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The Chainguard team went to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2021 and is now back and fresh. Time for some quick reflection. If you have a moment, we also have made a little landing page for the folks that we talked to, and anyone else who is interested with some links to take a survey or reach out.
Dan Lorenc
How did it feel to be back in-person to a large tech conference?
It felt really good overall! I think I lost a lot of my conference stamina though, and those long days (plus nights) added up quickly. I was completely exhausted by Thursday, so apologies if I missed anything toward the end of the week. I forgot how much energy these things take, but hope to get back into “conference-shape” soon!
What was the most interesting thing you saw on the showcase floor?
All the people wearing Chainguard t-shirts! Scott and Matt did an incredible job passing them out the first few days, so it was really cool to see that pay off by Wednesday and Thursday. I kept bumping into people I had never met before wearing our awesome shirts.
Did you make any new friends?
Meeting Adolfo García Veytia (better known as Puerco on GitHub and Twitter) was a highlight for me. Adolfo drives the Kubernetes release engineering efforts in his spare time, and has recently been implementing full Software Bill of Materials (SBOM) generation, as well as SLSA compliance. I had no idea he was attending the conference and he surprised me by sitting in the front row of SupplyChainSecurityCon!
What was your favorite part of this year's KubeCon?
The keynote at SupplyChainSecurityCon from Trevor Rosen of Solarwinds. It was great on every level. He captured what it was like to be an actual human responding to a security incident getting national attention, and also told an incredible technical story about how they built a new, cloud-native delivery pipeline designed with supply chain security at the core. I can’t wait for the recording to be published.
Have any good meals while in LA?
Everything outside of the conference center lunches was pretty good. The restaurant Allan Friedman led us to Sunday night was particularly good, but I have no recollection of what it was called or where it was.
Kim Lewandowski
How did it feel to be back in-person to a large tech conference?
Let’s just say the post-event KubeCon blues hit me hard. As soon as I left for the airport I started to miss everyone. It’s been a crazy few years and being back surrounded by friends old and new brought a smile to my face everyday.
What was the most interesting thing you saw on the showcase floor?
The number of new startups and projects with a booth this year was amazing to see. Startups will lead to innovation and better products for everyone!
Did you make any new friends?
Yes! At least 5-10! The best part was finally meeting so many folks in person for the first time.
What was your favorite part of this year's KubeCon?
Besides the hallway track and our CEO’s hair (the gift that keeps on giving), I thought Trevor from SolarWinds gave an excellent keynote at SupplyChainSecurityCon. The premier of Operation SLSA was also fun to reveal.
Have any good meals while in LA?
The food at El Cholo was legit and also came with lots of tasty slsa. Per my husband’s recommendation, a few of us followed Scottie to Eggslut for breakfast and topped it off with a donut next door.
Scott Nichols
How did it feel to be back in-person to a large tech conference?
I had a mix of feelings, wavering between “this is normal” and “alert! people!!”. It was great to be back talking with people and remembering that covid did not pause time and everyone I talked to had big news to share. The vaccine requirement for KubeCon let me sleep at night, knowing we were all trying to do this as safely as possible.
What was the most interesting thing you saw on the showcase floor?
I wandered around to the WAAAY back and found some familiar faces with a brand new startup called Moment. They are making a tool that lets a team produce run books or operational pages with interactive charts, logs, inputs, and buttons, whatever you need. I got to see their demo of these wysiwyg drag and drop UI elements interacting with a live Kubernetes cluster. It is a super neat idea blending monitoring, ops, and docs into a single page. I am joining their beta right away.
Did you make any new friends?
Sure did! This KubeCon I got to spend a lot of time talking with folks about Chainguard, and learning about what companies are doing internally around their supply chain. I think you make fast friends whenever you find another person willing to listen to your supply chain war stories :D.
What was your favorite part of this year's KubeCon?
I was able to go to some pretty great talks, but my most favorite part was getting to see my friend Stephen Augustus delivering keynotes and intros on the keynote stage. Steven has spent a lot of effort improving the Kubernetes space for a very long time, and it is awesome to see him up there doing the same for the conference community too.
Have any good meals while in LA?
We ended up at Girl & the Goat, and the flavors that were coming out of the kitchen I could not believe. I ended up eating like 3 servings of the tomato salad because it had this amazing texture and flavors, and I hate tomatoes. I was not sure what to expect getting there, but I was not disappointed.
Matt Moore
How did it feel to be back in-person to a large tech conference?
I love in-person Kubecon, since for me it’s all about the people. I appreciated the measures the CNCF had in place to make sure that everyone felt comfortable (e.g. color coded wristbands). By the end I was completely wiped out, especially with an extra “day zero”, but I’d do it again in a heartbeat.
What was the most interesting thing you saw on the showcase floor?
I had the opportunity to work at the Sigstore booth, and it was exciting to see both how many folks had already heard about it, but also see folks eyes light up when they see the demo for the first time. I’d also give the “boldest swag” award to Google for handing out USB devices at a security focused booth.
Did you make any new friends?
The great thing about Kubecon is both how many folks you meet, but also how many folks you get to see for the first time “in the flesh”. This was the first time meeting over a dozen folks from the Sigstore/SLSA/Supply-Chain community in person. There were also folks like Mark Hinkle (of Triggermesh) who I got to meet in-person for the first time after years of Triggermesh building on Knative.
What was your favorite part of this year's KubeCon?
Definitely seeing the buzz about Chainguard (and supply chain in general). I found it very validating to see folks were starting to take the space very seriously. However, being able to enjoy the post-launch buzz with the other founders in-person, and with so many of our friends from the community was extra special for me.
Have any good meals while in LA?
I am still crazing more of the nachos I got at El Cholo the first night. I also really enjoyed a lot of the things we got at Strada Eateria. I’ll give an honorable mention to Scottie’s “Eggslut”, which was pretty good, but I’m not sure it was worth the 15 mile trek he took us on to get there and back!
Ville Aikas
How did it feel to be back in-person to a large tech conference?
Fantastic, it was great to meet new folks face to face that we probably couldn’t have. While it was indeed ‘in-person’, I personally found many of the virtual sessions format somehow to be more “draining” than live person talks. My thinking is that it may have video format (which is fantastic for consuming on your laptop (big slides, small window with the speaker) does not look quite as appealing on a large screen where the speaker is a small window. But maybe that was just me. Ability to have f2f conversations whether on the floor, at the bar, wherever was just so much more freeflowing than vc, chats, etc. When that happens, you are more likely to be “fully engaged” rather than typing or checking email, etc. etc.
What was the most interesting thing you saw on the showcase floor?
Honestly I don’t think I saw anything that was just wow, but I think I was mainly looking for possible customers / partners instead of new things out there.
Did you make any new friends?
Yes, many many many.
What was your favorite part of this year's KubeCon?
Being able to talk to so many people in person and see the support that folks offered to our new venture. Seeing people walking around the conference, or the surrounding area wearing our T-shirts was so freaking cool! Validating that the problem we’re tackling is something that many people care very deeply about and are tackling was also fantastic to see. Also, the amount of support that various folks were willing to give to our new efforts was just so amazing.
Have any good meals while in LA?
El Cholo, the breakfast burrito (can’t remember the name of the place right next to the sketchy underpass)
That’s a wrap! We hope you enjoyed KubeCon as much as we did. A few of us will be at the Linux Foundation Member Summit in Napa. We’re looking forward to more in person events and meeting many more of you!
