Every year, a bunch of Redpill Linproers go to the biggest conference for cloud and Kubernetes in Europe, KubeCon. This year was no different and 17 participants from Redpill Linpro packed their bags and went to London.
Pip Oomen was one of them and in this blog, he shares his insights about the trip - from his special trip to London to this year's take-aways. 

Introduction

My name is Pip Oomen and I have been working in tech since the early 1990s. Since 2012 I have been employed at Redpill Linpro, within the CloudOps (Managed Services) department. I am currently a teamlead and responsible for the strategical decisions around container technology offerings from within CloudOps. I have been working with container technology since the early 2010s.

The conference

KubeCon/CloudNativeCon (KubeCon for short) is a conference organised by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), an organisation under the Linux Foundation. The first KubeCon was organised in 2015 in San Fransisco and 500 people attended. Since then it has been expanding and is now organised yearly in the US, Europe and Asia (China, Japan, India).

This years event in London had 13,000+ attendees and 400+ talks.

KubeCon focuses on the cloud native eco-system and is currently a three day event, wednesday to friday. It provides a multitude of talks divided in a number of tracks (interest areas) and also hosts a large showcase for providers of products and services, as well as a solution showcase for projects under the CNCF umbrella. During the evenings there is a large amount of community events and (sponsored) parties.

The conference kicks off on tuesday (day 0), with product specific mini-conferences. While initially you only signed up for just one of those mini-conferences, nowadays you sign up for the first day and can choose freely to participate in each of the simultaneous events.

Returning to KubeCon

This was my fourth participation in KubeCon. My first KubeCon was Barcelona (2019), followed by post-pandemic Amsterdam (2022) and Paris (2023). Next year's conference will return to Amsterdam, before returning to Barcelona in 2027.

In Barcelona in 2019 we were four attendees from CloudOps. In Amsterdam this was extended to a larger number of participants from CloudOps and a few from DevOps Oslo, for a total of 11 attendees. In Paris, Redpill Linpro participated with 25 attendees from all three countries. This year Norway and Sweden made up the 17 representees for Redpill Linpro, easily recognisable by the burgundy hoodies.

The road to London

Travelling to London was extra special, since I had the opportunity to travel by train from Amsterdam, using kubetrain.io which stood for the organisation of the transport.

We travelled with a coach full of like-minded people and this was really great a way to reconnect with old friends, connect with new people and exchange ideas, all while comfortably travelling to London and before the start of the conference.

On arrival in London, all travellers by train from the various parts of Europe (Amsterdam, Geneva, Lausanne, Montpellier, Paris, Zurich) joined the kubetrain party, where 300+ people gatherered. More old friends to greet and new connections to be made. What a way to kick off the week!

The experience

KubeCon is a way to orientate myself within the realm of cloud native technologies, while escaping for a short time from the daily bubble, and opening up for new and fresh ideas and concepts. It has become a vital tool to keep in touch with the ever-changing landscape, and has also become an important way to connect (and reconnect) with the (international) community.

My KubeCon experience has changed over time. The first year my main focus was on attending talks, but in later years this has shifted to roaming the showcase and solution floor and (re)connecting with people.

I do prepare a list of talks that seem interresting and try to attend a number of those, but given the opportunity to connect with people or attend a talk, I now usually choose the former. This is also influenced by the fact that all talks are put up on youtube after the conference. I therefore end up with catching up with the talks I marked as interresting in the weeks following the conference.

This year I met with people from specific projects (Sidero/Talos Linux, Kubernetes Stormcenter, OKD project) to plan and discuss the way forward. It is really nice and helpful to meetup in person after having only been in contact through chat and video.

The geo-political situation

One of the recurring themes this year was the interest and drive to establish a non-US based alternative to big-tech (Amazon, Google, Microsoft). The current geo-political situation is really having its effect on the discussions.

Redpill Linpro is in an unique position to offer solutions to the challenges faced by nordic businesses. Being present and visible within this space is a key factor to be able to profit from this situation.

This years key take-aways