Speaker Guide

Thank you for speaking at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2024, taking place November 12-15 at the Salt Palace Convention Center in Salt Lake City, Utah.

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 Content Team.

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

• Travel Fund Request Deadline: Monday, August 26
• Speaker Registration Deadline: Friday, August 30
• Finalized Schedule Date: Friday, October 11
• Additional AV Requests Due: Friday, October 18
• Last Day to Request Speaker Additions or Changes: Friday, October 18
• Pre-Recorded Session Upload Deadline (virtual only): Friday, October 25
• Presentation Upload to Sched Deadline: Wednesday, November 6

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, August 30, 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. Failure to register by the deadline may result in your slot being given to someone on our waitlist.

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 Letter 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, August 26.

Note: Talk acceptance does not guarantee travel funding.

Venue

This year’s event will take place at Salt Palace Convention Center located at 90 South West Temple, Salt Lake City, UT 84101.

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 Wednesday, August 14, and will be posted on our website using Sched.com.

IMPORTANT NOTE: The timing of sessions is subject to change through Friday, October 11, due to schedule changes that will be made as speakers finalize whether speaking in person or sending us a pre-record to be uploaded to the CNCF YouTube Playlist after the event.

• Please note that all lightning talks are 5-minutes, maintainer and breakout sessions are 35-minutes, and tutorials are 90-minutes.
• 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 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 Content Team by Friday, October 18. 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 required 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. As a reminder, you will be driving the presentation from your laptop via PowerPoint and this PDF version is only for attendees to review. The deadline for presentations is Wednesday, 20 March.

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 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 section below for additional information on the CNCF brand guide.

Lightning talks will be held Tuesday, November 12 with each talk lasting no longer than 5 minutes. To minimize the transition times, we are combining all pre-recorded talks and in-person presentation decks into one master lightning talk presentation. The lightning talks will take place in the order listed on the schedule (subject to change).

• All lightning talk speakers must submit their PowerPoint slide deck to our Lightning Talk Folder by 11:59 PM PDT on Monday, November 4
• Your deck must be 16:9 and in .pptx format
• If your slides require a special font, please submit that along with your deck
• Do not embed any videos, please also submit those along with your deck
• Please note that we cannot accept a pdf document

 If you have further questions, please do not hesitate to reach out to the CNCF Content Team.

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.

Authors are only required to staff the poster booth during KubeCrawl + CloudNativeFest on 20 March. If you have a co-presenter, please work with them to ensure that at least one of you is staffed at your poster during the KubeCrawl + CloudNativeFest event.

Digital Poster Presentation Instructions

Please bring your poster presentation on a flash drive to connect to the 55 inch (139.7 cm) LED monitor. We recommend you upload to our Poster Sessions folder as backup.

Technical specifications

• All Posters must be a single slide in PDF format
• Presentations must be in 16:9 format (horizontal) to best display on the monitor
• Final file size should not exceed 10 MB. If needed, compress images to reduce file size without losing quality.
• Minimum pixel dimension of 1920 x 1080 for the best clarity and visibility
• Use common fonts such as Arial or Calibri at size 16 or higher to ensure readability and consistency.
• Use RGB color model instead of CMYK whenever possible
• Do not use any special characters in your final file name

Best Practices

• Be clear and concise – Organize content with clear headings and bullet points, ensuring an attention-grabbing title.
• Create engaging visuals – Use high-quality graphics and readable fonts consistently throughout the poster.
• Keep your content focused – Highlight key findings, articulate research questions and conclusions without unnecessary jargon.
• Engage with your audience – Adapt explanations, practice a concise elevator pitch, maintain approachability, and provide handouts for further engagement.
• Give a logical layout – Design a logical flow with visual cues, considering the “F-pattern” reading habit displayed below:

Please reach out to Elna Vogel for any questions regarding poster sessions.

We are pleased to offer speaker cards for you to share online and on your social media! Example promotions and graphics can be found in the Speaker Kit. (Coming soon!)

The official conference name is KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2024. Please use the full name when creating your presentation. You may shorten the name to just KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, but you may not refer to the conference as KubeCon only. Please refer to the CNCF Style Guide for a list of appropriate names and abbreviations.

Official conference logos and other CNCF artwork are available for download on GitHub:

• KubeCon + CloudNativeCon logos
• CNCF logos and artwork

Before using any logos or artwork, please note:

• You must use the full KubeCon + CloudNativeCon conference logo. It is not permitted to use the KubeCon or CloudNativeCon logos separate from each other.
• Use of any trademark or logo is subject to the trademark policy.
• If you would like to use the Kubernetes logo for booth graphics, collateral, or swag, please adhere to the usage guidelines.
• The Certified Kubernetes marks may be used only by companies who are certified through CNCF’s Certified Kubernetes Software Conformance program. All usage cases must comply with the brand guidelines.

If you have any questions about trademarked logos, please email info@cncf.io.

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.

Uploading your pre-record

Please reach out to the CNCF Content Team as soon as possible if you need to submit a pre-recorded talk. There will be no virtual platform for this event and we will upload your talk to the CNCF YouTube Playlist within two weeks of the event’s conclusion along with the the in-person presentations. 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 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_KubeCon_Video_JohnSmith_v1.mp4)

You must upload the recording by Friday, October 25.

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 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 Content Team.