(cheery synth music) >> Hello, this is theCUBE. I'm John Furrier, your host. We're here for a KubeCon CloudNativeCon preview for the North America show in Los Angeles, here in person and a virtual event. Two of the co-chairs are with me again this year, Constance Caramanolis, principal engineer at Splunk, and of course, Stephen Augustus, head of Open Source at Cisco. Great to see you guys. Hey, thanks for coming on, virtually, for the preview. >> Great to be had! >> Constance: Thank you for having us. >> Stephen: Great to see you again John. (laughing) >> Constance: Yeah. >> So I love... well, KubeCon has gotten, It's my favorite event every year. This is where the DevOps actually, where the people are reading the tea leaves, connecting the dots, but also meeting up and doing what communities do best, which is set the agenda for the next, next generation that's happening in person. Last year, it was virtual. We had the European virtual KubeCon, CloudNativeCon. This year a mix. Give us a taste of updates that you want to share. Let's get, let's get into it. >> Sure. Uh, so I think, you know, um, I-I-I think uh, seeing this event in particular and uh, you know, one, we've got this, we've got this hopeful r-return to you know, some semblance of normalcy. I know that you know, over the last year and change, we've been uh, we've been kind of itching t-t-to see each other in person. And, and you know, and, and I-I think I say on a lot of uh, interviews that I, you know, one of my favorite parts of any conference is the, is the hallway track, right? It's really hard to, and, and we've- we've made, you know, we've made strides to replicate it, but there's- I don't think there's anything uh, you know, close t-to being in person, right? And, and getting to, to bounce i-ideas off of uh, your, your co-conspirators, (laughs) co-conspirators or compatriots. Um, so I'm- I'm really excited for that, um, I love the, I love the um, the mandates that we've put in place, uh, to make sure that people are uh, a little bit more safe. Um, and, you know, overall, like seeing uh- I-I think one of the things that gets me most excited is the, is the uh, the set of day zero events, right? Um, I-I think the, the increase in the uh, day zero events, we, we've got uh, Constance, what's the, what's the count at now? I'm, I'm looking over it and, and it's uh, it's, it's massive, right? You know, SupplyChainSecurityCon, Uh, the, you know, the Cloud Native for Eclipse Foundation, it's beyond, >> Too, hmm, too many to count right off the bat when I'm looking at it. >> Too many, too many to count! >> And it's also like, this is a reduced number because some people decide or some, not people, like projects, decide to do virtual uh, days or a non-conference outside of the normal KubeCon cycle because of... >> Yeah, well, let's get, let's get- >> that thing that should not be named. >> Let's get into some of the data. >> I want to jump into the trends. But just for the folks watching, this is a hybrid event, and- >> Yeah. >> There's going to be this day zero, which is the pre-programming. Which by the way, I think has evolved into a format that's just tremendous. You got the pregame, pre-event action. Very dynamic, very ad-hoc, ephemeral in the, in the, in the, in the, in the people getting together and making things happen. Then you got the structured event. It's uh, the 11th to the 12th on the pre-programming, day zero stuff, which you talked about, and then the 13th to the 15th, the main conference. It's in-person and virtual, so it's going to be a hybrid event, which should be dynamic because you have an in-person dynamic where it's a scarce resource of the face-to-face, working and trying to create synchronicity with the asynchronous environment on virtuals. So it should be an action packed and a must-watch event. So I'm personally excited, we'll be there in person. But I got to ask you guys, the co-chairs, how are you guys handling this? How are the papers coming, what's the call for talks? How are you structuring things? Can you just give a quick overview of what's, what's happening on the talks? >> Uh, talks, uh, I feel like it went really well this round. >> Um, really like, wide variety. I know it's pretty vague, but there's a wide variety of topics, uh, things that are getting I think, I feel like more popularity, like security is getting more popular. Uh, business value, one thing that I'm really passionate about, is getting a lot more traction. Uh, student track 101 is also, as always, I guess, as ever since it's been, since inception has been popular, um, it's definitely getting to the point where we're actually, well not to the point, but maybe it's just being more highlighted that a lot of the, like, like, some of the like great content from the day zeros are also showing up in KubeCon and then like, vice versa and they're kind of everywhere. Uh, Yeah, the talks I think was really- >> John: The sessions, the sessions are always driving it. Stephen I'm like from a, from a, from a maturisation standpoint, you have the, the, the people developing and then you got the f... the things are getting hardened. Can you talk about the trends around, what's kind of hardening out from a project basis on these sessions and what's forming relative to the trend line this year. >> Yeah. So, you know, so to Constance's point, I think that we're, we're starting to see some diversity in, or continued diversity and kind of the personas that are coming into the conference, right? So whether you're talking about that continuing 101 track or, the student track, which, you know, a lot of people have, have kind of jumped in and seeing that as an opportunity to, to, to not only start becoming part of the community, but also to immediately contribute to content. And then you've got that For me? It's, it's security, all day, right? I think, you know, I think that, you know, there's not a week, there's not a week that passes that I don't have a chat with someone around what's happening in security lately. And I think you'll see that highlighted in in all of the keynotes that we have planned there are, there's not one, not two, but three uh, keynotes around software supply chain security, and some of the different things that you have to consider as we're kind of walking into the space of you know, protecting, protecting your, your build pipeline, protecting your production artifacts, so that's something that really, you know, that goes to that, you know, that goes to my work on that, you know, in Kubernetes for SIG release, release engineering, that's, you know, something that we, we know that there are countless downstream consumers, right? So, some, you know, some that we may not have even had contact with yet from the upstream perspective, right? So it's, it's paramount for us to make sure that, you know, everything that we're pushing out to the community and to the wider world is safe to consume. So, so security is definitely top of mind for me. I would say for, you know, lots of things around you know, continue, continuing to talk about uh, GitOps observability. And I think, and I think that, you know, each of these, what's, you know, what's fun about um, each of these, uh, the, each of these topics, each of these areas is that they're all interconnected, right? So more and more you're seeing, you're seeing, oh, well, you know, the, you know, the Tekton folks are, you know, are talking to the Flux folks. And, and they're talking to the, the folks who are working on uh, Sigstore and Rekor and, and, and all of these fun tools about how to integrate into, you know, how to integrate into those respective areas. Um, so it's, it's, it's really a time of um, collaboration underscored by um, you know, protecting, protecting the community and the, and the end users. >> John: Yeah. We're seeing a lot of ah, um, you know, the security discussions. I mean, how far can you shift left before it becomes like standard, right? So like, you know, we're seeing that being built in. I got to ask you guys also on the trend of DevOps there's been a lot of conversations around Cloud Native, around obsolete management and in terms of ability, but data, the role of data has been different approaches on how people are leveraging machine learning and AI, can you, did that come up a lot in, in some of the, the discussions and the analysis? Because everyone's slapping machine learning on things these days, and there's a little bit of that going on, but it seems to be data and machine learning and horizontal scale, classic DevOps, things are happening. What's your reaction to, to some of those things that are happening? Can you guys, is there anything happening there? >> I feel like this year wasn't that big of a machine learning year in terms of submissions. >> Yes. >> I'm certain you agree with that, but it wasn't, as I think, like, security took a lot and, and, like, and this might also just be like, thinking about it holistically now, like security was, had such amazing submissions that it probably took a little bit of the spotlight off of when we were looking at the machine learning ones. Um... >> John: So security... >> Also I'm biased, so I think >> John: So security dominated more than, than everyone else did. >> Yeah. I think, you know, I think for this year, security is, security is dominating. I, you know, I think we even talked about this in the last uh, chat we had, um, the, you know, kind of from the AI side, I think you're, we're, we're running, there have been discussions around the, uh, you know, bias in, in AI models and um, you know, how we work through that, um, I'm not sure that we have any content for that this time around, but I think it, yeah, but I think, you know, as we start to talk about like how we collect data, you know, are, are we collecting the right types of data, how we serve it, especially as a, those relate to like collecting data at the edge, right? Like, how do we, how do we, how, how do we even deploy applications at the edge? We, we have a lot of potential solutions for that. But when you combine that with, well, how do we, how do we scrape information from the things that we're deploying from the edge, right? Or, or, or some, some of the things you'll see in the, in the program. >> Constance and Stephen, talk about the community vibe right now, because you know, that's the biggest part of this conference is seeing how the people come together, but it's also the vibe sets the tone. What's, what's the current vibe in the community that you're seeing and what do we expect this year at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon? >> Yeah, I'm going to say, I imagine the community's tired and it's been a long few, two years. It feels like 10 years, it feels like forever. And a lot of the in-person aspect that used to be like social validation, we just get like is lacking, so, but that being said, there's still been amazing, like collaboration from like the open, from like the Observability and Open Telemetry part. Like, I am seeing so many projects within the tag Observability collaborate together and making that a focus. And so even though we are tired, it's still, we're still doing good work. And we're still making a point of trying to keep that community tight even though it's much harder on Zoom and right, you know, it's going to try and do the awkward, like Zoom handshake. It just doesn't do the same thing there. But to Stephen's keynote, can't remember how long ago it is, about like resiliency. We are pretty resilient. And we're also, I think we're all learning to work at a slower pace because maybe we were working too fast beforehand. And I think that, I think that's a really good takeaway from all of this. So I think it's going to, for as safe as it can be to have some variation, it's probably going to just be like, it's going to be a big party because we're going to finally get to see each other after a long time then. >> John: Yeah. >> I hope we get to do that in a safe way. >> Stephen, you bring it in, Steve, you go. Oh, Steve, you always got the energy certainly on camera, but in person as well. >> (laughs) >> This in-person dynamic this year is huge. >> Yeah, we, >> Wh-what do you think is going to happen? What, give us your take. >> Yeah, so I mean, I, you know, I would echo Constance in saying that, you know, we're, we're, we're all tired, we're all very tired at this point. Um, but I, you know, but, they, they, the conference tagline for, for North America is, uh, is 'Resilience Realized', right? I think that, you know, throughout this, this year, um, the, the contributors, maintainers of, of all of these, you know, CNCF projects have made incredible strides uh, to empower the communities to, to, uh, to be together, to be family, to, to work better together, um, in spite of, you know, in spite of uh, location, location uh, boundaries, in spite of, you know, uh, uh, health concerns, like we've, we've really made the effort to um, to show up for each other. Um, so I think that, you know, what we'll see in the conference and, and, you know, one of my favorite tracks personally um, is the, the community track, um, so lots of, lots of content around, you know, a-around community building, around uh, I think more of the, the meta of, of maintaining communities, right? So the, you know, the, the, the, the code of conduct committee, as well as uh, steering committee uh, for Kubernetes got together um, last conference to, to talk about the values and principles of the community, right? And, and I think that, you know, that, that needs to continue to be highlighted, um, you know, some of the conversations that we've had around um, how you maintain groups, you know, how do you maintain groups, especially as um, especially as a, the, the, the size of the group grows, right? Once you escape that kind of like Dunbar's number uh, area, like it gets harder and harder to s have the s the same bandwidth conversations that you would in a smaller group, right? So making sure that we're continuing to, to have valuable conversations, but also be inclusive while we're doing that is, um, is something that will continue to be highlighted over the next year and change really. >> Well. I'm really impressed by what you guys do. And I know we're all tired getting, and we want to get back and, hats off to pulling it together and creating a great program because your, your group and your community is a social construct. It's, it's, we're all social animals. And this whole COVID virtual, now hybrid really is going to, going to show in real world as all playing out, and we're going to see how it evolves, and evolution is part of social communities. And I think that the progress has been made and, you know, and with the team and you guys putting together this great event. So my hat's off to you guys, thanks for, for doing that. Appreciate, great stuff. >> Thank you, thank you. >> Now, final question, um, what do you expect? Given, I mean, this is a social organization, um, things evolve, we're social organisms. We're going to be face to face. We're going to have virtual. We're going to have great talks, security obviously is prime time, Mainstream Enterprise Adoption in Kubernetes and Cloud Native. This is crunch time, so what do you guys expect for this event? Share your thoughts. >> Yeah, I-I think there's going to be lots of um, lots of fun, uh, I think uh more social conversations, less structured. Um, you know, i-if you have, if you haven't had the opportunity to kind of hang out on CNCF Slack, while one of these events are happening, we, we've spun up something of like a hallway track. Um, so, so people are hanging out, they're giving their takes during the um, you know, you know, in between uh talks, there, there was also a, you know, kind of after conference uh, hangout for, for the hallway track that we did. Um, so w we definitely want to continue some of that stuff. Um, as you know, between the last few conferences we've launched uh, Cloud Native TV um, and lots of great producers uh, and, and, and content over there. So you'll see, you'll see, kind of, us start to break the wall between um, that virtual content that we've created uh, across the last few months, as well as, you know, th s seeing that turn physical, right? Um, so how do we, you know, how, how do we, how do we manage that and h-how do we make that seamless for people who may be maybe participating virtually as opposed to physically, right. That there's going to be a bit of um, there, there's an aspect of like, you're, you're almost running two conferences, right. Simultaneously. So. >> It's a total experiment in the real world, but it's, it's all important. It's super important. Constance, your thoughts on, on the event, what people are expecting to see and surprises that might emerge, what do you, what's your thoughts? >> Um, I, well actually, see while you were saying something, I had an idea that I think we can make it more connected, So I just wrote it down, um, uh, I, I have some silly ideas when it comes to the conference stuff, which is why Stephen's laughing, although you can't see it. >> (both men laughing) >> Um, my, I, like, I'm, I'm trying to go in with no expectations, mostly because I'm so excited. I don't want to be disappointed um, and I don't want to miss out. I think, I actually think that probably a lot of the discussions are just going to be like, hi, like, it's so nice to actually meet you and just talk about random things. Maybe not as much technology discussions as maybe there would be at a normal, I like, ah, I don't want to say normal, right? Because we are in a new normal, like what KubeCon was several years ago. Um, I think that I do. I think that it would be probably a little painful, this hybrid part, since we don't know what to expect. I think there's going to be so many things that we're going to look back and be like, face palm and be like, oh, we should've thought about these things. So for anyone who's attending virtually, apologies in advance, and please give us feedback. There's so many things I know we're going to have to improve, we just, we don't know them yet. So please be patient with us and know that we wish that you could be there in person with us too. >> Um, uh, I don't know. >> Well, that's the thing, that's the thing. >> I'm just going to go in there with an open mind. Well that's the thing, it's, it's new, it's all new, virtual. So it's, it's, we're learning together. That's, I think, people put too much pressure. I think people like expecting, you know, some magic to happen, but it's all evolving. And I think the magic is the event. And I think, I think it's going to work out great. And by the way, there's no downside it's, you know, learn. >> Exactly! >> So, yeah. So, you know, so one of the things that I um, I, I have this spiel that I give to um, the release team, the Kubernetes release team, every time we start a new cycle, right? Um, you've got a set of returning contributors. You've got a set of uh, net new contributors, right? And um, and, and moving into the release team, you're kind of like thrown right into the fire of Kubernetes, right? So it's, it's, it's one of those things. I, I, I come in and, and, and, essentially say, um, be curious, question everything. Um, this is like, it's a, it's, it's very much like a human experience, right? And I think that, you know uh, to, to Constance's point, we're all here to, to learn and grow, make this a better experience for everyone. Um, so bring yourself, like bring yourself to the conference, right? I think it's, you know, in, in terms of offering feedback, we have, you know, feedback forms for every one of the, you know, every one of the, the talks that you attend, um, you can feel free to reach out to Constance, and myself and, and Jasmine, um, if you have feedback that you want to give personally, you know, there, there are, there are ways to get in touch with us. There are ways to make the event better. And I think that every time we, we uh, we incorporate, like, we incorporate a lot of this feedback into the next conference. So every time um, you provide some piece of information for us, that gives us an opportunity to make it better, right? So this conference is built, uh, this conference is built by the community, right? The, you know, it's not just a, you know, it's not a, you know, it's not a body just uh making, making decisions kind of off the cuff, it's, we are taking your ideas and we're trying to turn them into a program, right? So it's, it's the maintainers, it's the end users. It's the students, it's people who have never used Kubernetes in their lives, or never used Cloud Native technology in their lives. It's folks who are coming from the, you know, the, the corporate IT kind of classic uh, background, and, and just trying to understand how to be effective in this, in this new world for them. Um so it's like, it takes all kinds and we, we don't get it done without your feedback. So please, um, as you're coming to the conference, whether it's in-person or virtually, like, bring yourselves, be curious, ask questions, um, provide that feedback. And then um, and I think, you know, from the, you know, th-the kind of from the uh, the, yes, we need to be human, but we also need to um recognize some of the, the requirements, uh, that, that are, that we have going into this conference. So reminder that, you know, all of, all of the events are under, you know, under a code of conduct, please make sure to familiarize yourself with uh, code of conduct. I think that um, you know, I-I think that coming back into a physical space for a lot of people, the um, the, some of the social skills can, can erode over time. So please not just bring yourself, bring your best self. And, you know, be sure to review all of the policies around health and, and safety as we go into this. >> Constance, Stephen, that's great stuff. Love talking with you guys. Constance, you want to add something? Go ahead. >> I want to add one thing, also be gentle with yourself and like, be really kind to yourself and others, because this is going to be really overwhelming. I haven't been around more than 10 people at once in almost two years. And so, just remember to be kind as well, always be curious and question everything. >> Yeah. That's great stuff. Great reminder. This is what it's all about, face-to-face. Face-to-face, presence, being together, but also having the openness and the community around you. A lot of mentoring, you guys have a great community for people coming in that are new and there's great mentors, people are open and cool, great community. Thanks for coming on for this special preview for KubeCon CloudNativeCon, thank you so much. >> Thanks for having us. >> Thank you. >> Okay, this is theCUBE's coverage of Kubecon CloudNative, and we've been every year of KubeCon. It's been in fantastic growth. Going the next level again in person, a lot of security, real time adoption should be uh, should be great, virtual and in-person. I'm John Furrier, thanks for watching. (cheery synth music)