Speaker Guide

FinOps X 2025 Call for Proposals: CLOSED

Thank you to everyone who submitted a CFP for FinOps X 2025. CFP is now CLOSED.

Interested in speaking at another X? Review our Speaker Guide to better understand our guidelines and expectations for becoming a Speaker or Chalk Talk Co-Lead. For FinOps X 2025, we’re looking for speakers to cover either a FinOps Topic, or strengthen community understanding of a FinOps Capability.

We are looking for industry experts to broaden our body of best practices work in the following FinOps Topics:

• Value Through Optimization (Advanced): We’re looking for advanced-level optimization, cost governance, and unit economics at enterprise scale.
• Adopting FOCUS™: The unifying format for cloud bills with native support from all four major cloud providers.
• FinOps for AI: Planning for, estimating, allocating, optimizing, and reporting on the cost of AI services that have token-based usage and cost models.
• FinOps Scopes: The expanding Scope of FinOps where Practitioners are managing technology spending beyond public cloud infrastructure, including SaaS, licensing, data center, and private cloud costs.
• FinOps-Aware Product Decisions: Shifting cost from an afterthought to a key consideration in the product design process, or “shifting left” by designing and architecting for cost requirements before deployment.
• Cloud Sustainability: Many are starting the journey of cloud sustainability, developing skills including cloud carbon forecasting and budgeting while understanding the potential trade offs with cost.
• Public Sector: Industry specific challenges include more restrictive funding processes, defining the value of cloud spending without profit or revenue incentives plus mandates and regulatory restrictions.

You can also align your session proposal with a FinOps Capability. Watch FinOps X and X Europe 2024 content to get a better idea of how to address and speak to these topics.

Ready to submit your proposal? Fill out the CFP form. FinOps X 2025 CFP closes on February 7th, 2025.

Session experience levels

We use a range of levels to help attendees find the most appropriate range for their experience level. For FinOps X, we try to provide more 200 and 300-level talks, including outcomes from longstanding practices, real world experiences (and consequences), and technical deepdives into key topics.

• 100 – Introductory: These talks introduce and define FinOps subject matter, including high-level theory and adoption stories. These introductory sessions might cover multiple topics to define how the speaker approaches adopting FinOps or building emerging competence in a FinOps Capability.
• 200 – Intermediate: These talks add more depth and data to FinOps subject matter, including real-world stories or case studies, results, and lessons learned.
• 300 – Advanced: These talks dive deeply into specific domains or capabilities, citing real-world examples, unearthing mistakes or lessons learned, providing actionable steps, and demonstrating how other practitioners can use these insights.

Tell data-driven stories

We welcome speakers to share their stories and experiences using real-world examples and data. Please be sure to have the proper permissions or attributions to use data examples in your talks. Many speakers choose to anonymize data or redact sensitive things in order to still use data to support their topics.

You can also use findings from the State of FinOps annual survey to support your talk. We also encourage speakers to reference and cite past FinOps Foundation materials to help us grow our body of knowledge.

Inviting diverse speaker lineups

The FinOps Foundation welcomes stories and lessons from practitioners of all walks of life. We encourage organizations to support diversity in the  speakers to represent them, including other FinOps personas especially from underrepresented groups. Speaking with a co-speaker can broaden the perspectives shared at the event, but please ensure any panel submissions (3 or more speakers) are not all-male. We adhere to the Linux Foundation’s guidance, which you can check out for more details.

Creating supportive, safe spaces for discussion

Chosen speakers will be supported and encouraged to take the Linux Foundation’s free inclusive speaker training, preparing them to build a safe, welcoming, and thoughtful space during their FinOps X and XE sessions.

FAQs (Frequently Asked Questions)

What are recommended components of a great talk?

We’ve seen speakers find great success from aligning their talks to parts of the FinOps Framework, including Capabilities, Domains, addressing Personas, and more.

Can I use or cite data in my talk?

We encourage data-driven storytelling and real-world examples in FinOps X and XE sessions. You can use anonymized FinOps data (redacting any sensitive material, and with proper permissions and attribution) to support your talking points.

You can also use data from the State of FinOps Report to support your talking points. Our staff is more than happy to provide high-res charts and graphs if you choose to do so. We ask that you use proper citations and attribution when doing so.

Can I have a co-speaker?

We encourage single speakers as we’ve learned that FinOps X stages are ideal for telling one person’s story. If you have a story you wish to share with a colleague or peer, we ask that you only add one co-speaker unless submitting for a panel.

Can I use charts and graphs to illustrate concepts?

Of course! You can work with our designers to include high-resolution images, charts, and graphs. FinOps X and XE provide large presentation screens for speakers, so we want to use the highest quality images we can to support your talk.

NOTE: We ask that you get proper permissions from your organization ahead of time to use charts, graphs, and data that they might provide.

Can I submit a Chalk Talk idea to the CFP?

Yes! Chalk Talks continue to become a popular way for practitioners to workshop and discuss their FinOps challenges, best practices, and key topics. Feel free to submit your idea and indicate if you think it might be more ideal as a Chalk Talk.

Unlike Breakout Sessions, Chalk Talks focus on small groups of interactive workshops and are not recorded. We encourage participants to take plenty of notes and share them with their peers (e.g. on LinkedIn, Slack, etc.).

Can I engage the audience during my session?

We encourage engaging the audience in a respectful, inclusive manner during your talk. Some speakers have polled their audiences with a “show of hands” to build context and gather information before diving into their talks, for example.

Facilitating an inclusive question and answer session after prepared content is a great way to engage everyone as well.

We also welcome speakers to invite audiences to learn more by getting involved with the FinOps Foundation, whether it’s joining a Slack channel to discuss a topic, signing up for a Working Group or Special Interest Group, seeking certification in a given topic, or checking out other related content.

Will these sessions be recorded?

Keynotes and Breakout Sessions at FinOps X are recorded and uploaded to our community YouTube Channel after each FinOps X conference.

Who is eligible to submit?

We are accepting proposals from end-user practitioners. If you work for a cloud provider, tools and services provider, or vendor, the organization needs to be a Platinum or Gold sponsor.