Talks
This page is intended to list as many of my talks as I can find recordings of.
KubeCon
As of September of 2025, I have delivered 19 talks (21 with CoLos) across 11 KubeCons. The playlist below includes every recording, ordered by KubeCon & session date.
This list consists of 1 keynote, 6 sessions, 2 lightning talks, 3 panels, and 7 Maintainer Track sessions. Also, 1 CoLo (Data on Kubernetes Day) event talk and 2 Contributor Summit talks.
Playlist
KubeCon Japan 2025
Multi Cluster Magics with Argo CD and Cluster Inventory
You probably have more than one cluster and there is a decent chance you are using Argo CD. Additionally, it is quite likely that you have a few other variations of Kubernetes cluster lists. We posit that writing glue code to stitch together these clusters lists is not an awesome use of your time. Thankfully the good folks in SIG-Multicluster built this super cool api for cluster lists, cluster profile/cluster inventory! We are going to show you how to use said fancy new list with Argo CD along with other multi-cluster tools across Kubernetes clusters hosted by different providers. There will be demos. Possibly Mustaches. And a decent amount of awful puns. So come on down to bear witness to some sweet multi-cluster abstractions that will surely get your heart rate up.
Project Lightning Talk: Intro to Kubernetes SIG ContribEx (Japanese)
Kubernetes is the second largest open source project in the world, which means there’s always work to do! To maintain and build on Kubernetes, contributors work together in focused groups called Special Interest Groups (SIGs). These groups align with important technically areas of the project like Networking, Node, Autoscaling,and more. But who makes sure those contributors have the tools and processes they need to do their work and grow their groups? Meet SIG Contributor Experience! Ever wonder how the Kubernetes project does things on GitHub, or how social media for the project is run? Come learn how you can contribute to make the Kubernetes community even more fun and welcoming by contributing to the Contributor Experience!
What’s New in Open Source Kubernetes
Kubernetes moves fast. With 3 releases per year, it’s hard to keep up with what’s new in open source – not to mention whatever distributions or managed services you may use on top of it. This session will explore some of the most exciting changes to Kubernetes over the last couple of years including:
- New features to support AI workloads
- The introduction of a native way to implement the Sidecar Pattern
- Removal of “In-Tree” Cloud & Storage Provider code
- The deprecation of Pod Security Policies (PSPs) and introduction of Pod Security Admission
- The transition of image registry from k8s.gcr.io to registry.k8s.io
and more!
KubeCon NA 2024
The success and sustainability of the Kubernetes project hinges on its diverse contributor base. In this session, we will explore how the Kubernetes Special Interest Group Contributor Experience (SIG ContribEx) empowers contributors, optimizes workflows, & fosters sustained project growth. We will address the challenges of managing an expanding contributor base, the tradeoffs between attracting new contributors and growing existing ones, all while upholding high standards of code quality, stability, and the right balance between feature development, bug fixes & security enhancements. We will highlight the importance of clear communication channels, our mentorship programs, and knowledge sharing initiatives. We will also share valuable insights into the recent updates about Kubernetes community org membership, the advancements made in the automated assessment tool for membership statistics & more. So, join us in this session to gain insights about ContribEx’s many diverse programs.
Introducing “New Contributor Orientation!” – Kaslin Fields, Google & Mario Fahlandt, Kubermatic
SIG-ContribEx recently started a new initiative to help new contributors get involved with the community. The monthly New Contributor Orientation meetings are designed to orient new contributors in the community by providing a basic overview of what Kubernetes does as a technology, how the community is structured, and how they might fit within it. The presentation is followed by a Q&A period where prospective new contributors can get guidance that matters to them. In this session, we’ll provide an overview of the content provided at these sessions, share our learnings from running them for 2 months so far, and open it up to your feedback. This initiative is meant to help all SIGs, and we value your input!
KubeCon EU 2024
With the emergence of LLMs (Large Language Models) and other Machine Learning (ML) workloads running on Kubernetes, gone are the days when just CPU is enough. Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence workloads are best served by specialized processing units. While CPUs are great at doing work sequentially, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning require a different approach to processing information – a highly parallel one. In Kubernetes, that means GPUs (Graphical Processing Units) and TPUs (Tensor Processing Units). This talk gives you an introduction of what each type of processing unit is, what they are good at, and how to use them well in Kubernetes.
SIG Contributor Experience has been wildly successful in helping grow the contributor base of Kubernetes in the first ten years of the project via New Contributor Workshops. We stressed on the importance of growing existing contributors in our last maintainer track session. However, the other side of the sustainability coin is ensuring that contributors who get started with contributing to Kubernetes, actually stick around. A lot has changed in the last decade, and we also need to change how we teach folks to contribute and interact with the community. Join us as we give a comprehensive overview of the Kubernetes governance and community structure, where you can seek help and what some pitfalls are that you will unexpectedly but inadvertently face in your contributor journey. We will highlight areas that are suited for folks from all backgrounds: marketing, content creation, event planning, community elections, automation and so much more!
Kubernetes Contributor Summit EU 2024
We all love to do interesting things together with cool people, so why do many of us get excited when we hear the phrase “I’ll give you back 13 minutes”? So many meetings are terrible!
Great meetings work like magic to build relationships and get things done. Great meetings are how a group of people can build a space in time for themselves to learn, grow, and accomplish their goals together. You deserve great meetings, and they are within reach.
Come to this session to learn proven methods that will help you lead effective, inclusive meetings that people look forward to week after week.
KubeCon NA 2023
The success and sustainability of the Kubernetes project hinges on its diverse contributor base. In this session, we will explore how the Kubernetes Special Interest Group Contributor Experience (SIG ContribEx) empowers contributors, optimizes workflows, & fosters sustained project growth. We will address the challenges of managing an expanding contributor base, the tradeoffs between attracting new contributors and growing existing ones, all while upholding high standards of code quality, stability, and the right balance between feature development, bug fixes & security enhancements. We will highlight the importance of clear communication channels, our mentorship programs, and knowledge sharing initiatives. We will also share valuable insights into the recent updates about Kubernetes community org membership, the advancements made in the automated assessment tool for membership statistics & more. So, join us in this session to gain insights about ContribEx’s many diverse programs.
Co-Located Event – Data on Kubernetes Day
As a platform for distributed computing, Kubernetes enables users to run their workloads across machines. However data has gravity, and when workloads in Kubernetes have to share data with other applications, managing the application’s requirements can get more tricky. In this talk, we will explore what “Stateful” means from Kubernetes’ perspective. We will discuss the different types of stateful workloads, and the challenges of deploying them on Kubernetes. We will also look at the features that exist in Kubernetes to support stateful workloads, as well as the features that are in the works. Key Takeaways: What is a stateful workload from Kubernetes’ perspective? What are the challenges of deploying stateful workloads on Kubernetes? What features exist in Kubernetes to support stateful workloads? What features are in the works to support stateful workloads better in the future?
KubeCon EU 2023
My first maintainer track session as a co-chair of SIG ContribEx. The Kubernetes Contributor Experience Special Interest Group (SIG) is tasked with developing and sustaining a healthy contributor community. It also provides an excellent place to get involved with the Kubernetes project, either through code, non-code, or both. Join us and learn about ContribEx’s many programs and deep dive into some of our current initiatives: Granular Approval PR Plugin: The Kubernetes CI system currently can only assign Approvers on a directory basis. This has caused significant friction for various edge case scenarios. The changes for the approve plugin will distribute approval privilege by adding the ability to granularly assign approvers by file. Annual Report Generator: The Kubernetes project has an annual health check with all its SIGs and WGs. Recent improvements have significantly reduced the toil of project leads by automating much of the report generation. Peribolos: Improvements to in-house tool for GitHub user and team management. And much more!
Find your own path in the Cloud Native world, by seeing through the eyes of the experts. Rich Burroughs, host of the Kube Cuddle Podcast, and Kaslin Fields, co-host of the Kubernetes Podcast from Google, share lessons they’ve gathered from leaders like Kelsey Hightower, Liz Rice, Brad Geesaman, Joe Beda, and more. From Kubernetes history and fun facts, to advice for being a user and contributor; this talk will give you a foundation of knowledge to build your own path in the Cloud Native Ecosystem. You will walk away with: * Stories to help you understand where Kubernetes came from and what it is now * A fundamental understanding of the contributor community and where to get started * Familiarity with the value of working with the Cloud Native Ecosystem
KubeCon NA 2022
My first maintainer track talk as a co-chair candidate for SIG ContribEx. The Kubernetes Contributor Experience Special Interest Group (SIG) is tasked with developing and sustaining a healthy contributor community. It also provides an excellent place to get involved with the Kubernetes project, either through code, non-code, or both. Join us and learn about ContribEx’s many programs that you can participate in, including mentoring, meetings, community infrastructure, moderation, elections, contributor events, the contributor site, and more. Whether you’re interested in helping the Kubernetes project run smoothly, or you want to see how these programs can benefit you, or just have questions about how the project is organized, you’ll find answers here.
KubeCon NA 2021
From One to Many, the Road to Multicluster – Kaslin Fields, Developer Advocate, Google Cloud – KubeCon NA 2021 – October 13, 2021
For new folks in the CNCF space, becoming a contributor may sound daunting, and even overwhelming. But guess what? There are tons of ways to contribute apart from code. 5 members of the Contibex Marketing working group (Kunal, Bart, Chris, Kaslin, and Matt) are all participating and contributing through positive attitudes, documentation, networking, videos, drawings, and even raps. They want to share the welcoming spirit of the CNCF where no contribution is too small, and everyone will have something to share. Contributors’ stories must be heard, and that’s where the upstream marketing team comes in. (This proposal is for the Students’ track)
KubeCon EU 2021
Your first look at the Kubernetes community can be intimidating. This talk is here to reassure you: whatever skills you have, Kubernetes needs them. Our panel of contributors, new and old, will talk through their unique experiences and how you can get involved. We will talk through the specific ways non-code contribution helps Kubernetes be a fun, inclusive, and expanding community and how you can be part of it. We will highlight how SIG Contribution Experience is the “front door” to your experience and provide examples of the remarkable ways people show up for others in our community. Examples include spinning up a baking show, administrating communication tools, writing blog posts, and much more. If you have an hour a week or 8 hours a day, we’ll help you spend your time wisely and see how valuable you are as a contributor.
Let’s learn how resource requests and limits work by illustrating what is really happening inside of your cluster – literally! CNCF Ambassadors Kohei Ota and Kaslin Fields will use fun hand-drawn artwork to walk you through understanding what your cluster is really doing when you set a resource restriction in Kubernetes. Engineers and their applications are going through a transformation. From running apps on a machine or VM directly, to running it in containers, and then to container orchestration via Kubernetes. During this journey, it is easy to become disconnected from what’s really happening on the underlying infrastructure. By learning what Kubernetes is doing under the hood, you can get a deep understanding for how Kubernetes manages compute resources. This talk will cover what happens, starting from setting the restriction on a Kubernetes Pod, then how these parameters will be delivered from the Pod spec to the Linux kernel layer through kubelet and CRI/OCI runtimes.
The Upstream Marketing Working Group began as a vision to connect contributors. It has grown into a set of practices, channels, and bots that unite us all across the Kubernetes community. In this talk, contributors will walk through their experience of learning to tell their own contributor story. In doing so, we will walk through how anyone can write a great story, including key takeaways around narrative, call to action (CTA), structure, and available channels. Along the way, we’ll highlight tips to publish a blog, including collaboration with the Blog team, asking for reviewers from Upstream Marketing, and a brief look at relevant SEO practices. Attendees will leave with a formula by which they can share their story of contributing to Kubernetes and encourage others to share their unique and personal experience. Our goal is to inspire the next generation of open source contributors through a broad range of perspectives on what it means to contribute.
One of the speakers in this session, Peeyush Gupta, passed away in 2020 due to complications from Covid-19. He was a valued member of the Kubernetes community, and you can find his memorial page here: https://github.com/cncf/memorials/blob/main/peeyush-gupta.md
KubeCon NA 2020
The Upstream Marketing Working Group began as a vision to connect contributors. It’s grown into a set of practices, channels, and bots that unite us all across the Kubernetes community. We will show our theory of multichannel communication (and the four types of messages across the 4+ channels of discussion), examples of what our help looks like, and how you can ask for support. In the Deep Dive, we cover (1) Storytelling. We will give a walkthrough for writing a great story, including key takeaways around narrative, call to action (CTA), and structure. Along the way, we’ll highlight tips to publish a blog, including collaboration with the Blog team. (2) Technology. While we’re starting this WG to bring marketing practices to Kubernetes, communication benefits from the right amount of YAML. We have a Slack and Twitter bot we’d love for you to get to know. Bringing these parts together, attendees will have a vision for how this WG supports others and why you should join in the fun.
KubeCon EU 2020
This session was the 8th most popular at KubeCon EU 2020! Abstract:
“Like a kid in a theme park, the number of shiny exciting new technologies teams encounter as they move into and re-architect for the cloud can be overwhelming. Thus we welcome you, to CloudLand! Adopting the cloud comes with a lot of questions to explore and tools to learn. Why should I care about “Cloud Native?” What technologies count as “Cloud Native?” What Cloud Native technologies does my team/business need and why? Through colorful illustrations and a memorable theme park analogy, you will learn:
How to identify “Cloud Native” technology and why it matters,
The key characteristics of categories of technologies from the CNCF Landscape,
And get an introduction to many of the individual CNCF projects that fill in the Cloud Native Landscape.”
KubeCon EU 2019
Have you heard the container hype but don’t really get what it’s about? Have you ever had trouble explaining containers to someone unfamiliar with the technology? Analogies can help – and this one’s delicious! Come to this talk to learn how container technology – a topic which has gone from 0 to “Everybody’s doing it” in the last 5 years – and delicious fresh-baked cookies, aren’t really so different. You’ll walk away having gained a new way to frame your discussions around container technology, whether you’re explaining them to someone who’s hearing about it for the first time, or discussing them with someone who uses them on a daily basis.
KubeCon NA 2018
The Cloud Native open source community is famous not only for the great technical capability it provides but also for the incredible community that creates and supports it. The Cloud Native community spans the globe but getting to know the community near YOU can be especially helpful. Meetups are a common tool throughout the tech world for people with similar interests to meet and learn from one another, and it’s particularly popular with open source communities. Whether you’re in Austin, Texas, Seattle, WA, or lots of other places around the world, there’s probably a meetup (or several!) near you. And if there isn’t, you can start one yourself! In this talk, container and cloud-native related meetup founders, organizers, speakers, and hosts from companies ranging from small startups to large fortune 500 companies will discuss their experiences with the meetup community.
All Other Talks
Yep, I just threw all my other non-KubeCon talks I could find on YouTube into a playlist. Some are good, Some are not so much. Watch at your own risk.