 Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, and welcome to another episode of In the Clouds. I am very happy to be joined by the one and only Priyanka Sharma, general manager of CNCF. How are you doing today, Priyanka? I am great, Chris. Thank you so much for having me. Thank you for coming on. Please introduce yourself for the audience because I cannot do you justice. Well, hello, everybody. As Chris said, I'm Priyanka Sharma, and I'm the general manager of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, which you may be familiar with if you're listening to Chris's show. We are the home for close to 100 open source projects in the infrastructure space, with Kubernetes being our flagship. I had a long career in technology and Cloud Native. I did regular tech stuff before, including a startup, and then I got involved with open source in Cloud Native. I was a project contributor to the Open Tracing project, which was the third one to join the foundation, and that was the early days. This was the end of 2015, early 2016, and from there, this community seriously welcomed me. Everybody I saw was so warm. They just opened their arms, and at that time, I didn't know that much about infrastructure, but I was hooked, and I spent a lot of time educating and learning about observability, particularly tracing. I worked at LightStep at the time, then I moved to GitLab where I built the developer evangelism function and also got elected to serve on the CNCF governing board. At that time, I was then asked by Jim Zemlin, who I advise them, and I play with my puppy, Oli, who is a two and a half year old, Gadahula Mix, who thinks he's a lap dog. I don't know what a Gadahula Mix kind of looks like, because my dog is a German Shepherd Corgi Mix, so it's like an amalgam of weird things, but it's awesome. She's laying right here behind me, bark like a German Shepherd, but size like a Corgi. That's pretty funny. Well, Gadahula Mix, the funniest thing they do, is they're constantly chasing their tail. It's hilarious. I have so many videos of Oli just... Amazing. Absolutely amazing. So I normally ask a quick intro, like icebreaker question, cake or pie? Is cheesecake a cake or a pie to you? I mean, how do you feel about cheesecake in general? So this may be controversial, but I think it's a pie, because here's the thing. So I actually looked up randomly the definition of cake the other day. So the Oxford Dictionary and I do not agree, because for the Oxford Dictionary, if it contains flour and oil, like it's all about the ingredients, cake means there's some like bready layer, and cheesecake just doesn't have that. Unless you put it in like a weird crust or something, but yeah, you're right. It doesn't have that in general. It's not a pie. I'm good with that answer. I will take that. I just think cheesecake is delicious. It's my favorite dessert. That's for sure. It's very good. So let's talk about CNCF for a little bit, right? Like, broadly speaking, why was CNCF created, right? Like, why does it exist? A lot of people, I don't think, understand the reason behind CNCF. And it's very important, right, to its cause. Yes, absolutely. You know, when you look at our mission statement, it is to make cloud-native computing ubiquitous, which feels slightly tautological, because you're like, well, what's cloud-native? Right. Well, so we were formed back in 2015, because at that time, Google wanted to donate the Kubernetes project to a foundation, and CNCF was formed to be the home for it. Very soon, it was realized that Kubernetes is such a game changer in just how people build and operationalize their software, that there's going to be a lot of other needs to technology needs to truly help modernize software and go the container route, go Kubernetes route. And so it started becoming home to technologies, you know, Prometheus, Yeager, Envoy, container D, I'm just giving some. Yeah, the list goes on and on. Yeah, exactly. This was like close to 100 names long. And so it became the home, it started becoming, we started attracting those projects. And all of these together became cloud-native. It's cloud-native because Kubernetes particularly made it easier, better to utilize cloud computing to build with microservices. And so all of this was connected. And that was the name that was given to decomposable microservices-based, container-based architectures cloud-native. So it was very much of a redefined thing. We were creating a definition. And it's one of the few times I've seen very successful category creation, definition creation. Yeah, no, it's been an amazing journey, right? I think I got on the Kubernetes train in 2016 and it's just been a nonstop just growing ecosystem of projects and tooling and people helping each other. I know a lot of people say, yes, it's a community of companies contributing kind of thing, but it's like companies are made of people and it is a community of people that actually care about each other and care about making technology easier or more human-friendly, right? Yes, we have a little bit of ways to go, but we're heading in that progression with every release. New features, as they get promoted, they become hopefully more consumable and easier to use. So there's a bunch of different groups in the CNCF world, right? We have tags, we have SIGs, we have sub-projects and work groups and all of the other things. Talk about the high-level groups and what they do big picture-wise at CNCF, right? I know we have security-focused groups and a number of other areas, but what are those groups charged with essentially? I see what you're saying. I would actually like to go one level higher if that's all right with you. Then you look at how is CNCF structured and governed. There are actually, I'm not going to share a screen and ruin it. Oh, I can? Okay, great. That's excellent. I am going to do that then. Thank you. Give me a hot second. Basically, I just want to show in my mind how CNCF is structured and how that's a critical piece of our success. So I'm sorry, looking around, as you know, when you- We almost use screen-sharing music and then t-shirts that say, can you see my screen? Oh, gosh. Let's see, CNCF Overview Deck. Okay. So essentially, here we go. Okay, excellent. No problem. Take it down. It's okay. No, this is really, I think it's going to be helpful to people. And share screen. All right. So I think this structure is really useful for people to understand because it addresses a couple of things. It also addresses what you were saying before, right? This is like, is it a company? It's a company open source kind of thing. Okay. When you look at the CNCF structure at the top level are three equally valued bodies. Number one is the CNCF governing board. This is made up of mainly all our member companies. Like, you know, there's elections for various levels and then there's Platinum members. And then there's also developer representatives from Kubernetes, from other projects, TOC chair, all of that stuff. And this organization is tasked with the overall guidance and direction of CNCF. We, the executive, share our progress with the board and like decide on outcomes that we want to achieve together. This governing board has a marketing committee underneath it, which is full of like business folks in the industry who come together, talk about how can we spread the gospel of cloud needed. Then there's the technical oversight committee, which is in my opinion, super, super important because these are the folks who admit the projects. So Liz Rice, as you know, is the head of the TOC right now. She's done such an amazing job. And the whole TOC works tirelessly to keep iterating on themselves to change their processes or as needed all the time. And a great example of that would be the sandbox process. If you think about it, like, first of all, it didn't exist pre-pandemic. Then we made it a thing. And over time, we kept iterating it so that now early projects, projects who are finding their way can quickly join CNCF. And all they're provided is a neutral IP zone where companies and people can come together and collaborate safely. And that sandbox process is largely the reason why we're close to 100 projects today. Underneath the TOC, you have special, well, these used to be special interest groups. Now they're tags or technical advisory groups. So yeah, this is dated a little bit. And those tags are, you know, they look at like specific areas of interest. So there's like tag observability. There's tag security. There's all kinds of different options. And the whole point of those subgroups is that they've been identified as important enough that they will directly work with the TOC and report to the TOC on, I don't know if it's a monthly or quarterly basis, on progress on their various, let's say, observability on the various technologies and the progress they're making. These are often like areas of great flux in our technology ecosystem. And so they need the TOC to be like watching after them. So that's, that all sits here. There's also like not as formal working groups, which is, it's quite, it's much easier to spin up a working group. It's also like you can have an informal or versus formal, there's all kinds of flavors. So an example of that would be the CNF working group or the cloud native network functions working group. And that is really about helping the telecommunications companies adopt cloud native, keeping in mind their special needs and defining what would be a cloud native network function, which would be the key for them to utilize to go cloud native. So that's an example of a different kind of structure. So the CNF working group doesn't need to update the TOC all the time, but they can choose to request time to like do an update. But it's a gathering place when like today, like we have hundreds of people join those meetings, and they're actively working to come together with what will really work for telcos to help them. And then finally is the end user community, which as you see here is at equal footing with the technical oversight committee and the governing board. The EUC or end user community is full of folks who are end user members of CNCF, which means these are real users of our technologies. And they are, how do I say yeah, they do not sell any cloud native products or services. So these folks, they come together and they formed SIGs, which is special interest groups and user groups that focus on their real life experience with cloud native tech. And this is done in a vendor free zone, so they can comfortably get like just advice from each other, no one's selling anything. And these end users, they have a seat on the DOC, they have seats on the governing board, they're sprinkled throughout to make sure we're always cognizant of who we're building for, and this doesn't become just a vendor fest. Right. Sorry, that was a long answer. I'm sorry. No, no, that's fine. I think it's perfectly acceptable to show off that list there. All right, I'm back. Okay, cool. So you said like onboarding to the sandbox process is easy. And if you want to see the sandbox, we tell people to go look at the CNCF landscape, which has become enormous since I first started looking at it, right? Like, I remember when we used to print them out and hand them out to people, it's just too, like it's too fluid to just do that nowadays. So, you know, that onboarding that sandbox process to put a project into this like safe zone where anybody can work on it and like know that it has sometimes either backing or just it's, it's not going to be taken away from the sandbox, right? Like we know that, right? Like once it's in the CNCF ecosystem, it stays there. And that keeps like the creativity flowing, I feel like. Yes, and to be clear, there is an archival process for projects, but I get what you're saying. It's not there is a stability to a project that is in the CNCF, unless there's a formal archival process going on, which everybody would be aware of. Things are moving. This is a project that is serious for sure. And you mentioned the archival process, you know, Red Hat acquired CoreOS and Rocket was I think the first thing to be archived, I believe, if memory serves me right, the container runtime. So, yeah, it's not just a constantly growing thing, we do actually retire things as needed. Yes, absolutely, absolutely. Yeah, I mean, it's like, you know, it's true that it's not like every day there's a new archiving happening. So there's more influx than there is, you know, archiving. But which is fine, because we need a lot of things. That's just kind of how it is. And I mean, not only do we need a lot of things, the reality is, Chris, and I'm sure you know this better than anyone, is that cloud native, especially because of the through the pandemic has become the building block of all innovation today. It's been used everywhere. There was a keynote by Peloton at the last KubeCon cloud native con, you which they talked about how they really scaled up all their cloud native edge teams and like started deploying with Kubernetes recently. And so, and like, in addition to that, what I'm seeing is all these like cool new spaces, right? And you take edge computing, you take, you know, wasm, WebAssembly, you take, yeah, like even up. Yeah, AI amount, the whole nine yards, yeah. Yeah, everyone's starting to dependent cloud native principles at the very least. And that's making our community really excited about it. And there's new innovation coming for like, you know, there's K3S is a great example of Kubernetes for the edge, right. And so our scope is expanding as we're going because of the people who are in this ecosystem. And so that's also why our projects increase. So, yes. I mean, the onboarding process for sandbox projects, and you know, there's sandbox, there's incubating, graduated. There's a governance and a flow into how you move from one to the next. And, you know, how do you enter the sandbox in general or incubating sometimes projects enter there, just based off of, you know, a number of criteria. I don't want to dive too deep into that in this call, but you know, we mentioned the landscape. Can you tell me about how you would envision folks using the CNCF landscape to kind of help them and their organizations, right? There's so many projects now it's kind of like, okay, the division that, you know, all the dividing lines in that landscape are very important. Yes, that's actually a really good point you made there. I think the larger categories that we show are very key when you look at such a busy landscape. So number one, remember, the landscape was created to show that there are various areas as we discussed, right cloud needed was beyond Kubernetes. It was about different types of technologies we needed to care about. And the landscape was a very good way of depicting that that, hey, here's some players and blah. Over time, of course, with the success of cloud native, it's become, you know, it's become quite a mildee. But that's a good thing because if you want an empty landscape, like, is that all right? You know what I mean? Like, you know, when it comes to utilizing the landscape, and now, you know, since you've opened the Pandora's box and allowed me to share things. And so as we were saying, Chris and I, like, here, folks who are watching, it's like, you see database categories, streaming messaging, app definition, image, but like, all these categories, they're really important to understand, like, these are all subgroups that this is, is about. And you have all kinds of platforms, serverless, you have many ways to utilize this landscape. You can think of this as like, oops, sorry, went back to world clock. You can think of this as like an index, right? You know, and when you think about it, an index is something that's referred, it's not something that's read. You know, you read a book, and then you refer to the index materials as you need to. And so anyone who's starting out with cloud native, I don't recommend that you go, okay, database, click, click, you know, I just don't do it. It's probably not a good idea. It's going to overwhelm you. It's better, rather, once you have a baseline of cloud native, then let's say you're like, oh, I need to look for a good service property. Then you come here, and then you're like, okay, these are some options I click through and check out the solutions listed here. And solutions listed here are not just CNCF projects, they're also vendor stuff. Everything's fair game over here. And you know, I will tell you this, the landscape is actually the top referrer for many projects and their website or many technologies. So it's very useful to people. And I think that use case is very much you kind of know what you want. You just want to see what are the options in that category of technology, or you're like, hey, it's going to research CNCF members, okay, I'll just do that. And kind of look through that. Or I'm like rolling into serverless today. So just get information on that. So I think the landscape is it unveiled D? Absolutely. But that's a good thing. And you can use it to your advantage. Two things I wanted to mention there, right, like we have the CNCF trail map, which I think is helpful to folks, right, to kind of understand why the landscape exists is because you need to check some some boxes there to kind of build out that cloud native infrastructure. But then you clicked on that members page. As an ambassador, when people come to CNCF ambassador, we can talk about that in a second. It's that members pages where I tell people asking me, like, where can I go to work on a cloud native project as my day job, right? Like, go to that members phase on the landscape. And just start applying because they have jobs open more than likely, right? Like, I know red hat is just looking for people left and right. So you know, to that point, one day, I hope we're going to revamp the job board to a point that that's where you will send people. Right. We're working on it. No, and it's amazing, like the, the ambassador program of the job board, the speakers bureau, all the things you're doing to help not just technologies advanced with people advanced with cloud native, it's great, right? Like it is really refreshing for me because I know, like, the second I got involved in the community, like, I knew this was my place, right? Like, this is where I belong. Yes. Right. Yeah. So there's just wonderful people throughout the community and they're all moving towards the same goal, right? Like, we always have this mantra of, you know, project over company over self kind of thing, right? Like the idea is to move the cloud native ball forward, not to move your ball forward or somebody else's ball forward. Yes. You know, it's, it's when you sign that CLA, there is kind of an expectation that you're doing this for the greater good, right? Absolutely. And, and, you know, we kind of see that like, I know this is a community of individuals and of people over companies because people change companies all the time and they stay in the same thing. Yeah. Yeah. They just like move like four or five places and they're still here. And like, you know, there's also like the end user virtual cycle where like end users will use cloud native tech, give feedback, they'll find some specific area where there's a gap and then they'll create a technology and then they'll donate that project is like backstage by Spotify is a great example. Yeah. Right. And they've like made this whole thing like the developer, what is it, the service, that's like become a category now. And that's come from an end user who was using our tech, found a gap, created a project. And now there's like companies warming around it. It's like a beautiful just, it is truly amazing, right? Like circle of life. To quote the Lion King. Yes. As any, as any good talk would have is the Lion King quote. So the, you know, what role do those big vendors play, right? You know, there is different levels to that vendor kind of participation. Like what role do the vendors play in the CNCF ecosystem? They're super useful, right? They, there are many ways vendors, companies work with CNCF, right? One simple thing is membership, right? They'll become members and they'll do that for a variety of reasons. If you are, let's say providing a certified, if you're providing a Kubernetes distro of Sansar, you have to get it certified and you have to be a member to go through that process. And that certification makes sure that the Kubernetes, Kubernetes is same everywhere. And people can truly utilize, you know, anybody's distro and have a similar experience in terms of the base technology. So that's like one very tactical reason in which, you know, a vendor is like making a project easier to use by providing a distro. They're becoming a member in order to go through that process. And because they get a lot of benefits out of it, there's, we have like a whole foray of like benefits for members, which I'm sure you're aware of. And then same members often end up contributing contributors like they pay for people to work on these open source projects. So it's a very multi-pronged value prop that the vendors provide. And depending on, you know, many of them serve on the governing board as well. We have over 630 members at this point. So obviously not everyone's on the board, but there's elections and all of that. So when you think of what does a vendor provide, they provide first of all, a market for all these cloud native technologies. They create better developer experiences. They innovate on the base technologies. And then the second they do is they provide employment to people who are working on these projects. And then the third thing they do is become members, support financially, get benefits in return, and just overall keep the systems spinning. So what would you say to somebody and like envision me like five years ago and you're still, you know, you're still GM of CMCF and everything? Like, how would you suggest people get started, right? Like, I suggest to people, right, like go to a meeting, sit in on it, kind of, you know, feel your way out. Or, you know, if you're interested in networking, go work with the Kubernetes networking team, CIG, or the higher level CMCF tag. How do you recommend just anyone getting started with cloud native and contributing to cloud native infrastructures or projects, I should say. Yeah. So there's the good news is this, that this community is extremely welcoming, right? So you can almost kind of just like jump in and like find someone to talk to and ask them, hey, can I hop out with something? And that would be enough to get you in. And that's really good because the flip side is that we're pretty large ecosystem. It can get completely confusing. We all just talked about the landscape. So if I'm just going to close my eyes and point to something, we're probably not the best strategy. So I would say my answer to your question would really depend on who I'm talking to, it's very personal based. But in general, identify your interest or business need. Let's say you are working at company X, which is an end user company, and you're utilizing three C and C of projects. See which ones you are using the most at work and where like, you know, maybe you identify issues, etc. Then you can get involved with that project. You can easily contact them. The maintainers have like, you know, the names are public. And also like the repos are public, you can just contribute an issue. That's your first contribution. And ask questions, get involved. Tactically, you could literally fix the typo when you're involved. But my number one suggestion is find a person who can guide you a little bit. Even if it's like, hey, here's how, even if someone's just replying to your issue, you're starting a relationship with them. And it's good to kind of talk, get involved with them, learn about, hey, how can I help you? How can I, how can I achieve my goal of, let's say, making project A much easier to use at company X? And just go from there. In addition to these sort of asynchronous on your own time things, there's also the cool fun stuff around KubeCon Cloud Native Cons, which are, as we, it seems like very much in the 90% likely that we're going to be in person in a hybrid event in Los Angeles. These are like fun times. I mean, Chris knows, you know, yes, no, it's a blast. And like, I tell my family, right, we have two of these a year, and they're like my super bowls, right? Like that's how I explain it to my families, right? This is not super bowl. But it really is for the cloud native community, right? Like you show up for that with, you know, you're ready to go. You've got, you know, all your stuff polished and ready to present or talk about or whatever it is you're going to do at the conference that is, and it grows every year. Like, and you've done exactly, you've kind of EU this year, I have to say it was an amazing experience, right? Thank you. I pull that off virtually, was great. And like the interaction between like having places to talk asynchronously, like in Slack as well as in the platform, like it was just great and very well done. So huge shout out to the events team for that. And, you know, like, I know that we're constantly evolving with this. And I know QCon and A will be somewhat hybrid ish. So that folks that can't make it and participate. Yeah. And I know that's a challenge just putting the events together, right? Like we put on the getups, com as a day zero event for QCon EU and just getting that together was, you know, in achievement, putting the whole show together, monumental amount of work, right? And having seen some of the behind the scenes work, I really do appreciate everybody in CNCF that works on that. I really do. Thank you. That is so kind of you to say. And I agree with you that this time the event was awesome. It's going to sound crazy, but it was my favorite QCon to date, including all the QCon. You've been the most of them, right? I know. I know. I have. And here's the reason why. It was, you know, I did a lot of these happy hours, which were like, anyone can join and be like all hang out as a group. And then we break out into small groups and make new friends. That format really worked in a way that you cannot do it in person. It was like, it's just, it's just an online thing only kind of thing. And I know so many, like, you know, different levels, like a very experienced contributor meeting a brand new consumer, all kinds of like, it was students joining in because that was another innovation we did this time, right? Which is we really opened the door for students. So yeah, actually, people, anyone who's new and learning, there's always going to be a student track now. And that's a good starting point because it'll be very one-on-one content, but also from the perspective of someone who's not run a production system before. So yeah, of any kind. So that's kind of, I suggest people look out for that. But yeah, to go back to why this was special for me, that engagement and interaction in those breakouts got so rich and meaningful that it just, it left me extremely warm and fuzzy. And like, and you know, I was doing these every day, I was like, and then there was like the keynotes and the chatter on the slack, etc. The vibrance that I felt was unique. And so, you know, it's ironic though, right? Like, we've cracked the code for virtual events and boom, we now have to figure out something new called hybrid. That's going to be another channel, I know, right? Challenge. But and I ask people to bear with us. The first time we do it in NA, it'll be like a first time. And then the next one. It's the first time for the industry, right? Often in most cases, right? So, you know, I think CNCF is doing a very good job of adapting to the times we're in. Yeah, you're our best. Yeah. And you do your best, really, it is a very fine job. Shifting gears here, right? Like, I want to talk about something that's near and dear to my heart. And that's the inclusive naming initiative that we started. And I know that's like, not exactly CNCF, but it's very CNCF, right? I get the same time, right? Like, it's kind of the same, you know, right? We're a big part of it and it matters, right? Like, I know naming things are hard, but we have to evolve from, you know, calling things master and slave to something that is more inclusive to others, right? Like it is vitally important for our future because diverse communities make better decisions in general, right? Like, scientific study after studies has proven that. Can you talk a little bit about your involvement and why we're trying to change some of the nomenclatures that we use? Absolutely. So, yes, inclusive naming initiative is a project where it is, is a very, is very close to my heart. It all came about as a, you know, 2020 was an interesting year, I mean, so many ways, but particularly because we just erased relations in the United States were at pretty much an all-time low, I would say. And there was, after the, in the wake of the murder of George Floyd, many of us in the community had this collective awakening, reawakening, I should say, where we are like, hey, we have been uncomfortable for these really exclusionary terms such as master, slave, white, less, black, less forever. It's not just realizing that right now. No, it wasn't a realization. Yes, exactly. That's just a reawakening. It was more like, why have we not done something about this? And to be clear, the spockets of people were doing something way before. So I don't mean to say that we were the worst people ever. However, I do think the thing that they was different in 2020 was that suddenly the critical mass of people who wanted to make a change and just make it happen became meaningful. Right. And I saw that because we heard from projects all over, like Richie Hartman from Prometheus was one of the people who reached out to me and he's like, we're doing this, we want to do this right, we'd love support and help. And then the Kubernetes community had their naming working group that was a lot of work from Steven Augustus and Celeste Horgan on just making recommendations on how to change terminology. Now, you know this better than anyone, when it's software code that you're changing, it's not like words on a word doc, right? You can't just flip the switch overnight and it's fixed, right? It takes a couple releases. Yeah, they're also like, there's dependencies because words is how we connect different things and you don't want to break those. So that's why an initiative was needed to create best practices and processes for the folks who actively want to make the change to do it once and do it safely and securely and don't break anything, you know? Often there has been this argument of like, yeah, this is worthy to do, but like, hey, like, it's going to be a breaking change. We all deal with breaking change all the time. Right, exactly. It's not like you've never done it. Right. Yeah. We deal with deprecations. We deal with beta to alpha or alpha to beta to, you know, full ground. And so the whole point of I and I is to create the right processes, evangelize them, and have a commons gathering where anybody can come and ask a question based on the challenges they may be going through, trying to do this change, like if they need resources, if they just have a question. And this group in Camp Pass is not just CNCF open source projects, but also companies such as Red Hat IBM have played a founding role. And Cisco has done the same. There's a bunch of folks. Then a lot more are like, like, you know, members of the wrong word, like contributors, let's say contributors. And also we have looked at standards development bodies. We have lawyers. These are people actively contributing in I and I, which makes it, we hope, going to be a place which can, I don't want to say set a standard, but provide guidelines that are, you know, more adopted by more and more people making it a de facto standard. Right. And there is a framework for evaluating a harmful language on the I and I page or drop the link in chat. Let me drop a link to the framework itself. I mean, this has actually helped me in my day job like recently. So I mean, it's, it's very, very powerful. And the fact that we've all kind of collectively said, we're doing this, we have the capacity and the capabilities, we, we are doing this, right? Like and making these changes happen. I know it will take time. I know there will be arguments, but they are worth having, right? Like this is about people and how they feel about using a thing that we're developing actively. If you're uncomfortable with the way we name something, that's going to make you less likely to use the thing. Sorry, my camera goes for a second. But yeah, I mean, if, if, if you walk in the door and you see, you know, a room full of things that you don't like, you're going to turn around and walk back out. Yeah. And you know, it's like years ago, I came, I'm from India and I came here from college and when I saw my first code base, I was shocked. Oh, sorry. I think you might be weird. Yeah. I was like, super shocked because I was like, they're, they're still doing that. They're still saying these things. Is that allowed? And I just, and I was like, you know, I'm not full here. What do I know? I should just, you know, and no one else seems, seems to be saying something. So I'll just, you know, not say anything. That was a mistake. And that was also like just my own reaction. I realized now is important in that it shows how someone who's not even from the US who doesn't share the same history and background was really turned off. It's like, what is this? How is this allowed? And so if that's my reaction, I can't even imagine what the reaction is of people who have been, you know, who are directly targets in some ways. And so I think it's so important to be positive and inclusionary. And also to that point, you're made of like having a framework because society evolves, right? Everything changes as we go along. Things, the words that are totally normal now may become weaponized in the future. And we may want to work through that things that, you know, look like genderized things that are frankly just like ambiguous. None of that's good. So having that evaluation criteria is what's going to carry us through, I think. Yes. Absolutely. All right. I'm looking at my notes here. What do you see on the horizon that you're excited about? Like you specifically are excited about, right? Like there's a lot on the horizon that anybody could be excited about. But I'm curious what you're excited about in the CNCF future, kind of looking forward thing, you know, without revealing like anything. Anything you're waiting for QConNA to announce, kind of thing. Not asking you to break any kind of, you know, rules here. Yeah. No, I'll tell you this. I think, sorry, I'll just drink some water. Oh, I suppose it sounds like, okay, back on. For me, you know, what's super exciting is waking up every day, knowing him at the helm of a community that is so it's buzzing with activity, it's buzzing with an American. And just knowing that CNCF, the staff, the army, we got to like just keep up with y'all. We got to be always evolving and like changing ourselves to be matching the needs of our community. And that gives me excitement. Why? Because that tells me there's a lot more we're going to do. There's so much innovation that's coming from here. And that's, I don't see that stopping. And this fact that I just shared, right, that it's become the de facto basis of innovation in the pandemic. Everyone's using cloud needed for whatever they're building and whatever new they're creating. That gives me a lot of excitement because that tells me that, but you know, we talk about Edge, we talk about AI, ML Ops, we talk about security, whatever, whatever. Yeah. Those are just things we know now. And I'm just like super excited, like what are we hearing about next year? How is this going to keep growing? And that really is the meta thing that keeps me super excited about this job. And, you know, you go through the challenges because that's the guiding star. It's really refreshing to see how like innovative the community is, right? Like, oh, we have a problem or, you know, some logistical problem. And it's like, all right, let's hurt, you know, you just get this group of people to attack it basically and to just overcome that obstacle, right? Like it's just like, oh, there's a problem. Oh, I have an idea. I have another idea. Okay, let's meld these two together, see if it works, right? Like, and off we go running. But then we go back and we say this is why we did this and so forth so on. So, you know, we document it, there's governance, there's all the things that you would need to maintain and sustain the ecosystem. It's a great framework that's already in place to do that. Do, like, and I know this is kind of similar in the same vein, like, you get up every morning, you brush your teeth, whatever, you look at your calendar, but like, what keeps you going? Because this, like you said, you're constantly evolving. And I know that can be kind of tiring at times. What keeps you going on a day-to-day basis? Yeah, I mean, it's just that it's, I'm the type of person who does well when given responsibility. So if I, I feel a responsibility to do my very best for this community, for each and every person that is part of it. And that's, that was the whole joy of this job when Jim brought it to me, right? He said, I get to spend my waking hours, my working hours focused on making this community's life better. And so, and a lot of, like, yeah, there's things you have to do for that. Like, as I said, like the CNCF has to constantly be evolving. And that means, like, our staff has to do all sorts of like stretch themselves or like hire new people and hire new people, all that kind of stuff. And that, yeah, it takes its toll on you for sure. I think, and then, I'm liking the five billion decisions a day kind of thing. So that's, but one is just, as I told you, like, I do better when I am given responsibility. And when I'm, when just the expectation is there that you're going to figure it out, that's the best place for me to exist. And so there is a temperament match. I think the other thing is that I am very blessed that I work in a remote organization with a remote or remote community. So as I told you, I'm working from Hawaii this week. And that's pretty awesome. And I just was, I was able to do the long weekend here. And then, like, my work week is like, flexibly adjusted. And so I'm able to, like, put my, like, you know, live a life that's joyful, because of the way we work as a community together. And like, I mean, I'm talking to you right now. I think you're a central time. Eastern, sorry, Eastern time. I was just yesterday talking to somebody who was in Albania. It's like, you know, it's like, I'm talking to people in San Francisco and Canada, whatever. And so we're so distributed that that helps kind of live a life that is joyful and yet purple, like, you know, filled with purpose. So that's kind of, it's that combo of the flexibility of life, plus my need for responsibility, that kind of like goes hand in hand. That doesn't mean they're like, when it's like, you know, their days are really tired, they're, of course, but the potential, the flexibility and the responsibility, those three make it happen for me. Nice. Awesome. So anything that you want to promote or, you know, talk about, like, let me drop a link to KubeCon.na real quick. It's coming up in October. Get your tickets or, you know, get your virtual ticket, I guess, sometimes. Registration is going to be open soon, like imminently. We were meeting for California, like, you know, government guidelines on what's allowed. That's also going to be like, you know, ever evolving. We're kind of figuring it out. But waiting for government guidelines, they came out earlier than expected, because we were ready for June 14th to be the date when we hear from the government of California. But like, they already announced, like, start of the month. So now we're getting the registration stuff ready, and it should be coming soon. So that's one thing. The other thing I'd like to like, do a plug for, if I may, is, as you all know, it's Pride Month. So yay, happy Pride. Oh, I love it. Yeah. Something we're doing during, which is the first thing, first time something we're doing, is we have this diversity survey, which is a small microservice, not that many questions, which we're sharing with the community to tell us how, like, you know, do you feel, like, what do you feel? Like, is this inclusive? Is this welcoming? You know, I'm just kind of trying to understand what the makeup of our community is as well a little bit. So I would love to ask people if they can to consider filling the survey out. I'm trying to find the link for you. I think it's a survey. Oh, do you find it? It's a survey monkey link. That's right. I got it. Yep. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I've gotten good at this. I've been doing this for a year now. So I've gotten good at it. Someone says something. Oh, let me find the link real quick. Thank you. Yes. So I would urge people to help us understand our community better, sorry, by filling out the CNCF diversity survey. The whole goal is to understand the community needs, how they're feeling, and keep iterating to do a better job for you. Yeah. I mean, iteration is kind of the key to everything we do in Cloud Native, I feel like. So iterating on making our communities more inclusive is also something that we should be doing as well. So for our journey? Exactly. It never ends. So we have a show coming up here at noon. I want to give them time to clear the air. Anything else you want to talk about while you're here? No, I just want to say thank you Team Cloud Native for being such an amazing community of people who build bigger, better, more awesome every day. Thank you, Chris, for being an awesome member of the community. Thank you. This was a really fun experience and you're so pro. It's pretty epic. Yeah. And so I say, hey, come contribute, come join in, reach out if you have any questions. I'm always here. Yes. Same here, right? Like, I am a CNCF ambassador and I'm here to help you all navigate your way through the ecosystem. So feel free to reach out to myself, Priyanka, pretty much anyone in the community will help you out, right? Like, that's the best part. If you need help, just ask. Raise your hand. Exactly. All right. Well, thank you very much, Priyanka. It was a joy talking to you today. I really do appreciate you coming on. And we're going to have Dev Nation the show up next. I see Sebastian in chat saying hello. So Sebastian says hello. And we will sign off. And coming up later after Dev Nation the show, we have our Get Ups Guide to the Galaxy. We'll be talking about another CNCF landscape project, Argo, using our back with it. So yeah. Thank you again, Priyanka. Thank you, everybody, for tuning in. Stay safe out there and enjoy Hawaii. Thank you. Thank you for having me. Have fun, everyone. Bye. Bye, y'all.