Paris in the spring is legendary, and this year, Paris is putting on its most gorgeous face as it gets ready to host the summer Olympics. But that’s not why IOD is heading there this spring.
We’re going because it’s time for KubeCon, and we wouldn’t miss it for the world!
Read on to find out why this isn’t just another conference for us (and why we believe Kubernetes is defining the future of cloud), our top picks for must-see sessions for KubeCon Paris 2024, and most importantly—how to connect with IOD while you’re there!
Why KubeCon Matters
You already know KubeCon is big, bringing together 10,000 industry professionals—including developers, IT pros, and C-levels. But there are other big conferences out there. The reason we believe KubeCon is important is that it attracts the most avid Kubernetes enthusiasts, including leading project maintainers, major SIGs, and contributors.
It’s also worth supporting because it’s a vendor-neutral experience, letting all vendors showcase their top offerings for the Kubernetes world.
From past KubeCon experience, we’re convinced that it’s the ideal venue for vendors focused on product-led growth (PLG). Participants are exactly the practitioner-level audiences (developers, DevOp engineers) these vendors want, and they’re eager for solutions to make their workflows easier.
The opportunity for vendors and users to meet face to face is a win-win: users discover fascinating new products, and vendors gather feedback they take back to help build more user-friendly products to drive engagement, use, and sales. Out of this synergy, KubeCon is defining the future of cloud—essentially, the future of computing as we know it.
Given how much is riding on the future of Kubernetes and cloud, let’s take a look at which sessions at KubeCon Paris 2024 could offer you the most insight and value.
Which KubeCon Sessions Are Most Worthwhile?
With 100+ sessions to choose from, including technical sessions, deep-dives, case studies, and more, it’s tough to choose just a few each day. Luckily, if you can’t get to every one live, you can access recordings of all sessions via the CNCF YouTube channel.
Although everyone’s looking for something different, here are some of the sessions that I’m most excited to explore in Paris, divided up into categories to help make the choices simpler:
1. Advanced Kubernetes Topics
These sessions delve deeper into specific functionalities of Kubernetes. This is where you’ll find the die-hard users as well as people looking to solve the toughest development problems.
Session picks in this category:
- March 20: Navigating the Processing Unit Landscape in Kubernetes for AI Use Cases with Mofi Rahman & Kaslin Fields from Google and Rob Koch from Slalom. Traditional CPUs struggle with parallel processing needed for AI/ML. Presents solutions by introducing GPUs and TPUs in Kubernetes to handle these workloads.
- March 21: Confidential Containers for GPU Compute: Incorporating LLMs in a Lift-and-Shift Strategy for AI with Zvonko Kaiser from NVIDIA. Confidential containers offer enhanced security for processing sensitive data, increasingly important for companies in regulated industries to maximize AI.
2. Cross-Cloud Deployments
These sessions explore using Kubernetes to deploy applications across different cloud providers, meaning they’re all about making solutions that work in the real world.
Session picks in this category:
- March 21: Revolutionizing the Control Plane Management: Introducing Kubernetes Hosted Control Planes with Katie Gamanji from Apple, Jussi Nummelin from Mirantis, Cesar Wong from Red Hat, Tyler Lisowski from IBM, and Adriano Pezzuto from CLASTIX. Hosted control planes can help harness the advantages of multi-cloud clusters by simplifying management through centralized control and configuration.
- March 22: Cilium ClusterMesh in Action: Strengthening Security Across Distributed Kubernetes Clusters with Matheus Morais from Sicredi. As a large financial institution, Sicredi needed consistent security across its complex multi-cloud environment (2000+ apps, 47 clusters). After evaluating service mesh solutions, they chose Cilium ClusterMesh for its feature set, performance (eBPF, no sidecars), and fine-grained control.
3. The Future of Kubernetes
These sessions explore the latest advancements and future directions of Kubernetes technology, meaning this is where you’re going to find out what’s new and exciting—you heard it here first!
Session picks in this category:
- March 22: Keynote: Cloud Native in Its Next Decade with Erin Boyd from Red Hat and Lin Sun from solo.io. Look back over a decade of Kubernetes by exploring key CNCF projects today, presenting challenges for users and contributors, and exploring possible fields of growth including AI, sustainability, edge computing, security, service mesh, and web assembly.
- March 22: Special Purpose Operating Systems: The Next Step in OS Evolution or One-Trick Ponies? with Danielle Tal from Microsoft, Felipe Huici from Unikraft GmbH, Sean McGinnis from AWS, Mauro Morales from Spectro Cloud, and Justin Haynes from Google. Cloud-native deployments need optimized OSes. Promising immutability, special-purpose OSes promise atomic updates and enhanced security. Are they the future of cloud and Kubernetes?
4. Specific Industry Use Cases
In these sessions, actual users, developers, and product managers will showcase how Kubernetes is solving problems for a wide range of industries, letting you start visualizing how it might help you out as well.
Session picks in this category:
- March 21: Securing 900 Kubernetes Clusters Without PSP: Mercedes-Benz’s Journey to Validating Admission Policies with Tobias Giese & Tjark Rasche from Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation. When Mercedes-Benz needed to harden its fleet while running over 900 Kubernetes clusters and 6,500 machines, they rejected PSPs and PSS and implemented VAPs instead. They’ll share the journey, lessons learned, and the benefits of a native solution.
- March 21: Reducing Cross-Zone Egress at Spotify with Custom gRPC Load Balancing with Aleksandar Mitic & Yannick Epstein from Spotify. Cross-zone traffic (across different availability zones) can be a big problem, sending cloud spend into the stratosphere. Find out how Spotify helped solve this problem, cutting cross-zone traffic while still maintaining low latency and high availability.
5. Just for Fun
All work and no play? Don’t worry; tech lovers will find plenty of fun at KubeCon, including sessions like…
- March 21: Kubernetes Maintainers Read Mean Comments with Tim Hockin from Google and Davanum Srinivas from Amazon Web Services. A truly community-focused event where contributors and users can get together to laugh at some of the most outrageous comments.
- March 22: KubeDDR! A Dance of Predictive Scoring with MLOps, Step by Step with Leigh Capili from Broadcom and Annie Talvasto from VSHN. Come loosen up a little, using the game “Dance, Dance, Revolution!” to showcase AI/ML best practices with Kubernetes and CNCF tools.
Plus, there’s always lots of techie excitement to be had at the #KUBECRAWL + #CLOUDNATIVEFEST after hours on Wednesday, March 20, with juggling, lawn bowling, Lego workshop, and more!
Show Floor, Swag, and Beyond
New for KubeCon 2024 Paris is the Poster Pavilion, which organizers say will help broaden the focus of KubeCon, adding a more robust connection to academia. This in turn will help showcase applications for Kubernetes within fascinating applications that might not yet have commercial viability but could help define the next generation of software development.
While you’re at KubeCon 2024 Paris, be sure to leave plenty of time for the show floor. IOD will be circulating there as well, so get in touch so we can meet up for a selfie!
The show floor is always a wonderful opportunity to meet smaller and mid-sized vendors and to discover their fascinating solutions—along with a ton of swag (RedHat gave out actual fedoras in 2023; keychains, toys, backpacks, socks, and more are always popular vendor giveaways.).
And if you’re looking for something a little different, stick around in Paris to enjoy the Cloud Native Rejekts mini-conference (not officially endorsed by the CNCF). This “B-side conference” features talks that didn’t quite make the cut for the official KubeCon to offer people the chance to present their ideas in short sessions with a fun, alternative vibe.
Come Meet IOD at KubeCon 2024 Paris
KubeCon is an important part of our year here at IOD because it gives us the inside track on what’s happening in the world of cloud.
Here, you can rub shoulders with top vendors, hear keynotes about the future of cloud, and better understand where practitioners are coming from—all of which helps to create relatable, authentic tech content that engages practitioner audiences, which we know that can be challenging to achieve.
Have you faced these issues with your deep-tech and Kubernetes-related content production?
- Harnessing subject matter experts to give content depth and authenticity?
- Releasing content at enterprise scale and speed?
- Creating varied media content, including video (e.g. explainers, tutorials, how-tos) and text (blogs, white papers, case studies)?
If so, IOD can help.
IOD generates over 400 practitioner-based content assets a month—videos, white papers, case studies, blogs, and more—for some of the world’s largest tech brands, including Microsoft, NetApp, Check Point, ARMO, and Komodor.
Our proven process gives you a well-oiled content machine, keeping you in the loop with a dedicated point person and giving you access to a vast network of tech experts and marketing writers from security to DevOps and beyond. IOD delivers the fluff-free content that practitioner audiences are looking for at the scale and pace your industry demands.
Come meet IOD at KubeCon Paris to discuss your Kubernetes-related content challenges. Schedule a time with us here.
