Congratulations to the eBPF Foundation for a Great Virtual Event
We sent several members of the Subspace team to the eBPF Summit 2021 to listen in on the sessions. Among them were William King, our co-founder and CTO, and Emily Wagner, one of our lead software engineers.
The team met prior to the conference to assess what we might get out of it, and how a deep-dive type conference like this would come across 100% virtually. We went in with no set expectations, except to get more informed as to recent kernel improvements, and creative ways in which people had been using eBPF hooks lately.
We walked out pleasantly surprised, maybe even shocked, at how well the foundation had staged a conference that not only encouraged virtual collaboration, but built it into the culture and flow of the conference. The team at Subspace gives a nod of appreciation to the eBPF Foundation for a job well done on the organization front!
Making a Virtual Conference Deep-Tech Compatible
In terms of density of technical topics, and how quickly context switches could and did happen, it seemed fast-paced. The attendees in general were very collaborative, and the organizers of the event did a great job at enabling live and asynchronous communications simultaneously. AND, they did so on systems that their audience understand very well. Notable examples include:
- Participants were able to ask, answer, and collaborate in the integrated Slack channel at-will.
- This caused side conversations that happened over the course of extended periods, sometimes even when sessions were over.
- The live YouTube stream was easy to watch, take a look here:
Also, the speakers, deeply technical like the audience, would stop during their sessions to answer and collaborate on incoming questions in Slack... sometimes at the expense of their own time. There was at least one session where the topic changed from a success story to a struggle collaboration, and the speaker willingly participated.
This culture of collaboration was encouraged, almost seemed infectious, and the momentum seemed to continue through day two. If this is what the Foundation is like, they look to be building a community and doing a good job at it.
If this large a community is forming, it means that large and small organizations alike are starting to use eBPF, and in particular for network related services and products.
Some notable sessions/observations
The team at Subspace would like to call out a couple of efforts as special. There were many great moments, but these were the handful that stuck with us even after the event was over:
- The Capture the Flag event was well organized, educational (especially for technical people to learn more about it), and fun. This was an exemplar CTF event.
- The opening keynote was very well presented, and forward looking
- William called out Brendan Gregg's talk as his favorite from day 1
Congratulations to the eBPF Foundation, and our thanks as well to the participants. We would love to talk next year about how far the Subspace network has come, and some interesting things we're doing with eBPF technology.
As always, if you're interested in knowing more about Subspace, contact us, or send us a message on LinkedIN or Twitter!
See you next year at the eBPF Summit 2022!
