It’s been 2 months since KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe took place this year and only now am I finding the time to finish up this trip report due to other priorities and trips. Better late than never.
It took place in Amsterdam, Netherlands, selling out bringing a massive 10k participants that filled in the hallways, marketplace and sessions rooms.
My key takeaway is that Kubernetes is here to stay, not only as an orchestrator for containers, but now as a YAML engine that takes advantage of Custom Resource Definitions and Operators to expose new and interesting primitives that can be taken advantage of through manifests.
The main area of innovation being now the ecosystem around Kubernetes even more so than Kubernetes itself.
The recorded videos of the sessions are now up on YouTube.
The Marketplace.
Lunch break and me in the bottom right corner.
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Keynotes.
The Marketplace.
Socializing
The event was a great opportunity to meet new people and see familiar faces.
I had the opportunity to attend the Kubernetes Contributors Social on the first day of the Conference. There I was able to talk to some of the Kubernetes Steering Committee members and discuss open source and sustainability issues that are familiar across projects.
Some OpenStackers where in attendance, and it was great to catch up with Kendall Nelson, Jimmy McArthur, and Sean McGinnis in the streets and restaurants of Amsterdam.
Presentations
The schedule was full of interesting sessions.
(WIP) As I go through my notes and watch more presentations not that they are available I will keep updating this section.
My favorite keynote, titled “Gardens and Glaciers: Saving Knowledge Through Succession” was related to open source sustainability. The presenter, Emily Fox, likens knowledge in open source communities to ice. With the most robust type, glaciers, formed over multiple years of compression and compaction to get rid of all the gaps. These will melt if there’s not a new generation of maintainers being nurtured and ready to take over and share the burden and trust of the current maintainers. When the conditions are not right for succession, the maintainers are battling burnout, guilt and an inability to move on. Still trying to find the time and work conditions to continue maintaining the community they have long been a part of.
The City and Venue
Amsterdam is a beautiful city to hold a conference. The scenery is beautiful, the people are really helpful, and English is widely spoken.
The public transportation was extremely reliable and cheap and I didn’t have to resort to take any Taxis or Ubers.
The weather was a bit chilly and it did rain some of the time but usually not for too long.
The conference center was huge and confusing to navigate. The distance between developer session rooms and technical presentation rooms was significant and I’ve had to walk a lot from one side of the venue to the other, consecutively.
Kristi Nikolla 