The $40,000 Satellite Symposium

The four issues are not equal, and treating them as one negotiation is how planners lose leverage.

1. Unapproved device shipment - act first, today. This is a legal and customs exposure in the host country, not a sponsorship preference. Next steps: stop the shipment, get the device's regulatory status in the host country in writing from the company's regulatory affairs contact, and get advice from local counsel or the venue's customs broker. Do not let the units arrive and "sort it out at the booth." Long lead time, highest external risk, potential seizure and personal exposure for staff named on documents.

2. Content control in the accredited track - non-negotiable, respond within 48 hours. Company pre-approval of slides inside an accredited session is the one term that cannot be fixed with wording.

3. Attendee data - respond within a week, action is simple. Opt-outs are binding; the consent scope at registration defines what can be shared.

4. Contract and payment terms - negotiable, lowest urgency.

Ranking rationale: irreversibility and third-party exposure first, then the terms that undermine the program's integrity, then data, then commercial terms.

Move the session out of the accredited track and relabel it.

Structure:

• An industry-sponsored, non-accredited session, scheduled outside the accredited program (before the day's accredited content, at a parallel slot, or at a meal function), clearly labeled as sponsored and promotional in the program, app, and room signage.
• The company may review and approve its own promotional content in that session - that is legitimate, because no credit attaches.
• The accredited sessions keep: independent learning objectives, peer-reviewed content, a disclosed planner/faculty conflict-of-interest process, and no sponsor review of slides.
• Prominent on-site disclosure at the session: sponsor name, and a statement that the session is not part of the accredited program.
• Sponsorship recognition (logo, acknowledgment, exhibit priority) is decoupled from content influence.

The line I state plainly to the company: "You can buy visibility, access to the exhibit floor, and a session where you control your own message. You cannot buy the content of a session that carries credit."

If the company insists on being inside the accredited program with approval rights, the answer is no at any price - accepting $40,000 there puts the accreditation of the entire conference at risk, which is a far larger number.

Document the restructuring in a letter of agreement: independence of accredited content, disclosure obligations, no attendee data, and cancellation terms.

Determine what each attendee actually consented to, then share only that.

• The 12 opt-outs are absolute. Suppressing them is not negotiable and not something to trade.
• Email addresses are almost always a separate, optional consent - they should not have been a condition of registration, and they are not implied by registering.
• The defensible baseline is a badge-scan model: an attendee chooses to be scanned at the booth, and that scan is the record of consent to be contacted. That gives the sponsor qualified leads rather than a scraped list.
• If the registration form contained a broad list-sharing consent, honor it strictly as worded - but check that it was granular, that the privacy notice described this use, and that it complied with applicable data protection law in the host country and the attendees' home jurisdictions. If it did not, the consent is not a shield.

What I tell the sponsor: "You will receive leads from badge scans and from attendees who opted in to share contact details - not the full registration list. That is the same rule for every sponsor, and it is what keeps the list worth having: these are people who chose to hear from you."

Offer a compensating value: a lead-retrieval device at the booth, a sponsored session, a booth location. Put the data-handling commitment in the sponsorship agreement so expectations are set before the money is invoiced.