LIVE Sponsor Insider Webinars

I want to share. Is it this one? Yeah, I don't want it to be in a boot loop there. Okay, cool. Let me go here. All right, sweet. I'm going to drop this in the chat real quick before I go full screen. For folks who don't have this, we use this webinar deck every Thursday. So like you can see us updating it. The link will stay the same for like the next, whatever, 5, however many Thursdays there are between now and annual, probably 5. So we use this for the next few ones as well. So just handy to have it there. If you guys have any questions preemptively, please drop them into the chat and we'll also do Q&A at the end. I do wanna go through some of the event, like, logistics, if you will. I think that's become a more so common question that we're starting to see with the events and production team. So we'll go through the majority of that today. Today, as well as like just the upcoming timeline, so you guys know where we're kind of at now, especially if you just got dropped in. So first and foremost, thanks to almost everyone turning in their boots on time. So I think there's only like— I can count on one hand how many are left, um, which is great because as I said, some of you— I can count also on actually maybe two hands how many people signed in the last 7 days. So that's pretty impressive, pretty impressive.

It might be a record, right? A record, you know, turn-in percentage. I think it's—

yeah, I think it is actually. It means we have the best sponsors ever this this year. You guys are on top of it, so super appreciate that. Um, so what happens now, right? Um, as we've said to you guys in email, once we've gotten your graphics— some of you guys just needed like a little bit of tweaking. I know you guys are working through that, so, um, all good there. Um, what happens is once it's like complete and final, we have been sending it off to Freeman. We share it with them, and they're starting to work on your guys's proofs. So that'll be like an early next week kind of thing where you start to get proofs, even though you turned it in technically on time, you will, you know, avoid the late fees. And the proofs, just because everyone turns in at once, um, do take a couple days. So by next week you'll get your proof, and that will give you a chance to see what it will look like, um, just placed for Saturanal. And if you need to make any last-minute changes because something doesn't look the way you want it to, um, you can do that then. So that's the next phase for everyone who started in their booth. So you'll get your proof next week, um, and you're good to go. Um, a few of you, we are chasing what we call your booth headers. So I'm gonna flipped slides just for a second here of what we're talking about. So I think we have about half your booth headers. I know it's technically due today in the sponsor portal. So if you haven't done it yet, you can either do it in the sponsor portal or you can just email me or you can just email events. It really doesn't matter. Because you'll get a reminder by the end of the day if we don't have it by the end of the day. But basically, if you're a gold, super gold, platinum, platinum plus, you've got what we call this booth header. That will display your category. These were the original categories. I know there's a few more just because a few people fell into like new categories together. So if you go into the portal, that will give you the kind of like most latest and greatest list of the categories to pick. So if you haven't picked yet, just pick your category again. You can send it to the portal or you can just send it to me, ai@safestrength.com, and we'll make sure it gets added to your proof. We just want to make sure it is on your proof when Freeman sends it. Just so that way you can see it all together. I know some people were like, oh, I didn't, didn't put 2 and 2 together that like this was designed by Sastre. So I think it'll be helpful to see. So from that perspective, if you haven't picked your header yet, please confirm it with us. And you can skip it. So you can say no header in the category. You could just tell us no header. And on that question, I know a few people ask like, is everyone doing their headers? How many people have skipped? I would say there's about like 5 people who have skipped out of the 75. So a minority of people, right? So most people have a header. In a category. So if that's any context while you pick your header today, that's the list. And a lot of people are maybe unsurprisingly in the AI category. So I'm like, there's a lot of AI and I've seen a lot of security and compliance. There's a few of those. So that's it on booth headers, but that's kind of the next, just for a reminder, we wanted to go through there. You're on the weekly webinar, which is Great. Boot selection, I do wanna talk about just for 60 or 90 seconds. So I'm gonna flip to the latest and greatest floor plan here. This is up to date. We did go to the last and final Super Golds today. So what that means for you guys is the last, I think 4 or 5 Super Golds are picking as of today to pick their boots. And once they finalize, which I assume will be by tomorrow, we will go out to the Golds. So if you're in the first wave of like early renewal Golds, You'll get an email tomorrow to pick your booth. Just considering how fast and efficient the Super Goals went, I imagine if you're a Gold sponsor, at some point next week we're gonna hit you up to pick your booth. It did go really fast for Super Goals. I know we said last week it's probably gonna go really fast now, and that's 'cause most of you have been staring at this and you're like kind of ready with your game plan of, of where you wanna pick. So I assume by the time we get on this call next week, we'll talk about this only for 30 seconds 'cause most of you will have your booth by this time. Time next week, which is great. So, yeah, this is the latest and greatest there. Lots of folks around the Cantina. That's maybe not surprising as well, the AI stage. So, yeah, really no shockers yet on placement for the Supers. But, yeah, that's kind of where we're at in booth selection. Activation. So because we just went out to the last wave of Super Gold, we We are now confirming activations with those eligible. So that's the Super Gold and up levels. I know there's a few Golds have been asking if they can also do activations. There's a chance, right? I know some of you have emailed us already for like super turnkey things in a Gold that fit. That's things like games, video games, you know, prepackaged items. Again, things that are not what we consider a Premier Activation. So you'll start to see that information I would say late next week. So probably by this time next week, only because, again, a lot of those premier activations are still being chosen by the Super Golds. That usually takes a little bit longer because of the coordination required and just because it's, you know, an extra cost that you have to budget for if you wanna do an activation. So just a note there, and I'll talk about activations again later on the stack for just a few more minutes in case you're curious on it. Networking. So we've gotten a lot of questions about networking. So just as a reminder, we are gonna use this next week's webinar. So the one that's next Thursday, April 10th, as a dedicated sponsor networking webinar. As always, we will record it, we will livestream it. So if you're like, I'm not sure if I can make all of next Thursday's webinar, we're gonna record the whole thing, we'll livestream it, we'll make sure everybody gets the recording so you could share it with your team. It's helpful. It will be helpful for everyone on your team to know. So if you're like, you know, usually I'm the main POC, and I'm usually the one that just comes to this webinar. Super helpful to invite anybody you want from your team to next week's webinar to go over the networking. We're gonna be talking about everything networking. So that includes the Brain Date workshops that we've done. We've done them in the past, but we are improving them for this year. So again, if you've, even if you've done it before, still good to come to this webinar next week. We're talking about who do you wanna meet, which is new and improved. We did a little bit of this last year. But we have a new and improved version that uses AI, of course, that we're rolling out to you guys next week. So super pertinent to attend next week's networking webinar. And on that point, how you'll get access to the apps we'll be talking about next week for the networking. It's actually— our team is finalizing now merging into one app. So it's actually handy and super helpful to do it in once. But that aside, how you'll get access to the networking app and the sponsor app or the new Sorry, the new SAFTRA app, I should say, is by registering. So we'll talk about this in a little bit. There's a dedicated slide on how to register, but we cannot give you access to networking unless you are registered. So I know a lot of you have registered in the last week. I assume now that a lot of you have turned in your booths. I've seen a lot of you registered this week. So just a kind word to maybe register your team, especially if you want to get a leg up on networking by next Thursday. That way we give you access to networking. We can't do one without the other. And we can't make any exceptions. It's literally tied to our ticketing system. And so there's no other way to do it. You've got to be registered if you want to start playing around with the networking when we launch it to you guys next week. Go ahead, David.

Yeah, no, I'll just reemphasize the point. Get registered because then you start getting all the emails and notifications about the event. Like, Amelia, if I'm correct, it's as an attendee, right? Like you're getting that communication that goes to everyone. So, you know, when there's all these details, it's just important. Not just for you, it's actually for your team that where it's important because then they're going to be more educated because they're not joining these webinars and paying attention to everything. So getting your team registered is just highly recommended and super important. It'll make your jobs easier too because they'll know stuff.

I think so. And I've seen a few, I've seen a few people ask this week too after they turn in their booths, like how can they register for sessions? Same thing, right? You got to register for a ticket. To, and use your tickets to then register for sessions. And we'll talk about that a little bit today just as we flip to more logistics stuff. Speaking of logistics, so for travel and scheduling, this question's come up a lot lately, so I just want to call out where it is on the sponsor portal. You, you obviously can also use at any point just the SAS Re:ANUAL website, which I'm going to flip to there. The agenda and sessions for attendees are all listed here. I will say there's a— we just added a bunch of sessions that are getting added. So more sessions being added daily at this point. So, but you'll see a lot of them here so far. And these are like rough times you can use, but the sponsor-specific times live in the sponsor portal. So just calling it out, if you come to the homepage here and scroll down, I think it's just sometimes not intuitive to go below the fold. So our apologies, but yeah, down here you'll see the sponsor hall hours. I'll actually go over them really quick because I think this is becoming more relevant for folks as you book your travel now and sign up with your tickets. How this works on like Monday versus Tuesday, because I've seen that question come up a bit. Monday is optional sponsor badge pickup or early loaded and/or, right? Last year we had some sponsors who literally came, they all picked up their badges. They cruise by their booth. They're like, all right, my swag's here. I don't really need to like fold it or anything because it's not shirts. And I'll just come back the next day. Like, that's fine. Some people were there for like 20 minutes. So if you're around Monday, I would encourage it. Just like if you're around, I think it's good to get a lay of the land. If you're a brand new sponsor, I would definitely come Monday just so you can get a lay of the land. All the sponsors come Tuesday by default, right? Because that's the day that we also open to attendees. So Come Monday, it's a little bit easier to get into it if you're a brand new sponsor. It doesn't mean everyone from your team needs to come necessarily, but it is handy just to have this extra book of time. Again, you could spend like 20 or 30 minutes there. You don't need to spend 5 hours unless you're, you know, I think the Google team does because they have a huge booth. But other than that, you don't need to spend a ton of time there. I think it's good. You can like talk to our teams, right? You can still sign up for you can still sign up for networking at that point. It's better if you do it now, but you know, there's a lot of things you can do there. I've also seen people just hang out there. Like, I know, David, you've seen this too. Like, I'll see people go on Monday. We have lunch, we have coffee, and I'll see sponsors just hang out there. Like, yeah, I already— my flight's here. Maybe you can't check into your hotel yet because your check-in's not till 4, but you're there and your flight lands at like 1 and you want to come to San Mateo. Come to San Mateo, right? We've got lunch, we got coffee, we got Wi-Fi. You can sit and chill and work until you can check into your hotel. So I've seen a bunch of people do that as well as sponsors.

Yeah, there's lots of great spots to hang out. And like Amelia said, get the lay of the land, get your feel for the whole venue because it'll just make your experience that much better.

Yeah, agreed. If you can't come Monday or feel like, ah, I already booked a flight for Tuesday morning— Tuesday morning is the default when everybody comes to finalize their booth. And what we mean by that is the booth you guys submitted this week with Freeman, they'll build that. But you guys all saw you have a TV and a cabinet at each level of the booth. So that's things like, you know, plugging into your monitor, making sure it's working the way you want it to, it's playing what you want it to play. You know, again, if you do have swag and you're shipping things that you're all set up and ready to go so that, you know, test your lead scanners, just do all those things that you can do pre-event so that when we open the doors at 1, you're ready. You're not like still scrambling to get set up for attendees now coming in and being— you're just like ready to talk to them. So that's the default come Tuesday morning. The thing I'll say on this too is just as a reminder, everybody does need to pick up their own badge. So even if you come Monday or Tuesday, like if I'm David from the team and I'm trying to pick up everyone's badge for the booth, everybody does need to pick up their own badge. So only David can pick up David's and only Amelia can pick up Amelia's badge. We do ID checks, we do other like security checks and stuff at registration. And so that's why, yeah, everybody does need to be registered individually. On that note, I, I've seen a few people ask like, I have, you know, a shift schedule because not everyone is coming all 3 days of FASTR. That's fine. Just let us know so we can help you with like an extra pass. You don't need to swap badges. There's no badge swapping allowed. And so that's how you can get around that is just by asking. For an extra path or two if you need it just to shift people around. Coming into Wednesday, this is the longest and busiest day of SAS Re:ANUAL. Tuesday we haven't talked about, but our opening reception is quite fun and nice. There are things like Taco Tuesday, and I think we picked margaritas or something yesterday. Anyway, Taco Tuesday on Tuesday reception, fun time. It's a good vibe. We do like some tracks of content for like kickoff sessions. We don't do like We don't, well, we might light all the stages now, but previously we only lit like half the stages. Now we have so much content, we might light all the stages. But yeah, it's usually a, it's a good like entry day on day 1. Like it's a half day of content regardless. And so it's a little bit easier to, you know, you're more fresh to talk to people. You can do more of your networking on day 1. They do a busy day.

I'll just jump in like day 1 last year was really booming in terms of networking. The sponsor in particular was probably some of the most packed because there wasn't a lot of competing content, right? And so everyone was there, and I think sponsors, you know, got off to a great start, uh, on day 1 last year, and we're expecting the same. So yeah, be ready for that.

Expecting the same. Expect Wednesday to be a little crazy. Um, you'll notice Wednesday, Thursday— I mean, Tuesday, I think it's straightforward because you're— we're open in the sponsor hallway before attendees get there. But just to call out Tuesday, Tuesday, Thursday for days 2s and 3s, we do open an hour earlier than any posted registration time for sponsors so that you can come in. This is really just to refresh your booth. The other reason that we open an hour earlier for sponsors versus attendees is you will have to check back in in the express lanes during registration open time. There's a good comment in the, the chat. Day 1 last year was super busy. Yeah, that's a great comment, Alexis. Yeah. Be ready as soon as the doors open. I love that. Yeah, that's a great comment. Yeah, for Days 2s and 3s, yeah, we open an hour earlier at the sponsor hall for early access for sponsors because inevitably, I mean, Wednesday especially, everybody comes at once. Everybody comes back at once. Everybody comes at once. Part of the reason we open an hour earlier, it's really not to like, you can refresh your booth, that probably takes 10 minutes, but it's really so you can get in before the crowds come in. There is an express lane if you already have your badge, but there's no like sponsor express lane. So if you get caught in the crowd, you may have people, you know, our lines never take more than 5 minutes, but you may be there for 5 minutes versus 30 seconds. And that's why we, that's why we open early. Trust me, there will be coffee there. I know Rippling is this year's coffee sponsor. They'll have specialty coffee at their booth and also by the, I think it's West registration. But yeah, come in, come grab a coffee before everyone else does. Especially if you want a brief to coffee and then head to your booth. So I would say like Thursday, people kind of slow roll it just 'cause usually they are partying day 2, whether it's at our poker night or the CMO mixer we're doing or elsewhere. Like I know there's a lot of parties happening offsite as well. So I would say day 3 is more of a slow roll, but yeah, day 2 definitely recommend. I know it's early in the morning, but just know me and David will already be there. We'll already be awake, we'll already be there by the time you get there. If we can do it.

I'll be at that coffee barista. That's where you can find me.

100%. Yeah. I'm always the test coffee, right? I'm the first one. Just to make sure the machine works every morning. And then on move out on day 3, it is from 6 to 9. I will say, I know Freeman's a little bit strict about this. So if you are trying to load out early and you don't have anything left, if you're like, I don't have any swag to take home. I'm good. You can literally walk away from your booth when you're ready to. It's just if you have swag or anything you wanna ship back with, like, exhibitor services, if you have, like, bigger items that you brought in that you need to ship back or you have excess swag, they won't start doing that until 6. So just know that, you know, they'll— they do go really fast at the 6 o'clock, but they won't start doing that till 6 because technically the sponsor hall is still open to attendees. So just a quick call out on the schedule there. Hopefully that's helpful. I know we haven't gone over that in a bit. Just also on travel and schedule, because I know it's been coming up a lot. So as you guys just saw those hours, again, highly recommend if you haven't yet booking your travel, making schedules, just even at a glance for your team. The other thing you could do is the attendee portal is live here on castrannual.com. We linked it in that deck. But for things like parking, if you guys know you're gonna get a rental or if you're local and you bring a car, You can request parking as a sponsor. And also both the hotel links are here. I know we just got the one from the DoubleTree, I think Tuesday. So that's a newer one, but that one is a little bit more budget friendly. If you don't mind being a little further from San Mateo, the Hampton Inn is where the shuttle goes, but it's also like a 10-minute ride. So it's a little bit closer than DoubleTree. It's probably like a 20 to 25-minute Uber, just depending on time of day. I mean, you're usually going early and late, so yeah, usually 20-25 minutes. The difference on the shuttles here, like the Hampton Inn is our shuttle, so that goes to and from San Mateo County Event Center. The DoubleTree has their own like airport shuttle, so we'll get you from like the airport, which is cool. We don't go to the airport, but that's just the difference there. But they don't go to San Mateo, so just keep that in mind. Maybe it comes down to budget for you guys. But just keep that in mind if you're still looking to book hotels in the area. I just— sometimes people through, like, oh, you know, for a new sponsor, like, what's the pros and cons of staying in the city or maybe in things like Palo Alto versus staying in San Mateo? I would say these days, I think I see more people staying in the peninsula, like Palo Alto area for any, like, investor meetings, customer meetings versus maybe more so the city. There is kind of a lot happening in like the Mission Bay area, which is at the tip of the city. But I wouldn't recommend maybe staying like downtown. Even if you have meetings, it ends up taking a while to get there and back to the event center. So just a note there. We'll talk about customer passes too, because that'll probably make your life easier just to have your meetings at Saks Fifth Avenue. But there's that. So travel schedule, hotels. Okay, we talked about all this. So there's just a few other things we want to hit today. And then again, next week we're going to use the whole thing to go over networking in its entirety. So there's a few quick links here. Most, most, all, most, but not all of these are in the sponsor portal as well. I've had a few people ask for the Freeman portal. That's linked here. I've also had people ask, like, do I need to use the Freeman portal because I'm using the SAS portal? And the answer is, unless you want to order something extra, you don't have to. Or if you want to, like, ship your swag, That stuff's in here. So like, this will give you like an estimate for like shipping fees. There are a few people who I know order extra carpet just so that they have extra padding in their booth. All the booths are carpeted by default, but if I know some people like to have like the cushy carpet, they do that in here. But that's really all you need to do is like, if you have stuff you wanna ship, just get into the portal, hit the shipping tab, and everything on shipping is here. And you can coordinate it there with Freeman. Otherwise, there's really— you really don't need to be in there other than I would say shipping is like what 90% of people do in there. That's kind of it. And if you're like, I don't really want to get into the portal just for shipping, you don't have to. The shipping stuff also lives in our portals. If you go into the resources section, we've packaged all the shipping stuff together. I'll call out this does include the shipping labels. So if you hit the download button, we'll see how this pops up nice and handy for all the dates of like where to ship stuff, how material handling works, all that jazz, how cart service works, and then the labels are here, right? So you can also just email us if you're like, hey, I've got my shipment ready, can I just coordinate with Freeman on email? And we'll loop you into Freeman so you don't have to access the portal if you don't want to. So there you go. Made it simple if you don't wanna do the portal thing. That's the Freeman, again, Most of you will not need that except for shipping. I know a few of you order like extra things like carpet and that's kind of all that's in there. Activation, we were talking about AV. If you guys need extra AV, this is also on our resources center. I would say, do note that when you do fill out this AV form and email it, they will let us know that there is a new order for sponsor additional AV. Not all booths can accommodate extra AV, so just know if you try and like, I don't know, just submit this to like have a huge monitor in your booth that doesn't fit in your booth, it will get nixed, right? Because all monitor requests must be approved by SAFTER. So just know like I really haven't seen people order a ton of extra monitors throughout the year since everybody has one by default. I've seen things like the Super Gold and Platinum maybe order an extra tabletop monitor. I've seen people order extra computers for sure, just so that if you don't like want to be the computer that's plugged into the monitor the whole time, you could just order a PC here and hook it up via the HDMI. I've seen that a lot. That's probably the most common use case I've seen for the additional AV. And I've seen people rent iPads, like if you want to have the lead scanners on the iPads versus doing it on your phones. Again, those are the most common use cases. Haven't seen a lot of monitors because it's not usually needed or they don't fit in your booth. But yeah, most common use cases would be ordering a laptop so that you can leave that plugged into the TV, or if you need a few extra laptops, and then ordering iPads if you want to use that for your bleed scanner so that if your phones die or maybe corporate policy, you can't use your, your personal phones to scan. You can rent these iPads here and scan on those. So there's a question in the chat. Good question in the chat. Can we plug USBs into the monitor? The monitors by default in all booths and all levels is HDMI hookup. So you cannot directly plug a USB into it. We've also tried to do things in the past like Fire Stick. That was somewhat my recommendation. That didn't work that great either. My bad. The best way to do it would be to bring— like, if you're on a Mac like I am, I just bring like, you know, the little Mac dongle to hook up to the HDMI. If you're a PC, you can go directly into HDMI, or like I said, you can rent a PC from ETS, who's our AV company, and that will be— you can also rent from them, it's already set up, so like they'll set it up for you. And there is like it's really easy to do it there. So, so yeah, just great question there. But yeah, by default, we hook up to any monitor you have in your booth. Like if you have several, like the Platinums do, and I think Superbold has, I don't remember how many Superbold has, but yeah, HDMI is the default. I would say too, like test it beforehand with just like a normal TV. Like if you hook up your laptop or whatever laptop you're gonna use, and you're not renting it, I would recommend just hooking up to a TV and making sure, again, your booth loop plays the way you want it to. Sometimes, you know, you do need to mess around with the settings if you're trying to like loop a video in its entirety. So just something to bear in mind, and then, you know, make sure the power reserve is off and all that jazz. So good thing to test with just like literally any TV you have handy. That'll be a good rule of thumb because they're all HDMI. Okay, so that's AB if you guys need it and kind of why the internet form is coming. I know a couple people have asked, so that we'll have that next week for you guys. Additional power, I'm just gonna touch on this for a second because I've seen a few of you ask that. So additional electrical is here. It basically kicks you back out to the Edlin portal. But what you need to do here again, Power is included. So let me just go back and say that, like, power is included at your guys' booths, and I'll show you where it's included. Because I think some of the newer sponsors have been asking, like, is power— it's a booth by default. So if you go onto these handy-dandy booth specs in the sponsor portal, it does call out— does it call out the power? I thought it called out power. It doesn't call out the power. Interesting. Okay. I think he used to, but anyways, they all have power where you have cabinets. This is the general rule of thumb. So in a Gold, just where you have power would be like this back cabinet and then this front cabinet. It's usually like a small strip, so you usually have like 3 outlets accessible in each one, but that's kind of it. So for most people, that's usually enough if you wanna rotate between, you know, charging laptops, charging phones, et cetera. Just remember like, you know, your TVs, like I don't, I know they're small strips and usually they have more than like 3 plugs, but like because the TV's gonna be plugged into like the back one, like now you're down 1, right? So plan on just a few at each power strip. And so if you need to order more power, that's the use case that you would use Edlund for. If you're like, eh, I can get away with like 3 3 plugs in each of these, then you're good. Um, Silver Gold, similar, like there's power at this table, the power table, and then there's power in this front cabinet. Um, so there's 2 drops there. Platinum has a third, so there's one in this table, this table, this table, so there's 3 for Platinums. Um, there's 4 for Platinum Plus. Basically anywhere you see a cabinet slash table, that's where a power drop is. Silvers each have 1 power drop, so just something to be mindful of there. You may need to order extra power there. I know extra power is not that expensive if you need just like the bare basics of, hey, we just need another power strip. And there's a few of you who I know have activations that require dedicated power. So you'll see that in there too. If you've got things like machines, game, you know, money machines, claw machines, video games, whatever it is like, usually we do recommend just getting extra power. It's a couple hundred bucks that way. Again, you're not fighting for outlets with everything else you're trying to do and you're not like having to unplug your activation. To plug something else in. And sometimes your activations will need higher voltage than a 110, which is like standard. So just a note on like why you might need power. But yeah, by default you guys have power included. The other thing I'll say is, you know, power banks are a really good idea because you're going to be on your phone all day. So things like having an external battery either, you know, attached to your phone or just have a few for your team to use. Usually quite nice so that your phones aren't constantly dying. I know the lead scanner app does to like eat up the battery the more you're on it, and that's because like the brightness is turned up, the camera's turned up. So yeah, having extra like little external power banks usually, I mean, I do it all day at Caster. Like I, I can't live without an external power bank. So definitely recommend it. You can get some on Amazon. Most of you probably already have some, but just a reminder to pack it so you don't forget it. Shipping, we talked about webinars, we talked about. Okay, cool. So like, I think last things we want to touch on, because we touched on a lot of this, as always, like these quick links are all here for you guys, super handy. You know, again, we're gonna use next week to go over the networking dedicated. So we'll just touch on like 2 more things. One of those being registration. If you guys can't find your code, I think I saw that question in the chat that David answered, but if you can't find your code, email events@gasterate.com and we can resend you your registration code. Sometimes just because it comes from our alias, like we'll try and resend it as like me or somebody else on the production team. Sometimes they can get caught in filters. I've seen that happen a few times. So just let us know if you need us to resend your registration link. But yeah, as we mentioned earlier, I recommend you guys register your teams as best you can now and just put your code in to register for those sponsor all-access passes. The other thing we wanna talk about, because you'll get an email about this prior to next Thursday's networking webinar, so we'll only touch on it for a minute there, is a lot of you have customer passes, and now that you've turned in your booths, are keen to get started on inviting your customers and/or prospects to SaaStr 2025, which is great. So, um, how this will work if you have customer passes— so there's passes included in some of the eligible levels. So Super Gold's 5, Platinum's 10, Diamond is I think 15. I will say too, there's a good chance we open this up to Gold sponsors as well. We're just going to do like a little intake of passes we do from the Premier sponsors first. But basically how this works is you would nominate 2 staff for like the number. So like if you have 5 because you're super gold, it doesn't work the same way as a registration code. So we're not gonna give you a code for like 5 free, you know, all access team pack tickets for startups. It functions in a totally separate way. So how the sponsor customer passes function is we will give you a dedicated space. Spreadsheet with however many passes you have. So for Super Gold, like, you know, we number it 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. And then you would basically go out to folks that you think want to come to SAS Story Annual or folks that you want to meet with. Again, this should be either customers and/or prospects that you're trying to meet at SAS Story. And you would put them in your spreadsheet. And we need all the basic details, like first name, last name, company title, email, and country. That's basically what they need to get registered. That's what we ask for on that spreadsheet. And basically what you can do there is I wouldn't worry about like trying to suss out like, okay, but what if they're already coming? Like, I don't want to use one of my customer passes. Is somebody already coming? If they're already coming, we'll tell you. Like, if you're like, hey, I want to nominate this person, I want to nominate David to come as my customer. Choose after, it's like a spiff because tickets are literally $1,000. So instead of that, I'm gonna give him one of my customer passes so he can come for free. You would put David's name and email in that spreadsheet. And if David already has a ticket, we'd be like, hey, David actually already has a ticket and is already coming. So you can set up a meeting with him, but you can use your customer pass on somebody else that's not David. So you don't have to worry about putting them in and then trying to suss out if they're already coming or not. We will let you know. So David, I know you've seen people use customer passes in different ways. Like what's your recommendation here on how to use them?

Yeah, I definitely think that they're an awesome way to engage your pipeline. One of my favorite ways is to get your sales team involved and let them know, obviously, hey, we're sponsoring SaaStr this year. We have an opportunity to invite some of our either top customers or prospects. I love using it for like bottom of funnel opportunities to let them know, hey, we're, we're going to be at SaaStr and we'd love to invite you as our guest. And so it's just a great way to, you know, nice touchpoint on your pipeline and getting, you know, it's a, it's a really valuable asset. Like Amelia said, $1,000, but I think they're $1,500 on average. And so, yeah, and so, yeah, it's a great value add. And then if you, if you get some of your customers or prospects over to Saastr, it's a great way. I've seen sponsors get like an ROI on Saastr right away by leveraging that opportunity to get some opportunities face-to-face, closed, over the line. So, yeah, that's, that's one of my favorites, but there's all sorts of ways that you can use them.

Yeah, I see. Yeah, go ahead.

I was just going to say, you know, and in terms of process, right, like, you know, we'll get you that shared sheet, add the names there, and then once approved, it'll happen pretty quickly. We'll issue them a ticket and they'll be good to go.

Yeah. Yeah, it's really easy. It's really quick. Once you do have your nominations ready, this is something too where like if you're like, okay, I know I'm a Super Bowl, I've got, you can start now. We've had a few people ask us this week, mostly we're annual sponsors because we're used to this, but we've had a few people ask us for their sheet this week. You could totally do that. By default, we're going to email it out, I think next Tuesday on the team. Just let everybody have their nomination stack. We'll include like a little guide of how to do it. But yeah, this is really the, if you want to get a head start now because you turn in your booth. Just let us know, we'll get it to you. Otherwise, we'll get it to you next Tuesday. But yeah, super, super handy to use. Yeah, as David mentioned, tickets are fairly expensive now because they are like the last chance tickets to SaaStr. So yeah, something to just keep in mind there. I've also seen it different ways of like, yes, I think getting the sales team involved is super helpful. Just who they want to meet with. I think getting your customer success team, it's super important to get them involved of like, you know, who are your like most valuable MVP customers, your super fans that you think could be at SaaStr or would benefit from going to SaaStr on you, right? Or who's a customer you've been meaning to talk to that maybe you could have that meeting in person at SaaStr. So I've seen people use it probably 50/50, like half of their tickets go to prospects, hard with 5, but you know, half your tickets kind of prospects, half of them go to existing customers. That's probably a good way to look at it. I've seen some people go heavier on prospects versus customers. But I think in today's day and age, it's probably good to go 50/50. Like it's also good to be preemptive as much as you can of like, you know, I just want to treat my high-level customers as VIPs. I think that's underrated these days. So inviting them faster may be a good boon. There. And I've also seen it at the level of like, you know, there's— I've seen previous sponsors get their CEOs involved and use them for like VIP passes for who they're talking to, right? Like, who's your— who does your CEO consider a high-value attendee to see in the booth? Who do they want to meet with at the booth? Who are your executives trying to meet with? I've seen people use it too for like executive meeting in the booth as well. Either in the, I say in the booth, but you can do it in the booth or you can do it anywhere at SNASTR, indoor or outdoor. But yeah, I've seen, I've seen it used that way as well. So lots of ways you can use this. Highly encourage you do. I know we've gotten a common question lately of like, what's the deal on like approvals for this? Literally the, the only rule of thumb we have is that your nominations need to be director level and above. Just because that is the audience we have at SNASTR, right? You guys have all seen the slide probably ad nauseam that like 61% of people are VP level and above. So that's why we ask for nominations to be director level at least and above. I think the other thing is, you know, we don't ticket services providers under sponsor customer passes. We do ticket other SAS companies. So that's the only other thing to keep in mind. But that's really the only two rules. You know, 98% of people who put their nominations on the sheet get accepted and ticketed. Within like a day. So it's usually, as David said, quite easy and simple. And we'll flag for you if you're like, hey, we see that this one doesn't meet criteria. Could you potentially swap them out? And things like that. So just something to keep in mind there on sponsor customer passes. With that, I think just final thoughts here. Next week we're going to be talking Again, all about networking. So just final thoughts here. If you haven't thought about like your booth staffing and scheduling yet, you know, because so much of SaaStr is at that exec level of being at, you know, VP level and above, we do recommend having your execs also come to SaaStr. I know that's something that is sometimes hard to coordinate. I know too, for a lot of you have content, a lot of you are using your execs to speak. Maybe you can get them to stay, right? We do try and use your execs for our Who Do You Want to Meet program more so, like we try and highlight them above any of your other attendees to meet with prospects and people at SaaStray Annual. So just a word here, like as much as you can, I know sometimes people are like frowned upon booth duty, but I actually think it's great. I think it's one of the best ROI things you can do. It's not uncommon for us to see CEOs execs of like, you know, these Fortune 500 companies that are sponsoring SaaStr also be in the booth at times, right? Like, I know for a fact, like the Google Cloud team, their speaker is the CCO of Google Cloud, and they're literally doing time with him in the booth. Like he is talking on Wednesday afternoon, he's gonna go do like a founder's toast in the booth. Like they're doing happy hour that day. Like they're literally blowing this out that like the C— I mean, that is a big deal that the CCO of Google Cloud's coming. So if that's any indicator for you, 'cause they're one of our bigger sponsors and they're you know, dedicating the time for their CCO to come and be in the booth and talk to people. Maybe just a good example of how, you know, you could tell your CEO that they're doing that and then maybe they'll want to do that, something similar to that too in the booth. So again, just, just a word there that I've seen everyone do booth duty. I've seen CEOs and founders, I've seen co-founders, CTOs, CCOs, like, seen a lot of different execs do quote unquote booth duty. I think we probably need to come up with a better word for Intuit 25. I think it's just meeting customers really, right? You're just really— happens to be in a booth, but really they're there to meet customers. That's true. Okay. We're at the 45-minute mark, David. Anything else we missed or you think we want to touch on? And then if you're watching, just drop into the chat if you think there's anything we missed or you guys want to touch on as the audience.

I think we covered a lot. Make sure you get your team registered. I think next week's webinar is going to be great. I think we have a lot of new networking opportunities this year and some improvements on the older ones. So Brain Dates, the, the Who Do You Want to Meet program. So that'll be a great webinar.

And that's it.

Any questions, you know, email, feel free to email me, david@saastrinc. Amelia, are you Amelia? I can't remember.

I don't, you know, I put both in here like kind of interchangeably. I'm like, you can use either. I—

there she is, there it is. Amelia at SaaSdrink, Mona at SaaSdrink, and always the events team. If you CC events, um, just email events, it'll get to us, um, and, uh, that's always a safe bet. So, you know, let us know any issues, any questions. But, uh, yeah, start to get excited. We're what, I don't know, 45 days away, less?

And, uh, uh, less from load-in, but I'll give you the exact dates in the In a second. Hold on. I should know it off the top of my head, but I don't. It's in 40 days. Look at that.

40 days. Perfect. So it's going to be a great one. And yeah, thanks for tuning in.

Yeah. Thanks, everyone. As David said, just let us know if you have any questions. Excited for next week's webinar. Hope you guys can see that and/or watch the replay when we go over networking. Last but certainly not least, get excited. I know, you know, it's kind of a, it's kind of, you know, a big sprint to the finish line here. But, you know, I would say since all like 95% of you turned in your booth, a lot of the pre, like prep work is done there. Like the booth is like the biggest prep work. So now, you know, you can shift to doing things like registering your team, getting prepped for networking, figure out what you want to wear to SaaStr, which we should really talk about. But yeah, a lot of people— Don't put it on backwards, you'll be good.

Don't put it on backwards.

But yeah, a lot of people do like coordinating like team swag to stand out. And if you want to have an activation with us last minute, yeah, decide what you want on your TVs, maybe order your swag. I know production times are starting to get really tight in those 40 days, so just something to keep in mind there. If you haven't ordered your swag yet, it's not that it's impossible. It just may limit you on the swag that you can still get in time. And you will need to definitely, you may need to pay for like rush shipping or something. So just keep that in mind if you haven't done that yet either. Some people, I don't, I don't, I don't know who has one these days out of our, our newer sponsors, but in the past we've had people bring like their mascots and stuff. If you wanna like make a mascot, you're more than welcome to. So things like that. Again, the fun stuff to start thinking about, 'cause a lot of your prep is now completed with the booths being turned in. We'll go over networking next week and then you'll all be in really great shape and then we'll just use the rest of the webinars. Again, very similar format to this going forward except for next week's, which we'll talk about networking only. And then we'll just keep doing overviews of like the latest and greatest of what's going on. We'll talk about lead scanning like the week after. And yeah, a lot of it will just be to answer questions, do final reminders. So you guys feel hopefully prepped and ready to show up at SaaStr and fricking crush it. So. Crush it. All right. Crush it.

Everyone, see you next week.