Call For Proposals (CFP)

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon gathers adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud native communities from 23-26, March. Join our current graduated, incubating, and sandbox projects as the community gathers to further the education and advancement of cloud native computing.

Submissions are due by 12 October at 11:59pm Central European Time (UTC+2)

For any questions regarding the CFP process, please email cfp@cncf.io.

Important: Please do not list yourself as a speaker or co-speaker on more than three submissions. If you are listed on more than three, all of your submissions may be removed from review, including those with co-speakers. This policy helps ensure fairness, broad representation in the program, and a manageable review workload for the program committee.

Be mindful of how many sessions you submit or agree to join as a co-speaker, as it could impact not only your own chances but also your co-speakers’.

• You are allowed to be listed as a speaker on a maximum of three proposals submitted to the CFP, regardless of the format. You may only be selected to speak on one panel and one non-panel session per event (excluding any project benefits).
• Avoid submitting low-effort, AI-generated proposals. While CNCF does not ban the use of AI, especially since it can be a helpful tool for non-native English speakers, we strongly discourage submissions that appear to be low-quality or clearly AI-generated “slop.” If we identify that a submitter is consistently submitting AI-generated slop, it may result in removal from the review process and/or a ban from future CNCF CFPs.
• Panel submissions must include the names of all participants at the time of submission to be considered. To support speaker equity and inclusion, CNCF does not accept any session with three or more speakers who all identify as men. Additionally, panelists must represent more than one company.
• All speakers are required to adhere to our Code of Conduct. We also highly recommend that speakers take our online Inclusive Speaker Orientation Course.
• One complimentary pass for the event will be provided for each accepted speaker.
• Avoid sales or marketing pitches and discussing unlicensed or potentially closed-source technologies when preparing your proposal; these talks are almost always rejected due to the fact that they take away from the integrity of our events, and are rarely well-received by conference attendees.
• CNCF will not select submissions that have already been presented at a previous Linux Foundation event within the past year. If your submission is similar to a previous talk, please explain how this version differs.
• All accepted speakers are required to submit their slides prior to the event.

• AI + ML – This track covers the latest advancements and best practices in AI and ML within cloud native environments, exploring innovative applications, tools, and techniques for effective implementation. It’s designed for professionals who go beyond using provided AI tools and delve into bespoke AI, ML, data science, and AI/ML platform operations, offering insights into managing data models, implementing AI algorithms, deploying ML models in cloud native environments, and optimizing workflows with topics like MLOps, AIOps, AgentOps, GPU utilization with Kubernetes, and more.
• Application Development – This track focuses on the latest practices in cloud native application development and optimizing the developer experience. Designed for software developers and cloud-native architects deploying applications to cloud native environments and the creators of developer-centric tools that keep them focused on software not infrastructure, it offers in-depth insights into architecting, coding, testing, building, and continuous integration (CI) and deployment (CD) of scalable cloud-native applications. Attendees will explore best practices, architectural patterns, and cutting-edge tools from CNCF projects that streamline the development of complex distributed systems. This track emphasizes strategies for improving developer productivity, simplifying workflows, and enhancing the overall software creation process through innovative tooling and seamless integration of cloud native technologies.
• Cloud Native Experience – Content that deals with all the following aspects of the cloud native experience such as building & supporting a cloud native community, the business value of CNCF technologies, building Cloud Native startups, and openly sharing our cloud native misadventures. Attendees can expect to gain a range of insights and knowledge about building communities, the value of CNCF technologies, and learn from misadventures shared by the community.
• Cloud Native Novice – Content best suited for individuals who are new to Cloud Native and relevant to those in early career including students. This covers foundational concepts across multiple domains through introductory presentations. Attendees to these presentations can expect to learn core cloud native networking concepts, managing storage for containerized workloads and how previous experiences can map to cloud native architectures, understanding initial security activities for cloud native architectures, developing cloud native applications, how to start contributing to cloud native communities, and so much more.
• Connectivity – This track merges Networking + Edge + Telco with Service Mesh topics, offering a deep dive into networking technologies, edge computing, telco applications, and service mesh deployment in cloud native environments. Ideal for professionals in network engineering, and telecommunications domain, this track covers OSI Layer 4/7 service meshes, load balancing, network security, and automation, providing practical insights into deploying and managing service mesh technologies in production.
• Data Processing + Storage – This track covers managing data and storage systems in cloud native settings, tackling challenges like scalability and efficient management techniques. Professionals in data processing, storage, database management, and scalability will find valuable insights here. Attendees will delve into topics such as data streaming, containerized databases, volume provisioning, and optimizing workflows for robust storage solutions in cloud native environments.
• Emerging + Advanced – Content that covers cloud native research & academia, emerging technologies, high performance computing for specialized workloads, and highly advanced cloud native computing concepts. Cloud native research and academic papers are welcome to be presented within this track alongside very early stage technical concepts, proof of concept projects, advancement of research computing, and highly specialized advanced or niche topics. Attendees interested in the latest advancements in cloud-native technology(the underlying needs associated with sustaining research and academic workloads on cloud native infrastructure, deploying and managing computationally intensive workloads, and highly advanced or in depth technical content relating to cloud native) will likely be drawn to this track.
• Observability – Content that covers methodologies and projects for instrumenting, collecting, processing, storing, querying, curating, and correlating metrics, logging/events, trace spans, and general observational profiling of workloads. Attendees to these presentations can expect to learn good practices for meaningful alerting, queries, and operational dashboards, tooling and interoperability for observability challenges, and how to manage alerting rules definitions, thresholds and policies.
• Operations + Performance – This track covers operationalizing cloud native projects, optimizing performance, and tackling runtime challenges. Ideal for administrators, SREs, and DevOps professionals, it delves into autoscaling, high availability, performance optimization, operators, and ensuring cluster reliability. Attendees will leave with enhanced skills in administering, maintaining, and operating cloud native technologies, with a focus on reliability and performance optimization.
• Platform Engineering – This track covers essential topics such as building and customizing cloud native platforms, automating infrastructure operations, and improving self-service workflows for developers. It caters to platform engineers, DevOps professionals, infrastructure architects, and developers interested in these areas. Attendees will gain insights into integrating cloud native projects, extending platform functionalities, and accelerating software delivery velocity through effective toolchain and workflow enhancements.
• Security – Content that covers the security specific aspects of cloud native from detections to threat modeling, security education, identity and credential management, multi-tenancy, confidential computing, vulnerability management in cloud native, and other topics. Attendees to these presentations can expect to learn tactics and techniques in defending and designing cloud native architecture secure from attacks at all portions of the architecture and SDLC, managing credentials and identities, zero trust concepts and tooling, supply chain considerations, and learn from security audits of projects or incident post-mortems.

While CNCF does not intend to strictly dictate which track your submission should go to, we believe it would be helpful to provide some guidelines for beginners to better understand the various submission tracks and the types of projects or ideas relevant to each. The table below has been curated by carefully exploring the CNCF Landscape and CNCF Technical Advisory Groups (TAGs) and mapping them to the suggested topics for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon.

Please note that this is intended only as a rough guideline for those who are unsure which track to choose for their submission; your ideas and imagination are not limited to these examples.

• Session Presentation: 30 minutes, 1-2 speaker(s) presenting on a topic
• Panel Discussion: 30 minutes of discussion amongst 3 to 5 speakers
• Lightning Talk: A brief 5-minute presentation, maximum of 1 speaker
• Tutorial: 75-minute, in-depth, hands-on presentation with 1-5 speakers
• Poster Session: 1-2 presenters stationed at a monitor in the Solutions Showcase

End user companies are organizations that use cloud native technologies internally to build or run their own products or services but do not offer cloud native solutions to others. Examples include Adidas, Apple, and Spotify.

Cloud native vendors such as AWS and Red Hat provide or sell cloud native technologies and are not considered end users.

To check if your company qualifies as an end user, review the filtered list of CNCF end user members. If you’re unsure, please email cfp@cncf.io for assistance.

Poster sessions offer a unique opportunity for participants to showcase and receive feedback about their latest research, novel solutions and innovative ideas from a diverse audience of fellow researchers and industry professionals. Posters will be presented in a digital format displayed in the solutions showcase. Attendees will have the opportunity to walk around the poster area, interact with poster presenters, ask questions, and engage in discussions. Presenters stand by their posters to provide explanations, answer queries, and engage in conversations with those interested in their work.

Submission Process

• Poster sessions must be submitted as part of the regular CFP process.
• It is recommended to select this option if you plan to cover topics that have a research focus or novel solutions of potential future impact to the cloud native ecosystem.
• If you have a published paper related to your poster, please add a link to it in the Additional Resources section.

Selection Process

• Accepted poster sessions will be notified along with all other CFP results.
• Poster sessions will be evaluated by a dedicated Poster Session program committee, regardless of the track selected

While it is not our intention to provide you with strict instructions on how to prepare your proposal, we hope you will take a moment to review the following guidelines that we have put together to help you prepare the best submission possible. To get started, here are three things that you should consider before submitting your proposal:

1. What are you hoping to get from your presentation?
2. What do you expect the audience to gain from your presentation?
3. How will your presentation help better the ecosystem?

There are plenty of ways to give a presentation about projects and technologies without focusing on company-specific efforts. Remember the things to consider that we mentioned above when writing your proposal and think of ways to make it interesting for attendees while still letting you share your experiences, educate the community about an issue, or generate interest in a project.

Writing Your Proposal

Your session title will be the main point of reference for attendees to decide if they want to attend your talk, so choose it carefully. The title should accurately reflect the content of your talk and comply with The Linux Foundation’s Inclusive Language Initiative. Please use title case when inputting your title.

In the session description, make the most of your opportunity to pitch your talk to the program committee by emphasizing its problem, contribution, and relevance. Don’t forget technical details, but keep the big picture in mind. Your proposal’s description should be focused, detailed, and comply with The Linux Foundation’s Inclusive Language Initiative. It will appear on the website schedule if accepted, so ensure it’s error-free, uses full sentences, and written in the third person. This description can make or break an attendee’s decision to attend your talk, so provide enough information to aid their choice, and be concise. The competition for presentation slots is high, so a well-crafted, engaging abstract will improve your chances of acceptance.

Use this opportunity to elaborate on why your presentation is important and why attendees should care. Explain how your content will benefit the ecosystem or share any other relevant information with the co-chairs and program committee. We understand that this can be a challenging question to answer, but like the abstract, the relevance of your presentation is crucial, and it’s as significant as the content in determining acceptance.

Please indicate whether your submission is a case study. In other words, is your submission a report of an organization’s implementation of something, such as a practice, a product, a system, a service, or combination thereof? The case study can be thought of as a real-world test of how the implementation works, and how well it works.

If you have presented this talk before within the past year at a CNCF or Linux Foundation event, please explain the significant differences between that presentation and the one you are proposing in your session description.

Please list all CNCF-hosted graduated, incubating, or sandbox software(s) as well as all open source projects that your presentation will be focused on if applicable.

Since the Program Committee reviews numerous proposals, additional resources can assist in assessing a speaker’s proficiency and presentation skills. Please provide a video or audio recording of a previous talk you have given. If you do not have any prior recordings of your talk, you may create a brief YouTube video of yourself speaking for a few minutes.

How to Give a Great Talk

We want to make sure submitters receive resources to help put together a great submission and if accepted, give the best presentation possible. To help with this, we recommend viewing seasoned speaker Dawn Foster’s in-depth talk: Getting Over Your Imposter Syndrome to Become a Conference Speaker – Dawn Foster, VMware

Have More Questions? First Time Submitting? Don’t Feel Intimidated

CNCF events are an excellent way to get to know the community and share your ideas and the work that you are doing and we strongly encourage first-time speakers to submit talks for our events. In the instance that you aren’t sure about which track to submit under, reach out to us and we will be more than happy to provide you guidance.

First time using Sessionize?

Sessionize is a cloud-based event content management software designed to be intuitive and user-friendly. If you need guidance, please review how to submit your session for an event to see step-by-step instructions and helpful screenshots.

Submitting on behalf of somebody else?

While speakers ordinarily submit their sessions themselves, it’s also common for them to have someone else do it in their name. Submitters can choose to submit as someone else and must fill out the necessary speaker fields, but the session submission process is otherwise identical to when the session is submitted by the speaker themselves.

Example title

OCI, CRI, ??: Making Sense of the Container Runtime Landscape in Kubernetes

Example Description

You’ve probably heard about the OCI—a standardization effort to share a common definition for container runtime, image, and image distribution. Add to that the CRI (container runtime interface) in Kubernetes—designed to abstract the container runtime from the kubelet—and you may start to wonder what all these standards and interfaces mean for you in a Kubernetes world.

As of this year, a long list of runtimes, including CNCF projects containerd and cri-o, all implement the CRI. But did you know there are quite a few others? The unique number of CRI combinations is growing, all of which use the common OCI definitions for runtime and image interoperability.

But how would you decide which container runtime is right for you? Clearly each one has tradeoffs. This talk will help describe the current landscape and give you details on the why and how of each CRI implementation available today.

Example Benefits to the ecosystem

It is a repeating comment across the CNCF ecosystem that the number of choices for container runtime is confusing, especially for those who are newer to our ecosystem. Even for those who many have heard the names–Docker, containerd, cri-o–even they are curious as to the reasons why there are many varied runtimes available to implement the CRI interface for Kubernetes, and what is the history that brought us to this point.

This talk helps bring clarity to the container runtime landscape, and especially shows the interesting work being done in additional isolation technologies like gVisor, AWS Firecracker, and Kata containers and why that may be of value to consider for certain security or workload constraints.

In the end, especially as we have two major runtimes as CNCF projects, this talk hopefully brings a level of insight to practitioners, developers, and operators as to why clusters may choose various runtimes and how new features in Kubernetes like RuntimeClass are making it easier to support mixed clusters that can support the needs of workloads with different isolation features or requirements.

To help you further understand what is considered while the program committee and co-chairs are reviewing your proposal, please review the Submission Reviewer Guidelines.

CNCF and its project communities are dedicated to providing a harassment-free experience for participants at our events. All submitters are required to abide by our Code of Conduct.

If you have any questions regarding the CFP process, please contact us at cfp@cncf.io.