 Hey Taylor, you know thanks so much for joining us in our little scenic tour of Amsterdam in our fancy Audi Why don't you know introduce yourself tell us a little bit about who you are? Yeah, so my name is Taylor dole is all I'm the head of eco system at the cloud native computing foundation, and yeah It's been fun to run this very small little conference here. Yeah, right Yeah, I mean, it's you know you and 12,000 your closest friends. Yeah, it's a birthday party Yeah, I can't imagine that would be that would be a very large So, okay, so what I always have to ask is kind of like all right. What what is the ecosystem mean? Yeah, yeah, so the so our ecosystem It's there's so much to focus on within the cloud native community. Honestly, there's that either they're they're the projects They're the people the working groups the tags so many different things I'm mostly focused on the end users our end user members the people that are pulling down cloud native technologies and using them To power their business in their platform. They're not taking it and reselling it They're not consultancies. They're folks like Mercedes Audi Airbnb Reddit and they're actually using that to leverage their business make it up level And and so what's been you know, so I think you said you've doing this about a year or something What's what's been the kind of most pronounced? I mean, you know customers are lovely and everything But it's it's one of the things that comes up a lot for us with Kubernetes It's kind of like it's a kind of a change in thinking a change in style How have you seen that move or how's that been, you know in your experience? It's been really interesting honestly with so folks that the whole argument for open source has been one for many years Yeah, that's very that's the most exciting thing that have people aligned in that vision and now it's about Level setting around. Okay. I've achieved Kubernetes. It's like no, no, no, not the finish line Yeah, you've said there's so much more And that's that's what's most fun is hearing what workflows people are adopting seeing where contributions are going now too because there was seeing seeing the Focus on Kubernetes. So it's stable. There's not as much need to come in and develop out things And so you see those contributions go down a bit, but that's a good thing It's that tapering off. It's that hardening and so with that happening people are focusing on Argo open geometry backstage these other areas that need, you know, attention focus and code contributions and discussion Right. Um, yeah, it's funny. Why do you say, you know, kind of open source is kind of one? I mean, because uh, you know, I Well, we well, I we were doing it. I was doing an interview with somebody else You know who kind of grew up in tech kind of the same way I did and where we both are like just blown away by like, um You know, like we both remember when when open source was like banned in most of the organizations we worked with Like it was not okay to be using it. Uh, and it's like just so different now. It's just crazy Um, but uh, yeah, it's uh, it's kind of interesting. I do I do wonder how much of that checking of the box you know for kubernetes Is kind of a you know happens a lot I imagine And that's been it seems like kind of your experience Um, is there anything else that you've found has been particularly, you know, kind of Like that, you know or anything else that you know has really I don't know made you look look forward to the future. Like what are you looking for next? Yeah, so with with with what's next I think that Looking at edge computing internal development platforms That's what a lot of the discussions are about future states right now And then one that is still kind of a stumbling block for some organizations and I've dealt with that in in past roles is How to how to approach the the conversation of business value So that because a lot of engineers and and engineering teams Also get it. They understand the why behind kubernetes and cloud native and how to work with many of these technologies But when it comes to Advocating for it and pitching that within their internal corporations Organizations it can be difficult because You might have executives are like, oh, we did this 15 years ago. It was a it just went so poorly And so there's still that like A little bit of that Historical context that needs to be broken or like no no no it's different now for real. Here's why here's what it is You know, we could run much more than wordpress on it. Uh, just all those conversations. Yeah, we um Yeah, there's a there's some of that legacy from kind of that service oriented architecture days of the you know, when You know, everything was top down, right? And and I think one of the things is that You know kubernetes is kind of like on the fence in the sense like If you get into containers You know, that's very kind of bottom up, right? But then eventually if you use containers enough you start to notice that oh my god I cannot manage all these things and so you need something like kubernetes But kubernetes you can you can kind of do in small bits, right and then keep adding to it And is that how you've seen the growth happen or or are you mostly seeing kind of a an all-in commitment from like an organization at first? That's what's been That's that's a great question. There's there's been that want for some organizations to have the entire playbook ready And that's just that doesn't you know, you can do that. It just takes a lot longer Yeah, I was a old friend of mine python maintainer like you used to tell the story about an organization He was at where he like they did that they did the whole top-down thing and it worked and I was like really Do tell yeah exactly But yeah, so he all these war stories about you know, kind of doing this at the full like the right way You know and and I was just so blown away about how it actually like he actually they pulled it off. I was like, okay Um, yeah, because it's so unusual right normally we did waterfall to plants using agile Yeah, so I'm I'm always super impressed if somebody can actually pull that off. Um, but I would say it's it's definitely uncommon Um, so that's been but so you're kind of seeing like the pieces come in and and people getting Participant and then like it essentially adoption over time. Exactly. Yeah that it's really just starting small and then iterating up to Transformer change those workflows. Yeah. Yeah, and do you have any specific war stories about that? I'm trying to think I'm I'm certain I do Uh from personal experience when I was at disney studios that was I saw a lot of woes on that front And that was a lot of our internal transformation there while I worked there Um, we had you know over hundreds of applications And so it was we well we deploy things a little bit differently here on every single team Oh, yeah, it was like the untenable. Yeah Uh a team of five systems engineers, which we were right when I got there So we had aligned pretty early on we want to simplify this we want to use kubernetes And that became our common language to work with teams and share concepts And there was a lot of reluctance at first as any change, but it was nice to really align with those folks And uh at the end of it after all the struggles had been gone through they're like, hey, this actually works really well Yeah, no, we work like make a hard It wasn't intentionally painful. Yeah. Yeah, that's just what good learning feels like Yeah, one of the things uh, so, you know, I think we mentioned, you know I've definitely mentioned on the show before but like I teach at boston university And uh, one of the things that we do periodically as part of one of the programs i'm involved in Is these kind of ideation sessions and one of the things that I think is so fascinating about cloud native is You know, they kind of walk into the room with their idea and and you know We kind of have a few different perspectives and so like i'm usually there for like the tech perspective And you know With cloud native one of the things that I think a lot of the students have a really hard time wrapping their head around It's like, you know No, no, no, you want to write as little code as humanly possible, right? We want we want to, you know Actually kind of capture all the other code that's all over the internet, you know Either as apis or things like kubernetes or whatever so that you're writing this little shim that's like pulling it all together Um, and especially for like an mvp if you want to do a startup Um, you know, how was your experience with uh, some of that in you know, like places like disney or with some of the people You've been talking to is that a interest or an easy concept or a common concept or is it more A lot of people doing big iron development and then uh, you know and not realizing how much easier it could be Definitely the ladder. I think that it's the it's it is those light bulb moments And that's that's truly what I live for to see that spark like oh, you know What's you're able to share that idea and and kind of like have that buy-in with someone the it's I think as it as it pertains to writing less code and figuring out the right pieces to put together A lot of that has been figuring out the right way to shift left because I used to shift left all the time when I was younger I would just I'd be told to clean my room and I'd push everything into the closet Good choice. Good choice. So there's there's you can get to a point where it's too too much too far But that's of the delicate balance the teams are figuring out now and okay Do we have a platform team? Do we have a systems team? What makes sense? And how do we the proper abstractions? Is that's the most difficult thing? That's the art piece that's the creative and slam poetry part Putting together a team. Yeah, uh, I I think there's a isn't that that's a common meme for people to refer to development as slam poetry That's my fetch, right, right the the kind of related question I was just thinking about was um You know The other problem with that kind of model, right is like knowing kind of who to bet on and it's even kind of harder in kind of the open source world Where it's like, you know, will this technology be you know A thing in a year, right? And so how do you Talk to you know people in the kind of ecosystem about making those decisions or you know identifying good good bets basically Another great question. It's uh, so if you have you need a lottery ticket. Yeah It's it's it's really difficult and that's one thing that this I like that the cncf has done is kind of bucket projects within different levels of maturity So we have sandbox incubating and graduated graduated is an incredibly safe bet It's been adopted by multiple industries You you've you've crossed the finish line and then some as you start to take a look at incubating projects You know, there are some sandbox projects that are In a good state, but they just haven't been used widely They might be really code complete or coming from a really good engineering place or have a great developer experience But I think that's that's the distinction that is always difficult to make um But really what i'm seeing is that it's uh as as a foundation, we don't pick We don't pick winners. We're not king makers And that's been an interesting thing to take a look at and balance too because when I was at end user organizations That's what I wanted. I wanted the recommended architecture. Like please just give me the guide I'm interested in how I put all these things together. Yeah, and that's that's exactly a thing that we don't provide but We and and I get why but now being being inside the organization, but Now it's about elevating folks and their stories what they're doing what they're putting together So working with people to share the community guide of what they found worked for them and then pair that with a workflow So that's Some upcoming content that we're making on that front and refurbishing our end user radar That's those are the kind of moves that we're making to help be a better coach within the community And shed more insight on all of the ways in which people are accomplishing their workflows and workloads Is there um, I mean kind of related to that and I I don't think this exists, but uh, I'll ask the question. Anyway, um Is there any you know ideas around, um, you know Levels of maturity of maybe consulting organizations that you can recommend who can recommend or give you recommendations Is there any, uh thought around, you know I don't know at least kind of giving a list of of organizations that you might want to go talk to We do we do have some uh members of the organization that our consultant sees and okay. Yeah, that's yeah We just had some that joined but I think that's that's a good starting guide and and really the only one that we have Right now that that's uh easy to quantify. Though it's I like that idea I think that's something that has has I've heard that idea a few times and just hey could be you know, it was it was my idea Yeah, it's like I'm gonna cite you. I'm gonna cite you But uh, yeah, I'm excited. Yeah, that's good But yeah, it's I think that's because consultancies are working so much with these technologies It would be a shame to not hear how they're able to put things together if they've been able to figure out a pattern that works Right, right. Um, yeah, it's one of those things like, you know, I was in consulting for a long time And one of the things especially in those days when open source had most definitely not one Um was is like it was so difficult to share Anything um with you know, except within one, you know client, right? You know, they every client really wanted everything that you were involved with to be this completely locked down and You know IP protected and stuff and I understand why that was their default choice But I don't I definitely didn't agree with it Like there was so many there were so many ways that we could have uh found uh to do some sharing without You know violating their privacy at all, right? Um, and so I've still found that kind of difficult and depressing But you know, it's kind of That's why I was thinking about maybe, you know, is there a way you can kind of move that outside of the private, you know enterprise With with that, I think that we're seeing some being in a vendor neutral space and just everybody being aligned on cloud Native is the end objective We are seeing things like we have a marketing subcommittee and So there are a whole bunch of folks that are marketing products from different companies in some cases competing companies But they're sharing best practices on how to market to folks what to get involved in So you have these things where people, you know, kind of be going head to head with each other But they're like no we we get it and then you have these cool mashups and it's not like the you know Musical battles between artists kind of, you know, it's a more class So I definitely want to see that and I think the same thing is capable Possible when it comes to consultancies and figuring out a base because they'll all benefit from that, right? It's you want to spend the time figuring out the the basement floor when y'all can work on it together It's like it's it's a win-win for everybody. So I just wanted to know that now I see the next like I don't know if you ever worked with like local or like state government or whatever But you know, you have this rfp process and there's always an rfp Like meeting I can't remember what they used to call it But basically where you can kind of go and ask questions before you actually like give your response to the proposal And so now what I'm envisioning is that meeting is actually taking place in an underground bar and they're doing it with slam poetry So that is now stuck in my head as how all consultants, you know find out about whether or not they should be on a project I just I can't wait to see your biopic and that'd be the story. Yeah, exactly. Exactly So bringing it back to, you know, Amsterdam What are you most excited about or what has already happened at kubecon? That you were, you know, really looking forward to or it still hasn't happened yet So what still hasn't happened yet is I I've seen a couple of tulips, but definitely, you know Definitely going to be spending some time here afterwards. So really excited to check that out. That's cool It's I heard about the bikes and the bicycles, but I had it is for reals, right? Overwhelms. Yeah Well, the only other times I've really been in Amsterdam I was mostly like more towards the center where it's definitely not as pronounced I don't think I think it's because, you know, out here, they're, uh, you know A lot more people are going to work on their bike, you know And the even even for the bikes the city streets downtown are too small, right? But yeah, it's been pretty impressive. Do you are you a biker at home? Yeah, yeah, so it's a live in Los Angeles. So don't bike as much as I want to, honestly But um done rag bry bike to cross to Iowa. Oh, wow. So it's yeah, absolutely love biking when I get the chance to do so But uh, probably do some of that here and then yeah, it's on I think on Friday I'm gonna check out one of the boats and just like take a little tour on the city. So it should be beautiful. Yeah Um, yeah, I can't remember what I was here for last time I do know that so Amsterdam tends to have weather and also be a place that is a layover spot. So, uh, A colleague of mine and you know friend of mine He and I got stuck here for like three days And uh, I was like in the grand scheme of things. I one of the better places to get stuck. Oh my god. It was great Yeah, so we we actually had a really good time. Yeah, yeah, exactly Well, and and you're you're on an airlines expense account, right? Rather than having to like, you know fight it with the the company back home So that's that was pretty cool. Um So, uh, so definitely tulips the bikes have been impressive. Was there anything specifically about kubicon that you know, uh, You think it sounds really interesting or cool or whatever. I've loved what I've been hearing about the web assembly Community and and components within web assembly just seeing it kind of like get further and further along as it as it comes to Just Folks being able to work with that technology There's been a lot of like whisperings about oh, is that the next kubernetes and at the end of the day It's you know a different way to write to do kubernetes. We've we've been chasing that for a long time To the right once run anywhere, of course, but yeah, um, we're right once to bug everywhere It's like we're we're gonna find it. We're gonna find it. We're gonna find the one true ring Yeah, um as long as golem's not involved It's like we try to keep him out of our community Exactly. Yeah, we've ways to deal with that But if you don't mind a slightly offensive terminology, you should look up an old donnie burkholz talk about, uh, how basically the He he actually did like some data science around like here is our community before Then here's our community after we got rid of this troll Um, uh, who was a very strong contributor. Yeah, I shouldn't say troll Let's say like, you know somebody who who was not the most, uh, pleasant person to be around And yet Was a big contributor. And so it was like a loss, right? Um, but yeah, so let's not let golem into the The or if possible But yeah, it's that's that's been wonderful to see I've really been excited about that and then always the hallway track. It's just my favorite When when I've come to kubekans in the past as as an attendee that was always something I was you know worried about was I'd go to the talks and it was kind of expected that you'd come Back with a write-up talk about the talks and everything that you learned in them And so that was at san diego is my first in-person kube con I ended up skipping many of the talks and just going and chatting with folks within the community that I was working with It was so much more beneficial. Just that networking aspect has been when it is always one of my favorite things here Yeah, just I you know, I don't live next door to you So it's great to see you're in the same city as you right So I I was like well, actually there's um, there's somebody who's pretty Strongly mostly and I guess the more the linux community but open source in general Deb Nicholson who oci? I think uh, where's where she was at? Um, but uh, she uh, she and I actually live I don't know like two miles from each other And almost never see each other There at all, but we used to see each other all the time at conferences Which is really very amusing But I did want to explain real quickly because I think it's surprising how few people know what the hallway track is And so, you know a hallway track basically means like the walking around between the sessions and talking to people in the hallway And uh, it's it's really one of the things that we do with uh, I run a much smaller conference called devconf us In boston every year, um, but we offer uh, what we do is attendee training Or as well as like speaker coaching or whatever or attendee coaching or whatever you want to call it. Um, and uh, so we actually Anybody who kind of signs up we kind of have them show up in advance, uh, you know to the equivalent of a zoom call and uh, And you know talk through okay, this is the kind of stuff you should do before you even get to the conference And then at the conference, there's like a couple of opportunities where they can kind of Meet together and then so you have a little bit of a posse as well, which is kind of nice and then, um Also, you have like a coach who kind of drops in and is like hey, if you've done, you know These five things this is you know and explain things like here's what the hallway track is because they the point of the conference Is actually to be like a first conference for Either a speaker which was what its original intent was but what we found was that it's also kind of let's try to make it A first conference for an attendee as well Um, so yeah, I think it's I think it's a cool idea, but that's why I wanted to explain hallway track That's that's really cool I would like that concept of being able to educate folks on how to experience the conference as an attendee because you're right It's not I feel like I've been there's so many I've been to you ever like you're trying to acclimate and it's just like no You can make it just like code you can make a framework Well, what's funny is that um I'm I think I've been going to conferences now like too long or something because I basically only go to the hallway track Like I you know, I almost never get an opportunity to actually see a talk or like Eventually this is what's funny about friday is that I'm kind of half thinking about going to see the tulips on friday morning Because I won't be here long enough to get really another opportunity But friday is the day where I'll actually be able to have everything will have slowed down enough Where I could actually go and sit in some talks, you know and and actually pay attention for a few minutes Uh, so it's kind of like this tough balance because periodically I I like just hearing about tech because I'm a nerd, you know But yeah, I did want to also ask you um because it's funny how much this has been coming up But maybe we'll get back to uh, wasm after that because um, I really like wasm But before that, uh, we keep having I keep having in the interviews I've been doing for both in the car, but also on the show backstage just keeps coming up Um, and I was just kind of curious like You know any any theories as to why, you know Do you think it's really like fulfilling a need or like what's your experience with it been? You know, I feel like you get the 500 fit view on all these, uh technologies So i'm just kind of curious we're thinking about adopting it with the program we do for because basically we kind of run a very, um, junior consultancy with the worst turnover of basically 300 people every semester So it would be really nice for the continuity of projects So to do something like backstage so I'm just kind of I've been kind of gathering more information about it because it sounds really really cool Yeah, so it's it really has been coming up quite a bit and it's the I feel like it's it's the one of the only CNCF projects It's really filling that space as it pertains to internal development platforms and it's also I feel like it's coming up quite a bit too because Everybody does have an opinion on how to be able to Implement that or write a plugin for it and share knowledge or your endpoints your documentation. It's not always straightforward It's never straightforward So that's something that is helping make make that easier for for folks So I think that's definitely I've I've been hearing the same thing with that coming up because Even like you said, you know as it pertains to conferences and level setting and trying to figure out how to best experience things Backstage is really helpful for getting folks running much more quickly Oh, interesting. So like you're using it to like actually manage the conference? No, no, that's what I'm saying. That would be fantastic. Oh, yeah, right. If somebody's writing a plugin, please Yeah, how to experience kubecon. Yeah, yeah, I was like, oh that'd be a pretty slick. It's like, yeah, I've seen that I'm gonna work on my CFP That's that's kind of gone hand in hand with Seeing some more focus on cloud development environments as well and things like code spaces within github There's people like how do we get contributions with less friction and also make it easier for maintainers? There's there's no shortage of good ideas on how to things that we can add to projects or ways to get like a You know competency score or a maturity score for a project Whereas it out has to do in tests contributions, etc But that puts a ton of weight on maintainers, right? And so things like backstage and some other projects You know being able to figure out how to make everything work together is quite helpful. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah for us it's the the continuity You know across teams and and also Is basically what we have is like, you know, when you you think about like, you know, contributor guides on an open source project You know, we basically have we have to have an awesome one basically every semester and because the projects are often You know, some you know, sometimes multi-semester sometimes multi-year And you know kind of being able to get the team back to the place where the last team left off As quickly as possible is really difficult But they also are the projects are different enough that um, you you can't just uniformly say, okay It'll be react with you know post-grass or whatever You know, sometimes they're on github, but some you know, some organizations They have private repos or they're using, you know, something else altogether You know, so we have enough variability that we can't just have some stock You know Model which is unfortunate Cool, uh, so Yeah, I don't know if we have time to really talk about wasm. I will say You know, it sounds like you're kind of in the same boat where it's like Wasm it sounds really fascinating. I think it's really You know, if you're not looking at it already, uh, you should be Because it's gotta it's got a lot of promise that and so many orgs are using it I've been like wowed with what adobe's been working on on that front Yeah, definitely not enough time to jump into ai and all that front stuff too, but yeah Just really I think that's that's been the some of the biggest points of fascination here at the conference to s bombs And yeah s bombs edge computing idp all all of these things it's been It's I feel like in the past two It's been like you've heard the thread of at least one like very prominent topic But now we're starting to splinter and yeah getting some like some really good contenders Well, I think yeah wasm in particular is one of those things where it's um Like if you just kind of see it in passing, I don't think people really connect on its power And so I think as people are starting to be like Oh I see now, you know, it's really gonna just kind of you know, just go straight vertical It's it's even the the transformative thing being Able to up level older workflows like Things running in for train or cobalt actual stories like oh, yeah We can use wasm and then run that on an airplane now and that's what we need And so kind of encapsulating some of the older things are integrating with older enterprise Right entities that are ready for a rewrite per se. Exactly that at least get is the shim to then help them get to the next step Which right nobody wants to write that code ultimately. They're like, okay But that's what's going to truly transform it too. And then I'll then we get to all work on the fun stuff. Yeah. Yeah, we have to do our tours Exactly. Um, yeah, I'm still holding my breath. Uh, yeah, so I hear you. Well, uh, thank you so much for the time. We really appreciate it. Uh, and uh, you know, we'll See you around the conference. Uh, and hopefully you have enjoyed your lovely ride around Amsterdam and this fancy Audi This is great to know. Thank you so much for having me. Yeah. Yeah, I think it's a lot of fun I think we're gonna keep doing my tour in Chicago too. So, uh, you know, why not, right? Um, grab some pizza. I won't. Yeah If I get invited back, I won't bring it in the car Exactly. There will be a no pizza rule In the vehicle. I'm pretty sure that will be a mandate from