Cloud Forum
Call for Proposals

The Cloud Forum 2024 Call for Proposals is now Closed. Speakers will be notified in January.

Eligibility

Proposals to the Cloud Forum are only accepted from members of the research and education community. No proposals from vendors will be considered. The submission form requires authentication with your federated identity.

Presentation Formats

The Cloud Forum is an event designed for discussion and debate around the challenges and best practices of cloud infrastructure enablement at higher education institutions of all sizes. The Cloud Forum is designed to be a highly interactive event where the content is driven in large part by the experiences and plans of the attendees. The program consists of attendee presentations on topics of broad interest, lightning talks on the activities and ideas of the attending institutions, and multi-institutional panels for deep exploration of a single topic. In addition, the Forum may include an unconference where attendees will have the opportunity to bring their own topic, brainstorm with others, and report out to the group in short “Cloudburst” presentations. This year’s Cloud Forum will also feature a FinOps workshop.

The discussions at the Forum focus on higher-level strategic topics rather than deep technical issues. The more technical cloud topics are discussed in the cloud track at the Internet2 Technology Exchange which in 2023 was held in Minneapolis and will be in Boston in December of 2024. To better understand the difference between the two events’ target audiences and their respective themes, read the blog post There is a Lot of Cloud to Go Around. While it was written for Cloud Forum and TechEx 22, the explanation and differentiation are still valid.

Suggested Themes

We welcome any topic you may want to propose, but some trending topic areas you might consider include:

• Multi-cloud management (tools, strategies, staffing, etc.)
• FinOps successes/failures and enterprise management best practices 
• Configuration, management, and governance of controlled data environments (CMMC, GovCloud, etc.)
• Leveraging the cloud to respond to campus and research demands for Generative AI tools
• Staffing, training, and cross-organizational collaboration challenges and success stories including in support of using cloud for research and teaching
• Successes, challenges, and failures when working with external contractors and cloud vendors
• Interoperability of multiple cloud solutions

These ideas are included merely to inspire the thought process. Your peers want to hear what shapes your thinking and actions in the cloud.