Bart Farrell (00:00.142)

in that place, what’s going on there? That’s the idea here. And if you want to repeat your answers at any point, that’s a beauty of recording. also edit. So yeah, good. Paul, we’re getting geared up for KubeCon in Salt Lake City. You happen to be in that area. Can you just introduce yourself for people who don’t know you? Tell me more about what you do and what you’re doing in the Cloud Native community locally in Utah.

Paul MacKay (00:02.094)

Sounds good. Sounds good.

Paul MacKay (00:08.173)

Sounds good.

Paul MacKay (00:22.98)

Sounds great. Appreciate the opportunity to meet with you Bart and we are excited to have KubeCon here in Salt Lake. started, well basically I’m a principal engineer at Weave Communications which is a unique company that does phone, VoIP, payments and a lot of other things for patient engagement, dentistry and all that stuff. So I’ve been there about three and a half years before that, various background.

But where I came from, I’m actually the founder of Utah Kubernetes Meetup and started that about almost a little over eight years ago. I got involved with Kubernetes early on. I was at ancestry.com. I presented at KubeCon actually on our evolution of using Kubernetes at ancestry.com. It’s been about, I guess it was 2017 when I presented at KubeCon.

Just really been excited. We’ve had a lot of great people around us, a lot of growth in the community of CNCF type stuff, as well as in Kubernetes. We have a great Go community, actually, in Utah, in the Salt Lake area. And so, yeah, that’s kind of where I’m at. I’ve been an engineer for quite a while, been through a lot of different companies, and just enjoy the landscape that Kubernetes provides, as well as this Cloud Native.

Bart Farrell (01:48.514)

Fantastic. In this particular KubeGun, since you’re well familiar with the event and seeing it grow, comparing 2017 until now, what trends or topics are you interested in checking out more during the event? What kind of stuff are you interested in exploring more?

Paul MacKay (02:03.17)

Yeah, well, boy, you nailed it when you said it’s definitely expanded, grown, deepened, whatever you want to say Kubernetes is no longer when I was when I first started it, it was just very, very new. mean, Docker was still beta. So containers were interesting. I actually was involved with an architecture group and at semantic and software virtualization. So I kind of knew that space pretty well. But when Kubernetes came, it was just amazing, you know, that we wanted to do the orchestration aspect.

But now it’s just like everywhere. I don’t think there are too many people that don’t know the word Kubernetes. And they may not know what Kubernetes is, but the word Kubernetes is out there. And so I think what I’ve seen is the growth is just the acceptance. I mean, we were on that early adopter, really, really early adopter of Kubernetes. And now it is less difficult. I actually have been in subsequently a couple other companies where I introduced or helped

influence Kubernetes at those companies. And it was hard originally to promote it. mean, everyone is either on a colo, you know, they had, or they had their own bare metal, whatever, or they went to the cloud with VMs. And it was just really difficult. Now it’s not that hard. What I’m looking for is again, more of that broad spectrum of usage, of acceptance.

as well as I’ve seen it grow so much as far as the capabilities within the various versions of Kubernetes. I mean, early on when you were trying to do third party add-ons, know, the CRDs, which they used to call the now they’re operators. I mean, it’s so easy to do that. And so I’m looking for understanding more of where the community is. For years, we’ve been talking about Federation and that kind of came and went and kind of come again.

I don’t know if there’s still a need for that, but I still want look to see what they’re doing with Federation and also some of the other ideas that they’re doing with kind of the lightweight workloads that they’ve been talking about. some of those things, but yeah, just excited for Cubecom, especially because it’s coming to Utah, coming to Salt Lake City, and just great to have it here.

Paul MacKay (04:21.186)

So, you there Bart?

Bart Farrell (04:25.142)

Yep, sorry, cut out for a second. That’s okay. You know, one trend that is coming up a lot, it also came up in the last KubeCon. In your day to day, is AI really a thing? Do you expect it to be more of a thing in the near future? What are your thoughts on that?

Paul MacKay (04:39.524)

Yeah, so I think those have been around a bit have seen several, I don’t know if we want to call them bubbles or trends or whatever, hypes, you know. And AI really is not that, I mean it’s new, it’s new because there are there’s so much money and backing in it. I was also associated with the company, you know, many years ago with machine learning and so those technologies have been around for quite a while. I think the

as anything in software, hardware has gotten really great. So the things that we wanted to do are now lot easier because of hardware. And so I think, yes, I think AI is really important, but I think the key has always been don’t use technology just because it exists. Use it to solve a problem. And if the problem doesn’t necessitate it being used, don’t use it. I often say, if RegEx works, why get complicated? Or linear regression, why get complicated?

So I think in the Kubernetes world, I think it’s going to be important. I just don’t, I think we’ll just see what happens as far as Kubernetes and AI. It is difficult, especially in the cloud, the cost of GPU type workloads is difficult. I think Kubernetes provides a really nice way of doing those type of things. Early on.

Pachyderm, I don’t know if you’ve been acquainted with Pachyderm, they were a great company, great people, and that kind of in that world of get-op type, you know, for AI-ish type stuff. I think that always existed as far as being useful in that community, know, the Kubernetes community for that AI workloads, but do I think it’s, you know, be the next big thing that’s going to pop up? I think it’s just one of many, really, in my opinion.

Bart Farrell (06:30.446)

Pretty good. Now to get a better feeling for the community that you’ve been organizing for quite some time, how does your format work? Is it just casual meetups where people come together, share talks, you do panels? What kind of activities do you do?

Paul MacKay (06:43.588)

Well, it’s been fun over the years. Basically, it’s been a lot of reaching out to various presenters to come. Before COVID, we had a lot of people that, of course, would just come in person. They would fly in, or they were local people, or whatever. We’ve had many people from many wonderful companies and organizations. And then since COVID, a lot of remote. So we still do a lot of various.

projects that are out there, open source groups, of course companies that have products that are in the Kubernetes space. And then we have a monthly meetup, the third Tuesday of every month. We’ve gathered for a long time, and we get together and we present or have presenters come, and we have a great discussion. In fact, as we always say, the best discussion is after the presentations because the…

the mind is going, know, the thoughts are going and so that’s why for years we’ve had such a great community of several incredible people that have influenced the architectures of many companies around here because of that little core nucleus of people on the after presentation discussions as well as during the discussions themselves. So we reach out to everyone that we can to come and present or not come physically but at least to present remotely.

And we’ve had great success having so many different people. We have a YouTube channel that has a lot of our presentations from over the years, and you can see a variety of people that we’ve been able to have come. And we’re just excited and grateful for the attention that we’ve been given, as well as the enthusiasm of people wanting to know more.

Bart Farrell (08:23.532)

As someone who also run the meetups here in Bilbao in the North of Spain where I live, and it’s a similar kind of thing. It’s people that are hungry for new ideas. The presentations are kind of the excuse to then have those additional conversations afterwards. And it’s a beautiful balance to see these large scale events like, know, KubeCon, where we get exposed to a ton of stuff and there’s a lot of activity. But then I think it’s a sort of, know, brick and mortar regular meetups where I think, personally speaking, can have an even bigger impact because you’re able to take those ideas and go

further, you see these people on a regular basis, and it’s a wonderful environment to share ideas where you’re not going to get judged or criticized. Everyone’s there to learn. In terms of the in-person, sorry, go ahead.

Paul MacKay (09:02.242)

Well, yeah, no, just say, really, this is not my quote, but I often say, the network has never been copper or fiber. It’s always about people. And so the networking that has occurred over the years because of these type of meetups or these associations and relationships that have been formed, whether they’ve been around a technology or not, it’s amazing because,

Life is as an engineer, we move around companies every so often. But our relationships, the network doesn’t. It remains the same and actually expands as we get more involved in various different companies. So that’s what I really love about just the association that we have, whether it’s Kubernetes Meetup or Go Meetup or ML Meetup, it doesn’t matter. It is just getting people together, learning from each other because for me, I’m…

There’s so many smart people out there, I just can’t wait to learn and understand more from them.

Bart Farrell (10:03.054)

That’s a wonderful way putting it. I had not heard that reference regarding a network. And you can bet that I’ll be using it in the future. I will try to quote you as often as possible to cite my sources. In terms of, there are going to be close to 10,000 people, or I don’t know exactly how many, coming into Salt Lake City that are going to be there in person. For people that are unfamiliar with Salt Lake, what are places that we should check out? What are things that we should have in mind in terms of things that we can explore the free time that we’ll have?

Paul MacKay (10:17.433)

Yep.

Paul MacKay (10:29.732)

Well, it’s kind of funny when people ask that because I find that if you’re not from here, you know more about what’s here. Because if you lived here long enough, you don’t visit the things that the people, know, the tourists or whatever they come in for. So I can explain some of the things that I like and have seen and then also understand kind of where other people have come from when they they’re not from here. So, of course, November is a great time, hopefully, for skiing.

pretty early when Kupkon is out here in Salt Lake and Utah, but there could be some potential snow out in the mountains. of course there’s the skiing here. We have the beautiful mountains. Hiking still is possible in November. You don’t want to go up too high, but there’s still some beautiful hikes. There’s some beautiful areas. The downtown area is great. They have lots of food and places and lots of activity going on. If you’re into

Sports, course, we have basketball, Utah Jazz are amazing, and we have also hockey and other things. There’s, of course, the Church of Church Of of Latter-day Saints is there, and they have a lot of stuff that’s interesting for those that are interested in that world. And then there’s just stuff. You can just find whatever you want, I find. So that’s pretty bad as far as I’m not a good tour guide here, but there’s plenty there. I’ve enjoyed it, and a lot of people do when they come, go, wow, this is a great place to come.

And of course, you have mobility. The parks are incredible. And they’re not too far away. We have some of the most incredible variety of landscapes. You can go in the tundra of the high Uentas, or you can go out in the desert and think you’re out in the Sahara desert. So it’s kind of an interesting world.

Bart Farrell (11:55.874)

Fantastic.

Bart Farrell (12:16.686)

Well, there’s a lot to think about, you know, both in terms of the event and also the surrounding areas. You’ve done a wonderful job of situating us from your local community and also insights about things that we can check out while we’re there. Time is unfortunately limited, but I think it would be a shame to visit a place that has so much to offer and not take advantage of it. Paul, thank you so much for your time today. I’m looking forward to seeing you on the ground in Salt Lake.

Paul MacKay (12:38.584)

Sounds great Bart. Welcome to Salt Lake. Looking forward to everybody coming. Take care. Bye bye.

Bart Farrell (12:43.502)

All right, take care.