CNCF-Hosted
Co-located Events Speaker Guide

Thank you for speaking at our CNCF-hosted Co-located Events North America 2023 taking place November 6. This event is happening in person at McCormick Place West in Chicago, Illinois.

Please bookmark this page for easy reference and continue to check back as the event gets closer as we will be adding additional speaker information as they are available. If you have any questions, please email the CNCF-hosted Co-located Event Content Team.

IMPORTANT NOTE: Timing of sessions and room locations are subject to change through Wednesday, October 11.

• Travel Fund Request Deadline*: Thursday, September 14
• Confirm session and speaker details are correct in Sched.com: Friday, September 22 
• Speaker Registration Deadline: Monday, September 25 
• AV Requests Due: Friday, October 6 
• Finalized Schedule Date: Wednesday, October 11 
• Deadline for Virtual Submissions: Sunday, October 15*

• Upload Presentation Slides: Wednesday, November 1

*Virtual submission requests must be submitted by Monday, September 25

Please review the sections below to find more information about the above dates and deadlines.

Registration

To confirm your participation and secure your speaking slot, it’s important to complete your registration by Monday, September 25, using the details you received in your notification email. If you require this information again, please reach out to the CNCF-Hosted Co-located Event Content Team. Failure to register by the deadline may result in your slot being given to someone on our waitlist.

Complimentary registration is also extended to co-speakers or panelists from the original CFP submission. Please ensure their participation format aligns with yours before registering. For example, you cannot present in person if your co-speaker can only participate virtually.

If you’re attending the event in person, please review our Health + Safety page. Remember to check for updates as the event approaches.

Visa Letter Requests

If you require a visa letter, please register for the event, and then complete the visa letter request form.

Speaker Travel Funding

If you are not being assisted or sponsored by a company or organization and would be otherwise unable to attend for financial reasons, you may apply for travel funding. The deadline for travel funding applications is Thursday, September 14. You will receive notification from our travel fund team no later than Thursday, September 28.

Note: Talk acceptance does not guarantee travel funding.

Venue

This year’s event will take place at McCormick Place West located at 2301 S Indiana Ave. Chicago, IL 60616.

Hotel Details

We have several discounted room blocks that we invite you to view on our Venue + Travel page. Rooms may sell out in advance of the room block close date, so we encourage you to book early to secure a room at the conference rate.

The schedule will be announced on Monday, September 11, and will be posted on our website using Sched.com.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The timing of sessions is subject to change through Wednesday, October 11. Please note the following durations for session formats.

• Lightning talks: 5 minutes with no Q+A
• Sessions: 25 minutes inclusive of Q+A
• Panels: 25-35 minutes inclusive of Q+A (Check schedule for your exact timing).
• Workshops: 60-90 minutes (Check schedule for your exact timing).

If you have a conflict with the timing of your talk, find that it conflicts with the content of another talk, or are having problems uploading your bio and photo, please contact the CNCF-hosted Co-located Event Content Team.

Please note the following technical requirements:

• All speakers must supply their own computers and HDMI adapters to use during their talk.
• Presentation slides should be formatted in 16:9. 
• The room will include a screen, projector, and (1) microphone for each speaker or panelist.
• If you require any additional AV, please email the CNCF-Hosted Co-located Event Content Team by Friday, October 6. CNCF will make every effort to accommodate additional AV needs; however, final approval for additional AV requests will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Presentation Details

All speakers are encouraged to submit a PDF-format version of their final presentation slides ahead of the event to Sched.com. We find that adding the presentations before the event helps to drive interest in attending the session. The deadline for presentations is Wednesday, November 1.

To upload slides:

• Log in to your speaker profile through Sched.com or via the mobile site
• On the top of the page click “Manage and Promote Your Session”
• Click “Add Presentation”
• Click in the “Select a File” box and add the PDF document (note: there is a 50MB size limit)
• Click “Upload” and your slides will automatically be saved

Branded Powerpoint

We designed optional PowerPoint templates for our speakers. Use of these templates are not required but we do welcome you to use it for your convenience.

• AppDeveloperCon Template
• ArgoCon Template
• BackstageCon Template
• CiliumCon Template
• Cloud Native Telco Day Template
• Cloud Native Wasm Day Template
• Data on Kubernetes Day Template
• DBaaS DevDay Template
• EnvoyCon Template
• Istio Day Template
• Kubernetes AI + HPC Template
• Kubernetes on Edge Day Template
• Multi-TenancyCon Template
• Observability Day Template

Please see the section below for additional information on the CNCF brand guide.

The Linux Foundation, in collaboration with the National Center for Women in Technology (NCWIT), has created an online course designed to teach the viewer about inclusion, diversity, and unconscious bias. It is strongly encouraged by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation that all our speakers watch the course to learn tips/tools to use when speaking to encourage inclusivity in presentations and messaging.

Please read and abide by our code of conduct, which is strictly enforced. We ask that speakers especially review and are careful to be inclusive in the words and images used during their presentation.

If you’re not able to present in-person and will be submitting a pre-recorded session, please reach out to the CNCF-Hosted Co-located Event Content Team by Monday, September 25 to inform us of your submission preference. Virtual submissions will be accepted on a limited basis and must be received by Sunday, October 15 by 11:59 PM CDT.

Uploading your pre-record

Please reach out to the CNCF-hosted Co-located Event Content Team as soon as possible to update your status on the schedule as virtual. We have multiple options for uploading your pre-recorded presentation:

• Add your recording directly into the Google folder
• Share your file directly with the CNCF-hosted Co-located Event Content Team
• Or let us know if you have an alternate method (DropBox, WeTransfer, etc.)

Before sharing, you should save your presentation file in following format:

Naming Format: SessionTitle_YourName_version# (Example: My_Co-located Event_Video_JohnSmith_v1.mp4)

In order to mitigate technical risks, we are not allowing speakers to present their talk live. You must upload the recording by Sunday, October 15 by 11:59 PM CDT. This is a hard deadline. If you cannot meet this deadline we may have to cancel your session.

Virtual Platform

Our virtual platform will allow speakers to deliver content by pre-recorded talk. More details will be sent closer to the event.

Pre-recording requirements and information

• Some suggested tools to use for recording are Quicktime, Google Hangouts, Zoom, a screen recorder, or something similar.
• The recording should show your slides/screen as well as you presenting using a picture-in-picture format. 
• Ensure you have stable internet access. A hardwired connection is preferable, but if that is not available, turn devices off that could affect your connectivity during your presentation, and make sure that anyone else in the house is not on devices and/or consuming bandwidth.
• If you need assistance with your pre-recorded talk, please contact the CNCF-hosted Co-located Event Content Team for additional information.

The video requirements are as follows:

• Video Codec: h.264 (MUST) 
• Video File Format: MP4 (MUST) 
• Resolution: 1920×1080 (MAXIMUM) 
• What Frame Rate: 29.97 (MAXIMUM) 
• What Bitrate settings: 3mbps to 4mbps (NO LARGER THAN) 
• What audio codec: AAC @ 256k (NO HIGHER THAN) 
• Audio File Format: MP3 (MUST) 
• Size Limit for final output? 1.5GB per 60 min (MAXIMUM)
• Files must be no larger than 1.5GB per 1-hour of video. If we receive larger files, we will compress them to the size specs we require.

If you have any other venue, speaker, or schedule-related questions, please contact the CNCF-Hosted Co-located Event Team.