 Hello and welcome everybody to a very special Cloud Native Live this morning, afternoon, evening. We have a wonderful panel here today to talk about KubeCon, Cloud NativeCon. We're going to be architecting our shed, sketch. We'll get into how this pronounced later. But we're here to answer your questions, whether you're attending virtually, whether you're going to be there in person, we're really excited to have this discussion with you. So this is a CNCF hosted event. As such, we abide by our code of conduct here. So please be excellent to one another in the chat as you're asking questions. And I'm pretty sure here we won't give each other a hard time, at least not too hard of a time. Wonderful. With that, we'd love to do just a round of intros. I'd love to hear a little bit about your first KubeCon or your latest KubeCon experience. And with that, I'd love to throw to you, Annie. What's going on with you and KubeCon land? Oh, that's a good question. Yeah. So hi, everyone. By the way, I'm Annie. Nice to talk to you, everyone, virtually. I think my first KubeCon was in LA physically. Before that, I did virtual ones as well. And it was so fun because that was the first one, I think, after the pandemic as well. So it felt very friendly and very nice. And it was like a big community coming together. And after that, I've been to, I think, all of the KubeCons. So very, very nice. Very much always, I think there's the friendly vibe going on. So yeah, loving KubeCon. How about you, Sharia? Yeah. So yeah, I couldn't join actually any KubeCon physically, but yeah, I've joined like for the past two years. So yeah, the experience has been awesome because I'm currently a student as well. So being a student, being a part of KubeCon, learning so many things at scheduling events, this is something in the beginning, it becomes overwhelming. But gradually, when you learn something and get connected, because you can see, like I learned maybe two years back, I started or I joined KubeCon right now. And right now what you can see is like I'm being part of one of the CNC ambassadors. So the learning we take from the community and the contribution. So this path, actually, these things do continue in the KubeCon because during the KubeCon, the slags are like you do get a lot of help, right? So you do know a lot of opportunities and so on and so forth. So this online community work and this thing for the past two years actually helped me a lot. So yeah, that has been my experience. Amazing. Amazing. And Whitney. Hey, I'm Whitney. Nice to meet you all. My KubeCon was also, my first one was also LA. And one thing about talking about KubeCon is those of all us who gone to all of them, we love to just say the location of where it was without the time. So I mean, props to you, Annie. I mean, it's a very normal thing to do. But LA, I think, Annie, is this right? Was the fall of 2021? I think so. I was actually trying to think which one was it, but I can't remember. But I think, yeah, I should be that. Yeah. So I went to that as like a little scared little mousy baby who didn't know very much about cloud native anything. And then by the end, I was doing like full blown karaoke with all of the people that I admired from having seen their work online. And then all of a sudden, I'm with them in person in a little room and we're like belting out Bon Jovi together. It's such an experience, yeah. My first was in San Diego in 2019. And I felt the same way. I was working at Walt Disney Studios and my manager at the time. We had set up this notes doc where you go to all these talks, you take notes, and it was just kind of more of almost like a science kind of report that you would come back with. And that's when I discovered the hallway track. Like you had said, Whitney, when you just walk in, you kind of have these expectations of all these checklist of things you have to do, and then you just get blown away by all of the interactions with people. And you're like, oh, my gosh, you're that person. You're like, yeah, come on, let's hang out, let's talk. You're like, what? Just walking down the hallway and doing a double take, like, oh, my God. Yeah, it feels like seeing a celebrity. It's so exciting. I tell her what's going on. Yeah. For those able to make it to us in person or virtually, we're going to be having KubeCon November 6th tonight this year, that's going to be in Chicago, Illinois at the McCormick Place West. So for those folks making it in person, we'd love to say hi, stop by, say what's up. Definitely would love to have a conversation with you. Not to talk for everybody here, but I'm pretty sure the same rule exists for everybody. If you're attending virtually, we're going to have some advice too. Oh, go ahead. For those of the people who are watching this right now, I would love to hear when their first KubeCon is. And like what your quick synopses of your experience too. And then in terms of saying hi, especially in person, I personally always have stickers on me. So if you want some stickers from like, I'd have a little show, I hope it's called Enlightening. I always have Enlightening stickers. We'll have to get some, maybe we can get some cloud native live stickers that we can all give away. I always have like, you choose stickers. So it's a reason to come say hi to me. Don't be shy. Ask where sticker. I'd love to give you a sticker. Let's hang out. Let's be friends. Yeah. That'd be fun. Yeah. That's a good point. A lot of people, that's kind of like the secret swag that you can get from a lot of folks is, I know, like Duffy Cooley, not to put them on the spot. Don't apple them. But like Duffy Cooley, a couple other people will be out there with some really cool stickers and things like that. So it's always worth asking somebody if they might have some on them. If you see anybody that you've seen within the community, maybe temporary tattoos for cloud native live or something like that. I'm so in. I'll go ahead and apply them all the way up and down my arm. Just like I put it on my cheek before the keynote. That'll be perfect. I'm going to go ahead and share in the, or if I can, yeah. I'll go ahead and post this. If I can get some help sharing that one link with the from our marketing team for where it actually registered for the event, we can go ahead and get that posted. And then as it comes to stays, I guess that's my next question. We'd like to go to Annie, Shariah, and then Whitney in that order. When it comes to staying at KubeCon, can you kind of give some of your experience tips and tricks when it comes to booking a location? Because I know that can be a little bit painful, a little bit difficult in some cases. Yeah, I think that's actually a big part of the KubeCon experience, at least for me. Because to be honest, usually what I do, I booked one of the recommended ones from the KubeCon website quite often. And actually the best part about that is that usually the whole hotel is quite full of attendees as well. So you can actually do a lot of meeting new people on the hallway track in the hotel or in breakfast, for example, as well. But obviously that's a bit of a tip as well, that if you're a bit more introverted, for example, then maybe don't book a hotel from that list if you want to have your kind of alone time, which that is, by the way, me, a lot of the office and very times. So sometimes I do that by purpose as well, not the book from there. But to be honest, the hotel doesn't, in my opinion, matter too much because you're gonna be spending so much time at the venue as well as in the side events and everything. So as long as you have a nice good place to crash and you know, sleep and so forth, that's the most important part of the hotel and the accommodation, in my opinion. Yeah. I personally enjoy when I have a hotel that I can walk to that doesn't take, that's more casually to get to because if you start at Keynotes and you end at the after parties, it's a long, long day. So if I have a quick minute to jump to my hotel room and take some alone time, because I am an introvert, then I think it's really nice to have it close by. But it's also a luxury and like my big advice to be to book really early and it's already even too late to book really early. So just do your best, it'll be great. Shaiyar, how has it been booking virtual seats? You know, do you get like a coffee ready? I'd love to hear about that experience. It's a staff good. Yeah, so for my experience is basically, as it's been online. So it's like, yeah, booking you experience in, I guess it's in home, right? So like you do schedule events, like you have to take a party in these, you have to attend some seminars and something, some sessions on and so forth. So managing the time and the place, these kind of things are like for me. But today I'm learning so many things from Annie with me and you. So I guess in future, I can join in person and this experience will help me a lot as well. So alongside being a speaker, I'm learning as a, I can say as a viewer as well, right? Like the UX space as well. Yeah, great. So that was from me. Cool, cool. There've been some years where it's been a bummer not to be there in person or you might get sick or just like timing might not line up. Acceptance, things like that. That's another thing as far as getting to KubeCon in the first place, there are quite a lot of things going on leading up to the events as well. We have day zero co-located events. So that can be anything like Sillium Day or ArgoCon or all of these events about specific projects. And then the heart of the KubeCon conference, this year is going to be from the sixth to the ninth. I've gone ahead and posted in the schedule so you can actually go and take a look at some of the talks. We do have those co-located events on that schedule as well. That's another question is, or Whitney, go ahead. I have a question and it's, I probably shouldn't be asking this question. Like this is something I should definitely know, but here it is. What is CloudNativeCon? It was like KubeCon and CloudNativeCon. Initially, the, I believe that the conference, so this is as far as I know it. So this might be a little bit revisionist history at least for me. So the CloudNativeCon, I think was the initial name of the event. The CNCF wanted to make it something that was just encompassing of all things CloudNative. But then Kubernetes was huge. And so the team was thinking of making it CloudNativeCon plus KubeCon. And then the Kubernetes folks were like, no, let's put that first. And so that ended up being KubeCon, CloudNativeCon. After lots of deliberation, community talks and things like that. And I don't think that since it's always been that way, people have been like, no, let's just keep it that way. So maybe one day in the future, that'll kind of combine. But yeah, kind of curious. But yeah, that's the CloudNativeCon piece of that. I've always been curious as well. So look for that on this video. There's like a second conference somewhere I was missing somehow. It's underneath the venue. Yeah, no. You've been missing it the whole time. In Chicago, I'll find it. We did have one question come in. Was there any way to sync this to Google Calendar or something? That's actually, I don't know. I'm not sure if any of you have any insights on that front, but I think usually I've just gone to that shed, sketch and just filled in what to check. If you do check off what you're going to be attending, that does help us on the CNCF and the event side. Let us know what events or what talks are popular, feature seating concerns, things like that. So please, please, please do go and check off the things that you will be attending. That really does help us with the planning capacity. I don't know of any way to link that to Google Calendar or anything. That again, I'll usually just return to that and then look through my list. And then as the time goes forward, those relevant events will pop up. It's typically, that's typically how I use it. I'm not sure if you have any insights out, Whitney. I guess. I'm talking. I love the Sketch app and I basically use it instead of Google Calendar during the week. And what I love about using the Sketch app is that when I'm planning my schedule, I'm like, I'm going to see this and this and this and this. And then when I'm actually doing it, I'm like, no, you know, I'm going to go, I'm at a friend, I'm going to go to lunch, I'm going to miss this thing, but I want to catch the video later. I'll get the recording. And in Sketch, like I can even now in Sketch, go back to LA and be, and I can see what talks I wanted to go to years ago. And in Sketch, it'll link, once the videos are posted, the videos link in your schedule. So we're jumping way forward, but that all the sessions are recorded, but they're not posted until weeks after the events. So once they pop up, it's like I forgot everything that I cared about. And also it's like a hundred of them at once, and it's really overwhelming to navigate. So if I have my sketch, then I know, these are what I wanted to see. And then I have a way to go find the ones that I already researched and know that I care about. That's why I love Sketch. Did you have something to say, Sharyar? Not so, like for me, it's always been like, I don't know, from the virtual. So kind of, yeah. In the beginning, what I would have done is like, because when it's going to start at the KubeCon, we would like, I personally use Microsoft to do. So yeah, I do should do, like what are the things I do want to add in? What is the time basically, because I'm not going to add in all of the sessions, right? So this is something I basically do to add in the online sessions and also for the KubeCon as well. And then, Annie, what's your secret recipe to KubeCon success when it comes to scheduling? Yeah, I just kind of use the same tips and tricks with Nida. So I just kind of live by schedule while I'm in the event. I just kind of block out my calendar as much as I can and then live by the app or whatnot. But to be honest, I was just going through the program for the Chicago and I was marking every single session that I'm interested in and then so many, like it was just the billion sessions that I want to go through. So I think I usually do exactly the same. I go see what I can go see and then just watch the recording later on. And that's a big part of kind of my extended KubeCon experience in a way. And I think that's really what I actually also love about the sessions in recording so that I can always get back to them later. I totally agree. And similarly, if there's two conflicting sessions, two things I want to see that are in the same time slot, I'll add them both. I'll maybe see what I feel in the moment or see which one I'm physically closer to and then I have a way to be sure to catch the recording of the other one. In the moment, that feels like one of the most difficult decisions of your life. Is it, do I go to this talk or that talk? They're both my friend. What do I do? The best problem, though, right? Don't fret, the videos will be available and there are plenty of wonderful little boutiques, coffee shops and things like that to buy the friend that you didn't see an apology get. I'm so feeling fine. Awesome, awesome. So moving into kind of what to expect. So we kind of got into some of these things but would love to talk about who you might see and then the overall layout of the event. Annie, starting with you, I think when it comes to people, as you go to KubeCon, is there anyone in particular that you're trying to find or see or look forward to and then just kind of how you go about navigating the obstacle course, well, not so much of KubeCon, the event, the place, walking, cars, bicycles, whatever it might be. Yeah, well, I think it's always a bit of a hassle, particularly in the first few days, you're trying to figure out the new layout and the map and I usually just walk with the map in my phone and just try to figure out where is that hole and where is the other one. There's always a bit of a treasure hunt in that way but I do usually try to go to the sponsor showcase quite early on as well because, okay, quite often I make it there only on the last day but then everyone's a bit tired already, which is understandable by the way, it's a long, long conference but I tried to get a bit earlier so that I can have like really nice discussions when everyone still has energy and so forth but the one thing that I'm always most looking forward to kind of is actually the project pavilion in addition to the sessions of course. So I really love going to the project pavilion, talking with the project maintainers or contributors and just chatting with them and seeing what's up, how can I help potentially and so forth and just finding new places to contribute. And I guess my tip there is that at least in the previous cube cones, it's always managed so that you have different projects in the morning and then in the afternoon. So then it's good to kind of visit the area twice a day at least to check out all the sessions that they have a project pavilion boost essentially. Cool, what about you, Whitney? We're so much of the same minds because when you ask the question, I was like, the project pavilion booth is going to talk about and Annie's already there. With the project pavilion booth, what it is is all of the CNCF projects have little booths. So a lot of the exhibition hall are people vendors, people trying to sell you something sponsors and that's great to see too. It's really cool to see the trends and to see what products people are building on top of cloud native technologies, amazing. But the project pavilion is the actual CNCF projects themselves and the maintainers of those projects and little booths for those. And again, when I was first going to this stuff, I was so scared. And now that I've been around, I understand how friendly everyone is and it's like just such a joy to talk to everyone in the project pavilion. And even if you go up and say, I know nothing, they're so happy to tell you something and give you the gist of what their project does. Like they're excited about their project. They're excited to talk to you. So don't be afraid to talk to them. It's a joy. And then another great way I think to leverage the project pavilion is if I go to a talk and I hear about a technology that sounds exciting and I want to learn more about it, instead of trying to find another talk about it, I'll just go talk to the people at the project pavilion about what I learned or what I'm curious about. And it's a great way to leverage, like to learn more about something without trying to hunt down the right talk to do it, you know? And yeah, the project pavilion's a joy. What was the question? I forget. This is like, I asked too many. It was kind of like, you're looking forward to see and then just how you navigate the layout of the event. Oh, okay, yeah. Okay, excellent. Sorry, I think Annie had great advice. Sorry. I was just going to give props to Annie. She's doing it. Yeah. Yeah, make it happen. When it comes to the virtual layout, is there anything that you're doing differently, you know? Whether it be navigating Slack or taking a look at certain chats, I'm kind of curious to hear your experience on that front as far as how you go about navigating that, making the most of your time. Okay, so here comes the most interesting part because like what I was talking like one or two years back. So I didn't work that much on KubeCon, sorry, Kubernetes back then. So in the online sessions, what I was basically keen on is like learning from the introductory basic things and also finding same-mind people because I can recall like I know Ritik also, he was in the chat section. So he was mentioning, he was very active. So back at that time, I saw him. So I did follow him over LinkedIn. So after that, so I was always keen to find those keen people, those students who are actually working on this project. So after that, how it helped me is like, I got the opportunity through Twitter, one of the fellow mates like to work in the CNC Glossary project and after that Kubernetes. So basically this thing is like, if you're someone, if you're like beginner, you don't know anything and you are feeling, because when I started or when I actually basically became part of, like I was editing one of the sessions. So it was actually overwhelming for me because I don't know, I actually don't know anything back at that time. So it was overwhelming. So, but basically that process of finding same-minded people, students, that helped me a lot. And that's what I always cherish and I think I will always look forward to it. Also in the number as well. So yeah. Awesome, awesome, awesome. It's one thing with the, I know with the project Pavilion 2 right now, last count, which I think for me was like last week, we have 172 projects in the CNCF. Those are sandbox, incubating and graduated. And so you won't find every project there. It is space constrained and it will only continue to be. So until we can, you know, blow out the walls of certain venues and things like that to fit everybody. But until we figure that out, if you are, if you're going through the project Pavilion, you can't find a project. It might be likely that those folks are roaming the halls and are kind of in the hallway track. And that's another thing to be really mindful of. We talked a little bit about this. If you did want to find them, what might be a good strategy for that if their project's not in the project Pavilion? I'd say just screaming that project name. No, no, no. Don't do that. It's like, Argo! I would check out some of those folks. Typically the project Twitter handles and things like that. In a lot of cases, the projects will kind of let you know where they're at. If you want to do a little bit of GitHub sleuthing, that might also be helpful as well. You can take a look at some of the contributors or the maintainers and then start to kind of develop out a map like, oh, okay, I see maybe, you know, flux, for example, maybe Stefan is, maybe there's no flux booth unlikely, but say there was no flux booth. I'm trying to track down Stefan because I'm trying to ask him a question. Oh, he has a talk. And so you can start to see all of the threads, you know, whether it be socials, whether it be talks. I think those are the best ways to attract somebody down. There's a CNCF Slack workspace too, and most projects have a channel in that. That might be a way. Yeah. Great point. That is the best place to yell for the project in a sensible way. Is anybody going to be at KubeCon? And then you'll get some answers on that front. Cool. Yeah, and I think there's a link to the maintainer sessions as well. I think that might be a place to find some of the sessions as well with the maintainers in them. Annie, what is the maintainer track? Well, I don't know the official definition, but I guess it's a place where the maintainers can have their project sessions and deep drives and so forth more into specific projects, if that's correct. Do they go through the same CFP process as the rest of KubeCon? I know that they go do a different CFP process than the general CFP. Maybe Taylor has more details on their CFP. I think when it comes to the maintainer track, I know in most cases, so there are a couple of different things as it comes to CFPs, and CFPs is its own college, college-at-level course kind of level of understanding. CFPs is called for papers, called for proposals, so we should do that too. No, thank you. Three-letter acronym, TLA. So a lot of people, we have so many talks that come in and so many are so good, but we just can't, again, space, time. We can't host them all, unfortunately. I did a KubeCon talk this time. I wasn't accepted. Maybe next year. I'll see you on the keynote stage, but no KubeCon talk for me. When it comes to selecting tracks, that's another thing that comes into play. So we always recommend that people submit CFPs for talks they want to give. Even if you're coming from a project, there are a couple cases where special interest groups and different community groups can get a talk on the schedule, but those are very limited and very specific kinds of outcomes. So always, always, always, when in doubt, submit a call for papers, call for proposal, and then that's the best way to try to get onto the schedule. When you are submitting your CFP, there's many different tracks that you can submit too. One of them is the maintainer track. There's a, I think we had like 13, forgive me, I don't have them all at the top of my head, things I need to work on, note cards I need to make before KubeCon, but we have like a 101 track, maintainer track, there's several others. I think there's one on platform engineering, and so given all of those tracks, that's a great thing to take a look at while you're building out your schedule is are there any tracks that you're really interested in, you can like maximize that, you can have three from the platform one, two from a security one, and you can kind of build your schedule that way as well. So lots of, once you really start looking, there are a lot more things that you can dive into, but just another slice and category for you to dig into while you're building out your schedule. So that's a little long winded, but hopefully answers your question. And if any of you out there have any questions that are watching this, please throw those into chat, and we'd love to get that answered as well. Let's see. Well, when in doubt, I love the cloud native novice track or even the student, there's a student track, I think that's new. I'd like to hear Shereera's opinion about that. But if there's something I don't know, I think that's a great, and everybody doesn't know something. I think it's a great place to go to get a one-to-one level of whatever new technologies are out there. Yeah, and I think isn't the student track rolled into the novice track nowadays? Oh, maybe. I'm not sure. There was a reason. The real reason it was changed, just to keep you on your toes. Yeah. Yeah, I'm trying to... Let me see. I can take a look at some of the tracks. Oh, I have them pulled up. Okay, you got it. We have operations and performance, platform engineering, observability. Worth taking a look at that. We did have a question. Hey, I have a question for you. How do you begin networking? Do you start talking to people? Yes, absolutely. I think that's... For me, I might seem like a very big extroverted person, but for so long, I've been... I think I qualify as an ambivert. I think some psychologists have said there is no introverted, extroverted. It's just if you're really excited about something, you'll typically show as more extroverted. There's so many fun things on that front, but when it comes to tech, when it comes to cloud native, that gets me excited. Very much extroverted in that sense, but it can be really difficult and it can be kind of scary when it comes to even contributing to open source, right? Everybody's going to see your work, but that's the point. That's totally fine. We all learn together and like everyone has said here, it's a very friendly group. There's... It's very unlikely that you would bump into somebody and you're like, hey, how's it going? They're like, ugh, get out of here. And if they do that, you don't want to be their friend anyway. You're dodgeable, right? Yeah, come see me and we'll have a discussion. It sounds like I put a condom. But yeah, everybody's really friendly. One of the things that we'll do is when we're standing in groups, a lot of folks have been in the community for a while and have become community leaders. There's all of these unspoken conference rules. One of them is called the Pac-Man rule. If you're standing in a circle with people, you'll typically leave a spot open so people can jump in and join and then you just keep growing your circle out, but you always leave one space for somebody that might not have joined you yet. Just to show that you're open and you're having a conversation that is a little bit more welcoming, so if you see people in a very tight-knit kind of circle, maybe they're talking about performance reviews, maybe that's not a good place to join or they might just be having a more intimate discussion or just talking about strategy or business meeting, those do happen too. So always take a look. If you see the gap, that's an invitation to join in most cases. Come find us on the floor as well. We'd love to have a conversation with you too. I think that's a great tip. I can also add that I'm super shy as well, super introverted. Even as you as well, it might not always show that way. So I think everyone kind of feels that way. So if you go and talk to people, I think they're just going to be so happy with it because they don't have to then kind of kick off the discussion. So I think it's a win-win all around. And I do also see in the CNCF Slack, people sometimes messaging into different subgroups, like, hey, I'm interested in whatever topic it is. Might someone want to grab a lunch like tomorrow or today. So maybe sending in a few of those kind of messages so that you can kind of meet people who are interested in the same topics and just have lunch together or a cup of coffee and kick off discussion in that way because it can be very nerve-racking to just walk up to someone and say hi. That's always a bit nerve-inducing. And the Expo is a great place to get to know people even if they're people, first of all, if they're people out of booth, their whole job right now is to talk to you. They're hungry to talk to you so you don't need to feel like you're putting anyone out and you can also meet people who are interested in what you're interested in. And I'll tell you, projects and companies alike love to hear how their technology is being used in the real world. They love it. They want to hear your story. They want to hear your pain points. They want to talk to you. They're afraid that I'm going to bother someone or something. In the Expo area, you can be sure that you're not bothering anyone. They want to talk to you. They will find you and talk to you for sure as well. Yeah. It's true. That's a great point. I never really thought about that, but if you're looking to have that discussion, if you're looking for an easy mode, any of the booths, and then when it comes to the ecosystem that's a great place to be, go and bring your cloud-native questions there. That's a great, like, where do I get started? What is this? Scheduler? Could you tell me more about that? I'm like, oh, no, I can't. This project booth can. Let's go walk over there. You'll get those kinds of interactions. Let's see here. We had somebody asking for schedules. For schedules, we did share the link a little bit ago, but if you just Google KubeCon and take a look at the Chicago, Illinois event, November 6th to 9th, that's the best place to find that schedule. And there's an app called Sched. It has a web interface. It has a literal application. You can download to your phone, and that'll be what you use to plan your schedule. Get it locked in. Get your Sched. We did have a question about certifications being on site. This actually has come up in some discussions that we've had at the CNCF. I think at some point in time this will become something that we do. I don't know of anything at this time, but I do know it's been brought up enough to become a regular point of conversation. Stay tuned on that one. We'll definitely have a little bit more to share on that front. Yeah, stay tuned. You have some people agreeing with your points, Annie and Whitney. One question about generative AI, which is fun. That is a huge topic right now, obviously. Lots of different talks on the subject. Some might have even used generative AI to help them craft up some ideas for their talk. But we're really having that discussion as a community right now. There's no good central place or project that I've seen using that just yet in a huge way. But I think stay tuned after Cube. I'm sure I'm certain of the fact that you'll see a lot of different talks on the subject. I'm going to be having a lot of conversations with folks on that as well. I'd love to hear if any of you have any gen AI stuff going on, Annie Whitney or Shariar, or to learn if any of you are actually holograms and you're actually just running an LLM for the show today. Shhh. Shhh. Honestly, AI creeps me out. I'm an old lady and I'm just like, I don't like this. It feels wrong. Yeah. I do have a session in the AI ML track in Cube.Gicago coming up. So if you want to hear more about that, you can tune into the session and mark the session in the kit already today. Yeah. We'll see. A little plug here for that one. But it should be fine. I'm very excited for the session. It's like, I'm going to have to update my schedule and get that on mine. Yeah, I'm going to add that right now. I almost started doing it. I was like, no, I should be present. So we talked a little bit about No, go ahead. Sorry. Oh, I was going to say, like in terms of AI or ML or any of it, it's really cool to see the trends, which for me, I mean, you can see it in terms of what people are talking about in sessions. But for me, I kind of like just walking around the expo to like get a sense of like what's popular right now. Like, I didn't know even to look for something called the EBPF, but then all of a sudden I'm walking around the expo. I'm like, what's this EBPF thing everyone's talking about? And then I figure it out. So if you want to figure out what the trends are, I'd say walking around the expo is a cool way to do that. What's a good way to do that when you're attending virtually? Oh, yeah. So you're asking me, right? Yeah. You're on the spot. Okay. So, yeah. So I guess, you know, online, like you're just like in the chat, you're following the chat section what's happening in the chat section and basically the topics something like that. But the most, I guess as you were mentioning, like Annie and Whitney, like you guys can actually meet a lot of people and also tell you as well. So in online I guess the most important part is like during the coupon, there is a special slacker, right? The coupon general. So that part like being active because when you are just editing the session, it will be like people are just, there are some people who do spam, right? So but the people who are actually doing the work, who are actually who have the sessions, the active part and what you were mentioning with it was like the trendy thing. So those things are actually mentioned in the Slack general, I guess. So if you follow that, that one like yeah, you can think because in the chat section generally what happens because in the session there are a lot of people who do spam. So yeah I guess following the Slack channel is like for the online sessions. I have a question as a speaker, would it be helpful to be like, hey, I'm about to give a talk right now on this topic and put that in the Slack? That's a great question. I don't know that I've seen that. I think a lot of folks have done like, hey, this week I'm doing, you know, it's kind of like more of a weekly thing or just like a very intermittent update. But I honestly, I like that. I mean, especially if you have something, if you're giving a talk on Argo, letting the channel know like, hey, in an hour, I'm going to be giving this talk, I think I honestly, I think that would be helpful. More information, the better that's just my personal preference. But I like that, you know, kind of pairing that almost like with Twitter or LinkedIn or something like that. I feel like you would do the same there, but trying to get the word out and bring folks to that talk, that's a great idea. Or as like a live attendee, it's kind of like, I know the virtual attendees are there, but I've never, it's never crossed my mind before this moment that I could as a live attendee try to engage with people virtually. So I guess, maybe it's a more general question that's like what's a good way to do that? And is it welcomed? I'd say I'd say that it is again more pulling the community more into things. I'm like a very biased love community, love people, like more things. Some people might have like a very deep topic they want to get into, but I think, I do think that as you're speaking, it can be difficult to, you know, you're usually so preoccupied with like, did I bring the right HDMI cable? Okay. Oh, we need a new one. Oh, no, you know, like getting your slides up, speaker notes, all that stuff, pulling in some more things. Wi-Fi network can sometimes be an issue to conference. Wi-Fi and coffee. But I think if you are able to pull that in or even have your phone and maybe you know, if you have some kind of uplink to the rest of the web, that could be a wonderful way to bring things in or like, oh, I just got a question. Most talks I've seen are typically like almost closed off and air gapped, if you will. And so I think that would be great. I haven't seen many things like that where it's like, hey, it's going to be interactive. We have a live poll or I'm going to be answering questions live. You know, usually it's more focused on that closed knowledge that doesn't really iterate or change, but would love to see that because I think that's a fantastic idea. Cool. If you can bring your lightboard, Whitney, that would be kind of cool. Easy peasy. It folds up. Yeah. We did have one question about collocated events. So collocated events are run separately out of KubeCon. So each of those events is kind of like its own little pop-up shop, essentially. Each of those events has its own ticket cost as well. So unfortunately, they're not free. But I think if you submit CFPs to them and get in to talk, that could be a great opportunity to join that event if you have something to talk about. Otherwise, each of those have different costs and other things that are applicable. So unfortunately, I can't just show up and go to one of the collocated events, but definitely recommend checking out the schedule. If you do see one on there that you want to go and attend, you can click into that event website and then get a little bit more details and information. Each of those collocated events have their own special schedules as well. Typically, it's just one track, but you can get a little bit more information on that front as well. I have a question about collocated events. Are the videos available online? Are they public to everyone? Yes, similar to KubeCon. Yeah. Similar to KubeCon, those get uploaded. Collocated events in Chicago this year are not live-streamed. So a couple of people have asked like, oh, can I attend virtually? Unfortunately, you can't. For those this year was different when we were going through COVID and everything else, but I think most of those have been set up now to maximize the in-person experience, but those videos will be available after the event concludes in a matter of a couple of weeks. So for me, what I would do then is I would click, I would add the sessions I'm interested into my schedule, even though I know I can't see them because I don't have access, but then later when the videos come online I can't see much to get right to the videos that I know I'm interested in. That's what I would do. That's a really hot tip, Whitney. I didn't know that you could actually see that in-schedge as far as like the actual talk video itself. So that blew my mind on that front. I know it works in the web interface and the browser interface. I'm not 100% sure it works in the app, so maybe someone else knows that. But that's how I use it. Cool. I'm going to have to go back and look at my old schedules like, oh yeah, I remember this talk. We had two questions and then I'll kick back to some of the other event things that we have on our schedule. Nadia asked, is this a technical event on cloud computing? Absolutely. So forgive me, I didn't really even cover that or like overall attendance and things like that. So it's one of the biggest events that we put on as the CNCF as the Linux foundation. We have many other events, but this one is just like I have hats. I have many of them. This one right now is my favorite. This event is one of the largest that we have. We just concluded Amsterdam and I think it was around close to 10,000, 10 and a half thousand folks. Chicago we're looking, I think we saw about like 9,000 or something like that that are registering and it's still going up. So we will sell out. Definitely go grab some of them, but lots of things. CNCF stands for Cloud Native Computing Foundation. Another acronym. We got to fill out all the acronyms. I'm on a mission. That's not how I spell my name, I promise. No vowels. And then we had one question Mike said, has blockchain as a topic still been active in the CNCF? Not so much. In some respects we've seen blockchain discussions a little bit. The Linux Foundation is our parent organization. We're underneath that as the CNCF Cloud Native Computing Foundation and there's a group called the Hyperledger project and they mostly have a lot of discussions around blockchain and ledgers and those kinds of things as well. So definitely recommend checking them out if you're interested in that. So opening up for a little bit more Q&A again, please get your questions going if you have them for us. Please throw them into chat and we'd love to get those answered. When it comes to weather, Chicago let's talk about that. It is known as the Windy City. It is November. I haven't gone and looked at the actual weather reports or forecasts for the times that we're going to be out there, but it sounds like it's going to be chilly. So I know we have some things in the CNCF store like jackets, hoodies, sweatshirts things of that nature if you need to stay warm but yeah, whether has anyone here been to Chicago in November? Do you have any insights? I've been twice I think, but would love to hear from you first. I think I've been. It's pretty cold. Yeah. Yeah, I think I'm being around November in Chicago and it does get cold a bit but okay, so I'm a bit biased I'm from Finland originally which is like the Arctic Circle goes through the country so to me it's more of like a chilly weather than actually cold weather. Yeah, exactly. But I think layers are always the key so you can kind of see where the weather takes you and as far as wind goes I think you can kind of layers and maybe having a hood or something can help you a bit there as well and but obviously if you're in the conference hall you might not feel as much wind as outside but my tip for that is bring an extra set of hoodie or like a scarf or something like that that you can kind of pop in because sometimes the AC will hit you at the exact location where you want to sit in the session so just be aware of that and bring something extra. That's a good tip, yeah. Plus one, yeah Chicago is like surrounded there's a lot of it is it's at the edge of a lake basically so the winds comes in off the lake it's cold and then it's a lot of tall buildings so the winds rushes in between the tall buildings it's very windy, cold wind so plus one to layers I'll say it's very common to carry a backpack all around CubeCon so if you have your backpack with your layers in it you'll actually be more normal than if you didn't have a backpack I think you fit in more and then Amsterdam at least had a coat and bag check so you could bring it to the venue and you had a place to check it and there's more than one even so it wasn't even too much of a hassle to check or to retrieve your items from the check it's going to be chilly and so yeah huge plus one with layers as well I think that's going to be helpful when it comes to you're going to be navigating quite a bit of the city even if you're going to be staying near McCormick place or anything like that too so one of the other suggestions that we've gotten from some staff members and other community members is we're comfy shoes I think definitely I won't be wearing platform shoes or anything like that I value my ankles I don't want to sprain an ankle but as far as that just any tips or tricks when it comes to just like tactical gear as you're jumping into CubeCon any thoughts or ruminations on that? I think the shoes are the key and never like where you shoes in CubeCon or for that matter or anything is with these activities so bring shoes that you know are comfortable and you know that you can walk in because you will wrap through a lot of steps throughout the days as well and tactical gear that sounds very hardcore though like it's going to be like a battle zone I texture my hat I'm binoculars where's that top it's nice but maybe you can start with the shoes and I do always bring a water bottle so that I can kind of refill it or whatnot so that I can get that hydration in because that's also key in tactical situations is there anything else? Snacks? I'm a big snacks person yeah there will be like a meal offered on there but it's better to have snacks than to not maybe get so caught up talking in the project pavilion actually lunch is a good place to meet people too with a person who asks how do I network, how do I meet people sit down with someone you don't know at a lunch table that's a great way to do it too yeah and what is it there is a really good trick I learned for folks that are like if you're feeling a little bit nervous or just like not sure how to break in or you're introducing or meeting some new people there's a comedian famous person named Jeff Goldblum and what he does is I run into this all the time meet somebody or see a familiar face but might not remember if I met this person or not just because you meet so many people at KubeCon if you see somebody and you go of course that's a great hack that's a great trick because that can mean that you know them for the 18th time that's a great way to do that instead of like oh hi my name is oh this is Jessica oh of course really makes people happy when you do that now whenever you say it to anyone the whole conference they're going to look at you like you don't remember we had a question about transportation so when it comes to transportation we don't offer that as part of KubeCon I know that there might be some shuttles and other things running as part of the city amenities and things of that nature I honestly would have to go and double check sometimes we will have things I know to like in the past we've done that to parties and things of that nature with KubeCon we will have our KubeCrawl going on the day of the keynote which I believe is Tuesday again forgive me my brain I did the conference back a day and so it's Tuesday now that the main keynote is happening the KubeCrawl and party it's all kind of co-located at the same venue all of that is going on let's talk about let's talk about parties yes yeah hats off when it comes to the party I know that there is so unfortunately the events team is fantastic they've kept all of the secrets so I know nothing I'm John Snow I know nothing I'm very excited to see what happens on that front but typically we do we call it a KubeCrawl you can go around get some beverages and just walk across the Expo floor there will be things going on you'll see typically they'll get entertainers one year they had people walking around on stilts so yeah wild things on that front for folks that are end users of the CNCF I'm going to be having a end user reception during that party so it'll basically be a place for end users to come duck out check out some things get some other foods have great conversations trying to work on some lightning talks but still working on some AV things on that front but really that's another great time to come in and meet people people kind of take their business hats off and you can just have a little bit more of a casual conversation talk about what's going on in your life or just even around Chicago or even some of the sites that you've seen I think kind of getting a little bit back to shoes and what gear do you bring take a look around Chicago like you don't have to just be at the conference the whole time you can check out some cool things around there's a silver landmark called the Bean is what everybody calls it but I think it's actually called Cloudgate because I learned recently thanks Wikipedia and so you'll see that in our it's own CNCF project Cloudgate maybe somebody will submit it as a sandbox project sometime soon no rejected it doesn't do anything but cool there's also a lot of sponsored parties like a lot of non CNCF related parties Annie how do you like to navigate those oh I always want to go to all of them and then I'm so tired that I don't always go to many that's how I navigate them but actually this year I think for Chicago I'm going to take the goal to like pick a few parties and like really go into them and not be like socially exhausted to go into them because I hear so many great things about them and everyone's so happy with them and also really great networking opportunities and honestly I can give a tip because I really want to go to one of these there's so many like parties that are a bit less party as well so they might be bowling events or they're like a boba event or whatnot so they're a bit more chill a bit more relaxed so when people say to go to parties to network they don't mean that you have to go to like a you know nightclub party it might be just a relaxing like atmosphere event to kind of recharge a bit as well and chat with cool people so I highly recommend those as well yeah I'm a I don't drink I'm a non-drinker and I still have a great time at the parties for sure and my strategy sometimes there'll be like a sheet or something going around nothing's crossed my path I have an RSVP for anything but like my strategy is to RSVP for literally every party that crosses my path and then later figure out which one I'm going to attend like the night of that's usually the best tactic to be honest because they say they the parties sell out very fast all the side events all the bowling ones and whatnot so if you see one that you want to attend to I recommend signing up super fast how do you find the parties I think that's a million dollar question sometimes yeah it's just like look under your seat yeah for the hidden yeah it's all secrets no there's there's I know there are a couple accounts and things where folks will try to aggregate but that is that truly is the that is it's a bit of an art I haven't found anything best that's worked for me yet but as I've gone through the expo hall you will hear people talking as you get closer to like a Wednesday night Thursday night whatever the night is there are lots of parties you'll be like oh you're gonna go to the Armo party or this or that you know you'll hear different vendors being brought up or the sponsors of those parties is typically like it's that party get lab party you'll hear all of those things going on so I'd say keep your ear to the to the ground on that one but there's a kubecon parties twitter handle and I believe there's kubeconparties.com yeah I was just about to say I think there's a few people as well who like gather them up and send them out in social media and so forth yeah not officially endorsed by us or CNCF but it exists maybe a good start oh yeah this is fantastic so yeah that's something that I'll definitely keep my eye on and you'll definitely see me out and about I don't will definitely balance some nights too go have fun but if you got an early morning jog or something like that buy your underwear on some of the parties and things like that is my advice take the time for self care if you're feeling a little bit if you're feeling like you're pushing marathon it's not a sprint drink tons of water whether you're drinking alcohol or not just drink tons of water helps when you travel make sure that you're getting as much sleep some folks will go out for runs in the morning or do workouts or yoga so there's so much going on you can kind of taper it to be as you know individual to yourself as you want or as community or group involved too so you're in charge of the slider you get to pick where you go with that they're unofficial SIGs to what SIG stand for special interest group yes so they're official SIGs but unofficial ones like SIG boba which is a helps non-drinkers meet up or SIG running who for the runners or SIG bouldering for people who like rock climbing like me and those are also in the ctf workspace I believe if you look for those channels you can find people who match your interests but all of those interest related ones are prefixed with SIG so that's how you can find them there's a there's a kind of comedic one but it's anytime that you're out at a party it's you'll see people who are sticking around a little bit later you know one two in the morning just like it's yeah tough to do before keynote you won't find me out that late but SIG late night you might hear some people yelling that as they take a commemorative photo or something like that so that's that was a fun one as well but I imagine there's no crossover between SIG running and SIG late night it might be a couple people I might have seen a few people just not part of any SIG sleep I did I did post into the comments the marketing lounge office hours so our marketing team is again if you're looking for people to meet and want to catch up with some folks in marketing and discuss those things I've published those you can book some time on Thursday otherwise Monday through Wednesday there's some set hours there what is it and make sure to RSVP for the marketing happy hour on November 6th come by you know there will be all kinds of beverages there so again if you're not drinking you can still have a happy hour in a Diet Coke or water or something like that too happy to answer any final questions that come in but with that we'd love to go around and see like so we've gone through so much do you have some words of wisdom to people attending KubeCon virtually or in person I'd love to start with you Annie just some closing thoughts on that front do you have any nuggets of wisdom for us yeah I think people mentioned this Taylor and with me and everyone else here I mentioned it a few times but just like do you KubeCon the way that you like to do it is my number one tip I don't think that you have to do all the side events or the parties or all the system you don't want to make it like to do and make sure that you take the time to recharge during the conference and after the conference because it is very tiring so just make it look like you so that you're gonna then you're gonna have the best experience that looks like you as well then Shariah what about you any closing thoughts words comments tips tricks okay great so for me because it is going to be online so it would be like there there are a lot of bunches of sessions right so prioritizing what you are going to attend those things and also I guess focusing on the slack these kind of things should be focused students should focus on these kind of things and as I'm a student perspective I'm going to work I'm going to say something like that so if you're a student what you can do is like KubeCon is very inclusive and the CNC community is actually very inclusive so what you can do attend the sessions and obviously all of the sessions are not going to be like that those will be overwhelming for you but attend those and be active on the slack that will be one of the portion because if you actually want to utilize or some learn something these two things will actually help you if you just maintain both these yeah that's I guess from my end thank you thank you and Whitney let's let's wrap with you my advice is that you literally cannot do it all unless you are one of those holograms that we don't know about yet so take some time to plan before schedule is amazing check out the 101 track if you don't know what you're what you need to learn what you don't know yet once you make that once you like make a perfect schedule you plan all your parties you do all the things you're probably not going to do all that stuff just let the conference carry you away meet the people go do what you want go do what feels right in the time enjoy yourself and then especially if you made that schedule beforehand you can always go find those sessions later when you have time so be present yeah be present have fun this is your conference too this is your experience it's going to be a great time it's going to be a great time because all of you will be there it's it's a big party it's it's not so summer camp with all of your cloud native friends thank you so much everybody thank you to all the hosts and in our commentators today it was great to get a deep dive into everything virtual in person I hope to see you there please reach out if you want to say hi yeah if you see me running around the showroom floor like please just say like hey you know like I'd love to have a chat but thank you so much everybody wish you a wonderful rest of your week and we will catch you around the cloud native water core thanks everybody later