IstioCon 2021 is the inaugural Istio community conference for the world's most popular service mesh. IstioCon is a vendor-neutral event, showcasing the lessons learned from running Istio in production, hands-on experiences from the Istio community, and featuring maintainers from across the Istio ecosystem. The conference offers a mix of keynotes, technical talks, lightning talks, workshops and roadmap sessions. Fun and games are also included with two social hours to take the load off and mesh with the Istio community, vendors, and maintainers! Important Dates:CFP open: Nov 20, 2020CFP close: Jan 18, 2021Schedule Announcement: Jan 25, 2021Conference date: February 22 - 25, 2021Reminder: This is a community conference — so no sales pitches!How to Submit Your Proposal:We have done our best to make the submission process as simple as possible. Here is what you will need to prepare:1. Choose a Session format:Presentation: 40-minute presentation, maximum of 2 speakersPanel: 40 minutes of discussion amongst 3 to 5 speakersWorkshop: 160-minute (2h 40m), in-depth, hands-on presentation with 1–4 speakers Lighting Talk: 10-minute presentation, limited to 1 speaker2. Provide a Session Title and Detailed Description for the submission, which will be used in the online schedule if your proposal is selected.3. Each speaker must provide a Speaker Biography to showcase relevant experiences with Istio.4. Optionally, include Additional Details, Resources, or Notes describing why the proposal is relevant to the Istio community. This will be used to help the committee select your submission. Live vs recorded:Depending on the session type, they may be live or recorded. This is the plan:All lightning talks are recorded previously and there is no live Q&A.All workshops and discussion panels are live.Talks are live by default, but in cases where speaker will not be available on the given day or has an unreliable connection, we can record them.Language:Most of the talks will be presented in English but we will also have a group of talks presented in Chinese, scheduled for a time that is convenient for audience from China.Other considerations:All panel submissions with 3–5 speakers are required to have at least one speaker that does not identify as a man and the speakers must be from different companies.