Before You Book Rome, Write Down Three Names.

There's a version of a conference you've already been to, even if you've never been to a conference.

You book it in a good month. You tell yourself you'll set up meetings in advance. Then the month gets busy, a supplier misses a date, the ad account has a wobble, and you land with the calendar half empty. You go to two sessions you could have watched on YouTube. You have three good hallway conversations you can't quite remember by Wednesday. You fly home and the first thing you do is open Shopify to see what happened while you were gone.

That's not a bad event. That's a trip without a plan. And the founders who go and come back glad have a habit that fixes it, and it's short enough to write on the back of a boarding pass.

Three names before you price the flight

Before you look at flights, before you look at the ticket, write down three conversations worth leaving the business for.

Not "networking." Not "see what's working." Three specific people or companies, and for each one, the thing you'd want to walk away knowing.

A working version for a brand looks something like this. One partner who could put your product in front of customers you're not reaching, and pays for the promotion themselves in return for a commission on qualifying sales. One operator on the supply side of your next problem, whether that's payments, fulfilment or the next market. One founder a stage ahead of you who'd compare real numbers over a coffee, because the honest version of what's breaking at their size is worth more than any panel.

If you can name three, you have a reason to go, and the rest of the trip is logistics. If you can't name three, the problem isn't the airfare. You haven't got a plan yet, and no event fixes that.

One founder, after a trip that worked, put it in six words: "Meetings booked = survival mode OFF, networking mode ON." Another said the rule from the other side: "If you set yourself up with meetings or to see prospects in advance of the show then it's worth it." That's the whole method. The rest of this page is about running it against a real list instead of a poster.

The list to run it against

Affiliate Grand Slam is in Rome from 2 to 5 November at Fiera Roma. It's a performance-marketing event, which for a brand means the floor is heavy with the people who decide what products get promoted and who fund the promotion.

Three examples of what's confirmed, and what each is for. ClickBank and Digistore are marketplaces: brands list offers, affiliates browse them and choose what to run. MaxWeb and TerraLeads are networks that run consumer offers to their own traffic and partners. PlatformPay is payments. TikTok, Meta and Google are exhibiting with staff on the floor. On stage, founders who run brands, Nick Shackelford of Brez among them, alongside Marisha Lakhiani of Mindvalley and Dayu Yang of EcommOps.

None of those names is a promise. A logo on a floor plan doesn't tell you whether that company takes your category, what it pays out, or whether it'll accept a meeting. What the names give you is a list to run your three against, with a line on what each does, so the shortlist is made of real companies rather than hopes. That list is the first thing in the AGS Rome 2026 Welcome Kit.

Why one trip beats twelve emails

The argument for going isn't that these people are unreachable by email. Some of them are perfectly reachable. The argument is concentration. In four days you can put your product in front of several relevant companies, hear their requirements side by side, notice which one lit up and which one went polite, and come home with a comparison you'd otherwise have assembled over a quarter of calls. That comparison is what makes the next decision quick.

And there's a thing that happens in person that doesn't happen on a call. A network's partnerships person turns your product over in their hands. A founder shows you a number they'd never type. That's not magic. It's what people do when they're in the same room and the meeting was requested on purpose.

The sequence, so nobody's guessing

Read the kit and mark the companies and founders that fit your three. Use the Best Value for Money Guide to decide what access those three actually need: every pass gets the floor, all sessions, the welcome reception and the Match App, and the guide is honest about when an upgrade adds nothing for your plan. Choose the pass that supports the plan inside the whole trip budget, flights and hotel included.

Once you hold a pass, the Match App opens. You request a conversation with a specific company. They accept or decline. If they accept, you have a meeting to prepare for, and the guide has the prep: the three numbers, the product, the one question.

Then book the flight, because now it has names attached and a reason you could explain to a co-founder in one sentence.

The November question

You'll have noticed the dates. 2 to 5 November is the run-up to the most expensive four weeks of your year, and a founder preparing for the holiday period has every right to ask whether this is the moment to be away.

Here's the honest answer. The conversations worth having in Rome are about next year's acquisition, not this year's peak. Nothing you start in November produces orders before the rush, and anyone who tells you otherwise is selling something. What Rome does is let you put the partner conversations for the new year in the diary before the year starts, in one trip, while the holiday campaigns are already built and scheduled. The kit's guide has a prep note for exactly this: what to have finished before you leave, and the one thing the person covering for you needs to know how to do if an ad set dies at 2pm.

Write your three

That's the ask. Three names, then the list. Use the confirmed list to build your shortlist, then use the Best Value for Money Guide to work out what access and what budget that shortlist needs. If Rome doesn't have your three, you've spent ten minutes and you know. If it does, you'll know why you're going, and it won't be the keynotes.