LIVE Sponsor Insider Webinars

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 five everybody. Thursdays there are between now and annual probably five. 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 and A at the end. I do want to 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 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 their boots on time. So I think there's only like I can count on one hand how many are left, which is great because as I said, some of you, I can count also on actually maybe two hands how many people sign in the last seven 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 year.

You guys are on top of it. So super appreciate that. So what happens now? Right, as we've said to you guys at email, once we've gotten your graphics, some of you guys just need like a little bit of tweaking. I know you guys are working through that. So all good there. 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 proof. 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 avoid the late fees and the proofs just because everyone turns in at once. 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. Just placed for Satch Renal. And if you need to make any last minute changes because something doesn't look the way you want it to, you can do that then. So that's the next phase for everyone who's turned in their booth. You'll get your proof next week and you're good to go. A few of you, we are chasing what we call your booth headers. So I'm going to flip 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 end of day. But basically, if you're a gold, super gold, platinum slash 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 string.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 two and two together that like, this was designed by Saster. 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 five people 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 compliance. There's a. There's a few of those. So that's it on booth headers. But that's kind of the next just reminder we wanted to go through there. You're on the weekly webinar, which is great boost selection. I do want to talk about just for 60 or 90 seconds. So I'm going to 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 four or five Super Gold are picking as of today, do pick their boots. And once they finalize, which I assume will be by tomorrow, we will go out to the goals. So if you're in the first wave of like early renewable gold, you'll get an email tomorrow to pick your booth. And 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 because most of you have been staring at this and you're like kind of ready with your game plan of of where you want to pick. So I assume by the time we get on this call next week we'll talk about this only for 30 seconds because most of you will have your booth by this 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 as 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 this election 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 premiere activation. So you'll start to see that information. I would say late maybe 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 Goals that usually take a little bit longer because of the coordination required and just because it's an extra cost that you have to budget for if you want to do an activation. So just a note there and I'll talk about activations again later on this deck 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 going to use this next week's webinar. So the one that's next Thursday, April 10, as a dedicated sponsor networking webinar. As always, we will record it, we will live stream it. So if you're like, I'm not sure if I can make all of next Thursday's webinar, we're going to record the whole thing. We'll live stream 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 toc 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 going to be talking about everything networking. So that includes the Brain Date workshops that we've done. We've done them in the past. We are improving them for this year. So again, if you, even if you've done it before, still get to come to this webinar next week. We're talking about who do you want to 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 Networking webinar. And on that point, how you'll get access to the app, 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 put that aside. How you'll get access to the networking app and the sponsor app, or the new or the new sastrap, 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 boots. 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 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 Emelia, 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. And 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, I've seen a few, I've seen a few people ask this week too after they turn in their booths, like how, 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 faster annual 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 five 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 all these sponsors just hang out. They're like, yeah, I already. My flights here, my. Maybe you can't check into your hotel yet because you're checking until 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, chill and work until you can check into your hotel. So I've seen a bunch of people do that as well.

Lots of great spots to hang out and. 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. And agreed. If you can't come Monday or feel like, 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 in your 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, prevent, so that when we open the doors at one, 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 everybody does need to be registered individually. On that note, I've seen a few people ask, like, I have, you know, a shift schedule because not everyone is coming all three days of semester. That's fine. Just let us know so we can help you with, like, an extra path. 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 pass or two if you need it, just to shift people around. Coming into Wednesday, this is the longest and busiest day of sas. Re Annual Tuesday we haven't talked about, but our opening reception is quite fun and nice. There are things like Taco Tuesday and, um, 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. It's usually a. It's a good, like, Entry day on day one. 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 one. Day two, busy day.

I'll just jump in. Like, day one 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 on day one last year. And we're expecting the same, so. Yeah, be ready for that.

Expecting the same. Expect Wednesday to be a little crazy. 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 twos and threes, 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. Thank you. 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 one 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, twos and threes, you. 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 take 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 five minutes, but you may be there for five 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. Especially if you want to burrito coffee and then head to your booth. So I would say, like Thursday, people kind of slow roll. It just because usually they are partying. Day two, 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 off site as well. So I would say day three is more of a slow roll. But yeah, day two, 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. I'm always the test coffee. Right. Just to make sure the machine works every morning. And then on move out on day three, it is from six to nine. 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 want to ship back with like exhibitor services, if you have like bigger items that you brought in that you need to ship back or you've excess swag, they won't start doing that until six, so just know that, you know, they do go really fast at six o' clock, but they won't start doing that till six 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 have any up within 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 sastryannual.com we linked it in that deck. But for things like parking, if you guys know you're going to get a rental or if you're local and you're bringing 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 and 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, usually going early and late. So yeah, usually 20, 25 minutes. The difference on the shuttles here, like the Hands and 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 know sometimes people are like, oh, you know, for a new response. Or 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. Apps, apps. But there's that. So travel schedule, hotels. Okay, we talked about all this, but 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 faster 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 want to 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. 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 will 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 leave you in Freeman so you don't have to access the portal if you don't want to. There you go. Made it simple. If you don't want to 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. Activations. 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 a sponsor. Additional AV. Not all booths can accommodate extra AVs. 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 mixed. Right? Because all monitor requests must be approved by staff here. 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 run 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 personal phone to scan. You can write these iPads here and scan on those. There's a question in the chat. Good question. In the chat, can we plug USBs into the monitor? The monitor 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. I 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 could also rent for 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 yeah, just great question there. But yeah, by default the hookup to any monitor you have in your booth, like if you have several, like the Platinums do. And I think Super Bold has I can't remember how many super bowl tails, but yeah, HDMI is the default. I would say too like test it beforehand, which is like a normal tv. Like if you hook up your laptop or whatever laptop you're going to use and you're not renting it, I would recommend just looking up to a TV and making sure down your boost 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 and then, you know, make sure the power reserve is off and all that jazz. So good data Test which is 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 going to 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 boost 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 boost 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 it used to. But anyways they all have power. Where you have cabinets, this is a general rule of thumb. So in a gold just where you have power would be like this back cabinet and then the spread cabinet. It's usually like a small strip. So you usually have like three outlets accessible in each one. But that's kind of it. So for most people that's usually enough. If you want to rotate between you know, charging laptops, charging phones, etc, just remember like you know your TVs like I don't, I know they're small strips and usually they have more than like three plugs. But like because the TV is going to be plugged into like the back one like now you're down ones, 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 could use Atlant 4. If you're like you get away with like three, three plugs in each of these, then you're good difficult similar. Like there's power at this table, the power table and then there's power in this front cabinet. So there's two drops there, Platinum has a third. So there's one in this table, this table, this table. So there's three for platinums, there's four for platinum plus basically anywhere you see a cabinet slash table, that's where a power drop is. Silvers each have one 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, games, 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 like eat up the battery the more you're on it and that's because like the brightness has turned up, the cameras turned up. So yeah, having extra like little external power banks usually. I mean I do it all day faster. 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. We don't forget it shipping. We talked about webinars talking 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 going to use next week to go over the the networking dedicated. So we'll just touch on like two 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.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, highly 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 want to 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, customers and or profits to faster 2025 which is great. So how this will work if you have customer passes. So there's passes included in some of the eligible levels. So super gold 5 platinum's 10 diamondos 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 two faster like the number. So like if you have five because you're super gold, it doesn't work the same way as a registration code. So we're not going to give you a code for like five 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 start spreadsheet with however many passes you have. So for super goal like you know we number 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and then you would basically go out to folks that you think want to come to Sasha 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 Saster 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. So that's basically what they need to get registered. That's what we asked 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 but they 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 going to 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 set 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 Saster 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 going to be at Saster and we'd love to invite you as our guest. And so it's just a great way to, you know, nice touch point on your pipeline and getting, you know, it's, it's a really valuable asset. Like Amelia said, thousand bucks. I think they're 1500 on average. 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 Saster, it's a great way. I've seen sponsors get like an ROI on Sester right away by leveraging that opportunity to get some opportunities face to face 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.

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 in Super Bowl, I've got, I've got. You can start now. We've had a few people ask us this week, mostly renewable sponsors, because we're used to this, but we've had a few people ask us for their cheat this week. You could totally do that. By default. We're going to email it out, I think next Tuesday on the team. Just that everybody has 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 faster. 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 to see 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 superfans that you think could be at Saster would benefit from going to Saster 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 Saster. So I've seen people use it probably 50, 50, like half of their tickets go to prospects. Hard with five but you know, half their tickets go to 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 days 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, and use them for like VIP passes for who they're talking to. 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. I either in the, I say in the booth but you can do it in the booth or you do it anywhere at faster Indoor. 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 Nastra, right? You guys have all seen the slide probably at nauseam that like 61% of people are VP level and above. So that's why we asked 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 SaaS 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 Saster is at that exact level of being, you know, VP level and above, we do recommend having your execs also come to Saster. 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 Sastry 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 flash exact of like, you know, these Fortune 500 companies that are sponsoring Zaster also be in the booth at times, right? Like I know for a fact, like the Google Cloud team, their speakers, 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 going to go do like a founder's toast in the booth. Like they're doing happy hour that day. Like they are literally blowing this out that like this. I mean that is a big deal that the CC of Google Cloud's coming. So if that's any indicator for you, because 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 in a lot of different exact do quote unquote boothuti. I think we probably need to come up with a better word for in 2025. I think it's just meeting customers really. Right. You're just 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 Sink. Amelia. Are you Amelia AI? 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.

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

Less and less from load in.

But yeah, sorry, in a second.

Hold on. I should have done 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. I 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, you know, a big sprint to the finish line here. But, you know, I would say since all like 95% of you turn in your booth, a lot of the 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 faster. We should really talk about. But yeah, a lot of people don't.

Put it on backwards. You'll be good 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. To buy what you want on your tv, 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 newer sponsors, but in the past we've had people bring like their mascots and stuff. You want to like make a mascot you're more than welcome to. So things like that. Again, the fun stuff to start thinking about because 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 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. Show up at staffer and fricking crush it.

So crush it. All right, everyone, see you next week.