The Ultimate Attendee Guide to SaaStr Annual 2024

Okay, welcome everyone. If you're joining, you are tuning in to our live ultimate attendee guide for Saster Annual that's coming up. So I'm just going to make Trisha co host here so she can help answer any questions. So yeah, we're going to cover a few things today. If you've never been to annual or if you're coming back. Welcome back. Saster is coming up quickly. So yeah, we just want to go through kind of a guide of everything you need to know for this year. We are recording and live streaming this. So if you can't join or if you've got other team members who want to join, they'll be able to watch that as well. So yeah, thanks everyone for joining. So with that we're going to go ahead and get started so we can give you all the tips and tricks for attending this year's Saster Annual. So I'm going to go slideshow. Okay. So hopefully you guys know by now that the Saster Annual is quickly upcoming. It is September 10th through 12th, so just two weeks away really from the annual. It's our 10th SAS annual which will be really fun. And yeah, as I mentioned, if we, if you have any questions, we probably will cover it here. But you can drop into the chat or the Q and A if you're on the zoom or we'll also check the questions on the live stream. Thanks for joining SAS Triangle just at a glance, you know, we, you know, attendance is always hard to gauge at the end because it usually picks up as it is now. So but you know, we'll have around 13,000 people across three days. It is outdoor, indoor, sort of more festival style if this is your first time coming. We do a lot of like networking sessions, investor meetings, lots of really great speakers coming this year as well as like the new kind of like AI Summit and stage within Zastra Annual. So yeah, lots going on for the 10th Saster annual this year. So the purpose of today is to really just give you guys a high level overview. We'll try not to make it the full hour because we've done these before and people like the full hours a little bit. A lot to watch back if we send it on and we add this to the website. So we'll try and do this more. So at a glance, a lot of this is on Saster Annual. Com if you go to the attendee portal, a lot of this is there for you guys. But yeah, we're just going to hit some tips and tricks again just to know if it's is your first time or, or if you're coming back. Things always change from year to year. So just an important thing. So first and foremost to know before you go, I just talked about it, but the attendee portal is here. I'm also going to drop these slides into the chat if it will let me. So I'll drop this here. That way you guys can view this. Anyone with the link. Yep, perfect. So I'll drop this into the chat if you're following along on the zoom. But all of this information also lives in the attendee portal. So yeah, if you come here to sastranual.com, go to the attendee portal. This has a lot of what we're going to be covering today, but I know a lot, it's kind of dense. So we'll give you also our commentary on it which will be a little bit different. But yeah, a lot of this lives in the attendee portal. So if you haven't checked it out yet, we'll go over a lot of this now. But if you have to drop or something, definitely check out the attendee portal. It's also linked in the mobile app. Again, a lot of really great information. We're constantly updating this for things you need to know before you come. You'll also get, you know, those weekly attendee newsletters. We'll send that one out today with the recording of this for everyone. So yeah, so again, there's a lot of really great information at your disposal and I see a bunch of you here now. So, okay, so yeah, that's the attendee portal first and foremost. Lots of really great information there. If you're looking for answers, questions, lots of them are there. Yeah, but at a glance, right? Just to give you guys our best tips and tricks. So the location is the San Mateo County Event Center. If you've never been, it is a massive 40 plus acre campus. So you might see some different addresses. Sometimes in this webinar or when you get in the Uber you'll see like this Saratoga address and then sometimes you'll see a Delaware address. Both are actually correct and true. It's just because the campus is so big that there are multiple. It takes a multiple city blocks. So it is on either of those sides. You can go to either one. You can also just put in, you know, San Mateo County Event center. Sometimes it's also called the San Mateo County Fairgrounds. And all of those things will take you to the right place. You'll know when you see it because you'll See like a bunch of tents and like signage that's very blue, kind of similar to this vibe, indicating that you are getting closer to Sanster. So keep in mind, as I've said, Samuel is an outdoor indoor campus. It is a big campus so you know, dress and pack appropriately. It's the Bay Area, so weather is a bit unpredictable as it has been this week. So you know, it can get warm in the afternoons but you know, you might need like a thin jacket in the mornings. Sensible shoes are always recommended. Right. Our dress code for the event is just business casual. So yeah, that's just something to keep in mind is like there is going to be a fair amount of walking between, you know, the outdoors, the indoors, registration, all that stuff. So yeah, it's a fair amount of walking. So just come prepared. I know too. A lot of like our sponsors and stuff are doing giveaways that play to our indoor outdoor theme. We've got like hats and stuff in our swag store. But you know, all things get faster bucks for. So yeah, there's a lot of really great resources on property. Okay, this is one of the top questions we get lately which is like, okay, since the campus is so big, how do we get there? How do we get around? So first and foremost, if you are local or if you're renting a car, you, you can request a parking pass. It is absolutely free. So again, it's in that attendee portal, you click that link, you click the parking request form, it will ask you to fill in just your details of, you know, your name, email, et cetera, ticket number so that you can request parking so that you can get a parking pass. We do assign these on a first come first serve basis, but like I said, it's free. So even if you think you need it, I would request your parking now so that we can start to distribute that out to you. And then if for some reason parking gets full, you can use our overflow parking over at the Crown Plaza, which is one of our attendee hotels. And then in terms of Uber or rideshare drop off, there is rideshare drop off dedicated in all in both of the lots that we have on campus. So it really doesn't matter if you're like getting into the Uber and you're not familiar with, you know, things around town. If you just put in San Mateo county event center, it doesn't matter which location they take you to. Each one has a registration area and a ride share drop off. So either way would be fine. There's also shuttles So I know a lot of our attendee hotel blocks are now completely sold out. They've been sold out for a few weeks now. So there is a sastry annual shuttle that is free to attendees that you can get on. It does run between the Crowne Plaza, the newer Hampton Inn that's in town, and the sastry annual campus, of course, at the event center. So it does a constant loop. It's about every 15 to 20 minutes. Again, it just constantly will loop from those hotels to the faster annual. These are the posted shuttle times. You know, sometimes they've been able to hold it a few minutes, sometimes they leave early a few minutes. But like I said, you know, it is on a constant loop. It's kind of like if you've been to Disneyland, it's like getting on the tram or waiting for it. It's kind of like that. So it's like a shuttle. It's free to use. It's fairly handy if you're trying to get back and forth and you're not in a rush, obviously, if for some reason you're like in a rush to get to the event center, an Uber or Lyft would always be faster than the shuttle. But the shuttle three, so there is that getting around town. If you are from out of town, which I know a lot of you are, it is a busy time. If you're in San Mateo, like I said, a lot of the hotels are full this year. I think this is the year we've had the most local hotels be sold out at capacity, beyond capacity. So, yeah, it's a busy time of year in San Mateo, as I mentioned, you know, because a lot of things are at capacity or sold out, you might want to look into getting a rental car because it is actually still. Even though there's the shuttles, right. If you want a little bit more flexibility, a lot of people will get rental cars, Especially if you're coming in a team. It's just handy to get around. Where San Mateo County Event center is, is kind of in the middle of. It's because it's so big, right? It's 40 acres. You can see it here on the map. Like, there are amenities around it, which we'll talk about, but, you know, they're not really walkable. So if you need to get somewhere else or if you've got customer meetings maybe in the city or VC meetings down in Palo Alto, like your best way to get to those places is going be renting a car and getting a free parking pass. I warn everybody this Every year because we have so many people going to saster annual. You are going to see search prices on rideshare. So it's just something to bear in mind or factor into if you're trying to get around. That's why we do recommend rental cars to folks. Again, especially if you've got like two people. Even then it ends up being cheaper to just rent a car than taking an Uber back and forth from the campus to your hotel or maybe your hotel's farther because you can get into the sold out blocks. Yeah, we do see a lot of people do this. So other amenities though that are nearby. There is a Hillsdale mall. So if you forget something because you're from out of town, there's a lot of like amenities and restaurants there. Or if you're like I want to have a customer meeting that's maybe not on site because you're coming in early or you're staying a few days later, Hillsdale mall is a really great place to do it. There's also a Starbucks that's about 15 minutes away. Sort of walkable. But just know it also gets really crowded during Sastry annual. So it can take quite a bit of time sometimes. And then where the event center is last but not least is about a 30 minute drive depending on traffic to either downtown San Francisco or Palo Alto. I would say lately traffic's been worse. So it's probably 30 minutes to the airport and then like another half hour to downtown San Francisco. But depends on time of day you're coming. It is also kind of crowded on the weekend. So yeah, it's just a busy time of year. So just factor in kind of plenty of time for, for getting to the annual if you want to, you know, maximize your attendance. We'll go through the posted hours of like when the campus is open. When the campus is open, you know, you're free to hang out even if sessions are not going on. There's a lot of really great places on campus to hang out and do that. So speaking of which, you know there's a lot of really great places on campus which we'll go through and then we'll talk about how to pick up your badges. I'm just going to go to registration first. So yeah, there's. There's three locations in which you can pick up your badge. So on campus there's two registrations. Again, it's just because there's two sides of the of the multiple city blocks where you can enter. You basically have to like enter the property first. Whether you're taking the shuttle, the ride share or whatever it is, they're going to drop you off in one of these lots. And so we have a dedicated registration and check in at each of those lots as well as a satellite registration over at the Crowne Plaza. So again, since this is our main attendee block hotel and there's lot of hotels around it, we do a satellite registration there. It has slightly different hours. You might, if you're coming in early, that might be a little bit easier for you to go get your badge there and like skip the line versus coming to the campus. So a lot of options to register and get your badges early and then use the express lane versus coming all at once like you guys do, which is fine too. But yeah, you know, it's, it's just if you, if you want to maybe avoid the minimal wait times we have in the lines and satellite range is a good way to do it or early badge pickup is also a good way to do it. So again, anywhere you go on campus, there will be a badge pickup and entrance area. If you've never been to SAS annual, a few good reminders here on registration. So in order to pick up your badge, you need a valid photo id. So this will be either a driver's license or a passport. You do need your ticket confirmation code so that you know, we know that you are, you, you are picking up your ticket. Obviously you have ticketed to enter. A question I've gotten sometimes is like, okay, if I need to buy an extra ticket at the last minute, can I like buy it at the gate? The answer is you can, but they're honestly just going to load up the website, have you do the same thing. So it's probably easier for you to just load up the website and do that at your hotel before you come to the annual. So it's not any quicker or smoother. It's actually the same process. So if you add anybody last minute, you could probably just do that now before the last price, price increase for September 1st. And then once you get your badge, you do need to wear them at all times. So every day. So not just at your first entry point. So whenever you're coming back, disaster annual, you do need to still wear a badge. Try not to lose it because there's a reprint fee. The other thing I like to remind folks is that badge swapping and transferring after you check in is not, is not allowed. So what we mean by this is like if I go to Saster Amelia, and I'm the system and I Pick up my badge. I can't come for one day, and then the next day Trish takes my badge and says that she's Amelia 1. There are daily ID checks. So once she hits the ID checkpoint, they're going to see that Trish and Amelia don't match the ID and the badge. And at which point if you're like, oh, I want to transfer my ticket from Amelia to Trish because Amelia's not coming back. We do not do that after you check in, so you can do it before you check in. So if Amelia gets sick and I can't come to Saster Annual and I want to transfer to Trish for the entirety of the event, you can email eventsasstering.com or come up to the help desk once you're on site and they can help you do that. But once you check in, your badge is yours for the entirety of the event. Really important to utilize the express lanes that we have on campus. Once you have your badge, this means you can bypass like, you know, all the stanchions and the snake line. If you've already got your badge, then you can go through express because they will just check your badge and your ID and then you'll go through security. So just know that you'll experience that anytime you re enter. Obviously this is just for security purposes. We have a lot of people coming to Sastry Annual. Our goal, first and foremost, above anything else, is to keep all of you safe. So thank you in advance for your cooperation on that and also for not bringing any prohibited items which we listed here. You know, very similar like to the airport security list. It's probably the same. There's probably a few one offs there, like unapproved costumes or confetti. But yeah, don't bring any of that with you, obviously because we are doing security checkpoints that any of your items that you bring with you are subject to a search. And just know if you are bringing things like outside food and beverage, like, you know, you grab a Starbucks or a Phil's in the morning or you go have lunch off site and then you come back. If you're bringing it back in with you, it can only be for yourself and not like catering. If you have like a teen that's coming with you, like you can't bring like a Starbucks Carrier of coffee. One, we have coffee on campus. But two, it's just, you know, we do have food exclusivities and all that stuff. So just be mindful of, you know, what you're packing in and then personal Vehicles like scooters and bikes. Even though the campus is big, this is, this does not pertain to folks with disabilities but just, you know, in life. We've had some folks in the past because we have a big campus bring like their bikes. We just don't allow it because we do have heavy equipment running around. So keep that in mind. These are the registration times. You'll also find them on the mobile app or on saster.com, we just consolidated it here so you can see them at a glance. We do have early badge pickups starting on Monday the 9th. So again, if you're in town early, you can come get your badge either on campus or at satellite registration. And how this works for those who are new here is you would just pick up your badge and then go to like, you know, wherever your next appointment is or back to your hotel. There's nothing to do on Monday. On campus we have our sponsors that are loading in, but for attendees it would just be a badge pickup and then you know, you'd be able to like scope out the scene, get your badge. There's no lines on Mondays. I can tell you guys like it's a really chill vibe. If you want to commit your badge there, you can also Tuesday morning go to satellite reg if you're like I'm ready to get my day started or if I need to go get my badge because I have some meetings I'm going to go to before I come back to staffer. You can utilize the Crown Plaza pickup point and then at 2:30 the registration and campus will open for everyone. And at that point you can either use the express lane or if you've already gotten your badge or just come on in and register then and then come into the show. Similarly for Wednesday and Thursday, you know, we open Reg at 8am and then go till 7 on Wednesday so it's quite late. And then Thursday we open at 8 and then go to 3pm okay, one thing we like to just preface for everyone this year you will see this is very much like airport security, radio security checks. Every year at SASA annual we are utilizing these open gate security systems. This year again, you've probably seen these at airports or, or you know, kind of any checkpoints. These are stadium checkpoints. These are fairly standard. You know, it's kind of the, yeah, stadium system where you know, you walk through, you only have to like take out your laptop or your glasses case and then you pass your items on the desk to security and then you just walk through. Right. Most People are going to go through just fine. So again, just take a look at that prohibited list and just know, like, you know, probably all of you are going to have like a laptop or an iPad. So anything bigger than that, much like the airport, you're going to have to take it out real quick and then put it back in your bag once you're through. So, yeah, just know that obviously it's more to check for prohibited items. Most of you will just pass through just fine. You won't beep again. It's super fast. So just know this will be every day. It's not just the first day upon entry, it's every time when you come back to the annual. But like I said, again, I know there's a lot of you coming on campus, but it just takes, you know, a few seconds to walk through. So just know that for folks that have been asking us if there is a coat check or a bag check, there is. I'll call this out on the campus map and then we'll go to the campus map in a second. But it is outside. Not outside the grounds, but like it's outside the main hangers where a lot of you are going to be the entirety of the time. So it is at registration. So just keep in mind that co check is at registration. It is open these times. So you know, these posted times is when you can check a bag, whatever, a coat, extra layer, a backpack, whatever it may be. But again, it is at registration for ease of security. It's for that purpose of. Right. Because we are doing security this year. The code check is literally right next to registration. So if you're coming on the last day, which is where a lot of you use this, or run into the scenario, like if you're coming the last day and you need to drop your like roller bag or your suitcase at coat check, because you're going to go straight to the airport from Sastra annual. You can 100% do that. It's just like whatever registration you're at will have its own dedicated coat check. So you need to go back back to that one in order to get your stuff back. You know, we're not going to move it if you exit a different way. We don't know that information. So just make sure you know you go back through the same way you came. If you have something at code check and it is again, you know, outside by registration. So if at some point you're like, oh, I need something in my bag, you are going to have to go back through security right because you're exit, you're technically exiting to get to coat check. So just keep that in mind. Again, for most of you, it's not going to be a big deal because you're just going to check your bag, you're going to leave it there and when you're ready to go, you just come and pick up your bag and then you're good to go. So again, just keep that in mind, right? If you're like, oh, I may forget something, you'll have to go pop in and pop back out. Also, don't leave things overnight. If you're like, I'm going to leave my bag here on the 10th all the way through the 12th. We do not leave things because they're out by registration. We only things out there overnight. So we'll end up going to our like lost and found pretty much. So please don't leave things there. Especially don't leave, you know, like, valuables and stuff. Obviously we know a lot of you bring like your rolly bags on the 12th and that's all fine, right? We've got like security and stuff those days. But again, just be sensible on using coatjack with the number of people that we have around. Okay? Handy thing to do also is to download the Saster Events app. So if you don't have this yet, you can download Saster Events on your mobile device. It's got a lot of this really great information that I am spieling to you. So it's got the attendee portal as well as a lot of other stuff like signing up for sessions, signing up for brain dates, getting your ticket code. That's all in the app. So really handy if you download that app before you come to the show. Okay, so if you've never been to Sas re Annual, there's a few things we want to go through of what is on campus this year. So I'm actually going to click this one. So yeah, if you haven't seen the Attendee portal, if you scroll down, you know, there's kind of some quick links here. You can get to anything you need. You can also get to like the fuller size thing, you know, like if you click it, it makes it a lot bigger, as you can see. So like mine was really small on the side. And if you're like, I can't, you know, read that because it's too small, you can click that one, make it bigger, save it. Just know sometimes things change, right? So sometimes we change names of things. Like we've already changed the name of one of These stages. But like, you know, things are generally in the same spot they're going to be. If you have any questions on site, you can just look for the people in this Astro staff shirt. They'll be able to help you out if you get lost or, you know, you can ask the help desk or registration or just flag any one of us. There's a lot of staff around on site. So yeah, the campus is a really big property. So like I said, this is not to scale. Does not do it justice. But basically after you enter registration on from any checkpoint, a lot of things are going to be in these two, what we call hangar. So there's hanger west and hanger east. They are connected to each other. They're like more than like a football fields each. So again they're pretty big. These stages are in here. So if you're looking like I like, you know, there's two sessions that are almost back to back and I don't know how much time I have to get from point A to point B. It would take you no more than like, you know, five minutes to go from point A to point B of any of the stages. Same thing with like brain dates. If you're gonna get from brain dates to like another stage or the sponsor hall to a different stage. Again, things are fairly close in those two hangars. We try to keep it centralized. And then there is a lot of things on the outside property. So we've got things like, you know, the not so secret speakeasy, the casino, the founders lounge, Saster Square park which has like a dog lounge, you know, the VC lounge, the executive briefing center, kind of the whole outdoors. Like if you're looking to meet somebody at Saster annual and you're like, okay, we both know we're attending, we don't know where is a good place to meet up. You know, you can meet up in the cantina, the Sasha Cantina, which is over here. Cloud five is a good place to meet people. The midway is a really great place to take a meeting. A lot of people do take meetings out there because then you're outside, you're enjoying the air. A lot of people will take meetings in Sasha Square Park. This is basically all outdoor meeting space we've created for people. Just know that there will also be some doggies there from time to time at Sasha Square Park. And yeah, those are great places to meet back here in camp Hexi's cool zone. So if you guys don't know, Hexi is like our masc. He's A hexagon. That's Saster logo. He's on my shirt, so that's sexy. You'll see him around. Yeah, we put like a cool hangout area back there. If you're like, I wanna, you know, I don't know, play a game and also have a meeting, you can do that back there too. There's a lot of really great places to chill on campus, if you will. So we know it's 40 acres. We know things are a little bit further to get to in San Mateo. So we do have basically a full property campus built out so that you don't have to leave if you don't want to. A lot of people come early, they stay the whole day and then they leave. It's like, yeah, you don't have to. You don't have to leave if you don'. Want. I will say I have seen people take naps outside. So it's like we've seen it all. I've seen people take naps on the grass. I've seen a lot of people take zooms either in the co working space, which is Cloud six, or again, kind of anywhere on campus. That's a common occurrence these days. I've seen a lot of people do like little team huddles outside. So yeah, we've kind of. Again, it's all built out. There's like coffee, drinks, food everywhere. So it's pretty handy for staying all day. Okay, on to the next slide, which I think is going to be the sponsor hall. So yeah, if you have not seen this yet again, you can go to the attendee portal. Again, a much bigger version, but this is the sponsor directory, if you will, so you can see who's exhibiting this year and what booth numbers they're at. If you know that there's somebody that you want to meet with for this year. So a lot of our sponsors have been doing their own weekly sponsor webinar. Some of them are on this one, are going to be watching this one back. So major thanks to all of our sponsors. It's going to be a really great event this year to celebrate 10 years of annual. Okay, few other quick things because again, we want to try and keep this rolling through the event agenda here. Like I said Monday, if you're not coming Monday because you know you have a Tuesday flight, totally fine. It's just, it's only early badge pickup. So if you are in town again, good idea to just come stop by and get your badge for a few minutes. Tuesday. Right. We have satellite registration open in the Morning and then the campus opens at 2:30. And on this day we've got, you know, pray dates are open. There's a sessions that are going to be open on Tuesday and it is Taco Tuesday. I mean technically every Tuesday, Taco Tuesday. So we decided to blow it out. It will be Taco Tuesday on campus. We'll have drinks, we'll have tacos, we'll have birria, we'll have like bacon wrapped hot dogs. So yeah, it will literally be Taco Tuesday on campus. If you're like, oh, we were thinking of going out for tacos, like we brought the tacos to you. So Taco Tuesday. On Tuesday the 10th we'll have our opening reception. Like I said, with tacos, live music, some networking, some content. It's always a good way that we like to kick off Sass Re Annual, right Can get your badge, come meet some friends. There's not too much content going on. So it's a really great time to like talk to sponsors, talk to other attendees. Like do a lot of the brain dates. Like there's a lot of brain dates going on in that block. So yeah, Tuesday is a really good time to do that before you get inundated with maybe like too much content that you're trying to jam into your schedule. So Wednesday and Thursday are full content days. We open bright and early at 8. You know, brain dates start at like 9, content starts at 9:30. There's lunch. This day has a CFO summit, a happy hour poker night and then the big party with Titleau. So I'll get into each one of those. If you're like I haven't heard these words that you've just said very rapidly. So if you are a CFO or VP of Finance attending SAS Re Annual, click this link. I'll also give you a handy tip right now which is if you go to sasser annual.com. if you go to this networking, you'll see if you hover over it, there's a a bunch of stuff here. So a lot of those are all in my deck. We'll go through them. But it's a handy guide. If you haven't seen this yet, this will link you out to brain dates, poker night, the CCO meetup, the CMO brunch, the CFO summit, the Meta VC and all the side parties that people are doing. So it's all in this nav. Super handy. If you haven't done this yet, do this right after this webinar. Get to check all those out and see which ones you might want to go to or qualify for recommend, you know, you sign up for all of them. If you do qualify for them, they are kind of events within our event. So meaning for things like the CFO Summit, you know, this is going to be for CFOs and VPs of finance only. Or if you're like, I've been trying to convince my CFO to come and he hasn't had a reason why, or they haven't had a reason why, this is a good reason to come. So It's Wednesday the 11th from 12 to 3. Be sure you sign up for that because it is gated and badge checked based on who is accepted. Same thing with poker night. So if you're a CEO coming or Croat, we'll say poker night's getting pretty full, so maybe apply sooner rather than later. All of these are starting to get a little bit full. Yeah. Apply to CRO and CEO poker night on Wednesday the 11th. This is starting at 4. It goes all the way till 8. So you can, you can hear the music from the big party if you're going to poker night and you can bop back and forth. But yeah, this will be a fun time. I will preface, there's no actual buy in which is like the number one question we've gotten about poker night. It's all like house money, it's all for funsies, but it's still a lot of fun. This vendor come do poker last year and yeah, everyone kind of had a blast. It was full so like there were people like waiting to get into table games. So it's always fun, it's always full. So yeah, kind of poker night, it'll be a jam. If you are one of those two buckets, you know, apply for that and then yeah, like I said, the big parties. So we do the big party. For those who don't know, every year this is like our big on site party. We've brought like a different kind of like EDM electronic artist the last few years. So this year we're going to have Tito Lau, which we're very excited about. We saw her at Coachella, which is really good. So you know she will be here performing at the big party. She's actually currently like on tour in Europe so she's coming just for this. So this will be super fun. She's got, you know, some big collaborations with like James Hype and stuff. Or if you guys don't know her, you can click some of these links or just even YouTube her again and see check out her set, she has a really fun time. We love her vibe. And for full conference pass holders, we do have a few. I just checked this morning, we have a few bring a buddy passes left for your full ticket holders. The link is in that slide deck that I just linked to you guys. If you're following along the zoom, you can click that link. It just how these work is like if you are the full ticket holder and like if I was a full ticket holder and I wanted to bring Trish, but she wasn't ticketed for Olive Annual, but she was just coming to the party, you sign them up for a buddy pass and then basically you go meet your buddy. When they come to Sasser Annual, like, you go meet them at the gate, you get them in and then they can come into the big party. So it's, it's quite easy actually. People have gotten used to this because we've done this a few years now. But it's always fun to like, you know, come to the party, experience the vibe. You can come anytime after five, so you've got like an hour to like talk to sponsors and then enjoy the party night. So, yeah, it's. It's gonna be fun. It's always usually my favorite part of the annual. Okay, so coming into Thursday and then I'll go back to that slide coming into Thursday, you know, registration opens at 8am for everyone to. Typically by this point you're going through the express line again. Content's on, networking's on, brunches on their CMO brunch to talk about Meet a VC brunch, lunches, CCO summit, and then the last day, we always do a happy hour and closing reception. So CMO brunch, We just announced the lineup. We got inundated. I'm going to say inundated. And I'm not lying with like applications for people who want to come to CMO brunch. So if we don't accept you, it's not because we don't love you, it's because we're probably getting really full. So if you haven't applied yet, make sure you apply for CMO brunch. If you have a CMO attending, it is for CMOs only. So I've seen a few, like VP of marketing, supply, like marketing managers. We are keeping this one pretty strict. It is pretty tight door for the CMO brunch. And again, it's almost full array even though we just announced it. But it's because we have such a killer lineup. So if you do have A CMO who is attending. Be sure to sign them up for the brunch sooner rather than later. For any of these kind of like closed door side events, we'll try and accommodate walk ups, right. If some people bid and they're on the list and so we can try and you know, get people in, but it's not guaranteed. So the best way to do that is to apply for any of these, I will say for any of these, like cmo, cfo, cco, brunch. Once you apply, you will know you get in because you will get a calendar invite literally from me myself. It will give you all the instructions of how to check in for that brunch that day. So that's how you'll know you've been accepted. Again, we've been inundated with all these applications across the branch, but especially for cmo. So just give it a few days. If you're like, I feel like I qualify again, give it a few days. We're also, you know, we've already started our load and all that kind of stuff. So yeah, just give it a few days and then I'm sure we will. You'll get that confirmation from me. If you don't get it then, you know, then it means that we may not have room for you. But again, we will try our best. So we will try and accommodate some mock ups there but highly recommend that if you're coming and you're a CMO or if you qualify for any of these things, right, or somebody on your team does that you have them apply now. So, so the other thing we're doing, two more things we're doing on Thursday is there is the Me to vc, VCC and Founders branch. So this will be in the founders lounge that Rome is sponsoring. We'll do this for CEOs, investors only. Get them all together. People have been asking us this for years. And so I convinced Jerome to let us use their lounge space to do this on Thursday. So we'll have a founders and VC lunch. So it is in the agenda. This one you can sign up for. Just keep in mind we are going to check badges again for a lot of these side events. So Jess, again be be mindful of that. But yeah, do add that to your agenda. Usually we have a lot of investors. I know it's on sasha.com there's a lot of like hundreds of investors already coming. A lot of them are in brain dates. But this is a really good way to meet them too if you want to have like some really Good conversations. The CCO summit as I mentioned a few times is on Thursday. I think this one is full. So if you haven't already signed up. Yep. Again one of those things where you know, it's, it's. We'll try and accommodate last minutes on site if you are a cco. Right. But yeah, some of these are. This has been live for a while so I think this one's starting to reach capacity or is that capacity. And yeah, it's, it's our first time actually this year doing this many events within the event. So it's kind of an experiment. We did like one last year. We did our first CMO one last year so. So this year we have five. So it's our first time doing this many. Hopefully it helps, you know, those who qualify. And yeah we'll. The idea of them being a little bit more like restricted in capacities is to keep them more closed doors. Right. These sessions aren't recorded. They're really banging speakers honestly because they know they're not being recorded and they can be more like you know, open and free flowing. The other thing I'll say is like a lot of these people are doing open sessions. So like the CMO Summit is like Denise from Snowflake and Carolou and like, like Chandar and all them are doing a like open AMA for folks in the in just Astra annual on Thursday before they do CMO branch and then for CCO summit they're actually closing out C like some of the day with some of these members from CCO Summit on one of the core stages. So I will say that too if you like you still want to learn from these folks, look for those two things in the agenda because they are doing more broader sessions as well that are open for everyone. So speaking of the agenda, if you haven't done so yet, we highly recommend starting to register for sessions just so you can build out your schedule and know where you're going each day. We do are we are still adding content as weird as that sounds like again like we just got, you know, we just announced the MO branch, we're announcing some other main stages still. So yeah, there's been things that have been like you know, puzzle piecing in and out. So yeah, good idea to keep an eye on that and book your sessions just so you know where you're going from point A to point B. If you're following along on the zoom, we linked some of the most popular ones here off the side. So if you click any one of these, I want to go to the build.com session on Thursday. If you're following on the zoom, this will actually take you to the session itself so that you can save a seat for it. So to save your seat, I know it's a little bit confusing, but instead of hitting that star, you're going to hit that save seat button. I'm already logged in. If you're not logged in and it is going to ask you to log in here with just your ticket. I'm already logged in, so I'm going to say save my seat. And it's as easy as that. That when you do save it, it will automatically start it for you. But yeah, saving your seed is how you add it to like there. You can also add it to your calendar. Right? So if I wanted to add it to any of these, like my H.G. cal, I already have it on my calendar. But you can add this to your calendar as well just to help build out your schedule. It's also kind of nice, right? If it's on your calendar and then you know, like, okay, I kind of want to go to this one or another one. I know a question we get a lot of is like, okay, if there's two sessions I want to go see at one time, what do I do about that? We are going to be live streaming so you can go to the Saster YouTube channel after the fact and watch whatever sessions you might have missed that you want to, that you want to watch or if you like really enjoyed the session and slides and you want to share it with your team and you can use the live stream for that as well. Okay, so just a few other things because I want to talk about networking. You know, last but certainly not least is how to network. Again, I know it's one of the top questions we get now as you guys are gearing up to come to Sastry Annual. It's like, what is our best way to network? How can we do that? And that is via the Brain Aids Networking and the Brain Aids Networking lounge this year that's sponsored by Fullcast, that's on campus. So I'll just quickly explain a brief explainer of a what a brain date is and then what a brain date isn't because that will help you guys in the guidelines of how to maximize your networking. So brain dates are all around peer learning. They're one on one in group sessions. Again, it's all based on peer learning. So the goal is to help you know each other and fellowship so attendees learn something new, find mentorships, create Partnerships, exchange strategies, things like that. What it is. And it's like, this is not a wild west networking platform, as I like to call it. So, you know, there's not a tab of I'm just going to log into brain dates and suddenly I can see everyone attending. We don't do that. All brain dates are moderated. So once you do submit a brain date, it does go into a moderation queue. And that is because there are so many of you coming that yes, unfortunately, sometimes there are folks who just try and pitch themselves in a brain date. And so to help, you know, stave those off, we do moderate the topics that come in. Again, it is all about having an interesting topic and ideas to share. Right. It's not meant to be a bait and switch. We do get feedback from time to time. If folks are like, yeah, you know, even though their topic said one thing, it became a product commercial. And I really didn't like this brain date, we get that feedback and we do take action on that. So just keep that in mind. You know, it's not meant to be a product pitch or a commercial or a straight up like talk that only has to do with exactly what your product does. Again, it's like, you know, for myself, I wouldn't talk about Saster necessarily. Like, if I had email tips and tricks from sending all the emails for annual, then that would be my topic. Right? But it's not anything to do about Saster itself. I keep Saster examples. But if I wanted to talk email best practices, that'd be a topic that'd be approved versus like, you know, I don't know what we do at Saster, Come learn from me. Like, that would not be approved. So those topics don't make the cut. The first time you log into Braindates or maybe you have already, you will see this code of conduct which explains all of these guidelines of again, things we accept versus things that we more so don't accept in here. Again, we typically don't, you know, we typically don't approve things that have to do with your product or service. If you. I know there are a few of you right now that keep submitting multiple times the same thing and we keep rejecting it the same time. You know, if you do get a note from our moderation team that your brain aid was unaccepted, we typically write a reason why, right? Of like why it wasn't accepted and some hints of how to improve it so that it would be accepted. So yeah, I know that it's a little bit of A process. But thanks for bearing with us. There are a lot of brain dates that are already live, so I will say a lot of you have submitted, a lot of you already have your topics live. I know some of you are waiting in the queue just to hear back. That does take, you know, a little bit of time for us to read all the applications. But hopefully it will help improve your networking experience this year so that you have, you know, know, real connections, real networking versus you know, we had a lot of feedback last year that too many people got straight up pitched. So hopefully we won't get straight up pitch this year. So, you know, it's double edged sword for networking. But again, I think everyone off the bat will have a better overall networking experience this year with the way that we have implemented the brain dates for 2024. So when you do have a brain date booked or if you want to try and book one last minute, the best place to go once you're on site will be that brain date lounge, lounge in the east hangar. So that's, that's the best place to go. We have a dedicated team there that will help you with brain dates and networking. Help answer any questions I'll give you. Also, like a quick rundown of why sometimes I've seen, you know, throughout the years because we've done brain aids a lot now of why some of these only sometimes last. You know, sometimes the really good brain needs will last 30 minutes. Sometimes I see them getting like moved. Like they're like, yeah, we left that group there in the lounge and they've been there there like all day. Like or sometimes like I walk by and I'm like, oh, didn't that session or didn't that brain date just start? And they're like, yeah, it's already over. Because I don't like the host wasn't prepared or you know, again, it was a product pitch and so people were unhappy and so they walk out. So again, you know, just because people sign up for your brain date, they are not hostage to your time and your messaging. If they don't like it, they will probably log out. So it is a sad reality, right? If you do try and again, bait and switch people. Chris is doing more of a thought leadership perspective. So pr nates can either be, you know, at an extreme 20 minutes or 20 seconds. So a lot of the really great brain dates will have either slides or talking points just to help help, you know, ground the conversation, help it get going. They're sent around tactics, lessons learned or failures or data. Those are often some of our most popular brain dates. A lot of those who are. If you're thinking about hosting a brain date, we do ask that you put in the prep work, right? Not just roll up to your brain date and say okay, I'm gonna do mine on email best marketing practices. And I get there and I'm like, okay, what are my email marketing? You know, doing it on the fly is a little less great than, you know, even just having some talking points. If I write down, you know, five points of okay, let's talk about ab testing, subject lines, audience segmentation, you know, warm versus re engagement, that kind of thing. Right. So time of day, yeah, any story messaging, like all that stuff would be more concrete than just showing up to your brain date. And that's why some of them do again at an extreme like 20 seconds. Right. Like sometimes they can only end after a few minutes if the host themselves is not prepared to have that conversation or discussion. So yeah, we try and avoid that. Right. And that's why we do the moderation. The other thing I, you know, I should have said earlier, before minute 42, but you know, this is just all of annual is not LinkedIn. Right. So this is a real life event. People are going to be in front of you. It is a real event. There's going to be a lot of people, probably more crowds than you're used to in a while if you've been working remotely. So just keep in mind it is face to face. Right. Be curious. Show up to your bookings. If you book a brain date, if you commit to them, if you no show a bunch of brain dates, that is flagged, right. So that you don't just bail on folks that you said you were going to meet with. Or again, they'll flag it if, if we get some feedback from too many attendees that you're just doing a straight up product pitch that all gets incorporated to our feedback. For the most of you, you know, submit your brain date on a subject matter that you or topic that your subject matter on for most of you will be accepted. You'll have a really great networking experience. But again, it's just so that we can help kind of cure rate and make sure, you know, they, we're, we're trying to maximize the amount of brain aids last 20 minutes versus 20 seconds. So hence all that. But yeah, like I said, if you want to get into brain dates, then yeah, you go to sass braindate.com you do have to be a full ticket holder. If you just bought your ticket Give it. I always say give it like an hour before you log into Brain Dates, you'll see some of these are already in the topic marketplace, so you can start signing up for Brain Dates. There's a lot of different topics I always like to, you know, use like the search. If you're looking for some those of. And like, I mean, all. There's a lot of AI topics. If you search for AI, a bunch of them come up. So yeah, you'll see things like that. But yeah, that's how you join a brain Date. And then you can also post your own brain date. If you're like, okay, I understand, Amelia, I want to host my own Brain Date and exchange ideas, then, yeah, anybody is more than welcome to submit their topic to Brain Dates. Okay. Meet a vc. This is also super important. So for any founders or, you know, CEOs that are looking to have funding or meetings with VCs this year, we do this Evergreen program called Me to vc. So there's two ways to participate. If either you're a founder or you're an investor. We do the first wave of applications out to investors next week. So if you're not a founder or if you're a founder and you have not applied yet, please do so now because you'll be part of that first wave. We do a last wave pretty much like the day before the event starts. But obviously these investors need a little bit time to like, go through the criteria that we ask, you know, do a little research, see if they want to meet with you. So, yeah, get those applications in today so that you can be in the first wave that goes out next week. And how this works is like if I'm a million, I'm a founder and I'm looking to raise a round of funding. You apply via this link. It's just going to ask you a few questions. Basically, this is like investment, like overall general investment criteria for a lot of investors. So you'll tell us about your startup, startup, you know, location, mrr, ARR, things like that. Clients that you're, you know, proud to have. Tell us about your startup. Like, yes, this is a little bit of work, you know, you might get. We have known people every year who get investments out of this. So it's. While it's not guaranteed, a lot of people who do put in the work have at least a few meetings with investors and some of them have gotten funded at SAS renal. So I know this form's a little long, but trust me, you know, it could be worth it. So if that's worth it. You know, fill all this out out, say that you're attending Sasser annual and then hit apply. We share this with the investors so they'll reach out to you directly if they want to set up a meeting. We don't. You know, sometimes they ask us to help facilitate and then we do it. But for the most part the investors are self sufficient so they'll get the list and then they'll start just reaching out to folks. So be sure you do that if you are trying to raise another round of funding with that. Trisha, I know you've been helping answer questions as we go. Any, any standout ones that you want to cover at the end. Here, here. A lot of questions about food and beverage and if people need to be. Oh, I did kind of skip that a little. Gonna get fed, we promise. So much food, so many beverages. Yeah, that's a good question. So yeah, it's, it's. I don't know, it's one of those things where, yeah, it ends up being a top question. So yeah, because we are on a big massive 40 acre campus. There is food and beverage pretty much all day with how we have food and beverage rolling. So there's coffee and breakfast in the morning. There's coffee actually all day. So there's like cold brew coffee, there's tea, there's hot coffees, there are specialty coffees. Mercury is our coffee sponsor this year. There's coffee everywhere. Like we actually like doubled the amount of coffee from last year because this audience, including me personally, drinks a lot of coffee. So there's a lot of coffee on campus. If you're like a tea person, there's T2, there's like soft drinks, all that kind of stuff. So that's all included with your pass. I'll say that too. Like there's nothing to pay for once you are on site. There's lunch every day. So lunch is on the agenda. Right. 11:30 to 1:30 for Wednesday and Thursday obviously. We talked about how at the opening reception it's taco Tuesdays, there's tles, there's beer. During happy hours, there's things like, you know, appetizers, drinks, all that kind of stuff. And by drinks I mean, you know, if it's happy hour there'll there'll be alcoholic beverages as well as non alcoholic and there's like a variety of alcoholic or non alcoholic. If you're like I want a seltzer, I don't want a glass of wine, there's both. Some places like the Speakeasy that IBM is sponsoring has like specialty cocktails or like the Airstream that Workiva has has like slushies. So if you're like warm, that's where to go get a slushie. So yeah, there's plenty of food and beverage around all day. It's a good one. Any other? No, they're all pretty easy. Answered everybody in the thread. But again, if anybody ever has questions, you can just send us a note. Eventsassink.com we're super responsive. Great reminder. Yeah. So with that, if you guys think of any questions, you know, a lot of this is in the attendee portal, so you guys have the link to that. Now sign up for all those networking things, email events@SAS rank.com if you have a question or, you know, at some point next week, we'll, we'll flip that to, you know, we're now on site. Please come to the help desk. So on site will be at the help desk. Our team will be there to help you out with that. Hope you're getting excited. You know, it's not that many sleeps to go so fast or annual. It'll be really fun. It's again, massive campus. If this is your first time, indoor, outdoor, a lot of really great content, maybe even too much sometimes. Lots of networking parties, side parties, official unofficial parties. So yeah, it's a lot going on. You know, a lot of people getting together for this one. So it'll be great. We hope you guys are excited and we will see you there. And thanks for watching.