A plea from Sage Summit 2016: Register for sessions now

Remember what it was like registering for classes in high school and college?

In high school, if you weren’t participating in a program like band or ROTC, it was a race to select the best elective classes so you weren’t stuck with one you didn’t like. In college, it was a race to get classes at the best time. (Did anyone really want a statistics lecture class at 9 a.m. on Monday?)

As I mentioned in my last post, Danielle Cote from the Sage Events Team practically begged me to get this message out: Sign up for Sage Summit 2016 sessions right away. The No. 1 reason: Unlike in high school and college, Sage can add more sessions if the best ones fill up early.

The irony is that two years ago, I thought the right thing to do was waiting a little bit to start signing up for Sage Summit sessions. I was going on the theory that not every session is in the catalog when registration opens, so you might want to wait to see what else becomes available. But that was my thoughts as a green attendee, and even back then, Danielle had me think about it another way.

The reality is if everyone waited until the end, it doesn’t give the Sage Events Team enough time to act if they need to add more classes for the popular sessions.

“If everyone starts signing up early, we’re able to watch where the trends are,” Danielle said. “If we know early that these five classes are already full, we can add more. If people wait for the last two weeks, we can’t pivot that quickly.”

So what are the popular sessions? Easy: Anything in a hands-on lab. This makes for an interesting Catch-22: The most popular sessions also have the most limited seating. You can grab an extra chair or stand against a wall for a lecture, but you can’t grab an extra demo computer for a lab.

The most popular Summit sessions are the hands-on labs. But they have limited seating and fill up fast. (Special thanks to Dru Chai from Sage for providing me with this picture.)

The good news is they’re already planning more hands-on sessions for Sage Summit 2016, Danielle said, especially for Sage X3.

The Sage Events Team has always made it known that you can change your Sage Summit agenda any time you want — even after the conference starts. That’s still true, but if you want a guaranteed spot in the popular classes, sign up early. This way, you’re not only helping yourself to the best classes, you’re helping those who have to wait to register have a chance for a second (third, fourth, etc.) session opening up for them as well.

After I sent out an e-mail to our customers about registration opening, Rhiannon Thompson from Davidson Excavating asked me if they announced who the musical guest was going to be for Sage Summit 2016. I told her they dropped this juicy hint on the Sage Summit website:

“All work and no fun? Not at Sage Summit!

Get ready as we reveal the headliner entertainment in April. We would tell you now, but where’s the fun in spilling it right away?

In the meantime, we can tell you this band has received countless accolades for their artistic achievement, including multiple Grammy nominations, American Music Award nominations, MTV Video Music Awards, NME Awards, and more. Also, they have appeared three times on Saturday Night Live, in addition to performances on The Tonight Show, The Late Show with David Letterman, and more.”

Rhiannon immediately goes into The Scooby Gang mode and tries to solve the Mystery of the Unnamed Summit Entertainment. She even showed her work:

Now this is what I call an educated guess!

She made her guess, and then changed her mind and gave me a final answer. (Yes, I did ask her if she wanted to phone a friend first.) I told her if her guess was right, I’d take her out to lunch at Sage Summit. Looks like we’ll only have a few more weeks to find out if her guess is right!