How to Plan Your Manifest Vegas 2027 Week with Katie Date

Katie Date is the last of my Manifest OGs to come on the show, so I’ve officially collected all the infinity stones. Katie is SVP, Industry Relations & Strategic Initiatives at Manifest, a Hyve Group company. She came over from MIT after a conversation backstage at her 2023 keynote, back when Manifest was still a tiny startup.

This February, Manifest is forecasting north of 8,500 people, and Katie wants more than 2,000 of them to be shippers because that’s who the sponsors came to meet. So how do you get in front of them? Start by not blowing up their LinkedIn, their inbox and their phone with the same copy-paste message you sent to a thousand other people. Katie has seen plenty of those go out with someone else’s name at the top because the mail merge broke. Go talk to a speaker after their session, read name tags on the expo floor and use the kickoff party, when everyone’s guard is down a little.

Her first piece of homework is one you can do today: once you have your ticket, share it on LinkedIn. The people you already know will see it and invite you to their dinners and happy hours…