Keynote: Gardens and Glaciers: Saving Knowledge Through Succession - Emily Fox, Apple
Channel: CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation]
Date: 2023-05-01

Keynote: Gardens and Glaciers: Saving Knowledge Through Succession - Emily Fox, Security Engineer, Apple

Founded in 2015, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation is designed to empower organizations to build and run scalable applications in modern, dynamic environments such as public, private, and hybrid clouds. In the past 8 years, we’ve seen technical innovation in cloud native garden grow by leaps and bounds. However, with each technical innovation we compact the depths of knowledge that were necessary for that innovation to occur. Kubernetes exists to orchestrate containerized workloads, we use a service mesh like Linkerd or Istio to simplify and secure communications between containerized microservices. Every project in the landscape is designed to create a layer or layers of abstraction to simplify the complexity in cloud native architectures. When compacted and concentrated this information forms knowledge glaciers — an accumulation and compaction of deep knowledge built over time that provides foundational understanding as community knowledge expands. Unless we take steps to preserve and transfer information, the more knowledge we lose with each generation of technologists as those lessons learned (like surviving day two operations) are lost to history. This emphasizes the importance in active succession planning and building-the-bench of community leaders and maintainers. We need to dedicate time to save the glaciers, transfer institutional and technical knowledge within the ecosystem, plant the seeds of tomorrow’s leaders, and make room for our community to grow and bloom.