 Welcome everyone to today's session where we're going to discuss lots of great CNCF resources, everyone here should know about. I'm Catherine Paganini, Head of Marketing at Boyant, the creator of Linkerd. And I'm also the co-chair of the Business Value Subcommittee and Tag Contributor Strategy. And just one quick announcement, so Danielle Cook was supposed to be here, but she couldn't make it, but Annalisa was so kind to jump in, so we'll have her today. Richard, do you want to introduce yourself? Hi everybody. My name's Richard. I lead marketing at Jetstack, which is part of Venify. And like Catherine, I'm also part of the CNCF Business Value Subcommittee. My name's Simon Forster, and I'm a co-chair of the CNCF Cartographos Group, and I'm an independent architect and engineer based in London. Hello. My name's Annalisa Giannaro. I'm head of marketing, communication, or spark fabric tech company based in Italy in Milan. I initiated the Italian team localization of the glossary. I'm active in the Cartographos Group. I'm a co-organizer of the KCD event in Italy, and I've just been appointed NCNCF ambassador. Thank you. My first time on stage, so I beg your mercy. I'll start with the first question for Simon, for Richard, sorry. We know that the landscape, the CNCF landscape is overwhelming. We heard about it this morning too in the keynote. So how do you suggest people shall approach it? It's a tricky one because it is very overwhelming, but it is probably the best single visual representation we have of the ecosystem. I mean, the cloud native ecosystem has grown hugely, as we all know, and this landscape view is a testament to that. And as a consequence, it's obviously become a little bit more difficult to navigate, which is going to be particularly problematic for people that are just starting out in the cloud native ecosystem and want to know and get their way around. But there are ways in which you can navigate it. On the web resource, and it is designed to be interactive to a certain element, but if you click on the guide, you'll get a rundown of the logic and the idea behind why the different areas of the project category is structured in the way. Nevertheless, it is a little bit like an eye test, I think, as we've heard it called before, and it is becoming more complicated. We assume it will become more complicated as the ecosystem continues to grow, which is one reason why as part of the Business Value Subcommittee, we're looking to soon provide a summarized project table. This will provide, it will sit alongside the landscape. There are examples of where we've got to right now with the project summary table that you can see there. The concept is to improve the way people can navigate the landscape, essentially, be able to identify projects that best meet their own development needs, be able to compare projects more easily than you can from the landscape, and give people easy-to-know information about each of the projects. We hope that will be a valuable resource, particularly to help people who are first starting to try and find their way around the ecosystem. But Catherine, you've been very successful with a resource, the Cloud Native Glossary, which was called out in the keynote yesterday as well, and congratulations on that. Please tell us how you kicked that off. I have to go back in time. In 2017, I joined a Kubernetes company and had to really understand what is Kubernetes, what is Cloud Native. It's really difficult to find content that is accessible for someone who is not technical. Everything assumes a lot of context I didn't have, and probably most non-technical people don't have. I really had to study a lot. I bought a book about introduction to computer science and one on distributed systems and started studying really. Then at some point, friends of mine that were not necessarily in the Cloud Native ecosystem started asking me, hey, my company is talking about Kubernetes. Can you explain to me what it is? On my way to KubeCon Europe on a plane, I suddenly was like, oh, I'm just going to write an article. I don't know. A aspirational goal was pitch it to a publication, see if they are interested to publish it. If not, I'll just point my friends to it next time they ask me. To my surprise, the News Stack was interested. They published it. I started publishing more articles there that basically outlined my learning journey. As I was studying, I was summarizing what I've learned and just published it, because if I needed to learn it, probably others did too. That was actually the case, because I got really good feedback from just random people on the internet, which was really awesome. That really shows that there is a need for simple, basic content. At some point, I realized the CNCF should own this kind of content. That's the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. They should also help educate people on the business side, or people who are just getting started, not just highly technical content. We formed the Business Value Subcommittee with a focus on business people. C-suite is really important. The C-suite needs to approve engineering projects. How on earth can they do that if they don't understand the concepts when you're talking about them, like discussing these projects with them? Really important for them to understand it. They are not technical. We need that kind of content. Then you need all the sales and marketing people that work at Cloud Native Companies. They need to understand it too, but also non-technical people who are new to Kubernetes. It's complex enough. If we can provide easy, accessible content that is digestible, that is not full with industry terms, then it's a lot easier for them as well to understand it. That's a very long story. That's how we got to the Business Value Subcommittee. Of course, the logical thing that we needed to create was first start with the glossary. The first thing we need to do is define these concepts. A year and a half ago, we launched. It's been pretty successful. In that sense, we have actually people all over the world localizing it. It's live and 10 languages. Ordo just became... Let's see the other thing. Ordo. Those languages make me happy. It just makes it accessible Cloud Native to communities otherwise not that don't have that type of content. We do have here someone who is, as you've heard, localizes the Italian glossary. Annalisa, what motivated you to do that? I started for very similar reasons. Personal reasons. I was missing an international environment I was used to in my previous professional life. I needed to find a place to belong within the community because I fell out of place. I needed to understand more the technical aspects and concepts I was handling with my new job. Above all, I needed to understand how to convey the potential of Cloud Native to decision makers who have no technical background like me. If they talk with technical people, they might get lost. I was starting hard. I stumbled upon the business value subcommittee and the glossary project that is connected to. I thought, I find my way. A way to give and take. I can contribute translating and I can take learning. That's how it started. After a while, I joined the cartographer's working group as well. That's why I asked Simon, what motivated you to create the Cloud Native maturity model? Thank you, Annalisa. The Cloud Native maturity model originated when I first came across the landscape and the trail map that some of you may be familiar. I came across that in about 2018 and I thought it was fantastic. They were CNCF artifacts that were helping people to understand the projects and the ecosystem that was out there. What I wanted also, though, was a path through that to adoption. It's one thing to go and say, well, these are the projects and the products that are out there. It's another thing to go and attempt to integrate them into an organization. I put together a proposal and I talked about it and I socialized it at following KubeCon events. The CNCF was very receptive to that and was able to put me in touch with another couple of small groups as well. There was Danny Alcock of Fairwinds and John Foreman and Robert Glenn of Accenture. We all started to collaborate and we worked on a maturity model. The model itself is divided into five key areas. There's technology, there's also people, process, policy, and business outcomes. I'm sure for many of you, particularly with my background in financial services, the policy and the process side has been really important. We have five levels. The model was an attempt to start to go and really get that conversation going with customers or within the organizations you're working with around those key areas and adoption of cloud-native technology. Annalisa has also been a great contributor to that model. Annalisa, can I just invite you to comment on why you've become involved? When I joined the group, the model was practically completely outlined. I was invited over by a colleague because at that time we were structuring our own cloud-native journey to offer to our customers. I needed to know more, to understand more. I was driven by business reasons this time, but I say because of the people I met and because people are one of the main chapters, the main drivers of the maturity model. That struck me. I could give my opinion as well. I couldn't say anything about processes and technologies, but probably people were my thing. I don't know if you know, Italo Calvino was a very famous Italian writer. 35 years ago, he wrote in his American lessons at the Harvard University something very interesting. He said that our adaptability to new setups in technologies is much slower than the innovation brought by technology itself. I think it's very true. People remain the key factor. Organizations need to take it into account to understand the proper pace of adoption and the best experience possible. When we think and we talk about experience, we talk about human beings. Richard, could I ask you about what's coming up? What's next on the radar? Yeah, of course. In terms of the resources that are coming up. I mentioned the project summary table, which you can see is in progress. As I said, that's designed to really give people the easy to know information about each of the projects that we've got within the CNCF. We also think there's a really interesting concept to help people first embark in terms of their cloud-native journey. There's a learning journey concept that we're working on. Some of you may have seen the trail that's available on the CNCF site. What we're thinking about now is a version of that that will provide people with signposted information to curated resources, some of which we're talking here about right now. The cloud-native maturity model or training guides or the glossary, for example. The idea being that we can give people a really good introduction, which they can continue to use and come back to, that they can use as part of their learning journey as part of the ecosystem. The cloud-native journey, I say, is something that we're really interested to try and develop into a really good resource for everybody. I think that we realized there was kind of a pain point because we've been working on these resources that are basically scattered all over the internet. Someone just learning about it may find them or not at all. There is no one place. That is, I think, important because it's like here are some resources. There are other CNCF groups that do other things that we don't know. You really have to know about it and know where to look for it, and that is kind of a problem. A lot of good work gets lost. By bundling them all, so basically it's just a page that has a lot of links and with a recommended order. You're probably going to start with what is cloud-native and then go down, work our way down until the most kind of advanced topic. I think that will make things a lot easier because everyone can just go and say like, okay, here it is. You can start at the beginning. You can jump in the middle. Hopefully that will make everyone's journey a lot easier. At least that's the idea. Yeah, absolutely. The thing that we're talking about right here is non-code contributions. I think it'd be interesting to get our perspective on why we think non-code contributions are important. Catherine, what do you think about that? Yeah, I mean, there are a lot of ways to contribute to open source and code is one thing, and it's really important. No question about that, but code on its own will not get you far. People need to understand it, so you need docs, that's content. People need to know about it, so you need people who speak at conferences, who write blog posts, who organize community events. That is marketing, a dirty word I know in engineering, but it's really important. Then you need to find it. Not only on GitHub, you need to find, you need a website, you need UI, UX experts, you need content again. Those are a lot of things that you need, and so you need a broad variety of skillset, and as such, you need a lot of different people. Yeah, for a project to succeed. Anything you would add, Annalisa? Yeah, non-code contributions, as you said, guarantee variety in terms of people who contribute, and in terms of possibilities given to tech folks as well. I know a number of developers, programmers, architects, engineers that want to contribute without coding, because probably this is something they do all day long and they want a change. What I advise is just think about your skills and what you want to do, what you wish to do, and do it. For example, there are people who create illustrations, who create data visualizations to enrich documents, reports, and articles. You can create presentations on the topics of the working groups you are in, or even create games, why not? Just think about what you want to do and do it. For example, I prefer writing over speaking, and I wrote a number of articles for the blog post of the CNCF, one on people in the cloud native material model, one when we launched the Glossary in Italian, one on how to organize a tech event. I was invited over on several occasions to talk about community and to talk about my personal experience. There's plenty of possibilities. My perspective on this as well is that code exists in a real world. It's there to often to go and support functionality that our customers require or our organizations require. But if we think about it, when I implement an application, I have to think about the non-functional side of that. I have to think about how we're going to secure that, how am I going to go and release that. I have to think about all of the policy or regulatory requirements that might be backing that up. That's all policy. Tag security, again, has a tremendous amount to do with policy, for example. That side process is incredibly important, and of course there's the people side of it as well. I've actually just got a quick question as well. Annalisa, do you have to be technical to contribute? Of course not. You can be a designer, a strategist, a marketer like me, a UX expert, an HR person who knows, and maybe we will need even more philosophers in future to handle ethical issues or more psychologists and sociologists to understand new behavioral patterns. We really don't know. The community is growing and things are changing really fast. What's sure is that the community needs a medley of tech and non-tech to create cognitive bridges between worlds. There is when probably both folks could help each other in overcoming a bias that I found, which is if you make knowledge easier to access, it doesn't mean that it's less valuable. In other words, simple is not shallow. It's just a way to make more audiences understand and take part in the community and let us make business as well. And for contributors who don't have English as their first language, Annalisa? It's a pain in the ass, sorry. No, it's better if you're a native speaker, but I remind that the mission of the community is to make cloud native ubiquitous. This means growing local communities by leveraging local resources and languages. So it would be great to have more contents in more languages because people want to have the possibility, the chance to talk about topics, cloud native topics in their language too. So that would be great. On the other hand, our community is English based, so we need to talk in English. And this means double effort for us because you have to think about insightful contents to start and it's not easy per se. And a second step is you have to think about the language and you get panicked because you have to think about accent, the missing words, you get stuck. But what I think is that just feel the fear. Don't let it block you. Jump into chats, meetings, talks, whatever. This would be my last one anyway. And try it and trust the community. We are not here to show off, not to be judgmental. It's like to share experiences to make people work better and feel safe. So we went through all possibilities, but what if people want to contribute? What shall they go? What shall they do? Yeah, so for those of you who are technical, I think you know the first thing you'll be doing and that's checking out repos. And we do have repositories on GitHub, particularly for the maturity model. We have them for the glossary and also for the landscape guide. The second thing that you can do, if you're not already signed up on Slack, please do make sure you join the CNCF Slack organization and start to join in the conversation there. We have channels for the Cartographos group, for the Business Value Subcommittee, and you'll find them also for other related sub topics as well within there. It's very important. And then also we have community meetings. So they're all listed on the CNCF calendar. We strongly encourage you to go and check out the meetings and please feel you're very, very welcome to join. Even if you just want to lurk, maybe introduce yourself and just get the scope of what's going on and then think about how you might wish to contribute. So, you know, Richard, I mean, if you do want to contribute and somebody does have an idea for a resource, we've talked about the ways that we've started to bring them about within the CNCF. What can people do? Well, they can reach out to us directly. I mean, hopefully we're visible. So if you do have the ideas for a resource, something that you think is going to solve a particular pain point, something that perhaps you've come across yourself, that you feel you could use some help or you wanted to suggest to us that it might be something we consider to look at, then please just reach out to us. I mean, as Simon said, Slack is very active within the CNCF. So we're all on Slack. You can reach out to us directly that way. If you want to attend a business value subcommittee, you can find us meeting every third Wednesday of the month. And you can use the CNCF website to find out when those meetings are taking place. And yeah, I think that would be the most appropriate way. If you've got an idea that you think would make a really good resource that others could benefit from. And sorry. But Annalisa, so I mean, you, as a, like me, you're a non-coder, but you've been, you've been very active in your contributing. What can you share about some of the things you've learned through your own experiences through contributing? One aspect that struck me when I entered the open source community, because the CNCF is an open source community, is that people coming from different companies of competing in the market are able to work openly on shared project that the whole community could benefit from. And this is something very peculiar. I come from a very different industry. I worked there for 20 years and then I changed. And this is something really that you can find somewhere else. So it impresses me. It's amazing. So my question is, what motivated you and what motivates, what still motivates you to stay and to be active? Yeah, so basically what drove me first was, as I mentioned, I needed to understand cloud native and I created the resources I needed, right? And because also other people, like if I needed, other people needed to write that's the assumption. And I think that's true. And that is actually, for me, the best way to learn, right? Like when I was in high school, that's how I actually met my, one of my best friends, she was sitting next to me in math and she was struggling and I volunteered to help her. And because, like if you explain something to someone, you explain even things that you think you understand, but the way, because you have to break it down in a way to explain it simply to someone, it's a really, really effective way to learn. And that works really well for me. And so, whether you do it one on one, like with my friend, or you write an article, because in an article, you're basically imagining and you're talking to someone, you're going through the same process. It's, yeah, it's just incredibly effective. So for me, that's like, just continuing to participate is my learning journey. Basically, it's like, I'm sharing my learning journey, right? Like you're, whatever you're working, you contribute that. So that's something that really keeps me going, right? And then what keeps me engaged as well is like just the community, right? Like meeting all the people, you have all these people from different companies, from different countries, from different backgrounds. And you build this enormous network, and that's really enriching. And I think like professionally as well, you know, like if at some point you need a new job, there are like people who could help you. And then there are a lot of, I think, benefits or unintended consequences of things that you never really thought of. And I think you get some opportunities with non-code contributions that you don't necessarily get with code contribution, not as prevalent at least. So last year, I got a keynote at KubeCon, like never talked publicly two years ago ever. And then it was really scary, right? Exciting, a unique opportunity, right? I would not have gotten that. Being on a panel, like with these, you know, amazing smart people meeting people all over the world, everything is, yeah, it's just rewarding. And one thing that I think like a lot of people think that contributing is about giving, right? Like, and of course you're giving, but you get so much more out of it, right? Like, and so it's very enriching. And yeah, that's at least what keeps me engaged. Richard, what about you? Very similar. But I mean, I think I've been working in a couple of open source ecosystems before cloud native. And it's incredible to see the sense of engagement and community and innovation around this particular ecosystem. And I think, you know, it's very much at the still very much at the beginning. I mean, in my role, we talk to large companies that are adopting cloud native. And many of them, the majority of them say that in terms of their overall IT estate, cloud native is, you know, less than 15%. So there's still a huge, huge level of adoption to happen. And we're just at the start of this. And the fact that we are such a vibrant, we engage so well, and it just seems a very innovative ecosystem is, for me, is a really interesting thing to be a part of. Simon. Yeah, I mean, the main reason for me is probably community. I mean, I'm a geek, and I really enjoy being in amongst all of the people that speak my language. And then, you know, secondly, by participating within the CNCF, it gives me the confidence, you know, to be able to talk about cloud native, to be able to talk about that with people outside of our community, about what's going on, what the projects are, what roles they fill, and then also the steps to adoption. That's really important. And then probably the final thing that keeps me engaged is, becomes apparent that there's just so much work to be done. So I really encourage anybody who wants to get involved, even if it's just correcting a spelling mistake, please submit that pull request. We desperately need it. Yeah, well, I just began. So I'm staying because I'm at the beginning. But it's not only that, it's that I understand that your voice can be heard. And what you do and say can be of real help to other people. And, you know, Tim, Tim really once said that empowerment of individuals is the key factor for which open source works. So this is why all single projects and all single working groups are so important. They empower people. And that's why I'm saying, I guess that's it. I think, yeah. So thank you very much. We've got a few minutes of questions. I mean, it'd be great to hear if anybody has got questions, please raise your hand. And okay, is someone coming with a mic or? Okay, someone's just coming with a mic. Thank you. Some of us work for like a multinational company that is not really cloud native oriented. They have a really strong, established customer base and really conservative tech stack. And some of us might be from the R&D team or an engineering team that is looking really into the whole community and they see the potential. But they need also this like business value speech for like the guys up the ladder. So my question would be, do you have resources that would not only empower non tech people to get into the technical part, but the technical people to be able to speak the business value language? That's an excellent question. It sounds like that's something we need to think about because I mean, I don't have an immediate answer to say, yeah, something to point you to. But I don't know if you guys know of any other resources where Simon? Yeah, you may find some value in just taking a look at the maturity model. It does have a section on business outcomes. And it might also, so it might be able to give you some ideas on how you wish to be able to communicate that to your stakeholders. Yeah. So that might be a helpful place to start. Just adding one thing. So the business value subcommittee is like, is still new, right? And so we were, we started with the foundational things, right? Like definitions and then like helping people navigate the landscape and so on. So as I mean, Richard said it before, like that is a pain point. So we need like, we need people to like, if you identify a pain point and you want to work on it, we can help, you know, like, I mean, help us create it. Like, because if you're, if you need it, other people need it too. So like, yeah, there are not a lot of resources yet from our group, right? Like there are a lot of other resources. So just, yeah, just come join us. Hi there. I'm currently creating a community for the French individuals. So we are creating a group to talk between companies about a CNCF, everything. Where should I start to make sure I'm not creating something, a duplicate of a possibly current channel existing on the Slack or wherever to know, is there already anything existing in the community? Should I contact someone specifically? Yeah, what exactly are you, is it events or just like trying to meet up? Yeah, we are creating meetings where we talk, we are creating a Slack channel with many topics, but only for French to... On the CNCF Slack? Excuse me? On the CNCF Slack or... Not currently. This is why I'm asking because I don't want to create something. I want to make sure it's linked to the CNCF. Yeah. So honestly, I'm not sure. But I know, for instance, like for Latin America, there is a Latin Slack channel where everyone who is Spanish speaker or like from Latin America can kind of join and they exchange a lot of information, things like that. So I don't know if there is something like that for French speaking. There is a France channel. Oh, okay. Yeah, so... But as we are going to discuss about a lot of topics, I think it's going to be too much for just a single Slack channel. So I think we are going to create something outside. Yeah, I'm sure there is someone in the CNCF who would be the right point of contact. I'm not really sure who that is, but... Someone probably in that French Slack group I would think on the CNCF. But yeah, sorry. I know if you are talking about meetups as well, but you can have a look at the KCD channels as well, because usually KCD events start as meetups, smaller meetups on a regular basis, and then they become events, formal and structural events. So maybe on the KCD formation, you can find more to start with. Yes, of course, ask someone there. Yeah. Thank you. This is also related with this question about the Slack, because I've been in the Slack for a while, but I refrained myself from interacting, because it's very... I mean, for example, there, you're describing Slack, and then you put a bunch of channels, right? But it's 1,000 channels on the Slack. And this is as overwhelming as the KubeCon itself, and why I guess people are here now is that sometimes what is lacking is a bit of more structured or where to find. Some of your answers were, talk with someone there or ask someone. So there's always someone that has some extra information, let's say. And that's pretty... That's really not clear for someone who's just joining or just starting or just looking for that information. I hope this was not too confusing. Well, I totally agree that there are a lot of channels there, but not all of... There are some channels where it's like there are thousands of people, and it's almost intimidating to post something there. But a lot of... Our channels from our groups, they're not that huge, because they're not as many people who look for part of it, right? So it's not yet. But at least people who are... Maybe sometimes you have a lot of people who are there, and they never look... They're never actually on the chat. But on the glossary, if you want to contribute to the glossary, people say hi, and ask questions. You can reach the maintainers. So I don't know. I think it just depends where you are. If it's very purpose-driven, I will say that Latham's one is probably... The French one will probably be like that as well. Lots of people, lots of different topics. But if it's for particular projects, I think it's a little bit friendlier, and it's not as scary, I would say. I understand you, because last year I went through a phase of discovery literally on Slack, and I didn't even know what Slack was. So I learned to use the search engine, so that if I'm interested in platform engineering, I find it. If I'm interested in, I don't know, observability or tax security. So I think it just takes you a little while to understand where channels are and what Slack can offer you. But then from one channel, you are addressed to other channels. It's just really a question of, let's say, patience and work on it. Yeah. And I think the meetings are really good, because then you have face-to-face. The meetings are generally not huge. So you just join a meeting, everything. You can find all CNCF meetings on the CNCF calendar, and there are always friendly people there. And if you want to join the business valley subcommittee, we're going to be there. It's not going to be huge. Everyone can introduce themselves. So that would be a more personal way of interacting. Last thing. I began with a marketing committee, just because I'm a marketer. And there I stumbled upon. I learned about the subvalue committee. And then from the subvalue committee, I learned about the glossary. And it's all a concatenation of things. But I think in general, we can say, if people are lost, at the last resort, they can come to the business value subcommittee slack and just reach out to any of us. But we've learned through experience how to navigate around the CNCF, so we can help. Any other questions? Okay. Thank you very much. Enjoy your evening. Enjoy tomorrow. Cheers.