SaaStr Annual 2024: Only 26 D-A-Y-S T-O G-O!

Live streaming. Yep, there it goes. Okay, we're going to go ahead and kick off because there's a few things we want to go through today. And as always, we are recording this. You can watch these on our YouTube channel. Some folks always ask me where they are. So I'm just going to show you guys briefly. If you go to YouTube.com and then you click on the Live tab, this is where all of our recordings will live for the webinars that we do every week. So you can see we're streaming live now. And then. Yeah, these are where they live. There's also. I know Trish linked them in like the last email. You can kind of tell because, you know, we started a countdown. So these are like the last few webinars. If you missed any if. And you want to catch up there. The other thing I'll do is I will drop the link to these slides just into the chat. Again, I know this was in Trisha's latest email as well, but I'll just throw this into the chat to everyone so you can follow along. We do just use the same deck every week and we just update it so that you don't have to find a new link. So if you save this link once, then you're pretty much good to go. So with that, if you guys have any questions as we go, you can use the Q and A. And yeah, we're gonna get started. So first, and we are gonna talk majority about braindeeds today. But first and foremost, we'd be remiss if we did not mention that two things are due tomorrow, one of which applies to everyone, the other of which applies to just a few folks. But I think still good to do a quick reminder. So as you all hopefully know and are feverishly working on, a booth artwork is due tomorrow at no later than 12 noon Pacific. So that's the time to get it in. Um, we will be drawing down an audit right at 12 noon to see who's missing. Um, so, you know, submit your graphics today or first thing when you wake up tomorrow. But yeah, all booth artwork is due tomorrow, no later than 12 at noon. I'll talk about what happens if you do submit late, because I think this is a question we've gotten from a few folks now. Um, so if you do happen to submit late, it's. It's not that you can't submit late. Um, it is that you will be receiving a late fee that will be applied by Freeman. Again, it's not something we can control. It's just you know, they're. They're at a point where they have been receiving submissions from some of you guys and are starting to do the proof phase. As you may or may not know, we do load in about a week and a half before the annual actual starts. So we actually start like September 1st, which is closer than when the actual event happened. So from that case in perspective, that's why we need the boots now, so they can start to print these and be ready for when we start to load in. So hopefully that gives some context as to the deadline. But, yeah, that is the deadline. If you do happen to miss it, you are going to have this late feed. And basically what happens next is like, it's not that you can't, you know, you have until September 1st to submit your booth. You still need to submit it next week. So it really only buys you a few days in the weekend to, you know, get your graphics all together. There's a really good question in the chat that I'll address here, too, for folks that are wondering. So if you have submitted your booth booth, or you submit it tomorrow and you're like, I'm panicked, right? Of like, okay, how do I know that? We got it in, like the box folder. So that's why we're going to do an audit tomorrow at noon. We are going to, you know, just do a drawdown of and an audit of who has submitted by 12 noon tomorrow. If we have not received your artwork by then, you will get an email notification. So this will be from, you know, Trisha myself tomorrow afternoon. It's not gonna be right now because it's gonna take us a while to audit, but we're gonna go through it. You'll get an email tomorrow afternoon saying, you know, your artwork has not been received. If for some reason, right? You're like, I think it's in the folder, or, you know, it should be there. You know, it's also good to reply to that email. The artwork won't fit in it, but, you know, you can do like a G drive link or something with the artwork too, so we can make sure there were no issues on the upload. You'll also get a notification the other way. So if you did already submit your graphics, we've seen most of them. So for the. For the person who was in particular asking in the chat, we have received your artwork, but otherwise assume that you'll get a notification either way tomorrow. You know, we got your artwork and we're just. It's going to take a few days to get You a proof back or we did not get it and you need to action that immediately. So pretty much everyone will get an email tomorrow. Unless you've already gotten your proof back, in which case some of you have actually already approved your booth, in which case I'm not going to email you tomorrow. Just enjoy August 16th because you've already met all your deadlines. So those will be the only people who don't get any home tomorrows. They've already done theirs and they're. They're done completed. So yeah, that is the main deadline for tomorrow. There is also another deadline for sponsor activation. So it does live a little bit further in this deck. But activations are also due tomorrow. There's a bit on the, there's a bit on the process here, right, of like how it works and all that kind of stuff. But basically activations are also due tomorrow. A little bit on that. I know a few people have filled out this, like the activation selection and intake form yesterday or this morning or maybe you're planning on filling it out tomorrow. It is going to be a fairly quick turnaround time if you are submitting this week because we actually have to submit permits tomorrow. It's. They're due tomorrow because we have to submit permits tomorrow. So it's not that we can't do it last minute. You know, we are, we are working furiously with the folks that submitted in the last week to get all the paperwork together. But we do have to submit it over to the county. This is like a county deadline that Saster has to meet. You guys have to meet the Freeman one. I mean, as do I, but I really have to meet this county one. So we are going to do our best to submit all of those tomorrow. So yeah, just know if you have submitted recently, it's going to be a fairly quick turnaround time. Again, not impossible. Just, you know, you'll need to get us some information from like your vendor and stuff pretty quickly. You know, it's usually just you can call them, get that info and then we can fill out the form and get you all squared away. So that's just a second reminder there. I won't spend too much time on that because I know not all of you are doing activations. So I also want to leave some time at the end for questions and just like other kind of final reminders now that we're getting so close to the event, in case you guys missed anything. But as promised, we're going to spend the majority of today's webinar on brain dates. So, so yeah, brain dates are. Brain dates are an interesting thing. So I'll give you both an overview and I'll show you guys the platform. Um, but just to give a little bit of context of like brain dates at Zastry Annual. And if you're joining late, because I know you guys are joining, the link to the slides are in the chat. If you're watching on the live stream, I think Trisha's linked them in the portal or her or her most recent email or both. So you can also go there and get to them. So that's how you can get to them too. So. So yeah, Brady, it's. A lot of people have asked us, you know, what can we do as sponsors to network. There are actually a few different things to do for networking. I'm going to go through the brain dates and then I'll show you guys one other bitten bob that I think we talked a little bit about last week. But just something I also want to go through today with you guys on like other things that are happening because I think not everybody maybe knows about them. So I'll go through those and then I'll kind of explain to what we're doing with a few of the sponsors that we're piloting. We'll talk about it more next week. It's called our who do you want to meet program. We piloted it at SASTER Europa. It worked really well. We're going to pilot it for SAS Annual, I think with the super golden up sponsors. So just be mindful that is nothing for you guys to do there again. We'll launch that next week. Trying to do one launch at a time here and go from there. So yeah, a few different. Again, I'll save some time at the end because there's a few different things we want to just hit, but we'll spend the majority of right now on brain dates. So yeah, brain dates are in a nutshell, the primary way to network with folks at Saster Annual. But it's all based around thought leadership. Right. So brain date from an. Think about it, I think first and foremost from an attendee's perspective, brain dates is really, as it says here is the best way to describe it. So I stole a few slides from like the deck they use with us sometimes. It's a. It's a peer learning experience. Brady has been doing this for a while. We've also been doing this for a while. I think we started doing brain dates probably when I started at Zaster Annual. So that was a while ago now. So yeah, six or seven years of doing brain dates at Zaster, but Annual and Europa, lots of different learnings. You might have actually used brain dates at other events. So that's something I like to call out too. You know, we're not the only ones who use brain dates. We do use it differently though. So I'll call out those nuances if you have or haven't used it before. Yeah, but brain dates is really, again, meant to be, you know, a peer to peer learning experience. It's all. It's a great way we have found to network with people at Sastry Annual. That's like less chaotic. Right. You're not, I mean, going around and talking to people is great, but sometimes, obviously you want to be a little bit more, you know, organized or know what you're going to be talking about or like, you know, if you're. If you're a marketer or a CRO or an events person coming and you want to talk to other marketers or CROs or people coming or you're recruiting. I know a lot of people have used brain aids to recruit too. AD again, it's a good way to do it with a little bit more of a lens of peer learning behind it because that does align very, very, very closely to saster and how we, you know, talk about our kind of mission and values, which we probably don't talk about enough on these webinars. But, you know, the kind of core of annual and its creation was this whole concept of, you know, sharing, scaling and learning. So Share scale learn is one of our taglines. You may have seen, you'll see it in person at Annual, but Brandy's really closely aligned with that. Right. Which is why we've used it for the last few years with again, a little bit of different nuances of how we do it than other events. If you've seen done brain dates but with a lot of really great success. I know a lot of, you know, both sponsors, attendees, investors, people hiring again, that have just normal attendees too, that have used brain dates to have a really good experience. Not to say that, you know, brain dates should be the only thing you do. It's faster. You should do a brain date. Right. If you can, I'll explain why maybe you would or would not want to do one. I think as a sponsor, sometimes people are automatically like, oh, I have to do this. Like, I have to find a way to make this work. I have to have somebody on my team do this. And yes, it's a good idea, but I'll Also tell you why in my slides coming up, why it might not be a good idea or it might not be a fit for your company to do the brain dates. And again, I'll just touch on some of the other ways to network at the end, so maybe that's a better fit for you. But most of our attendees do end up using brain dates and doing the brain dates. So that's the kind of overall spiel on brain aids. If you're following along on the zoom and in the chat and on the slides, you can watch this video later. It does give a good overview of brain dates, kind of other than the one that I just gave. But. Okay, so then a few things I'll call out. You know, why we do. We kind of talked a little bit about, like why we do this and stuff. So. So I'll, I'll flip back a little because this is a, this is such an important thing to call out for everybody on this call or for folks watching back the replay, because I assure you, this is the number one question I get every time about brain dates, which is, you know, now that Braindates is live, you go to log in and you get an error and you're not sure why. It's probably because you or the person who's trying to log in on your team is not ticketed yet. And it is totally fine if during this webinar I see a bunch of tickets come in on slack because you guys go to register or right after. It's totally fine. I just want to call out before I get too in the weeds. You do have to be ticketed to access the brain dates. So if somebody on your team or even yourself has not used your sponsor promo code to register yet, you're not going to be able to access the brain dates until you do. So. So you do need to register first. I know the majority of people have not registered yet. That's why I call that out, too. You are going to need to register yourself first. The other thing I'll say, I know we've gotten some questions lately on like, how do I seemingly register? So when you, if you go back to your kickoff email that Trish would have sent you guys, you know, you can just search for TJ King in your inbox. You'll notice, right? Like, I. A few people have asked us, like, okay, like, I don't see sponsor tickets on here. That's correct. And that's because they're what we call a hidden ticket. So they're not going to be visible by default. So Whatever your code is, you're going to need to put your code in first for the sponsor ticket to show up. So I think I made an example here of, I think I called mine faster full. Aha. I did. Okay, so I made a sample here for today's purposes of, you know, now that I've put it in so you can see there, I just put it in, it pops up as at the top because it's the hidden ticket. And then you can register your team. Now if for some reason you're registering more than 10 people at a time, you can only do 10 at once. That's the max. It doesn't mean like, if you have, you know, if you're a diamond and you've got 20 tickets, it doesn't mean that, you know, you've already used 10. It's just that for tickets you can only do up to 10 at one time. So that's an important call out there. Of again, just how to get your tickets because you do need to be registered again to access the brain dates you are going to need to be registered. The other tip and trick I'll say is it takes a few minutes to sync. So I know people too who are like, okay, Amelia, I'm going to register right now during this webinar. Cool. And then I'm going to log in. Like once you get to the brain, hit part of the login. I would say in a safe world, it takes about an hour to sync up. It actually doesn't usually take that long. But keep in mind it is because the systems are talking back and forth between your registration, which is bizzabo, and then the actual brand aids platform because they have an integration and sometimes that can take a little bit longer. Right. If you're registering like right now, for instance, today's been a very. Which is good news for all sponsors. Today's been a very like busy ticket day because it's the 15th, so it's our mid month deadline. It's been a very busy ticket day. So a lot of new, a lot of new data is going through the system. Right. So again I, I give it about an hour. If after an hour you still can't log in, then reach out to the brain date help because it'll tell you like, who to reach out to and go from there. But I usually say give it an hour. If after that you can't log in after an hour, then something's probably wrong. But yeah, give it an hour just for like a safe zone after you register. So, okay, so a Few things there. Again, you got to register first, so make sure you do that. So, yeah, again I talked about a little bit, but why would you or not want or why would you not maybe want to do a brain date? So keep in mind that sponsors are getting early access. So all you guys on this webinar, anybody who has a sponsor ticket can now go into the platform. The link is in this deck. I'll go over it with you guys. But you guys get early access. So we. What that means is, as you'll see in a moment, I'll show you guys the platform. There's a few topics in there that SASTER has preceded, but it does mean there's not a ton of topics in there yet. Because you guys are getting in there first, right? It's a benefit to sponsors that you guys are getting in there first. You know, the idea being that we're launching to you guys today, you can start to put your topics into the moderation queue. We'll approve them before Monday because Monday is the all attendee launch. So once attendees get into the platform, you know, then they can start to book their brain dates. They can also start to submit their own brain dates. So any. The other thing to keep in mind is, you know, anybody can submit a brain date topic that is ticketed, right? So it could be an attendee, it can be investor that's coming, it can be a sponsor that's coming. It's open for all ticket types. You can submit a brain date. So yeah, so as sponsors, you guys are getting early access. So just bear that in mind. Usually once the time of annual rolls around, the topic marketplace, which is really like where you land in brain dates. That's what they call it. They just call it a topic marketplace. That's basically the feed, right? So once you land on the feed, you'll notice there's like I think 20 or 30 in there now. There'll be more by Monday and there'll be even more. There'll be literally thousands by the time we get to SAS re annual. So early access definitely something you should try and take advantage of if you want to participate in brain aids. I've also seen sponsors do it kind of both ways of like they kind of wait a little bit, you know, maybe post one topic, see how it goes, and then post another one. So you don't have to do it all at once either. I usually actually find it's best to spread it out and see how your topics are doing or maybe not doing. Right. Brain aids are 100% opt in only. So they are, they are 100% often. So you know, I can't force people to go to your brain date. The other thing you'll notice in our guidelines upcoming is that if your brain date sits empty for too long, so from whenever you posted it, if we see for after, you know, about a week that no one's joining the brain date, we may have you change your topic. Right? That's pretty common. If we're like, okay, okay, no one's joining this topic, maybe try again. So again, a good thing to keep in mind there. There's a good question in the chat that Trish is answering, but I'll also answer it live. As a sponsor, do you get any sort of priority tags on like brain dates? So again, you are getting this early access, that is the best foot forward we could give sponsors, right? I think they're tagged but honestly the tags are, in my opinion, not that easy to read. They're more by category. So yeah, again, as this is like the early access and Premier Access, this is the best foot forward because again, your, your topics could potentially be preloaded into the app and the marketplace before it launches to all attendees Monday. So that's the honest. The other thing I'll call out, it's like it's not first thing Monday, it's really end of day Monday. So like you have some time to, you know, still get your topics in Monday morning and to the queue, which I'll talk about in a second. So anyways, yeah, so we've talked about early access and then sponsor engagement. You know, again, this is meant to be from a thought leadership, peer learning perspective. So always keep that in mind and I'll explain kind of what I have seen, you know, after six or seven years of doing brain dates of what it is and what it isn't. I think this is super helpful for folks, especially if this is your first time either sponsoring or maybe you've been a sponsor, but you've never actually done the brain dates. So there's a few different things to keep in mind. Is like I said, right, they are brain dates have different sizes. So there's what we call one on one, which is just, you know, you and then somebody else talking about one specific topic. There's groups, which is a one on four, so that'd be like Amelia plus Trish and three other people that are talking about a specific topic. So that's the different size. A super brain date is completely curated by Saster. These are almost micro sessions, if you will. These are Actually some of our most popular speakers from either workshop Wednesday or throughout the year or different things from within the Saster community that we ask them to lead a bigger roundtable. These are 1 on 20, so they are quite big. You know, we make them all do slides. Like we basically do a whole speaker process with them. So if you see super brain dates and you're like how did that person get that? That's how we do that. A few of you do have super brain aids that are pre stated on the platform. So. So yeah, that's how we do that. So yeah. So keep in mind again the overall goal is to learn or give back your learnings. Right. Exchange ideas, things like that. It's not meant to be a product pitch. So I'll talk about that next. So what Brain Dates isn't is like I think sometimes people have a misconception when they first get in of like yeah, there are a lot of topics that we. You'll see in the platform but it's not a wild west networking platform. And what I mean by that is like it's not a place where you can just like you know, scroll through endless attendees and be like I'm going to meet with that person because they're also in marketing or I'm going to pitch that person like it is not that at all. Again it's meant from a thought leadership perspective. And all of the brain dates are both moderated and somewhat curated. So I just talked about the super brain dates which are the really big group brain aids. So again a 1 on 30 basically those we curate into the platform. All brain dates otherwise are still moderated. So meaning when Trish logs into Brain Date she if she wants to submit a topic for either a group or a one on one, it will go into a queue. So basically your topic doesn't just like automatically appear in the platform for everyone to join. It goes into a queue. We have a moderation team and they will either approve your topic. Again if it's thought leadership they pretty much approve it. I'll go through some good examples on the next slides. If it's something that is directly related to your product, they will reject it. I'll tell you right now. So not to say that some of you won't try. You can try. It will just get rejected. So that's kind of the. That's how that works. Right? So it's not just a. Again, it's also not a wild west from the fact that like anybody can post anything. That is actually true for some events who do brain dates. It can be that way where people can just post topics. We actually used to do it that way, but we started curating it because too many people like posted their topic as network with me. And I'm like, that's not a topic. Like, that's literally not what this is meant for, right? Like, I'm sure people do want to network with you. And in that example I would say, but why? Right? Like network with me. Yeah, is a bad topic. But like, let's talk about. I'll just give them a personal. Like email marketing, right? Because if I'm doing emails, because I do the sales emails, like, and I want to talk about email marketing, like that's a better topic, right? Like let's talk about email marketing. It also has nothing to do with asking. It has nothing to do with anything. If I just want to talk about people's email marketing, that would be a better topic, right? It also is not. I'll just come to the next kind of data points here. It's not a bait and switch either. You know, people can. And I'll, and I'll say this, it goes both ways, right? So if for people who are joining your brain dates and if, if you're joining somebody else's brain date as the host, it goes both ways. You can rate the brain dates. Many people do. There's also live people. We have staff from the Brain Aids team in the lounge and let me tell you, they will 100% hear it when a brain date sucks. Like the. These people will go up to the, you know, kind of the host and be like, yo, this guy, I don't know if he has any more brain dates, but like, you know, they posted a topic that seemed interesting and relevant to me, but it actually turned out to be a commercial. Like, people do not appreciate it, right? It's not fun. I actually have seen people walk out of a brain date when we used to do this early on because it was a bait and switch. So that is not. Again, with a moderation. We try and avoid that. It still can sometimes happen. It's not a good feeling for the attendees or the host, right? People are going to walk. I have seen people walk out on some hosts. It's not a good feeling for like the Brain Aids team is helping facilitate, right? So again, just avoid that. If you're, if you do it and then you end up sending the whole time just talking about your product, people are going to tune out, right? They're coming from. Some of these people are coming from really far away to be at Sastry annual. Trust me, there's like a lot of really long plane rides I've seen. So from, you know, New Zealand or India or whatever, we do a big domestic audience, but we still have a big international audience too. So, like, some of these people are coming from really far away to come to Saster and they do not want to hear your product pitch right now. Right. Maybe they want to hear it later. Maybe you're a great thought leader and they like what you do and they want to talk to you later and connect. Right. And they want to be pitched later. Again, fine. Like in the conversation, if, you know, they ask you more about what you do or what your company does and you want to share more, that's all, you could do that after the rainy day, right? And if they invite you to, you know, tell them more about your product and what you do, obviously a lot of that, that happens a lot of the time. But they don't want to be suckered into thinking like, I signed up for this brain date and then all you showed me was like your demo deck. So keep that in mind. Like, if we do get too many complaints, we have in the past, you know, been known to kind of again, delete topics or like send that person a message of, you know, your topic. It's just too much of a pitch or too close to what you do. And if we get real time feedback on site, we will make adjustments again. It's rare. So. But I just want folks to know, right, again, if you, if you follow some of our best practices here, you'll be completely fine. That's the other thing I'll say, like, you'll be completely fine. You know, if it's not a pitch, a commercial, either hidden or not about what your product does or like, you know, your talk is exactly related to what your product does, like they're one, it's going to get rejected in the queue and you're going to get frustrated. But those topics just don't make the cut. So I'll show you guys what does make the cut next. Right? So not to start off with all the negatives, hopefully I started with some of the positives of why you should do a brain date from like a thought leadership perspective. And again, a lot of sponsors have had a lot of success with this if they do it kind of following these guidelines, right. And again, I don't think they're super hard. Like full cast, who is sponsoring this year's brain date lounge? You know, we did like a brief kind of what you guys. And I know they're watching, but like they. We did a brief overview with them. Okay. What you're seeing now kind of gave them the guidelines and they came up with like really great topics. So again, not to say it's like super hard. And also I would say if you're like, not sure, post your topic because once you do, I'll show you what happens. Like it goes into our moderation queue where it actually becomes like a chat. So we can like chat back to you if we're like, okay, this topic is super close, but like, maybe let's tweak it to this so it's a little bit better for the saster audience. The other thing to keep in mind is like our moderation team knows all the content that's happening, right? Like we know all the brain dates that are happening. We know all the like earned content that's happening. You know, the sponsor content that's happening. We know, we know all the AI topics that are happening, right? We also may say to you like, hey, somebody else is kind of already doing this. Like, hey, we have this topic a lot in brain dates, which last year it was plg. This year it's probably going to be AI. It's like a lot of the ones are already AI. So I'm like, so you know, we may say, hey, you know, like that's cool about AI. Or it's like, it's like too niche. Maybe can you go like higher level? Or maybe you need to go more niche and more tactical. So again, we'll give you as helpful feedback as we can for our moderation team. It's not that we want to reject topics, trust me. Like, we want there to be as many topics as there can be. Because honestly, we just let people join. Like we'll see in the data, right? If they join your topic, cool. If they don't join your topic again, we'll probably ask you to resubmit a new one. So we do try and work with every single person who wants to do the brain dates to make them the best experience possible, both for you as like a sponsor and a host or if you join somebody else's brain dates, right? So I'll talk about that next of like why you might want to join versus host your own brain date, because it is work, but it's something to think about too. I always recommend do a bit of both, right? Like join some brain dates, host some brain dates. That way the onus is on you the whole time to be hosting and talking it is a little bit draining for the one like hosting the conversations the entire time. So good things to know there. So I highlighted this box here of like, okay, I feel like you've clearly pounded into us that it can't be a commercial but what can it be? Like what are you guys going to accept as a brain date, especially as a sponsor? I will say we know who all the sponsors are too. So we typically do give you a little bit more leeway versus just you know, generic attendees that are coming to Saster Annual. So I've put here just you know, some really basic, top some really basic topics to give you guys, you know, general categories of things we would accept. So the first one again if you know, if, if you're a marketer on the team or you've got marketers coming and they want to, they want to talk about something in marketing. Cool. I, I use this one as the first example because it's specific, right? It's not just about, you know, marketing in 2024. This one is specific to email marketing tips to improve open rates. Right. Either things you've done that you've seen or you could say the opposite would be five emails I sent that nobody opened. It doesn't have to be things that are always success. A lot of the really good brain dates have been sharing failures. That is something of camaraderie around faster. Not everything works. Again I just use that as a topic of whatever your domain expertise is. Again, think about something specific in that domain that you could talk about from a peer learning, thought leadership perspective. If you have any data, if you have any examples, those are always great to bring. Right? Second kind of example, very similar, right. So how we improved, you know, XYZ and how we did it. On this one though, I do always like to give the hint to sponsors that the answer cannot be your product. It can't be, you know, I. E. Email marketing tips to improve open rates and I'm an email marketing platform like that will get rejected. That is literally what you do and I'm sure the answer is going to be survey says your product. Not to say, you know, if you talk about something and I'll give you a little bit of nuance here, right? So if you're like okay, I'm going to do just use this email marketing tips example. Many email marketing tips to improve open rates. It is related to what I do but you know, here are the five ways I did it and like one of them is the like you know, you do use your own product then we'll, we'll, we'll actually accept that, right? If you actually detail out to us. Because you can write in your submission like, you know, email marketing tips to improve open rates. Here are the tips. Like, I'll say that too. Like, the more detail you include, the merrier. I do think there's like a character limit, so you've got to keep it a little bit brief. But yeah, the more detail you can include, the better rate of like, okay, what are those tips? Or here's how I did it. I will say, the more tactical you make the title of your brand aid, the more people will join it too, right? So if you're like, okay, here are the five ways I did it, you know, subject lines, whatever, AI, blah, blah, blah for email marketing and people like, oh, I want to know how to do that. And so they will join your brain date topic. You know, again, another example here of like, you know, example, brain dates do really well. So if you've got something that you're doing on your team, 100%, you should be showing this off, right? That's a great brain date of, like, things, you know, we did on our team to improve. This example is like outbound emails. If you're like, okay, here are some of the best outbound emails our team wrote. People will go to that, right? Especially if you screenshot the emails and you bring them up on your computer, people will go to that. Like, I would go to that. I'll be like, our team, take notes. Those are the kinds of things that people want to go to, right? And again, doesn't have to be sales. I just use these as examples of, you know, something that is the best of something. Again, something that worked for you or maybe something that failed for you that you want to share on. It can also be a little bit broader, right? So we've talked about mistakes. It could be something more like, you know, you know, email marketing best practices. Let's have a group discussion on what's worked for you and what hasn't. As a host, right? You should always have at least a few talking points if you're hosting a brain date. Because otherwise, I think I say this in the next slide or so people will literally show up to your brain date and stare at you because you are the host, right? If you, if you know, if Trish is hosting a brain date on, you know, best practices for best practices for maximizing your leads at an event, which I think you guys would all go to and maybe will be the topic for next week's Webinar. But, you know, if that was her brain date and she did no prep and, you know, she just kind of rolled up and was like, oh, yeah. So, you know, I think activations work. And then, you know, I really, I really have my team train up on knowing what the booth pitch is. Listen, brain aids are 20 to 30 minutes. Do not have people show up and stare at you. Like, I always just like this webinar. I did prep for this webinar, right? We did the slides. I talked to the brain date people. We got the platform already. Like, we did the prep work, right? Same thing with the brain date. It's kind of like a micro, micro, micro speaking session at faster, the more prep you do, the better. And by prep, you know, I've seen people go all the way through prep of they made slides for their brain date. I'm here for it. Make slides for your brain day. I actually think it's the best. Some people ask us to, like, okay, if I do make slides for my brain days, like, how do I show it with the group? Like, just bring your laptop and pull it up like it's. The groups are at small tables, right? It's only one of four. Four people can see your laptop. Just make the font big and you're fine. So again, I've seen people go all the way to slides. I've seen most people do talking points, right? Of like, okay, maybe it's one slide, but I'm going to put the talking points, especially if it's a group brain date discussion of. Okay, what should we talk about next? Maybe you can steal data, you know, from the Internet or even chatgpt of hey, chatgpt, what are the best email marketing tips to improve open rates and then have a discussion about it, right? You don't always have to come up with it yourself. Again, you should just do some prep, right? Do. Do the five to ten minutes of prep. And we've seen those be some of the most popular reads. All right. Examples of some topics we would not accept. I think we've gone through these enough, but really the categories of things we don't accept is anything too broad. So if you. If. Or if it's not a topic. So in this first case, networking with founders is not an actual topic. So we will not accept anything that's not actually. Or meet with me. Trust me, a lot of people have submitted their topic as meet with me. But again, this is not the Wild west. We don't accept that that's not a real topic. It's Not a pure, like what maybe I could learn from you. Right again, but it's pure learning. I need to know what I'm going to learn from you or what you're going to learn from me. Like it's, it's too broad. If it's just meet with me. How to get more clients. We do see a lot of, you know, services and consultants come disaster. This really doesn't apply to you guys as much as sponsors, but again, if it's too pitchy, it would kind of apply to you. So we don't accept those kinds of relate those topics that are too services related and we don't accept topics that are generally too early stage or too, too niche. Like again, I know there's a fine line of like, okay, too broad is too broad and like two niches too niche. But like if it's too early stage, like, you know, we get this a bunch at annual. It's like how to expand into Europe. I don't know why we get this like 20 times in brain aids. We reject all of them. I'm like, one, we've done this content a million times in disaster, so you can look it up. Two, it's way too early stage. Right? Like I'll say two, because I know some of the questions the speakers have asked us. If you guys are, you know, sponsoring and you're speaking one, that doesn't exclude you from doing a brain A. So you can still do brain Aid. Two, like, what is the stage of companies and profiles of people attending? Right. Actually this year I think, you know, if you've been a past sponsor, it used to be that 1 to 10 band. Really that 10 to 25 is our most popular band right now. So they're more in that scale up period. Right. They're not really stage. Again, we kind of just reject early stage topics because nobody goes to them. You know. Also, you know, the Internet and YouTube is a great place. Like most people will just look up early stage content. Again, they want to know from you personally, like, what are your trials and tribulations this year? What are your failures, your learnings, your data points? Like, what can you share? Right? And that's what makes a really good brain date. Again, I'll say this and I put some fun emojis here. Like, you know, they, I kind of already touched on these. But this is one of my last points here. Like, you know, why do some braids brain dates I've seen throughout the years last the actual 20 minutes. And some of them, this is an exaggeration but why do some of them last 20 minutes and some of them only last 20 seconds? Right? Again, if they're engaging, people have done slides or talking points, those will last the full time. I have seen brain dates run super duper long, whether that's from a sponsor or not. I have seen people in the braindates lounge where like the brain aids team was like, we've left that group there for like two hours and they won't leave. And it's fine, we have extra tables, right? It's fine. Like brain aids have like a time on them just to again help garner the conversation. But I've literally seen people just like chilling at brain dates during the big party and they're just like hanging out, talking and I'm like, that's, I mean Duke's over there, but okay, bye. Like it's fine, you know, like if, if that is how the conversation goes, that's how the conversation goes, right? We don't quell brain dates. We generally like, if we have the space, we'll let brain aids run long. If you guys are having a really great discussion, again, it's centered around tactics, lessons learned, peer learning. It's all about having a really great discussion, right? So the more, again I've said it, but the more prep work you do, the more, the better. The thing I'll say for sponsors too is I, I would aim for fewer, better quality brain dates than booking a ton almost seemingly unprepared. I know some people too. Now that we start started this moderation format for the last couple years and couple annuals is sometimes the sponsors will try and flood the marketplace. They'll be like, okay, I'm going to do 20 topics. Well, guess what? People can see in brain aids if like they're seeing your company too many times. It's actually a bit of a turn off. So four things I recommend for sponsors is like post a couple topics at a time. Like post a couple groups, you know, maybe make them different speakers if you can. The more variety you can give people, the better. Also just, you know, post maybe give us like two or three topics now and again, see how it goes. It means like, you know, if your group fills up, we'll probably be like, hey, that one filled up. Like do you want to do a similar topic or something else another day? Again, we're very communicative on the brain dates. And if you're just not sure after all this because it was too confusing, you know, I'll show you how to submit your topics next. But just submit your topic and you will get, you know, a feedback loop of how to make it the best brain date possible. Again, we do treat them as like micro, micro, micro sessions. So that's the best way to think about them. Okay, I've talked about a bit. The ones I've seen that are 20 seconds, which is an exaggeration, is like, you know, sometimes brain dates will run super short. I've seen them go super long. I've seen them go super short. I've seen some where, you know, they end after only a few minutes because the host wasn't prepared to carry the conversation. And it's one thing I'll say to our sponsors, you do not have to host a brand date. I've personally done it at multiple Sasser tail. It is work. It's like this, right? You have to do the prep work, you have to do the slides. Otherwise again, people will show up and stare at you, right? Like it's not LinkedIn. It's not like where, you know, you can respond and then check your phone and then go back to something else and you're like, oh, yeah, that was funny. I'm like, did. I'm going to reply to that comment. It's real life, right? So people are here again, they're flying from all over the world or all over the country to participate in your brain date. The more it is around peer learning, the better. I have, you know, sadly seen participants leave a brain date if it becomes too pitchy or too boring for that matter of fact. So again, they didn't travel all this way for that. And keep in mind, again, on just like this being irl, it is irl. So again, you know, be face to face, be courteous. I've had sponsors who like bring people gifts. Like, it's fine, like if you want to bring some of your swag to your group, bring it and give those people swag. That's fine. Again, it's a human interaction, right? You're talking to four people, not in front of a computer, not on a zoom, literally in front of you. So just remember how that feels if you haven't done an in person meeting in a while. Because that's what brain dates are, right? They are in person and meetings. And always be courteous, right? If for some reason you need to cancel your brain date, usually it's hard to reschedule just because, you know, brain dates will start to fill at certain times and there's only certain capacity in the lounges. So if you do commit to them, you know, do them you will get flagged if you start to no show too many brain dates. And again, you'll just get some feedback on the app of, you know, we'll get the ratings of, okay, this person, like didn't show up for a brain date or, you know, ended up being a bad topic. So. So the other thing I'll say and then I'll show you guys the platform is like, why did I spend the majority of this time actually just talking about brain aids and not showing you the platform? The platform is the easiest part, so I'm gonna, I'm gonna show you it. It's literally gonna take five minutes because the platform is the easiest part. So much like posting on the brain dates, it's the prep, right, to get on the platform that is maybe more important than getting access to the platform itself. Like, the platform is easy to use. It's pretty simple. You really can't mess it up. I'll show it to you now, but I really like to take the time to again, walk people through just the concept of brain aids. What we've seen works, what doesn't, how we do moderation, right? Just so that if you can go back and replay this or some of your team still needs to watch this for brain dates, they've got a better understanding and they're more better set up for success to actually have, you know, their brain aids accepted and have a really good brain A on site. Right? So it's not just getting into the topic marketplace. It is having a really great discussion with attendees once you get there. So with all that in mind, I will show you guys the actual platform now. Okay, so if you missed it at the top of an hour because we have some late joiners, Braindates is live now. This is the URL for. It's super easy. It's just sastranual.braindate.com this is the way to get there. I think it's live in the mobile app as of like 10 minutes ago. So if you have the Saster Events app, which we'll talk about, you can get into it there. If not, honestly, I still kind of like it in the desktop mode because it's a little bit easier. So. So I'll explain a few things that again, hopefully, you know, stand to reason of what you guys have seen me talk about in the last 30 minutes and all that. So one, you'll see there are, you know, participants in here because we just launched this and we seeded this with brain dates, right? So we see did this with some super brain dates. As well as some topics from Fullcast because they're our sponsor. So they got an early preview before you guys did. But you guys are in here before everyone else, right? So we don't want to attendees officially until Monday. If you start to see some attendees in there, it's because they figured out the URL. It's fine, that's going to happen. But it is mostly sponsors right now. I will say we're not accepting topics from any attendees yet until next week because we want to try and prioritize all the sponsor ones first. So if this is your first time logging in, you'll be prompted to log in. I'm just already logged in. You may need to create an account, but again you just need to be registered and then you can create a brand aid account and then yeah, this is what they call the marketplace. So you can call this the marketplace. You can call this the feed basically, right? This is where all the topics live. We do try and tag them, right? So the supers, you'll see that we tagged and things like that. Sometimes we'll try and tag, you know, your guys's if it's doing really well or something. So again we do try and tag things to make it easier for people. Some of you already have brain dates in here, which is cool. And then, and then for those asking in the chat, like, how did some of the sponsors already get in here? Some of you had a super brain date in your agreement, so that's how they already got in here. And then Fullcast is our sponsor, so again they got an early preview. So there's a few sponsors in here already. And then there's a bunch of super brain dates in here from different companies that we preceded with like some Sask or Superfan speakers that we've done throughout the years. So that's how you already see topics in here. Now there I would say there's not an endless list of topics in here. Like you can scroll like I think there's a few more and then that's kind of it. Like yeah, but I've already reached the end. Usually it like keeps going. So I've already reached the end. There's actually not that many in here now, but it is a little bit preceded. Feel free to join any of these. So you know, I talked about, I talked a lot about, you know, hosting and kind of the responsibility and onus of hosting, you know. So with that you don't always have to host if somebody on your team wants to join a brain date. Like if I, you Know wanted to know more about reducing AI Churn and AI adoption. You know, I would just book my spot here for a brain date, so you'll see it all functions the same way, whether it's a super or not. I accidentally booked myself there, so I'm gonna undo it. But that's okay. So I'm gonna leave here, right? Cause I don't wanna actually take up that spot. But that's how you join a brain date. It's that easy. It was that fast. So that's. That's how fast I booked my spot. It doesn't super sync to your calendar though. So, like, you may wanna see, like, if you're going to other sessions at the same time, that or if you have booth duty at that time, we're relevant for this audience. You know, you may just wanna. It can push it to your calendar, but it won't, like, pull in your calendar. So just bear that in mind. Once. There are a lot of topics in this feed. I like to use the search bar, right? If I'm like, okay, I want to find marketing topics yet. Oh, there are. Okay, you know, if I wanted to find marketing topics, this is more go to market. But this is always a good way to do it. That's an actual marketing topic, right? You can search, you can also filter. So there's categories, right? Of, okay, I want to go to something that's been hosted by a marketing company. I want to see what's trending, right? This actually changes in real time. So the more you guys post, the more this will change of what's trending and what's not. Or if you're like, okay, I just want to see, you know, I just want to join some of the supers. I can filter by format too. So those filters will start to get really handy once this feed gets really full. And then last but not least, I'll show you how to post a brand aid. So if you're like, okay, Amelia, enough already. I'm just going to post my topics like, I've gotten the spiel. So this is how you post. Do you need to post it yourself? So sometimes the responses ask, like, can I post on behalf of our CEO. Like, it's going to show up as you. So, like, you do have to post as yourself and they have to post as themselves. So you just have to post it yourself. You are going to pick, like, what kind of conversation you want to have. There's different categories, right? So sometimes, like, you know, if you're like, all right, I'm really Struggling on email open rates help me solve this problem. Like, what's working for you guys? If it's more of a brainstorm. If again, storytelling is typically the one we see. The leave category of AMA is actually can work really great too. If you're like, you know, I am super knowledgeable on this one topic. Doing an AMA is often a good idea. You know, it is still prep work because I would come with seed questions for your AMA of, you know, okay, I've, I've got some examples of some other things I've discussed with peers. But doing AMAs are good. Usually open discussion or deep dive. Those are our top two categories. So anything that's like an open or deep dive is typically the most common. And then again, this is where you put in your actual talk. Right. So there is a little bit of AI here. So it, I think it, I think it's generative. So like it will learn based on what people are posting. But you do have 95 characters here. Right. So if I want to say, you know, five things that work in emails, you know, subject lines, a B test, you know, I have to keep this a little short and more myself room, I'll just say like and more. Right. Again, the more tactical you can make it, the better. Then you could say like, what, what inspired this? Again, this is a good place to put the most detail that you can of. Like, you know, why should people want to join this? Why do you want to host this? Like, why do you want to talk about this? Basically tell us, why do you want to talk about this? So you know, I'll say in this example, I have a lot of emails, we've written, we've sent emails to, I don't know, probably 10 million people this year. And here are my learnings. Right. Again, the more you can fill that out, the better. You do have a little bit more room there. So the more you can tell us of why you want to host this again, the better it also will show to attendees. Right. So again, it's kind of like the description for your talk. So think about this as a description, why do you want to talk about this? And then you're just going to pick the type. So I'll explain real quick what that means. Right. So again, if it's a one on one, you'll meet one person, Right. It does give you a little prompt here. The one on ones are not at a specific time. So if I book this as a one on one and it's accepted by our moderation team, it's Going to post and then the purse. So when Trish joins and clicks on my topic, she can say, oh, I see Amelia's free, you know, Tuesday at 11. That's a good time for me. That's the time I want to do our one on one. So you'll actually pick a time if it's a one on one and you can set your schedule in the Brand Aid app for when you're available. So that's how a one on one works. If it's a group, again, it's a one on four. These typically run a little bit longer, which is why I say prep is important, right? Like you don't want this to last 5 minutes instead of the 40 it's supposed to last. And groups are at specific times. So like if you post a group, it will see ask you to pick a time. Notice how that was not there for the one on ones. So you know, they'll pick a time. With you, it's more often a group. You'll pick a time. So I'm just going to ask the keywords. You know, I'm going to say marketing. If I can spell correctly, hello, you have to put at least one and then you can pick a time. The times are based on when the prenatal is open. You'll start to see, you know, Tuesday, as you guys probably know, we're only open in the afternoon because sponsor load in is in the morning. So you know, there's only a few times. Tuesday evening, I will say Tuesday, good time to post your group brain date. Lots of time for people just to go to brain aids on Tuesday. Wednesday, obviously there's a bit more times that maybe not align with your schedule though, because you're like, I just left in my booth, I need to be in the booth. So there's lots of times Wednesday, there's lots of times Thursday. As we get more into it, these will start to fill. So that's the magic of getting early access as a sponsor, right? There's only so many group pods at one given times. Like if all the pods fill at 9am, you're going to see 9am grayed out. So once you start to see that, you'll know it's because groups are starting to fill up. And typically we do fill all the groups by the time it's the annual. So good thing to know there. I'm going to say 9am and I'm going to hit next just to walk you guys through it. So they'll give you a little preview, right, of how it looks Again, you do want to post as yourself because now you can see me here. See, that's me. Yay. And you know all the things that I've posted about so far and then it'll give you, you know, how many slots left. So then I'll post my topic and then I. I don't know if I have God mode in my post it. Okay. It didn't. Okay, good. Okay. Or actually I think it did, but your guys is going to say it goes into a queue. Sorry, I have got mode on, so I just posted mine. So yours will go into the queue. Once we approve it or we give you, you know, feedback on it, then it'll show up. That's how you show up here. Right. So it's not in real time as mine just was. Sorry, I should have made a dummy account, but I apparently had got vote on this so I just posted it. So anyways, that's a lot about brain dates. Maybe in our last five minutes I'll just talk about other ways to network. It's asked. Or if you're like, brain date seems like work. It is.

I think it's worth us calling out. All the brain dates are going to be in Hangar east in the Brain Date network.

Yes.

And do we want to tell people what it looks like to arrive to the lounge and get to a table and how that process works?

That's a great point, Trish. That's a great point. Because, you know, I've done this so many times, I just automatically figured you guys knew where to go. That's a great point. So I'll load up the campus map and then we'll end on the networking reminders. But yes, okay, if you guys load up this campus map, this links to the one in your portal. All the expo booths are in Hangar west. And yeah, to Trish, this point, all the brain dates are in Hangar East. So you're going to walk through this little connector tunnel that we build to get to your brain dates. It's not a far walk. Again, these things are like not to scale. Right? It's maybe 50, 50ft in between the buildings. I don't know where your booth is on the floor, but you know, it's not that far. So give yourself like five minutes to get over there. That's enough. So you're not going super far. It's a huge brain aids lounge. So I think at any given time I think there can be like, I don't know how many people, but I think there can be like a hundred brain aids at Any given time as like the maximum amount of brain aids. So yeah, it's super huge. In this other hangar. It is nestled between, you know, the two other workshop stages. And then how it works is like there's a check encounter on either side. So if you're like, okay, I came from this side or I came from this side, the first thing you're gonna hit is check in. So you would check in with the brain aids team and they will either assign you to a table or assign you to a waiting room table. If like, if you're doing a one on one, they typically have you wait for your other person first before you go to a table. And then yeah, for groups they will give you like a table number that you will go to to host your group brain dates. So that's the brain aids lounge. Some people, I will say if they're doing a one on one, don't stay in the lounge. So sometimes they're, you know, they're like, oh, you know, table 32 is open for you. They're like, we want to go outside. Okay, happy trails. Go outside. Like if you want to go outside, you can. It's just like the brain aids lounge is the meeting point. I will say 99% of people do their brain aids inside. Sometimes though, you know, the alumni attendees, like, I've been inside for a little bit so I'm going to go outside for my brain date now that I've met my other people. Fine. 99% of people do it in the lounge though. So that's where you'll go. That's a great call out. You'll check in with that team first.

And I submit a brain date and all four seats get filled up. Can I submit the same brain date again and do repeat sessions to try to get multiple of the same session to get more attention?

That's a great question. We will let people do multiples once if it feels right. So for like, okay, your group brain date is one on four. If four people join you submitted, you submit it again. We know it's a, we will know if it's a full brain date, we'll say, okay, we'll let you do that one more time on like a different day, different time. Right. Typically not usually back to back, but no more than twice. Twice is, you know, the, the, the limit for anything that's popular. In the case it is super duper, uber popular. If you're like, okay, I have filled my brain date not only once, but I have now filled it twice. We do look at all the brain dates. And sometimes, you know, a little light beam comes down and we're like, we have plucked your brain date to become a super brain date. So it is rare. Not that it's not happened for sponsors before. Again, we do it all on opt in data so once attendees can get into the platform. If we do see your group fill once and then twice, we may plug. We sometimes don't pluck you though, so it's not guaranteed, right? I don't want, I don't want to. It's, it depends on what time it is, what else is going on. But sometimes they are plucked from the ether and, you know, promoted. If you, as you were promoted to host on the Zoom. So sometimes we do promote them. It's rare, but it's been known to happen. All right, last thing. I'll end on in our last four minutes. If you're like, this is a lot, or you're like, this is not enough, give me more networking. Amelia Sastor. More networking. There are already five things here, plus I'll flip over to saster.com real quick because there's a bunch of after parties. So real quick, if you go on this networking tab of Sass re annual, just hover over it, you'll see there's a few different options. We talked about this a little bit last week. We'll talk about it again next week. If you're a sponsor and you do qualify for one of these things, do apply, right? If you're like, okay, my CEO is coming, my CRO is coming, have them sign up for poker night or sign them, you know, or submit them on our behalf. If you're a CCO or your CCO is coming, CCO summit's almost full, so I'll say that, but apply now. Apply now to CCO Summit. If they're leading your customer success team. It is almost full, that one. It's, it's, it's actually gotten really great responses, which is awesome. There's also CMO brunch, so we're doing this on Thursday. CMO branch, if you're CMO or your VP of marketing is coming, sign up for CMO branch. And again, great way to network CFO Summit. If your CFO is coming or if you've got customer. We have a lot of people who said, like, my customers are CFOs, have them sign up for CFO Summit. You know, apply there so we can get them in. If they qualify, meet a vc. If this is something that your leadership team wants to do to and they're bugging you. You know why haven't you told me how to meet more investors? It's after you can submit on behalf of B2B C. I'd probably have them do it because it does ask some questions are a little bit more ARR and revenue and funding but apply for me to vc. The other thing I'll show you guys if you go on sasha.com and also I say if I missed your after party or if we missed it, I'm sorry. Just send us your. Send me and Trish your after party. But right now on the homepage you can see our official guide to the official semi official and unofficial parties and side events of Sasser annuals. I'll drop this in the chat in our last couple of minutes. Hold on. There it is. Okay. Okay. Again we tried to, we tried to you know rodeo up all the ones that we found on the Internet or that some of you, some of you guys sent us your parties. If you haven't sentenced your party and it's not on here, just let us know. There are a few on here. So yeah things to be mindful of is you know we try and post as many as you can. We don't, we sometimes can't post all of them because there's too many. But just send us your party. We'll try and add it to this list. We do update it a lot. We send it out in like the attending newsletter. Something we found in London that's really helpful for sponsors is you can go to other. Mostly you can go to other sponsors parties. We're like what do you mean? I'm like yeah, I'm like I'm not the host. Like if, if you qualify and you know you sign up there and they let you in and you want to go go. So it's a great way to network. You know we do have a lot of after parties on site. Somebody was asking about the big party. It is announced here Tita Lau who I personally love love it's going to be playing the big party. She is a great female dj. Some of you may know her. You know she's been on the festival circuit this year. She is really blowing up right now. So I'm excited to have the her team have been great so far. Really great female artist. Really great for you know just the vibe of Saster in life. It's going to be a fun time. It's going to be right in the hanger, right. We're going to have a, we're going to have a blast. Granting the music up since we have a little bit of a buffer this year. So it's going to be fun. If you haven't seen her sets, look her up on YouTube, trust me, would be like, this girl's a good time. So it's going to be fine. She's also going to be playing like during the poker night. So if you're like still having poker times, it's fine. You'll be able to hear her. So all good there, you know, it's poker night. Finance CFO Summit again, lots of things going on this day coming into Thursday. If we missed yours, send it to us. We'll try and add it as fast as we can. But yeah, lots of official and unofficial after parties. Do recommend having your team go to these usually sponsors. Go to other sponsors parties and it's a good time. So with that it is 10 o' clock y'. All. So we went through a lot. Hopefully this is helpful for brain aids. I'll just drop into the chat the URL for brain aids in case you didn't see it or missed it again, just sastraanual.braindate.com submit your topics Last thing I'll say is it usually takes us about 24, but sometimes it can take up to 48 hours for us to review your brain aid submission. So just keep that in mind. Sometimes if we get a bunch at once, it takes a little bit longer, but we do read them fast and furious in between looking at your booth graphics that you've submitted. So again, submit your booth, submit your activations and start working on your brain dates. And with that we will see you next Thursday. We're less than 30 days of SAS re annual. See you guys next Thursday. Bye.