KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2023 Wrap-up

Less than a week ago me and my lovely wife Meg Stefuli attended KubeCon in Chicago, and it was an amazing experience for both of us. I want to take the time here to reflect and share our thoughts and consideration on another successful event and community gathering; we absolutely loved every minute of it and although for me it's getting almost business-as-usual (but exciting nonetheless every time!) for Meg, being this the first Kubecon she attended, it was an absolute blast! We'll share some pics to help understand how cool it was :)

Chicago

First time in Chicago! We were so impressed by the city, its chilled vibe, great downtown architecture and friendliness of people. Of course, we had to go check the Chicago Bulls as soon as we landed (they lost :( )

but we had a lot of fun and we felt right at home. It's a great show!

Cloud Native Rejekts

Rejekts is a mainstay in our schedule for every KubeCon, and for a reason: it's the cosiest, cutier, most relaxed conference (scratch that, it's an experience) that I've ever been to, so it's natural that we take a weekend off to be there and meet old and new friends. This time, not only we listened and learn to a ton of interesting talk (finally got my head around WebAssembly, thanks to Caleb Schoepp , and learn about Dagger,io, eBPF with Inspektor Gadget, RBAC and more) but we had a chance to give two lighting talk: one on greening service mesh with Ambient (preview of our upcoming Linux Foundation webinar with Marino Wijay) and Meg took the courage to get on stage last minute and present about the struggle of juggling family and work in tech (video here); I'm so proud of my lovely wife!

TAG Environmental Sustainability

And it's show time! The week started in style meeting the folks from the TAG Environmental Sustainability (you'll see some of the folks in the picture later at the keynotes!), a recent interest of mine (we ran the Amsterdam chapter of the Cloud Sustainability Week); we had a cozy conversation around how to make cloud native software better and less carbon-intensive. Come join us on Github!

Co-located Events

That's where a lot of deep technical talks and conversations are happening, and it's a great start of the week (I wish CNCF would not make these a paid upgrade from the main conference ticket) to begin with some learning and updates on our beloved projects. In particular many Soloists were busy giving talks ( Marino Wijay with his talk at CiliumCon, and another from Daneyon Hansen also at CiliumCon, Lin Sun at WASMDay) and solo.io sponsored CiliumCon.

I spent most of the day at IstioDay, with great talks from Lukonde Mwila and Ovidiu Valeanu (recording already up here) and a workshop on Ambient Mesh by Christian Posta and Jim Barton (disclaimer, I work with them!).

CNCF Ambassador breakfast

We started the first day with an ambassador breakfast, so many new faces and great start of the day! Thanks Katie Greenley to make it happen and to push the program to new levels of engagement.

Keynotes

Sustainability and inclusion played a big role at this year's keynotes, with the appearances of Niki Manoledaki , Marlow Weston , 🐾 Carol Valencia and my dear friend and co-organiser of Kubernetes Community Days Netherlands William Rizzo , who couldn't be there in person but was more than present in spirit ❤️. Also heartbreaking mention during the first keynote of the great people we lost this year; this showed us that after all our community is made of humans, and it's ok to show your vulnerable side, we are here to help and support each other.

Sponsor area

This one this area was massive and really spacious, and a real pleasure to walk around and randomly bump into people (see below, our new friend Hope Oluwalolope and someone you might recognise):

Special mention to my determined and focused wife that visited 209 booths in 2.5 days!

If you tired of collecting swags and talking to vendors, you can always hang out at the project booths, see me here at the Istio one (one of the most busy ones):

and Meg joined Audra Montenegro at the KCD booth, explaining the value of running local communities to passersby and interested folks alike.

Wrap up

Let me close with an heartwarming picture of two amazing humans, Duffie Cooley and Ihor Dvoretskyi (he literally changed my life!).

That's all folks, me and Meg salute you and are extremely grateful we had the opportunity to experience Kubecon in Chicago. Cheerio!