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3 years ago, if you had asked me what Kubernetes was, I would have started back at you. I would have laughed if you’d also told me that I would have travelled to 7 countries by 2024. But as destiny has it, I now know Kubernetes (a little) and have already travelled to 7 countries with 6 of them in 2024 and also spoke at KubeCon Delhi – India’s first KubeCon!
All of this was only possible due to Kubernetes and KubeCon – the world’s largest Kubernetes conference. Since joining InfraCloud 3 years ago, I’ve had a steep learning curve and many opportunities, including attending KubeCons.
I have already attended 4 KubeCons in person now:
- KubeCon Chicago – November 2023
- KubeCon Paris – April 2024
- KubeCon Salt Lake City – November 2024
- KubeCon Delhi – December 2024
And with all the KubeCons, I had a mini vacation after the work trip. I explored Chicago, New York, Paris, Switzerland, and Italy, along with Doha and Dubai in transit. While the stories of all these trips are up on Instagram, I haven’t been able to keep up with the blog posts due to time and work 🙁
Nevertheless, when KubeCon India was announced in Paris earlier this year, I was ecstatic, and why not? It was their first time doing it in India, and I had to be there. This blog post will briefly recap India’s first KubeCon in Delhi.
India’s First KubeCon – KubeCon Delhi
KubeCon Delhi took place from Dec 11-12 at Yashobhoomi in New Delhi. While I had spent a few years in Noida, I hadn’t heard of this place. Yashobhoomi is one massive convention centre. It’s humungous. The first glance I got of the venue, I was stunned. This was as close as the massive venues I saw in Chicago or Salt Lake City. Further, the branding and registration processes were almost the same – we could print our badges at other KubeCons, but that wasn’t the case here – as I had experienced at other KubeCons.
Since this was India’s first KubeCon, many people from across India were present in person. With all the visa woes and financial situations, many of them haven’t been able to attend a KubeCon in person. This was the perfect opportunity to experience it up close – and I also got to meet a lot of them whom I couldn’t meet otherwise.
Do check out my LinkedIn posts on daily updates from KubeCon India:
Speaking at KubeCon Delhi
2024 has been good for a lot of reasons, one of them being getting opportunities to speak at international KubeCons. I was on a panel discussion at KubeCon Paris, had 3 talks at KubeCon Salt Lake City, and also had one at KubeCon India.
Being a lead for the platform engineering working group, I spoke about platform engineering and the activities that the working group does. It was a non-technical talk but focused on platform engineering, the maturity model, the whitepaper, and everything else the group has been working on. The idea was to get more people from India to know about the group and join the same.
Mission 011 – Internal Evangelism at InfraCloud
While my talk was selected, I wanted more people from InfraCloud to attend and speak at KubeCon. I devised a plan – Mission 011 – an internal evangelism activity I undertook. Through webinars and internal sessions, I generated a buzz among everyone and got ideas for talks. We did multiple brainstorming sessions and submitted around 10 talks to KubeCon Delhi.
Finally, we had 4 talks selected at KubeCon, with 6 speakers, a first from InfraCloud. I have written a more detailed post on Mission 011 on InfraCloud’s blog.
KubeCon India 2025 in Hyderabad
Being the organizer for CNCF Hyderabad, I did a lot of monthly meetups last year, the highlight being Hyderabad’s first KCD. While we planned to repeat that in 2025, something bigger was already planned – KubeCon India comes to Hyderabad in 2025 – and I couldn’t have been more excited.
While I’m closing this year on travel and talking gigs high, I’m eagerly looking forward to what is in store for 2025. (And hope to be more consistent with blogging in 2025). 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.
