Live SaaStr Insider Webinar: Campus Map Walkthrough

replay. So just a quick intro to these before we kick off. We do these every Thursday. We do these SaaS Insiders Live at 9:00 AM Pacific on Thursdays, and you guys can join them or you can watch the recordings. We also put them into the sponsor portal. So anything you need is also in there, which we'll walk through a bit today as well. So just to kick off on things, to go through today. Um, we've been trying to do a new launch every Thursday, and yes, eventually we'll run out of things to launch to you guys. Um, but we do these every Thursday just to give you guys a sense of what's new and what's going on. So I'm going to share my screen. Um, we'll get into today's content, and then I'll do a few reminders just if this is your first webinar that you're joining or you want to just watch the latest replay. We'll kind of hit a few things here so that you have an overall understanding are caught up on SASTRA Annual. So just a few things. This is the SASTRA Annual sponsor portal. You should all have access to this. If you do not, then please just let us know. We are events@sastainc.com, and we can get you access. Or if you want additional folks to get access to the portal, again, just let us know. We can add them to the portal as well. The portal is going to be your one-stop shop for everything. This year at Stashery Annual, we are constantly updating this. So we've been updating this almost daily, if not weekly. So each time you log in, I mean, again, eventually we'll catch up and everything will be in there. But yeah, there's a lot of really great stuff in there now. So I'm gonna go through this briefly, and then I'll, I'll get into the meat of what we wanna go through today, which is the campus map and the expo booth floor plan to explain how sponsor selection works. Now that we are officially kicking off sponsor selection. Sponsored booth selection today. So again, just a rough overview on the portal if you haven't been here yet. You'll see there's a lot of tabs across the top. Again, this will probably take you about 10 minutes to get orientated with if you haven't logged into this yet, or if you're newer to logging in. On the homepage, I do wanna call out, if you scroll down, a lot of the event overview information is here. Your— the addresses, points of contacts, as well as the sponsor hall hours. I had somebody just ask me this morning where the sponsor hall hours are. If you scroll down here, they are here as you're starting to look to book your travels into SAS Re:Invent, probably around now. This is a good place to look at the sponsor-specific hours for sponsors. They're obviously a little bit longer than a normal attendee if you have extra staff coming. But these are the maximum amount of hours you should plan for at SAS. So that's the home page. A lot of really great venue information and hours there. The next thing you're going to want to do if this is your first time in the portal or if you haven't logged in in a minute and need to check everything out in here, is to complete these tasks under the task list. So you'll see there's a few that you'll see are immediately due. So that's things like your website, your address, your description, logo, your contact information. Again, this should take you about 5 to 10 minutes to fill out. Nothing too hard to do there. You can nominate your lead scanner admin now should you like. If not, we don't need it till April 1st. If you don't know who that should be on site, And then uploading your booth graphics, those are due April 1st. So, yeah, you'll see the link here and then I'll, I'll explain those in a second just to get you caught up. But those are the most recent tasks. One thing I will say is we don't have the sponsor speaker tasks in here yet. When you do upload your slides, this is where you'll upload them to. I know everybody right now, if you do have sponsor content, is still in the phase of determining their content and speakers. So that task will live live here. Shortly. Another thing to, again, just read over if you haven't seen it yet is the sponsor timeline that's here in the portal. Again, super great high-level overview of things that have happened and things that are yet to happen just in the timeline of being a sponsor for SaaStr. So you'll see we launched this portal recently. We've gone over the booth specs last week. There's a whole recording if you go to this webinars tab that lives in there. You can replay the deep dive. It's a really good one to watch, especially as you go into with your design team of what you want to design for Zaster Annual. It is like a 40-minute webinar, but again, you could just watch the section that is just for your level. You do not need to watch the entire thing. I would just watch your section if you're a Gold or Super Gold or Platinum, and that's like 10 minutes of it. So really great walkthrough to walk with, to watch with your design team as you prepare to design your booths. Today we're releasing the floor plan and booth selection. Next week we're releasing booth activations, um, for those that are super golden up. The week after we're doing a sponsor speaker webinar, um, which we'll chat more of Thursdays, right? We're gonna do one like this, hit a lot of reminders. Um, and then booth artwork will be due Tuesday, April 1st. Um, and then we'll start to get into like nitty gritty, just best practices as we get super close to the show. But yeah, like I said, there's pretty much a release, um, happening each week right now for sponsors. Booth specs, as mentioned, there is a whole webinar about this. You can watch it in the webinars tab from last week. But just at a glance, there's two— I just want to point out there's two resources you should— maybe three, including the webinar. There's three resources you should use when designing your booth. The first one is when you come to these booth specs, you'll see these are the design specs at a glance. Why we do two sets is that the design specs at a glance are 3D render. It's nice for you to picture how many people can really fit in the space, how it will look amongst the other booths in the show floor. And then here where we've linked the full design specs, which is in the resources section of the, um, sponsor portal is everything you will need. So this will have the actual measurements, right, of, okay, how much room is between, let's say, this top of the wall to this monitor. You come to the next page, that is all labeled for you here clearly, right? So that's 18.62 inches. So things like that, the very specifics are here. We are going to be adding some Adobe Illustrator, um, templates on Monday. So that's something you can do too. If your team is using Illustrator to design these, you can also just wait till Monday so that all the specs are in there for you. That'll also make it super easy. I know some folks asked for that last year, so we're doing that for this year. So that's Booth Specs again at a glance. There's a whole webinar. You can watch it there. I'll go into the webinars tab. And then I'll kind of hit what we want to talk about today last. But yeah, all the webinars. So there's been 3 so far. They live here in this playlist. So if you notice, this is a little playlist button. You can watch the last 3. Really, if you're in this portal, I would say watch this one on Boost Specs. And then this one today is also super helpful of just an overall overview. You don't have to watch all 4. So webinars live there. Registration, a few people have asked us for their code earlier, and that's totally fine. So if you wanna start registering your team now, just hit us up at events@sasring.com. We can get you your sponsor access code sooner rather than later. But otherwise, we're gonna start sending these in March just so that you guys can register your team anyway. I know a few folks are traveling internationally, so they wanted their tickets now. Again, Again, no worries, just let us know, and this tab will basically walk you through what you do once we send you your code to register. It's pretty easy. Um, just make sure that as a sponsor, each ticket has its own unique email address and ticket holder. Um, resources. We just saw this a bit, but right now this has things such as the boot design specs and the artwork submission guidelines. That'll have things like bleed lines. That's important. And file types for your designers. We do update the resources as we go. So again, Things like shipping, we're gonna be adding things like how to order power and extra AV. We add all those resources. So this will be populated a lot more, but for now it's really focusing on those booth design guidelines. If you're a new sponsor or even if you're a returning sponsor, the FAQ is super handy. These are like a, an amalgamation of questions we've had throughout the years that have been frequently asked. And so we have a lot of the answers here just in the FAQs. Again, the hours are here. When are booth graphic dues? The late fees are there. Shipping at a glance is here. We'll add the labels for you guys, even more questions and answers here. And if there's something you can't find an answer to, just let us know, right? events@sasstraining.com. It goes through a few of us. We make sure we get the right person on it to answer your specific question or area of need. Okay, so the two things we wanna go over today, I'm gonna start with the campus map and then I'll go into the expo. Floor plan. I'm gonna make my screen a little bit bigger here. And if you're following along and you're like, this still looks small on my screen, please log into the sponsor portal, come into the campus map. The other one I'm gonna go under is the expo booth and floor plan map. And it'll show up a lot bigger. You can also, I think, right-click and download it and save it, and then it's a lot bigger if it's not showing up fully on your screen. But this way you can— I'm gonna leave it there 'cause you can mostly see everything at a glance. Coming into the campus map. So a few things I'll explain as it relates to booth selection and being a sponsor. One, there are multiple areas of entry for registration, picking up your badge, pick up and drop off. It's something we try and communicate into our comms. You'll see it's also in that homepage when you go back to it of like, if I'm a sponsor, does it matter which registration I come to? And yes, we'll remind you of this later, but yeah, it kind of does actually. Like as a sponsor, you're gonna wanna come into this number 19 Cloud, Delaware registration because that is where sponsor exhibitor services is too. So like if you get a rental car, if you have stuff you're bringing in and you need help from Freeman to get that over to your booth, they're gonna be at Cloud 19. They're not gonna be at Cloud 1, which I know sometimes is frustrating 'cause you have to go around, but they're gonna be at Cloud 19. So just something to keep in mind as a sponsor, you're gonna wanna default going to Delaware. Now when it gets closer, right, you're gonna pop into Uber and be like, oh, I'm just gonna go to the San Mateo Event Center. Sometimes they will route you to Cloud Number 1. Usually that's the default. So we do have the addresses listed here. You'll see we also put the street names on it so you can at a glance look in your Ubers of where you're going. But the Delaware address is the main address. It's also the shipping address for sponsors. So that's where you should route. That's where we put a lot of the exhibitor services into Delaware. So just something to be mindful of there. Because there are multiple entrances. For those asking, if I'm a sponsor, can I use the VIP entrance? This is a speaker VIP entrance. So these are folks that are either speakers of SAS or Annual or were invited to one of the kind of invite-only summits that we have. If your sponsor speaker wants to use that entrance, they can do so. But we kindly ask that you don't have staff going through there. The lines at registration are really never longer than a minute to get in. And we have extra hours just for sponsors to come and get their badges. Highly recommend you utilize that so you're never caught in like the crush of just everyone trying to get in. It's a disaster at once. There's a lot of ways to get around that and make sure you're at your booth before everybody else comes in. Okay, coming into other things on the campus, I'll start with the two hangars. So the two hangars, West and East, are literally— they used to be old airplane hangars, so they're huge. I know. The like one disservice of a map like this is obviously it's not to scale. Keep in mind our campus is a massive 40-acre campus just to spread out throughout this entire thing. So yeah, you know, walking from the coworking space to the EVC is a small walk. It's probably like, I don't know, 4 to 5 minutes depending how many people are also walking. But yeah, the 2 hangars are the main areas that you'll be in the most during SASTR. So Hangar West and Hangar East, there is a connection and junction that we put in between them to really make them contiguous. They're where you're gonna spend a lot of your time. Um, but I do think you should spend some time outside as well. But yeah, the hangars are where you're gonna spend a lot of your time during SaaStr specifically as a sponsor of this year's event. Now you'll notice again, maybe a different take we put on these two hangars, maybe versus other shows you've been a part of, or maybe this is your first show that you're a part of as a sponsor. Which I know some of you are, is the hangars are in the center of literally all the action. They are the center of the action. They are the center of attention. I was just talking to somebody the other day who had previously attended FASTR and has been like longtime fans. This is their first time officially sponsoring. And they were like, yeah, even as attendees, I remember it was a lot. Like, it's a lot as attendees, as sponsors, it's even more because you guys have slightly longer hours. But this is where, you know, as the weeks go on, we'll talk about things like rotating rotating your booth staff, having different people so that you don't have, you know, 2 people in the booth the whole time. They're gonna feel a little bit overwhelmed by the time it's day 3. And that is because both the hangars we engineer to, one, have no bad booths as a sponsor, and two, they are the majority of traffic. So you'll— things like there's all the, you know, all the main or core stages, if you will, are in both hangars. A lot of the networking is in both hangars. The sponsors are in both hangars. The summits are now in one of the hangars. The brain dates, the workshops, the Founders Lounge, the, you know, Speakeasy Lounge, a lot of that is in the hangars, which is great because if you're trying to get to one of those things as well as a sponsor, you can get to it handy. But it also means, you know, this is the core of where most people hang out and where the most traffic is. So yes, we do recommend on those hours that are on the homepage of the sponsor portal, you know, some people ask us like, hey, can I shave an hour off here or there? The answer is yes, of course you can. Like it's, it's entirely up to you. But one thing to keep in mind just as we get into things is there are people who come early, right? There's a lot of international people who also come to SaaStr and they're up earlier, right? They're used to it being already the afternoon for them. Pacific time is one of the most brutal time zones to get acquainted to if you're coming from overseas and they're only here for a few days, so they're not really adjusted. And so we get people literally, if we open reg at 7, there's people there at 7. They're having a coffee, they're talking to sponsors. I've seen them talk to sponsors. I've had sponsors tell me, you know, the first person I talked to was a really good prospect. I'm glad I was here. Or conversely, I've had people say the opposite, like literally the last person that came up to the booth during the wrap party was somebody that we closed as a deal. So again, we recommend being there the entirety of those hours. Obviously it's going to ebb and flow in terms of how much traffic you get, but just know overall we've engineered this campus and these two hangars to have constant foot traffic. So that's the biggest difference I want to express to everyone. If you're new to SASTR or just remind folks, if this is not your first SASTR, it is constant foot traffic. It's a lot. It goes by really fast. So it is best to, to come prepared, right? We do these webinars. We help you guys get up to speed as much as we can, and it's going to go by really quickly. I know some people will wait until, you know, the days that they get there to be like, okay, now let's figure out what's on our TV. Maybe let's figure out our pitch and refine it a little better on day one. And it's kind of too late for that because the time that we open the hall on day 1, people come, like it's a half day for attendees. And so they're eager to get in. They're ready to be talking to folks and going to content and talking to all of you. So just one thing to bear in mind on these 2 hangars is they are really great. They're over the center of attention on traffic. There's a lot going on with them. And just know that one, when you pick a booth, which we'll talk about next, there's no bad booth. But just in terms of like overall staffing and things to take advantage of, right? We always recommend you have, you use, you know, whatever extra tickets you have or get some extra tickets to have people experience FASTR not only as being in the booth and doing booth duty, but also as attendees, right? There's a lot of networking on campus. There's a lot of other areas on campus and programs we do to take advantage of that you won't necessarily be able to if you're in the booth the whole time, all 3 days. So something to keep in mind there as you're starting to plan things out. And then I'll go into what these things are in these hangars. So in the Hangar West, this is where the sponsor hall will be. I'll show you that zoomed in version in a second. The Cantina, so that's really, you know, like a, it's Star Wars name inspired, like the Star Wars Cantina, but that's the watering hole, right? Of SAS Re:Invent. There's coffee, there's food and beverage all day there. I felt some people asked me this question last year of like, If I'm a sponsor, like, what are like the food times and hours? Which is the same as it is for attendees, right? You guys are more than welcome to eat anywhere on campus. So there's a lot of places, yes, in Hangar West, and there's some in Hangar East. There's gonna be more in Hangar West 'cause there's more people. We typically do food trucks about here. So in between Cloud One and Hangar West, we usually put some food trucks out here as well. So if you're ever like, you know, the lunch isn't outside or grab and go. Some of it is hot grab and go. So I know we have like a grill here that does hot grab and go foods like, um, chicken tenders, burgers, stuff like that. So that's, it's grab and go style. And then we do food trucks outside. So like, I, I know on Tuesday we're doing like Taco Tuesday. So like, so the tacos are out there. Again, that might be something as a sponsor, nice to have like a floater person. If you're like, okay, I've got, you know, maybe 2 to 3 people in a gold booth, I'm gonna have a floater person so that we can trade off like going to get tacos, talking to people, or we're getting tacos, walking around the campus. Again, things like that. Nice to have, right? Because it's going to be busy the entire time. But that's the cantina. The AI demo stage. This is new this year. So I don't know if you guys have seen some of the releases we've done that we're partnering with our friends at Mayfield to do this AI demo and pitch stage. I will say too, if you're a sponsor and you have an AI feature or you're an AI-first company, which some of you are, I would apply for this thing because they're doing a funding of $500K up to $5 million. You can apply on FastReannual.com. You'll see it in the nav. It says AI pitch stage. As a sponsor, you should totally apply. It doesn't mean I can like influence the judges and say that you win the $5 million of funding. Uh, but we definitely recommend that you guys also apply. You're not exempt from getting this funding from being a sponsor. So definitely gonna want to, um, apply to that now. Okay. Other things in Hangar West. There are things like the casino, which are at the front. This is where poker night will be. And then other times it's just open play. If you want to, again, network over a game of poker. The AI stage, as it's kind of called, has all AI content. The cloud stage, that's more B2B SaaS that does have some AI content. Who do you want to meet? This is a new networking lounge we're doing. So a lot of you that were super golden up last year were able to take advantage of this program we did called Who Do You Want to Meet? And we're bringing it back this year. We're making it bigger. More details to come out. Again, we'll launch it on this webinar so that we do a whole walkthrough and deep dive on it. But this will have its own lounge again, closer to sponsor. So easier for you guys to take meetings there. The coworking space is another great area to take meetings. If you're like, I need to meet somebody, maybe not in the booth. Coworking space is a great way to do that. There's kind of like another food station back there, drinks, and you can also watch the main stage, which is kind of nice. So I know some folks also like if they need to go, if they need to go do some work, that's a good way. That's a good area to do it. Now, if you're looking for a place to do a Zoom, I would do it outside. Outside. Like I would come over to Sassafras Square Park. There's plenty of seating out here. There's also plenty of seating actually between these two hangars to go do a Zoom. So if you're like, I need to take a meeting, it happens during SaaStr. I wouldn't recommend inside areas because they're gonna be louder just by the nature of being inside, but I'd actually go anywhere outside and that way also you can get some sun. Okay. Hangar East. This is the workshop hangar. So this has our summit stage. This has our Brain Date workshops. This has our partner workshops. This has the Founder's Lounge. This is where you're gonna go for the deep dives, all the workshops and the speakeasy. You're gonna be going back and forth between these two things again as a team. If you're doing things right and you're working all of SaaStr Annual, you're probably gonna go to some content and you're, so you're gonna be going back and forth between basically the workshops hangar and then the main hangar west. SaaStr Square Park, as it says the name, you know, it's a huge kind of park and beer garden that we built out. The Super Brain Dates are out here for like networking in the parks. If you're doing any of those, that's out here. If you do have sponsored content, you know, they're gonna wanna go to Cloud 16, which is the green room. There's also a VC and VIP lounge out there in Cloud 17. So if you do have a meeting with a VC, you can take it there. The EBC is kind of like an invite-only thing that we do with a few other folks. And then yeah, the rest of the campus, again, Open seating, lots of places, lots of things concentrated in these two hangars. You can also, if you're like, I forgot what Amelia said, what one of these cloud means, if you load up this campus map and scroll down, all the descriptions are here of kind of like what these things are at a glance. And you'll see them called out once we release the launch agenda next week, which is coming out. Again, we'll walk you guys through that next Thursday as well as activations. And so that will also give you a better sense of kind of like where things are concentrated. But again, you're gonna see most things are in these two hangars. So just coming into the sponsor expo in particular, I'm gonna go into that one. Okay, this is the sponsor, um, booth. So basically if you take that map I just showed you guys and zoomed in on it, um, this will show you where all the individual booths are. Now, if you were a sponsor last year, this is it's gonna look super familiar. There's some different improvements and changes to our process, but again, gonna look very familiar. If you're new and this is your first time doing booth selection with us, there's a few things to keep in mind, and I'm actually gonna zoom out here to show you more of the sponsor floor. Okay, that's a little better. So a few things to keep in mind here as we launch booth selection also today. First and foremost, we always go in level of order and contract signature date. And so what we mean by that is, you know, the Diamonds go first, then the Platinum Plus, then Platinum, then Super Gold, and then Gold. There have been previous years where we did that like concurrently, like, okay, we're going to let the Diamonds pick and whoever's at the start of the Super Gold pick. We don't do it that way anymore for a lot of reasons, one being that a lot of our sponsors I know that are currently at the Diamond and Platinum Plus and Platinum level have been previous sponsors. Some are new, and sometimes they don't always pick where we think they want to pick. So for instance, like these are earmarked as Platinum Pluses, but this Platinum Plus sponsor may say, you know, I actually really want to be at the north entrance, please put my booth there. And so that's why we don't do it concurrently anymore. We were able to do this a little bit last year, but this year that's why we're going a bit more stricter in order of level and contract signature date. So what does that mean for you as a sponsor? Well, one, it really means we are technically kicking off today, but that means like, you know, the top 5 or 6 people that are at that level of Diamond and Platinum Plus are probably going to take a week or so to pick their booth. So there's really nothing for you guys to do today. Sorry if that's a bit of a letdown. I would, however, go through this map and the other map with your team. I know it's the end of the month, so maybe it's something you do early next week. But I would sit as a team knowing your level, right? And just kind of earmarking where you think you wanna be. Again, there's no bad news with Jasper because they're constant foot traffic. So for things like, you know, this bottom level, if you use this again in tandem with the campus map, which I'm gonna try and tab over here. You'll notice things like, okay, these booths down here that are next to the casino. If I line that up with the map, that's by one of the entrances, right? So again, some people like that. Some people are like, I wanna be near the entrance. Some people are like, you know, I'd rather be closer to the food or to the connector entrance, 'cause I think more people will be there throughout the day versus just times when they're coming and going at Sasser. But again, remember there's things like food trucks out by the entrance too. And other things that will pull people that way during the day. Again, dealer's choice. I don't think there's any bad booths. We looked at the data from last year. There wasn't like one location did, you know, astronomically better. Well, the Diamonds did, but in terms of each level, there's no like one location that does astronomically better than another because again, we engineer this floor specifically to have no bad booths and have constant foot traffic. So I would take it more as an exercise of where do I feel like I wanna be that will suit my brand? And also what I'm pitching, right? Like if you're an AI company or if you're really going hard on AI, you might wanna be closer to the AI stage that has all AI content all days. I know a lot of people did that last year. They were like, I've got AI stuff I wanna talk about. I wanna be near the AI stage. Great. Keep in mind now there's also an AI demo stage here. So there's kind of like two AI stages. So kind of this whole spread is good if you're like, I'm gonna be, AI. Some people that are more at, again, the super gold level really like to be at these ones that immediately ring the cantina because they're one of the most highly trafficked areas, right? People are coming and going, they're getting coffee, they're getting food. Again, some people really like that. Some people are like, I don't want them to be coming and going. I want them to be like purposefully more so in the sponsor hall. And so they'll pick more of a middle row. Again, kind of dealer's choice on what you're doing. If you have like an activation, sometimes people like to be again in the middle row because they want to do an activation that brings people over. Versus having them, you know, being maybe distracted by food or coffee or whatever it might be. No bad booze, but I think it's just up to you and your guys' company and brand and message you want to get across of where you ultimately end up in the sponsor hall. So that's how it works at a glance. We do, again, just as a reminder, we go in order of level and then contract signature date. So what that will mean for most of you that are at the Super Gold and Gold level, means that in reality, probably it's not going to be your time to pick your booth for another couple of weeks. If you're like, I'm going to be out of office for part of March, you can email us, you know, either now or when it's closer to your out of office to do a check-in and say, hey, you know, how close are we getting to picking our booth? Should I worry about it? Or, you know, my out of office is only a few days. You guys aren't going to be at me yet. I don't have to worry about it yet. So that's something you can do. Just email us if you want to gauge check kind of where we are in the process. We'll update you next Thursday on the webinar of where we are in the process as well. But yeah, just keep all that in mind. And once we do get to you to pick your booth, again, we do it in order of level and contract signature date. So all the Diamonds, Platinum Pluses, Platinums, we'll pick one at a time. Once we get into Super Golds, we do do waves of Super Golds. So we'll do all the Super Golds. Usually in waves of like 5 or so, and you'll give us some of your top choices. The other thing to keep in mind, and you'll see this in your instructions when it's time to choose your booth, is you can tell us if you're like, hey, I think this person as a competitor either might be sponsoring SaaStr already or has been talking about sponsoring SaaStr, and I don't want to be near them. You can say that. Or if you're like, hey, I want to be near this partner that is actually sponsoring SaaStr, you can do the reverse and let us know too, and we'll try and put you guys as close as we can together, if not neighbors. But that's just something to bear in mind too. You can let us know if there's any folks you want to kind of not ban, but just not be as close to in the sponsor floor. So that's the gist of booth selection. I know there's questions coming into the Q&A. Keep putting your questions in. We'll do Q&A at the end if we haven't I don't think we've covered— at a glance, I don't think I've covered those two topics yet. There. So the other thing to keep in mind in booth selection is, again, we'll give you an update on kind of where we are too. There's no bad booths. Try to make David a co-host here. I don't know if that's quite working.

Hey, sorry, I had some technical troubles. I'm here to help with Q&A. See?

All good.

Very good. Okay.

Anything? What did I miss though? You know, on— I know I've been going on for like half an hour on just reminders and campus map. What do you think I've missed on? I'm sure I missed something on like the campus or the floor plan for folks to keep in mind.

I think you nailed it. I think you nailed it. I think last year the layout that we did was just— we got just great reviews on it. It's funny because—

For sure.

Sponsors, almost no matter where they were, they kind of were coming up to me and saying, hey, I love my spot and I wanted—

yeah, I want the same one.

So it didn't matter which corner of the world they were on, they all said, oh, this is the best spot. I was like, yep. So, you know, I mean, they were— they really were all pretty good. Like, the traffic flowed from all the different entrances and the north entrance. And I think just keeping in mind that who do you want to meet, which is new this year, and a new lounge, that could be just a new sort of, uh, great spot to be near because folks are going to be going there a lot, you know.

Yeah.

Um, so I know, I think you got it. I think we made some, like, it's going to be mostly the same as last year, right? But some, like, a couple little tweaks that I think are going to make it even better.

So a couple little tweaks. Yeah, like you mentioned, right, the feedback was really good. Um, like, if you guys missed the one last week, again, recommend watching it. We made some tweaks to the booths even between September and now, just based on sponsor feedback of adding some of the headers, adding some more storage. That was all based on sponsor feedback. Maybe, you know, giving the Platinums a little bit more branding in their booth. So for things like this floor plan, right, that was also feedback on a lot of the higher-level sponsors want to be able to pick their booth just outright, right? Like they want to say, okay, I'm a Diamond. If I want to be at the entrance, I should be able to be at the entrance. And like, of course. So that is something we've improved for this year of, yeah, these are like suggestions for the Diamonds. If you want to, you know, last year they were by the Main Stage. They can either keep that or they can pick anywhere else on this floor plan. Um, so that's something newer we're doing, right? Not to say that like the D— like we're wrong and the Diamonds are right. Um, but to some degree, like, we like to give the people what they want if we can do it. So that's why we go in order of level. Now I will say we're going to be a little bit stricter on things like the Super Golds and Golds because there's, there's a higher volume of you guys. And so yeah, those are going to be placed more so where the Super Golds and Golds are now. But again, I imagine we'll get a few Supers that are like, I actually want to be at the entrance, like, and we'll try and accommodate that as we can if we— once we get there. But yeah, that's why we were going a little bit stricter in order of level and date this year. And again, it's just something to keep in mind. For either next year, or if you're like, oh, now knowing that, maybe I want to be at a Platinum level so I can pick anywhere.

Um, you could still upgrade, actually, you know, there's still a chance, right? And we do have more Platinums this year, uh, we do. And so yeah, we do. Yeah, we'll see.

But, uh, yeah, it's funny, I was just thinking about it. I was like, they're not actually all on here yet because we just added like another one today, and I'm like, I only had a few on here, so I have to—

yeah.

But again, they could pick from wherever, so it doesn't super matter. But yeah, Platins are interestingly up this year. I would say Supergolds and Golds are about the same mix as last year.

The same. Yeah.

Yeah.

Wouldn't surprise me if we end up with more.

So yeah. Yeah, exactly. So yeah, I think again, just a lot of food for thought here on different strategies I've seen. I've never been right when it comes to betting on where people will pick their booth. You know, if when it comes down to it being your turn, you're like, no, I would like a suggestion. Like, yeah, we can make you guys a suggestion for sure. But I've, I've never been able to fully guess where I think sponsors will go. I think oftentimes a lot of sponsors actually take the— and the reason we have so many aisles, right, is to force kind of the amount of end caps we have to force, like, you know, in the flow of people, they do go down these two sections because there's not a lot of room. I mean, again, this is not to scale, but like You're basically zooming by the stage here. If you're going this way, you're basically zooming by like food and the bathrooms this way. Like it's fairly narrow. Um, and the aisles for sponsors are a little bit bigger. Um, so again, people like to zoom down here and yeah, sometimes people will be like, I'm the first Super Gold and I'm gonna pick 206. I'm like, okay. I wouldn't have thought that that would be the first one to go. Like I always think it's gonna be the people around the cantina. Or nearest to the stages, which is somewhat true. But yeah, again, a lot of people do pick kind of the middle ones.

People in 206 last year, if I'm remembering right, they crushed it and they renewed right away. They're back. So it might already be taken by them, but we'll see.

Yeah, we'll see. We will see. All right. I think just last things again, you guys can use these kind of like hand in hand. I'll zoom back in between the campus map And the expo floor plan. Hopefully too early if you guys join late or if you're watching about the recording. Hopefully it was helpful to go through a little bit of the sponsor portal. With that, let's do Q&A. I'll just go to the FAQ screen for now. Actually, maybe I'll leave it on the campus map. I don't know why I did that. I'm gonna leave it on the map. And we can do Q&A. If you guys have any questions we haven't gotten to, please drop them into the chat. Okay, first question is, what is the situation on Reich share. It was hard to find last year. So the answer on rideshare as a sponsor, I'm gonna answer for sponsors because the answer's gonna be different for attendees. There is a rideshare pickup and drop-off in this Cloud 19. So you should always be using that address. That is the 2495 South Delaware Street address. There is a rideshare pickup and drop-off there. There is a rideshare pickup and drop-off here. Again, Just in the nature of being in the Bay Area and having lived here, the default is Cloud 1. So I get it's confusing as a sponsor because everything you put into your phone when you put in San Mateo Event Center is gonna route you to this Cloud 1. But as a sponsor, you wanna be at Cloud 19. So just save that address, 2495 South Delaware Street. Listen, it's not the end of the world if your Uber drops you at Cloud 1. Not to say you can't pick up your badge there. And we can't let you in. If you have stuff, we can't receive it there because all the receiving people are at Cloud 19. So again, if you get dropped off there and it's just you coming into your booth, it's not the end of the world. You can also get picked up there. But that is something where, again, I wouldn't rely on the default of the Uber phone. Same thing goes for pickup, right? You can tell the Uber where to pick you up. So again, if you're a sponsor and you're like, I wanna just get picked up and drop off at the same location because it's too confusing with the two addresses. Listen, I get it. It's 40 acres. That's why there's literally two different addresses for disaster pickup and drop off. One is on the Delaware side, one is on the Saratoga side. It's because the campus is literally that huge, um, that there's multiple street addresses. So I would do the same thing for pickup. I would just save that 2495 South Delaware Street address. Put that into your phone. Don't use the PIN on Uber. I think that's where a lot of people have gone wrong, even attendees, right? But specifically as a sponsor, I would put that back in as your pickup address. That way, you know, okay, I'm just going to walk back out to Cloud 19. That's where I got dropped off. That's where I want to get picked up. 2495 South Delaware Street. Then, you know, without fail, they're going to go into that lot. There's no other lot on the street that they can go into. So that's, that's what I would do, right? Like I would just plan to anchor on Cloud 19 for pickup, rideshare, all things like that. Super easy to do. Now the one caveat, not to confuse everyone, as a sponsor is if you do end up taking the shuttle, it's gonna drop you at Cloud 1. Again, fine if you don't have stuff with you. I think a lot of you taking the shuttle wouldn't have stuff with you because shuttle's not gonna take all your boxes, disaster, from your hotel. So that's just one thing to keep in mind. Like, If you are trying to utilize the shuttle as a sponsor, um, because it's free to the two hotels that it goes to, it is gonna drop you at Cloud One. So that might just mean something like on the setup day, Uber on the setup day, like Uber to Cloud 19 on the setup day. And the other three days you can just take the shuttle and it'll drop you right here, probably super close to your booth. Um, so that's the only caveat. But other than that, if you're planning on ridesharing, use the Delaware address for both pickup and drop off. That is how you can guarantee of where it will come pick you up. Otherwise, I honestly have seen it go either way. I've seen sometimes where you use the pin on Uber, it picks you up at 1, sometimes it picks you up at 19. So if you want it to be accurate without fail, I would just use the street address. And again, as a sponsor, 2495 South Delos— Delaware Street, you know, San Mateo, California. Um, that is the better one to use specifically as a sponsor. So hopefully that helps. I think that's a good question because it's just a good tip for folks. And that's just something, again, we will remind you guys of as we get closer. Write this on your— write the— do people write addresses on their hand, right? Like write it on your hand like this. Or like if you make a GCal invite for your team, that's the address I would use. I think that's a good tip people kind of sleep on is like, I make one for our team because sometimes they'll go to the wrong entrance. It happens to us too. Again, not the end of the world if you come to the wrong entrance. But it's something where I'll make people just like a Google Calendar. I'll send it to them and I'll be like, yeah, for— I actually send staff to Cloud 19 cuz it's, it's closer to where we wanna be. So yeah, I send people there too. And so I give them the Delaware address. I tell them the same thing for pickup, like make sure you designate the address for the pickup and then you'll be fine. Right. Otherwise, yeah, I get that it's confusing and Uber can kind of go to one of the two parking lots if you don't tell it which one. Specifically. So good question. Is the next question, is there a list of hotels you recommend? That's a great question. We are, we are working on our hotel blocks. I should have links to you guys by Monday. You know, just keep in mind it's also their end of month. So a lot of these hotels I am working with the group salespeople, they're also salespeople. And so it's also the end of the month for them. So yeah, we should have that Monday. Again, that's something we'll add to the portal as soon as we have it. So you'll get the link. I know next week too, after the crush of like end of month that we're feeling and you're probably feeling, we will do a sponsor newsletter just with a little— that hits a lot of these points. We'll put the link in there. We'll put some of these high-level reminders, but that link will be in there. Just off the top of my head though, if you want to book it now, I don't know how crazy different the rates are, but the Hampton Inn is like the San Mateo Hotel. That's closest to the venue that the shuttle will go to. So that's the Hampton Inn San Mateo. If you've been a previous sponsor and you're like, oh, I'm just gonna go to Crown Plaza because that's where we always stayed. Crown Plaza has construction this year. So they don't have any rooms. So just bear that in mind. If you get turned down, it's not because it's sold out. It's because they're literally just closed for May. So just keep that in mind. So Hampton Inn is a good bet. And then again, really anything in San Mateo. Will be— there's like a huge Marriott there that you can also go to that's close to the venue. And there's a few others that are more like budget hotels, again, that are within like 10 minutes of the campus. So maybe just last thing we'll wrap on for folks that are new here, and apologies, this webinar was a little bit longer. We've been trying to keep these to 20 minutes, but I think good Q&A. Just, I think one thing to be mindful of is like this campus will pretty much have everything you need. Like, I know it is, you know, not like a, let's say, Dreamforce, which is down the street from us typically around the same time, but not this year. You know, you're in the city, you're in SF, you're like, ah, I can walk around Moscone, then I could just go get a lunch wherever or go get a Starbucks. One, yeah, you can walk to Starbucks. There is a Starbucks. It takes the about 15 minutes. I know because I've walked it. So it's about 15 minutes away. I will say everybody mobile orders there, so I can't stand. But yeah, if you're like, you know, I'm just really hankering for a Starbucks more than anything, yeah, it's about a 15-minute walk to it and then a 15-minute walk back. So yeah, you know, you can get there. There's a mall that's about a 15 to 20-minute walk. It's the Hillsdale Mall. Again, if you want to meet people off campus, Hillsdale Mall has a lot of restaurants you can do that in. There's like some fancier ones and there's some like, you know, normal ones that are quick service, if you will. So that's a good place if you want to meet somebody off campus. The other thing I'll say on the, on the matter of like coffee and like Starbucks, like we bring in a specialty coffee vendor. We're like, I don't go to Starbucks.

I'm like, it's really good.

I'm a coffee— pretty— it's so good.

I'm like, I need coffee and they're really good.

So yeah. It's really good. Not only that, but we have like 5 different types of coffee. I wanna say like we do drip coffee, right? So if you just want like a normal, I just wanna get my coffee in and like throw some creamer in it, whatever. I just want it black. Like there's drip coffee pretty much everywhere. There's my favorite, which is the cold brew. Don't sleep on the cold brew. We actually made extra last year because a lot of people were going through it and I was like, it's so good. So yeah, the cold brew is really good. It's like Ilé cold brew. It's fantastic. That's what I live off of at Zaster. And then yeah, I live off the specialty coffee. So Excelsior Coffee, which we've had last year and it's going to do a bigger footprint this year, does specialty lattes. So if you're like, I don't want to go to Starbucks, but you have like, you know, 5 to 10— there is going to be a line, duh. Like everybody wants a specialty coffee. But like, if you want a specialty coffee, go wait in line for 5 minutes. They'll make you, you know, like a vanilla chai latte or whatever. And it's good. Like It's pretty good, man. So like on that point, you don't really have to leave the campus to get coffee. Things like breakfast, I say we do some of, I don't know why, just for years I say this every year. A lot of our sponsors and attendees like will eat before they come or they just don't eat breakfast. Or they're like very particular about breakfast. Like me, I do like overnight oats, so I'm like, I don't need like a bagel or breakfast burrito or stuff like that. I'm a little picky when it comes to breakfast, so we do a little bit of breakfast as a sponsor. It's typically for sponsors. There's like, you know, there are things like bagels and stuff like that on the days of SASSR, but there's typically not a lot of breakfast. I'll say that's, that's where we don't go over. We don't like to waste, right? So in years past when we had a lot of breakfast, a lot of it went to, you know, had to be donated. So we don't like to waste. So we do a smaller amount of breakfast, but then there's things like, you know, lunch again, you can go to any any of the grab-and-go spots throughout the campus. They'll have all the, you know, we try and hit all the dietary restrictions of like vegan, vegetarian, meat-free, gluten-free, kosher. There's a few kosher. And if you ever can't find it, just like come, you know, you guys will know me, David, you'll start to know the rest of our sponsor team as we get closer so that you know their faces. Like just come ask us or whatever, come, you know, text the— I don't know, maybe I feel like I need to make like a text hotline for this year for sponsors, like, um, 1-800-SAUCER or something. I don't know. Yeah. Uh, I'll look into the hotline, but yeah, maybe you'll be able to text the hotline if you have a question. Um, so yeah, things like that. Again, you'll have plenty of lunch on campus. It's a matter of though making sure you eat because it is, you know, It's lunch every day. Um, the two core days of, so the second and third day, 11:30 to 1:30 doesn't change, hasn't changed for years. The first day, cuz it's a half day, it's the same for sponsors. So we will feed you guys lunch during your loading. And then we do Taco Tuesday at like 3. So if you're like, ah, I'm gonna, a lot of people last year were like, I'm gonna hold out for tacos. I was like, yeah, sure. Like they're good. Uh, but yeah, it's a matter of like all the food trucks will be out here. We can't park them inside. Um, believe me, I tried. It's, it's, it smells too much like gas when you park them inside. So yeah, they are all parked outside, um, closer to this Cloud One, but just know, you know, pop your head out, get some, uh, food truck tacos or whatever else we have for food trucks, and then go back into the sponsor hall or the cantina right here in the middle. We'll have grab and go. This area has grab and go. This area will have hot grab and go. Um, this area has grab. Again, there's like grab and go pretty much everywhere. So super easy to get to. And then yeah, like other things you guys might need, again, like we said, you know, the coworking space, great to go do some work. The cantina actually has a lot of tables in it too. So if you need to leave your booth and just do a few things, cantina has a lot of space to do that. We also throw like snacks throughout the day in the cantina. There's like different beverages. So again, there's coffee, there's tea, there's like water, there's soft drinks, you know, there's, there's things not just coffee. If you're not a coffee person. And again, if you need to take a meeting, I would take it in Sasha Square Park outside. I would meet somebody there. There's a lot of places on campus just to sit and also chill. I know some people have asked me that, like, where do you want to go sit and chill? Like, go to the beer garden, man. Like, it's not beer all day. There's kombucha in the morning. But yeah, go chill in the beer garden. Like, take a call out there. Have some time with your team out there. Like, and just hang out for a minute away from the chaos. So. Yeah, there's a lot of really great places just to hang out. And really, again, the, the reason— I'll end on this if there's no more questions— the reason we emphasize like trading off people on your team is so that you guys can also have fun. Like there's a lot of— like 2 years ago we had a zipline. Like I was like, ah, I wonder how many people get on that thing. And they did. But like a lot of sponsors like, oh, I ran outta time. I'm like, dude, like just, you know, trade off with your team, go ride the zipline for 10 minutes and get some fresh air and touch grass as the kids say. So yeah, lots to do at SaaStr. The agenda, more so of like the content agenda is coming next week. Next week we're also gonna be talking about sponsor activations. We'll do reminders like we did this week. But in the meantime, if you guys have any questions, events@saastrinc.com. Again, there's like 5 of us on it. So if you route it there, we'll route it to the right place. You don't have to worry about it. Hopefully you guys are getting excited. You know, take a look at this. We'll, we'll let you know once it's getting closer to pick your booth. Look at those booth specs, you know, maybe early next week after the chaos of the end of the month. Start to design your booths. If you have sponsored content, you all have an email from our speakers team. Please pay attention to that in your inbox if you've got it. And yeah, anything else, David?

I think we covered it. I think we're good. We'll be caffeinated and ready to go. So definitely going to be a great start. Just stick with the portal and We'll be back next week, right?

Yeah, as always. Yeah, sounds good. Yeah. Thanks everyone for joining. We will see you next Thursday. Bye.