A Quick Recap of 2023 China Kubernetes Contributor Summit

Author: Paco Xu and Michael Yao (DaoCloud)

On September 26, 2023, the first day of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon + Open Source Summit China 2023, nearly 50 contributors gathered in Shanghai for the Kubernetes Contributor Summit.

This marked the first in-person offline gathering held in China after three years of the pandemic.

A joyful meetup

The event began with welcome speeches from Kevin Wang from Huawei Cloud, one of the co-chairs of KubeCon, and Puja from Giant Swarm.

Following the opening remarks, the contributors introduced themselves briefly. Most attendees were from China, while some contributors had made the journey from Europe and the United States specifically for the conference. Technical experts from companies such as Microsoft, Intel, Huawei, as well as emerging forces like DaoCloud, were present. Laughter and cheerful voices filled the room, regardless of whether English was spoken with European or American accents or if conversations were carried out in authentic Chinese language. This created an atmosphere of comfort, joy, respect, and anticipation. Past contributions brought everyone closer, and mutual recognition and accomplishments made this offline gathering possible.

The attending contributors were no longer just GitHub IDs; they transformed into vivid faces. From sitting together and capturing group photos to attempting to identify "Who is who," a loosely connected collective emerged. This team structure, although loosely knit and free-spirited, was established to pursue shared dreams.

As the saying goes, "You reap what you sow." Each effort has been diligently documented within the Kubernetes community contributions. Regardless of the passage of time, the community will not erase those shining traces. Brilliance can be found in your PRs, issues, or comments. It can also be seen in the smiling faces captured in meetup photos or heard through stories passed down among contributors.

Technical sharing and discussions

Next, there were three technical sharing sessions:

• sig-multi-cluster: Hongcai Ren, a maintainer of Karmada, provided an introduction to the responsibilities and roles of this SIG. Their focus is on designing, discussing, implementing, and maintaining APIs, tools, and documentation related to multi-cluster management. Cluster Federation, one of Karmada's core concepts, is also part of their work.

• helmfile: yxxhero from GitLab presented how to deploy Kubernetes manifests declaratively, customize configurations, and leverage the latest features of Helm, including Helmfile.

• sig-scheduling: william-wang from Huawei Cloud shared the recent updates and future plans of SIG Scheduling. This SIG is responsible for designing, developing, and testing components related to Pod scheduling.

Following the sessions, a video featuring a call for contributors by Sergey Kanzhelev, the SIG-Node Chair, was played. The purpose was to encourage more contributors to join the Kubernetes community, with a special emphasis on the popular SIG-Node.

Lastly, Kevin hosted an Unconference collective discussion session covering topics such as multi-cluster management, scheduling, elasticity, AI, and more. For detailed minutes of the Unconference meeting, please refer to https://docs.qq.com/doc/DY3pLWklzQkhjWHNT.

China's contributor statistics

The contributor summit took place in Shanghai, with 90% of the attendees being Chinese. Within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) ecosystem, contributions from China have been steadily increasing. Currently:

• Chinese contributors account for 9% of the total.
• Contributions from China make up 11.7% of the overall volume.
• China ranks second globally in terms of contributions.

The Kubernetes Contributor Summit is an inclusive meetup that welcomes all community contributors, including:

• New Contributors
• Current Contributors
  • docs
  • code
  • community management
• Subproject members
• Members of Special Interest Group (SIG) / Working Group (WG)
• Active Contributors
• Casual Contributors

Acknowledgments

We would like to express our gratitude to the organizers of this event:

• Kevin Wang, the co-chair of KubeCon and the lead of the kubernetes contributor summit.
• Paco Xu, who actively coordinated the venue, meals, invited contributors from both China and international sources, and established WeChat groups to collect agenda topics. They also shared details of the event before and after its occurrence through pre and post announcements.
• Mengjiao Liu, who was responsible for organizing, coordinating, and facilitating various matters related to the summit.

We extend our appreciation to all the contributors who attended the China Kubernetes Contributor Summit in Shanghai. Your dedication and commitment to the Kubernetes community are invaluable. Together, we continue to push the boundaries of cloud native technology and shape the future of this ecosystem.

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