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As you read the title already, I was in the USA again the last few weeks as I delivered my second international talk in 2024 at KubeCon Salt Lake City. KubeCons will always remain special as my first international trip was because of KubeCon Chicago and ever since my international trips have been because of KubeCons. Chicago followed by KubeCon Paris and SLC recently.
In this post, I’ll do a quick recap of what happened at Kubecon Salt Lake City, my speaking engagements and a sneak peek into my extended trip with a mini vacation in the US.
KubeCon Salt Lake City
This year’s KubeCon was held in Salt Palace in Salt Lake City, Utah. Thanks to KubeCons, I’m not only improving my Kubernetes and cloud computing knowledge but also the geography of the US too. As always, this KubeCon too had a day 0 with colocated events which included ArgoCon, BackstageCon, ObservabilityCon Platform Engineering Day and Cloud Native University Day where I spoke. This was followed by 3 full days of the conference with insightful keynotes and sessions along with a sponsor and project showcase.
My Talks at KubeCon Salt Lake City
This has to be the best KubeCon for me because I had 3 talks and a booth duty here. I was talking at the Platform Engineering Day as well as the inaugural Cloud Native University Day apart from sharing the platform working group updates. There was also a CNCF community booth where I represented CNCF Hyderabad and shared the journey of the group with the global audience.
Are you really ready to adopt a platform?
Being an active member of the platform engineering working group, I have spent quite some time with the folks from the community learning about the nitty-gritty of platform engineering. This short talk was where I shared a Platform Readiness Checklist that would help organizations decide whether they’re ready to adopt a platform or not. The checklist was based on my learnings and interactions with the community. Do listen to the complete talk below.
Mastering myself before mastering Kyverno
Kyverno is one of the popular tools that is used for creating, managing and enforcing policies in cloud native deployments. I along with a team, developed a Mastering Kyverno course last year and it was quite an experience. In this talk, I shared my journey of building a course for first-timers. From talking about how I helped my friends ace exams back in college, to learning constantly as a developer advocate to eventually co-authoring a course! Watch the video below.
Apart from the talks, I spent time at the solutions and project showcases where I interacted with a lot of people and saw quite a few interesting projects. There were a lot of AI-related products solving tons of problems. I didn’t visit all the booths, but did visit all of them that interested me. So overall quite satisfied with how things unfolded.
Extended Vacation – Exploring USA
As always after an international trip, I decided to take time off and travel. I spent a few days in Salt Lake City visiting the Capitol, and Museum of Natural History and getting my new phone! Yes, I bought a Samsung Galaxy S24 Ultra from BestBuy at a sweet deal. Also tried some delicious Pizza, Cheesecakes, Coffee and Gelatos. Watch more of it in my Instagram highlight.
Post Salt Lake City, I headed to Las Vegas. From here, I booked the Grand Canyon tour which was totally worth it. A detailed blog post coming soon. I visited The Sphere, High Roller and obviously tried my hands at Casinos, and learnt that I should never do it again. The highlight was the trip to the CocaCola store where I got to taste Coke from 16 different countries! Watch my Las Vegas Highlights on Instagram.
After spending a few days in Las Vegas, I headed to Los Angeles. I was clear about what I wanted to do here. Went to the WB studios to visit the actual sets from FRIENDS and The Big Bang Theory, two of my favourite sitcoms. After that, I visited the Griffith Observatory where I got to see Jupiter and 4 of its moon and Saturn rings! But the highlight was a ride in an autonomous Waymo cab! Check out my Los Angeles highlight on Instagram.
The last and final pit stop was Frankfurt. Since I had the Schengen Visa which was valid for a few more months, I planned to do a pit stop for a few hours in Frankfurt. I got to visit the the ancient markets, Altar Open, and Cathedral, walk across the Main river and just fall in love with the architecture. Loved the short stay there.
2024 was all about talks
2024 was special for me. My work and my talks took me to Paris and Salt Lake City which allowed me to explore Europe and US. As I gear up for a couple of more talks in the weeks to come, I can only be thankful for all the opportunities that came my way. While this blog is there to stay, I need to plan things better and dedicate more time to what I enjoy doing – writing and sharing stories. I met a friend yesterday and she told me she shared a blog post of mine with her friends who used it to plan their road trip. That’s a great motivator for sure.
That’s about it for this blog post, I know it’s a little abrupt as I was sharing stories from Paris and then suddenly it stopped and now this. I plan to be more consistent here. Feel free to reach out to me for any assistance. Drop your thoughts in the comments below, tweet to me at @Atulmaharaj, DM on Atulmaharaj on Instagram, or Get In Touch.
