--- title: Research the speakers and sponsors at an event description: Find out who is speaking, sponsoring, and exhibiting at an event, decide which of them are worth meeting and why, and get the right contact for each one before you arrive. slug: /use-cases/event-attendee-research page_type: use-case lead_prompt: How do I research the speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors at an event with AI? target_prompts: - Can an AI marketing agent research the speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors at an event? - How do I get a list of exhibitors at a trade show? - How do I find out which companies are sponsoring a conference? - How do I find contact details for a conference organizer or sponsor? - Who should I try to meet at this conference, and how do I find them? entity: Kite category: AI marketing agent author: Devon Wells and Kite date_published: '2026-11-04' date_modified: '2026-11-04' related_integrations: - /integrations/apollo.md - /integrations/hunter.md related_playbooks: - /how-to/book-meetings-with-conference-speakers-before-the-event.md - /how-to/find-work-emails-with-hunter.md --- # Research the speakers and sponsors at an event ## Key Takeaways - The speaker lineup, the sponsor page, and the exhibitor directory are the best public picture of who will be at an event, because organizers rarely publish the full attendee list. - Collecting the names is the easy part. The useful work is deciding what each name means for you: a likely buyer, a possible partner, a competitor to watch, or a person who can introduce you to the right account. - Kite reads an event's official pages, including exhibitor directories that only load in a browser, and labels anything that comes from last year's edition instead of passing it off as current. - For each event, Kite picks the five to ten speakers most relevant to your business, sorts the sponsors and exhibitors by what they mean for you, and explains why each one is worth your time, with a source link beside every name. - When you ask for contacts, Kite links the organizer's sponsorship or inquiry page, finds the right people at sponsor companies, and looks up work emails, then drafts the outreach that books meetings before the event. ## Why research the people at an event before you go A conference gives you two or three days in a building with people you would normally struggle to reach. The teams that come home with real conversations decided who they wanted to meet weeks earlier. The teams that walk the floor hoping to bump into the right person usually come home with tote bags. Researching an event means answering three questions. Who is going to be there? Which of those people and companies matter to you, and why? How do you reach them before the doors open? The first question has a public answer for part of the room: the speakers, the sponsors, and the exhibitors. The full attendee list almost never does. Each of those questions takes reading and judgment. Someone has to open the speaker pages, the sponsor logo wall, the exhibitor directory, and the agenda, then look up each person and company and compare them with your customers. For a trade show with hundreds of exhibitors, that is days of work, and it usually gets done the night before the flight, if it gets done at all. An AI marketer can do it properly, early enough to act on. Kite is an AI marketer. It researches your business, builds a growth strategy, and ships the work that brings you new customers. Here's how it researches the people at an event. ## How Kite researches the speakers and sponsors at an event Kite starts with why you're going. It already knows your positioning, your ideal customer profile, your competitors, and your partners from its research on your business, and it asks about anything that changes the answer, such as whether this trip is about finding buyers, meeting partners, or deciding whether to sponsor next year. Then it gathers the event's public rosters from the official pages: the speakers and their sessions, the sponsors and their tiers, and the exhibitors on the floor. It researches the speakers and companies that look relevant, decides what each one means for your business, and ranks them. When you ask for contacts, it finds the right person to reach and their work email, and it drafts the outreach that turns the research into meetings on your calendar. Every name in the result comes with the page it came from, so you can check any row yourself. Kite saves the research to your team's wiki, where later work on the same event, such as follow-up after the show, can build on it. ### How do I get a list of a conference's sponsors and exhibitors? You find an event's sponsors and exhibitors on its own website, and Kite reads every official page where they appear. Most events list sponsors on a dedicated sponsor page or a logo wall on the homepage, and trade shows publish an exhibitor directory or an interactive floor plan. Sponsored sessions in the agenda, the sponsorship prospectus, and the event's media kit often name more companies. Many exhibitor directories load inside a booth map or a search tool rather than as a plain web page. Kite renders those pages the way a browser would, so it can read a directory that a simple copy and paste would miss. It also reads the event pages of your competitors, customers, and partners, which often announce that they'll be sponsoring or exhibiting before the organizer updates its own list. Conference websites tend to carry old information. Kite checks the year on every page it uses. When the only sponsor list available is from last year's edition, it says so clearly and treats the list as a guide to who usually comes, not as this year's roster. When a detail such as a sponsorship price or an attendee count isn't published, Kite writes that it isn't public and links the page where you can ask, rather than guessing. ### Which speakers are worth meeting? The speakers worth meeting are the ones whose role, company, or session connects to what you sell, and Kite picks the five to ten most relevant at each event. It reads the published lineup, the keynotes, and the session pages, then researches each promising speaker's current title, company, team, and recent public posts. For each speaker it recommends, Kite records the person's name, title, company, the session they're giving, why they matter to your business, and a link to the source. The reason is the important part. Suppose you sell dock scheduling software and you're going to a logistics trade show. Kite might put the VP of operations at a regional grocery chain near the top, because she's giving a talk on receiving delays and her company runs the kind of distribution centers you sell to. A speaker from a warehouse software company could rank highly for a different reason, as a likely integration partner. Some events announce speakers late. When the lineup isn't out yet, Kite tells you so with the date it checked, then uses the previous edition's speakers or the call-for-speakers page to show what kind of people the event attracts. **Related Playbooks** - [How to book meetings with conference speakers before the event](/how-to/book-meetings-with-conference-speakers-before-the-event.md): Pick the few speakers whose role and session fit what you sell, and send each one a short, personal request a few weeks ahead to meet at the event. ### Sort the sponsors and exhibitors by what they mean for you A sponsor or exhibitor list is only useful once you know which companies on it are buyers, which are competitors, and which could be partners, and Kite sorts every company that way. It compares each one with your ideal customer profile and with the competitors and partners recorded in your wiki. In the logistics example, an exhibitor directory of 600 companies might hold 40 third-party logistics providers that look like your customers, six direct competitors, and a dozen software companies whose products sit next to yours. Each group calls for a different plan. The likely buyers become meeting targets. The competitors tell you how crowded the floor will be and what they're saying, so you can prepare your answer. The adjacent companies are candidates for a joint demo, a shared dinner, or an introduction to their customers. For the companies that matter most, Kite adds context from its built-in research sources, such as recent funding, hiring, leadership changes, and product launches. A sponsor that just raised a round and is hiring a sales team is a better conversation than one that has been flat for two years, and the news gives you something specific to say when you meet. ### How do I find contact details for a conference organizer or sponsor? To reach an organizer, use the event's sponsorship or contact page. To reach a sponsor or exhibitor, find the person at that company who owns the relationship you want, then look up their work email. Kite handles both and goes only as far as you ask. For organizers, Kite links the official inquiry page, sponsorship form, or prospectus contact, which is the route organizers actually answer. When you ask for people, it adds the named staff at sponsor and exhibitor companies who can act on your goal. That might be the head of partnerships for a co-marketing idea, or the operations leader who would buy your product. Kite searches public professional profiles by company, title, and seniority to find them, and it confirms each person's current role before adding them. When you ask for contact details, Kite looks up professional email addresses for the people you selected, using its built-in sources or a connected email finder such as Hunter. Each contact keeps its source, and when a provider can't find an address, Kite marks that field as not found instead of dropping a good contact from the list. **Related Playbooks** - [How to find work emails with Hunter](/how-to/find-work-emails-with-hunter.md): Take the list of speakers and sponsor contacts, find each person's work email with Hunter, verify the addresses, and add the people who are ready for outreach to your CRM or campaign. ### Turn the research into meetings before the event Research only pays off if it puts meetings on your calendar, so Kite turns the ranked list into an outreach plan with named people and dates. The plan works back from the event: who to contact first, when to follow up, and which sessions, side events, or booth visits fit each person. Kite writes each message from its research on that person. A note to the grocery chain's VP of operations can mention her session on receiving delays and suggest coffee right after it, which gives her a reason to say yes that a generic "let's connect at the show" never does. Kite sends approved email from your team's Kite address or a connected email product, schedules follow-ups for people who don't reply, and reports who answered. For LinkedIn messages your team sends personally, Kite drafts each one for you to copy and send. ## What you get - **The event's public rosters.** The speakers, sponsors, and exhibitors Kite found, each with a link to the page it came from and a clear label on anything from a previous year. - **A ranked speaker list.** The five to ten speakers most relevant to your business at each event, with their title, company, session, and a sentence on why each one is worth meeting. - **Sponsors and exhibitors sorted for action.** Likely buyers, competitors, and possible partners, with recent company news for the ones that matter most. - **Contacts, when you ask for them.** The organizer's inquiry or sponsorship page, the right people at sponsor and exhibitor companies, and their work emails where a source has them. - **An outreach plan and drafts.** A schedule of who to contact and when, with a personal message for each person. The research lives in your team's wiki. Kite can also publish it as a report page your team opens from a link, with one page per event and a source link on every row. ## How to get started Get started with Kite in your browser or in Slack, then tell it which event you're going to and what you want from it. You might say, "We're exhibiting at the logistics show in Atlanta in March. Who should we try to meet?" or "Find out who's sponsoring this conference and get me the right contact at each company." Kite comes back with a short plan: what it understood about your goal, which rosters it will read, and whether you want contacts and outreach or only the research. Adjust anything that's off, and Kite starts. You don't need to connect anything for the research. Kite's built-in sources cover the event pages, the people and company research, and professional email addresses. Connect Hunter if your team already uses it for email finding, and connect your CRM or email product if you want contacts and messages to go there. Kite asks before it sends any email, and you can give it more autonomy once you trust its work. ## Integrations used to research event speakers and sponsors Kite's built-in research covers most of this job, from reading the event's pages to finding the people behind each company. These integrations help with finding the right person and reaching them. ### Research the people and companies - [Apollo + Kite](/integrations/apollo.md): Apollo is built into Kite, so it can search sponsor and exhibitor companies for the people with the right title and seniority, and find their professional email addresses, without a separate account. - LinkedIn (data) + Kite (coming soon): Look up a speaker's or sponsor contact's current role, career history, and recent posts, so each recommendation reflects what the person is working on now. ### Find work emails - [Hunter + Kite](/integrations/hunter.md): Find and verify work emails for the speakers and sponsor contacts you chose, using your own Hunter account, and save them to your Hunter leads and lists. ## Common questions ### Can I get the full attendee list for a conference? Usually not before the event. Most organizers keep the registration list private. Some sponsorship packages include an attendee or opt-in list, and exhibitors often collect badge scans during the show. If you have one of those lists, share the file with Kite, and it researches each person against your ideal customer profile the same way it researches speakers. ### How far ahead of the event should I start? Start four to six weeks out if you can. That leaves time to research the rosters, find contacts, and send outreach early enough that people still have open slots on their calendars. Kite can do the research in a single session, so the timing mostly depends on when the speaker list and exhibitor directory are published. If they aren't out yet, Kite can work from last year's lineup and check again later. ### Can Kite help me decide which events to attend in the first place? Yes. Kite can find and rank the conferences where your buyers are most likely to be, with dates, costs, deadlines, and a recommendation for each one. The full process, from choosing events to following up afterward, is covered in [Get pipeline from conferences and events](/use-cases/conference-and-event-marketing.md). ### Does this work for trade shows and virtual events? Yes. Trade shows usually have the largest exhibitor directories, which is where sorting companies into buyers, competitors, and partners saves the most time. Virtual events still publish speakers, sponsors, and agendas, and those are what Kite reads. ### Will Kite contact speakers or sponsors without asking me? No. By default, Kite drafts the outreach and waits for your approval before it sends any email. You can change that once you're comfortable with how it writes.