KCD Chennai, India 2025

[AudMonte01]

KCD Organizer Checklist

Please fill in information, organizers, and sponsors as you assemble them, and then make a new comment when this application is ready for review.

Event Details

• Event type: In person
• Event Venue:
• Event Date and Time: April 26, 2025
• Expected Number of Attendees: 500
• Event cost per ticket: TBD

Organizers Details (identify at least 3 organizers). Designate who will be the CFP admin, as well as the financial officer:

• This KCD organizer alias is up-to-date with the below organizers: [email protected]
• Sponsorships + CfP: Senthil Raja Chermapandian | [email protected] | Principal Software Engineer, Ericsson | Chennai, India | https://community.cncf.io/u/mycnpj/ | SLACK: senthilrch
• Ticketing: Gayathri R | [email protected] | UI/UX Developer, gopaddle | Chennai, India | https://community.cncf.io/u/mn34db/ | SLACK: Gayathri R
• Program Committee + contests: Pavithra Vasudevan | [email protected] | MTS-III, VMware | Chennai, India | https://community.cncf.io/u/mz4ads/ | SLACK: Pavithra Vasudevan
• CfP: Mohan M | [email protected]
• Venue insights: Kannan V | [email protected]
• Program Committee + contests: Veera Ashok | [email protected]

Terms

IMPORTANT: These are the terms within the checklist that must be abided by. Note - There are exceptions to these requirements in some jurisdictions due to applicable laws & regulations.

• This team's fiscal sponsor has signed the terms & conditions set forth by the Linux Foundation
• This team has gone through a formal review process, where standards on timing, organizers requirements, and location collaboration have been reviewed, and approved.
• Every organizer has an account on Cloud Native Community Groups
• The majority of the organizers live within the KCD city or just outside of it. For small countries, the organizers can live within the region, but must be able to easily travel to the KCD if it were in-person.
• All organizers agree to follow the CNCF Code of Conduct
• All organizer inquiries / communication for CNCF must be summarized via GitHub (comment under your KCD issue) for easy tracking
• All organizers have taken Inclusive Open Source Community Orientation (LFC102)
• Agree to get logo creation and approval with and from CNCF. NOTE: Previously existing KCDs ideally use their previous year's logo
• Agree to use the designated CNCF registration platform
• Offer at least 3 complimentary tickets to increase diversity for the event
• Share the sponsor prospectus with CNCF via [email protected].
• Agree to use Sessionize for CFP and to close it at least 8 weeks before the event, and launch the agenda at least 6 weeks prior to your event. CNCF will provide an event code so Sessionize is free to use if you are charging an event fee.
• Agree to ensure the final program schedule is diverse (e.g., not all speakers of one gender, one culture, or from 1 or 2 of the same company). Here are some tips on how to create a diverse lineup.
• Submit your final speaker lineup and schedule to [email protected] for review, prior to publishing the agenda.
• Produce a transparency report after your KCD (template below).

Resources & Templates

• Make a copy of this timeline based on whether your event is In-person, Hybrid, or Virtual.
• CNCF to share an editable version of this Sponsor Prospectus once team decides who owns this role.
• Dynamic Agenda Builder for your speaker lineup
• CNCF will provide a editable copy of this Canva transparency report template for guidance.
• NOTE: Access to Sessionize, your microsite platform with registration, and an email alias (if desired) will be provided by a core CNCF program manager.

[AudMonte01]

October 21 Kick-off Meeting

• Audra to give @senthilrch write permissions to update this GitHub issue.
  -- Team has 2 owners for each core responsibility with access to a pool of volunteers
• Slack channel is already active and Senthil to pin this GitHub issue there
• Audra Updated [email protected] alias with the above organizers

Venue insights

• Goal to have the venue booked by November 6
• Ericson might be able to support the venue booking, at least the initial booking (Senthil will know in a week's time).
• Team already has explored 3 venues that are available on their desired date, and are near-enough to the airport

• Audra to assign sponsor prospectus to Senthil and add above-mentioned alias to it.

Other key timeline points

• Team to decide who will be handling ticket sales and design of the website, and let Audra
  -- Ticket sales will start around November 14
• December will be quiet due to KubeCon India
• January 6 is when they want to open the CFP for 6 weeks (closing on February 17). Audra will need to give team Sessionize code in the previous month's sync.

[AudMonte01]

November 18 CNCF Check-in

Venue:

• Received estimates for old and new convention centres. Expecting estimate from IITM research park this week. Based on estimates, team will finalize the venue next week.
• Explored the option of hosting the event in a hotel banquet hall. But too expensive and sponsor pavilion is not large enough.
• Explored the option of hosting it in a university. Have reached out to Sathyabama University (yet to receive response)

Marketing

• Logo was finalized via email. Senthil sent Audra final logos without watermark
• Ticket sales Audra to send team documentation around INR support in Stripe for Bevy Pay
• Audra to give Bevy Pay management access to Senthil
• Audra to give page builder access to Gayathri

Team

• Owners and co-owners finalized.
• Audra to assign Senthil write access to tools/platforms based on the table

Sponsorship prospectus:

• To be updated and sent out week of Jan 1

Timeline:

• Major tech conference last week in Chennai (Nov 15-16). KubeCon India is right at the corner. So team has shifted the launch and ticket sales dates to after KubeCon India.

Revised timeline:

12-Dec-2024: Venue booked
16-Dec-2024: Event announcement
18-Dec-2024: Early bird ticket sales begins
06-Jan-2025: CFP open
17-Feb-2025: CFP close
24-Mar-2025: Schedule announcement
26-Apr-2025: Conference

[AudMonte01]

December 20 CNCF Monthly Check-in

Team roles

• Audra added Senthil and Mohan to organizers channel, and needs to add the rest of the team
• 2 people from Senthil's team will be volunteering for the website (hidden as volunteers)
• Senthil - Sponsorships
• Mohan + Senthil - Program and CfP
• Gayathri + Senthil - Ticketing
• Ashok + Pravitha - Pre event contests, building the agenda, speaker logistics, emcees
• Marketing - building a dedicated team around this
• Kanan - venue insights

Venue

• Received formal communication from Sathyabama University. They have agreed to sponsor the venue.
• 2 auditoriums allocated (multi-track)
• Within the city limits, and accessible from the Chennai airport
• The team has yet to visit in person, but will in the first week of January

Tickets

• Stripe in India is by invite only and not offered via Stripe Atlas
• Audra proposed a waitlist option Maia Walshe (Bevy CSM demoed last week). See this time stamp from the recording
• Townscript or KonfHub is widely used in India

Logo design review

• Senthil to send final SVG and PNG files to [email protected]

Content

• Audra sent Sessionize code to team email alias
• CFP will open first week of January