Building and Scaling Cloud Native Nordics; Tips, Tricks, and Lessons Learned

Co-presented with Kasper Nissen (https://twitter.com/phennex) at KubeCon San Diego 2019
Online slides: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1jn6UuEXUclkaiHrBVmCJZaPC6tRbYh4Ik6ufrP7NFZI/edit#slide=id.g61dd67c414_0_51
Recording: https://youtu.be/kHonSTlbHEc
Location: San Diego Convention Center, San Diego, CA

Check out https://cloudnativenordics.com for more information!

Transcript

1. Building and Scaling Cloud Native Nordics Tips, Tricks, and Lessons Learned Kasper Nissen (@phennex) Lucas Käldström (@kubernetesonarm) www.cloudnativenordics.com CloudNativeCon+KubeCon NA 2019
2. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics WHO ARE WE? 2 Kasper Nissen @phennex Lucas Käldström @kubernetesonarm
3. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics LUCAS KÄLDSTRÖM (@kubernetesonarm) 3 CNCF Ambassador / now Freshman at Aalto University in Finland Running the Finnish CNCF meetups Certified Kubernetes Administrator Former SIG Cluster Lifecycle & WG Component Standard chair Running luxas labs, Contractor for Weaveworks Kubernetes on ARM (+more) / kubeadm / Weave Ignite creator
4. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics KASPER NISSEN (@phennex) 4 Cloud Architect / Site Reliability Engineer at Lunar CNCF Ambassador Certified Kubernetes Administrator Cloud Native Aarhus (Cloud Native Copenhagen) Cloud Native Nordics Blog: kubecloud.io
5. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics IT’S NOT ONLY US! 5 Foto: Torstein Lund Eik
6. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics AGENDA 6 - Running a meetup? Easy, right? - Experiences running meetups standalone (Helsinki/Aarhus) - Introducing Cloud Native Nordics - Our toolbox - meetup-kit - workshopctl - Community website (frontend, backend, infrastructure) - Questions?
7. Running a meetup? Easy, right? 7
8. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics 8
9. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics 9
10. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics RUNNING A MEETUP 10 • Find sponsors / speakers (ALL THE TIME!) • Once the meetup’s done, you gotta start planning the next one • Recordings? Recordings! • Visibility? Graphical Profile (gotta look solid) • Building a community (inclusiveness, etc.)
11. Our stories 11
12. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics CLOUD NATIVE & KUBERNETES FINLAND 12 • Summer of 2016: I started thinking about running a meetup • Summer of 2017: Found two co-organizers: Annie and Teemu • October 2017: First meetup in Helsinki ◦ … Running meetups bimonthly • December 2018: Started planning Cloud Native Nordics with Kasper • January 2019: Expanded to Tampere (with local co-organizers) • October 2019: Expanded to Turku (with local co-organizers) • Fall 2019: Working on reusable tools for communities
13. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics CLOUD NATIVE & KUBERNETES FINLAND 13 • Helsinki (870 members, 25 months) ◦ Meetups: 11 ◦ Speakers: 26 ◦ Sponsors / Speaker Providers: 15 / 12 ◦ Total / Unique / Average RSVPs: 888 / 452 / 80 • Tampere (193 members, 10 months) ◦ Meetups: 5 ◦ Speakers: 14 ◦ Sponsors / Speaker Providers: 9 / 5 ◦ Total / Unique / Average RSVPs: 200 / 114 / 40
14. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics CLOUD NATIVE & KUBERNETES FINLAND 14 • Lessons learned ◦ Finding speakers (especially in the beginning) is a lot of work ◦ Creating a graphical profile is very useful, but can be challenging to get right ◦ Creating some structure / boilerplate is truly helpful ◦ Livestreaming / recording has many pitfalls ◦ Hard to balance content for also newcomers => “standard intros” & workshops ◦ Networking in the middle of the agenda
15. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics CLOUD NATIVE AARHUS 15 • Started in May 2017 • Aarhus ◦ Population: ~350k people ◦ 2nd largest city in Denmark • So far ◦ 25 meetups ◦ 946 members ◦ Avg. 56 RSVPs
16. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics CLOUD NATIVE AARHUS 16 • Spring 2016: I wrote my master thesis; “KubeCloud - A Small Scale Tangible Cloud Computing Environment” ◦ Presented in the local Google Developer Group • December 2016: Got hired at Lunar Way (now Lunar) ◦ How do we managed microservices? We need to redo the infrastructure... • December 2016: CloudNative-dk Slack Community • May 2017: First Cloud Native Aarhus ◦ … running a lot of meetups, we actually did 3 meetups in a month. • December 2018: We set sail to the Cloud Native Nordics journey
17. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics CLOUD NATIVE AARHUS 17 • Lessons learned ◦ The need for different tracks ▪ Started out with 101’s and kept digging deeper ▪ But new members joined continuously ▪ We call them; Cloud Native Aarhus Hack Nights ◦ Focus on organizers from multiple companies ▪ The need for more hands to keep the momentum going
18. Introducing Cloud Native Nordics 18
19. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics MAP 19
20. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics STATS 20 95 Total number of meetups 5696 Members 4891 Total RSVPs 2700 unique attendees Average RSVPs 51 12 Groups
21. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics HOW ARE WE HELPING EACH OTHER? 21 - Monthly Community Calls (public, recorded) - Unified Brand (slides, t-shirts, colors, etc.) - A lot of common tooling, and guidelines - Slack Community - Website (discoverability) - Speakers (roadshows, collaborative networks) - Possibly (future) Kubernetes Community Day - Reach out if interested!
22. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics ROADSHOWS! 22
23. Learnings, Tips, and Tricks 23
24. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics TOOLBOX INTRODUCTION 24 • meetup-kit • workshopctl • Community website ◦ Open infrastructure ◦ Reference stack
25. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics MEETUP-KIT 25 • MeetOps — Meetups by Pull Request! • https:/ /github.com/cloud-native-nordics/meetups ◦ Yet to-be-refactored into meetup-kit • YAML engineering ◦ We haven’t found the optimal developer experience yet… for now check in YAML • Automatically fetches information from the meetup.com API • Generates README files & aggregates data for the website
26. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics 26
27. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics WORKSHOPCTL 27 • Standardized, user-friendly and reproducible way of running workshops • workshopctl init --clusters 40 --provider digitalocean my-workshop ◦ my-workshop.yaml created, with relevant info • workshopctl gen my-workshop ◦ Manifests generated => git push • workshopctl apply my-workshop ◦ 40 clusters created using DigitalOcean’s managed k8s ◦ All environments set up with VS Code accessible on a public domain • workshopctl delete my-workshop
28. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics WORKSHOPCTL ENVIRONMENT 28 • Password-protected • Unique per attendee • Running in a Pod • kubectl access • docker access • helm installed • k8s syntax highlight • Exercise READMEs • Solutions on-demand • Full Ingress support
29. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics COMMUNITY WEBSITE 29 - Centralized place for all relevant Cloud Native Nordics activities - Make it more attractive to contribute with speakers, sponsorships, etc. - Discover closeby events - Keep track of speakers, venues - Build a reference architecture, to use in workshops as a simple getting started guide
30. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics WEBSITE 30 https:/ /cloudnativenordics.com
31. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics WEBSITE: SETUP 31 website stats-api cloud-native-nordics/meetups config.json Organizers
32. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics REFERENCE STACK 32 kubernetes flux-cd helm stats-api website prometheus-operator nginx-ingress -controller cert- manager sealed- secrets node-exporters Kube-state- metrics prometheus grafana https:/ /github.com/cloud-native-nordics/k8s-config-repo
33. Kubernetes -based Infrastructure for Static Sites (KISS) https:/ /twitter.com/changelog/status/986084630280404992 33
34. Kubernetes -based Infrastructure for Static Sites (KISS) https:/ /twitter.com/changelog/status/986084630280404992 34
35. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics COMMUNITY INFRASTRUCTURE 35
36. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics CHALLENGES 36 - Handling sponsorship tiers and money - CommunityBridge / Non-profit organization? - Better Developer Experience for our tools - Could be greatly improved for non-YAML-breathing persons - Organizer Accountability and Consistency - Need ways to follow up when we forget to do things - Meetup Organizing Checklist & Organizer Roles - Social Media and Marketing - It’s just hard
37. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics SUMMARY 37 “Alone, we can do so little; together, we can do so much” – Helen Keller.
38. @phennex & @kubernetesonarm #CloudNativeNordics QUESTIONS? 38
39. Thank you! @kubernetesonarm @phennex 39