It’s fitting that on the last day of KubeCon it was time to celebrate the community and the 10th anniversary of Kubernetes. A packed ballroom at the Salt Palace Convention Center was treated to a lot of exciting news and future plans, not to mention very fun rounds of Family Feud.

Here’s a brief recap of the day.

Chris Aniszczyk kicked off the event, and ushered in a lively discussion among co-chair Joseph Sandoval of Adobe, Lachlan Evenson, Microsoft, and Kelsey Hightower, about the past decade of cloud native and Kubernetes and whether we’re actually “there” yet.

And of course there was lots of exciting community news.

Africa is home to the fastest growing population of developers, which makes it even more exciting that CNCF is partnering with Andela to train 20k to 30k developers over the next two to three years. Starting in 2025, the partnership will be offering Kubernetes and Cloud Native Associate and Certified Kubernetes Application Developer certifications.

Also, there are three new cloud native certifications: Backstage, OpenTelemetry, and Kyverno.

Mark your calendars!

The next KubeCon + CloudNativeCon schedule is live and includes some firsts, namely a KubeCon Japan!

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India 2024 |December 11-12 | New Delhi

2025

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2025 | April 1-4, 2025 | London, United Kingdom

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China 2025 | June 10 – 11 | Hong Kong

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan 2025 | June 16 -17, 2025 | Tokyo, Japan

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon India 2025 | August 6 – 7, 2025 | Hyderabad, India

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 | November 10 -13, 2025 | Atlanta, GA

2026

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe | March 23-26 | Amsterdam

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America | October 26-29 | Los Angeles

Kubernetes 10th anniversary survey

The community knows what an impact Kubernetes has had on cloud native and on the broader technology ecosystem, but our survey also uncovers how it has changes lives and careers. 

Honoring the past to forge ahead

Gail Fredrik, Heroku CTO at Salesforce spoke about the ideal practices for application development in the cloud, emphasizing minimizing fragility, maintaining growth and reducing friction. These ideas were distilled from TwFA, aka Twelve-Factor, which is now an open source project. Twelve-Factor plans to work on telemetry, creating standards around secrets and identity and deploying multiple groups of applications. 

Cloud native technologies to watch 

Lin Sun, solo.io and Karena Angell, Red Hat, both from the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee, called out four key cloud native technologies attendees should be looking out for in the coming months. The first – cloud native and AI – was probably not a surprise, but the second – cost and going green – brought about a lively discussion about the price and footprint of AI, though of course AI can also be used to help optimize cloud spend and carbon footprints. Other tech trends to watch out for includes mulit-cluster and simplification.

Announcements

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Japan

CNCF expands certifications to platform engineering

Automate Kubernetes security and operations with Kyverno certified associate

Internal developer platforms at scale with certified backstage associate

Gain insights into cloud native apps with the OpenTelemetry Certified

CNCF and Andela announce partnership to train 20,000+ African tech