Outreach and Event Services

Marketing

Marketing services for projects are designed to assist with the awareness of the project, increase project adoption, and increase contributors. CNCF has marketing resources to support the projects in the following areas:

Event Management

Events are central to CNCF’s strategic approach, fostering community growth through direct interactions and knowledge exchange. CNCF offers various participation avenues for projects:

Learn more about eligibility and the parameters for CNCF-Hosted Events here.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Project Opportunities

We provide:

• Full event planning and logistical support.
• Integrated marketing and communication plan, including an event website, communications, and marketing of the event.
• Obtaining sponsors for the event.
• Media introductions.

Learn more about the guidelines here.

Submit an Event Request: 2024 CNCF Project + Co-located Event Proposal Form.

Additional ways projects and project maintainers can participate in events:

• Submissions for call-for-proposals at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon are encouraged to discuss their use of CNCF projects.
• CNCF sponsors industry and Linux Foundation events each year, often with a booth. We encourage project maintainers to join CNCF in our participation to meet with the event attendees and talk about your project. ** Project contributors are welcome to use our booth as a “home base” for meeting colleagues.
• Connect to our worldwide network of Cloud Native Community Groups and Ambassadors to raise awareness of your project.
• Travel funding is available for your non-corporate-backed developers. Please visit our most recent events’ need-based scholarship page to learn about eligibility.
• At events, we promote all CNCF projects and help connect users and developers to our projects.

Marketing Services and Programs

CNCF provides a full portfolio of marketing services and programs to support community and ecosystem engagement for CNCF projects. This includes:

• CNCF Online Programs: Graduated and incubating projects can participate in Online Programs like webinars, videos, and livestream. They can communicate release launch details or provide a project update. The exception is Kubernetes, which holds a webinar approximately 30 days after a release.
• CNCF Blog and Kubernetes.io Blog: Graduated and incubating projects can submit blog posts. Share technical content and how-to’s, stories about cloud native and project deployments, and use cases and success stories. Blog posts should not be vendor pitches. They must contain content that applies broadly to the Kubernetes and cloud native community. The Kubernetes blog receives over 1.5M visits a week.
• Case Studies: End-user case studies help elevate the technical conversations to business objectives and challenges. This program features use cases and the impact CNCF project and cloud native technologies are having on end users’ businesses. The case studies build narratives around specific metrics that reflect the positive as a resource for companies considering adopting cloud native technologies.
• Newsletter: The CNCF newsletter is published monthly. Project updates are a regular feature in the newsletter.
• CNCF manages the blog editorial calendar for balanced content shared with the community. We also provide writing, editing, and funding freelancers to develop content.
• Project media velocity reports: Monthly, CNCF pulls press mentions and share of voice data for all projects including mentions in social media and key messaging.
• Fashion a Phippy: Graduated projects can donate a character to the Phippy and Friends program, to help others better understand the concepts of cloud native computing, and increase the marketing and engagement opportunities for their project.

Marketing Communications

The goal of marketing communications is to generate awareness for the project and project milestones, community growth, and developer engagement. The communication activities provided by CNCF include:

• Proactive media and analyst coverage for projects including arranging and assisting with interviews and information sessions
• Promote project news and milestones through other channels: journalists, analysts, and news releases/blogs
• Identify top publications/podcasts (Bloomberg, Changelog, eWeek, Fortune, Forbes, InfoWorld, The New Stack, etc.) and develop plans to earn coverage through contributed articles, quotes, interviews, and news pick-up
• Secure analyst briefings for inclusion in reports: Gartner, Forrester, IDC, RedMonk, 451 Research, and more
• Organize media/analyst luncheons,1:1 meetings at key events
• Develop thought leadership reports, surveys, success stories, and case studies (print and video)
• Actively manage project social media channels (Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, Github, Flickr)

Surveys

The CNCF marketing team can help create surveys for your project to help ascertain adoption or other interests. A prominent example is our annual Cloud Native Community Surveys. For smaller, more targeted surveys, we can assist. Submit a request via the CNCF Service Desk.