DoK
Vendor-neutral, practitioner-first, only about data.
Every operator and storage layer on equal terms.
Sponsor prospectus 2027
Sponsor DoK in 2027
Keep state. Reach the people who run data on Kubernetes, and be in the room where they decide.
Founding sponsors
Founding sponsor places close 31 January 2027.
The market
Data on Kubernetes is now the default, not the experiment
Source: Data on Kubernetes 2025 Report
- of organizations run half or more of their data workloads on Kubernetes in production
- ~50%
- databases are the top Kubernetes data workload, for the fourth year running
- #1
- already run AI and ML workloads on Kubernetes
- 44%
The problem
The hard problems moved to day 2: skills, storage and AI data
Source: Data on Kubernetes 2025 Report
- of teams report a skills gap running data on Kubernetes
- 40%
- bottleneck is storage I/O performance
- #1
- say real-time data processing is critical to AI success
- 64%
The gap
Nobody neutral owns the practitioner conversation about data
namespace: practitioners
Vendor communities
One product, one agenda.
Great for users of that product, closed to everyone else.
CNCF TAGs
Built for maintainers and specs.
Not for the engineer on call tonight.
What exists today
DoK is relaunching, not starting from zero
Plus the annual Data on Kubernetes report and the Operator SIG, working on operator standards.
- Slack members
- 4,300+
- talks and videos
- 600+
- DoK Days a year at KubeCon EU and NA
- 2
What is new in 2027
2027 adds reasons to come back every week
release: 2027
Governance
Steering committee
Five companies, one seat each. Nobody owns the room.
Reference
DoK Patterns
Reference architectures in Git, reviewed by SIGs.
Research
Operator Scorecard
A neutral maturity rubric for database operators.
Monthly
Postmortem Club
A real incident, live, every month.
People
Pilots and Docks
30 ambassadors, 10 city chapters.
Brand
New brand and site
Launching at KubeCon EU 2027.
Who you reach
You reach the engineers who decide
| Audience | What they decide |
|---|---|
| Platform engineers and SREs | Which operators and storage run in the cluster |
| DBAs moving to Kubernetes | How databases are run, backed up and upgraded |
| Data and ML infra teams | Vector stores, lakehouses, streaming platforms |
| Operator maintainers | Roadmaps of the tools everyone else adopts |
The year
2027 runs on two DoK Days and 50 weeks of showing up in between
| When | What | |
|---|---|---|
| Nov 2026 | Harbor Night, Salt Lake City | Brand teaser |
| Jan 2027 | Founding sponsors | Announced |
| Spring 2027 | KubeCon EU 2027 | Public relaunch |
| Jun 2027 | DoK Online Day | Three regions |
| Q3 2027 | Operator Scorecard v1 | 15 operators rated |
| 8 Nov 2027 | DoK Day New Orleans | State of DoK launch |
Plus weekly DoK Live, monthly Postmortem Club, quarterly town halls and meetups in 10 cities.
Sponsorship
Four tiers, with prices locked for two years for founding sponsors
Open source projects join free as Community Collaborators. Pricing is final after steering committee sign-off.
kind: Sponsorship
Platinum
$75K
Sponsor Council seat · Votes for steering seats · Top placement at both DoK Days · 4 newsletter features
Gold
$40K
Sponsor Council seat · Votes for steering seats · DoK Day presence · 1 co-hosted livestream
Silver
$15K
Logo on site and events · 1 newsletter feature · Job posts
Startup
$5K
For companies under 100 staff · Logo and job posts · Launch shout-out
The rules
What money can't buy is why the room is worth paying for
- No paid talk slots at DoK Day
- No paid questions in the State of DoK report
- No paid Scorecard results
- One steering seat per company
What you get back
You see results every quarter
- Reach. Slack, livestream, newsletter and event audience numbers, from one dashboard.
- Leads. Opted-in attendee contacts from DoK Days and online events.
- Content. Performance of every pattern, stream and post you co-created.
- Renewal review. A month-9 review, so you know what you got before you decide.
Join as a founding sponsor
Founding sponsors close 31 January 2027
- Pick a tier
- Tell us if you want to stand for a steering seat
- Name one person for the Sponsor Council
Email sponsorships@dok.community to get started.