I recently had the privilege of attending KubeCon Europe 2022, one of the largest events in the Kubernetes community. It was an incredible experience that I will never forget. The conference was held both virtually and in person bringing together experts, enthusiasts, and organizations from all over the world to learn, network, and collaborate.

KubeCon in Valencia, Spain🇪🇸 was a blast! And I don't just mean the explosive awesomeness of the conference (although, that was a blast too🚀). This beautiful city was the perfect backdrop for a week of Kubernetes goodness.

The conference was jam-packed with exciting sessions, keynotes, and workshops that covered a wide range of topics related to Kubernetes and cloud-native technologies☁️.

I have to say I was particularly impressed by the level of technical expertise and passion that was on display. The speakers and attendees were all knowledgeable, approachable, and eager to share their experiences and insights.

I also wanted to take the time to highlight the Dan Kohn Scholarship Program, which was established in memory of Dan Kohn to support and encourage underrepresented groups to pursue careers in cloud-native computing. As a recipient of the scholarship, I am honoured to have been given this opportunity to learn from and network with individuals who share my passion for this field. I am truly grateful for the support provided by the program.🌸

I would like to extend a heartfelt thank you to the organizers and sponsors of KubeCon+CloudNativeCon Europe 2022 for putting together such a fantastic event. I am already looking forward to next year's conference and can't wait to see what the future holds for the Kubernetes community.

My top 5 talks 💡

KubeCon+CloudNativeCon EU 2022 was an unforgettable experience filled with insightful and innovative talks. Out of all the amazing presentations, I have picked my top 5 favourite talks that stood out to me.

TikTok's Story: How to Manage a Thousand Applications on Edge with ArgoCD 🦑

This talk was a case study about how TikTok manages thousands of applications using ArgoCD. TikTok currently have around ~100 edge clusters, ~150k CPU's and around 3,000 applications, in this demo they showcased the challenges faced by TikTok by operating a large network of K8s clusters, managed and orchestrated by ArgoCD, which shows the great potential that GitOps solutions have.

Authors: Qingkun Li & Jesse Suen

Open Policy Agent - Intro & Deep Dive 🪖

Authors: Anders Eknert & Will Beason

Open Policy Agent (OPA) is a recently graduated CNCF project which has a lot of potential to solve a large number of policy-related use cases for Kubernetes or Cloud Native solutions in general. This session is a great way to learn more about OPA and also to get a project update directly from the maintainers on new features and changes!

What Anime Taught Me About K8s Development & Tech Careers 💼

Author: Annie Talvasto

The talk given by Annie Talvasto was a compelling and captivating experience. It was one of the best and most straightforward explanations of Kubernetes and tech careers that I have encountered. I highly recommend this talk to anyone who is starting or considering a career in the cloud and has an interest in anime. The speaker uses references to popular anime characters like Naruto and Luffy (One piece) entertainingly and engagingly to illustrate key concepts, making the session not only informative but also enjoyable.

From Student to SRE That Loves CNCF in No Time 🎓

Author: Jacob Valdemar

This talk introduced Jacob, who a year ago had limited knowledge about Kubernetes and other CNCF projects. Jacob decided to take on a new challenge and joined Lunar as a Site Reliability Engineer. During his five-month internship, Jacob learned how to develop and maintain a GitOps-based Kubernetes platform while contributing to various CNCF projects. His hard work shows off that we all can overcome ourselves and no matter how much of knowledge we have if we pursue our dreams and goals enough we can accomplish them in no time!

Removing Language Barriers for Spanish-speaking Professionals 🇪🇸

Author: Victor Morales

In this talk, Victor Morales addresses a pressing issue faced by many professionals, students, and enthusiasts in the open-source community: language barriers. According to a survey published by the Apache Software Foundation in 2020, language can be a significant factor that hinders individuals from contributing to open-source projects. To address this, Victor provides an in-depth exploration of the contribution process for localization teams, highlighting the pressing need for individuals to join these teams and help translate important documentation into different languages. This talk is particularly relevant for those whose primary language is not English, and for anyone interested in making open-source projects more accessible and inclusive for all.

Closing words 📖

The open-source community is a truly incredible thing, and it's amazing to see how individuals and organizations can come together to create amazing things. The Linux Foundation and CNCF have done an incredible job of bringing together developers, companies, and individuals to further the cause of open source and help drive technology forward. Thank you again to Linux Foundation and CNCF for their ongoing support of the open-source community.

Everything started with an email from CNCF on the last day of August 2021, telling me that I was provisionally selected for the Diversity & Inclusion scholarship, thankfully I was able to meet the prerequisites to travel and I was able to use this incredible opportunity. Talking a little bit about myself at that moment I was a volunteer for the CNCF San Salvador at that moment, that is our own chapter of CNCF over there. Now, I'm a co-organizer of the chapter and we are really helping the community in El Salvador to get involved with IT and Cloud-Native products that are really helping to boost people's lives over there.

The process to apply, and to claim the scholarship was a really smooth process, basically, there are multiple ways to apply; whether it's needs-based or diversity and inclusion or applying like a student, there is an opportunity for everyone.

When I claimed the scholarship I was amazed at how easy was to register for the events and thankfully the Linux Foundation scholarship also included a pass for a co-located event, I chose Service Mesh Con that was going to take place in LA as well.

I arrived in LA on the 10th of October 2021, it was all new for me, the city, the LA vibes, the good food (tacos are awesome down there btw).

I went the first day of the KubeCon to register and I encountered a really nice registration experience, a really great and non-intrusive COVID vaccine registration system.

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I got my badge that obviously I still keep as a treasure and good reminder of my experience, and then the experience started!

I attended a lot of talks and breakout rooms, the experience and knowledge shared over there was just amazing. Definitely, there is always something new to learn over there, also this is a great opportunity to catch up with new technologies that are coming up and people are using more often and often.

Also, this is a great opportunity for you if you want to make networking, I met a lot of friends, I was able to meet in person with my friend Raul Flamenco, we both organize the CNCF chapter in El Salvador, so this was a great experience to catch up with him and also plan our future plans for our CNCF chapter in San Salvador, El Salvador (new blog posts are coming around that topic).

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I really want to thank the Cloud Native Computing Foundation for this awesome event and also to Linux Foundation for this incredible and life-changing experience. If you are reading this and you are thinking about applying I really encourage you to do it, it's going to be an experience that is really going to boost your professional life and will help you to expand your horizons in Open Source.

Thank y'all for reading!