Guest post from Hrittik Roy, Content Lead at p3r.one
Hey, Thanks for checking this post. I’m Hrittik (@hrittikhere) and this is my blog for the first Kubecon + CloudNativeCon I ever attended. Let’s start! 😀
An email from CNCF, brought a smile to my face. Guess what? It was the selection mail for the Needs-Based Scholarship for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe Virtual 2021. Flashbacks of the day two months back came through when I was figuring out what to write on my first international scholarship application in the middle of my first semester university exams with a default expectation of getting rejected.
But here I was with a coupon code to enter the (new and updated!) portal with a full access scholarship for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, and for being a scholarship recipient, I also got access to complimentary registration for one CNCF sponsored ‘Add-on’ session / Co-located Event (Cloud Native Rust Day, Cloud Native Security Day Europe, Cloud Native Wasm Day, Crossplane Community Day, FluentCon, Kubernetes AI Day, Magma Day, Kubernetes on Edge Day, or ServiceMeshCon)
Kubernetes on Edge and Data on Kubernetes (@birthmarkbart is doing some superb work building DoK) were the events of my choice. But before that, if you’re reading this, I can say taking a bet on yourself is awesome. Go apply to the things you desire. Maybe the first time you might get rejected, but anyways you learn how to write. And after a few write-ups, you know how to write well. Writing well opens up quite a lot of doors 🙂
Getting back to May 3rd the platform was open for general use, and it was so overwhelming. So many tracks or simultaneous sessions and so many menus and also a dedicated menu for virtual giveaways. How cool is that?
It’s good that I was new to Kubernetes and didn’t have so much experience with it. Looking back, if I would have known what I know now, then my prioritization skills would be of no help. I get distracted easily, and my thirst for knowledge wouldn’t satisfy itself. Me upgrading whatever I know scares me for the next KubeCon 😛
A quick shout out to Linux Foundation for the LIFT 2021 scholarship. It’s coming out to be quite handy for my goals in open source.
Not to jump away from the topic. If you’re curious about what talks are my favourite talks, here we go:
Day 1
Your Path To Non-code Contribution In The Kubernetes Community
Day 2
Hacking into Kubernetes Security for Beginners
Day 3
Keynote: Linkerd vs COVID-19: Addressing the global Pandemic with a Service Mesh – William Morgan, Chief Executive Officer, Buoyant
Happy Hours
Virtual events are kind of good. Who thought about having an excellent conversation with the CNCF team on my first KubeCon and in my first year of university? I didn’t anticipate that, and hopping into the happy hours turned out to be quite happy for me as I got a chance to have a quick discussion with @pritianka. I found the platform to be relatively better than the previous years and how young people are jumping into expanding CNCF and open-source.
As @derfabianpeter always says, continuous improvement is the name of the game. Indeed.
Apart from the conversations, I connected with a few people who are helping me to settle in this immense landscape. I am exploring, and I am writing a lot on CNCF to form a one place quick read to all CNCF projects; read it here.
Final Thoughts
CNCF is inclusive and needs more and more people from diverse backgrounds to join this huge event and use this scholarship.
Feel free to reach out to me for any help while in the application process or just for virtual coffee/ brainstorming. I am new to all of the socials, and feel free to follow/connect with me:
Twitter (Actively Posting)
LinkedIn (Actively Sharing my Journey)
Github (Actively Committing and a readme profile worth checking)
Happy Learning!