KubeCon Exhibiting for Success: A Simple 3-Phase Plan

KubeCon is expensive and an investment. When you add up the booth fees, travel, time onsite, and the cost of pulling your team away from their day jobs, the price tag is real.

And it can also be incredibly valuable if you show up with the right expectations, goals, and plan.

Going to KubeCon and want some advice? Book your free 25-minute consultation!

Let’s (re)set your goal of the event

Let’s talk about the Elephant in the room: KubeCon is a brand marketing and ecosystem/community-building event, not a lead-generation event.

So many companies go to KubeCon with a goal of ‘net-new names in the database’ or ‘new sales leads’. These are not bad goals, but if you base your entire success on these goals, you are likely to be disappointed.

That’s because KubeCon is a brand marketing, awareness, and community-building event. It’s where companies build credibility, awareness, relationships, partnerships, and ecosystem trust.

Leads are often a secondary benefit. It’s awesome, but it shouldn’t be your only success metric.

Still need convincing? A few signals make this clear:

• The Linux Foundation / CNCF sponsorship framing emphasizes brand visibility and community presence far more than demand gen.

• KubeCon PR coverage tends to focus on industry direction (platform engineering, AI + cloud native, project momentum) — influence and positioning, not leads.

• The KubeCon transparency reporting emphasized  “analyst + media attention” and  attendees note their reason for attending is “learning, community, and connections”.

• Open source community leader Jono Bacon put it well in November 2025: KubeCon is “a relationship-building event masquerading as a trade show.”

And candidly: after attending 20 KubeCons (including Kubernetes Forums like Sydney and Seoul — remember those?!) both as a vendor and as part of the Linux Foundation team, the strongest outcomes I’ve seen consistently come from credibility, narrative clarity, and relationships, not raw lead volume.

So let’s reset your goal:

KubeCon is where you earn trust at scale and accelerate conversations that often convert later. Once you treat it that way, KubeCon becomes dramatically easier to plan for and easier to win.

A simple 3-phase plan for KubeCon success

Now that we have reset your expectations, let's talk about the plan! It’s a three-phase plan consisting of (1) before the show preparation, (2) at the show activities, and (3) after the show communications. The activities in each phase integrate and build on each other.

Before the show: Clarity + meeting engine

Before the show is … Now! It starts with booth messaging, graphics, and pre-show communications.

Define your message:

Start with messaging because everything else depends on it:

• Who is your ICP? Who do you want to meet and why?

• What do they care about? What pain or outcome will catch their attention?

• What is your CTA? Demo, book a meeting, start a product trial?

• What’s your tone: corporate, direct, challenging, snarky?

Once you know this,  you can build booth messaging that resonates. And remember: you have about 5 seconds to grab someone’s attention. Booth copy needs to sound like a real person solving a real problem, not like a product page.

Start talking to your targets now:

One of the biggest mistakes teams make is waiting until they are onsite to see who shows up. Build momentum before the event:

• Communicate via email and social channels, tease what you are showing at the event, and include CTAs such as "visit the booth" or "book a meeting."

• Do targeted reach out to book meetings before you arrive. Don’t assume you’ll get time with people onsite because (1) they may not be checking messages during the event, and (2) their calendars fill up quickly.

At the show: Execution + qualification

You’ve arrived. You’ve got meetings. The booth is set up. The swag is out. Now your goal is simple: create great conversations and turn the right ones into next steps.

Educating at the booth:

Standardize the talk track and align on the key message, how to run the demo, what your CTA is, and whether you scan everyone or only qualified leads.

Important to remember: The KubeCon audience does not want to be sold to. They want to learn, explore, and connect. The goal is leave people thinking that you understand them and they should keep talking with you.

Learning at the booth:

One thing that your product and marketing team will appreciate is the information you capture during the event. Take photos, gather customer quotes, and document “what we learned today”. This content becomes fuel for post-show marketing, roadmap conversations, and positioning improvements.

The KubeCrawl:

The KubeCrawl deserves a special mention. It’s a staple of Linux Foundation events: a 90-minute kickoff in the expo hall with food, drinks, and networking.

During the KubeCrawl, resist the urge to sell. Instead, grab a drink, relax, have authentic conversations, and make connections. Long-term, this pays off far more than pitching in a crowded room.

After the show: Follow-up + pipeline conversion

You have left the event. You've had a lot of fun, interesting conversations, and everyone is worn out, including the people you met at the event.

Now is the time to plan your post-event follow-ups. You don’t need to send them the Monday after the conference. But you do want to follow up while KubeCon is still fresh.

Follow up with personalized, non-generic messages. Remind them what you spoke about, share a relevant resource, and suggest a clear next step.

Prioritize and segment your badge scans. Send different follow-ups to different groups to improve conversions.

Don’t forget to debrief and identify opportunities for improvement for the next event. Maybe even write an event report-style blog post you can use in your post-event communications.

In Summary

KubeCon is a brand marketing and ecosystem event first. By setting your expectations, building a simple pre-show plan, showing up with messaging that resonates, prioritizing relationships and learning onsite, and running disciplined follow-up, KubeCon becomes a meaningful driver of awareness, trust, and pipeline, now and in the months that follow.

Do you need help with your KubeCon EU presence? DM me to schedule a complimentary 30 minute consultation. I also have limited availability to help organizations with their KubeCon plan.