The Cloud Native Computing Foundation supports the worldwide community of the Cloud Native meetups (they are listed on meetup.com) website.
CNCF is currently working on expanding the Cloud Native community around the globe, and we are happy to accept the new meetup communities to join our network, and become one of the official CNCF meetups.
If you are interested in joining the list of official CNCF meetups, please take a look at "How to apply?" section below.
- Boosting the visibility of your meetup group
- Meetup Pro cost coverage
- One-time complimentary swag certificate to the CNCF Store
This page provides guidance on starting a new meetup group based on the experience of existing ones.
Here is a list of suggestions and tips to get you started:
If you start a brand new meetup that aims to cover the whole Cloud Native landscape, we recommend to use one of the following naming convention:
Cloud Native Computing <Location>
Kubernetes <Location>
Prometheus <Location>
<Other CNCF-hosted project name> <Location>
Please, do not use any commercial brand or product names in the meetup name.
The description of the group is left to the discretion of the organizers.
A brief description of the role of the CNCF and the Cloud Native approach could be added.
You can use text from the Cloud Native Definition.
In order for your meetup to be the as visible as possible you should add a relevant list of tags.
(For example, "Cloud Computing", "DevOps", "Cloud Native", "Docker", "Containers", "Serverless", "Microservices", "Kubernetes", etc.)
The most important thing is to keep an active group, with frequent events (ideally once a month).
Sustaining a group yourself can be difficult to manage. Ideally you should have a team of passionate and committed co-organizers.
Joining forces helps spread the load and expands the network.
You should provide some kind of form in order to allow people to submit their talk proposal similar to this:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/1V2Y03YMOrIor0M796_WMbYx-fdsn80ngaT-PIum8gUU/edit
Note: Make a copy! Please do not edit that form.
When possible take care to review their presentations.
Attend conferences (e.g. DockerCon, CloudNativeCon...) where you can find speakers and meet a lot of people who use or are involved in the CNCF projects that may be interested in joining your group.
You should contact local technology companies. Many of them are interested in hosting such kind of events.
It is better to find a place in a central location. Downtown would be ideal because it's easier to access for most of attendees.
First of all don't forget to thank your sponsors.
Then the most important information is about the agenda, each talk description should contains:
- A short bio of the speaker
- An attractive title
- A paragraph describing the content of the presentation/demo
If you're planning a hands-on demo, you should ensure that the WiFi can handle the number of attendees.
Furthermore you should check you're not limited by some kind of quotas (Cloud provider).
The choice of date and time matters. Most of meetups choose Tuesdays, Wednesdays, or Thursdays after work.
If you're limited by the room capacity, you should do an overbooking.
Most of the time there are 30% of people who RSVP but they never come.
You should think about sending a reminder message to the meetup group to ask the people to free their place if they can't come.
If possible you should record videos of the presentations and take pictures for social media and the event page to share afterwards.
You should also share the slides with all members after the event. Optionally, please submit them to the CNCF Presentations repo on GitHub.
If you're a newly created meetup and added to meetups.cncf.io, please reach out to meetups@cncf.io for a complimentary $50 swag certificate to the CNCF Store.
If you have any other questions, you can ask them in the CNCF Slack.
- The meetup group has to be created following the best practices, decribed above.
- We accept only active meetup communities. Please, ensure that:
- at least three successful meetups were held before applying
- at least one meetup was held during the last 60 days before applying
- The meetup.com policy is to allow only organizers of the meetup group to accept the invitation from CNCF. Please apply only if you are an organizer. If you are a co-organizer (in meetup.com terms), please ask the group organizer to apply.
- A single Meetup group can't be a part of two Pro organizations simultaneously. Please make sure that your group is not a part of another Pro network before applying.
- If all the requirements above are satisfied, please apply via filling the form.
We review the Meetup applications on a montly basis, and if your Meetup group satisfies our requirements and best practices, we'll send you an invitation.
No, once you formally apply you are part of the pool of applicants that get reviewed on a monthly basis.
No. We will only follow up if your application is accepted.
Please, ensure that your group satisfies our mandatory requirements (eg. three and more successful meetups, naming guidelines, etc.) before applying!
It's the sole responsibility of the Meetup group to self-promote itself, however CNCF is happy to offer the marketing support for the Meetup group as one-off in some exceptional cases (eg. the Meetup group is affiliated with the larger local Cloud Native event happening the same time in the same area).
Also, please make sure that you are aware of other community-focused CNCF programs, including CNCF Ambassadors and CNCF Speakers Bureau.
I'd like to get in touch with the CNCF ambassador in a specific city/region. Where can I find who is a local ambassador?
Here is a map of the CNCF Ambassadors.
NOTE: If you are an existing CNCF Ambassador and would like to ajdust your location on the map, please contact the CNCF Staff.
CNCF Meetup program follows the CNCF Code of Conduct.