There were 8K to 10K attendees at the last in-person Kubecon in 2019. It was a proper-sized enterprise IT conference. A proof point? The show floor had typical enterprise IT vendors, including Datadog, VMware, and HPE. However, Kubecon was unlike any conference I’ve attended. The keynote was deep in the weeds with updates on CNCF projects such as NAT. There wasn’t a core message throughout the conference. I was a bit lost. I’m sure I wasn’t the only one.
Many people in the Kubernetes community like to point to my experience in IT infrastructure. However, this isn’t wholly accurate. I’ve gone to SAP SAPPHIRE for years. There’s nothing infrastructure about SAPPHIRE. It’s all about business applications, development, and support. The open-source community is different.
And that’s OK to an extent. You have to be different to enable actual change. However, enterprise IT is stubborn. When I walk into an enterprise data center and see an IBM mainframe running some of the most critical workloads within an organization, I'm reminded of the fact.
I’m looking forward to seeing how the Kubernetes community has matured as more and more people wearing sports coats show up to the conference.