Keynote Speaker Guide

Thank you for speaking at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan 2025, taking place 16-17 June at the Hilton Tokyo Odaiba in Tokyo, Japan.

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.

• Travel Fund Request Deadline: Monday, 31 March
• Speaker Registration Deadline: Friday, 4 April
• AV Requests Due: Friday, 9 May
• Meeting with Co-Chairs Deadline: Friday, 16 May
• Presentation Slides Due: Wednesday, 11 June
• Keynote Tech Check: Calendar invite will be sent the week before the event

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 Friday, 4 April, using the details you received in your notification email. If you require this information again, please reach out to the CNCF Content Team. Be sure to submit any accommodation needs when registering.

If you have already registered for the event and are now a speaker listed on the schedule, please reach out to our registration team in order to be issued a refund.

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 by pre-record.

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.

Speaker Travel Funding

We place an emphasis on funding applicants who are from historically underrepresented or untapped groups and/or those of lower socioeconomic status.

If you work for a company that has the ability to fund your travel, we ask that you not apply, to save funds for those in need.

We receive thousands of requests for funding each year. CNCF is trying to use funds to assist as many people as possible. As such:

• We are often unable to fund one person across multiple events in a year
• Lower cost travel funding requests are more likely to get approved
• We typically do not fund the same person two years in a row

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 Monday, 31 March.

Note: Talk acceptance does not guarantee travel funding.

VENUE

This year’s event will take place at Hilton Tokyo Odaiba located at 1 Chome-9-1 Daiba, Minato City, Tokyo 135-8625, Japan.

HOTEL Details

Please check our Venue + Travel page for the latest hotel information. We invite you to reserve your room as soon as possible, as availability is limited and rooms may sell out quickly.

The schedule will be announced on Wednesday, 19 March, and will be posted on our website using Sched.com.

Unless otherwise designated on the schedule, keynote are 10-minutes and sponsored keynotes are 5-minutes. If you have a conflict with the timing of your talk or any issues uploading your bio and photo, please contact Cody Galloway.

Any additional AV requests are due by Friday, 9 May.  

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.

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

Co-Chair Meeting

Sign up by Friday, 16 May to schedule a meeting with one of our co-chairs. You’ll receive an email from CNCF with the sign-up link(s) when ready. Please have an initial draft of your presentation prepared for your meeting, as it will be reviewed to ensure your messaging resonates with our audience and complies with our strict no-pitch, non-advertorial policy, especially on the keynote stage.

Email your final presentation to Cody Galloway by Wednesday, 11 June. This timeline allows for sufficient review and alignment with our event standards.

Important: Final PowerPoint Slide Deck Guidelines

In conjunction with recent equipment and process enhancements, The Linux Foundation and our onsite production team have updated our keynote presentation deck submission process to ensure a smooth and reliable event experience:

• Draft Submission: All keynote speakers must submit a draft of their presentation deck in PowerPoint format one week prior to the event for a technical review to confirm compatibility and address any potential issues.
• Final Deck Submission: The final version of the PowerPoint deck must be provided on a USB drive either during the scheduled tech check or e-mailed at least 12 hours before the keynote, whichever comes first. This version will be considered final, and no changes to slides or notes will be allowed after submission.

If your presentation includes custom fonts, please use these instructions for saving using a Mac or saving using a PC to ensure the fonts are properly embedded in your deck.

Once your final deck is saved and submitted at your tech check, it’s locked into our system. This allows our team to create backups, integrate with show systems, and test for smooth transitions. Failure to adhere to this policy means that any changes made past the final submission at rehearsal will not be incorporated into the show—once again, the version submitted is final, and no exceptions can be made onsite the morning of your keynote.

Keynote Tech Check

All keynote presenters are required to attend a tech check and slide run-through on the keynote stage. 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 finalized 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.

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, speaker, or schedule-related questions, please contact Cody Galloway.