Now, before I tell you about my experience of attending KubeCon + Cloud Native Con EU Valencia, Spain(Virtual). I wanted to let you know about what KubeCon is.

What is KubeCon + Cloud Native Con

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation organizes this flagship conference which gathers adopters and technologists from leading open source and cloud-native communities together in one place. For more details, you can refer to cncf.io

My Experience

This was my first KubeCon and let me tell you something that I came to know about this conference after engaging in the CNCF community and thanks to my mentors Saiyam Pathak(Civo), Kunal Kushwaha(Civo), and Bart Farrell(DoK community) who told me and guide me about the scholarship for attending and benefits I will get as a student.

I applied for the Virtual attendee scholarship and I got it and I was so happy, it feels like I am a part of a big community and to be very honest CNCF is the best supportive community I have ever come across, the reason behind it is that the people are so collaborative, helpful and respectful to each other and you will be guided at each point you got stuck.

So now you feel like how a beginner can apply, what's the procedure and all that...Let me guide you.

Scholarships

There are two types of scholarships listed below:

DIVERSITY SCHOLARSHIPS

Applicants must be from a traditionally underrepresented and/or marginalized group in the technology and/or open source communities who are unable to attend without some financial assistance. Including, but not limited to: persons identifying as LGBTQIA+, women, persons of color, and/or persons with disabilities.

NEED-BASED SCHOLARSHIPS

Individuals who apply should be active members of the open-source community who are unable to attend for financial reasons and are unable to get funding from their companies.

You can apply whichever fits you well.

Chances of getting Virtual scholarships are comparatively higher than in-person.

Let's begin with my KubeCon Journey.

So the main event was started out on the 18th of May although the event kicks off on the 16th of May itself there was some Co-Located event for which attending those sessions is totally up to you.

My KubeCon started mainly with the Keynotes Sessions

Do not miss the Keynotes as there will be announcements of new projects and updates and a lot more, or if you miss them by any chance do not worry every talk of KubeCon will be started posted on the CNCF youtube channel as the event gets over.

I attended all the Keynotes sessions every day during KubeCon days and learned more about CNCF projects and what the community is for.

But if you ask me about my favorite Keynotes sessions, then they are as follows:

1. Opening remarks by Priyanka Sharma(Executive Director CNCF).
2. Supporting the Community – So Open Source Projects Can Grow and Thrive - Le Tran, Member of Technical Staff, Kasten by Veeam
3. Landscape Sustainability: The Pillars of Cloud Native Growth - Dave Zolotusky, Software Engineer, Spotify & Katie Gamanji, Senior Kubernetes Field Engineer, Apple
4. Exploring the Frontiers of Cloud Native - Bryan Che, Chief Strategy Officer, Huawei
5. Push It to the Limit: From Canary Deployments to Canary Clusters - Henrik Høegh, Platform Engineer, Lunar
6. CNCF Project Updates - Jasmine James, Senior Engineering Manager-Developer Experience; Ricardo Rocha, Computing Engineer, CERN; Emily Fox, Security Engineer, Apple

Although I attended every Keynote, I found these ones to be more productive.

What Talks should a first-time attendee or a beginner should take?

As I said above do not miss the Keynotes also if you're a beginner or a first-time attendee you can attend the following tracks,

1. Student Track
2. 101 Track
3. Lightning Talks and some other talks as well according to your interests...

I also recommend joining the CNCF slack during the KubeCon where you'll find the Hallway track and other channels as well where you can network with people and they will be happy to guide you as well.

Apart from this, there are Virtual office hours and virtual booths where you can talk directly to the company's officials and project maintainers who will guide you about their products and you can ask questions as well.

Eye-opening sessions and talks for me

1. What Anime Taught Me About K8s Development & Tech Careers - Annie Talvasto, Camunda(Personally Favorite)

• CNCF 101 - Kristi Tan, The Linux Foundation & Charley Mann, Cloud Native Computing Foundation
• Intro to Kubernetes, GitOps, and Observability Hands-On Tutorial - Joaquin Rodriguez, Microsoft & Tiffany Wang, Weaveworks
• Lightning Talk: Beginner to Maintainer Journey of a Student - Debabrata Panigrahi, National Institute of Technology Rourkela

• From Student to SRE That Loves CNCF in No Time - Jacob Valdemar Andreasen, Lunar

• Kubectl Said What? - Christopher Hanson, RX-M, LLC
• Navigating the CNCF Landscape, the Right Way - Divya Mohan, SUSE; Savitha Raghunathan, Red Hat; Kunal Kushwaha & Saiyam Pathak, Civo

All the above talks can easily be found here youtube.com/c/cloudnativefdn/videos

Apart from this, I've attended the happy hours with Priyanka Sharma on Zoom with other attendees as well,

Met some amazing folks and learned a lot from their experiences as well and if you ask me "Which among these people do you want to meet in person", My answer would be Taylor Dolezal, Priyanka Sharma, Katlin Ramer, Megan, and Jai Campbell.

There is also a mentoring session organized by CNCF on zoom Virtually here is a glimpse of that as well.

Summing up all

This 4-day journey was full of learning and networking. I came to know lots of new technology and how to contribute to them, Talks and the sessions guides me, and practical demo's taught me a lot, and somehow got a feeling of "A lot more to come just be in a flow". I truly want to thank the CNCF for organizing. I don't know how my 4 days went off in a second.

At last, I just want to say one thing "KubeCon is not just a conference, It's beyond that. It's an experience in itself".

what learning I get from this Kubecon will be shared in my upcoming blog, so see you soon.