KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2022 are just around the corner! Detroit will be the place to be on October 24-28th, as developers, end users, entrepreneurs, community members, and cloud advocates in general, meet to talk about all things Kubernetes and enjoy. If you are a newbie in cloud-native computing, here you have a rookie guide to make the most of the event.

When is KubeCon 2022?
KubeCon is actually split into two separate events: one for Europe and one for North America. This year’s Europe convention was held in May but don’t worry – you can watch all the presentations on CNCF’s YouTube channel. The North American event will start next October 24th. Though the main three days of the event will be from the 26th (Wednesday) to the 28th (Friday), you won’t want to miss the pre-event programming.
Pssst: the whole schedule is here.
Pre-event activities for Kubernetes beginners at KubeCon Detroit 2022
For starters, on Monday, 24th you can attend the Learning Day Featuring Kubernetes hosted by KubeCampus. This is a free event with two 2-hour hands-on labs: the first one, starting at noon, is intended for Kubernetes beginners that want to learn real-world cloud-native skills and make contacts with industry experts and community members.
Also, on Tuesday, 25th you can join the Getting Started with Kubernetes: Hands-on Workshop at an additional fee, where the renowned trainer Nigel Poulton will give an introduction to Kubernetes with a lot of hands-on examples.
Not to mention a DevOps Happy Hour at the “Cliff Bell’s” famous jazz club, and a BBQ and party at the House of Kube on Tuesday evening.
Keep in mind that the activities just listed are all off-site and some require additional registration.
What to expect from KubeCon and CloudNativeCon North America 2022
The main event will take place in Huntington Place Detroit and has been designed to make everyone feel at home.
- Wellness activities – biking, yoga, and meditation are just a few of the activities that will be offered from Wednesday through Friday. Also: look out for the presentation Tips To Fight Impostor Syndrome, by Aurélie Vache.
- Inclusiveness – the cloud native community is trying to be more inclusive at all levels, starting by using a language that’s not harmful in any possible way, as Anne Gentle will entice us to do in her talk: Inclusive, Accessible Tech: Bias-Free Language In Code And Configurations. The EmpowerUs Breakfast will seek to celebrate and uplift FTW (Femmes/Trans/Women) and allies in the community. The presentation ADHD: Understanding, Awareness, And Shared Experience will start the necessary conversation about neurodivergent people’s awareness and inclusion. There will also be an Allyship Workshop regarding historically excluded groups from a human-centered perspective.
- Community building – even though all eating opportunities are excellent for connecting and networking, there’s a visible effort at giving more opportunities for people to feel invited and join in. There are thirteen different talks, panels, and meetings devoted to creating community. Youngsters are especially welcome: there will be a panel by students on how to pursue a career in cloud native through hackathons and the presentation of a mentor-mentee framework. Mentoring and networking will also be available for seasoned engineers: a virtual and an in-person session plus the presentation of the new Mentoring Working Group.
- Something for all levels of expertise – we just mentioned the pre-event learning opportunities for beginners and will delve into the talks from the main event next. Of course, there will be plenty of presentations on all kinds of specific topics and learning opportunities for pros, too. ContribFest sessions are also fantastic places for maintainers and [potential] contributors to meet, work together, and learn something new.
A few talks for rookies
As promised, we have handpicked a few presentations that we think are introductory enough so that newbies find themselves comfortable there.
- The whole 101 Track is perfect if you’re a beginner and want to learn more. We find especially intriguing Kubernet-Bees: How Bees Solve Problems Of Distributed Systems, by Simon Emms and Christian Weichel, The 10 Biggest Mistakes You Shouldn’t Make In Open Source, by Bill Mulligan and Divya Mohan, and How CNET (And Friends) Use the CNCF Landscape To Run High Traffic, Dynamic, Scaleable, And Cost-Effective Websites, by Corey McGalliard.
- Keynote: Cloud Native 101: Motor City Edition – Jeffrey Sica and Bob Killen, both active consumers and contributors to CNCF projects for years, will explain in this talk the cloud-native stack, common problems that projects try to solve, and the important role of the community.
- What Container Runtime Do I Need? – with this talk by Abubakar Siddiq Ango, attendees will understand what a container runtime does and how to choose a proper one for their workload.
- BoF: Intro to Open Source Licenses and Q&A, with Jeff Shapiro from The Linux Foundation. This BoF session is for anyone who wants to consume, contribute or use a project downstream with their own code.

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Speakers
You can always watch the videos on the CNCF YouTube channel later on in November, but nothing can compare to the experience of connecting with your people in real life. Fellow attendees are the true reason for going there! In the meantime, getting to meet some of the big names in cloud computing doesn’t hurt either. Here are 10 speakers in no particular order you may want to search for at this years’ KubeCon and CloudNativeCon 2022:
- Flynn is the original author of the Emissary-ingress API gateway and works on educating on Linkerd, Kubernetes, and cloud-computing development.
- Kaslin Fields is a Developer Advocate at Google Cloud, a Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) Ambassador, and a contributor to Kubernetes – Find her on Twitter.
- Tim Hockin (known in the community as ‘thockin’) has been working on Kubernetes since before it was announced and, before that, on Google’s Borg and Omega projects – Find him on Twitter.
- Priyanka Sharma is the Executive Director of the CNCF, co-creator of the Inclusive Naming Initiative, founding team member of the OpenTracing standard, and contributor to other open source projects – Find her on Twitter.
- Phil Estes is, apart from Principal Engineer for Amazon Web Services (AWS), contributor and maintainer for the CNCF containerd runtime project, participant in the Open Container Initiative (OCI), and long-time core contributor and maintainer on the Docker/Moby engine project – Find him on Twitter.
- Bob Killen is a member of the Kubernetes Steering Committee, chair of the Contributor Experience Special Interest Group, and involved in many other cross-cutting areas of the project – Find him on Twitter.
- Jeffrey Sica is a Principal Developer Experience Engineer at the CNCF and works on upstream Kubernetes in various sub-projects – Find him on Twitter.
- Paris Pittman has contributed to Kubernetes for 6 years and serves in several leadership roles in the project as well as the CNCF ecosystem at large – Find her on Twitter.
- Jason Morgan is a maintainer of the CNCF Cloud Native Glossary and co-author of the CNCF Landscape guide. With his articles in The New Stack, he brings complex topics to a broader audience – Find him on Twitter.
- Arnaud MEUKAM, core K8s contributor, he’s the SIG Chair for the Kubernetes Infrastructure Group and Release manager – Find him on Twitter.
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