🇺🇸 Next week: KubeCon NA 2024
I am extremely eager to meet all the amazing folks attending KubeCon NA 2024 in Salt Lake City USA. I've been waiting for this event for the last two months, preparing demos and presentations, but I am really looking forward to meeting as many practitioners as I possibly can to have amazing conversations.
I usually write these blog posts for anyone interested in the topics that I discuss in this blog, the platform engineering book, or the people interested in the projects that I am participating in. If you are attending and you see me around, please say hello! Also, check the book signing sessions if you want to get an autographed copy of my book.
Now, if you are not going to the event, what would you like to know? What should I pay attention to? Drop me a message on X/Twitter, or BlueSky and I will keep you posted about what is happening in the event.
It is going to be a personally crazy week for me, so here are day by day my plans and recommendations. I am arriving on Sunday night, so my week starts on Monday.
Monday 11/11/2024
You must go to Cloud Native Rejekts (this year is free, so there is no excuse) if you are around on Monday. Rejekts is the pre-conference conference. This is a great time to meet other speakers and have one-on-one conversations in a relaxed environment. I am not sure how many people will be attending Salt Lake City, but from previous editions, I would assume that there will be around 400 people in a cool place. I will be hanging out in sessions until midday when Diagrid is running a Dapr Workshop (you must register for this one!) that you can join to learn more about the project with some hands-on tutorials.
I do see myself finishing my presentations while hanging out in the venue.
Tuesday 12/11/2024
The madness begins. With sixteen (16) co-located events (zero-day events) the conference starts strong.
I will be starting my day at AppDeveloperCon.
With my friend Daniel Oh from Red Hat we will give a quick introduction to the Application Development Working Group work we have been doing as part of the CNCF's Technical Advisory Group at 10:15 am 🕝.
From there I will visit the folks at the OpenShift Commons Gathering, which will be located outside the venue, as it is a separate event focused on OpenShift users. I will be doing a lightning talk title "Making your cloud-native applications environment-agnostic" at 11:30 am 🕝.
Right after my presentation, I will head back to the venue for Platform Engineering Day, where I will be doing a book signing session sponsored by my friends at Syntasso at 12:15pm 🕒.
Daniel Bryant
From there, I will return to AppDeveloperCon to present with my friend Jonaz from Elastic.co about "Why does continuous profiling matters to developers?" at 3:20 pm 🕡. Jonas is quite deep into profiling, so it is a real pleasure to be able to present with him. Expect a bunch of flamegraphs 🔥📊 in the screen.
It is fair to call it a day after that presentation, but I am sure I will stay around to see the closing keynotes and visit the other co-located events.
Wednesday 13/11/2024
If it is your first KubeCon, you need to attend the opening Keynotes, while these sessions might not be the most technical and advanced sessions of the conference, here is where you can see what is coming in 2025, not only in the technology space, but also on the business side of things. I expect a lot of GPU, AI, and security-focused topics to be covered, but what I am looking forward to seeing are who are the key players presenting this year and what their messaging is.
At 11 am 🕚, the sponsor's hall opens, so I will most likely be hanging out at the Diagrid's booth #R14. While the sponsor's hall is bright and shiny, if it is your first KubeCon, I strongly recommend you plan ahead for the sessions that you don't want to miss. I usually make a selection based on the speakers and topics that are being presented.
Next, I will be attending Yaron's presentations, titled "Dapr's Road Ahead: GenAI APIs, Distributed Scheduling at Scale and What it Means for Your Platform" at 12:10pm 🕙.
At 3:25pm 🕝 I will be attending Scale Job Triggering with a Distributed Scheduler by Cassie and Artur from Diagrid, where they will go deep into Job scheduling at scale.
Later that day, at 5:25 pm 🕝, I will be presenting about "Taming your application's environments" with my friend Marcos from Dagger. It is always fun to present with Marcos as he is a truly motivated engineer, so his sessions never disappoint, expect a lot of code and running software on the screen.
Thursday 14/11/2024
Thursday's Keynotes are more focused on Open Source and I am looking forward to see project announcements. I am also looking forward to see my friend Alexa Griffith from Bloomberg to do her Keynote about "Centralizing and Simplifying Enterprise AI workflows". If you are not following her on X, make sure you do so, as she runs a podcast that you should check out.
Following the Keynotes, I will do my second book signing session of the conference sponsored by Loft Labs -> vCluster booth (A6) at 12 pm 🕛. There are limited copies, so be early if you want to get yours.
To close a fantastic day, I will be heading to the Crossplane + Dapr graduation party, which will take place at the Quarters Arcade Bar. If you haven't reserved your spot yet, you should do so because there are limited spaces available.
Friday 15/11/2024
Friday Keynotes are not to be missed. At this point I am sure I will be tired, but more relaxed. I do always enjoy the maintainer's track and projects updates, so check the agenda and make sure you meet folks before they start heading out on the last day.
Then, it will be time to pack and go back home! 🏠
I hope you all have a fantastic experience at KubeCon if you are attending. If you are not, please get in touch, let me know what topics you are interested in, and I will report back live from the event when I see relevant topics being discussed. If you want to get in touch with someone in particular or if you want to ask questions to the experts, drop me a message on Twitter/X.