hey welcome back to los angeles thecube is live here at kubecon cloud native con 2021 we're so excited to be here in person lisa martin with dave nicholson and we are here with priyanka sharma the executive director of cnc at prayanka welcome to the program thank you so much for having me first of all congratulations on doing an event in person in such a safe clean way i was really impressed when i walked in this morning was asked for my vaccination record my temperature was scanned you're proving you can do these events safely this isn't rocket science so agreed and i'm so glad you appreciate all the measures we've put in place because this is how we can do it in-person interaction is essential for us as human beings for us as professionals and so we owe it to each other to just do the right thing you know have a vaccine requirement wear your masks have these what i call the traffic light uh system where if you have a green a green band it means people can come a little closer it's okay red means please at least six feet of distance and these things go a long way in making an event successful in times like this they do i love that when i saw that mine keeps falling off i'm cold so it keeps falling i'm green just so you know i know you're green what about you i'm green here you can can i have yours that's my favorite and you know you fell off again you had um the three folks that came up who were uh like uh co-chairs co-chairs yeah yeah and uh and they did almost a little almost a little skit yes that on the surface people could say well that's ridiculous and it's like no it's not it's giving everybody the guidelines so that everyone can be comfortable because when i see your green wristband i understand that you are comfortable because i don't want to accidentally reach out to give you a fist bump when you might be particularly of course yeah yeah so no visual cues make it easy yes yeah yeah very very easy very comfortable talk about the energy at the event this is the second full day tina was standing room only yesterday give us an overview of the energy and some of the things that are happening since you can't replicate those hallway networking conversations on video conference i know exactly what you mean man it is so lovely to be in person to meet people and you know for those who are comfortable there's like the fist bumps and the hugs and the big smiles and that energy i haven't seen it in almost two years um and even you know just standing on stage as i was telling you folks uh off camera i've been in this role for over a year and a close to a year and a half i've done three cube cons already but this was my first in person and being on that stage experiencing the energy of the people in that room like when i asked everyone during my keynote i was like are you all proud to be team cloud native and i got a resounding yes back from the audience that's what i'm talking about yeah you know it was amazing what's some of the news that's breaking lots of stuff going on obviously some first one in person in almost two years but talk to me about some of the the news that's breaking here at the event yes so so much new stuff to share um from our side on cncf our journey has been very much about being celebrating our culture and welcoming more and more people into it so that we can have more folks in team cloud native to take various jobs to find fulfillment and all those great things right and all of our announcements are around that theme of people finding a place here people paying it forward in this community and building the culture the first one i would like to share is the announcement of the kubernetes and cloud native associate certification so this is an exam that is going to go live end of the year so people sign up apparently the beta signups went away like this after i announced it so it was really cool wow popular by demanding yeah very very popular and it's it's an exam for folks who are brand new to cloud native and it the studying for it you'll go through you know the fun fundamentals of kubernetes what is the cncf landscape what are the key projects and ultimately you will actually deploy an application using coop cuddle commands and it's such a great primer so so how brand new can someone be when you when you say brand new are you talking about someone who already has a phd in computer science but hasn't done anything in the kubernetes space tell me how brand new can you be uh-huh that's a very good question and it is literally you can come with zero knowledge you would of course have to study for the exam and like go through that journey but the idea is that it is the gateway and so it is possible you're a phd in computer science but you've studied some esoteric part of computer science that's very unconnected to what we do sure go ahead and take it but maybe most likely you would like the more advanced certifications better but if you're let's say a marketer looking to break into the cloud native industry this is the move take this exam and suddenly all these employers you speak their language they'll be impressed that you took it and it's it's an opportunity to advance your career the oh community is huge i was looking at the website the other day 138 000 contributors yes from more than 177 countries 186 is the latest number 186 awesome 289 plus million lines of code written this community is really so productive and so prolific and it's great that you're offering more folks that don't have the background like you were saying to be able to get in and get started absolutely it's our whole thing of bring in more people because as you all probably know there's so much demand for cloud native skill sets across job functions so that's why we're here to help with yeah i you know i i want to double click on this as we say because you hear the word inclusive associated with this whole community so much um you're talking about something that is a certification yeah a marketer okay fine but we're really talking about anyone who has the drive to potentially completely transform their lives yes and in this age where things can be done remotely you don't necessarily have to live in silicon valley or cambridge massachusetts to do this or in one of the other global centers of technology anywhere yeah so that's the that's the kind of energy that's part of this that isn't a part of any large industry focused conference because you really are making opportunities for people of all backgrounds to change their lives so i don't know i don't am i extending a a virtual thank you from all of those people whose lives have been changed and will be changed in the future maybe i am but so but talk about inclusiveness in in you know from from other perspectives yes i think that you know talent drive skills none of these are exclusive to a certain zip code you know people everywhere have great qualities and deserve chances and why shouldn't they be part of a community that as you said is especially inclusive feels especially nice to be a part of and that's what i exhorted the community to do in my keynote yesterday which is that our ranks will grow and we should go out of our way to make sure our ranks grow and we do that by shining a light on our culture telling people to join in lending a hand and you know letting people's personalities shine even when they'll be different from who we are whether in terms of job function or skill set whatever and i think that's the top level um paradigm that we want to have right where we are always welcoming people when we think of inclusiveness it is you know there is certifications like kcna did do a great job there are also efforts that we must always be doing so something that we work on constantly consistently is contributor strategy where we're working on creating ladders and pathways for folks to become open source contributors it is known now that open source contributions lead to job advancement in your career right and so the whole goal is bring people in not just to hang out not just to talk but to actually grow and actually kubecon cloudnativecon is a great example of another little thing we do which is uh we uh award uh underrepresented minorities and people who are who need need-based funds scholarships to attend nice yeah and it's changed one thousand 1518 lives already and we actually uh in uh in this event have announced that we are renaming the scholarship to the dan khan scholarship fund um i i do you folks know dan yes did yeah so dan he breathed life into team cloud native right he built this organization to have the impact that it does today and all the while he was relentlessly focused on diversity equity inclusion so it was it was just like the idea came from within the team and the minute someone said it it just struck a chord with all of us yeah we're like we're doing this no question and it was one of the fastest decisions we've ever made i saw uh some results of a dei micro survey on the website where 75 percent of respondents say this community is becoming more inclusive there's obviously work to go but as a female in technology you feel that you see that as well yes i think i'm very proud of that survey that we did by the way because it's our way we're going to keep doing it it's our way to keep a pulse on the ecosystem because you can keep doing initiatives right but if people are not feeling great then who cares and so um but yes i think dei is a journey if there is no destination right always we have to be thinking harder trying harder to you know i think for example something cncf's done a great job is identifying particularly gender diverse folks who are in the community and maybe could deserve a role of high responsibility so i'm really proud that our technical oversight committee which is our really the top technical people in the ecosystem who desi decide project stuff they are led by a woman there's many women on that and it's they're all very exemplary awesome technologists and so i think um the diversity survey gives us like a hint into like the things people do like and i mean the fact remains we need to do more to source more people to come into the ecosystem we need to always be changing and evolving with the needs of the community right as i mentioned the community is 138 000 strong 6.8 million plus contributions so far you can imagine by opening that dei door just the thought diversity that comes in alone and the number of projects that will come from folks that just come in with a different mindset oh 100 we are already seeing that um we started off as folks who had you know lots of projects from the great big tech companies people who had web scale problems as i call it and that was great but in recent years the end users who are initially just consuming this technology and that too slowly are now hook line and sinker in and we have like argo cd came from intuit which is an end user uh backstage came from spotify which is an end user so this trend is growing and the diversity as you said is continuing yeah i i'm particularly interested in the dynamic where you have people who have their day job if you will where their employer is absolutely 100 encouraging them to participate in the community to develop things that will not only help the employer and that mission but also building uh solutions for everyone and providing enrichment for the for the person and and i i'm i'm going to make a little bit of a prediction i want to get your thoughts on this i think that um one of the silver linings of what we've been through in the pandemic having a lot of people at home having that relationship with your primary employer be just a little bit different and just a little bit more removed i think everyone is realizing that you know what um we all need a passion play to be a part of in addition to whatever we're doing to put bread on the table in the immediate future and so i i think that i want to hear your thoughts there's going to be an explosion in contributions from people and hopefully a lot more openness on the part of employers to let people dedicate their time to this do you do you see that do you think that yes i think i think you're really on to something here um something i mentioned in my keynote right was this conversation i've had with so many that we in this community our identity is cloud native first so we're folks who are in team cloud native before we are working at insert company name you know um google at t spotify whatever it's not a dig on the company it's actually a celebration of those companies because they are liking the developments that happen in open source they are appreciating the value these people are creating and they're employing them so absolutely there is this ongoing trend of folks seeing great value in folks who understand this cloud native projects in particular and of course right because we have been such a great place for industry collaboration lots of vendors have great products make lots of money on these projects and that's as it should be and so the value of the people contributing to these projects is very high and it will only continue to grow i imagine so so here we are in los angeles at kubecon cloud native con 21 what's what's next well uh the good news is this was the first of many to come hybrid events in person plus virtual and the next one is happening in end of may in valencia for europe 22. valencia spain and i have heard beautiful weather very nice people amazing food so just for that that alone is worth registration yes i know right it's going to be amazing i'm so excited and i hope i will see you folks there sign me up i've never been to spain i'm there me too let's do it excited let's do it for our spanish-speaking uh viewers i will say claroque he you can't you do you can do it all you can speak spanish on the queue we can have something honestly i'm impressed i'm impressed i can't i can't do that any and you donated your green card so thank you so much so nice congratulations on the event thank you uh for growing the community for and growing the diversity of it and for the the projects that are going on now and we're sure many more to come we look forward to seeing you in valencia in may thank you so much see you in valencia all right we'll see you there for dave nicholson i'm lisa martin we are live in los angeles the cube is covering kubecon and cloudnativecon at 21. stick around we'll be back after a short break with our next guest