KubeCon 2024: why attending a conference is important and some useful resources

Last week I had the pleasure of attending KubeCon 2024 EU in Paris, which is why I must begin these lines by thanking SIGHUP for giving me the opportunity to participate in the second consecutive KubeCon, THANK YOU!

I decided to write these lines to try to motivate those who have never been to a large-scale event to participate!

In this case, size matters!

If you're involved in the cloud native world as a client, developer, consultant, or big vendor, you can't miss it! Colleagues, clients, partners, competitors, maintainers of small projects, volunteer committees, big corporations, they'll all be there!

It's a unique opportunity to meet people, talk, engage, and establish relationships.

In many cases, you might come across other attendees and simply by listening to them speak or explain their problems or needs, new scenarios may unfold that you hadn't considered!

If you're in consulting or a client, you'll likely meet vendors you work with during the year in the showcase area, and it will probably be an opportunity to meet technicians, sales representatives, or executives who will then remember you or your company throughout the year.

The inevitable gadgets like t-shirts, socks, or stickers can be a pleasant additional incentive.

Education

Of course, a conference mainly means sessions!

You have the opportunity to listen to some of the most authoritative voices talking about the topics you work with, whether they're business or technical sessions!

Don't underestimate the chance to ask questions in the Q&A following the session or to have a chat with the speaker right after.

Community

KubeCon means community; let's not forget that CNCF projects are based on the open-source community, which you can collaborate with on many levels, and what better opportunity to meet and put a face to the people you may chat with during the year on Slack?

Immersing yourself in the community is a unique opportunity at the end of the first quarter that allows you to pause projects (as much as possible 😅), recharge your batteries, and come back charged and determined!

Resources

Whether you were present or not, you certainly couldn't have followed all the sessions that interested you or already found them on social media! CNCF records all sessions, provides videos and presentations, practically in real-time: WOW.

Within the conference agenda, you can find everything; the videos are obviously available on the CNCF's YouTube channel, and there's a photo album of over 5000 photos to consult!

Are you already looking forward to planning the next conference?

You can find CNCF-sponsored conferences on this page; I'll be present at KCD Italy in June in Bologna, and you? 

CyberArk Conjur 13.2 released: another step in the right direction

One week ago CyberArk released another update for Conjur Enterprise, which now has reached the 13.2 version and this was definitely another step in the right direction!

This release includes the usual bugfix, expands the integration of Conjur ( eg now OpenShift 4.14 is supported) but most importantly adds 2 super interesting features:

• CyberArk Vault Synchronizer high availability support

• Enhanced Conjur to support Container Storage Interface (CSI) driver

Synchronizer high availability enhances the DR strategy of Conjur and now it's possible to setup a "passive" Synchronizer in DR site aware of the status of the primary Synchronizer that comes to live in case of a failure. 

This feature consents an optimization of the resources and of the strategy building the DR for the customers!

The enhanced support to Container storage interface driver, consent to Conjur to inject directly into the correct pod the secrets bypassing the need to have a sidecar/init container. 

This new feature consents customers to optimize the resource usage on the clusters and continue to fetch secrets securely.  

CyberArk Conjur is in constant evolution release by release, and in my opinion, the evolution of Conjur during the last year has been terrific. Big kudos to CyberArk !

Asa final reminder, CyberArk Conjur is a secrets manager and is available in 3 different versions:

• Enterprise

• Opensource

• Cloud

Kubeweekly - Get weekly Kubernetes news in your inbox

Hello there, as I wrote here, I've always been a community guy, so I've found a new way to contribute: during the first half of 2024, I'll be one of the editors who helps to find the content of Kubeweekly.

Kubeweekly is a newsletter that brings to your inbox, a curated selection of news, tweets, articles, or videos about Kubernetes and the CNCF landscape.

If you like to check the result or join the mailing list, please check this page!

KCD 2024 Italy announced - Bologna 20 June 2024

Hello there, just a quick post, KCD Italy has been announced and will be in Bologna on 20th Jun 2024!

I'm not directly involved in the organization of this event but my company is, so I'm publishing this post trying to help !

The CFPs is opened and available at this link, english session are welcome!

The hunting for new sponsor is also still opened so in case, please contact one of the organizer or reach me and I'll keep you in contact with them.

KCDs are events organized by the community supported by CNCF

CyberArk Conjur 13.1 released

A couple of weeks ago CyberArk has released a new interesting version of Conjur 13.1.

This point release it's really interesting because brings some important updates under the hood that aim to increase the resiliency of the followers.

If you want to read more about this release, please read this article that I wrote on the SIGHUP blog.

KubeCon EU 2024 Paris, let's talk about Kubetrain

Yesterday, KubeCon NA in Chicago came to a close, so now we can start talking about KubeConEU 2024, which will take place in Paris from March 19th to 22nd, 2024 😊.

For Paris, early bird registrations are open until November 28th, and it's still possible to participate in the call for papers.

I wanted to tell you about an interesting initiative called Kubetrain, which aims to reach Paris in a more environmentally sustainable way by choosing trains over planes.

To make everything economically sustainable, the organizers of Kubetrain have come up with the idea of arranging sponsored carriages from some of the major European cities. This way, people can travel to Paris, making it possible to organize networking events during the journey!

The involved cities are as follows:

• Amsterdam
• Berlin
• London
• Lyon
• Milan
• Zurich

The trip from Zurich is already "operational," and for the rest, it's still a work in progress.

I encourage you to follow their website for updates and potentially book your departure from your preferred city.

I find the initiative very interesting—kudos to the organizers!

Why should you contribute to community projects? Some information about CNCF and OpenSSF.

I start with a premise for those who may not already know: the open-source software ecosystem often revolves around foundations, with the most famous probably being the Linux Foundation.

Regarding the cloud-native domain, the reference foundation is the Cloud Native Computing Foundation, commonly known as CNCF.

The CNCF is a foundation created by the Linux Foundation in 2015, specifically to handle the management of projects in the cloud-native domain. In simple terms, we could define it as a third-party, vendor-neutral entity that regulates the development and activities related to all the major projects related to containerized technologies like Kubernetes.

The foundation consists of a large number of sub-entities, working groups that oversee various projects, and much of the work is done by volunteers. To participate, the rules of the CNCF's code of conduct must be adhered to.

Speaking about Kubernetes and the main projects associated with it, you can imagine the amount of work required to make this system function and how many people at all levels can be needed to contribute to both technical and non-technical projects.

Throughout my career, I have always tried to be a part of what surrounded my professional world, taking part in events, speaking at events, and even organizing them.

Even in my current role at SIGHUP, I have maintained the same approach and operating mode. Since the past few months, I have been part of the Italian team responsible for the Italian localization of the CNCF's glossary.

I share this with you because I find it extremely rewarding to participate in these kinds of initiatives, getting to know new people, perhaps stepping out of one's comfort zone a bit, and being of assistance to people and companies one may not know, all for the sake of fostering a better ecosystem.

As you can imagine, contributions can be made at all levels, with different teams for the different scopes. Of course, it's common to work with people from all around the world and from diverse backgrounds.

As a colleague told me a few days ago, "if you enter a meeting and feel like a fool compared to the other participants, it probably means you're in the right place," because participating in meetings, even as an observer, with high-level individuals is a great opportunity for professional growth.

Well, now that I've piqued your interest, how can you participate or find a project that suits you?

I suggest a series of links where you can find information about CNCF events and projects:

• EXPLORE ALL CNCF SITES
• END USER COMMUNITY
• CNCF SLACK
• CNCF repositories GitHub

What I've mentioned above also applies to another foundation, very interesting, born in 2020, called the Open Source Security Foundation, commonly abbreviated as OpenSSF. This foundation is an initiative of the Linux Foundation and focuses on enhancing the security of open-source software.

Since I work in security, I closely follow various initiatives of this foundation.

At the moment, due to time constraints, I'm not an active contributor, but members of my team have already had the opportunity to contribute and participate in various working group meetings. It's important to always adhere to the code of conduct when participating and contributing.

In this case as well, I'll provide you with some useful links where you can find collaboration ideas for OpenSSF:

• OpenSSF Working Groups
• Get Involved
• Repo su GitHub
• OpenSSF SLACK