for overall purposes, keep that in mind. Also keep in mind, I think something you kind of stumbled into talking about, Waylon, was the level of audience that we have. So keep in mind, I know maybe it's been a while since some of you have seen the Perspectives, but you know, and this came up in London a lot too because folks were like, oh, sometimes I'm hesitant to scan like, you know, every single person. And that comes to the booth, I'm like, yeah, but at SaaStr, they're not just like random AEs, no offense to all AEs out there, but like half of our, literally the data has shown that like half our audience for the last 5 years of SaaStr Annuals has been, more than half have been VP level and above. So I'm like, well, if you don't scan everyone, you actually probably are missing out on some folks that, you know, wanted to grab something and talk with you later. There is a lot to do at SaaStr. So I always preface that too, like, as an attendee, there's a lot to do. I know people spend a fair amount of time in the sponsor hall because of how we engineer it. But again, like, I think you're remiss if you don't scan every single person that comes through because they are at your booth, right? And, and yeah, they're probably within your audience target market that you want to hit. So other kind of last things we'll touch on, I think these are again good reminders and then we'll, we'll maybe dive into a few of the booths. We won't go through all of them today because there's a lot of levels. But I think just overall tips for exhibiting, and this is kind of top of mind from London, and I want to also get your thoughts here, Waylon, on this is we've seen sponsors have a better, like, success on site when they can do more of a staffing plan. And what I mean by that is like, we'll show you guys the booths. And it is important, like I said, not to overlook the booth. It is your hub on site. Like, we've known people who have now done like book signings in their booth or times where it's like literally CEO meet and greet. I would also say like, don't assume that anyone at your company is above doing booth duty again, because, because half our audience is at that VP level and above, it's typically best to have an exec or two in your booth out, you know, either one time or like those key traffic times, which is gonna be like happy hours, morning, you know, the things you can kind of guess are gonna be high traffic times. Yeah, it, it does actually make an impact to the attendees and companies we've seen who have done that. On their ROI for the event. So keep all that in mind. But yeah, I would say rotate, you know, folks if you can. Again, I know from a budget perspective, if you're like, okay, I just want to send a smaller team to our booth so that we can maximize what they're doing in the booth, I totally would go for that first. But if you do have budget, right, I would try and rotate folks as best you can between, you know, being in your booth, going to content, doing the networking. That's where we've really seen folks kind of maximize their overall time. Yeah. What have you seen here on this one, Whelan?

So I think, yeah, like if you can get at least two sort of shifts of people, that's really helpful. As you said, like it's tiring to be standing all day at the booth. And so like obviously, you know, it is something of a sales job when you're at a booth, right? Being on like that can be tiring. So if you can swap people out, that's definitely helpful. And then as far as the exec side of things, like Amelia said, there's going to be a lot of VP level and above, a lot of C-level, a lot of actual buyers there. These are, you know, your economic buyers and your, you know, your executive alignment partners that you would want at those companies that are going to help you get the deal done, right? I think it's tough selling in SaaS right now, and the best deals, the fastest moving deals are always one where you've got an executive connection. So if you can have an executive booth, I know Goddard from G2, CEO of G2, finds a way to do big deals.

And they're a big sponsor, right?

So yeah, and they work the floor and I'm sure those relationships, you know, he's, he's probably able to talk to 50 to 100, I get, I would guess customers and potential customers. And that's super impactful for the sales team.

Yeah. Yeah. So that's something to keep in mind. We'll, again, we'll, we'll probably hit some more of these again. Like we'll keep hitting these on like subsequent webinars. We'll keep adding to our tips. We'll put these all on the portal as best we can. The other thing I'll say, I'll hit on the last point because I, I think I've seen this trend just overall at other events that I've gone to and just personally attended. And I see it a little bit. I saw it a little bit with our sponsors at SaaStr Europa. But I think I'd be remiss not to tell you guys that, you know, if your hub, your booth is literally the hub of your company during, you know, these 3 days of SaaStr Annual, spend that time engaging with the foot traffic, right? Like, I know, I know we're all trying to do a lot at once and you're like tempted to just answer that email at the booth or like, I just got to I've literally seen people now take Zoom calls at their booth, which like I get, we're all freaking hustling. Like I respect the hustle game. But also if you have to think of like you're— if you're— if you're— if that Zoom call is that important to take in your booth, you are not engaging with the foot traffic in front of you, which again, I get sometimes you can't avoid it. You know, maybe again to that point, swap out that person if you know, like, okay, I've got to do this weekly call with, you know, our board or CEO, whoever, executive team at the time during SaaS Annual, like maybe go to the coworking space and do it and have somebody else at the booth. Who can engage with folks, right? Part of this too is like being welcoming. I don't know how to explain this one, but like maybe you can help me put it more eloquently. But yeah, I think, you know, some folks will sometimes they, you kind of default, right? I think when you're in a group setting too, because I think part of this is some people have not seen their team IRL in a while. Like we're guilty of it too sometimes, but we have a longer time for load-in. So then we kind of like get it out of our system before the actual show. But yeah, I have seen folks like default to like, okay, there's no traffic coming, I'm gonna default to like doing emails on my computer or doing something else or like talking to the people in the booth with me. And again, but if that one, if that other person walks by and you don't look like you're ready to have a conversation with them, they will probably keep walking.

So yeah, I don't know how to say that nicer, Waylon, but no, it's totally, it's, I think we had a sponsor a couple years ago and they were at a gold level and they outperformed most of the super golds and The secret was they just actually, they kind of complimented everybody who walked by and just engage with them. Right. And I've been at a lot of events, not just SaaS events last couple of years. And, you know, if you walk past a booth and nobody's looking, it's almost like you're cold calling the booth and like nobody likes cold calling. You want to engage you first. Right. So definitely. And I think it's another reason to have an exec on site. I think, you know, when there's an exec on site that sets that expectation, you'll probably see better alignment with, with focusing on potential prospects versus talking internally and doing work.

Yeah. All right. Those are, those are good points. Let me flip over to the booths. I'll spend some time. Let me go Super Gold actually, and then I'll go back to Gold and then I'll kind of hit on some last tips that are prevalent for all levels. So let me just reshare here on Super Gold. So As we've said at the top of the hour, but if you're, if you've joined late, we'll just say it again real quick. So I will put these slides in the chat. We're also gonna email them out to all sponsors and then the sponsor portal goes live on Monday. So like all that nice stuff of like expo hours, we're pushing the agenda live tomorrow. Like all that stuff will be in there. We, it is a living, breathing portal as some of you know from Europa. So a lot of what is in there now will still get added to. If you have any questions, again, ask them of our events team, events@fastring.com. One or many of us will reply, and then that actually helps us build out like what people are asking so that we, we kind of know what to keep adding to it. But with all that being said, this is our most popular booth, so I'll probably spend the most of the time on this one because it's the majority of booth that people have. So yeah, Super Booth— Super Booth— Super Gold Booth with— it's a Super Booth— a Super Gold Booth with an activation. These are the Specs at a glance. If you've noticed the Super Gold, because again, 90%, I would say 98% of Super Golds do an activation. It's again, it's not mandatory, it's just highly recommended. So by default, this is their setup with an activation. Now there is a, there is a flip, there's a no activation version which has slightly more furniture and stuff, but I'll stay on this one because again, most people have a Super Gold and most people do an activation. So a few things I'll call out here and you'll see a few patterns by, you know, regardless of your level. So everything we just talked about is irregardless of level, right? Like being engaging, doing all those things important for any, any sponsor, any booth footprint, anything that you're doing at SAS Re:ANNUAL. There's a few key components that you guys will design once you start to get to this phase. Or you might say, you know, we're going out of office for July 4th. I don't want to— you can send this to me, but I'm not going to look at it yet. That's fine. Because the other thing I'll say is the deadline is in August to submit your booth. So you have tons of time. Maybe you don't consider like 6 weeks. I consider 6 weeks a long time to get anything done. And I know design can sometimes be a slow process, but that's a fair amount of time to do all that. So a few things you guys will notice again at any level, and you will always have a back wall. So in, in this case, it's labeled A. That back wall, right, is, is gonna be the bulk of what you're designing. The reason we did this 3D mock, and you will get a full slick as well with like, you know, like how big or how much room is from here to here. Like we have full slicks per level that will be in the portal. But this is, again, these are, that's why this is at a glance. Again, it's just to start the process with your design team of where you kind of wanna maybe do it. I recommend doing a 3D layout first. That's actually what we do to like make the booth. So that's why we have these 3D layouts of, we look at them in a 3D format before Or we kind of do like the flat graphics themselves because it does help give you context of, okay, like, you know, at a Super Bowl level, there's two of these headers, right? They're side by side. They're, they are literally 3D in the physical world. Like they bump out a little bit from the booth. The lights are there. But something we saw last year, right, is like because people started on like a flat plane, they were, they had like graphics maybe on their A wall that like were behind these headers. So again, I always like to start from like a 3D plane if you can. It, it's helpful for context of, oh yeah, like my header is going to go over whatever's at the top of my boot. So I always say like, you know, make it plain at the top, um, by the amount that the header is, which is, um, you know, it's, it's 15 inches. It's 15 inches high, but you know, you could plan for 20, give yourself a little bleed room and then do the rest of your design. So I always like to start from there. It's just a good like rule of thumb when you're starting the design process. If you, if you can have the ability to start from like a 3D context and plane, um, it's also why we mocked them out this way to see, you know, Also, it gives you a good context of like how many people would fit, how much space you kind of have for an activation, right? So again, by default, the Super Golds have that space for an activation. They have, you know, what we call kind of like a back demo communal table with the monitor there that plugs in and the power. And then we always call these like front welcome cabinets in the— that's the one here that's labeled D. And again, I think it's just good to start from first principles of, okay, like like even without starting to design your booth, if you just look at this mock, like just think about how you wanna apply like your company, your branding to it. Like what are you gonna do on the screen that maybe ties or doesn't tie into this? You know, again, if you are doing an activation, maybe you don't wanna put a huge amount of like text or like logo on where we, where we currently have it saying SaaS for Annual, 'cause it might get blocked, right? You kind of have to set your, stuff higher. Like if I've seen people do like logos across the bottom, but then you put an activation there, then you literally cannot see them. So if it's mission critical, definitely, you know, put it in the playable space. The other thing I'll say, I see this every event and I always like tell people this when they submit their graphics and sometimes they don't care, but I do think once you get on site, put your company name somewhere. Your company name and what you do. Like, again, if you're starting from first principles, if you can think, like, use our mock here as like, okay, what do I actually want to say? What would like, you know, get people to come interact with my company in particular at SaaStr versus the others? But also, what do I do so that if somebody is walking by, right? And again, to Waylon's point of being inviting and engaging and, you know, not, not making people cold call your booth, like, if you tell them what you do, then that it's a little bit easier for them to make that self-decision of, okay, like, am I gonna engage with them or is that something I don't need right now? It does make a huge difference. I know folks who've gotten kind of higher lead counts when, you know, they've literally put in plain language like their logo and then what they do. It's like the tagline or again, something or something in their product tied back to their activation or both, right? That again, that really helps people. You're, if you gotta think about these booths, you're going down aisles and aisles of booths and folks kind of want to pick and choose who they want to talk to. So yeah, I'd be, again, remiss not to remind folks to put your name and what you do somewhere on one of these panels.

Yeah, I think that's the biggest thing that, that you see as a miss is you just got to think like if someone doesn't have time to visit every booth, you've got your, you know, an ideal customer You know, they're from the right size, right type of company, the right persona. What's one sentence that would let them know that I should be checking this out? Because that's, that's, it's almost like your marketing email, right? Like that's the, that's the subject line. If they don't know what it is, there's some people who just come to you like, hey, what do you guys do? You know, you're better off making sure that they can tell that before they even approach the booth.

Yeah. Yeah. That's a great, again, another great analogy from Whalen, like the subject line of, you know, Yeah, whatever your subject line or whatever your hook is that you're going to bring people in, I would say to like, you know, what can you do for this person with your product? Obviously, we're all, you know, getting really efficient these days because that's the theme of 2024. But yeah, what can you help them with, right? Like, how can you add value? I think if you answer that question of, okay, I'm going to look at this 3D spec, you know, obviously I'm going to give my designer whatever, 156 by 1/4 inch, Okay. Like, let them deal with that. Like, from a holistic perspective, just saying, how can I add value to the people who are coming to SaaStr, right? How can I solve their problem? Or how can I add value? I think you answer one of those two questions with your booth, you're on the right track. If you designed your booth and you can't answer that question of like, okay, if I didn't know, I actually do this as a good rule of thumb with SaaStr branding. I will show it to somebody who knows nothing about SaaStr. And I'll say, okay, what do you think the purpose of this is? What do you think this, you know, what, what comes to mind when you see this and see what they say. So, you know, you could show it to your mom and say, Mom, here's our booth. Like, what are your thoughts? And if she's like, you know, she might say, I don't know what your company is because your company name's on it. If there's no tagline or I don't know what you actually do here, you know, those aren't, those aren't, that's not, that's helpful feedback, but you might want to update your booth design. So again, I would start from one of those First principles, you know, how can you add value or how can you help this person solve a problem that they may be dealing with? Start, start from there and then build backwards right into kind of the logistics. I think sometimes we get very caught up, you know, close to event and going through logistics and people have very technical questions that we answer. But again, I'd start with that and then go from there. Like I've actually floated back out to a few folks who've asked us about activations, like, okay, but why do you want to do this activation? They're like, I don't know, actually. What does that have to do with your product? Oh, nothing. Okay. Like, let's maybe, let's maybe workshop that so we can get it to a place where, again, the whole goal of that is to maximize your guys' ROI on site in the booth. So the other thing, I'll just touch on a couple last things here because I know we're already at the 30-minute mark. So we showed the Super Goals. We, you guys will get this and then you can go through it with your teams if you have, again, particular— again, we'll show these again like next week, like we'll hit some of the other booths. So there's just a few last things I want to hit. So let me hit resume share on this. So I know one of the number one questions we get, and I just mentioned it, but it's like, when is the deadline on booths? Again, if, if you have people out of office this like starting today or next week because the 4th of July here in the States, probably just a good time to look at this deck and start thinking about what you want to do before you actually do it. That'd be my recommendation. Because booth graphics are not due until Friday, August 16th. They are due at noon Pacific time because both ourselves and Freeman operate in Pacific time. So if you're in the, you know, if you're in London, then you get a little bit more time because that's your end of day Friday. But yeah, Friday, that is the deadline. That's the deadline you'll see on all the slicks, which is what we call like, you know, the buy booth little like technical specs that have all the direct measurements on them. So you'll see that on there too. Any graphics submitted— again, that deadline's pretty far away, so you got 6, you got more than, you got a little more than 6 weeks. If they are submitted after this, it is like an automatic late fee. So, you know, we'll remind you so you can avoid that. But I know sometimes things are unavoidable. There are design artwork guidelines. Again, it's things like bleed lines, that kind of thing. You know, again, if you look at the 3D renders, that should help you a lot when you're picturing how to put your booth together. And then, yeah, you'll Basically, once you start to submit your booths back to us, you'll get a proof, and then you can either, you know, revise it or approve it. And then once you're approved, you are good to go, and it's turnkey. So when you show up on site, your booth will be ready for you. And then there's just a few last kind of overall tips and tricks I want to share with folks. Since now you've seen a little bit of a look at some of the overall designs that we've kind of went through, like, you know, how you should think about your booths. From any level perspective. But let me just flip to the last one here. This one. Okay. So final reminders. And then again, we'll send this all out to you guys and then you can ask any questions you might have or you can email events@sastrink.com. I know we talk a lot about activations. And so sometimes that leads people to believe that they can just show up with an activation if they think it's going to fit in their booth. And, and to some level, you sort of can, but it might take a while to coordinate onsite if you do not know about it already. The reason for, and the reason for this being, this is not a SAS rule. So I'll just preface by saying this is not our preference on how to do things. It is literally the rules and regulations we abide by. And so therefore, you have to abide by. Isn't that nice? So any and all activations do have to be approved by SAS we get the approval with the venue. But basically you send it to us, we'll get the approval with the, the venue. This is due to a lot of different kind of entities having rules and regulations in San Mateo County. So bear that in mind. There's like different fire safety rules. There's definitely health permit rules. Anything food related has to have a permit. I mean, we will literally file the permit for you. I think you just have to sign it at some point when it's approved. That's it. But like, we will do all that for you. But that does require, right? Free event coordination. So if you show up on site, we may not be able to get you a food permit, like, right there and then. So, because there are deadlines for these, you have to submit, like, the month before. So anyways, coordinate with us on the events team. You can, you know, if we have Andre, you can ask him or reach out to any of us that you've already been working with. We can help you too. The other thing I'll say, because a few things have changed in rules year over year, so this is If you're a renewal sponsor, this will be a little different. If you're brand new here, then this is just the rules that you'll always know. But, um, they did change a few of the regulations around material handling. So that's the one thing I do wanna cover off on because I know part of this was because people violated a lot of rules last year. It's just your annual. So, um, yes, um, material handling is required by us. Freeman. So all the booths you guys see, our general contractor partner is Freeman. You have probably worked with them at another show of SASTR-ish size. Um, they are like, you know, the number one— I think they're the number one like provider of kind of the general contractor booth services. Uh, but anyways, they do have rules they also need to follow with like San Mateo labor and more importantly union rules. Um, so you can't hand carry anything into the venue. Um, so anything you're dropping off, again, this could like if you have an activation delivery, we'll help you coordinate all this. But anyway, you just have to fill out like the paperwork that says, you know, my delivery is going to Freeman these days and you ship it to them and they'll handle it all for you. It's super easy, but basically you ship yourself to Freeman. I do know a few folks that are like, oh, I need to ship whatever I'm doing just to the venue and then have Freeman give it to me because it's perishable or I'm getting something branded and like it's not going to be done until literally the day before the event. Again, that's fine. It just requires a little coordination. In so that we can make sure that, you know, Freeman's got the forms. If you have a vendor that's local that's bringing it in and they need to like cart it in, there's like hand carts they can do. So again, there's a lot of ways to work with you to get your stuff. I wouldn't be overwhelmed by this. I think a lot of people too get sometimes like overwhelmed on all the rules. Literally, if you just ask us, we'll help you coordinate it and like point you in the right direction. If it's not an us thing that we need to approve, like if it's a Freeman or a venue thing, like we will literally help you do that. So So don't feel overwhelmed by it either. I'll say that. I know a few folks last year got like really overwhelmed because they tried to do it last minute. It's like, again, 98% of times we can help you guys accommodate it. It's just if it's like kind of weird or obscure, it might need a little bit extra time. If you show up on site, it's a lot harder for us to accommodate it. Again, doesn't mean we can't do it, but I don't recommend it because sometimes, sometimes we literally can't because there's like a permit or something you would've needed to have. So it's always better to know beforehand. And again, that's why, again, start from first principles on your booth. If you think about all those things together, that will help inform like what activation you might want to do. It'll help inform what swag you might want to bring and any sort of deliveries, right? So start there first so that we can help you with the right activations. And again, more creative that it ties into your product. I'd say that's the main takeaway from today. The better. Wouldn't worry too much about all this, right? Like, yeah, you do have to fill some stuff out, but just tell us what you want to do. Like, just, and we'll help you. So that's what it's literally here for. And that's why we do these weekly webinars, cuz hopefully these help to, I know sometimes you guys can't make it to all of them cuz there's a lot of them and they're like an hour, but we're trying. And this one's almost 40 minutes, so we'll try and wrap it in a few minutes so it's not too, too long to watch back. But yeah, lots of helpful information there. Anything I think just overall for sponsor, like booth expo stuff, I think Waylon, you want folks to kind of think about now as they're getting into it.

No, I think that you covered everything pretty well and the points that I really wanted to emphasize, I think we got already got an opportunity to.

Cool. Okay. We'll leave you guys with, you know, again, start, just start from the basics, you know, take a look at this deck, think about what you want to do first before you start to design it. That will probably help you. That will, you know, help inform again, the more coordinated you can be. I call it branded sometimes, but the more like branded it is, like coordinated it is like sometimes this Things, and I'll be like, right, does that make sense there though? Like, what purpose does that serve? Like, yeah, we do— like, we literally have these— we do have physical 3D clouds, and we're always like, okay, but how would we use— you know, like, before I made them, I was like, okay, if I'm gonna print 3D clouds because they're very on brand, what would I do with them though, right? Like, what— why would they exist in the physical world? So yeah, anyways, I think that's a good, um, rule of thumb. So hopefully this was helpful. If you have any questions, let us know. Waylon, how can— I'll wrap on how folks can get in touch. So Waylon, how can folks get in touch with you?

Yeah, you can reach me at, on LinkedIn. So Waylon McGill, and then you can also reach me by email, waylon@saastrinc.com.

Good to spell it. All right. You guys can email events@saastrinc.com if you need any help. I do see all those emails too, or I'm just ai@saastrinc.com. And thanks for joining. I know next week is Is it 4th of July on Thursday? Yeah. Well, we're still having a webinar. So if you're bored on 4th of July morning, because we do this every Thursday, we'll hit some of these points again. We'll probably keep it a little bit shorter and brief and just add in some more tips as you guys are starting to think about your booths and overall sponsorship. But thanks for joining. Thanks, Phelan, for co-hosting, and we will see you guys next week.