Keynote Speaker Guide

Thank you for speaking as a keynote at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2024, taking place 19 – 22 March, at Paris Expo Porte De Versailles in Paris, France.

This is the official event speaker guide for Keynote Speakers. Please bookmark this page for easy reference and if you have any questions, please email Cody Galloway.

• Speaker Registration Deadline: Friday, 9 February
• Additional AV Requests Due: Friday, 1 March
• Meeting with Co-Chairs Deadline: Friday, 23 February
• Presentation Slides Due: Monday, 11 March
• Keynote Tech Check: Tuesday, 19 March

Registration

Your Speaker Registration is the confirmation of your participation in the event, and the deadline is Friday, 9 February.

• Registration details were included in your acceptance email. If you require this information again, reach out to Cody Galloway.
• All keynote speakers receive complimentary registration. If you previously registered, please email Cody Galloway to have your registration updated and a refund processed.
• If you’re attending the event in person, please review our Health + Safety page. Remember to check for updates as the event approaches.
  

Visa Requests

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

VENUE

This year’s event will take place at Paris Expo Porte De Versailles located at 1 Place de la Porte de Versailles, 75015 Paris, France.

HOTEL ACCOMMODATIONS

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 Wednesday, 24 January, and will be posted on our website using Sched.com.

Note: Keynotes are 15-minutes and sponsored keynotes are 5-minutes. Keynote sessions occur each morning, 20-22 March, 9:00 AM to 10:25 AM Central European Time. If you have a conflict with the timing of your talk or any issues uploading your bio and photo, please contact Cody Galloway.

We designed an optional PowerPoint template for our speakers. Use of these templates are not required but we do welcome you to use them for your convenience. Please see the CNCF style guide which covers things like abbreviating Kubernetes as K8s not K8 or K8S.

• Meet with Co-Chairs by Friday, 23 February
• Email final presentation to Cody Galloway by Monday, 11 March

We strictly enforce a no-pitch, non-advertorial policy for all of our presentations, especially on the keynote stage. Leading up to the event, we will send you a link to schedule a meeting with one of our co-chairs to review your presentation and ensure the messaging resonates with our audience. You must have an initial draft of your presentation at the time of the meeting.

Helpful Notes on Presentation Design

Obsolete, low-resolution (i.e. pixelated), and malformatted logos are an epidemic among conference presentations. High-resolution logos of over 1,000 cloud native projects, products, and companies are available in the cloud native landscapes. Note that all of these logos are stacked, not horizontal, and include the name. The logos should be current, otherwise you can open a pull request if they are not. Also note that the text below the logo shows the proper capitalization of projects like gRPC and containerd. In particular, Alibaba Cloud, Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure have all changed their logos in the last couple years; please use their current logo.

Please also review the CNCF Style Guide, which covers important things like abbreviating Kubernetes as K8s not K8 or K8S.

Any additional AV requests are due by Friday, 1 March. 

The keynote room will include:

• Screen(s)
• Projector(s)
• Handheld + Lavalier Microphones
• Countdown Timer
• Wireless Slide Advancer
• Lectern
• PowerPoint Slide Monitors
• Separate PowerPoint Notes Monitors

Note: After emailing your presentation to us, we will upload it to the show computers to play from backstage. CNCF will make every effort to accommodate additional AV needs; however, final approval for these requests will be made on a case-by-case basis.

Keynote WalkThrough

Tuesday, 19 March

All keynote presenters are required to attend a tech check and slide run-through on the keynote stage on Tuesday, 19 March. You’ll receive the exact time slot in your keynote pre-event email, sent the week before the event. If you anticipate any attendance issues, please inform Cody Galloway promptly.

The purpose of this exercise is not to conduct a complete run-through of your presentation from beginning to end. Instead, the goal is to achieve the following:

• Make you acquainted with the stage and provide a glimpse of what you can expect on the actual show-day.
• Test and adjust your microphone audio levels.
• Address any specific AV requirements you might have, such as playing a video or conducting a live demo.*
• Review your slides to verify accuracy and observe how your PowerPoint notes will be displayed.

*Please let us know well in advance if you plan to give a demo on stage as there are additional steps we must take to ensure your success.

Requirements

• Punctuality is crucial. Please arrive on time as indicated in your calendar invite. Delays will directly impact subsequent keynote speakers due to our tightly packed run-through schedule. Aim to arrive early to ensure a smooth experience for everyone.
• Consolidate your PowerPoint notes and increase the font size for better readability on the main stage. Keep the notes brief, with a maximum of 3 bullet points per slide.
  • TIP: If you need more notes, duplicate the slide and add them to the second one. Your clicker will switch the notes while the slide content remains unchanged for the audience, ensuring a smooth and enhanced presentation experience.

UPLOADING YOUR PRE-RECORD

We have multiple options for uploading your pre-recorded presentation:

• Add your recording directly into the Google folder
• Share your file directly with the Cody Galloway
• 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_KubeCon_Video_JohnSmith_v1.mp4)

In order to mitigate technical risks, we are not allowing virtual speakers to present their talk live. You must upload a recording by Friday, 1 March.

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.

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.
  

Pre-recording help

If you have questions or need help pre-recording your keynote session, please let Cody Galloway know by Friday, 1 March and we will follow up with our production team.

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 have any other venue, platform, speaker, or schedule-related questions, please contact Cody Galloway.