In early December 2017 I was able to attend the North America KubeCon + CloudNativeCon convention in Austin, Texas. It was an exciting event where container experts, developers and implementers all got together to discuss the present state -- and future -- of container technology. Following are five important things I took away from this conference.

TAKE 1
A huge increase in developer interest. I'm willing to bet that no other technical conference had a greater percentage increase in the number of attendees over the last year than KubeCon. It went from hosting an overflow crowd of just more than a thousand attendees in 2016 in Seattle to an overflow crowd of more than four thousand in Austin, Texas, in 2017. That incredible increase is proof that the amount of interest in this technology is continuing to grow.

TAKE 2
Corporate interest in container technology. Industry experts from Google, Microsoft Azure, Red Hat and Uber laid out their outlooks and visions on how containers have changed the datacenter, and will continue to do so in the future. These experts all agreed that cloud-native applications will radically alter the IT field for the better, and they all want to contribute and help define this future. Leaders from Netflix, Pinterest and other companies talked about the fact that without containers, they simply could not have managed to efficiently scale their applications; moreover, they also mentioned how they're giving back to open source projects to improve cloud-native technology.

TAKE 3
Many big announcements. The Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) chose this event to announce new projects that it will be adding to its stable, as well as updates to its existing projects. CNCF also announced that it has added new members to its roster. As KubeCon has become the de facto container event, many companies are now seeing this conference as an ideal venue to make major announcements to their product lines, both in terms of new products and upgrades to their existing products. This year we saw many major announcements from more established companies, such as Ubuntu, Oracle, VMware, and Dell, as well as smaller container-centric companies such as Twistlock, Rancher, and Hepito.

TAKE 4
Cloud native is not just about the cloud. The biggest takeaway for me at this event had to do with cloud-native applications. Despite the fact that many, and in fact most, businesses will choose to use one of the public clouds to develop and deploy their applications, cloud-native applications aren't solely about deploying applications to the cloud; they play an equally important role in the development process of -- and the tools used for developing -- applications.

TAKE 5
Mandatory attendance. Whether you currently work with, or are thinking about working with containers, you should make it a priority to attend this event in 2018. Cloud-native application development and deployment is growing at an incredible rate, and the products and procedures used to work with containers are still being developed. You need to stay on top of these developments and keep relevant in this fast-paced and evolving industry, and the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon conference allows you to spend a few days to expand your knowledge on container technology and its latest developments. Don't miss out next time!