KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2023 is around the corner, and with it, lots of Linkerd goodness, including some great talks and some opportunities to meet the team behind the world's most advanced service mesh.

As at previous KubeCons, you'll find the Buoyant team at two booths: the Buoyant booth in the expo hall, and the Linkerd kiosk in the Project Pavilion. We'll also be participating in something very special this KubeCon: The CNCF Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group will make its first appearance at this conference.

And if you can't wait for KubeCon, you can join us at KubeCrash, the Chicago warmup event, on October 18.

Before Kubecon: KubeCrash, the Chicago warmup event

On October 18, we're co-hosting KubeCrash, a free virtual conference that delivers crash courses in open source. This year's theme is a great one: Multi-Cluster Kubernetes at Enterprise Scale. We'll cover everything enterprise users need to know to get the most out of cooperative multi-cluster deployments while keeping a handle on operational complexity and cost.

Speakers include Sean Schneeweiß, Software Engineer, Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation; Eddie Wassef, VP, Chief Architect, Vonage by Ericsson; Rob Koch, Principal, Slalom Build and Co-chair CNCF Deaf & Hard of Hearing WG, and many more. Register for Kubecrash today!

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2023

This year, KubeCon North America will be hosted in Chicago, Illinois, from November 6 - 9. Bring your winter jacket—it'll be chilly!

Meet the Linkerd maintainers

You'll find Linkerd maintainers at the Linkerd booth in the CNCF Project Pavilion and the Buoyant booth. Both are located in the sponsor expo hall. Swing by for a conversation with the team behind the world's most advanced service mesh!

Our KubeCon talk picks

Monday, November 6

Lightning Talk: Empowering the Deaf and Hard of Hearing in Cloud Native and Open Source. Jon Zeolla, Seiso, Rob Roch, Slalom, and Catherine Paganini, Buoyant. Learn more about what our working group is doing and why it is important during our lighting talk. (Add this talk to your schedule) 

Tuesday, November 7

Keynote: CNCF Graduated Project Updates. William Morgan, Buoyant. Don't miss the Linkerd project update during the keynote for a fun video starring Linky, the Linkerd mascot… and William Morgan, CEO at Buoyant. (Add this talk to your schedule)

Linkerd for the Enterprise: VM Support, Flat Networks, Gateway API, and More. Alex Leong, Buoyant. In the service mesh world, Linkerd is known for its simplicity and low operational cost. In this project update, Linkerd maintainer Alex will focus on the other side of Linkerd: its focus on enterprise use cases. They'll cover recent work in Linkerd to add support for connecting and securing VMs and non-Kubernetes workloads; to support multi-cluster deployments with flat networks; to adopt the Gateway API for standardized configuration and easy integration with Argo, Flagger, and other CD tools; and some exciting upcoming features for the project. (Add this talk to your schedule)

Wednesday, November 8

Five Years of Cloud Native Rust. Eliza Weisman, Buoyant. In 2018, the Linkerd project made a big, risky bet by choosing Rust — at the time, a new and unknown programming language — to implement the next generation of Linkerd proxies. Since then, the bet has paid off, with Linkerd reaping rewards in security, reliability, and performance, and by 2023, Rust has become increasingly popular in the cloud native ecosystem. It's easy to see why: Rust's compile-time memory safety prevents entire classes of CVEs, without sacrificing performance or productivity. In this talk, Linkerd maintainer Eliza Weisman reflects on the project’s five years of experience with Rust in Kubernetes — how the project has benefited, how things have changed, and what we’ve learnt. (Add this talk to your schedule)

Thursday, November 9

UX Matters: Switching to GAMMA Without Ruining Your Reputation. Flynn, Buoyant. Linkerd has been one of the first implementations of the GAMMA specification, allowing service mesh users to use Gateway API resources to configure east-west traffic. This is a significant departure from earlier Linkerd versions, which used the Linkerd-specific ServiceProfile resource to offer granular control over traffic routing, metrics, and reliability mechanisms like retries and timeouts. In this talk, Linkerd maintainer ?? will dig into how a service mesh can approach the GAMMA specification. While he will use Linkerd as a lens to explore GAMMA in Rust- and Go-based controllers, as well as the Linkerd data plane proxy, this talk isn’t just about the code or Linkerd-specific APIs. (Add this talk to your schedule)

Service Mesh Battle Scars: Technology, Timing, and Tradeoffs. Flynn, Buoyant and others. It has been ~6 years since the first service meshes hit the market, and hundreds if not thousands of users are employing the technology in production today. As the space has matured and meshes are used at scale, many users are wondering about why certain constraints exist in their mesh of choice. Come hear maintainers of 3 CNCF service mesh projects discuss the very real tradeoffs they’re making everyday with topics ranging from eBPF, sidecarless, Rust proxies, multicluster, and user experience. (Add this talk to your schedule)

CNCF Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group

I am one of the founding members of the CNCF Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group. While not deaf myself, it is a community I have had some exposure to early on. Barely three months old, the working group has almost 20 members, most of whom are deaf or hard of hearing. Our team is currently working with the CNCF events team to ensure KubeCon is accessible to this community. And something I didn't expect to happen so soon is that three, maybe even four of our deaf members will attend the conference. If you see them, please be sure to say hi — they'll appreciate the hearing community welcoming them. (Learn more about our mission and goals in our charter.)

While not directly Linkerd-specific, the Buoyant team, and specifically the leadership team, have fully supported my new passion, and a lot of the progress would not be possible without them. Buoyant has been an ally of Deaf and Hard of Hearing Working Group since day one!

Would you like to take to the KubeCon stage?

Do you have a Linkerd story you'd like to share at the next KubeCon, but aren't sure how to take the plunge? We'd be thrilled to help you get started. Sign up for the Linkerd Community Anchor Program and some very friendly people will give you hands-on help in telling your story.

Connect with us outside of KubeCon

If you can't make it to KubeCon this year, don't worry. You can always find us in the Linkerd Forums or the Linkerd Slack channel . Hop in and say hi!