My KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2020 virtual experience
I attended KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2020, held virtually, on a diversity scholarship. It was my first Kubecon and though held virtually, I had a lot of fun. This is my personal account of attending this conference.
Day 0
In a real-life conference, time zones wouldn’t have been a problem. But they are a problem in virtual conferences (nothing anyone can do about). Still, luckily, most of the talks and workshops I wanted to attend were at a favorable time for me. The first talk I attended was A Flight Over the Cloud Native Landscape by Carson Anderson, Weave. This was a great session for someone new to the CNCF community. Carson gave a quick intro to 33 graduated and incubating projects and how they relate to each other.
I also enjoyed sponsor sessions The 2020 Open Source Jobs Report - Cloud’s rise and the impact of COVID by Clyde Seepersad and Kubernetes Is Not Just Kubernetes – Ramp Up with These Eight Open Source Projects by Kenny Coleman which gave a lot of insight about the development in the open-source community.
An advantage of virtual talks is that I didn’t have to make scribbles (aka notes) during the talks. I could simply watch on-demand videos with the presentation slides all over again. Win-win 😉.
Day 1
Zoom and the newly discovered rambly (kudos to Alison Dowdney) made up for the lack of one-to-one interaction. I connected with a lot of people and contributors through these channels. Everyone was very kind and gave me a lot of advice for further contributions and involvement in open source.
The enjoyed the workshop Migration 101: From VMs to Kubernetes by Luke Kysow and Iryna Shustava and further interacted with them via the live Q/A and slack channels.
For the rest of the day, I attended a few Graduated Project Lightning Talk until I could resist my sleep.
Day 2
The keynote The Cloud Native Journey @Apple by Alena Prokharchyk was awesome. Great to see software giants’ involvement in the open-source community.
In The Building Blocks of DX: K8s Evolution From CLI to GitOps by Katie Gamanji, I finally got to understand a lot of buzzwords and terms I heard around in the community; especially the term SheetOps (never heard before the talk).
I learned a lot of tricks I can do with the cache via Contain Your Enthusiasm for Go Dev: Fast, Simple Go+Docker Development by Ed Warnicke.
Giving and Getting Technical Help in Open Source Without Being Scared! by Sonia Singla was great. I also talked to her after the session via google meet and we talked about communications in open-source communities and she gave some really useful tips. Kudos 🖖.
Met some amazing developers and community members in rambly. It was so good to see many students (like me) were also taking part in the conference. Had a quick fun chat with Davanum Srinivas (aka dims), with whom I had talked a few weeks before the conference and he introduced me to the community. It was great talking to him again 😁.
Talked to many representatives and developers of different companies and startups about their open source projects via their sponsors’ booths. Also grabbed (soon to come) a lot of schwag 🤩.
Day 3
The keynotes Moving Cloud Native Beyond HTTP: Adding Protocols to Unlock New Use Cases by Jonathan Beri and More Power, Less Pain: Building an Internal Platform with CNCF Tools by David Sudia were great and inspiring.
A High-Schooler’s Guide to Kubernetes Network Observability by Drew Ripberger was great. He talked about his experience working on Kube-netc, an open-source project he worked on during his summers under Nirmata. Definitely check it out.
A Walk Through the Kubernetes UI Landscape by Joaquim Rocha introduced me to a variety of UI tools for Kubernetes cluster monitoring.
Finally SIG CLI Intro and Updates - Phillip Wittrock, Maciej Szulik, Sean Sullivan, & Eddie Zaneski gave an update about the recent developments in sig-cli. Maciej Szulik also showed some neat cheats for efficient working with kubectl.
Awesome.
Day 4
On the final day, I attended some great sessions.
The keynote Predictions from the Technical Oversight Committee (TOC) by Liz Rice gave insight into the current developments in TOC.
I enjoyed the talk Building Linux Distributions for Fun and Profit by Margarita Manterola where she talked about the current trends in operating systems particularly the developments in containerized operating systems and their scope in the near future. (Btw, she has a great collection of books too).
The Peer Group Mentoring + Career Networking is by far my favorite event during the conference. I had to wake up till 5 in the morning but it was totally worth it. We were arranged in a group of 6 with a mentor and talked about various prospects of open source particularly: technical, community, and careers. I met with a lot of developers and mentors during the meets. In the end, the sessions/party with Rin Oliver was great and a lot of fun.
Conclusion
The conference would have been even better if it was real-life. But it is what it is. Nevertheless, this was my first conference and it was the first time I was amidst such cool developers.
I had a great time, I made new friends I am still in touch with and most importantly, I learned a lot.