SaaStr Insider: Weekly Sponsor Webinar

Yeah, they're streaming in. Hope you guys are super excited to hear about all things Annual. Thanks everyone for joining. There is a lot to get through. We don't imagine we'll get through everything today. Obviously there's a lot to kick off and cover for SAS Re:Annual. We wanted to give a high-level overview of Annual for both returning and newer sponsors. If you have not sponsored the Annual previously and this is your first one, So there is a lot of ground to cover. We will be doing these weekly webinars as we do. We've been doing them every week. We've kind of been doing different topics. And so we'll— they'll primarily be fairly annual-focused from now through annual. So with all that being said, I'm going to go ahead and share my screen. Just as a quick note, if you guys have questions, drop them into the Q&A or into the chat. As we go again, there's a lot to cover, so, and you don't have 2 hours, so we're gonna try and keep this concise and do a high-level overview. There'll be even more information next week. We've been sending out emails, so if you haven't gotten the one from like this week, I think there were 2 different emails, definitely let our sponsor success team know, and I'll show you in a minute where to send that email. So let me, without further ado, that's the twice, share my screen. All right, let me go big on this, and then I do have some tabs open because we'll, I always do that wrong. We'll pop over to them. You know, Google Slides make it easier. Like, I think I'm sharing the screen. All right, sorry, there's a lot going on, but we're getting into antics. All right, sponsor kickoff to annual 2023 is the 9th SaaStr annual. Maybe slightly confusing for sponsors who were here last year. It was actually 10 years of SaaStr last year, just saaStr.com. We've done annual, right, since a few years into saster.com's inception. Um, so Saastr Annual 2023, 9th Saastr Annual. Next year will actually be the 10th Saastr Annual. Um, it is, as we say, the world's number one cloud gathering, biggest SaaS event, um, in the SF Bay Area that's completely SaaS-focused. It is September 6th, 7th, 8th, um, at the San Mateo County Event Center. So for returning sponsors, this is where you were in '22 and also 2021. For new sponsors. If you're either in the Bay— if you're in the Bay Area, you might know this as the San Mateo Fairgrounds, as they sometimes call it, or the San Mateo County Event Center. If you are local and you are sponsoring this year and haven't been yet, highly recommend going to Foodieland this weekend. There's a giant food festival there. You can get a lay of the land. You will notice it is a giant 40-acre property, which we'll cover a bit on. It is a massive, massive campus. If again, this is your first time sponsoring or for those who are coming back, we are using the campus in different ways this year to optimize our last 2 years of learnings, which we'll cover as well. So it's an expansive, super immersive, like completely SaaS thing for 3 days in the Bay Area. We got, you know, we've had really good weather for the last 2 years. It's been a little bit more unpredictable just in general in the Bay Area this year, but it is festival style, which we'll talk about a bit. It is different than, again, if you're a new sponsor, then maybe other traditional conferences you've been at that are completely indoors. It is indoors, outdoors, festival style. There's a lot of like tents and like things we build out in parking lots, as well as interior buildings that we use as well. So the 9th, 1, 3 days, hopefully you guys have the date saved. Just SASTRA Annual at a glance. You guys have probably seen this, but you know, we'll probably have upwards of 12,000 or so attendees this year. It is 3 days. Again, we'll talk about the sponsor schedule in a minute here. We do these things called Brain Dates at each of our SaaStr events. Some of you have heard of the annual, but you just did Europa or one of our previous events. We do these really great networking sessions via Brain Dates, which we'll do a whole deep dive on in a future webinar because it is deserving of its own content of how to optimize it. There's a lot of VCs who come to SaaStr annual. We are doing different things this year as well. Like we've got like, I think like 2 different CMO tracks at this point, CRO Confidential, all this kind of fun stuff that's new for 2023. Lots of great speakers from around the world. We'll talk about the agenda that's now live. And, you know, between the sponsors, partners, and everyone in between, it is a— it's a huge show. This, for whatever reason, is my old slides. Anyways, we are at the San Mateo County Event Center. I'll quickly come into our contacts here. So you guys probably have everyone's email. I've got a few of the faces from the team on here with me. Toya, David, and Kevin, they were probably one of your individual AEs that you've been working with. They do as well, like, sponsor success and account management, so they'll be helping you as well for all things disaster annual 2023 related. We do have a few dedicated teams as well, so anything logistical, be sure to email our sponsor success team. You'll notice too, like, Toya, Kevin, David will loop in the sponsor success team. So that is a big thing to keep in mind. That goes to a number of people in a number of different time zones so that we can respond to all of our sponsors in a fairly timely manner. That is why, you know, you might not see a name on that, but there are a lot of people on it. So rest assured, that is your primary source of truth and the first place to go to if you have a question on your annual sponsorship. SponsoringSuccess@staffdrank.com. You probably got an email from them a couple times this week. We sent an email to all of our, like, annual sponsor contacts as well as yesterday throughout the day we sent everyone their registration codes. But for some reason you're like, I didn't get one of those emails, definitely email us and let us know so that we can see what happened and get you all of your info that you might be missing from this week already. For those who have speaking with their sponsorships, You guys probably already know our speakers team. They're speakers@saftrank.com. And then I just put my email at the bottom if you need to reach me on anything HighLevel, though I do see everything in the sponsor success inbox as well. So I'm everywhere. Let's talk about places to stay. So if you have not, again, the San Mateo County Event Center, for those who are new or even returning, is a massive campus. And so there's a few hotel blocks that are, you know, 5 to 15 minutes away from the venue. There are some other ones. This does not mean that this list is all inclusive of the hotels in San Mateo. There are other hotels in San Mateo that are closer. They're more boutique hotels, or maybe a bit smaller, or some of them are a bit nicer outside of kind of like this band of price point. And so we've got a few options here. Obviously, once we send these slides out afterwards, which we will send this in the recording, You'll be able to click these links and see if you can book a room in one of our courtesy blocks. They are like certain dates on the courtesy blocks, so it might not work for you. It might work for you just depending on how long you're coming for your team. I know some teams come for the whole time. Some teams kind of like split because it's such a long conference. So we'll get you guys these links to come. Getting to and from the conference, I'll just touch on quickly for again, Uh, for all intents and purposes, it is a very heavy rideshare property. So a lot of folks between sponsors and attendees will Uber. I have known a sponsor who literally get a rental car because it's cheaper than Ubering back and forth. I will say this, it has happened for the last 2 years, so I imagine it'll happen a 3rd year. DASRE Annual is so big that the rideshare prices do surge. So like you might be looking at this of like, you know, I've got a team of 10 people. It's probably easier for us to get like a rental van, a car just to park. We will have on-site parking, which is a little easier. That would actually probably be more cost-effective than Ubering like 10 people of your team over back and forth. It also gives you a little bit more flexibility of like if somebody needs to go on a Starbucks run. So just something to consider there if you're bringing a lot of folks. I know a lot of sponsors actually did end up getting just like rental cars last year because it ended up being cheaper than the surge pricing on Uber. So just a fair warning and a reminder for everyone. It is a lot of people and it is, you know, a mix of both SF Bay Area companies and also a bunch of international and around the United States attending demographics. So it is a heavy, heavy rideshare event. So just bear that in mind when you pick your place to stay because, you know, you have to suss out parking at those places, but there is parking on site as well. So something to keep in mind. Anything I missed there, Kevin, on like kind of just getting in, getting around, travel?

No, I think you nailed it. I think that's everything. But again, I think it just always the friendly reminder, it's like the earlier you can plan and get this all coordinated and situated, the better. But nope, I think you hit it all.

Yeah. Bear in mind, we did have more links than this. Some of them were already full with attendees also booked their rooms. So yeah, to that point, the sooner you can book these, the better if you have not already. Already, highly recommend that as a sponsor, you book your hotel accommodations as soon as possible because it does fill up again around San Mateo. Some people I know like stay in the city and then come down for like customer meetings, but that's personal preference. So one thing that might help you book your travel is a more sponsor-specific agenda. So just for everyone's knowledge, the like attendee-facing agenda is live, which we'll cover in a bit. On sasreannual2023.com. You can see the full schedule there with like every speaker and session going on at once. But we wanted to give you guys a more simplified sponsor-specific agenda so that if again, if you haven't booked your travel yet, you could bear these dates in mind. I know for a lot of folks in the US, Monday the 4th is in fact Labor Day, so You know, just if you haven't booked your team's travel yet, that might be something to bear in mind of like your team may only want to travel on the morning of the 5th because they have the 4th off, or some people may not care. So just a consideration there again as you're booking travel. So our first day of sponsor loading will be Tuesday the 5th. That's the day before Annual officially starts. It's what we affectionately call Day Zero. And there's a few things that go on on Day Zero. Two primary things for sponsors is there is early badge pickup, and there's also load-in. I'll explain what we mean by load-in because I do feel like we've seen some comments in the sponsor success inbox of like, what do I need to do for load-in? What does that all entail if this is your first SaaStr? So our booths are turnkey, meaning like you show up, your booth has its monitor, it's got all the graphics installed, it's got whatever, you know, inclusions were in your booth package, and it's got power, and the rest of your load-in is like if you're shipping any swag there, if you want to test your booth loop on the monitor, if you want to get your lay of the land of SaaS before all the attendees show up. That is what we do during sponsor load-in. For those who have activations, I know a lot of people like to come early to make sure everything is set for their activations. You know, people really take this time year over year to, you know, roll t-shirts if they have swag, make sure they've got all their giveaways. I've known people who will literally come look at their booth and like go to a nearby Target or whatever and be like, I'm just gonna get some extra tchotchke things and like booth decor for our booth. People have done that. So that is the things that people do during load-in. It doesn't mean that you need to come and physically set up like the graphics of your booth and the monitors and the power, like that will all be set for you. So it's really to load in your swag, any activations, and really to pick up your badges early. There is a window here, you'll notice from 2 to 4, for sponsor-only badge pickup. We do highly, highly recommend this because the attendees are allowed to arrive starting at 4 PM this day zero to come just pick up their badge early. A lot of out-of-towners do this, so people do take advantage of this. So definitely plan on coming, you know, if you can get there. It's not mandatory, but you'll have an easy breezy time if you come at 2, come get your badge early, and then you've got plenty of time to load in. This load-in, you'll probably notice, goes a little bit longer than previous years. And that is again because the 4th is a holiday and we knew that people were probably traveling in on Tuesday the 5th, that we wanted to give people a little bit more time to come in and get their, you know, badges and then load in their boots. So do keep these times in mind. They are fairly strict on like, you know, if you're coming at 8:10, Buildings probably closed. So yeah, do keep these in mind. There is more time on Wednesday in the morning, which I'll show you. So keep this in mind. The other thing I'll say that we usually get questions about— I'm sorry, I'll try and see if there is Q&A. Okay.

Yeah, we're getting a couple, we're getting a couple questions about shuttles from the hotels and which hotels it'll be.

Yep. So Good question here. So let me go back one because there's like 4 questions on that. Sorry, my chat was hidden. Of these, yes, there is a shuttle that goes from Crown Plaza to Sastre Annual. I will say there are like 2 other nearby hotels that are not on this list. They have minimal availability because I know a lot of people have already started booking them. But basically, if you're one of those 3 nearby hotels at the Crown Plaza, there's also like I think there's like a DoubleTree or like a Courtyard or something also there, like—

and a Hilton.

And a Hilton. Yeah, that's it. Thank you, boy. You can basically walk from that hotel. It'll take you 5 minutes to walk to Crown Plaza and get on the shuttle. So that's an easy one. These other ones we do not do shuttle service at. So again, Crown Plaza is where most people stay and that is what sells out first. Because of the shuttle situation. Also, you know, this could change. Like if we see that there— one of these other ones does sell out, then it's possible we would add it. But last year, you know, people were kind of scattered outside of that major block that's at Crown Plaza because there are again like 3 or 4 hotels right there. Most people just walk to Crown Plaza, get on the shuttle there. Some people did Airbnbs around that area or took an Uber to Crown Plaza because it was cheaper and then got on the shuttle there. So Again, that could change, but right now the only planned one is from Crowne Plaza. Great question. We'll try and— sorry, I'll try and— yeah, go ahead.

I'll just add one thing. Hi everybody, I know I'm chiming in here, but the one question sometimes you get is, does it make sense to stay in SF or San Jose? Totally up to you guys. If you want to do side events there, if you have customers there where you think that makes more sense, you can. However, at least the last 2 years, I, we saw a majority of the people stay in the peninsula, which is San Mateo near the airport, just because it's pretty easy to get, uh, whether you use Ubers, Lyfts, or public transportation. So, um, anyway, just at least giving some context there.

Yep. Um, cool. All right, keep the questions coming now that I can see them a little bit easier on my screen. Uh, okay, so we covered day zero. One other thing I'll say on to Crown Plaza, you'll notice it is kind of like our hub. Again, it's nearby a few other hotels that are walkable to it. So if you look on Google Maps and you, you know, use that link for the Crown Plaza and the address that was on the previous slide, you'll see there are other hotels around the area. We do have Satellite Reg also at the Crown Plaza. So if you're like, not everyone on my team needs to go to Lowdin and they do wanna pick up their badge like after they get off their flight when they're already at the hotel, they can do so at Crown Plaza. The only thing to keep in mind is each individual person needs to pick up their badges. We'll say this a lot between now and Annual, but like, if I'm Amelia, I cannot come and get Poya and Kevin's badge. Poya and Kevin need to go themselves and get their badge. So bear that in mind as well. All right, coming into the first full day of Annual, Wednesday, September 6th. Again, that satellite registration will be open on the first official day of Annual. So if you've got, again, team members either flying in early or if they were late or delayed for some reason, they can do it at the Crowne Plaza, or they can obviously do it onsite as well. If you're staying at Crowne Plaza, it's really— or one of those nearby hotels, it's really easy to walk over there. The onsite registration for just general attendees post— I made a note here, the posted time on the website for attendees is 8:30. We actually open at 8:00, so that kind of gives you a half hour buffer there if you want to come, you know, before attendees do. Do note there is no like express line for sponsors. Like this is due to how we do health and safety, which we'll explain. There is no express line. So if one of your team members arrives late, they will have to wait in that line. So bear that in mind, right? Buffer yourself a little bit of time, especially if you are, you know, waiting to do the shuttle. I think it runs about every 15 minutes or so, right? If you're again taking an Uber, sometimes with the surge, the pickup times are a little bit longer of like, you know, connecting you to your Uber or Lyft or whatever takes longer than 2 minutes like it normally does. So again, bear that in mind when you're coming to and from the campus and also on your way out as well. You know, that is something to keep in mind too. So that is registration. We have about 2 hours here for sponsor final load-in on the morning of. Again, this is just to like Brewster booth, that kind of thing. Get ready for the day, test all your lead scanners, etc. The sponsor halls will officially open at 10, as well as kind of everything else. So Brain Dates start at 10 AM on the first day, and then we've got lunch. You'll notice kind of our core content on day 1 starts a little bit later. This is a learning we had from last year. So our speakers and content really starts at noon and goes all the way to 4:30. But a lot of people did come at like that 10 to 12 kind of hour last year based on our data to come do brain dates, you know, get their badges, do the campus, etc. So we like to give attendees and sponsors time to get in right before content formally begins. It also means that like you're not really competing with too much content in that morning of the first day. Attendees are coming in, you know, they've got more of a capacity to talk to sponsors because there's not all this other competition going on, which is also why we start the content at noon. Lots of reasons, but So those are the core reasons why. And then you'll see we've got happy hour this day, 3:30 to 5:00. And then something new for this year, or everything will seem new if you're a new sponsor, we're doing what we call the SAFTR Food and Wine Festival, kind of a taste of Napa. It'll be in our hangar, it'll be in Fiesta Hall. This will be super fun. We're going to bring in some of like the, well, for us, local vendors from Napa and do like a fun, you know, wine, cheese, good vibes kind of thing. On the first day. I will say, and Poya, maybe if you want to jump in here as well, some people have been asking us about like after parties, some of the downtown stuff if you were here last year. So last year, if you remember, we did like a shuttle to the downtown area and then we did like faster nights in the downtown area. That was kind of hit or miss with both attendees and sponsors. And so what the feedback we mostly heard was like to do something on site. And so that's why we're doing the Food and Wine Festival. It makes it easier for all sponsors to participate. And if you guys can imagine like this massive 40-acre campus, like there's not a lot of competition around it. Like once you're in Zastreanu, like you're in Zastreanu. So this is something that we took the feedback on. It's there. And then, Poi, if you want to talk about like this and then maybe like the after-party kind of, you know, schedule. Yeah.

Yeah, of course. So just to echo what Emilia said, one of the things we've heard time after time is the benefit of the SASTR annual campus. It's in San Mateo. I live very close to it. It's a very boring town, so there's not much to do. And the benefit for you guys—

Snowflake is there. I'm like, let me take a picture of that.

My point being is you don't have the distractions that you usually do in SF or Vegas, right? Where you can go to the hotel or you can go to Starbucks. Like, you're kind of stuck on campus, so you have the attendees and sponsors and partners' attention. So Uh, why, you know, like, let's take advantage of that. That's a huge, uh, competitive advantage for our event, hence why we're doing it. With that said, you are encouraged and welcome to host your own side events. Um, our only ask is if you could, don't do it at the same time that we have something on the agenda, or do it towards the end of it as like your starting point, right? So start yours around 7. If it's a little early, that should be okay. And what we'll do is, as long as you're a sponsor, we'll help you promote it. And we usually do that through our networks, through the SaaStr blog, so on and so forth. So as long as you're not competing with the agenda, you let us know ahead of time, we will lean in. And given that I live in San Mateo, if any of you guys want suggestions, like, hey, which restaurant should we go to? Which bar? Let me know, like, depending on what you're looking for and the vibe. Happy to help you.

Yeah, definitely ask our sponsor success team. Listen, I know a lot of people have already been like, hey, I'm thinking of doing something. Do you have another sponsor who's thinking of doing something? We're kind of less so like that kind of matchmaker, but to Boya's point, like, if you're like, oh, I've got, you know, either myself, some other sponsors, or like, directions on what to do. I will say some people do a mix of things, right? Like it doesn't always have to be in San Mateo. I know some folks are doing things already in like SF or down in San Jose. So again, considerations of like obviously San Mateo is closer and you'll probably get a more contingent of people already at Annual. But if you do other things like the city, you might get a different one just depending what your goals are. Okay, so I'll come into Thursday because we're I was like, there's a lot of slides and it's already been 20 minutes. So like I said, there's a lot of ground to cover. Coming into Thursday again, registration badge pickup opens at 8:00 AM this day, goes all the way to 7:00. Sponsors, you have that again, morning refresh, early access from about 8:00 to 9:00. People do ask us, I think year over year, like, do we strictly gate this? Like, do we let attendees in? And I'll, I'll give you the spiel I give everyone every year. For some of the out-of-towners and people who are like— this population does exist. There's like a population of diehard VASTR fans, which we love. They do come early. Like they come early, they go to the coworking space, they chill, they grab a coffee. It does not mean you need to have like somebody staff at your booth for like, you know, those early folks that are there. I would say it's not the majority of attendees. Majority of attendees, again, on day 1, we've seen kind of come around 10. Day 2, around like that 9 to 10 AM range, which is why content starts then. But yeah, just something to bear in mind there of like, it is really long days, right? Especially because now with Day Zero, there's kind of like 4 days. The sponsor holds open literally on this day from 9 to 6. We do recommend as much as you can, if you have the staff and obviously budget for this travel-wise, to shift your teams, right? You can even shift them on-site of like, hey, you know, you're on booth for like whatever, 2-hour shift, and then you can go enjoy the rest of the disaster. We also recommend that because there is a lot to do at SASGR outside of your booth. There's a ton of really great speakers and content. We'll talk about brain dates more as we, you know, go, but there's a lot of great brain dates they could be doing. There's a lot of good people they could be meeting at things like the Cantina or like the Speakeasy. And so again, highly recommend if you can and you've got the budget for it to really maximize your sponsorship. We do always recommend having, you know, kind of different groups in the booths either, either per day. You could say like, hey, you know, day 1 you're on booth duty, day 2 just attend as an attendee, or you could do it by hours, you know, if you're a little bit more constrained. I do think it keeps it a little bit fresh. It helps your team a little bit. They can, you know, be outside and have fresh air and then come inside, whatever it is. Like it does help kind of make those long days go by a little bit faster if there's the ability to do that. So just something I'll, I'll touch on there because I know We're barely on day 2, so it's, yeah, big days. Big things to say, you know, we start again a hint earlier. Braindates start at 9:00, content speakers start at 10:00. Lunch is the same time every day, 11:30 to 1:30. We do what we call like our Women in Equality brunch on the second day. We've got our secret, not so secret speakeasy. Secret in that the location is secret, but not its existence. We do a happy hour this day, and then we also do what we call the big party. So for, again, those who are new or returning, the big party is like our big on-site concert. Last year we had Duke Dumont, the year before we had Cash Cash. It is a, I'll say, band or DJ, and everyone's gonna be like, oh, it's gonna be a DJ, but you never know. We've had bands in the past. It was just for the last 2 years we've had DJs, so I'll leave it a mystery. But it is a good time. And so just the last point here on day 2 that Poya made earlier, listen, we did start the big party a little bit earlier. That was feedback we got from like sponsors and attendees last year as well. This is really cool. We do this out in Stage A, so literally like the sun sets during the big party. It's a really fun vibe. But it does still give you time to do an after party. So again, you don't need to compete with the schedule. It is a long day, but we do know people who did after parties last year, things outside of, you know, our posted agenda hours. Kind of after parties, after meetups, customer meetups, whatever, or even runs in the morning. You could go the opposite path, you know, you could do a breakfast, you could do a run in the morning. It does not always need to be dinner or happy hour. So that's day 2. Coming on to day 3, Friday, September 8th. Again, reg and badge pickup open from 8:00 to 3:30. If you've got new team members coming in, you've got that same 8:00 to 9:00 block in the morning. For early access. I'll give a caveat for day 3. I would say in previous day 3s, because our show was not on a Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, day 3 by like the mid, I don't know, early afternoon, I would say like around Jason's Q&A, which is like 3 o'clock, I feel like people were like, all right, like I feel like as a sponsor, I've been here a really long time. So again, these are the suggested hours, these are the open hours. It does not mean you need to stay till the bitter end. There will be attendees until the very, very end of Annual. But we leave this in your guys' capable hands of gauging whether or not you want to send some of your team home earlier, or if they've got flights to catch at like a specific time. You know, technically we're open through 6:00 PM because we're going to have like a beer garden this day. And you know, we've got content going longer. We're starting a little later, like it's going to be a Friday, right? So if you're going to SaaStr, it's going to be a good vibe because it's Friday. And so we're going to kind of capitalize on that now that we have a Friday. Day of the week on our show. But just for all sponsors, again, to bear in mind on this day, it was really up to you and your best judgment assessment of like, do I send some folks home, you know, based on travel, weekends, whatever it is. I will say there's always attendees who stay till the very, very end. So bear that in mind for your loadout. Loadout again is very turnkey. So the only things you would need to load out of your booth is any swag you have left over, any items you might have gotten like maybe customized with Freeman or whatever that you want to ship back to your offices. That is the only thing you would need to load out of your booth. You don't need to like worry about unplugging things or graphics. They will do all that and they actually do it fairly quickly once the attendees have left. So it's really just loading out in terms of shipping if you want to ship anything back to your home office location. So hopefully that was super helpful. Okay, it seems like we haven't had drop-off yet, which is really great. But we're at the half-hour mark, so I'm gonna hit on like maybe 2 major things and we'll try and hit some more of this next week so that we're not droning on for 5 hours on SASRA Annual. Health and safety, I did see this question in the chat earlier, so I will give you guys the official health and safety guidelines for SASRA Annual 2023. If you just went to SASRA Europa or sponsored SASRA Europa, these will look very similar to you, but they may look different if you were an annual sponsor last year because they're quite different from annual last year. So this year we're doing at Annual a very similar system to what we did at SASTR Europa. Obviously there's a little bit more registration points at Annual than there were Europa, but each day we will have mandatory passive temperature checks each day of the event. So every day, you know, as you're coming in, there will be an ID check as well as a passive temperature check as you come into Annual. Anyone that it flags, you know, will not be permitted to enter. I will say this is a bit nuanced. If it does flag you, we usually send you to an onsite EMT. We have medical personnel staff on site to ask you about why you might have a fever, etc. Bella staff with you. Obviously for some folks, you know, when they do read a fever, they'll be like, yeah, I don't feel good, so I'm going to go home or I'm going to go back to my hotel. So that is usually what happens. But yeah, if you're really, really sick or if you're visibly sick, our team will ask you to kindly go home and rest. You guys are sponsors, so again, you know, Highly recommend if you're coming from international or even just other parts of the country, again, if you're feeling unwell or sick or anyone has, you know, symptoms of being sick, we ask, you know, take a rapid test, talk to your doctor, make sure it's not something major. Obviously you don't want to travel just in general if you have an illness and just reach out to us because what we can do is help you swap your ticket, you know, for another team member, whatever happens for your booth. So again, Just don't come sick is the policy for Annual 2023. Other things we're doing, you guys kind of know this and I have it in another slide. So again, just keep in mind there are these passive temperature scans each day. It's kind of a mix of like thermal cameras, walkthrough stuff. Anyways, there's crazy camera equipment we have for Annual. Just something to bear in mind there. There's a few questions here. Yeah, okay, some of this is upcoming, so I'm going to keep going. On the questions. Let me come into the campus and venue because I feel like this is going to get maybe the most questions. Depending on how many questions we do or don't have about this, we can maybe hit a couple more things and then hit you guys with some more next week. All right, SAS Triennial, I will say, and I'll let Poyang and Kevin chime in on anything that I missed here, is again, unlike other events, even other SAS events, even other conferences maybe that you guys have either been to or been a sponsor of. It is festival style. So, you know, we use this image because you can see like this is from last year when we had a bunch of the booths outside. We've done things like booths outside, stages outside, Sashiko Park outside, stuff inside, Brady's inside. So it's been kind of a mix for the last 2 years. And so as you can imagine, we kind of gathered all this data from the last few years of Being at the San Mateo County Event Center, having it festival style, seeing what people like, what people didn't like, and kind of using that to optimize our third year here, which is this year, 2023. So I will come into the campus map and explain a few things here. Obviously, drop in questions into the chat as you guys have them. So I'll explain a few different things. You guys probably didn't stare at this campus map as much as we did last year. So it'll look fresh to you, which is great. I will say there are some differences from last year to this year, which I'll point out now. And also, if you're new, again, this probably just looks fresh to everyone because it's been a while since last, last year annual. If you remember last year, all the booths were outside, pretty much all the stages were outside, and then we used what we called the hangar for like brain dates. So if you remember that big like airplane hangar building last year, if you were there, it was, it kind of actually turned into the hub of the event. And one other thing we learned— well, actually we learned a lot from last year, but a couple other things we learned from last year that informed our decision for this year, and then I'll walk you guys through the whole map. We did notice a lot of people actually drop off on what they call the Delaware side of the campus. So again, it's 40 acres. If you look at it on Google Maps, if you're unfamiliar, it does help because you can get a lay of like the— it has like a 3D tour, which is super helpful. But there's basically two cross streets, and again, The campus is really big. So like a lot of Ubers for— and rideshare people, again, this is a rideshare-heavy event. A lot of the Ubers like are programmed to drop off at Delaware. The shuttle, you know, because we contract them, they'll drop off kind of on what we call the Saratoga side, which is where the Expo Hall was last year. But we did notice like in registration on flow of people that most people were actually coming from the Delaware side. And so what we've done for this year, because a bunch of, a bunch of you guys, a bunch of our attendees were like, oh, we get in, but then you've got to like walk actually to the other side if you're coming from this side to get the sponsors. We made that consideration a lot easier. We've actually moved where we put the sponsors. So again, some of you are probably like, what? I was in the same spot for 2 years. Or if you're new here, you're like, ah, okay. But we've actually moved the sponsors to be a bit more central. To where the actual attendees are coming in and leaving because we noticed that people were coming through a little bit more heavier on one side than the other. And we're like, oh, we should probably change that for this year. So that all being said, the sponsor halls— now I say halls because there are so many of you— are moving inside. I will say this is a benefit for so many reasons. Some of you are probably like, oh my God, yes, I can finally rig a banner over my booth. Yeah, you can actually finally do that. Some of our bigger booths, I'm thinking of the Diamonds and some of the Platinums, you'll notice the booths are actually different this year because they can be a lot taller. You'll also know from last year of being in a tent, about half the time our sponsors were in the sun and you guys were like, oh, you know, we brought hats, we brought sunglasses, we're making the most of it. But also then your booth monitor's in the sun half the time. It's a little bit more unpredictable on weather. Again, it's great to be outside, but also I feel like we do get some lifts out of being inside or outside. So what we did this year is we kind of took all that into consideration, move all the sponsors inside to our halls, and built one of our biggest stages actually in that big expo hall. So in the hangar, as we affectionately call it, you've got the giant sponsors we love. We moved one of the cantinas in there. The Brain Dates are even bigger in there. There's two other stages stages in there. This is literally going to be the hub of the event because it's so close to where the Ubers drop off at Gate 1. Like, that is literally going to be the first place that they walk into, and then it connects now all the way to Stage A, which is like our biggest stage, um, on site at SAS for Annual. So we're like, this is where people are going to be, this is where people kind of ended up last year, um, and so we took all that and we're like, let's put the sponsors in the most actually trafficked area from last year, um, which is the hangar. I will say We've got kind of like the hangar, and I call it hangar adjacent, but San Mateo calls it the Fiesta Hall, which is literally right next to it. There's going to be like a cool tunnel thing connecting them both. We'll have even more sponsors in there. The coworking space will be in there. So if you guys have not been to SAS 3 Annual before, the coworking space is like a mini WeWork. And so people like to go in there as well to— as you guys know, our audience likes to do meetings and be active during SAS 3 Annual. So that's a change there. So a lot of the other places have been shifted around. So some of the workshop stages are moved. Plaza stage, that was like kind of like the Hollywood Bowl style stage, is still there. The midway's there, or, you know, our VIP lounge, which is for sponsors, is still there. We'll explain all that later. But just the biggest change here is we did rejigger the entire campus actually to be more around the Hangar as the hub of the event, because that's where most people actually ended up last year, and that is where people drop off and pick up the most to our event. Um, anything else you want to add there, Poya?

Uh, well, yeah, I'll go, Kevin, and if you want to add, uh, and chime in. Look, I actually think it's, it's the best for everybody once we gathered all of our feedback by December. Half our sponsors were like, hey, it's a lot for our team for 3 days to be in the sun, especially if on that side, and the monitors have a glare. So this this is the best for everybody. And in Barcelona, we actually had this style of open air. With that said, um, the event's still going to have that outdoor component, um, in parts. So if you have ordered swag that's sunglasses or beachy or something, don't worry, like, it's going to go into good use because it's 40 acres and there's a lot of land that's going to be outdoors. So, um, yeah, that, that's one thing. But it's— this is a huge upgrade and we're finally past the era of, uh, COVID where we don't have to worry as much about health and safety, strictly being outside. Yeah, so yeah, anything on that, Kevin?

No, I think the, the only thing I would add is, you know, as, as a theme to how we've set this up over the last few years is just to maximize foot traffic for our sponsors, to maximize the experience for both sponsors and attendees. And so that theme is, is definitely not going away.

Like, we're—

again, you can kind of see in what we've learned over the years, like Again, this will just drive a ton more foot traffic, more eyeballs, and things of that nature. So, um, and it's not just for my delicate Irish skin either, okay? So I think, I think this is going to be great.

Yeah, your skin, your skin's grateful, to say the least. Um, two questions I'll just answer, uh, live. One is, uh, do we have a mock of the sponsor hall? Uh, the plan is to have that probably over the next two weeks, so give us until like middle of July.

Um, there is a sneak peek on the next slide which we'll Yeah, yeah, yeah.

But the main reason, just so everybody knows, it's, it's because of inventory, right? We got to figure out like what our best estimate what the inventory is before we start, you know, rolling out that process. The other one is around parking. Yes, there will be parking. The good news this year, overall, we're taking less of the parking lot. So yes, we'll have more details on that as we get closer, but parking. Will be an option as well.

Yeah, and Regina, to confirm, that is on-site parking. So we, even though there's a lot of space in 40 Acres, there is, we try and maximize parking obviously for like speakers, staff, sponsors first before we go out to attendees. So you guys will get that information before attendees do. It doesn't mean you'll have it forever before attendees do, but you will get like a window to like grab a parking spot if you need one beforehand before we release it to all attendees. Pam is asking where exactly the exhibit hall is. There's actually 2 of them this year. They're kind of— they're— I call them adjacent connected. So they're these giant buildings here. I'll say this with an asterisk. This is not to scale, guys. I feel like we get that feedback every year. I'm like, I get it. We're just trying to like simplify the map. You roughly know where things are. The hangar is 100,000 square feet. It is ginormous. So for all intents and purposes, for our sponsors, if you were here last year and you're here this year, that is actually bigger than where all the sponsors were last year in the parking lot. Like between all the tents, canteen, and everything, we did measure it. The hangar is actually bigger than that entire space. So, if you could imagine that big space last year where all the sponsors were, the hangar is actually bigger. So it is ginormous. This map is never to scale. It's really just to give people, attendees and sponsors, a sense of like where things are roughly around the venue. But it is hard to do the 40-acre property. Nothing will ever be at scale, not even like when you see the sponsor booth map, like, that's not to scale either. Like, aisleways probably seem bigger in real life than they do on our CAD designs. And that's because 10 feet on a CAD looks like one little blip, whereas, you know, 10 feet in real life is really across. So bear that in mind. Yeah, never to scale, but yeah, that's 100,000 square feet. The Fiesta Hall, which is like joined and connected to it is like another, I want to say like 75,000. So like these are huge, huge, huge spaces that we're using and building out in the show. So yeah, cool. Let me go, let me hit a few other things because it's 9:45. We dropped this in again. We will send this to everyone so you guys don't need to zoom in, etc. To Poya's point, we are looking at inventory right now and I will say This is a look at the sponsor hall. I'm not— we're not calling this the official map because we've changed. I don't know, I've probably changed it like twice in the last 3 days based on where like inventory is, where we have efficiencies in the floor plan. But it will look something like this for— this is even just half the hall, right? There's not even like the full hall with Fiesta Hall in it. This is just half the hall. This is a look at half of the hall, how it is currently, but this will change. So Do us a favor, don't like screenshot this and be like, all right, I'm going to come on site and it's going to perfectly match this thing that Amelia showed me on the webinar. This is just a look at the sponsor hall. It's not the official final placement. It's just so that you guys can get a sense of how everything fits and you can see how big it really, really is. It's a giant stage. Like, if you guys remember last year, this was, this is literally bigger than Stage B last year, which was huge. There's a lot of booths in here. There's a big cantina stage. Rain dates are in here. Again, this is just a look at the sponsor hall. Once we have a close to final one, that's what we'll go out with. Again, there are always still changes that are made even after we start booth selection, after we have a final floor plan based on inventory, based on different power needs. As we go through, through things with the venue, they might say like, hey, you actually cannot drop power to that one, etc. You know, things move and change as they always do with live events. So there is a question here that I'll answer of like, where is the Food and Wine Festival? That'll be in these halls. So that'll be within the sponsor halls. And then a question on when booth locations and like this map will be available. So our plan right now is to— hold on, I answered that one too. Okay, I have this on our key takeaway slide. We're gonna start selection, I think on the 12th, 11th or 12th of July. So it's really after the 4th of July holiday. We got some feedback from sponsors that some of you are out for the whole week. So we didn't wanna start booth selection on like Thursday the 5th, but then half of you were like, I wasn't here to see that email. So we're starting the next week. And next week we will show you the booth and like a bunch of other stuff we didn't even get to hit today. So we'll hit all that next week. In prep for the sponsor booth selection that starts the week after. A couple other things I'll hit. Actually, let me skip this for now. Let me say 2 things on registrations and then I'll do reminders and then we can answer the rest of your guys' questions. I know we love the questions, obviously keep them coming. If you think of something after the fact, just email us, we will answer it. Or if you've got like a specific question now, That is okay too. One thing I'll say here on registration, you should have received again in the last 24 hours your specific and unique registration code to register your team for sponsor all-access tickets to SAS Re:ANUAL. Highly, highly important that you do these early. I saw some of you already use them. Thank you for doing that. That is awesome. It's great if you do this early. So again, we can have accurate counts in the system of how many like sponsoring teams there are. Of like, you know, who all we need to tell security has like early access. Really great if you do this also because we have those daily ID and temperature checks. So again, you're going to want to make sure that everyone on our team has their own ticket. If you're like, I've only got 5 included in my contract and I've got a 6th person coming, just email Sponsor Success and let us know so that we can accommodate that. There's a few questions here on customer passes. Poya, do you want to cover that one now in this section?

Uh, yeah, of course. Um, so last year we did this for—

I can't hear you.

Can you guys hear me? Right, thumbs up, I think.

Hopefully.

Yeah, Kevin, can you hear me?

I can hear you.

Yeah. Oh, cool. Um, yeah, so in terms of, uh, the partner passes, we love doing that for our 10-year anniversary last year, just something we did, I think, for all sponsors. This year our goal is to do it. We're talking as a team, um, and we absolutely want to do it. We just have to do it on an ad hoc basis. So if it's something your team wants to take advantage of, just reach out to your AEs or Sponsor Success. We'll get the thumbs up and we'll pass on the instructions on how to do it. We just have to limit it and have a process this year versus last year.

That's it.

But the goal is to do it. Just ask us if that's something you guys find value and we can get approvals on how many we can extend. But it is a nice value add for everybody.

Cool. A couple other things we'll hit. There's a question here on shipping and then brand activation. So activation, I left this as its own thing because there is an entire deck of sponsor booth activations that you can do at SAS Annual. This deck is more than 50 pages. Let me see, it's almost 100 pages long. Obviously, we cannot cover another 100 pages here unless you guys raise your hand and want to do 3 hours on sponsor activation. So that all being said, if you have an idea for an activation you want to do, we are sending that deck of like 75 pages, 100 pages to our top tier sponsors first because of how much space they take. Obviously, our top tier sponsors being like Unicorn, Diamond, Platinum, Super Gold Plus, etc. You guys have more spaces in your booth. There's more flexibility for this kind of thing. And so we're going to those tiers first. So if you're in one of those categories and you're like, I want an activation, please give me access to this, just email the sponsor service inbox and we'll give you access to that entire, entire 100-page document of activations you can choose from. I will say a few sponsors have already chosen them because they did them last year or they saw something last year that they called dibs on. But that's like 5 of them. So you've got 100 other pages of activations that you can do. They're not all food related. Some of them are non-food related items, etc. So again, if you want access to that, let us know because we are doing it by groups and by level first, just to give our more top tier, higher spend sponsors like the first right of refusal. As we have availability, we'll go out, you know, to more sponsor levels. I will say in the last couple of years, the activations have pretty much sold out from like Super Golden up. So just something to bear in mind if you're like, I'm currently at a Gold and I want one of those activations for sure. It might mean you need to reach out to Kevin, David, or Poya to upgrade so that you have the right space to accommodate it. So that's what I'll say on that. I know there— we'll maybe hit some of them next week just as like fun ideas of like things you can do around the conference. But yeah, it's 100 pages and I'm mindful that we're running out of time. I knew we're not gonna get through all this today. So let me hit on key takeaways and then we'll answer any final questions and then again, hit you guys with even more information next week. Again, it is a massive 40-acre expansive campus festival style, indoor, outdoor, you know, weather is a bit more predictable now that the sponsor booths are inside because you are, you know, inside. But I will say each of those areas has like huge garage doors that we open. There's a ton of great open airflow. Really good vibe. And so still plan for, you know, weather being unpredictable in the mornings and the evenings, especially because you'll be walking around, you know, other places, disaster, that are outside. It is a massive property we take advantage of, and so you'll inevitably be both outside and inside for a mix of those 3+ days. There are daily ID temperature checks. So again, please start to register your teams. Do register your teams with their own emails. I have seen a few folks kind of registering their team with like one person of like, oh, Amelia's going to register Kevin, David, Boya. Each one needs a unique email address. Otherwise it— otherwise you'll get an email from us because basically the system needs a unique email for their on-site ticket. So keep that in mind when you're registering your teams. You could even do like Amelia plus one at Zaster Inc. That's fine. Just, you know, make sure it's got a unique email. Yeah, if you haven't already, again, register your teams and plan your travel. I would say planning your travel is super important since the Crown Plaza room blocks go really fast as well as the other three around kind of the shuttle area. Prep your swag, activation booth, and giveaways. I know we didn't talk about shipping too much. We will have that in, you know, the next webinar of where to send your swag, all the deadlines for shipping, etc. But if you haven't ordered your own swag, right, to come to your office first, or your own kind of like custom activation, that's a good thing to do now because a lot of production times have been a bit slower this year in 2023. So keep all that in mind. Also maybe pre-warn your design team that their booth specs are coming next week and that you'll have, you know, that you'll need their services to design your booth soon. Again, sponsor hall layouts and booth design requirements, we'll cover this more formally next week. We cannot cover it in 10 minutes, but we'll spend the majority of the time on it there. And then booth selection, like I said, we'll start July 12th just because we're factoring in the holidays for a lot of folks who have like the whole week off or different teams out for 4th of July next week, so we'll start on the 12th. It does go in order of boost selection, so it does not mean that like everyone will get an email on the 12th. If you want to gauge like kind of where you are in the mix, just again ask our sponsor success team. We can let you know kind of like, okay, you're towards the beginning or you're, you're week 2 or you're, you know, wave 3 or you're towards the end so that we can give you more of a heads up. People are asking for the slide deck and recording. Yeah, so we're going to send this one out. Today, now that we're, we've, we're wrapping it up, we'll send out this deck again. You guys, if you haven't gotten those emails or someone on your team needs them, please let us know so that we can add them. I know there's a lot of like POCs, co-sponsors, and sometimes we email people too much, sometimes we email people too little, but now you're getting a third email this week from us. So yeah, hopefully you'll get this one with the recording. Next week will go out as well. I know it's kind of like the day after. The July— or a couple days after the July 4th holiday. So if you guys can't make that one, we will same thing as this week, send out the recording and the slides. With that, if there are any final questions on annual, please drop them into either the chat or the Q&A and we'll try and answer them as best we can. Hopefully this was helpful. I know this was already a lot of information and like the tip of the iceberg. Okay. Cool.

I think we're good.

Yeah. Thanks. I'm gonna end on our slide of like emails. So if you've got, again, any questions, yeah, hit the, hit this, hit the sponsor's desk email.

To answer, hold on.

There's, yeah, there's a few more questions.

Um, the shuttle, uh, once again, the shuttle is only from Crown Plaza. There are a couple of hotels near Crown Plaza walking distance, like Hilton's one, but we only— the base for us is Crown Plaza, uh, just because they are one of the most flexible when it comes to parking. Um, and then in terms of, uh, any questions regarding, uh, Fremont, I would probably hold that until we come back from the holidays. That's when the plan is to get the specs, we usually do a quick Q&A, they finalize it, then we ship it out to everybody. But you'll have ample time to do your graphics. So I would probably hold that question when we return. I think it's July 10th is the beginning of that week.

Yeah, just to touch on it briefly again, I think it's some— for newer sponsors, right? It's a little confusing of like, your booths are turnkey, like you send them, you send Freeman your graphics and like they install it on site so you don't have to do all that. They do not do the actual graphic design, though. So like, that is something that they do not do. If you need that sort of service, we can help you source that. But it's not something that Freeman does. Like, there you would send them from either your design team or a contractor that you have on a designer to send them their graphics. But just for everyone here to know, like, they don't do design services. If you're like, I want this backdrop to look like this. They don't do that. Good question. I think there was a question too in Sponsor Success I'll just hit, which was related of like, can we bring our own furniture, swap, etc.? Obviously we'll cover this more next week on the booth deep dive. Every level comes with a set of furniture. You can swap it if there's room for it in your booth. So I mean like, If you've got a gold booth, you don't really have room for a couch in there, you know, like a long La-Z-Boy. So that's probably not possible. But if you're like, I wanna change the color of the stool to the exact same one of like different colors, that's fairly easy. More like a couple more, a couple less stools. Again, that's fairly manageable. Freeman can do all that. That'll be in the kits that you guys get. But yeah, things like couches in a gold booth, harder to do. It has to fit within your booth. All right, I think we hit it. If you guys think of any other questions, you know where to find us now, hopefully. Thanks everyone for joining again. I know this is a lot of info and we didn't get to cover off on everything, so no worries. We'll be back next week doing this and you can reach out to us via email at any time and we'll respond to you there. So with all being said, thank you for your attention and patience with us. Hopefully this was super helpful for annual and we will see you next week.

Thanks everybody.

Bye.