Istio Day Europe

Co-chairs: Zack Butcher, Iris Ding

Istio Day is the biannual community event for the industry’s most widely adopted and feature rich service mesh, where attendees will find lessons learned from running Istio in production, the latest updates on Istio’s ambient mode developments, and the opportunity to meet and learn from maintainers across the Istio ecosystem.

This will be the third Istio Day. The first Istio Day was co-located with KubeCon Europe 2023, in Amsterdam. This colocated event replaces ServiceMeshCon, which was first held in 2019, before Istio was a CNCF project.

Who will get the most out of attending Istio Day?

Developers, operators, platform engineers, architects, product managers, open-source enthusiasts, and C-level executives who are keen on enhancing their microservice management and increasing productivity within their companies.

What is new and different this year?

This year, Istio Day will emphasize two key areas: ambient mode’s maturation, including compatibility across various Kubernetes providers and CNIs, as well as all new insights and case studies on how organizations use Istio to fulfill their business needs of delivering AI, multi-cluster configurations, deployment optimization, world-class security, comprehensive observability, and more. 

What will the day be like?

Istio Day is a full-day event filled with a plethora of engaging sessions for all skill levels. It will feature keynotes, lightning talks, panels, and technical deep dives on topics such as DNS, certificate rotation, multi-cluster deployment, Istio development, and much more. There are sessions featuring a variety of adoption stories and attendees can take part in an Ask Me Anything Istio panel with founders and key maintainers. The Istio community will also have a project kiosk at the main KubeCon conference; please come and meet our community members!

Should I do a bit of homework first?

While no advanced preparation is needed, having a basic understanding of the concept of a service mesh and the goals of Istio in particular will allow participants to take full advantage of the opportunities presented. Sessions are designed for all levels of experience – from novice to knowledgeable.

Looking for community?

Istio Day offers a wonderful learning and collaboration opportunity to attendees. Most of the project maintainers, steering committee, and technical oversight committee will be there. Many people-years of real-world experience, hard-won war stories, and uniquely creative insights make this a guaranteed accelerator wherever someone is in their service mesh journey.

Contributed by co-chair Iris Ding, who is looking forward to collaboration with the diverse and world-wide community of Istio contributors and users against the backdrop of the iconic sights and famous food of Paris. Also, she’s hoping for some springtime strolls around the Seine.

CTA: It’s not too late to register for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Paris 2024 and of course attend the Istio Day. Get all the details here!