Should you attend KubeCon?
KubeCon CloudNativeCon is a flagship CNCF cloud-native event that takes place every year in the EU and NA. But the question is, do you need to attend KubeCon? What are the pros of attending, and when should you skip it? For organizations and startups, does it really mean something significant? Should you sponsor the event? Let's try to break it down, and I will share my thoughts. If you are reading this and have different opinions, please do comment; I would love to hear them.
When is Kubecon Happening? 19th-22nd March
Should you go? I always decide to go once the schedule is out for a conference, but for a conference like KubeCon, where I know there will be many people with whom I can connect and learn from at the event, I plan it a bit differently. For me, it was simple this time; I am speaking and have two sessions, so I registered for the event, and also, I already have an EU visa. If you are already in the EU, then I think it's a go-to event, and it's local to you, and you will enjoy the people and conference talks. If you are not local but get sponsorship from the company, then also it's fine. Now, the question arises whether you should spend the ticket amount yourself and attend; this is a big question, as now the money is going from your pocket. A conference like KubeCon has various tracks with amazing sessions that are selected after going through a massive review process. You can decide based on various factors:
Early bird tickets - these are very cheap, if you get them then you are good.
Talks - If you think some of the talks are really amazing and you would like to attend in person, mostly the talks come on youtube in 2 weeks.
Jobs - Since there are more than 200+ sponsors so its a nice place to make strong networks and get hired and plenty will be hiring. So if you are looking for a change, this can really help
Networking - Yes, you get lot of networking opportunities and get to meet people who have created the projects including the awesome project pavilion. So if you would like to meet the maintainers, its a great place.
Visa - If you come outside of EU region when going fro KubeCon EU, you would need the VISA and you should plan that ahead if you plan to attend
My honest opinion is that KubeCon tickets are expensive. If you can grab either the early bird tickets, get sponsored by your organization, or are selected as a speaker, it's fine. Otherwise, if you are not local and have to travel from a different country and pay for the event, you should really think ten times.
Sponsoring the event - As an organization, you definitely get exposure to a vast audience and also get to partner with other startups/enterprises who are sponsors. There are more than 200+ sponsors, and you get to meet a lot of people, maybe get some leads (leads are never guaranteed), and you get a chance to receive feedback for your tool/product. The sponsorship costs are high, but so is the event, so if you are funded, then it might make sense to be there to create some noise and buzz and do creative swag giveaways to attract even more people."
Coming to Civo Navigate where I talked about Generative AI in the Kubernetes era on Kubeflow. Its was well received and I had so much fun learning a lot of things in this space.
Next I will be going to WASMIO and KubeCon EU Paris.
WASM IO sessions
Create Production-Grade Wasm Applications on Kubernetes [Workshop]
Sustainability with WASM? - faster, greener computing [Panel]
KubeCon Sessions
Other Awesome videos
Awesome Reads
Cloud Native Computing Foundation Announces Falco Graduation - CNCF has announced the graduation of Falco, a cloud-native runtime security tool for Linux systems, marking a significant milestone in its development since its inception in 2016. The graduation reflects Falco's growth, widespread adoption by over 30 organizations, including Shopify and GitLab, and its status as the de facto Kubernetes threat detection engine, demonstrating its importance and reliability in cloud-native security. You can learn it from one of my videos I did years back on the concepts and architecture here .
A Practical Guide to Running NVIDIA GPUs on Kubernetes - The blog post is a comprehensive guide for integrating NVIDIA GPUs with Kubernetes, specifically targeting Kubernetes Operators, ML Engineers, and GPU enthusiasts. It covers the setup of an NVIDIA RTX GPU on bare-metal Kubernetes, including driver installation on Ubuntu 22.04, pod configuration in Kubernetes, and troubleshooting steps, aiming to simplify the process and enhance AI/ML workloads' portability and efficiency.
Introducing Kubernetes Validation with — Common Expression Language — CEL - The blog introduces the integration of the Common Expression Language (CEL) with Kyverno policies for Kubernetes, providing a method to enforce complex validation rules without the need for custom validating webhooks. It highlights the advantages of using CEL for more expressive and simplified validation within Kubernetes, making it easier to ensure the correctness and compliance of custom resources and reducing operational overhead.
Understand your entire application with the Radius Application Graph - The Radius Application Graph offers a solution to the complexity of managing cloud-native architectures by providing a comprehensive, automatically updated representation of an application and its interconnected resources. This tool simplifies cross-team collaboration, documentation, and the understanding of complex Kubernetes and cloud environments, aiming to enhance the development process and operational efficiency.
Comparing Open Source Log Shippers : Logstash, FluentD and Fluent Bit - The blog compares five popular open-source log shippers: Logstash, FluentD, Fluent Bit, Filebeats, and Vector, detailing their pros, cons, and use cases to help users choose the most suitable tool for their specific log management needs. Each tool is evaluated based on performance, setup ease, plugin availability, and system resource requirements, highlighting that while each has unique strengths, the right choice depends on individual requirements and the specific context of use.
Kubesimplify Updates
Completed 4k+ views on our WebAssembly course, go learn now!!
Platform Engineering Demystified - Navigating the Basics by Kunal Verma - This blog addresses the transition from traditional DevOps to Platform Engineering to overcome challenges in modern software delivery. It introduces the concept of Internal Developer Platforms (IDP) and the role of Platform Teams in creating a standardized, efficient environment for developers, aiming to streamline processes and reduce the cognitive load associated with managing complex software architectures.
Resources and Repos
glasskube - 🧊 The missing Package Manager for Kubernetes 📦 Featuring a GUI and a CLI. Glasskube packages are dependency aware, GitOps ready and can get automatic updates via a central public package repository.
runwasi - Facilitates running Wasm / WASI workloads managed by containerd
web-check - 🕵️♂️ All-in-one OSINT tool for analysing any website
pingora - A library for building fast, reliable and evolvable network services.
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