A commentary on Rejekts and KubeCon NA in SLC, written while jet lagged coming back to Europe. Tech talks, new and old tech, laughs and Utah shitty anti-trans laws.
Rejekts
This round, like in Paris, I had the pleasure to attend and speak at Cloud Native Rejekts, a lovely 2-days conf that serves as aperitif to KubeCon. Connecting the Cloud Native community in a cozier and far more relaxed space (compared to the main thing), the frame was this time a huge coworking space in downtown SLC: Kiln. I attended some talks, I connected with a ton of people — roughly 80% of the ones I really wanted see anyway, then gave my talk on day 1, at 2 PM.
My talk
“I explained eBPF to my grandma!” is a lightweight talk that aims to simplify the eBPF kernel technology for the masses, grandparents included. I had a lot of fun putting it together, but, I have to stop procrastinating ’cause once again I finished my slides just the day before at 1 AM — and I edited them quite heavily the morning of the event. On the bright side it was well received from both experts and eBPF newbies!
KubeCon
My KubeCon started early with half-day of the Kubernetes Contributor Summit. I had a blast connecting with the k8s team and the networking went on during the days after KCS especially during the meet&greet lunch, a fantastically executed meeting between all the different SIGs. This mini-event sparked conversations across different topics from the current release, to the release team and release engineering. Joining as Comms lead for v1.32 also gave me the opportunity of pushing for some deadline in real life, which felt weird since I’m only used to remote work since 2019. We also had the very last KCS after-party but that won’t be commented on, what happens in the contributor party, stays at the contributor party. Sorry. To start contributing and joining the good parties: slack.k8s.io
Day-0 of KubeCon meant mainly Platform Engineering Day for me. I attended eagerly every talk and followed closely from the first row — even if we actually had many round table as a set-up, pretty cool! There’s a lot of buzz for the Platform Engineering topic within the CNCF and the cloud native community. I won’t venture into the content of the talks: no spoiler! They are all recorded and you can take a look anytime on the CNCF channel: here.
Big news: there’s a new Platform Engineer Associate certification coming soon that will serve the purpose of educating engineers in a formal way about Platform Engineering, there should probably be a new TAG (Technical Advisory Group) dedicated to this topic to facilitate its operations as it currently is a WG (Working Group) under the TAG App Delivery, despite having our very own sub-WGs.
Another mini-event organized by the Platform Engineering Working Group has been the Platform Breakfast at the Coupla Coffee, an amazing gathering of early birds that I witnessed only once since I’m lazy. Kidding, I just had other breakfasts to attend.
To join the group: slack.cncf.io > join the channel wg_platforms
Since I was nominated CNCF Ambassador for H2 2024, I attended my first ever gathering with the rest of the team and it felt pretty great, especially since I knew most of them anyway, due to my committments in event organizing, open source and cloud native advocacy.
I had the opportunity to discuss with the fellow KCD (Kubernetes Community Days) and CNCG (meetups) organizers during another breakfast event, where we ended up talking about sinergies between Cloud Native Days and other tech events too.
My KubeCon experience
My KubeCon day 1 has been split between the marvellous project pavillion, where all the open source project and community events have the opportunity of interacting with attendees, and the sponsor area where I grabbed a ton of swag, so much that my bag coming back was on the verge of exploding in a million tiny pieces. Day 2 has been mostly doing ambassador stuff and meeting many (old and new) people that really wanted to catch up with, like Ramiro from Okteto, Steve from Nethopper, Nick from Otterize, Orlin from SUSE and many more! Day 3 has been mainly recovering from the previous day (and night of parties) while attending more interesting talks.
Overall I would say it was a pretty good experience for me. I’ve learnt a lot and networking wise I connected with many new people.
The only (but big) downside is that Utah has shitty anti-trans law so many many people decided not to support KubeCon in SLC, rightfully so. A city picked for KubeCon should be safe for everyone at all times!
Why did I go? I bought the ticket way in advance as I need(ed?) to find a job, sorry folks! :(
Pictures and extra
I was in more selfies at this KubeCon than in my whole life, lol.
Had amazing food and a night hike too. Proof:
Now a little gift for my readers, a code for 40% discount on all LF trainings (usable up to 5 times): KCNA24WC1EQ-KX5J5
Instructions on how to use it:
- Navigate to training.linuxfoundation.org
- Select your preferred training by clicking “Enroll Today”
- You will be redirected to the cart
- Enter the code and click “Apply”
- Complete your purchase and voilà! Happy study and let me know how the exam went if you want :)
My next stop is KCD Denmark and then KubeCon EU 2025 in London. I can hopefully make it to Atlanta too(?) Let’s see what happens with my new future employer.
Anyway, if you live relatively close to London and you don’t mind taking a train stay tuned for KubeTrain EU 2025, road to London. There will be a BIG party at the arrival too, on the 31st of March.
You can find all my links 👉 here.
See you around, ciao!
Originally published on blog.mb-consulting.dev