SaaStr Annual 2024: Networking at SaaStr!

And we're going to kick off. It will let me. Oh, that came in a weird window. That's okay. Okay, we're just going to start with some reminders for today. Yeah, hopefully you guys know the Saster annual is coming up in just 19 days. So, yeah, up and coming quickly. We're going to use this time. We're here every Thursday. But, yeah, the Thursdays of when we're doing this is dwindling. So, yeah, I think you've only got two of these left before we see you, if my mouth is right. So, yeah, we're gonna use these last couple just to go through a lot of reminders, answer any open questions, and yeah, we're looking forward to seeing everyone. So let's just go through the timeline first. So first and foremost, a few things we want to hit here that are probably top of mind for you guys. One, we know that all booth graphics were due. Thank you, everyone, for submitting. We only had one late booth graphics, so pretty good. I actually think that's a Saster record, so thanks. Trish, you're on mute, but thank you. Thanks for getting. Helping us get them all in. I know you gave some people a little bit of a grace period at, you know, Friday at 1pm we're like, hurry, gentle encouragement. Yes. All right. So, yeah, anyway, so. So, yeah, thanks everyone for doing that. So great you guys are avoiding those late fees for the most part. So, yeah, great. Great to see that. I do want to go through customer passes, so I have a dedicated slide for it. We are going to extend this deadline. We've had quite a few of you ask for this, so you've heard it here first. I know Tricia sent it in her recap email with the recording, but, yeah, we're going to extend it to next Thursday. The reason being, obviously, we do this on Thursdays too, so that you'll get a final reminder to submit your customer passes through. We are going to send it to next Thursday and then that'll be like the final extension. So we'll do a little bit of extension because I know a lot of you are not ready to turn them in by tomorrow. So all good. We're extending it to next Thursday. We will walk you through that process today. Okay. Other things happening this week also. Starting tomorrow, we're going to start to send out that lead scanner access for whoever you nominated. So you will have to nominate that person in the portal. If you haven't done it yet, we'll show you how to do it real quick. But otherwise we do want to talk about a lot of the networking opportunities today open to sponsors and really just hit some final deadlines. And if you're watching on the live stream, welcome. We do this primarily for SAS or sponsors, but a lot of this still applies to attendees too. So you're more than welcome to watch. I see a few of you on there, so you're more than welcome to watch too. Okay, the other thing I'll call out is I'm going to once again just drop this into the chat. Like I said previously, we use the same slide deck week over week. We just add to it so it makes it pretty handy. If I can find my Zoom chat, which I can't, but I don't know what happened to our chat.

And I will drop this into the chat.

Oh, there it is. I was like, I have a different setup today. Here it is. I got it, I got it. There we go. Okay, dropping it into the chat there, folks. For you. Yeah, the. So the quick links I wanted to point out because you guys are all here. I'll try and go slideshow actually because I forgot so many tabs open. So. Okay, so I'll go slideshow the quick links here. I think just important things to note if you know, you're like, okay, what do I need to do then? Now that it's basically three weeks pre event, so you guys got all your booth graphics in. That's great. Activations are done at this point, so if you haven't done one it is unfortunately too late. That is something where it is a somewhat long. Some of you have learned process to submit activations. Um, if you have one, there's a few of you have, you know, already chatted to us and they're still being finalized. Those are fine. Just for anything new, it's probably too late unless it's not food related. So I'll give you guys that asterisk. Like if it's not food related, then you're probably fine that it has a little bit of a different process than food related. Food related just has to all be turned into the county altogether. So we did submit those on Monday since everybody turned all their stuff in by last Friday. That was our deadline for activations. So if you do have an activation, know that we've turned everything in and we're basically just waiting for final approvals. We will have copies of everything for you guys for when you come on site. Good to have it handy anyway because they may ask you for it. But that's the scoop on activations. As a reminder for activations, it's further in this deck, but I'll just talk to it because you guys have the link now to the deck. Even if it is prepackaged, you do need a permit for that. That's one of those things where we can still try and get you a permit for that. If you do move fairly quickly, we basically do like an addendum submission. So I know sometimes some of you are probably like freaking out right now of like, oh, I was just gonna like, you know, go to Target and get some like Halloween candy or go to my favorite bakery or place and like in San Francisco that I know of and like just bring it into the event. Again, anything food related, even if it's prepackaged or you buy it that morning, that does need a permit. I know sometimes because we have so many of these, they try and be lenient. So again we'll try and get it in for you if you are doing prepackage. But it does still need a permit. So reach out to me and Trish if you are planning to do that so that we can still try and get it accommodated. Right. It's really at this point up to them and not us, but we'll try and make it happen if we can. So yeah, just keep that in mind for activations. If it's not food related, then again, different stores, you pretty much still have time to do that. As long as you can get to Freeman in time, then you're good. That's kind of the scoop there. So you have a little more time to do that. Additional AV orders, I think the deadline has passed for the early rate, but it doesn't mean that you still can't order av. So I'm going to click that real quick so you guys can see lots of really great stuff in here, including the AV order form. This is really. If you need like, you know, an extra monitor because you want one on your welcome counter. If you need some iPads, I know some people, you know, their company policies require them to like rent equipment versus bringing their own. So you know, it's pretty. It's a pretty basic a la carte list there. But if you need av, that's there for you guys. So just call on that up too. A couple other things that are going to be important now. So Internet orders are pretty much done and closed. Those are past due. Again, if you're like, oh, I forgot to order, you can submit to me and Trish. We'll try and see if the venue will accommodate it for you. But at this Point that's past due power. I think they'd like to know sooner rather than later because they do drop the power fairly early before everybody shows up. So again, one of those things where they may not be able to accommodate on site if you didn't already order power. So again, use these quick links. They're also in the sponsor portal. Just something to keep in mind, right? Like some things they can try and still do on site. Powers not power. Navy kind of ain't one of them. Like if they didn't bring this size monitor extra for AV and you try and order one, they may not be able to accommodate it. If they have one laying around because they've got extra or I've got an extra in my stash, then they can try and accommodate it. But yeah, you know, they only bring so much stuff. So do recommend if you need AV to order it now, same thing if you're like, oh shoot, I missed the Internet, you know, try and you know, let us know. Now that's again, Internet power. Av, that's one of those things where for those who don't know or who are newer as a sponsor to Saster, we load in basically a week and a half before the event starts. So we actually start our. We've actually already started our process, but a lot of our vendors will be starting like next Friday on things. And so that's why, you know, things like AV power are important because, you know, they're, they're basically putting things on trucks as we speak. So that's why that's important to get that in so we can try and accommodate everything. Right. Again, it's not that they don't bring extra to accommodate on site ads, but things like power, since we do carpet the hall, and I think that was a question we got from somebody earlier this week. We do carpet the hall. The power they run under, right? So they pretty much can't rerun power that doesn't exist already. So if you do think you need extra power, I would order that now just to be safe and sorry, it's a couple hundred bucks. I don't think it's that bad if you think you're going to need it just to have peace of mind. Okay. The other thing is shipping. So again, I just want to call out that this is in the sponsor portal. There's like a whole material handling guide here and if you go to the Freeman portal, it's got even more info and so we'll touch on it a little bit more later. But just a friendly reminder to Start your shipments. Right. I know Freeman's going to start receiving deliveries at the warehouse and then they'll start receiving on site deliveries starting the ninth. But super important, right, if you're ordering your swag or if you're still doing it last minute. You know, hey, we order stuff last minute too, so you can still get it if you, if you hustle. You might have to pay some rush fees to your vendors if you haven't already ordered. Depends on who you use. But yeah, important reminder to, you know, ship all your stuff because that will sneak up on you. I think sometimes shipping deadlines. Plus reminder that Monday 3rd September is Labor Day. Right. So here in America, I know we've got some international teams do. It is a, It's a bit. It's what we call. It's a holiday, but you guys call it a bank holiday. It's a holiday, basically. So Labor Day, you know, they don't do shipments, they don't do that kind of stuff. Things tend to get backed up around Labor Day, as I've noticed. Right. Even for our stuff that we ship for disaster. I try and make sure it comes Friday, August 30th. I think it's Friday, August 30th, right? Yeah. Like everything come the 30th. Because if it doesn't come that day, it probably will take like an extra five days. So, yeah, I always try and ship stuff a little bit earlier. The other hack I've done is like, you know, if you have the budget for it, I do try and guarantee delivery dates. I know some vendors will let you do that if you pay a little bit extra. Usually I like to. I recommend that again, if you've got the budget for it and you haven't shipped your stuff yet, pretty much good to, you know, do sort of a guaranteed delivery if they again, free. Raymond Warehouse is used to receiving things, so they're fine. I'm like, you know, signing stuff, whatever, like all good there from there. So, yeah, so with that, I do want to go over some networking things because I know a lot of you were asking questions this week about brain dates and stuff. And so let me just flip to that and then kind of the other ways to network upcoming and like what to do now. Right. Like if you've done all your stuff. So let's talk first about leads. So I'll start to slide show from here. So yeah, as we mentioned for sponsors, these are the lead scanning and capture guidelines. This link will work for you starting tomorrow. So even if you try and click it now you're going to get an error. So just so you know, it will work for you starting tomorrow because we're going to send out all the invites to all those admins who are your designated POCs for the lead scanning at Annual. There is a handy guide on here. I will say it's fairly straightforward. You basically log in, you can set up, you know, whoever, whatever fields you want. It is just one login. So I'll show you guys briefly because I'm logged in. Sorry to switch screens so often. Oh no, I'm already logged in. That's why. Hold on, here's me. Okay, so here's me. I'm already logged in. And once your admin logs in, you'll see things like this. You know, if you were a Europa sponsor, you might still see Europa back in there because your data's still in there.

So.

So right now for most of you, you're just going to see SAS re Annual at the top. And yes, it does say the 9th or the 12th because you know the 9th is like an early load in day for sponsors. So that's when the capture will start to work. Set up again, fairly easy. You just set up, you know, your name, phone number, you can add members here. So some people have asked, you know, like how many people can I add? You can add up to nine other people. So the admin has to stay right, you've got to stay primary. But I can add like Trish if I wanted to. So which I probably will. So you just go here to add user. It logged me out because I tried to log back in one second. That was my fault because I was already logged in, so. Oh man, I was already logged in. I ruined it anyways. Very easy to set up, as you guys can see. Let me see if I can actually get logged back in on a window once. Hold on. My zoom is going a little crazy. Let me just try and get logged back in.

Added me. It made me feel like last week when I got promoted to a panelist. So thanks for the big. Lift my spirits.

I'm like, you know, it's my fault. I was already logged in. Okay. Like it's my fault. I ruined the system.

While you're looking around, I did want to tell people that when we were chatting about power and the deadlines for electrical drops. If you have an active, you're already tracking the power that you need for that and we'll be in touch with you separately, so don't worry about that.

Yeah, that's a, that's A great call out. I will call it too. We're gonna do a separate webinar next week. I know you guys are like, oh, there's too many webinars. Okay, I got my, got my slides working. But yeah, we are gonna do a separate one next week just to go over the activation next steps. So we'll send that invite out to you guys if you have and it'll just be sponsors who have an activation that need to go to this. So it'll be right after next week's all sponsor webinar. So we'll do it at 10am we'll just keep the activation people if you will and you can stay on. We'll talk about things like, you know, power, which you do need to pay for but we're ordering right so that you. It's all, it's all easy. You don't have to worry about double ordering load in times. Where to, you know, if you're, if your vendor calls you, like I'm at the gate, where do I go? Like we'll give you all that info so you know where to send them if they call you instead of us or you know, show up at a random gate versus the one we say to go to. So okay. Anyways, I got my login back working so yeah, anyway, so I'm again my fault. I was already logged in. So for setup. Yeah, you're just going to, you know, you can add users here, you can add again up to nine other people. You can add a user here. Takes a minute. Right. So yeah, you just do name. So I'll just add Trish for fun because everybody already knows her email so this is not like private information. Com. She's going to get a cool, you know, handy invitation. Great. And now she shows up here as staff. So again you can only have one admin. This auth code is for when you log into the app. So the way this works is I'm logged in on the admin side and so this is what your admins are going to do, right? They're going to set it all up. You will be able to see your leads in real time. There's obviously no leads yet. So it's like I don't know what you want to. I don't know what you're trying to see here, lady. There's no leads yet. So. There are no leads yet because there's nobody to scan. I haven't scanned anyone. So yeah, that will be where your leads live. I know some people have asked like can I get them in real time. Like that's where they live in real time. You, you can only do that on the desktop, which is why we say, you know, have an admin. You can again view your scans, all that stuff. I don't have any, obviously haven't scanned anyone because I don't have any badges. So the other thing you're going to want to do is like, yeah, do your setup to set up your company details, add your users. I think that's the most important. I'll go back to that real quick because I'll, I'll call out that this auth code is important because this is what they're going to use to log into the mobile app, right? So they are going to need that code. Your probably going to need to give it to them to log in to scan leads. So what you'll do is like everybody's mobile device basically turns into a lead scanner. You know, we don't do like separate devices. You can just use your, your phone that you already have. I've got it on my phone. You know, I've got an iPhone. So you just, if you haven't downloaded already, you can do it now and prep for tomorrow. It's just called the Capello app. You usually see it pop up first. It's you know, called Captello. Captello Scanner capture. That's the same one. It's the, the C that almost looks like the Costco C, but it's not the Costco C. That's the one that's Cantelo. So that's the one to download, you know, booth number, all that stuff. Good to fill in. And then really what you're going to want to do after, you know, just get your team set up, have everybody download the app is this is where you're going to configure the, what you want your team to fill in as they're scanning. So I know a lot of you have been asking us like what's configurable. This is all wysiwyg, so you can pretty much capture like anything. Just note if you pull this over, I know a lot of people ask like, do we provide phone numbers? We don't. So but if you pull this over, what that means, it does not mean that Saster is going to give you everyone's phone number because you've pulled that over. It means it's going to prompt your team to ask them for their phone number as they're capturing leads. So I want to call that distinction out. I know it's a little bit Confusing. It doesn't mean that we automatically give you those details. It just means that because it's a field in here, you can configure it so that if you want your team to ask for phone number, right, you can say something like this is required. Right? So I know that whenever somebody on my team scans, they're going to need to ask for phone number. Since Sasser does not provide that, you can do things like exclude it, do other things, right. Display. You're usually going to want to put both. Again, using both things. Don't make it hidden because that means it'll disappear and then update, action, override. Right? And then I'm going to hit save and close and then now phone number is there and it's required. I'm going to delete this because that's just an example. While I'm here, I'll call out the fields that Saster does provide to you in your lead capture. So that'll be first name, last name, email, company, job title, and then country. So those are like our standard fields. Again, anything else you need? Again, it's fairly wysiwyg. So I know some people have been like, you know, should I put a drop down here of, you know, do I want to make them red, yellow, green? I'm going to say, you know, green. Oops, I can't type on my other screen green onion. But okay, you could say green, whatever you want, right? And then that'll come up as an option for you guys. There, there. I know some people who have done like, yeah, assign owners. You can do that just to assign it in real time. That is kind of hard. Again, remember that you're going to be in front of this person IRL when you're scanning them. So like, I try not to make it too complicated. Otherwise they're like standing in front of this person for two minutes and they're like, why do I have to give you all this stuff? You know, you can time. You can time it, that's fine. Like that one I think will fill automatically with whatever time you scan them, which is sometimes handy. Again, any other notes you want to put in here, you can put again, you can pretty much configure any of these, right? So if you want to do a star survey of like, is this person, you know, instead of red, yellow, green. If you want to do like, okay, we'll do the star system. And like that means you as the person would rate that lead maybe like one through five, right? If this is five max stars, that means if you know, if they're talking to a prospect and they're like, that person's not going to buy, I'll just put them as a one. I think they're kind of cold. I'll put them as like a three. If they're a hot lead, I'll put them as a five. So, again, you can pretty much can use these fields since there's so many of them to configure to whatever you need. Right. You can put in custom content if you want to put reminders for your team at the top of the leads. Again, it is just your team seeing it, so that's really up to you. I'll get out of there. I'm going to delete these because I actually think mine overwrites all of yours. So I'm going to delete them and that's it. Yeah, notes. You know, you can put notes. Some people ask if they can put notes. Docs. If you're using your phone, I do think it lets you, like, take a photo and like, attach it. So, yeah, it's pretty handy. It's a different tool than what we've used at Last Annual. It's a lot more robust and it does work a lot better offline for some reason. You know, you find yourself in a spot and your phone's not working great or something, or you're elsewhere and you need to scan someone. It's got better functionality for that. So. Okay, so we've talked about leads since that'll start going live tomorrow. I'm sure you guys will let us know if you have any more questions on that. But like I said, fairly straightforward just to set yourself up or have the admin set you up. So I'll briefly talk about networking and then we'll do some final reminders because the bulk of what we want to go through today. If you guys missed last week's webinar, we are live now on Brain dates. The thing I called out last week that I'll call out again this week, you do need to be registered in order to access brain dates. So I'll say that one more time. You do need to be registered with the ticket to access brain dates. I've had a lot of people sign up in the last week, I think, to get into brain dates, which is great as sponsors, but when I go through, I'm like, I see your CEOs not registered yet and they're emailing us. Why can't I get into Brain Date? It's because they're not registered. So, yeah, you do need to register anybody on your team with your sponsor All Access Pass in order for them to get into braindates. We don't do like a sponsor list. It's directly connected to Bizzabo, which is our ticketing platform for many reasons. That's how the integration works. And so that's why you do need to be registered first. So if you haven't done it yet, do make sure you register. You're going to go to this handy tickets page. It also is, you know, you're starting to come up on the deadline to register your teams. It's a good idea to do it so that they, you know, are a verified ticket holder. Just for a lot of reasons. I recommend doing it. You'll notice when you come to this page, it will look blank. You'll put in your sponsor code. I'm just going to put in my dummy code. And then you'll see this sponsor All Access Pass pop up. That's the one you want, Right. You can only do 10 at a time if you're trying to register your whole team. If you're just doing one person, you can do one and then continue from there to register. Right. The other thing I'll say as a reminder is it takes about an hour safely to sync from visible to brain dates. Just keep in mind it's like syncing constantly. But there's other people buying tickets right now. So I would say 20 minutes is usually the soonest I've seen it work of like, okay, register 20, like I assign myself a ticket 20 minutes later. Are you pretty much going into the platform like nine times out of 10. But sometimes when it is high volume like it is right now, it does take a little bit longer. So give it about an hour before you reach out to us. And if it's been an hour and you still can't log in, then let us know because then there might be an issue. But yeah, you do need to be registered first and take it in. So we did a whole webinar last week. It was just about brain aids. It was an hour, literally just about brain aids. I'm just going to give you guys the TLDR because we cannot do the whole spiel of brain dates. But I'll just say, you know, a few things about it. This is our primary way to network. Sponsors did have early access, but now everybody has access. So it is open to all ticket, all full paid ticket holders and sponsors. It is, you know, meant to be a peer learning system. There is a code of conduct that you're Going to see the first time when you log in. So it looks literally just like this. Highly recommend reading this and not just saying I agree as it will help you a lot on either why your topic is accepted or maybe why it gets rejected. Brain dates are moderated so it's not just like, you know, I can pop into brain dates and I can start posting topics willy nilly or I can start meeting with people randomly. It took me their first but now take me to the homepage. But so you'll see, right, there are already attendees in here. There are already topics in here. We did try and do, you know, sponsor early access. If you get it now, it's still a good time to get in. Right. So still highly recommend doing it. Doing it this week. If you miss the early access, it's fine. It just means it's open for everyone now. So yeah, you'll come in to brand it's again, you're going to set up an account the first time if you haven't already. And then it will drop you into what we call the topic marketplace. This is where you can see other people's topics or where you can create a topic yourself for submission. I'll walk you through it because it will actually just go into the queue. So if you're like, I want to host a brain date and last week we went over a lot of reasons why you may, you may want to host or you may not want to host. Those are listed here. Basically, I'll say in a nutshell, brain dates are work. So brain dates are pretty much like micro presentations, if you will. So if you're hosting one, you have to carry this conversation. So for like a one on one, it's like 20 minutes. For a group, it's like 30 minutes. Sometimes I've seen them go long. You're as the host, you are the one carrying the conversation about whatever your topic is that you came up with. Again, it's a peer learning system. So things that are, you know, great topics. I've seen there's a few in there. So that will help you get a good sense of like what are the things, you know, we approve what are things that other people are posting? You know, people do things like here's how I conquered PLG or here are the best emails I sent this year or here are my emails that didn't work. Like anything that's a failure or learning typically does super well on brain dates. Anything that you are a subject matter expert in that is not related to your product does really well on Brain dates again, Attendees can see where you work. So I'll just go back for a second to Brain aids, show you a sample topic. I think the top one was like the Canva one. Oh, I see. It's defaulting me there because it wants people to read it. I get it. Okay. So you can see like this, there was a Canva one here, but now I've seen Neo4J. This is a good one too. This one, like I wouldn't go to because it doesn't relate to me as like I'm not a product person but you know, top product Roadblocks and headache scaling from 0 to 100 with Neo4J. Again, great topic. It has. It's, it's, you know, sharing about their scaling stories and roadblocks and headaches. He's a CTO, right? He's not, he's not going to talk about Neo4J. It's like a super technical product. Like none of you probably use it. Like he's just going to talk about his lessons learned and his scar tissue from building out a product from 0 to 100. Because you know, once you go from 0 to 10, things start to break in your product and then, then it breaks again a little bit later. So yeah, he's going to do his on scaling, right? It's not really, it's not about anything that they do related to that. We do get investors who will do things like this, right? Like meet with an investor. We do allow things like that. We don't allow things like, hey, I'm a sponsor. Meet with me to talk about marketing. I'll tell you why and I'll tell you about the who do you want to meet program, which is, that's what it's for. So please don't use brain dates for that. We have a whole program for this. This one is a, it's a good one. Again, Fullcast is a sponsor, so this one is a good one because it's, you know, it's their CMO talking about marketing. It's not related to what Fullcast does. So that's a good topic there. Right. So again you'll start to scroll down. You'll see there's a few amount of topics in here already that people posted, some of which receded, not all. And then, yeah, there's a bunch in here, right? So again you'll start to see this one only has one spot left. Okay, that's great. Again, so you will see different topics in here. You'll start to see things that will start to fill Things that people like. Again, usually scaling topics, anything like that is for the best. Trish, I have somebody at my door. Can I have you take over for a second?

I don't have the screen share, so I'll just keep talking to this. But we did have a few of you reach out this week asking, what is the difference between a super brain date and a brain date? So I know a lot of you have sponsored super brain dates as part of your package. They will still be in this same Hanger east location where the Brain dates lounge is, but it is a larger session. So you know, you'll have the 20 to 30 seats that we discussed in your contract. It is completely different than the other brain dates that any attendee can go in and pitch and propose. And those typically only have, I think, four or five spots. So as an example, even I could come in and say, you know what, I'm going to host a brain date around the five biggest mistakes that I made as an event planner. And when I put that in there, I'm going to want to make it as compelling as possible. I need to make sure it's not a sales pitch and then I'm going to submit it for approval. Sastor is going to come back and say, trish, we love your topic.

You're in.

You have a brain date. And then people will be able to start reserving seats. Or they may come back to me and say, trish, we already have three other people who've submitted some of these topics, so we're not going to be approving that. But the mini little brain dates and the super brain dates, two totally different types of sessions in the same location. And for those of you with sponsored brain dates, that's why you'll see the super brain dates designation at the top of some of those sessions.

Yeah, that was a good point. Great point there. So let's see if this person comes back to my door. Hopefully not, so I can keep cruising. But yeah, good point on why it may or may not be accepted. Yeah, sometimes it's only because we have so much of the same topic. We're like, guys were like overloaded with this topic. Maybe try something else. And it is all to help you try and, you know, maximize people who are coming to your brain dates. I know a lot of people do want to host groups again. We did a whole webinar on this last week. You can watch it on our YouTube channel. It is 45 minutes, but I actually think it's worth doing just so that you know all the guidelines and then it's easier to get your brain dates accepted. But yeah, basically you know, if you do a group brain date, most of our hosts will do slides. So again it is, it's worked to do a group reading. It's a little bit, you know, it just makes it easier for all the participants in the group if you have slides that they can follow along with things like that just to help center the conversation. So yeah, brain dates are great. Looking forward to reading your guys submissions once you do start to submit. I think another question we've gotten is like once you submit, like how long does it take for the moderation to either accept it or not? We try and do it within 24 to 48 hours. Just depends on how many brain aids are in the queue at the moment. It might take a little bit longer, but typically we do it within 24 hours. Sometimes it gets a little bit longer if there's a bunch in there and we have to give a lot of feedback. But yeah, that's, that's the typical turnaround time. Okay. Additional networking, which is what I want to chat through today and then I want to talk about who do you want to meet and then just like final shipping reminders. So we talked about this a little bit last week but we kind of ran out of time because we talked mostly about brain dates. But we. You have a few new things of how to network at SASTER Annual. So there's a few new things I'll go through here. I know it's one of the like the most requested things from both attendees and sponsors is like absolutely do more networking. So it is something we are trying to do as much as we can. So yeah, it is something where you know that, that feedback does not fall on deaf ears. Like we are always trying to do new things. So even if you're a returning sponsor, a lot of these will be new to you because we did them. We didn't do, we actually didn't do these last year. So these are pretty much all new programs. So I'll go over them first because again I think now that everyone's turning their booth and maybe things are a little bit calmer, you can start to think about things like this and maybe sending a few last minute folks who might qualify for this if you're not sending them already. So did want to call these out. So first and foremost we have a CRO and CEO poker night. If you were on campus last year, if you went to Europa, you know, we kind of do a sash for Casino Royale now it's really fun. I'm going to tell you the odd number one question I've got about Casino Night, Trish, which is people have asked me what the buy in is.

We've gotten a bunch and I'm like, there's no money. I was like, there's no money?

Yeah. I was like, yeah, there's no real money involved. So if you're like, oh, that takes the foot out of it. Like, guys, we can't have real life like gambling for cash on campus. That's. That is a permit process. I don't even want to try to buy in.

Is $10,000 payable to Amelia?

Yeah. So yeah, there's no buy in. I don't know why that's our number one question. But it oddly has been. We do what we use like Sasser bucks and stuff. So yeah, there's no like real buy in. But I still think it's fun. People did this throughout all three days last year and it was like always full when I walked by the casino. So it's a fun thing to do. You know, we've got poker, blackjack, roulette. There's one more. Can't remember. Texas hold them. Yeah, Texas hold them. So, yeah, there's a few different types. We already have over 100 people registered. We were trying to get to 200 and I actually feel like we're going to go over it because we'll have to think about. Because the casino is only so big. But we are trying to just do it with the. It was meant to be the top 100 CROs. A top 100 CEOs. We're already at past 100 between the two and people are just now starting to submit. Like I've seen submissions flood a lot this week. So yeah, one of the things where if you're like, okay, my CRO is coming or my CEOs coming, make sure they apply. They do have to apply. So I can't stress this enough. For all of these programs, you do have to apply and you have to get accepted. So the way you'll know that you'll get accepted is you will get a calendar invite from me. So if it's your CEO, like they'll get one from me, your CRO, cmo, whatever it is for any of these networking things, they will get a calendar invite from me, myself, not events. It's like from me actually. And that's the list we're using. Like we are using whoever is on my calendar invite list. That's who we're going to let in it is access controlled. So if you're like, amelia, I forgot, and my CEO's here. I mean, I'll probably be at poker night for a little bit to help, but then I'm like, you know, it's in the same building as a big party, but I'll slide over to the big party because Tita, Laos playing. So, like, good luck to you at that point. But, like, you know, Trish and I will be there. It is gated. It's not us, one of us. And, you know, some help will be there. It is access controlled. So you do have to be accepted. I do want to say that, too. I know it sounds weird, but some people are like, I applied, and I assume I got in. I'm like, I don't know why you would assume you got in. Like, if you got the calendar invite, you got in. If not, you didn't get it. I'm sorry. Like, it is access controlled. It's not automatic, it's not guaranteed. We do have a little committee that reviews all these things, and if they approve you, they will add you to that calendar invite. So I know they just did a big round of invites yesterday, I want to say, for poker night and for cfo, which we'll talk about next, and then the other ones, you know, we kind of do on a rolling basis. So, yeah, you do have to get accepted via that calendar invite in order to come. But if your CRO or CEO is coming, we do highly recommend again, you submit them. Even if you think like, okay, they don't have time for that. You know, there's. Again, it's free to spit. You guys are already sponsors. We know who all the sponsors are. We're pretty much like, if you're an attending CEO of a sponsor company, we let you in. Right? Like, we're not going to say no to your CEO, but you do have to submit him, otherwise we may not know who he is. So, yeah, please submit your CEO or CRO if they're coming for this in particular, because they do need to apply. So. So again, maybe. I talked a lot about the submission process. It does apply to all of them. So I'll just talk about why you might want to go to one of these various ones, because the submission process is pretty much the same. So for poker night, we did it specifically for CROs and CEOs, because they always want to meet one another. It's like the feedback we get a lot at our annual events and that Jason has gotten from, you know, some of his portfolio companies is like, you know, the CEOs are always wanting to meet the CROs. The CROs want to meet CEOs in case, you know, their tenure is not long. So, yeah, it's. It is actually meant to be more of like a. It is a networking event. It'll be fine because it's poker night. You know, there's like, food, there's drinks, there's poker. It'll be a great time regardless. Even if you're just going to network because you're not looking to hire, but a lot of the people who are coming are. So, like, there are. There's some CEOs coming and looking to hire like a CRO. So if you've got like a network because you are a CRO, or I will say too, we have been letting in VP of sales because I know sometimes the CRO title doesn't exist at some companies or if you're a huge enterprise company. And so maybe you don't have, like, you've got a, you know, director sales title. That's pretty much equivalent. We have let those in too. So, Julia, just know that's kind of the purpose of poker night. And yeah, as I mentioned, it does lead into the big party. So Wednesday, it starts at 4. It goes all the way till 8. So it does lead into the big party. Since they're in the same building, that basically means you're going to hear the big party and, like, be able to enjoy the music. If you're at poker night, you can also bounce back and forth. Right? You don't have to be playing the entire, entire time. So that'll be a fun vibe. You can, like, go do some table games, go rock out to a few songs, come back, whatever suits your mood that evening. So, yeah, that's poker night. I'll go to the next one. What's next one? CCO Summit. This one is actually almost full, so I'll call that one out. This one has more of a hard deadline. I think it's the 25th. I think it says it on my slide. Let's just see. Doesn't say it on my slide, but I'm pretty sure it's the 25th. Yeah. Applications for this one close the 25th, which is soon. And I. I am cognizant. That's like a Monday. But that's because this one's almost full. Like, this one has over 200 people. And our side events only have certain capacities, again, to keep them more closed doors, more intimate, better for networking. They are capacity restricted. So again, same process here it is submission and accepted submissions only that will be granted access to CCO Summit for the most part. I'll kind of asterisk that a little bit. But yeah, submissions for this close the 25th because it is almost full. If your CCO is coming or thinking about coming, highly recommend again you put their name in now even if they like can't make it. I would just put their name in now. Since these submissions will be closing, there are over 200 people already coming. So like these are the chairs and speakers. It's a really great lineup. This is in itself probably worthy of its own event, right? I mean Success Customer Success Week and SF Customer Meetup do this, they do this actually as their own events. They're just doing it within Sasha this year. So John Gleason, who's at Success Venture Partners, he's been a Workshop Wednesday speaker has helped us put this all together and yeah, you know some pretty stellar companies here from Slack, GitHub, Tableau Notion, Mulesoft, like, like really great folks to learn from. And most of this is closed door. So you do want to apply for this. I'll asterisk at the last two sessions we are going to open up to the public. So if you're like I do just want to hear from these folks but I maybe can't go to the whole summit or I got to be in the booth. The last two sessions are actually in the Bizabo agenda. So if you flip to the handy dandy agenda here, you'll notice that the last two sessions from the CCO Summit are actually on this agenda on Thursday. So you can sign up for those freely. They're going to do like their closed door stuff for course and then basically open it up to everyone at the end. So still recommend you go to that if you are not like a cco but you know, you head up sales or interested in customer success, still get to go to those open door sessions that are at the end. So there is that. Okay, so next is the CFO Summit. So this is again all of these are new for this year. This is just if you're, you know, CFO/VP of Finance is coming to Saster. This is Wednesday so it's before poker night. It is. We're doing like a mini talk track with just CFOs only. So we do some networking. You know we've got gainsight, the SAS CFO guy and then we're going to do some benchmarks. So yeah, this is really geared entirely to CFOs. Some of the Content I'm like is over my head that I've read if your CFO is coming or if you want a good reason for your CFO to come, apply for this one. Again these, these applications are more open until we'll see if they get full kind of like CCO summit. So the sooner you apply the better. But yeah, we are going to have a CFO summit on Wednesday that one of your fellow sponsors, Sage, is helping us put together. But we'll it's still relevant for any CFOs that are in attendance. So make sure you apply to that one if your CFO is coming. Two more ways. The CMO branch. So not to forget all the marketers, we are doing a CMO brunch on Thursday. It is slightly at the same time as the CCO summit, but those Venn diagrams are really overlapped that much. So you will have to slightly pick one. If, if you are the CEO and you want to go to one of those, you might have to pick one. But yeah, so we're going to do a CMO branch. We did this, this one is the one we did last year. A little bit differently, but same idea here. We're going to do like kind of closed door networking for CMOs and then just open it up at the end of the day. So if you're in marketing, that's a good one. And then. Okay, so last but not least, who do you want to meet? So talk about this for a little bit. So we piloted this program at Saster Europa this year called who do you want to meet? It's simple in name and it's probably easy to guess what it means. We basically ask attendees. Maybe it's confusing for sponsors actually, but okay. Anyways, we ask attendees. So the question is to attendees. We ask attendees, who do you want to meet? And basically on that list they can pick the Super Gold and Up sponsors of who they want to meet with during the show. It's a good way for, you know, our attendees to see, you know, most of the exhibitors that are coming. It is a pilot program. So that's why I asked that it is right now only for Super Gold and Up sponsors. The reason being that because Super Gold and Up sponsors also have content, we already have all of their like speaker waivers, things like that, email address, contacts, like we have a lot more data from these folks than we do just for any sponsor off the bat. And it is a pilot program. So we've only done this once so far at SASA Europa earlier this year in June this is the first time we're piloting it for annual. Doesn't mean that we will, you know, change the rules or guidelines or whatever next year. I'm sure we will, but right now it is only open to super gold, platinum and up meaning diamond. Right. Sponsors. This year again, it's a pilot program, so a lot of people will be like, okay, what do I need to do to get the leads? It's completely attendee opt in. So basically we launch this to attendees next week. They can opt in if they want to meet with you. We send you that list the week before the event. There's nothing for you to do as a sponsor if you don't get a list. It maybe, you know, people didn't opt in for whatever reason. It's not a. Again, nothing here is a guarantee. It's not a guarantee of opt ins. It's just something we do to try and connect you with some of the attending companies so that you've got their info before the event officially starts. The meetings, you're supposed to have them on site at Sasser Annual, right? Probably in your booth or anywhere on the 40 acre campus. But that's the scoop on the who do you want to meet program. Some of you have asked us that, we're Europa sponsors, if we're doing this again. So we are indeed. Again, it's a pilot program, so there's going to be a lot of kinks. We appreciate all your patience on who do you want to meet? Right? It's not perfect. It's a pilot program. It's not something that any of you also either paid for. Right? It's just a program that we're piloting to see how it goes. To see how it goes with all of you guys, to meet more folks at Sastry Annual and maximize some of your sponsorships. But again it's. And if you're like, I actually don't want that, you can just let us know otherwise by default. Right? You can just. If we get people to opt in to meet with your company, we'll send you a list the week before the event. That's all you need to know. It's all you gotta do. You don't have to do anything from there. We set it all up, it's all automated and the attendees can pick to meet you if they want. So yeah, that's how we do. Who do you want to meet? We piloted it for Europa. Again, it's really simple. We just, you know, we put it into their like secondary agenda of do you want to Meet with this person, and that's it. It's really simple. All right, last thing. I'll say shipping, and then there's a few last reminders in here, and then we'll hit anything that I missed. Okay, so shipping again. Now's the time to start thinking about this because the warehouse has been starting to receive shipment. And then after the 30th, which is already next week, there is a bit of a late fee. So make sure you much like booth. So make sure you get your shipments into the warehouse. If it's going to the warehouse, if it's going to show site, they will only start accepting on the 9th, you know, and before that, they may refuse it. So, yeah, be mindful when you're shipping, I always recommend if you can. I know you can't always, because you're not shipping it yourself. If you can work with your vendor to put in your boxes, you know, just your company name and. Or your booth number inside the box, that's helpful. Outside the box, it's super helpful. But sometimes we get a bunch of. Every year, we get a bunch of boxes that we have to open because there's nothing on it. And so hopefully if your logo's on it or some sort of instructions, we'll suss out who it's for. You'd be surprised. Sometimes we get random stuff, and I'm like, I don't know who this is for. So we'll just keep it till someone says, hey, my xyz, things are missing. We're like, oh, we've got them. So, yeah, not to fret. If you have something that you think might have gone missing, it just might not have been labeled correctly or it might actually be missing. That's fairly rare.

I've asked each of the sponsors, when I am talking with you, keep a list of what you have shipped, who was the shipper and what's the tracking number? Because we have a lot of people who are saying, like, oh, I'm direct shipping a little literature stand or something. Yeah, Amazon. And we don't know whose it is. At least if you've kept, hey, it was Amazon. And here's my tracking info. That'll help us track it down for you.

Yeah, yeah, those are all good points. So, yeah, again, if you haven't done the shipping, do the shipping now. Or in my case, you know, I shipped some. Some stuff, and they were like, it came down, it came damaged, so I had to go call the vendor. So again, good thing to ship because, like, you know, if you ship late it comes damage again by some act, you know, I don't know who is responsible for the damage. There's so many, there's so many hands. It's crossing, right? Like the production people, the shipping people, whatever. Like it's, you know, it came damaged, whatever. I don't really care how it happened. Like it did happen, right? And so now I at least have got time to triage that. So good reminder to ship early too, just to make sure all your stuff is as you think it's gonna be. I was like, okay, well I have to order some replacements, which they helped me with. But you know, again, just a good reminder. Sometimes stuff happens, right? So better to ship sooner rather than later or ship some extras too, because you never know. It's rare. But again, you know, this is like one delivery out of the hundreds we have. So it does happen. It's rare, but always good to be prepared for it. The mobile app is live, so again, you usually be ticketed to get in. So if you're not ticketed, it won't let you do a whole lot on the app. You could just pretty much download it and then it'll prompt you to log in. If you don't have a ticket, it's not really going to let you do anything. So you do have to have your ticket to get into the mobile app, but highly recommend downloading it. It's just called Saster Events, so you probably already have it. Actually, if you've been to Saster before, it is the same app. If you still have it on your phone, you may just need to log out so that you can get into this year's annual event. Or if you came to Europa, you probably just have to like switch events. You'll see a button in the bottom left that says like switch Events on there. So if you're logged into a past Astro event, you'll just need to switch. Most of you probably won't have this on your phone anymore. You probably deleted after annual's over. So. Okay, last things here. Parking, rideshare, shuttles. A lot of this is on the attendee portal. I know you guys have your own portal as sponsors, but there's still some really great information in the attendee portal that applies to sponsors, right? So things like parking, if you need to request a parking form, you come do that here. I think some people have asked like if I've requested, how come I haven't gotten my permit yet? We have not started the distribution, so like we're just gathering the information now and then we'll start to distribute, probably next week or so. But that's parking. If you request right now is, it's still free parking. So you can just pick, you know, I'm coming all three days. If you're not sure. Err on the side of caution is what I tell my sponsors. If you're like, I don't know, maybe I just need Tuesday and Wednesday, but maybe if I come back Thursday, like, what happens? Right? Like just air. If you're a sponsor, just air on the side of all three days and on your type here, you're going to pick sponsor. That way we can assign you to the lot that is closest to the expo hall. So that's why it's important to pick the right type. If you're like, oh no, I submitted it and I accidentally picked up attendee or, or I also have a speaker. Like again, we, we, we know that information. So if you got it wrong, it's okay. We'll suss it out for you and get you to where you need to go. Shuttles. I know that's been another question. So that'll be my last one before I wrap on any other questions we get. But yeah, there is a free Saster annual shuttle does do a loop between Saster, the San Mateo County Event center, where Saster's at the Crowne Plaza, and now the Hampton Inn. So if you're one of those two hotels, it's basically gonna do a loop. Takes about 15 to 20 minutes to loop. It takes about actually 15 minutes to get from, you know, Crown, then the south of Hampton, then it gets to San Mateo. So factor that time in. If you're like, oh, I'm gonna try and take the shuttle disaster. They do like the smaller shuttles now too, but they do multiple. So again, if you're like, I'm a sponsor and I'm in a rush, you know, the, the most time where it's heavy hit is 9:00am or like 8:30. So if you are needing to get to your booth on time for booth duty and you're like, I just can't wait for the shuttle. Like, obviously an Uber or rideshare would be faster. Like if you need to get somewhere on time at faster, I. And you don't want to wait for the shuttle or the shuttle ends up being full and you have to wait for the next one. Again, I would not risk it. If you're like, I need to be in my booth because I'm the only one. Right? Again, I know sometimes you're like, I don't want to spend the money on the Uber, but like, like your company has spent a lot of money to sponsor. So like, you know, I think they probably have you there then be half an hour or so late if you're meant to be in the booth. If not, happy trails. It's usually nice and easy breeze to get on the shuttle, but yeah, it does get busy at those peak times. So just a reminder there, you may need to Uber maybe once. Right. And then shuttle back. Usually back is not an issue. So keep that in mind with that. Anything else you want to hit, mister?

Not that I can think of. I've been checking. We don't have anything in the chat. We don't have any questions. I did see some emails coming in from people asking about electrical and parking.

Okay.

Watching and sending us notes. I will follow up to all your emails right after this, but I think you've covered everything.

All right, guys, well, there's only two more of these left, so get excited. There's a lot going on this year. We've all decided events. Tina Lao at the big party. She did play Coachella this year. That's usually how I source our artists. But if you haven't seen her, she has a good time. Just look her up on YouTube. I, we, we really enjoy her music on the team. So we're excited. So we hope you're excited. So yeah, that'll be fun. You know, it's still, even though Monday is a half setup day, it's still a lot of time in San Mateo Bay Area. Don't forget to submit your customer passes. Right. We did extend the deadline, but you do still need to submit my next Thursday. Use that sheet that Trish sent you. If you're like, how do I submit my customers? Trish would have sent you a sheet. If you can't find it, she'll resend it to you nicely. But yeah, make sure you fill in your customer passes. Again, exciting times. We started loading like late next week, so there's a lot of really good things going on. Okay with that. Thanks everyone for joining. Hope you guys are getting, you know, excited for annual. All your boots are in, so that's like a big load off, right? You know, ship your staff, register your team, start to do all the networking, all the fun attendee stuff that attendees are doing too. I know there's been a lot of chatter that's picking up on social, which is great. So yeah, hope to see. We will actually see you guys soon. Only two more of these left. Again, these are on YouTube. If you want to watch the replay or send it to anyone on your team. And with that, we will see you guys next week if we don't talk to you sooner on email. So thanks everyone for joining and we'll see you next week.