KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2019 was not my first international conference invite but it was the first one I actually got to go. The other one I couldn’t get to go was Elasti{ON} 2018 because of VISA issues. Knowing KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2019 was happening in Europe I knew I had to go. Where else will you meet all cloud native enthusiasts, researchers, engineers I mean every one working to make building of cloud native applications easier. I applied for a Diversity Scholarship and fortunately for me I was amongst the 56 people selected to be part of KubeCon 2019 at Barcelona.
This post is just to tell you about my experience, why you should go for the next one, what I plan to do next and also to say thank you to all the sponsors who made it possible.
1. Let the games begin
The first thing you’ll notice will be the Code of Conduct. It was literally everywhere, so everyone adheres to the rules of engagement.
I registered for KubeSec as well and it was just amazing the sessions we had; from designing and implementing secure CI/CD pipelines using tools like manifesto and notary, learning from the challenges faced in implementing a multi-tenancy cluster and different ways to secure your Kubernetes cluster. One thing that I’m really looking out for is what Nick Smith mentioned in his presentation; “Bringing end user identity to the Service Mesh”. Coupled with the launch of Service Mesh Interface I’m excited about the interoperability of any Service Mesh with Kubernetes and how it will work with end user authentication to see what else we will be able to achieve from this aside the reliability, observability and security that we already get from service meshes.
Later that evening, I went for an Istio Meetup at Carrer d’En Cortines. It was packed and didn’t fall short of inspiration. Stories of what people are doing with Istio and what’s next for Istio from the creators.
There were so many sessions to pick from. Mostly centered around how people used cloud native opensource tools to improve certain deliverables, mistakes they made using the cloud native tools and how you shouldn’t do what they did or just introduction to new ways of doing things. There were sessions on Mental health, Lightning talks on diverse topics and also a chance to meet maintainers of some of the tools we use in the cloud native space. Imagine breaking the slack/zoom or gitter barrier to finally meet and talk with maintainers you’ve worked with. I got to meet Bogdan Drutu who is one of the maintainers of OpenCensus, I contributed an elasticsearch trace exporter to help visualize distributed traces in Kibana. By the way if you use OpenCensus kindly read about the merger between OpenCensus and OpenTracing to form OpenTelemetry.
I couldn’t believe I met Joe Beda and got a signed book from him as well.
Oh, there was time for fun as well. This year we got lucky to celebrate Kubernetes 5th birthday. 5 years for the “Cloud Native OS”, got to see the beautiful town of Poblo de Escober and then the AWS party on the last day. Made new connections, found new opensource technologies to contribute to and use for different projects. It was simply amazing.
What next : CNCF Ghana Chapter
There’s this qoute by Kevin Spacey, not sure if it his character Frank Underwood on House of Cards or Kevin Spacey himself. But to paraphrase ,
“If you’re lucky enough to do well,it’s your responsibility to send the elevator back down”.
After all these amazing experiences, some of which I’ve not included in this post, it will be selfish not to help create an avenue to bridge CNCF opportunities and also a platform to share knowledge about opensource tools under the CNCF umbrella. This is not just for people who already know these but people who are also willing to start in the cloud native space.
Chatting with Kasper Nissen during one of the “Meet the Ambassador” sessions, I enquired about starting a CNCF Ghana chapter. Learnt a lot about how he started #CloudNativeAarhus and how they’ve been able to keep an active community this far.
I’m really excited for what myself and a couple of people; Adane Nana, Addico Samuel, Banini Mawumefa, Boadu Kwabena, Obugyei Eunice and Quartey Papafio Winnie are ready to do with our local CNCF Meetup in Ghana. We hope to share knowledge and also help people to contribute to some of the opensource technologies under the cncf.io umbrella. Just like KubeCon + CloudNativeCon we will do our utmost best to make our Code of Conduct very visible to build an all inclusive CNCF Ghana chapter.
We are not certain of what the challenges ahead hold for us but it’s better to have start and fail than not to start at all. Give us a follow and you can help.