 We're at KubeCon CloudNativeCon. I am Katie Greenlee, and I'm super excited to be here with all of you today. Thank you for joining us. A few housekeeping items before we get started during this live stream, you will not be able to talk as an attendee, but there is a Q&A box at the bottom of your screen. Please feel free to drop your questions, and we'll get to as many as possible either at the end or throughout the live stream. This is an official live stream of the CNCF, and as such, you are subject to the CNCF Code of Conduct. Please do not add anything to the chat or questions that would be in violation of that Code of Conduct. Basically, just be respectful of your fellow participants and your presenters. Today's live stream will be a feature on KubeCon CloudNativeCon co-chairs. We're excited to have you here. We'll dive into what they're most excited to share with the community and their tips and trips for a successful KubeCon and CloudNativeCon. So I want to take a moment and welcome our guests, Aparna and Casper. And Nikita will be joining us here shortly, hopefully. So welcome, both of you. Thanks for joining me today. Thank you so much. Happy to be here. Great. Well, let's get started. What is your, how do you prepare yourself for a successful KubeCon when you're traveling either far or nearby? What do you kind of do to get yourself ready for that? Aparna, why don't you start us off? Great. Yeah. I mean, definitely plan all of your logistics ahead of time and all things event itself concerned. Plan your schedule ahead of time. There are like a lot of amazing talks this time. And there's often I find myself in the situation where I want to be in three places at the same time. So I think it really helps to build your schedule ahead of time and at the same time also build your social schedule because I'm sure all of us want to use this opportunity to meet with our network, meet with fellow maintainers, meet with our colleagues. I mean, these days I find myself meeting some of my colleagues only in KubeCons. So yeah, definitely build your both event schedule and social schedule ahead of time. Yeah, I totally agree. And also book your hotels and flights early, especially hotels, but I guess that's a little bit too late for Paris now. Actually, until tomorrow to book their hotel and then the room blocks closed. So good reminder on that one. Yeah, but otherwise, yeah, definitely go through the schedule and make sure that you have a fair amount of a good idea of what you want to, which sessions you want to join and why you have room to walk around freely and just interact with people. I usually do this when I have two or three talks for each slot. And then when I'm at the end of the previous session, I usually just have a look at the two sessions I chose and figure out is it time for me to go to that next session or is it time to actually go and walk around, meet some new people, go to the solution showcase and stuff like that. So yeah, so plan your schedule ahead is probably the best advice because there is a lot of talks and a lot of different rooms. Maybe also get familiar with the venue itself can be quite a big undertaking to understand the room layout on the first day. So maybe it's a good idea to figure out, yeah, what the rooms are and at least have an idea of that. So I think that's my advice for planning a little bit ahead for KubeCon. Yeah, those are great suggestions, especially with navigating the venue, right? These venues are rather large. And as much as we try to ensure that everything is kind of close to each other and an easy experience going from keynotes to sessions to a solution showcase, sometimes it doesn't always lend to be that way. So definitely getting to know how to navigate and planning accordingly with traffic and hallway traffic. We're sure to wear some good shoes as well because sometimes it can be a long walk. Yeah, exactly. Is there anything you do when you get on site, besides walking the venue, maybe when you first get into a new city or location, do you go check out new restaurants? Are you do take some time in your room and kind of get extra rest before the week? What kind of pre-KubeCon rituals do you have when you arrive? So I think my ritual is I usually arrive on Sunday and try to arrive at a good time during the afternoon, something like that, if possible. And then have the evening just relax a little bit, go out and get some nice dinner or something like that and just relax as much as possible because it's a fairly hectic week. So being prepared and being ready for that is, yeah. So I usually just go out just nearby, maybe at the restaurant or at the hotel, the restaurant or whatever. It doesn't really matter that much. Just get settled in and get ready for the week. I think that's my ritual usually. Yeah, what about you, Parna? Definitely get over my jet lag. But take it easy, get over my jet lag. And then the second thing is find the nearest coffee shop and find out what time they open because I am a coffee person and I need my morning coffee. And sometimes I've been in places where the coffee shop opens at 9 AM, which is an absolute deal breaker. That's too late. The nearest coffee shop. Yeah, smart. I like that. That's good planning for getting yourself ready in the mornings. When you're on site and we talked about building out your schedule, are there must attend experiences that you want to do? Are there some that you decide to skip? What does that look like for each of you? What? Thank you so much. Hi, Nikita. I just asked, Kasper and Parna, what their must attend experiences are at KubeCon. We're about to jump into that and which ones are the ones that you may tend to skip in order to manage your time a little bit better. Yeah, I can maybe take a stab at it. I absolutely want to go to all of the keynotes. If I were in attendee, I mean, of course, we are coaches, so we will be there. But yeah, I mean, putting myself in the shoe of an attendee. We have a terrific lineup of keynotes this time. So I definitely prioritize those things. And then as I suggested earlier, when building out the event schedule, there are certain talks that I'm like, OK, I'm really, really going to this one today. And then if I have to make time for some sort of social interaction, then there are a set of things that I'll be like, OK, I'm going to watch. Make sure I watch the recording of these sessions. The ones that I tend to skip are like if it's really late in the day. And as coaches, we have to be ready at 7 AM to follow those. So those are the ones I would tend to skip. But I try to make the best out of the entire week, even though at the end of the week, I'm sure all of us are super exhausted. But yeah, the goal is to make the best most of the time there. Yeah, I would definitely also say that I have beforehand selected a few must-see breakout sessions. So I will most likely go see them because they, yeah, either really appeal to my day-to-day job or whatever it might be, I'll just find it very interesting. So definitely have a couple of those for Paris as well. But also just attending the keynote is always a really special experience, being in the big room with all the people, getting all the latest news from the big stages is always really interesting. So I always prioritize going to keynotes as well. Yeah. Nikita, what about you? I don't know if Nikita's there. We'll give her a moment to jump in if she's able to. While we're kind of talking about the big stage and the keynotes are kind of your must-see for both of you, what are the themes you're most excited about that's coming out of this KubeCon for 2024 in the cloud native space? Yeah, so yeah, I can take a step in this. So yeah, Kubernetes is turning 10 this year. So that's definitely a really, really big theme that we now have been doing cloud native for a decade. There's a lot of interesting discussions coming out of that. I'm pretty sure. So I think that's going to be a really, really big topic and celebrating the 10-year anniversary. But also, of course, AI is on everybody's lips these days. So AI is definitely a hot topic. Also, if you just look over the keynotes, there's a lot of AI involved in those as well. But also, I guess, if AI from all aspects could be, how can we use AI? How can we make sure that Kubernetes is able to run these new type of workloads? It's the security perspective. It's the compliance perspective. It's all the different perspectives of AI. Also, how do we balance environmental sustainability with AI that require a lot of resources to run? So there's a lot of really interesting topics in that space as well. And then, of course, platform engineering is still a really, really hot topic. I think we see that platform engineering is also moving, at least the many of those thoughts that we applied. And we created a really nice experience for our developers. It's moving more also in the data science, data engineering field as well, so providing a real platform experience for our data scientists and data engineers is also a big topic this time around. Yeah, I think AI is definitely top of mind for a lot of people, like you said. And I know for me, Kubernetes turning 10 is definitely top of mind, apart of, is there any other ones that are kind of beyond what Casper talked about for you? Yeah. So I mean, security is still a very top of mind topic for people. In efficiency, sustainability, all of these themes like Casper said, WebAssembly is still a hot topic. And I mean, overall, I think ContribFest has been a very successful opportunity for people to actually come in and make their first contribution, like actually get the repo set up, talk to maintainers. So I definitely encourage going to ContribFest, the cloud native novice track, the cloud native experience track. So these are all opportunities where we want to make sure that first time attendees don't have enough opportunity to engage and sort of get their feet wet without feeling overwhelmed with all the stuff that happens in the event. So yeah. Yeah. I think you're right that these are definitely something that people are going to be excited to hear. Are each of those themes going to be talked about on the main stage? Are they kind of woven more throughout the primary sessions that people? What kind of things do you think they can expect overall when it comes to that main stage that we're looking at? Yeah. So the first day, so I mean, again, it's a four-day experience. The first day is like co-located events, right? And then for the main event, the day one is going to be the AI theme. Day two is going to be sustainability. And we've been using this platform. So how are we optimizing? How are we making it more efficient? And day three, we are going to kick off the celebration for 10 years of Kubernetes. That's exciting. Excited to see how each of those different days kind of set the tone for conversations that happened throughout the week. What would you say, in your opinions, going to be one of the biggest challenges the cloud native space is going to face for 2024 just based off of the different CFPs that came in this year and the different talks that were accepted, even just those overarching things. What do you think is going to be those major challenges that people are going to focus on for 2024? Yeah, I definitely think that AI is probably a theme here as well and how do companies figure out how to utilize this new technology and implement it and use it in whatever business they're using or driving. I think AI is going to be a really, really big conversation point and figuring out how can we use that? How can we support that as a community? How can we make sure that it's compliant, that we are not doing something that's really bad, really leaking information or whatever it might be? So I really think that figuring out what to do with this thing we call AI is going to be a big challenge for a lot of companies this year. Yeah, and I think that sustainability efficiency optimization is going to be an ongoing theme this year, given that we've been operating and using Kubernetes and all things cloud native for like almost most early adopters at this point, like six to seven years plus easily, there are a lot of mature adoption of the platform and people are really struggling with like, okay, how do I operate this thing efficiently and how do I make the most out of the existing investments that we have? And from multiple angles, like from a bottom line cost angle, from a sustainability angle, there are regulations and carbon neutrality commitments that companies have made and governments required it. So these challenges are definitely going to be double defined for companies this year. I agree with both of you on that. I definitely am curious to see where AI takes us for 2024 and into the future. It's been interesting to play around right with all the different tooling that's coming out of AI. I love it because it's a nice like little laugh here and there, but I think that there's a larger conversation in how it works within the different projects that we have and then how do we provide standards around people utilizing it, right? That's another really big portion of it. And then sustainability is just such a hot topic between ensuring that you're running your platform at top optimization is always a big thing, but I also just think overall people are starting to really think about in terms of how they make this lasting effect and how they continue to move it forward. You know, move it forward. It's definitely, those are the two that I see a lot of people talking about. What sessions are you planning on attending? Not, you don't have to give them all away. We don't, I don't want everything to go and just flood the sessions you're going to, but maybe what's your top two sessions that you're excited to go to outside of the keynote? Yeah, I can start. So I really look forward to Kubernetes maintainers read mean comments. I think that's going to be a really, really interesting session, probably a fun experience. And in sort of the same category around like a fun session, I think the cube DDR, a dance of, I think it's called predictive scoring with ML Ops. It's the dance dance revolution. They will use that as a demo. So I really look forward to see what that is about and how ML and AI can be used in that session. So I think that's my two must see sessions that I think also will be quite a fun experience. Yeah. For myself as an end user, I'm definitely interested in more of the nuts and bolts sessions. There's one called as can HPA be better, which is the horizontal part of the scaler. And there's a session where they're going to be presenting war stories of like operating Kubernetes at scale. It's by two Google engineers. And so yeah, those are the sessions that I'm really looking forward to. And there's a great lineup of keynotes. And I'm also looking forward to the TOC keynote, where they're going to lay out the vision for like the next 10 years of Kubernetes. And I'm like super excited to watch that. Yeah. I think all those sessions sound great. I'm excited to hear what the TOC has to say as well, Aparna, and what they kind of envision for that next 10 years and how the landscape really has changed, right? You think about 10 years ago, Kubernetes kind of came out and no one was really thinking about cloud native. And even when it first started, it wasn't like, oh, what's the possibility of growth within this? It was kind of like, oh, this is what we have. And now here we are, I think 180 plus projects that are all contributing and making this really cool space for everyone that overlaps and it's kind of cool to see the different ways that people work with each other. So I'm excited to see what they envision for that longevity. And I'm with you, Casper. I'm all about those mean tweets. I'm excited to hear people read them. I think it's gonna be really funny. I think it helps to bring a lighter side to the community that just reminds people that although we're doing serious work, it's okay to laugh about it. It's okay to look back and remember that, oh, yeah, that was, it felt like a big deal, but now it's kind of not. Exactly. So those are the things that I'm excited about. And then are either of you gonna take advantage of getting to see anything cool when you're in Paris or are you gonna slip away and see the Eiffel Tower at night? Maybe have a nice warm bag at it in the morning. What is your plan for Paris outside of KubeCon? And if you don't have any, that's fine too. Yeah, I get in a couple of days earlier. So I get in there Saturday, the week before the event. So a few days before the event actually. So yeah, so I'll have some time to look at all the, the top attractions and I definitely want to try out the local cafes and the markets and yeah, experience the culture of Paris. Yeah, I was lucky enough to be in Paris with my wife last year. So I had a weekend there with her. So we got around to see a lot of the top attractions, but walking around, seeing the Eiffel Tower and go to Montmartre and see the church and with a nice viewpoint over the city. So this time I really booked it to be in on Sunday and then out again on Friday. So I don't have much time for sightseeing, maybe a little bit Monday. We didn't get to see the catacombs under the city. So maybe that would be an excursion to visit that experience, but other than that, I don't think I will have much time to do that. I hope to put on my running shoes a little bit and maybe just run around the neighborhood a little bit, getting some experience from that as well, but other than that now, not that much sightseeing for me. I'm with you on that one. I get in pretty much the same day, Sunday or actually Monday and then I fly out on that following Saturday, but I do plan on pushing myself because I will be jet lagged just like you, Aparna. So I'm gonna push myself on Monday to go check out Versailles. So hopefully I'm not too tired while I do that and hopefully other people in the community get to enjoy Paris, but we're so excited. Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today and sharing your insights, your tips and tricks, what you're excited to go see and excited for coupon and we're excited to see both of you in Paris. Thank you. Thank you so much for the opportunity. Yeah, thanks. See you in Paris.