 Yeah. Hey, welcome back to Los Angeles. TheCube is live here at KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2021. We're so excited to be here in person. Lisa Martin with Dave Nicholson, and we are here with Priyanka Sharma, the executive director of CNC. Yeah, Priyanka, welcome to the program. Thank you so much for having me. First of all, congratulations on doing an event in person in such a safe, clean way. I was really impressed when I walked in this morning and was asked for my vaccination record, my temperature was scanned. You're proving you can do these events safely. This is rocket science. So agreed. And I'm so glad you appreciate all the measures we've put in place because this is how we can do it. In-person interaction is essential for us as human beings, for us as professionals. And so we owe it to each other to just do the right thing. Have a vaccine requirement, wear your masks, have these what I call the traffic light system, where if you have a green band, it means people can come a little closer, it's okay. Red means please at least six feet of distance. And these things go a long way in making an event successful in times like this. They do, I love that when I saw that. Mine keeps falling off, I'm cold. So it keeps falling, I'm green. Just so you know I'm green. Yes, I know you're green. What about you? I'm green here. Can I have yours? You can borrow it for a second. What a guy. That's my favorite. And you know, you- I fell off again. I had the three folks that came up who were like co-chairs. Co-chairs, yeah. Yeah, and they did almost a little skit. Yes. That on the surface, people could say, well, that's ridiculous. And it's like, no, it's not. It's giving everybody the guidelines so that everyone can be comfortable. Because when I see your green wristband, I understand that you are comfortable. Yes. Because I don't want to accidentally reach out to give you a fist bump when you might be particularly- Of course. Yeah. Visual cues. Make it easy. Yes. Very, very easy. Very comfortable. Talk about the energy at the event. This is the second full day. Yes. Keena was standing in Ramonli yesterday. Give us an overview of the energy and some of the things that are happening since you can't replicate those hallway networking conversations on video conference. I know exactly what you mean. Man, it is so lovely to be in person, to meet people. And you know, for those who are comfortable, there's like the fist bumps and the hugs and the big smiles. And that energy, I haven't seen it in almost two years. And even, you know, just standing on stage, as I was telling you folks off camera, I've been in this role for over a year and a half. I've done three cube cons already, but this was my first in person. And being on that stage, experiencing the energy of the people in that room, like when I asked everyone during my keynote, I was like, are you all proud to be team cloud native? And I got a resounding, yes, back from the audience. That's what I'm talking about, you know? It was amazing. What's some of the news that's breaking? Lots of stuff going on, obviously. You said first one in person in almost two years, but talk to me about some of the news that's breaking here at the event. Yes, so much new stuff to share. From our side on CNCF, our journey has been very much about celebrating our culture and welcoming more and more people into it, so that we can have more folks in team cloud native to take various jobs, to find fulfillment, and all those great things, right? And all of our announcements are around that theme of people finding a place here, people paying it forward in this community and building the culture. The first one I would like to share is the announcement of the Kubernetes and cloud native associate certification. So this is an exam that is going to go live end of the year. So people sign up, apparently the beta signups went away like this after I announced it. It was really cool. Wow, popular by demand. Yeah, very, very popular. And it's an exam for folks who are brand new to cloud native. And the studying for it, you'll go through, you know, the fundamentals of Kubernetes, what is the CNCF landscape, what are the key projects, and ultimately, you will actually deploy an application using kubectl commands. And it's such a great primer. So how brand new can someone be? When you say brand new, are you talking about someone who already has a PhD in computer science but hasn't done anything in the Kubernetes space? Tell me, how brand new can you be? That's a very good question. And it is literally, you can come with zero knowledge. You would of course have to study for the exam and like go through that journey. But the idea is that it is the gateway. And so it is possible you are a PhD in computer science but you've studied some esoteric part of computer science that's very unconnected to what we do. Sure, go ahead and take it. But maybe most likely you would like the more advanced certifications better. But if you're, let's say, a marketer looking to break into the cloud native industry, this is the move. Take this exam and suddenly all these employers, you speak their language, they'll be impressed that you took it. And it's an opportunity to advance your career. Community is huge. I was looking at the website the other day, 138,000 contributors from more than 177 countries. 186 is the latest number. 186, awesome, 289 plus million lines of code written. This community is really so productive and so prolific and it's great that you're offering more folks that don't have the background like you were saying to be able to get in and get started. Absolutely, it's our whole thing of bring in more people because as you all probably know, there's so much demand for cloud native skill sets across job functions. So that's why we're here to help them. Yeah, I want to double click on this as we say because you hear the word inclusive associated with this whole community so much. You're talking about something that is a certification, yeah, a marketer, okay, fine. But we're really talking about anyone who has the drive to potentially completely transform their lives. And in this age where things can be done remotely, you don't necessarily have to live in Silicon Valley or Cambridge, Massachusetts to do this or in one of the other global centers of technology. Anywhere, yeah. So that's the kind of energy that's part of this that isn't a part of any large industry focused conference because you really are making opportunities for people of all backgrounds to change their lives. So I don't know, am I extending a virtual thank you from all of those people whose lives have been changed and will be changed in the future? Maybe I am. But talk about inclusiveness from other perspectives. Yes, I think that talent, drive, skills, none of these are exclusive to a certain zip code, you know? People everywhere have great qualities and deserve chances and why shouldn't they be part of a community that as you said is especially inclusive, feels especially nice to be a part of. And that's what I've exhorted the community to do in my keynote yesterday, which is that our ranks will grow and we should go out of our way to make sure our ranks grow and we do that by shining a light on our culture, telling people to join in, lending a hand and letting people's personalities shine even when they'll be different from who we are, whether in terms of job function or skillset, whatever. And I think that's the top level paradigm that we want to have, right? Where we are always welcoming people. When we think of inclusiveness, it is, you know, there is certifications like KCNA did do a great job. There are also efforts that we must always be doing. So something that we work on constantly, consistently, is contributor strategy where we're working on creating ladders and pathways for folks to become open source contributors. It is known now that open source contributions lead to job advancement in your career, right? And so the whole goal is bring people in, not just to hang out, not just to talk, but to actually grow. And actually KubeCon, CloudNativeCon is a great example of another little thing we do, which is we award underrepresented minorities and people who need need-based funds, scholarships to attend. Nice. Yeah, and it's changed 1,518 lives already. And we actually, in this event, have announced that we are renaming the scholarship to the Dan Kahn Scholarship Fund. Do you folks know Dan? Yes, yes. Did you know Dan? So Dan, he breathed life into Team CloudNative, right? He builds this organization to have the impact that it does today. And all the while, he was relentlessly focused on diversity, equity, inclusion. So it was just like, the idea came from within the team and the minute someone said it, it just struck a chord with all of us. We're like, we're doing this, no question. And it was one of the fastest decisions we've ever made. I saw some results of a DEI micro survey on the website where 75% of respondents say, this community is becoming more inclusive. There's obviously work to go, but as a female in technology, you feel that, you see that as well? Yes, I think, I'm very proud of that survey that we did, by the way, because it's our way, we're gonna keep doing it. It's our way to keep a pulse on the ecosystem because you can keep doing initiatives, right? But if people are not feeling great, then who cares? And so, but yes, I think DEI is a journey. There is no destination, right? Always we have to be thinking harder, trying harder to, you know, I think for example, something CNCF's done a great job, is identifying particularly gender diverse folks who are in the community and maybe could deserve a role of high responsibility. So I'm really proud that our technical oversight committee, which is our really the top technical people in the ecosystem who decide project stuff, they are led by a woman. There's many women on that and it's they're all very exemplary, awesome technologists. And so I think the diversity survey gives us like a hint into like the things people do like. And I mean the fact remains, we need to do more to source more people to come into the ecosystem. We need to always be changing and evolving with the needs of the community. Right, as I mentioned, the community is 138,000 strong, 6.8 million plus contributions so far. You can imagine by opening that DEI door, just the thought diversity that comes in alone and the number of projects that will come from folks that just come in with a different mindset. Oh, 100%, we are already seeing that. We started off as folks who had, you know, lots of projects from the great big tech companies, people who had web scale problems, as I call it. And that was great. But in recent years, the end users who were initially just consuming this technology and that too slowly are now hook, line and sinker in. And we have like Argo CD came from Intuit, which is an end user. Backstage came from Spotify, which is an end user. So this trend is growing and the diversity, as you said, is continuing. Yeah, I'm particularly interested in the dynamic where you have people who have their day job, if you will, where their employer is absolutely 100% encouraging them to participate in the community, to develop things that will not only help the employer and that mission, but also building solutions for everyone and providing enrichment for the person. And I'm gonna make a little bit of a prediction. I wanna get your thoughts on this. I think that one of the silver linings of what we've been through in the pandemic, having a lot of people at home, having that relationship with your primary employer, be just a little bit different and just a little bit more removed. I think everyone is realizing that, you know what? We all need a passion play to be a part of, in addition to whatever we're doing to put bread on the table in the immediate future. And so I think, but I wanna hear your thoughts, there's gonna be an explosion in contributions from people and hopefully a lot more openness on the part of employers to let people dedicate their time to this. Do you see that? Do you think that? Yes, I think you're really onto something here. Something I mentioned in my keynote, right, was this conversation I've had with so many that we in this community, our identity is cloud native first. So we're folks who are in team cloud native before we are working at insert company name, you know, Google, AT&T, Spotify, whatever. It's not a dig on the companies, they're actually a celebration of those companies because they are liking the developments that happen in open source. They are appreciating the value these people are creating and they're employing them. So absolutely, there is this ongoing trend of folks seeing great value in folks who understand this cloud native projects in particular. And of course, right, because we have been such a great place for industry collaboration, lots of vendors have great products, make lots of money on these projects and that's as it should be. And so the value of the people contributing to these projects is very high. And we'll only continue to grow, I imagine. So here we are in Los Angeles at KubeCon cloud native con 21, what's next? Well, the good news is this was the first of many to come hybrid events in person plus virtual and the next one is happening in end of May in Valencia for Europe 22, Valencia, Spain. And I have heard beautiful weather, very nice people, amazing food. So just for that. That alone is worth registration. Yes, I know, but it's gonna be amazing. That's awesome. I'm so excited and I hope I will see you folks there. Sign me up. I've never been to Spain, I'm there. Me too, I'm so excited. Let's do it, let's do it. For Spanish speaking viewers, I will say, claro que sí, es la verdad. You know what can't you do? You can do it all. You can speak Spanish on the queue, we can host this show. I know, I was like, I'm impressed, I'm impressed. I can't do that and you donated your green card so thank you so much. So nice. Franco, congratulations on the event. Thank you. For growing the community, for growing the diversity of it and for the projects that are going on now and we're sure many more to come. We look forward to seeing you in Valencia in May. Thank you so much, see you in Valencia. All right, we'll see you there. For Dave Nicholson, I'm Lisa Martin. We are live in Los Angeles. The queue is covering KubeCon and CloudNativeCon at 21. Stick around, we'll be back after a short break with our next guest.