First time attending KubeCon North America, and I have to say tech-wise I got my but kicked. Its a good thing though. You go into a conference thinking you know something about technical and devopsy things. Then you run into the daily practitioners and you find out that there is so much more to learn and to stay updated on! Like a school kid doing a book report, here is my one day conference summary/report.

KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2022 – Detroit Conference Report

The KubeCon + CloudNativeCon is a gathering of industry professionals discussing and sharing their knowledge in the Kubernetes and the Cloud Native technology Landscape. The primary driver of this conference is Kubernetes. The conference is run by the Cloud Native Compute Foundation – cncf.io which is part of the Linux Foundation.

I attended one day, Wednesday 10/26. The estimates of attendance was 6000 in person attendance. The opening keynote highlighted that in the face of an expected economic downturn large companies stressed that they will not be cutting hiring or spending in the Cloud Native arena as they see Cloud Native as a tech differentiator and a way to bring products to market quicker while generating revenue.

*Kubecon KeyNote* *Kubecon Meeting* *Kubecon Floor* *Kubecon Floor2* *Hashicorp Socks*

Tech Companies were in attendance (not a complete list)

  • HashiCorp
  • Canonical (Ubuntu)
  • Red Hat
  • Microsoft
  • Crowd Strike
  • AWS
  • Dell
  • Suse
  • Cloud Bees (Jenkins)

Non-traditional Tech Companies in attendance

  • Ford Motor Company
  • Capital One
  • Intuit
  • Spotify
  • US Air Force
  • Visa
  • McKinsey Consulting
  • U of Illinois
  • U of Michigan
  • Lockheed Martin

Theme of the conference

It seems obvious to say that the theme of a Kubernetes conference (KubeCon) was Kubernetes, but that was the driving theme; the technology and the revenue around this tech stack that is being generated, from innovation, security, to cost savings. The conclusion is that there is a definite need–yet Kubernetes is not simple technology. By looking at the attendees, I believe we are into the portion of the adoption curve where the mainstream wants this technology for their infrastructure yet can’t find any people to hire.

On the Vendor booth floor there was two themes amongst the vendors. First was optimization or reduction of costs consulting. The second was security and compliance companies focusing on giving operational insight and compliance dealing with container usage.

Conclusion

I think this was a great opportunity and showed many areas to be considered for ITM and IT curriculum in general. With the Academic rate of $150, I believe that if the next conference is near to Chicago, it would make sense to send a few professors and bring 5 top students as companies were looking to hire right off the floor.