Transparency
Report
Attendee Overview
Content
Co-located Events
Security
Sustainability
Media Coverage
What an amazing week in Amsterdam!
This KubeCon + CloudNativeCon was one for the books, with more than 10,500 of you joining us in-person and almost 6,000 virtually - making it Europe's largest vendor-neutral, open source conference. DataCenter-Insider reporter Ulrike Ostler wrote that "Cloud Native's popularity continues unabated," and #TeamCloudNative agrees - you rated this event 4 out of 5!
Numbers aside, in-person events are so important for our community and the cloud native ecosystem. The real-time interactions that KubeCon + CloudNativeCon engenders sparks the collaboration that consistently uplevel our projects and continues to change the way we build and deliver software. In fact, attendees said the top two reasons they joined us in Amsterdam were networking and breakout sessions. Everybody benefits when we provide a welcoming space for vendor-neutral engagement, and we will continue to do this throughout the year at events, from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon China and North America, to the hugely popular Kubernetes Community Days and regional KubeDays.
It wouldn't be KubeCon + CloudNativeCon without firsts - and we had many in Amsterdam including the addition of the new Startup track, which demonstrated how to build a business based on cloud native technologies. We also hosted the Security Village, alongside TAG Security, to bolster collaboration on the ecosystem's security posture.
While I was disappointed to miss out on the in-person action, it was an honor to share my personal evolution with you. As I begin my maternity leave, I am warmed by your kind words of support and congratulations. I'm looking forward to seeing the community together again soon in Shanghai and Chicago, and I hope that I might be able to introduce my little one to their first KubeCon + CloudNativeCon.
There is much to unpack from this phenomenal event and I've really enjoyed looking back as we put this transparency report together for you. I hope you find this information valuable.
Priyanka Sharma
Executive Director, CNCF
First-time attendees
CFPs Submitted
Pieces of media coverage
Attendees thanks to
Dan Kohn Scholarship Fund
ATTENDEE
OVERVIEW
We enjoyed the largest in-person European KubeCon + CouldNativeCon to-date, with more than 10,500 joining us in Amsterdam - a 48% increase in in-person attendees from our 2022 European event.
Demographics
Attendee Geography
Top Countries in attendance
Total
2,874
1,955
1,673
In-person
2,008
1,378
1,377
Virtual
925
866
578
Top Three Job Functions
DevOps / SRE / Sysadmin
6,392Developer
2,971Architect
2,419| Attendee Job Function | Total |
|---|---|
| Architect | 2,419 |
| Business Operations | 169 |
| Developer | 2,971 |
| - Data Scientist | 136 |
| - Full Stack Developer | 2,306 |
| - Machine Learning Specialist | 86 |
| - Web Developer | 418 |
| - Mobile Developer | 25 |
| DevOps / SRE / SysAdmin | 6,392 |
| Executive | 670 |
| IT Operations | 493 |
| - DevOps | 205 |
| - Systems Admin | 213 |
| - Site Reliability Engineer | 63 |
| - Quality Assurance Engineer | 12 |
| Sales / Marketing | 845 |
| Media / Analyst | 161 |
| Student | 482 |
| Product Manager | 486 |
| Professor / Academic | 68 |
| Other | 911 |
| Attendee Industry | Total |
|---|---|
| Automotive | 468 |
| Consumer Goods | 481 |
| Energy | 242 |
| Financials | 1,521 |
| Health Care | 203 |
| Industrials | 253 |
| Information Technology | 10,789 |
| Materials | 44 |
| Non-Profit Organization | 382 |
| Professional Services | 698 |
| Telecommunications | 595 |
Year on Year Growth - European Events
From KubeCon + CloudNativeCon 2022 in Valencia to the event in Amsterdam, we saw a 48% increase in in-person attendees.
| Ticket Type | 2017 Berlin | 2018 Copenhagen | 2019 Barcelona | 2020 Virtual | 2021 Virtual | 2022 Valencia | 2023 Amsterdam |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Total | 1,535 | 4,300 | 7,700 | 18,682 | 26,648 | 18,550 | 16,092 |
| In-person Corporate | 58% | 62% | 63% | N/A | N/A | 19% | 33% |
| In-person Individual | 12% | 10% | 13% | N/A | N/A | 7% | 13% |
| Virtual All Access Pass | N/A | N/A | N/A | 71% | 67% | 50% | 27% |
| Virtual Keynote + Solutions Showcase Only | N/A | N/A | N/A | 20% | 27% | 8% | 8% |
| Speaker | 9% | 8% | 6% | 2% | 1% | 3% | 4% |
| Sponsor | 17% | 16% | 14% | 6% | 5% | 12% | 13% |
| Media | 2% | 2% | 1% | <1% | 0.6% | 1% | 1% |
| Academic | 2% | 3% | 3% | N/A | N/A | 1% | 2% |
Diversity, Equity & Inclusivity
CNCF strives to ensure that everyone who participates in KubeCon + CloudNativeCon feels welcome, regardless of gender, gender identity, sexual orientation, disability, race, ethnicity, age, religion, or economic status.
Our commitment to cultivating a friendly, welcoming, and inclusive environment extends to the facilities and resources we provide at events. In Amsterdam, these included:
As part of our deep commitment to diversity, equity and inclusivity, we hosted a number of popular onsite experiences to help connect individuals to opportunities within tech, including:
- EmpowerUs Breakfast
- Diversity Lunch
- Peer Group Networking
Gold CHAOSS D&I Event Badge
Awarded to events in the open source community that foster healthy D&I practices.
| Diversity, Equity & Inclusivity Events and Mentoring | Total |
|---|---|
| Diversity Lunch participants | 125 |
| EmpowerUs participants | 50 |
| Peer Group Mentoring + Career Networking mentors | 8 |
| Peer Group Mentoring + Career Networking mentees | 42 |
Our Next Kubecon + CloudNativeCon
Content
With more than 300 sessions, KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe featured a diverse line-up of topics ranging from introductory sessions through to technical deep-dives. Talks are available now on our YouTube playlist.
| Sessions | Total | In-person | Virtual |
|---|---|---|---|
| Keynotes (includes sponsored keynotes) | 22 | 22 | 0 |
| Total sessions (CFP & Maintainer) | 308 | 287 | 21 |
| - Breakouts | 210 | 198 | 12 |
| - Maintainer sessions | 98 | 89 | 9 |
Thank you to our KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2023 co-chairs
Aparna Subramanian
Shopify
Director of Production Engineering
Emily FoxApple
Security Engineer
Frederick KautzComputing Engineer Infra and
Security Enterprise Architect
Content
Breakdown
The schedule was curated by conference co-chairs, Aparna Subramanian of Shopify, Emily Fox of Apple, and independent consultant Frederick Kautz, who led a program committee of experts and track chairs, including project maintainers, active community members, and highly rated presenters from past events.
Talks are selected by the program committee through a rigorous, non-bias process, where they are randomly assigned submissions to review within their area of expertise. You can read the details in our CFP scoring guidelines, and specifically about the Europe selection process.
For KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, 1767 submissions were received from 2672 proposed speakers at 632 companies. Of those, we were able to accept 186 talks with 347 total speakers - an acceptance rate of 11%. You can read more in this announcement blog.
In addition, we heard from 209 maintainer speakers, who ran maintainer sessions - which were not part of the CFP process.
Key stats
CFP submissions
Speakers
first-time speakers
Speaker Diversity
CNCF enforces guidelines on gender and diversity equality among our speakers, including not accepting all-male panels.
| Diversity | Overall | Percent |
|---|---|---|
| Speakers - women + gender non-conforming (keynotes) | 9 | 41% |
| Speakers - men (breakouts) | 245 | 73% |
| Speakers - women + gender non-conforming (breakouts) | 90 | 27% |
Startup Track
New to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe this year was the Startup Track. Inspired by an idea from Liz Rice, the Startup Track demonstrates how you can build a business based on open source and cloud native technologies as part of #TeamCloudNative.
It featured two talks, hosted by cloud native veterans:
From Community to Customers
Kelsey Hightower, Distinguished Engineer, Google Cloud
An open discussion on building a business around open source projects, where Kelsey shared his learnings from Puppet Labs, CoreOS, Google, and advising startups behind some of the most successful open source projects in the Cloud Native space.
Building a Successful Business
in Cloud Native
Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer, Isovalent; Kelsey Hightower, Distinguished Engineer, Google Cloud; Guillermo Rauch, CEO and Founder, Vercel; Sheng Liang, Cofounder and CEO, Acorn Labs; Tom Manville, VP Engineering, Kasten by Veeam
This panel discussed how start-ups and smaller vendors can best take advantage of opportunities to succeed within the cloud native ecosystem, including how contributing to open source projects helps a business, how vendors can make their products appeal to a community centered around open source, and how the cloud native business environment differs from traditional markets.
With more than 52,000 community group members, 406 group chapters and 24 Kubernetes community days, it is obvious the interest is real. And given the conversations I had with CIOs, cloud-native modernization is top of mind -- if not the highest priority -- for many organizations.
Paul Nashawaty
TechTarget
Co-Located
Events
CNCF-hosted co-located events feature industry experts covering topics like observability, web assembly, telco, edge, and more. This year we took a fresh approach, offering all-access passes that allowed attendees to join any of the CNCF-hosted co-located events, and even switch between multiple events.
Demographics
Attendees by Gender
Men
50%
Women
8%
Non binary
/ other
1%
41% prefer not to answer
Top Three Countries Represented
Germany
19%
USA
15%
Netherlands
9%
Top Three Job Functions
DevOps / SRE /
Sysadmin
41%
Developer
19%
Architect
16%
Sponsors
Total Onsite Leads
2,315
Average Onsite Leads
Per Sponsor
178
119% increase from 2022
Reports
You can rewatch the session recordings via the co-located events web page.
Security
Security is people-powered, and we all benefit by collaborating together as a knowledgeable, vendor-neutral community to develop tools and processes to uplevel our security posture.
Security was a key focal point at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, where a number of new initiatives were hosted to foster a collaborative approach toward tackling security issues.
If we truly are moving to standardize cloud-native technologies, to lock them down and further secure them and to build an increasingly comprehensive set of standards and protocols, then we can feasibly also now turn our attention towards being more sustainable in our software application development and more sustainable in terms of how much of the planet's resources that software uses.
Adrian Bridgwater
Forbes
SECURITY VILLAGE
The Security Village, a dedicated space for attendees to learn, share, and collaborate about the latest security practices and tools in the Kubernetes and cloud-native ecosystem, featured a series of talks, open spaces for security-related discussions, and a daily afternoon unconference.
SECURITY TAG UNCONFERENCE
Security TAG hosted a daily afternoon unconference, covering a range of security-related topics, from securing software supply chains to implementing zero-trust security, managing security for cloud-native infrastructure and applications, or building a security-first culture.
Each morning attendees could submit topics for that afternoon's unconference session, to be answered by industry experts, practitioners, and fellow attendees.
SECURITY AUDIT ANNOUNCEMENTS
We were pleased to announce the latest refreshed Kubernetes third-party audit based on the 1.24 release, at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe.
The goal of this security review was to identify any issues in the project architecture and code base which could adversely affect the security of Kubernetes users.
This audit was sponsored by CNCF and conducted over the summer of 2022 by NCC Group with the help of the Kubernetes SIG Security Third Party Audit Working Group.
SLSAs FOR GRADUATED PROJECTS
To continue efforts to improve the security of CNCF graduated and incubating projects, we worked with Chainguard to assess the software supply chain security practices of two graduated projects: Argo and Prometheus.
The assessments were based on Supply-chain Levels for Software Artifacts (SLSA), which provides a framework for software supply chain integrity. SLSA is housed under the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) and details standards and technical controls that can be adopted to improve artifact integrity and build resilient systems.
These efforts build on the security work CNCF has been doing with independent security audits with OSTIF and fuzzing audits with ADA Logics and address a crucial aspect of security health in the software supply chain.
As we've continued to see an increase in frequency and severity of attacks across the software supply chain, we felt it was more important than ever to ensure our projects are taking steps to continuously improve their security practices with SLSA.
Chris Anisczyck
CTO, CNCF
On Sunday, April 16, we hosted a complimentary Kid's Day in Amsterdam featuring three workshops:
- Minecraft Modding
- Phippy and Friends Raspberry Pi Zoo Rescue
- Stories and Games with Scratch
The Minecraft and Scratch workshops were taught primarily in Dutch, while the Raspberry Pi Workshop was taught primarily in English. Both English and Dutch-speaking volunteers assisted in each workshop.
We'll host Kids Day again at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Chicago this coming November, for all children (ages 8-14) who are interested in technology, coding, and STEAM fields.
Sustainability
We're committed to sustainability at our events and KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe was no exception.
We do our best to balance sustainability with various rules and regulations (especially where food service is concerned) in the cities and countries in which we host our events. See below for ways we are partnering with our vendors and community to create more sustainable events and minimize environmental impacts.
- We carefully plan for the attendee numbers based on historical data to minimize waste from the start
- Food & beverage items are sourced from local suppliers
- Leftover food was donated to a local food bank
- All disposable cups were biodegradable
- Lunch bags were made from recycled paper
- CNCF and sponsors donated left over items, including apparel, napkins, coffee cups, toys & games, office supplies, cleaning/sanitizing supplies, and other miscellaneous items to HVO Querido Amsterdam
- Conference lanyards were made from 100% recycled materials
- Learn more about the RAI's corporate social responsibility initiatives
- Learn more about ACS' (audio visual provider) corporate social responsibility initiatives
Health & Safety
On-Site
Overview
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon implemented the following health & safety measures:
COVID-19 safety
COVID-19 Numbers
Over the two weeks immediately after KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, we were made aware of 10 positive tests. Fortunately, no serious cases have been reported.
in-person attendees
Incident Transparency Report
received on-site
Media & Analyst
Coverage
Key Stats
media & industry analysts
in attendance
Mentions Of Kubecon
+ Cloudnativecon
Increase from 2022
European event
Online Reach + Traffic
SOCIAL IMPRESSIONS
SOCIAL ENAGEMENTS
EVENT SESSION VIEWS As of May 11, event session videos have garnered more than 3,400 views
Media + Analyst Results
mentions in media articles, press releases, and blogs that were shared 664 times on Twitter.
mentions in media articles, press releases, and blogs that were shared 622 times across social platforms.
mentions in media articles, press releases, and blogs that were shared 731 times across social platforms.
Coverage Overview
176 media and industry analysts attended both in person and virtually. They generated a huge amount of coverage from this year's European event hitting over 4,200 articles and press releases, a 69% increase from last year's European event. The CNCF PR and AR team hosted two media and analyst roundtables at the event focusing on platform engineering, and what's next in cloud native, in addition to an end user panel at the press and analyst conference.
If DevOps was about combining the workflows of operations and development, then platform engineering aims to be the solution to the problems that are created. It's not an either/or proposition between the two, but platform engineering is an evolution of the DevOps movement, said a KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU panel organized for the media.
Loraine Lawson
The New Stack
Media Coverage
176 journalists and analysts attended both in-person and online.
A list of publications can be found below:
- Amazic
- Cloud Security Podcast
- Computable
- Computerweekly.de
- DataCenter-Insider
- De Nederlandse Kubernetes Podcast
- Freelance
- Heise c't
- Heise Developer
- Heise iX
- ICT Magazine
- InfoQ
- IT Daily
- ITmedia Inc.
- ITPro
- L'informaticien
- Le Mag IT
- Le Monde Informatique
- Linux Magazin
- NetMedia Group
- opensource.com
- Programmez
- Radio Tux
- Reshift
- SDxCentral
- Sigs Datacom
- SiliconANGLE
- Silverlinings
- Software Defined Podcast
- Software Defined Talk
- Software Engineering Daily
- Software Guru
- Springer Nature
- Storage Newsletter
- Tech.eu
- Techstrong Group
- TechTarget
- Techzine
- TFIR
- The Cloudcast
- theCUBE
- The New Stack
- The Stack
- ThinkIT
- Toolinux
- VMblog
- Vogel IT
- ZDNet
- ZeCloud
- Zona Movilidad
Media Coverage Highlights
More than 210 original articles published from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe in leading outlets including:
Industry Analyst Coverage Highlights
#kubecon2023 Omdia on the way back from two full days at a great non vendor event. The future of cloud native is now living up to its promise, the ecosystem has matured and the audience is now looking at more aspects of running K8s in production. The takeaway is that platform engineering is now the hot topic.
Roy Illsley
Omdia
There is a lot more to say about this conference, but the key take-away for manufacturers is that Kubernetes and its ecosystem is no longer only about IT. It's about OT as well.
Harry Forbes
ARC Advisory Group
Michael Azoff, Omdia - Kubernetes maturity and other highlights at KubeCon Amsterdam 2023
Charlotte Dunlap, Global Data - KubeCon EU: Modernizing IT Operations Through GenAI
William Fellows, 451 Research - Solo.io's Gloo Fabric aims to offer a holistic approach to application networking
William Fellows, 451 Research - Isovalent aggregates components, extends from Kubernetes to multicloud, bare metal
Al Gillen, IDC - KubeCon Europe 2023 Highlights Linux Foundation's Expansion into Europe
Krista Macomber, Futurum - Open Versus Closed Source: What is the State of Kubernetes Protection?
Steven Dickens, Futurum - GitLab and Oracle Partner to Accelerate AI/ML Development
Steven Dickens, Futurum - VMware Doubles Down on Cross-Cloud Services
Camberley Bates, Futurum - KubeCon Europe 2023 Highlights Kubernetes Explosion and Need for Instant Platform Engineering
Steven Dickens, Futurum - KubeCon 2023: SUSE Launches Rancher 2.7.2, Latest Version of Rancher
Jon Collins, GigaOm - Touchpoints, coalescence and multi-platform engineering — thoughts from Kubecon 2023
Torsten Volk, EMA - OpenTelemetry: The Star of KubeCon 2023
Larry Carvalho, Robustcloud - Embracing the Future: Generative AI and Web Assembly (Wasm) Innovations at KubeCon CloudNativeCon EU 2023
Sanjeev Mohan, SanjMo - It Depends: Gabriele Bartolini, EDB demystifies data on Kubernetes concepts
Sanjeev Mohan, SanjMo - Sanjeev Mohan, Matt Butcher, Fermyon and Justin Cormack | KubeCon CloudNativeCon EU 2023
Jon Brown, ESG - At KubeCon 2023, observability and FinOps high on the agenda
Paul Nashawaty, ESG - Takeaways and emerging trends from KubeCon Europe 2023
Brent Ellis, Andrew Cornwall, Forrester - What Is WASM, And Why Does It Matter To The Enterprise? (Part 1 Of 2)
Brent Ellis, Andrew Cornwall, Forrester - What Is WASM, And Why Does It Matter To The Enterprise? (Part 2 Of 2)
Brent Ellis, Forrester - Taking WebAssembly/WASM To The Enterprise And Beyond
Lee Sustar, Forrester - Selecting Your Kubernetes Strategy
Rob Strechay ESG - Reflections on Kubecon + CloudNativeCon EU
Ameer Gaili, Analysys Mason - KubeCon 2023: telcos increasingly turn to open-source solutions to unlock cloud-native network benefits
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - KubeCon CloudNativeCon EU 2023 - Jason Bloomberg - YouTube
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - Plenty of gas: Innovations continue apace at the first post-pandemic KubeCon
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - CloudFabrix: Adding an Observability Data Modernization Service
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - Direktiv: Automating Infrastructure Integration Processes with Knative
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - ObservIQ: Observability Pipeline Built for OpenTelemetry, Now in the Cloud
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - PerfectScale: Right-Sizing Kubernetes Clusters for Governance and Cost Savings
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - Traefik: Cloud Native API Management and Service Mesh
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - Netris: Virtual Private Cloud across Multiple Clouds, On-Prem, and Edge
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - KSOC: Real-Time Kubernetes Security Operations Center
Jason Bloomberg, Intellyx - Slim.ai: Generating SBOMs when Slimming Containers
Sponsor
Information
KubeCon + CloudNativeCon would not be possible without the support of our wonderful sponsors. And attendees agree - 89% visited the Solutions Showcase during the event.
| Booth Traffic | Total |
|---|---|
| Onsite leads total | 94,587 |
| Onsite leads average/booth | 446 |
| YOY SPONSORSHIP | 2017 Berlin | 2018 Copenhagen | 2019 Barcelona | 2020 Virtual | 2021 Virtual | 2022 Valencia | 2023 Amsterdam |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Diamond | 5 | 6* | 6* | 6* | 6* | 6* | 7* |
| Platinum | 4 | 7 | 15 | 7 | 8 | 17 | 18 |
| Gold | 7 | 7 | 14 | 8 | 12 | 18 | 18 |
| Silver | 15 | 51 | 55 | 35 | 46 | 95 | 111 |
| Start-up | 13 | 25 | 53 | 26 | 28 | 49 | 63 |
| End User | N/A | N/A | 3 | 3 | 2 | 2 | 1 |
| Marketing Opportunities | 8 | 19 | 27 | 17 | 25 | 44 | 45 |
| Total Unique | 47 | 96 | 146 | 87 | 102 | 189 | 221 |
Diamond Sponsors
Platinum Sponsors
Video Highlights
Thank You
We hope you enjoyed reflecting on a great event in Amsterdam - let's do it again soon!
Your comments and feedback are welcome at events@cncf.io
Check out our calendar for community events near you and don't forget to register for KubeCon + CloudNativeCon + Open Source Summit China in Shanghai, 26 - 28 September, 2023, and KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Chicago, 6 - 9 November 2023.
