This is part of a series of daily posts on my experiences at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019. You can read more about the conference and the series in my Day 0 post.

After a series of receptions yesterday evening and a well-attended RedMonk beers event, I woke up this morning looking forward to the first conference keynote and the slate of client and vendor meeting I on today’s schedule. I also woke up hungry, because with all of the receptions and chatting, I forgot to have dinner last night.

Luckily my first meeting was a breakfast meeting with a client. As we all sat down at a lovely proper restaurant (a luxury, as most meetings are scheduled at coffee shops or hotel lobbies where everyone is fighting for space), it eventually came out that nobody at the table had a chance to get dinner last night; it was nice to see that I was not alone.

Keynote Highlights

I was then off to the first keynote of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon conference itself. The keynote was largely comprised of foundation/project updates as well as vendor-led talks. While you will be able to watch the keynotes yourself once they are posted (sessions from past CNCF events can be found here), I offer the following social media perspectives on the morning keynote session. 

A general feel for the keynote space:

Turns out 12,000 seats is… a lot.#kubecon pic.twitter.com/Rp3TtOBYGo

— Dr. Jabe Bloom (@cyetain) November 19, 2019

On Bryan Liles emphasizing that not everyone in the room is a developer (which matched a thread running through the keynote that the success of open source projects rely very much on elements such as documentation):

“How many of you write software for living? That’s a lot. But notice it’s not everyone.”

Love @bryanl giving a shout out to the huge documentation effort undertaken by the cloudevent maintainers. #KubeCon pic.twitter.com/rI3Dz9XYW5

— Matthew Broberg is at @[email protected] (@mbbroberg) November 19, 2019

Erin Boyd making a time-of-day appropriate metaphor of Rook and “caffeinating” Kubernetes

Now @erinaboyd is talking about Rook and Keeping Kubernetes Caffeinated. #KubeCon #kubecon2019 #CloudNativeCon pic.twitter.com/Lkw2eChDpA

— Kaslin Fields (@kaslinfields) November 19, 2019

I also offer the following slide from Boyd’s talk (because coffee metaphors work for me):

On the excitement around Web Assembly:

One of the interesting common themes I'm seeing in these #Kubecon keynotes: WASM. WebAssembly is clearly going to be a huge enabler in the coming year.

— Dan Ciruli (posting on Masto now — see bio) (@DanCiruli) November 19, 2019

.@nats_io JetStream. What's next? Native MQTT support … Webassembly support. Almost 10 years (founded 2009). 90 minute deep dive on Thursday. "Let's connect … everything" @derekcollison #KubeCon pic.twitter.com/gbL5ATRPcG

— Aaron W | 🧵 @aaronw.dev (@as_w) November 19, 2019

On the developer-focused tone of the keynote program (and also a look at attendee demographic data):

Interesting stat that 7% of the #Kubecon attendees are executives. I’m looking forward to the next report. There is a lot of value for the developer at the keynote. I don’t see as much value for the infrastructure audience or executive. https://t.co/bb5XHnPjKf

— Keith Townsend (@CTOAdvisor) November 19, 2019

And, finally, on the excellent job MC Vicki Cheung did running the show:

Great job emceeing at #KubeCon #CloudNativeCon @vmcheung also I love the hair 🔥 and the shoes! pic.twitter.com/GbLD7elH4f

— Shilla Saebi (@ShillaSaebi) November 19, 2019

This morning’s keynote also encouraged that attendees pay attention to self care and emphasized that the conference has a Wellness Track (including Puppy Pawlooza/Paw Therapy sessions).

On Attendance Numbers

This afternoon’s schedule included a press/analyst program that both Rachel and I attended (with client and vendor meetings both before and after). The program addressed a topic that I have heard from almost everyone I’ve talked to in the past two days: the growing number of conference attendees.

While the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America numbers jumped 4000–a 50% increase–from last year, it is worth noting that attendance in Europe increased by 3400–almost 80%–from last year while attendance for the China event also saw considerable growth.

The growth in attendance across all three events can be read positively: as a mark of the still growing interest in Kubernetes and other Cloud Native technologies. However, many of the attendees I spoke to also expressed concern that KubeCon + CloudNativeCon will–or already has–become too big to navigate in a meaningful way, especially from a developer/practitioner point of view. While this is a legitimate concern (and my colleague Stephen has written about the advantages of smaller conferences), for now it appears that the benefits of the growing communities (for instance, the CNCF job board also launched today) surrounding the conference outweigh the downsides of larger crowds.

Related posts:

• KubeCon North America 2019: Day 0
• KubeCon North America 2019: Day 2
• KubeCon North America 2019: Day 3

 

Disclaimer: The CNCF is a RedMonk client and paid for my T&E to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon