 From the CUBE studios in Palo Alto in Boston connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation Hi, I'm Stu Miniman and welcome to this CUBE conversation I'm coming to you from our Boston area studio and happy to welcome to the program someone We've known for many years, but a first time on the program Priyanka Sharma. Thank you so much for joining us Hi Stu. Thank you so much for having me. All right, and Priyanka Let's not bury the lead or anything. The reason we're talking to you is the news You've got a new job, but in an area that you know really well So we've known you through the the cloud native communities for a number of years. We see you at the shows We see you online So happy to you know share with our community. You are now the general manager of the CNCF So congratulations so much on on the job Thank you so much I am so honored to have this opportunity and I can't wait to work even more closely with the cloud native community Then I have already. I mean as you said, I've been involved for a long time I actually just saw in my LinkedIn today that 2016 was when my You know Conversation with within the CNCF started I was then working on the open tracing project, which was the third project to join the foundation And like CNCF had started like in 2015. So it was all very new. We were we were in conversations and It was just such an exciting time and that that just kept getting bigger and bigger And then the git lab I serve on served on I actually still serve until the 31st on the board So and now this so I'm very very excited. Yeah, well, right So you were board member of the CNCF but Priyanka if you go back even further we look at you know How does CNCF start? It was all around Kubernetes. Where did Kubernetes come from? It came from Google and when I dug back far enough into your CV I found Google on there too. So maybe just give us a little bit of your career arc And you know what you're involved with for people that don't know you from all these communities and events Sure, absolutely. So my career started at Google in Mountain view and I was on the business side of things. I worked with AdSense products And around around that same time. I had a bit of the entrepreneurial bite So the bug bit me and I I first joined a startup that was acquired by GoDaddy later on and then I went off on my own and That that was a very interesting Time for me because that was when I truly learned about the power of open source One of the products that me and my co-founder were building was an open source time tracker and I just saw the momentum on these Communities and that's when the dev tools love started I started get and then I got involved with the heavy bit industries Which is an open source which is an accelerator for dev tools there I met so many companies that were either in the cloud space or just general other kinds of dev tools advised a few ended up joining light step which where the founders they Them and a few community members were the creators of the open tracing standard got heavily heavily involved in that project Jumped into cloud native with that Was a project, you know contributor organizer educator Documentarian all kinds of things right for two plus years and then get lab with the board membership And that's how I saw actually the governance side, you know until then it had all been the community the education that Aspect and then I understood how Chris and Dan had built this amazing foundation That's done so much from the governance perspective So it's been a long journey and it all feels that it's been coming towards in this awesome new direction Well, yeah, congratulations to you and right CNCF, you know in their press release I see you know Dan talked about, you know, you've been you know speaker you've been a you know governing board member You've participated in this and you're gonna help with that next phase and you teased out a little bit There's a lot of constituencies in the CNCF. There's a large, you know user participation We always love talking at kubecon about the people not only just using the technology but contributing back the role of open source The large vendor ecosystem Is a lot there so, you know, give us your thought as to kind of where the CNCF is today? And where you know, it needs to continue in and go in the future Absolutely, so in my opinion the CNCF is is a breakout organization I mean, we're approaching 600 members of which 142 are end users. So with that number the CNCF is actually the largest and has the largest end-user community in of all open source foundations, so Tremendous progress has been made especially from those days back in 2016 when we were the third project being considered so Leaps and bounds is so impressive and I think you know And if you think about like what's the end-user storyline right now? So the CNCF did a survey last year and so 84% of the people surveyed were using containers in production and 78% were using Kubernetes in production Amazing numbers, especially since both are up by about 15-20% year over year So this move towards DevOps towards cloud native towards Kubernetes is happening and happening really strong The project has truly established itself. Kubernetes has won in my opinion And that's really good. I think now when it comes to the second wave, it is my perspective that the end-user communities and the You know the just the momentum that we have right now. We need to build and grow it We need deeper developer engagement because if you think about it There's not just one graduated project in CNCF. There are 10 so Kubernetes being one of them But there's for me because there's on why Yeager etc etc So we have amazing technologies that are all gaining Adoption being graduated means that they have fast security audits. They have diverse contributors They have, you know, safe good governance So you as an end user you can feel very secure adopting them And so we have so much to do to expand on the knowledge of those projects We have so much to make software just better every day So that's my one one vector in my opinion the second up vector. I would say it has been more opportunistic As you know, we are all living in a very unprecedented time with a global pandemic Many of us are sheltering in place. Many are generally life is changed And what you are in media, you know this much better than me I'm sure that the number of the amount of digital consumption has just skyrocketed people are reading that many more articles people are I'm watching that many more memes and jokes online, right? and what that means is that More and more companies are reaching that crazy web scale that started this whole cloud native and DevOps space in the first time first place With you know, Google and Netflix being D2C companies just building out what eventually became cloud native SRE that kind of stuff So in general online consumption is higher So more and more companies need to be cloud native to support that kind of traffic Secondly even for folks that are not creating content Just a lot of the workflows have to more move online more people will do online banking more people will do e-commerce It's just that the shift is happening and for that We as the foundation need to be ready to support the end users with Education enablement certifications training programs just to get them across that chasm into a new even more online focused reality, you know, and I guess it put Bianca that tease up One of the ways that most people are familiar with the CNCF is through the the event So cube con and cloud native con really the signature event It's been tremendous growth over the last few years You actually had involvement in a in a virtual event the cloud native summit recently For a cube con the European show is announced virtual We know that there's still some uncertainty when it comes to the North America show Supposed to be in my backyard here in Boston. So we'd love for it to happen If it happens if not, you know, we'll be there, you know, virtually or not Give us a little bit your experience with the cloud native summit and you know, what's what you're thinking today We understand as you said a lot of uncertainty as to what goes on it Absolutely, even when physical events come back in the future. We expect this hybrid model to be with us for a long time. I Definitely hear that Completely agree that everything is uncertain and things have changed very rapidly for our world Particularly when it comes to events, we are lucky at the CNCF to be working with the LF events team which is just best in class and we are working very hard every day then doing a lot of the Lancaster of the work of Building this I mean the best experience we can for cloud club con cloud native con you which as you said meant virtual I'm really looking forward to it because what I learned from the cloud native summit online was Which was the event you said that you mentioned that I had hosted in April Is that people are hungry to just engage to see each other were to communicate? However, they can in this current time today. I don't think the technologies at a point where physical events Can be overshadowed by Virtual so there's still something very special about you know seeing someone face-to-face having a coffee and having at that You know banter conversations, but at the same time there are some benefits to online So as an example with the cloud native summit, I Really it was just me and a few community folks who were sad. We didn't get to go to Amsterdam So we're like, let's just get together in a group, you know have some fun talk to some maintainers that kind of thing I expected a few hundred max Thousands of people showed up and that was just mind-blowing because I was like wait what? But it was so awesome because not only were there a lot of people there were people from just about every part of the globe That so normally you have you know, you ask you're up that kind of focus or sometimes there's the Asia pack events That cater to that but here in that one event very big by the way, we were talking to each other in real time There were folks from Asia pack there were folks from America's you you also the African continent So geo geo meant nothing anymore and that was very awesome People from these different parts of the world. We're talking engaging learning all at the same time And I think with over 20,000 people expected at poop con you but it being virtual We'll see something similar and I think that's a big opportunity for us going forward Yeah, no absolutely it there's some new opportunities some new challenges I think back to you know way back in January I got to attend the GitLab event and you look at GitLab, you know a fully You know remote company but talking about the benefits of still getting together and doing things online I think of the developer communities. They're used to working remote and working across different time zones But there is that that need to be able to get together and collaborate And so we've got some opportunities. We've got some challenges and when do remote so I guess yeah, Priyanka I'll give you the final word, you know things you want to look forward to things We should be expecting from from you and the CNCF team going forward I guess I you know, I'll mention fraud and so I guess, you know Dan con staying part of Linux Foundation doing some health care things will still stay a little involved and You know Chris Anisek who's the CTO still the CTO. I just saw him did a great panel for Docker con with Kelsey Hightower, Michelle Nerali and Sean Connolly, you know all people we know that you know often they're speaking at Kubecon too So, you know many of the faces staying the same not a I'm not expecting a big change But what should we expect going forward? That's absolutely correct. You know big changes my first big priority as I join is I mean As you know coming with the community background with all this You know work that we have put into education and learning from each other My number bug goal is going to be to listen and learn for in a very diverse set of You know personas that are part of this whole community. I mean, there's the board There is the to the technical oversight committee. There is the project maintainers. There's the contributors They're the end users potential developers who could be contributors. There's just so many different types of people All united in our interest in desire to learn more about cloud native So my number one priority is going to listen and learn and as I get more and more up to speed I'm very lucky that Chris Anistek who has built this with Dan is staying on and is going to be Advising me guiding me and working with me Dan as well is actually going to be around to help advise me and also work on some key initiatives in addition to his You know big new thing with public health in the Linux foundation. You never expect anything the average with Dan So it's going to be amazing He's done so much for this foundation and brought it to this point which in my mind I mean, it's it's to bend us the amount of work that's happened. It's so cool So I'm really looking forward to building on this amazing foundation by created by Dan and Chris under Jim I think that what they have done by not only providing a neutral IP zone where people can contribute and use Projects safely. They've also created an ecosystem where there is, you know, events. There's educational activities Projects can get documentation support PR support It's it's a very holistic view and that's something in my opinion new at least in the way It's done. So I just want to build upon that and I think the end user community will keep growing They'll keep educating will keep working together and this is a team effort that we are all in together Well, Priyanka Congratulations again, we know your community background and you know strong community at the CNCF Looking forward to seeing that both in the virtual events in the near term and you know back when we have physical events again In the future. So thanks so much for joining us Thank you for having me All right, be sure to check out the cube net you'll see all the previous events We've done with the CNCF as well as as mentioned We will be helping keep cloud native connected at kubecon cloud native con Europe the virtual event in August as well as The North American event later in the year. I'm Stu Miniman and thank you for watching the cube