Okay, we're back. We're live. We're here with Karl Baker and we're talking about Myanmar today He is the senior advisor for Pacific Forum and we love to talk to him about things all around the world involving diplomacy and International and foreign policy and so forth and today we're talking about Myanmar and I cast the show as will Myanmar ever get Arrest for military coups. I'm not sure he agrees That's a fair premise for our discussion. So Karl, welcome to the show Thanks, Jay. I'm good to be back and and that's I would certainly like to see that I guess that's sort of the aspiration for everybody But whether we can really do that or not is is going to be a real challenge I think because the the military in Myanmar is is Well insinuated into the fabric of society Well, it's interesting because if you if you don't have representative government And as a call it a power vacuum the military is a it's a good prospect to fill it and in Myanmar They filled it for a long time well, you know and and you know, it's It's part of the part of the region too I mean these are old empires that you know built up fairly significant territory back from from the 900s to to the to the Kelowna area in the 18th 1800s And so, you know, so there is a there is a tendency to see strong man Centralized sort of rule in these countries. So Myanmar isn't unique. Remember, we have Thailand next door And they of course are also very very Oriented to military coups. So they've all had their share, you know, and and while Cambodia isn't a military coup It's a military government. It certainly is a centrally controlled government. So, yeah I think if we can put up that map of Myanmar, we can we can get started here So if you look at the map, you can see that that Myanmar There's a there's a central valley that focuses on the Irwati River and that that river really runs Pretty much from just just north of Mandalay all the way down through Yunga And then there's feeders that that feed that Irwati River that come out of the Himalayas And so it's really centered around around the Irwati River one of the great rivers in Asia And that's and that's really the focus because that's where the the barman population where the word Burma comes from Is is in that central area and that's where they're they're located. That's where that's where they're the dominant Group of people, but if you look on the periphery, you'll see that there's there's states that have been created And this was done right after the the end of end of the colonial area at the end of World War two when When when Ong San Ong San Suu Kyi's father Actually was able to come together and and reach agreement with the ethnic groups that comprise this place called called Myanmar So if you go back to that map, you can see it goes on the bottom. There's the Rakhine State, which is which is of course the area where the Rohingya are low where we're located and still are located. It's it's largely Muslim in that area and and there's a lot of people that in the British era that migrated down into that area from Bangladesh and and what happened in the with the Rakhine is back in the back in 2018 2017 2018 is the mill Myanmar military pushed them back out into into Bangladesh and Cox bizarre and that's part of the story of what happened when When Ong San Suu Kyi lost her credibility in the national community because of the genocide the accusations of genocide by the by the Myanmar government, but that that And then when you go up around what you see in Myanmar is you have you have the chin and then you have the the the kuchen and the Sean and the and the Cayenne states and all those are are Made up of ethnic minorities of the same name and what happened in 1947 when Myanmar was created as a as a country is all those states had agreed to to a federal system where you had states that had Significant autonomy from the central government located in at the time young gun and of course later on they moved up to Napidao and so So what you have is you have a history of Conflict in those border regions and so that's that's really Myanmar in a nutshell is you have you have the central valley That's controlled by the Burmese and and they've always controlled that area And then they've always struggled for national unification to to get those outer regions Part of the part of the government and so that's really the the the the single most important focus for anyone In Myanmar is national unity and that's the rationale that the military has used for current times since 1947 to Establish a who government because they were concerned about the national unity of Myanmar and they felt that the the civilian government couldn't fulfill that Requirement because they weren't strong enough and they weren't Dealing with those peripheral regions and so now from from 1947 on then there's been this history of the pong long Conferences and and they have in the attempt to replicate what Aung Sanh did in 1947 where he reached the agreement with these with these outer outer states to to form a Federated Federated Union and and to the to date that's still where the conflict is mostly occurring So what you see since the coup in in February of 2021 is you have these these conflicts that are are in the Peripheral regions, but what's different this time with the coup is that there's some level of Oppression that's occurring among the the Bumar as well And so that's a little bit different because in the past the the conflict was always with the with the ethnic organ at the ethnic Armies which are located in the periphery now you have the the the military is also in conflict with The the Burmese people in the Central Valley because they are opposing the the democratically elected government Wow so much contention So much argument over such a long period of time They would be so much more successful if they could have a unification Don't don't they appreciate that disease is the person on the street the man on the street appreciate That it would be better for them economically if they could stop fighting with every everybody Yeah, sure, but the problem is is how do you do that because they've never been able to reach consensus and you know And when the when the democratically elected government the the National League of Democracy Was in power They attempted a pong along Congress and they were unable to to get the the currents specifically But other ethnic groups were unwilling to go along with the with the agreement to establish a unified Federated system and and part of the problem is is is the of course in any federal system is the degree of autonomy Granted to to the individual states and of course, you know when you look at those states the the states really are go go beyond What the ethnic group actually controls and so you have you have a conflict Built in because you have Burmese and you have the ethnic group that are in conflict over over resources and over control of those of those specific states And so that's what complicates the whole the whole idea of establishing a functional federal system You know the Burmese that I know not many of them. They're very nice sweet kind people Gentle people. I don't understand how they could be involved in genocide against the Rohingya or otherwise. What are the two personalities here? No, I mean I have the same I had the same impression. We did a lot of work in Myanmar from really 1914 to 1914 2014 But what century is this anyway? From 20 from 2014 to 2020 or 2019 and and and they are very friendly Including the military the military are very very sincere in in their belief though that that they are the Only group of people that can really ensure National unity because they feel that that their institution is is key to achieving that and and the problem is is that The the the institution itself the military itself is has has corrupted itself by believing that and so and so it's an endemic problem to the military that they can't get beyond the idea that they have to have military control to be able to Unify the country because only the military can do that and you know and and then and then Beyond that. There's a there's a very strong sentiment that I was I was surprised to see Among the military about it was really just simply a visceral hatred To to toward some people specifically the Rohingya and of course you can't use Rohingya as a term in Myanmar They're they're they're Bengalis and and you know And that's it's word is almost spit out of their mouth when they use that word because they feel very much that that and this goes back to The English colonial era where these people were located up in the areas of India If you go back to the map the India and Bangladesh and moved down into the Rakhine area You know, it's hard to wrap your mind around exactly where yeah, yes, and what is yeah so you see what happened is during the colonial administration you had you had the the English basically controlling all of that area left of Myanmar as well as Myanmar and so and so they these workers were Moving back and forth as as part of the part of the British Empire at the end of the Empire Of course the people in in Yangon felt that those people in Rakhine should now go back to Bengal Or go back to to what is modern-day Bangladesh, you know And so that was that's always been a real sore spot is that particular area in Rakhine And now if you look at the chin, which is right above there It's very heavily Christian. And so, you know, that's that's sort of a very minority a very a very minor Population it's not it's not heavily populated all those peripheral areas are fairly underpopulated So there's probably four or five hundred thousand people in that chin area, but that's you know, that's that's again a point of conflict because they are very different from from the Burmese that are controlling the central areas of Myanmar Maybe we're gonna take a moment and Look at the definition of unification. It says it sounds like if you're not if you're not on my team Then I don't want to unify with you. I want to squash you somehow Well, that's that's what's happened. I think that's what's happened with the military is that that is that is sort of their definition of a federal a federal system is that the the Burmese very much control all the All the assets and all the resources in those areas and of course those those peripheral areas because their mountainous are Rich in resources. There's there. There's a lot of timber. There's a lot of Minerals that are mined out of out of those mountainous regions. And so yeah, that's part of the problem Is is how do you actually share power? How do you share resources when when the lowland? Area has has the dominant population the dominant culture and the resources are located out in the periphery where there's there's very very Very dug in kinds of military organizations run by these ethnic ethnic groups. Well, it doesn't does it do him any good. Does it do the military and hunter guys any good? To do genocide on the Rohingya. I mean, is it is it help toward unification in some way? Does it help economically? Does it help in terms of sharing the resources? Why do they do that? It just seems like blatant historic hatred Well, and I think that's that's sort of the the outsiders view and it's very easy to take that view You know, I mean if you if you talk to the the military their their story was you're not you're not getting both sides of the story You're only getting the side of the story from you know from these bleeding heart liberal international organizations and you know, and so what really happened was the the Rohingya Attacked the villages and they and they killed people and they they are the ones who started the fight and and the military was simply responding to the egregious actions by the the Rohingya army, do you accept that crap? Well, I mean there's there's probably some truth to to some of the some of the Statements that are being made by the military, but they're also of course, you know being over overstated They're being exaggerated by the military and and certainly, you know, and this was the this was the argument that we had but is several several meetings In a row with these guys is if this is true Then you should tell your story and make it believable But don't don't just just say that it's true and not try to demonstrate how it's true Because you know they would they would say they would say that this is what's happened But then you know their next sentence would be you know and those stupid Bengalis They just have children and they have too many kids and they and they don't they don't work and you know That's sort of sort of racist kind of rhetoric, you know And so you know and so it you know, it just doesn't ring true in in the end It just doesn't ring true and I'm sure this is the same experience that the you know That the human rights watch and people like that have when they go to these regions, you know part of every hunter every coup like that is You know the basic mission of perpetuating your power You don't you don't want to lose your power And you want to hold on to it for as long as you can and take you take steps to do that And I wonder, you know, you mentioned that there at least for time was a representative government at democracy even In Myanmar, I wonder if you would ask one of the military coup guys hey, when you finished your your mission of Unifying Myanmar, but would it be time to go back to a representative government? Is that what you're actually hoping for? Or is it rather that? When you achieve that, you'll you'll you'll consolidate your own power as as a coup and And and we you know, obviously we ask those kinds of questions and in fact their answer is oh, yes We believe that that is the right way to go, you know and what happened in this democratically elected government remember is that thing saying was was a Military general and and he is the one who actually transferred power to himself and then and then the next the next election was was where Aung San Suu Kyi's party won now Aung San Suu Kyi couldn't be president because she's she was married to a foreigner And her children are foreigners and so she can't she can't legitimately be president of of the Of the country according to the constitution So there was a guy named when mint who was who was nominally the president but of course Aung San Suu Kyi took the role of State counselor and took on several of the ministries and so she actually was was controlling the government But in the meantime the military of course controlled not only the military but also the ministries of borders border areas and home affairs So they continue to control those peripheral areas. So so their argument is is that no we are only here to to to Unify these these peripheral regions and you know and and to support that That argument is they actually did run a panglong conference during the nld era And it was unsuccessful You know and and of course the military held the nld responsible for being unsuccessful because they couldn't get They couldn't get some of the some of the ethnic armies to join in in resolving the issues over on federalism under under the Leadership of the nld and so I'm sure part of the rationale for going back to this to this Military control was yes preservation of power But also because they failed in their attempt to unify the country and we can't stand around waiting For things to get worse because these ethnic areas are are making are Making noise again, and if we don't do something do something dramatic We're going to lose Myanmar I mean again that's that's giving you the the sort of the military Explanation of why they had to do this and you know it sounds like you guys got to fight like hell Or you won't have a country anymore Don't ask me where I got that. Yeah. Well, it just so happens to be january 6th today Yeah, yeah, so so anyway, so you know that's that that's kind of where we are and you know, and I think The interesting part I found of what's happening now is that the there's this this shadow government that's been formed And it's it's called the national national unity government And it's it's made up primarily of of angstanzu angstanzu cheese old party the national league for democracy But there's also this this thing called the national unity coordinating council And what's interesting about that is they are talking about a federal system And they have support from from the ethnic groups They have support from the from the bermes in the central valley who for the first time Feel like they're being left out by the military And so there's there is this movement and in fact that the united states in in the national defense authorization act Does recognize the goals of of the nug as being unifying the country under a federal system, you know, and so The the the sense of congress that comes out of that there isn't really much much in the way of firm action That's been that's been mandated In in the legislation by the united states, but there is the provision to to promote That vision for for minmar Now how that how that gets translated into action I is is complicated because you can't simply go hand money to to the karen and to the to the kuchen And and the shan states and expect that to to work its way into a coherent Strategy of of how do you get past the coup? But it's it's encouraging I think again like I said beginning is that there's this this effort inside minmar to actually come up with a a response to The military's proposal that it all it alone can Deal with the peripheral issues of the issues in the periphery of the country. Was that a free and fair conversation? Or is the coup determined to uh, keep those keep those guys at bay? Oh, there there's I mean, there's no question, you know, and and this gets to to they're they're not they're not acknowledging the NUG by any means or or the national unity Coordination Congress there that's that's this is this is all you know shadow government kind of stuff that's going on No, there's no way the the coup the coup leaders are saying we will return to democracy through free and fair elections After I think in 2023 in late 2023 is there is there target date? so I mean clearly when you look at what what the The honte is doing is they're kind of trying to follow the the the thai lead In in talking about how how thailand, you know went through a a A coup in 2014 and then and then was able to run elections and win the election in 2019 so so prior on show prior Prime minister priate was was the general in in charge of the honte And now he's the he's the prime minister Prior prior chanocha, you know, so so he is the model that I think they're trying to follow And and what what the NUG is trying to do is they're trying to say look, there's a better alternative to to going through that model and so then it becomes The problem then becomes is how do they how do they deal with that? And of course ASEAN the association for southeast asian nations Is is involved with that, you know, and they and they came up with their Five-point consensus, which includes the need to have dialogue between the factions and and the honte is simply not doing that And so what's interesting is today as of today. In fact, uh, hon sen the cambodian prime minister is visiting Myanmar And he's the first official visitor and of course hon sen also happens to be this year's chairman for asian And so the asian states specifically indonesia and and malaysia are very concerned That hon sen is trying to do an end run on asian and try to make a deal with with The honte with with the honte to to come to some resolution and get get Myanmar back into asian because asian so far has refused to let the the honte Participate in asian meetings and and the next big meeting is the asian retreat in february in in shimmery Which of course Honsen would love to be able to say look i've brought me and mar in and and now we can start normalizing relations within asian So it's you know, so you can see the dynamic is playing out where the strong men in in Southeast asia Are are sort of encouraging what the honte is doing And then there's a question of whether asian can really step forward and and be more assertive and try to promote The the nug are trying to promote something other than just accepting the the honte has faded completely It sounds delicate and complicated. It's delicate and complicated and you know and and the united states You know has not really done much I was going to ask you what is our policy vis-a-vis the Was it nug and the honte which do what do we publicly favor? What are we doing in in the public sphere of foreign policy? Yeah, well public publicly we're saying we as I said we support the the goals of the nug and and the ndaa does say that you have to you know Specifically the u.s. US policy says you have to secure unconditional release of all political prisoners it says they should promote genuine national reconciliation and It it should I'm looking here because I can't remember this It wants to impose costs on the military. It doesn't say how nothing specific It wants to impose costs But but you know the most significant part is it wants to support and legitimize the national unity government of the republican union You know and so I think that's the most significant statement that comes out and and there's really really there's there's some money That's been put to it in in terms of humanitarian assistance But not much and it's not clear how that money how that money gets gets transmitted into Myanmar And so there's there's a lot of questions, of course And then the other the other thing is there's their talk is there's talk about about sanctioning You know the the oil and gas companies because that's where the hunt is getting your money Of course the problem is you know typically in in a situation like this when you impose sanctions the people that suffer are the are the people that are Not once you should not be sanctioned the ones who should not be sanctioned They're the ones of course who end up suffering because because the hunt it will take care of itself first So you know so so that you know the easy the easy answer of course is always sanctions, but sanctions Are complicated in the situations. They seem old-fashioned these days. That's my my cut out But let me ask you what what should Tony blink and do here? I mean it's a fresh look at it You know in view of all the things you've mentioned What would be a better foreign policy vis-à-vis Myanmar? Well, I mean, I think you know they had they're on the right track By by saying, you know, we we support all these things. We support, you know, we support the ASEAN five points which involve Dialogue between all the parties, you know and and recognition that that if you send somebody in that they should be able to talk to the opposition You know, I mean, I think those those are reasonable reasonable prospects and and to me I mean support ASEAN, you know push ASEAN Into into a situation where it's kind of forced to deal with this not not Hun Sen by himself But but ASEAN as a group, you know, kind of force force ASEAN into a role of taking some responsibility You know, the problem is of course is that China Russia Are busy Providing support to to Myanmar in the process No, I I want to ask you about that one of the news articles that popped up when I googled this Was that China just gave Myanmar? I guess that's the military group a submarine Nobody gives me submarines Do they really need a submarine and why China giving him a submarine? Well, I mean It compliments their other one submarine that they got from India And and I mean the the idea of submarines in Southeast Asia is is sort of a Point that I've made other places that are it's really silly I mean to have two submarines you have one and you want to have one in constant dry dock and the other one that can probably Range out for a couple days at a time But everybody in Southeast Asia thinks they need submarines now and so and so Myanmar wants to play Wants to play the submarine game too You know, you know, so it makes no sense for for Myanmar to so what is China trying to do there?  What is how well? Yeah?  It's called the mitsoni dam and and there's been huge local protests against it because it blocks off I mean it cuts off the river in the airwadi and you know, and it's uh, you know, it Basically china is is extracting resources and of course, you know, it takes, you know, it takes its High moral position of saying we don't involve ourselves in in uh internal affairs of other governments You know that kind of that kind of noise, but in the meantime, you know, they've supported They've supported the junta in in saying that They they've in in resisting any attempts at the security council to get any any kind of a resolution out on on Condemning the the rohingya on condemning the the junta and and some of the some of the atrocities that have come about Since since the junta has been basically, you know Committing genocide in in the outer regions of of uh, me and mar as well Yeah, that seems to be a fact. We're known worldwide and and you wonder, um, you know Why there isn't more made of the involvement of a left criminal court of justice in in the hag or truth truth commissions Or some kind of external influence on Me and maria is the hunt to reject all of that fact is that we all know there have been Human rights violations and war crimes essentially going on Well, maybe this goes back this goes back to the to the days of nld when when they look the other way Over the rohingya, you know, and that's you know, and that's when when angsan su chi lost her lost her her Nobel Peace Prize and was was You know really shunned Internationally and i'm sure part of the reason why she did that back in in 2017 was because she understood that there wasn't much room for error in in modifying the the Me and mar military And so she she kind of took the heat from the international community But I don't I think she was in a position where she couldn't really do much Because because her her authority was was fairly constrained to begin with and and if she resisted the military in that case they would have just pushed her out sooner rather than at the at the point of the new of the new Legislature bad. She was such a darling for a while Well, she was and to me that was part of the problem is is it was it was so focused on her That that we sort of forgot the larger context of of nyenmar and got a little bit too too locked in on on treating her as the champion and in fact she She she couldn't fulfill Those those expectations. I think I mean her her role was was more limited than we were willing to admit She's not coming back, right? She's she's Built too old right now too much baggage. She's not coming back politically, right? I Well, she'll she'll always be there. I mean she's angsan's daughter You know and so, you know, so she she she is a she is a living legend And so she will always be part of any In any civilian government in nyenmar be involved in some way. I mean she's she is she is that that important She's she's she has that status. I mean she can't not be But no, I mean she's not ever going to come back as as the leader of of nyenmar I don't think and I don't think I don't think she she wants to quite honestly Like you say, she's she's in her 70s and you know, now they've got all these trumped up charges That that they're trying to trying to push on her like importing walkie-talkies and you know, I saw that Violating covet 19 protocols and all that it's just silly stuff You know that that they're using as as an excuse, but you know, I think I think She still represents The democracy to the outside to the outside world in nyenmar and that's that's fortunate and unfortunate because like I said she her capacity is somewhat limited and just on who she is and so There there has to be there has to be a new face If that's what you mean by by trying to trying to reestablish democracy in nyenmar There has to be a new face to replace angst and she whoever that might be And and and that's not clear who that is there isn't there isn't a real emergent Charismatic person who's who's going to show up in and replace it It all sounds like a confluence of Factors that are negative. I mean it's and correct me. Please correct me, but I see me and mar is one of the most Fragmented disrupted Countries in southeast Asia The rest of them are having problems too, but not quite like this And if you had to draw a line from where They are today to where they could be should be to be a productive member of that part of the world It's a long way. Am I right to say that they are at the bottom of the heap in terms of organizing a reasonable representative Successfully economic economically successful country And Well, I mean you don't forget you've got you've got laos next door and We have to do another show on laos I mean nyanmar nyanmar is a country of 50, you know over 50 million people and and it's really quite vibrant I mean when when when we were there, I mean, it's pretty remarkable how fast it grew I mean from from 19 Gosh to keep doing that from 2014 to to to 2019 the changes that occurred in those five years were pretty remarkable I mean they rebuilt their entire airport. They they you know, they Traffic traffic in in yangon was was just crazy just overnight, you know, and so there's It wouldn't take much to to to get the flame Reignited if we can if we can get past, you know, this this junta and so in some respects, you know If we can if we can find a way to come to some reconciliation between between the the nug and the junta I think we could move forward and that's why I While people are dismissive of ocean's ability to do anything, you know, I think that there is some some potential for ocean to to Make progress and and if they do it could move pretty fast So I would be feathering ocean's cap, wouldn't it? It would and and ocean knows that but it also knows that that it's very constrained in what in what it's capable of doing And you have these these I'll call them a dilettante like han sen who's willing to you know Ditch ditch ocean for his own personal gratification and personal glory In in trying to solve the problem by himself And so you've got you've got that problem with ocean too is that you have Other people in the region who who aren't always as committed to ocean As as they they should be I think because because ocean does have cloud If if it's willing to act together, but it's becoming more and more difficult for ocean to do that Last question carl You know, we've established that people are nice and friendly And vital and there's great possibility for the country going forward if a few things get worked out somehow But I never asked you about the food. How's the food? Well, you know, it's the food is kind of halfway between india and southeast asia.  Well, you know, there's a there's a Burmese restaurant right here in town called yangon down down in chinatown here So and then it actually is pretty representative of me and our food So you can go try it.  Would you go to yangon? You know, I mean assuming that it was safe from a you know, the pandemic part of you Is is is it worth traveling to uh me and mar? Oh, you know, actually, you know, there's a lot of history not necessarily so much in yangon, but if you go up into Into into the bagan in the mondale region It's it's really quite interesting and if you and I if you venture out even further I I haven't but if you would venture out even further into some of these more remote areas like like Up up into the the shan and the and the kitchen area I mean, those are quite interesting areas They they've got a lot of a lot of remains from the old empire, you know, the old the old empire actually ran all the way all the way across thailand and and miles and came or part parts of Cambodia So it it there's interesting history, you know, when you when you fly into yangon It's it's like coming into the midwest where you see a little church in each town in in in Myanmar you see little little temples in each town with the With the shoot is sticking the gold shoot is sticking out and you know, so it feels feels like a very very Very Buddhist place and it and it's very very much oriented to to the religion Thank you Carl Carl Baker Senior advisor to the Pacific Forum I really appreciate it coming on discussing this with us very important. We understand You know the international world around us and every nook and cranny of it. Thank you so much Carl. Thanks to you


Four local candidates have been recommended for two Judgeship vacancies in Minnesota's 9th Judicial District. One vacancy will be chambered in Brainerd in Corwin County. That seat opened up when Richard Zimmerman retired. The other vacancy will be chambered in Bemidji in Beltrami County. This is a newly created Judgeship in the 9th District. Now the four finalists are Annie Kloss and Hughesby, who is currently the Beltrami County Attorney, Judge Lori Flohog, who is Deputy Judge for Leech Lake Band of Ojibwe's Tribal Court, Stephanie Shook, who is an Assistant Crow and County Attorney, and Christopher Strandley, who is the Cass County Attorney. An announcement of the appointments will be made following an interview process over the next few weeks.


Hello, everyone. Welcome to Cloud Native Live, where we dive into the code behind Cloud Native. My name is Taylor Dolozal, and I'm a senior developer advocate at HashiCorp, where I focus on all things infrastructure, application delivery, and developer experience. Every week, we bring a new set of presenters to showcase how to work with Cloud Native technologies. They will build things, they will break things, and they will answer your questions. Join us Wednesdays at 11 a.m. Eastern Time. In today's session, Diego and team have joined us to talk about from zero to production in less than one hour with Crateo, platform ops. This is an official live stream of the CNCF, and as such is subject to the CNCF code of conduct, which simplifies down to please be excellent to one another. Please don't add anything to the chat or questions that would be in violation of that code of conduct, and be respectful of all your fellow participants and presenters. With that, I'd love to hand it off to Diego and team to kick off today's presentation. Diego. Thank you so much for the invitation. I am Diego Braga, and I work as a solution architect. Be also an architect of a startup that is called the NIGIX, but I will tell you later on what we have prepared for you today. And I will pass the microphone to Luca. Okay, hi. I'm Luca, and I am working on Crateo. I'm a developer, and today I played the role of head of a platform team, and we will see you later. And then I pass the microphone to Mauro. Okay, thank you Luca. Hi Mauro. I work in Crateo as a developer. I am a JavaScript enthusiast, and I love to have you here. Yeah, and I'm Susan Daniels, and I work for Spotify, and more specifically, I do developer relations for an open source project called Backstage. You might be familiar with it. Yeah, pretty much familiar with Backstage. So let me break the ice for today's livestream. So we started to develop Crateo Alphamops last year. It's an open source solution, which aims to give us a centralized way to create a provision and orchestrate and coordinate any kind of resource in any kind of infrastructure adopting the collaborative approach. And what we would like to do today is to do some storytelling, some role playing. We will be the role of a startup that is called the DJIX. And let us change the t-shirt and put the t-shirt on the DJIX team. Okay, so we can start. Okay, Luca Mauro, I have a really, really great idea for our startup that is called the DJIX. I know it sounds like the DJIX, but it's because I had a really, really great idea. So, since we do know that bees are engaged in this time, and we must make sure to protect them and find a way to protect them, why don't we develop an application that gives advices on how to help them? What do you think? Yeah, it's a good idea. Besides, it's more important to take care of the poor bees. Yes, we must save bees. Okay, so we need, as an architect, I think that we need to find a way to go into production in really, really few fields. Because business is running, we have business requirements, we have a lot of things to do. And for sure, I do know that the dev team and the platform team will fight over the time. So, let's find out if there is a solution out there to collaborate and to spin up the infrastructure to deploy the application and do things in the right way. Yeah, as a head of the platform team, I've long been targeting Crateo, which contains so many technologies I love. And there is also a cool CLI. So, we can try to use it and to install the platform. What do you think, Mauro? Yes, okay, now I go to Google and I send you the link to the chat. Oh, okay, thank you. As an architect, I would like to spend a little bit of time. What is a platform? And what platform ops means? And usually I look at Google for definitions. So, I don't know if Mauro can Google platform ops for me, but basically what a platform ops is, is an approach, is a methodology, which aims to organize the platform team in a way that the platform team is a group of people. And the goal of this goal is to offer services that are consumable as APIs from the end users. And users can be any one can be developers, can be business analyst, can be data scientist as Luca knows, as a high-level platform team are struggling to find a standardized way to expose services and only a good way to do implement automation. Okay, so, I was reading this on Google about platform ops, and I think that Mauro could share the screen. Yes, I'm already sharing my screen. I found my repository of Croteo on GitHub. Okay, so let's wait for the monitor to come back. Yeah, because, okay, it is, okay. Basically, I was reading something about Croteo. Okay, it is here. Yeah. I was reading something about this solution, because actually I was looking for, as an architect to the Cloud Negativity Foundation landscape that is really, really rich of solutions. And it is rich, but it could be also complex for a company, regardless of their size, to choose, to charity technologies based on the maturity of the CNCF, based on the community, based on a lot of things. And I was really looking to different solutions that are interaction from the cloud native community. And I saw that Croteo is a platform that depicts the open source projects from the CNCF and standardize the way you offer these services on a catalog. So as an architect, I do believe that the platform team should construct the complexity of infrastructure provisioning, machine learning, model sharing, et cetera, and give only forms to the exactly as Google, Azure, Amazon, all the public provider to their console. So this solution of Croteo platforms, I think it should be tried. Also because it's based on a lot of interesting projects, like Backstage. And I was following Backstage in the last year, and Geiger is a really interesting developer portal that Spotify Engineering released to the community. And they made a lot of interesting features in the last month, but I don't want to still have the topics to choose. So I think that Croteo did the right choice to integrate Backstage for the portal. But also there is another interesting project that Croteo is leveraging, that is Cosplay, that we really love it. And it's the same way, I mean the approach is exactly the same as Backstage if you think about it. So you have manifest that describes something, everything is based on data, so everything is audited, so everything is based on Kubernetes. We are talking about Kubernetes APIs, there is no locking of proper language, et cetera. So I think these projects are really, really interesting. The fact that I use them and collaborate with them is something that our startup should use. So I think that Luca is right, and we should install Croteo in order to spin off our application. These are struggling, they are in danger, so we have less than one hour to work to save them. Yeah, I read this as well, the Kubernetes cluster for Croteo. So Luca, do you have a... Mauro, do you remember the EKS cluster that I gave you the reference later on? Maybe, no, I don't know, let's try to connect to it, wait. Yeah, you could try to install Croteo there. Yeah, okay, let's try to install. Let's check. Okay, so give me the kube-config file on the chat. Okay, I'll send you on the chat. Okay, here you go. Okay, so easy, okay. Brings to Croteo, okay. Just a second, I'm installing it on my terminal, just a second, okay, no, okay. You can view my screen, okay, it's installed. So what I need to do, okay, Croteo... Just a couple of commands. Oh, easy. Okay, that's fine. And if I can say something, I will complain to the guy that wrote that install it on me, because as an architect I would like to see more documentation. So I will look at the initials and say that the regular section should be expressed better. Do you agree with me, guys, because... Yeah, yeah, I hope so. Two instructions. Yes, yes, Bob. Absolutely. Easy, easy, install. And I think it's fast, 37. Okay. And so the second command is... Okay, Croteo install core. Two commands, okay. Yeah, it's super easy. It looks like super easy. We'll see if it works. Croteo install core. It's faster and it's easy. Oh, okay. Okay, here we go. Install. Let's check the cluster. Okay. My alias are very... Super alias. Yes. Okay, getting a space. And okay, I jump in Croteo system. Okay, and okay. Okay. Okay, I think it's installing the other component. Okay. Oh, Croteo dashboard back end from 10. Okay, creating a container. Creating. Okay. Yes, running. Okay, creating container. Okay, running. Okay, not yet ready, but I think... It's everything up. Yes. Yeah. I think he's building many things on the background, but we can wait some minutes. Guys, right back, can you hear me? Yeah. Yeah. It's kind of... So you are ready to go into production. Can everything is live? Not yet. Just wait some seconds. Okay. Okay. I'm worried that we are late for going into production. These are struggling and we find a way to go into production. We're still creating the back end. So as far as I read on the documentation, the core module that we installed, I think, there is backstage within it. So... Yeah, absolutely. Yes. The core part is leveraging backstage as a portal in services. So I think that... I never tried it, but that should work in this way. So what I love about the Cratero platform is the last graph that you are showing. So as an architect, I love the loosely coupled technologies. I love abstraction, and I love using manifesto to describe anything. So Cratero leverages Kubernetes APIs because backstage does it in this way. Cratero does it in this way. It doesn't mean that Kubernetes is the only environment in which resources can be provisioned. So cloud native is really cool and a lot of companies are transitioning to this approach. But we don't need to forget the rest of the environment. They need some primates, maybe some legacy environments, etc. So the fact that Kubernetes as a control plane can handle a lot of different, also, side Kubernetes is a really cool idea, in my opinion. I don't know what you think, guys. Sorry, Diego. I'm just putting this DNS in our Cloudflare DNS just to have a better address. And I'm back here. And Luca, what do you think about this slide? It's easy. It's cool. What do you think? Yeah, it's clear. It's super clear. I like the way all the pieces are connected together. Yeah, it's cool. Okay. And what we can do with Croptail? Okay, just to dox the install. Maybe there is some information about the install because the DNS is not yet propagated. And I think it's about five minutes and it will work. The power running and the service are okay. Okay, let's try to go to the dashboard. And so dashboard. Oh, okay. Cool. It's running. Okay, it's working. Fantastic. Okay. Just about five seconds, but please can wait five seconds. Five minutes. Okay. And now we don't have some components. And okay, we need to create our big picture. Yes. Yeah. How can we do that? I think I found an example. Okay, maybe it's time to speak about Croptail. Sorry, backstage of Spotify. Yeah, so thank you. So let's wait until my screen is shared. Okay. Thank you. So I joined this cool tech company called the Bee Geeks. And I was thinking it was about music, you know, coming from Spotify where I work with backstage. I thought, well, music and backstage. Well, it sounds like a good idea, but it turns out it was a whole different story. It was actually about bees. But anyway, long story short, I joined the company and I had my onboarding. And during my onboarding, they talked about the tools they used. And one of the tools, it was backstage.  And let me just sign in a little bit here. In one of the documents, they had this onboarding document with all kinds of information I could find on the tools they used, where I could find what kind of documentation, like literally anything I as an engineer would need to be successful. But yeah, then you have this onboarding, you get your laptop, you get this document. But actually, you do not get to see something in the kitchen. You know, during your interview process, people will not show what tools they're built upon. And well, as an engineer, you're really curious. So the first thing I do is go into backstage here and see what kind of services we have and discover more about that. So for this, I use this software catalog. And in this software catalog, I see all these things. But basically, I really would like to know things I own. My team owns, because a person basically normally would not own anything. It would be a team owning a service. So let me see. Well, these are the things I own, but I could add other things to fill around, like the marketing department or maybe some lifecycle or text which are used in the service definitions. Well, the actions workshop, that sounds kind of interesting. So I'm just going to click that one. And when I do that, I immediately see all kinds of relevant information. Like I can see what it is. I can immediately go to the source and find where it is on GitHub. But I also can read documentation and learn more about the service. So that is a rather good start. The other thing I could also look at is maybe looking at how the actions are actually going. Not that well, so it's good that they hired me maybe to get away those nasty errors in the whole process. So let's see what's going on there. Well, there's obviously some error here. Let me just go to the log files. And I can discover this all without leaving this portal. So as you can see, this is an aggregation of several services, which we are using. For me, that's super handy because I get all this information just in one place. Now, if I would like to solve this problem, I would have to click the link and look what's going on and solve it in the tool itself. But this is like my bird's eye view of what is happening. I can also discover what APIs are provided but also are consumed. Well, naturally, I'm really curious. So I read the documentation and I wanted to know how this actually works. So I can dig up definition and maybe get more information and really learn how I would have to use this API digging through the source code of the application. Building up my confidence about the organization. Now, I could also do it on a different level, like from the API going down. I can see the relationships between the different services. So if I would go to the Spotify API here, I can see that it is used in three different consumers. And if I click that, I get to that one as well. Now, Backstage is not a developer portal. It is a platform for building developer portals. And by that, I mean that in itself, Backstage is basically a collection of plugins, which means that it has no opinion. It will really fit in your organization because you have the freedom to add, modify, remove any plugins you might need and configure them in the ways you like to see fit. So for instance, I gave an example for GitHub. It could pretty well be that for the marketing mini site, we would also click on CI CD, but it would be hosted on GitLab. And this is basically what you can get with those plugins. It makes it really extensible. And that is one of the reasons that Backstage was developed this way. So there are different plugins, examples, Argo CD, which most of the viewers might know as well, CircleCI, JIRA, PagerDuty, SNCC. There's many, many plugins, and you can develop them yourself as well. So when we developed Backstage at Spotify, that was one of the big things which made it really successful because the engineers who own services or a certain domain, they were able to create their own plugins and by that enabling themselves and others to venture outside of their domain. So they could like discover the services or create them. That is a little bit of background. But yeah, basically every tab I click, every thing you see here is all based off plugins. So here you can see for instance the PagerDuty. Well, I don't know how, just my first day and I'm already on call for the marketing site. I don't know if this is a good company to join but anyway, this is what happens. So this whole catalog, it is built off of files, which is all YAML. You can populate it in different ways. It is not meant as a sort of truth. It is a place where you aggregate all your different sources of truth and offer that experience where I as a new engineer can easily discover this information. Another part is documentation. So like you can see, you can also create documentation here and aggregate it also from already existing sources. For instance, you would probably include the documentation with your source code. That's perfectly fine. But if you have other places where you have documentation, you can all aggregate them into this single place. So if I for instance would search on GitHub, actions on too many results, workshop, it will search both my catalog and all known sources for results. And then I can filter between documentation or things in the catalog that could find. And there I can resume my journey on the information I was looking for. The other thing is creating. And for this, we use software templates. And with the software template, I can basically create a service on base of a skeleton which would include all best practices the company has. So if I build up my confidence with documentation, learning about the APIs, the way the applications actually work, I could start my first project here and be also confident that it would align to certain standards and best practices as well. Once again, these templates, you can just edit them. It's all obviously YAML. And you can create it with actions which are already available. For instance, Bitpocket and GitHub and GitLab. But you can extend that as well. So let me just create something. If I fill out this form, let me just do that. I want to bore you with my guidepost. I can basically fill out all the information I need to do this. Let me select the correct team. It will create a repository. With the skeleton files, it will register it in the catalog and it will also create the documentation. So if it is finished and I would open it here in the catalog, you can see that already my project is there. So hopefully here are some things already in there to get me started. And also the documentation link is already there as well, as you can see. So that is a good starting point for me and it will massively improve my experience as a developer. So it being so extensible and by using plugins, it is a perfect candidate, perhaps for the big leagues to control their software with. We see many more different projects adopting backstage as well, creating a plugin or like building a whole experience with this beautiful project as a source. So thank you. Back to Diego. Awesome. Diego, are you still with us? I think we lost Diego. No. All right. While waiting for Diego. Oh, go ahead. Speaking about templates. Backstage templates, Mauro. I found that template is our application. Do you have the link? Let's try to apply this template. Okay. You share the screen. Okay, perfect. Okay. I'm getting the link from the chapter. Yeah. Okay. Okay. Thank you. Thank you, Diego. Okay. Let's try to create our BGX app. We put the whole of the template and let's analyze it. And import. Okay. It's fine. Well, we have the BGX app template. Yeah, great. What's this name for our app? Save B. Yeah, it's cool. Do you like it? Yeah, I love it. The description of our app. That's it. That's name. That name is a B plus. Yeah. Okay. And next step. Okay. We integrate our app with the captain delivery platform. So we have a super secure captain API token. Okay. And the owner is... Sure, two every month. Yes. I think it's not a good idea to share our captain aid token. So save B is the repository. Okay. Looks fine. Let's create. Okay. No. Something. Let's retry. Save B2. Maybe the second item is better than the first. The R7. I show you again the captain API token. So you can copy it. Repository. Save B2. Okay. Now it's publishing correctly. Maybe Github something... Some problems on the API. Okay. It's... Okay. Authenticating on our captain, creating project, creating service. So let's go in my Github page. We have a save B2. Save B1. Okay. Looks fine. Okay. In our captain we have a save B2. And we have three stages. We have test and prod. So in tests we can do some tests. And it's delivering. Okay. So I back on my terminal. And I get the name spaces. With my super alias. And I jump in save B2 dev. Okay. So give pods. Not yet running. But I want the service. Because I want this external IP. And I go here. Okay. Not still working. But the container is not ready. Okay. Stay here. And wait to deliver the app in all the stages. Okay. It's super easy. Just with one click. We are delivering our save B app. Okay. Just a second. Okay. Let's try our URL. Not yet. Okay. But. While it's creating our app. I go back in our. Crateo. And go in save B2. Okay. And I know there is this card. This is the overview of our app in captain. Only in dev stage now for now. But I know there is this overview. Okay. Dev is succeeded. And test is still running. Let's try to. Whoa. That was some hop. Yeah. Okay. We are the VGX. Okay. Congrats. Okay. But. I want to show something more. I think. We can do something better. Okay. Let's. Wait all the delivery in the dev test and production because in captain we have. I'm sorry. Three environment. In. Dev. All is there. The test is delivering and the product not yet. But I think. It will be. So fast. Okay. Okay. Let's wait. Some seconds. Okay. This is okay. So if I back in. My. Platform officer. We can. See the three stages. Off. Our. Okay. We have shoes to use. Captain to delivery. Because it's really. Faster and easy. Normally. All the operation that I. Done with our template. Is. Made from the captain. CLI but. We have. Integrated our. With the captain API. And so we did. Just. One click or one to click. We can delivery our. Application and. So this is. The second thing. I want to show you. We have. The. First. The. And I show you. How we can. The. So I. Go back. And. New delivery. My. This is. The stage is a dev. And this is the. Major with the. So delivery. Okay. I go back in captain. And. Just. Okay. This is the. Delivery of our. To. Second version of our application. The first version is. In devs test and the production. I just. To the. CLI. Get namespaces. Okay. We have three namespaces. One for that one for product one from test. And in every namespace. There is. A pod with our house on application. So. I go back in captain. And we wait. The delivery of. Ever. We have the zero one. Version. But. I think. Faster to. Switch. Okay. So the captain tab. Shows. The second context. Because in captain. And we have. The test product and. You can show. The details of every steps. Some information. In a test and product the second. Delivery is. Is given. From the previous context. But. Of. So I think it's delivery. I go back here. Okay. Okay. This is the second version of our application. So we have the home page. With a hive. But. If you. Go in Australia we have these. Amazing bee. But we need Italy we have these. Japan. And the USA. Okay. Great. Just with the one click. And then we have the delivery. Our application. For for now. Sorry. Look I have only one to. Images. I'm developing the. Up. And the night. And not yet ready for the. The version three. But I think it's a good. A good start. Yeah it's a great start. Besides we did all in a real time. And less. In a time less than one hour. So. Was great. Yes. Yes in 40 minutes we have. Two. Version of the. And with captain. We in the. Backstage we. We have all the tools. That works. Very cool. Really fantastic I'm sure the. The stakeholders or be handlers will be very happy about. Getting all of this out so quickly. So congratulations. Yeah. I do have a few questions for all of you. If there are any. If anyone out in. Watching the stream has any questions please. Feel free to throw those into chat. And we'll be sure to kind of. Get those questions answered. One thing that I did see come up was. In relation to backstage. And seeing that there was an Argo plugin. Is there a plugin for flux was one question that I saw. Or just. Do you all know of any plugins that are going to be added. That you all are excited about. Yeah so. If you want to. Know what plugins we currently have. You can go to backstage.io. There's the. Big big. Plugins button. And you can discover all the. The plugins we we have. I'm not aware of. Of flux. But. It just might be. You could also find it out by. Joining our. This quarter channel and just shouting out. Anybody. Is already working maybe on that. Or. Has interested in interest in that and. You know maybe even. Pick it up yourself it is. Since you have project so. Feel free to contribute well. Feel free. You're really really invited to contribute. And at the functionality you. You are missing. To backstage. Awesome awesome thank you so much. It's it's always fun to see what. Plugins people are looking for and then. You know like we said if you want to get involved with. Adding some. Now now might be the time to take a look at. How to contribute. How to help out on that front. Or at least raise that issue up so that other people can. Think on that and kind of work with you on that front. Another question. It's just adding an issue and. People will. Will reply to that and pick it up or. You never know. I think that's the biggest thing with open sources. There's kind of always that worry is just like. I really want this thing but. I have to do so much work to get it to that point but. Like you said you know if. Sometimes it's as easy as raising an issue and then people are. Like a good idea and then I can kind of help make that happen. Awesome. One other question that I have for you was. How does one add a new service to the. Catalog pertaining to back. Backstage. Yeah that that really depends. There's a there's a few way ways. So the. Like I. I've shown in the in a really really short demo. Is for instance by creating. A new component. With. Software templates that will add that to the. To the catalog. But basically. It'll. Like many things in life nowadays. It all comes down to. A little bit of Yammel. Which you which you would. Which you would add. This is something you could do manually. Adding that to your to your repo. And. Then importing it. So if I would go here to the create. I would register an existing. Component. I could just like point directly. To the. To the Yammel. It would be analyzed. And I can choose to import it. Another thing is I could. Basically also just point it to a repo. And. From there. And from there. It. Will offer to create it. Automatically as well. But there's many, many different ways. And you could. Like maybe have a. Have a custom processor. Which will read some source. Or maybe even a script. Which will generate all this. It's not up to me. It's up to you. That's awesome. Nice to be able to kind of have a framework to work within. And I know that in a few of the companies that I've worked with. That something like this would be. Highly beneficial. There's just so much time spent. Chasing down, you know who owns what. And how do I work with this. This tool or this API. Not opi, but the API. On that front. What's the best way to go about finding an owner of a service. Say if like something were down. Or I'm trying to take a look at an integration. How would I. What would be the best way to use backstage to look up that person. Yeah, I would just go to the to the surface. For instance, if it would be something. Which would be down for instance this marketing mini site. I would go there. I would see the description. I would see who's the owner. I would see who's. Who's on page or duty. I could create an incident like that. That functionality is in there as well. Provided by by the plugin. If I would like. For instance, I could click the team and I could see who's on the team. And that sort of things which other services to the own. So there's different ways to identify that. I could have also like type the service name in the in the search bar. And end up at one of these. Pages and go from. From there. It really helps because. The day infrastructure is becoming more complex. There's more and more and more engineers being onboarded. The prediction of the number of software developers working at companies is so high that I really wonder how we are going to even provide. Enough for them, let alone make sure that that they are easily on boarded. Into increasingly difficult. Companies. And another thing. Which is also. Quite complex is the infrastructure itself. Like. Well, let's just. Not mentioned the CNCF landscape map. That that alone says it all. But if you imagine that. You would work with. Only a selection of. A cloud native technologies. With. Within autonomous teams. Then. You can imagine that those autonomous teams might have their own implementation. Even or their own. A way. Of setting the standards. For for for their. Piece of platforms. So. Yeah, this really. Makes it it will not solve it. But at least you will be able to find it. And that's also why. Why this was started. Within Spotify a few years back. It's a music to my ears to hear that. So that's it's really fantastic. It's it's nice to be able to have that single place to look everything up. Because it is so difficult to, you know, rely on everyone to get their documentation together. It's it's difficult to do. Especially for, you know, things that aren't Greenfield. The things that are being. Either on boarded or just older system services. Maybe even. Some applications that require minimal maintenance. But the team really doesn't have time for. So it's nice to have a platform to kind of. Roll all those things up to you. So, so thank you all at Spotify for creating. This is really fantastic. And I wouldn't say that it is. Easy. But at least you can. Never. Never easy. Maybe straightforward. But possible is something that I'm happy to take. Awesome. One other question that I saw come in was. If my machine doesn't have enough resources to spin up an entire Kubernetes cluster. Are there some alternatives for me to be able to take in and actually start using some of these tools or inspecting some of them. I think that if no one has an answer one one thing that I've found helpful is the kind project the Kubernetes in Docker. I know that Docker for Docker desktop and Rancher desktop. There are a few platforms out there that enable you to kind of help out on that front. And to kind of get up and running as quickly as possible. I like Kubernetes in Docker in some of the some of the contexts that I work in because I can test things or pull down the latest version of Kubernetes as soon as it's been really close to as soon as it's been released and actually see what features are applicable and usable. Just a clarification. We will delivery. Sorry. Release. Yes. Version is a cloud version of all the platform. So if you don't have a power computer, you will can use our cloud version. That's really nice. I've seen one of the projects. I know we didn't talk about it today, but was telepresence and there's some interesting projects within this space. In order to kind of upgrade your computer or give it more capabilities. So definitely definitely recommend checking out that cloud offering if you all are curious about that. Awesome. I have two more questions, but if any of you out there in the interwebs have any questions, please feel free to throw this into chat and we'll get those asked and answered. My next question was taking a look at the integration environment. Everything had looked fine there. How could you kind of talk through how that promotion process works within the infrastructure configuration to bring things to production or kind of one environment on that front? What steps are involved? Sorry. I lost the connection for just a second that I can repeat the question. Sorry. No worries. So the integration environment that we started off with looked fine and was mostly straightforward to kind of understand. When it comes to promoting two different environments, can you kind of tell me what's involved with those steps with these platform operations? Okay. Okay. So in the web UI we have this button and this button calls the captain API. So for this demo it's very, very, very easy and very, very small that we just can delivery the dev stage in an image. But to captain API we can post a lot of settings and a lot of configuration and I think the next version of our planning will be more powerful. Awesome. Do you know if there's any way to ensure that deployment in production guarantees some predefined SLIs or SLOs? I'm assuming that would be with captain. But do you know how to go about satisfying those SLOs or setting them? The captain. Okay. It's based on the SLEI and SLAO files. And we have, I'll show you the plugin. We have a shipyard YAML in captain. And here we can define all the stages in our, for our application. We have the stages, the name, the test production, and the sequence. And we, with this button we have triggered the deployment delivery, the sequence delivery, sorry. In the delivery sequence it deploy the application in all of our stages. So when I click here, sorry, I click here, the starting stage is deaf but captain delivery all the application in all the other stages. So for example, yeah. Okay. We can post a delivery direct. So for example, if Luca wants to publish the application only in test, for example, it can post a trigger in the delivery direct and manage the version of the app in all the environment. And captain has some other cool functions. For example, we have a demo with the remediation. Remediation is that the application will pass to the next environment if only meet some requirements. For example, if an application, the second application is too slow to go in the production, captain can monitor it and can stop the delivery for the other stages. Excellent. Excellent. Definitely something to take a look at because that's nice to have those quality gates as we go up to each of the different environments. Wonderful. Wonderful. Well, thank you so much, everyone. One more thing. In captain, there are a lot of tutorials and very, very explained, very, very complete tutorial. And you can try the captain platform for the easiest environment, so in today's context, more complex. So I think it's a good product. Absolutely. Absolutely. And one more thing to add to that before we forget to mention that, but the Corteo team will release the backstage plugin, which you've seen in the demo for captain. So that is also something to maybe people are interested in as well. I think it's brilliant. You might think it's wrong. Thank you. Thank you. Yes. This is our first version of the captain plugin, but we are developing the first release to make it so stable. And we have the captain overview. And as you can see in the overview, we have the card, but we have also the card in the system. And not now for this demo, but we have a summary overview of all our environments. So for example, just for clarification in the system, you can use these details of your application. That's really fascinating. I really appreciate you all coming out today. Unfortunately, we are at time, but it's really nice to see kind of how all of these systems can integrate together and kind of connect. They are greater than the sum of all of their parts. So I think that that's, thank you so much for coming by to show us that as well. All of these things are, I've seen captain a little bit, but I'm kind of curious to check out all of the other things that you showed today. I've spent more time on stage than backstage, so definitely need to check that out. Thank you everyone for joining the latest episode of Cloud Native Live. It was wonderful to hear from the whole team today. We really love the interaction that we had from the audience. And join us next week where we're going to be talking about what's new with Coverno. Coverno is a policy engine designed for Kubernetes. Thank you again for joining us today. We hope to see you soon and have a wonderful week. Adios everybody.


It's the mat work. Okay bet a little bit of confused though. So one you said you want to come off as a diverse artist? Well, I guess like it's not like that's like my aim, but I feel like until I found find like a particular sound I think that there's like I think in some ways I do have a diverse diverse type aspect or maybe I'm looking at the word you know what I'm saying wrong as far as production because like I think basically I feel like I'm capable of doing some upbeat sound, but then I'm also capable of doing a slow you know what I'm saying more lyrical type music you know what I'm saying but then I also feel like I can every now and then have like a club type record which I'm not so concerned about that so I guess my question should be should it be to focus on that one side of it it just just as far as um production and like lyrical content should it just be that one focus and then later on maybe introducing different sounds? Um would you consider yourself probably on the Kendrick Lamar side of things right? Yeah, yeah. All right so let's look at Kendrick would you consider him a diverse artist just to get your idea of what diversity is? Yeah yeah I would feel like he's like a diverse artist. All right my opinion. All right and I agree I agree that he's diverse he's just not he's not what people are usually thinking when they're saying I want to be diverse all right but he's definitely he has the capability to do a lot of different things but he still stays within a Kendrick pocket all right he has a Kendrick point of view a Kendrick way of going about things and that part needs to be consistent all right this whole a lot of these sounds and these other things that people are associated with diversity are usually superficial and you need to figure out what's going to be more so that constant of or at least having that identity and your own voice that you're consistent with more than anything. I was just at an event last night and Love Renaissance one of the guys on that team who they've done a few artists and he was like one of the main thing they look for because somebody asked him what did he look for an artist he was like he's looking for a point of view and a voice those two things which I was like you know I've said this for a long time so it's that's going to be the thing that makes you matter and make people understand who you are so first get that part out the way like understand those two things are more important than this sonic diversity and production for diversity. Secondly the other thing is let's think about Kendrick Lamar section 80 you ever listen to section 80 yeah um not like heavy but I have done yeah all right so one thing about section 80 it's not like every single song is the exact same amount of BPMs or something like that but there's a consistent energy in that project right I mean and I think one thing that people have to really associate more than anything when we start to think about diversity the energy is more important than also some of that production and stuff what I mean by that is like once I'm getting to a certain if I'm the certain person who likes a certain type of mood certain type of feel a message then when I'm in that pocket I'm in that pocket and that energy wise it's the same pocket but maybe some of the sonics might be slightly different right the beat might not use the exact same you know placement on the drum pad or something like that but at the same time it's along the same lines in terms of energy and so if you could have an overall energy that you produce and that you bring which is probably going to also relate and come from your perspective at your point um and your voice then that'll be something more to aim for than thinking all of my beats need to sound the same or it has to sound like this cohesive project like the whole cohesion thing is more of a okay I'm working on an album would I have a specific message and concept that I want to express but when we're talking about just having your own pocket and identifiable sound outside of the point of view and the voice is really more so like what's that energy that I go to you to bring


All right, so this is going to be a bit of a weird presentation for me because it's kind of a bit outside of my comfort zone, but on the other hand it's something that I've missed in what we do for a while. So what I want you to get from this presentation is a little bit of ideas or inspiration on how you could focus your work into making sure that we are caring and doing the most for out of our work overall. First of all, let me present myself. You see something. Well, I guess that my presentation slide is gone. So let me just explain it. My name is Alish. I am a KDE developer. I have been for over a decade right now. I'm also the KDE President as I was introduced as well. I'm employed by Blue Systems doing software work on KDE, and I am based in Barcelona in the lovely Mediterranean coast. Now, what I wanted to reflect on today is that we're all consumer of things. We are all very used to by using consumer products. What economy has been about over the last century, and well, it has its upsides and they are kind of all geared towards of being able to use things and use them easily. And I think that this is something very directly related to what we do, what we do as KDE, which is create things so that specifically software, pieces of software, so that people can enjoy them and use them as tools, right? It's unlike other software products, not unlike, I don't know, a bag of chips, right? When you need to be able to get emails, you will get K-Mail. When you need to get carbohydrates, you will buy pasta, right? So we're all familiarized with the concept of product, and in the end it's a lot of what we create.  Now, I think that it would be interesting for a second to take a step back and think about how a consumer, somebody who's used to buying bag of chips and someone who's used to buying cars and TVs, well, they're going to consume our software, right? Because while many people use it, thousands and some people say millions use our software. Well, we have all wondered why it isn't billions. And in the end, part of our task is to make it easy, not just to have our products used, but to make sure that everybody can reach technology, hardware, computation, internet, etc., right? So that's what I would like to discuss. And since I didn't really know how to have this conversation, I reached out to my university notes where they talked about something that is called the marketing mix. What I think that kind of misses like a lot to do is to have acronyms for things. So these are the four P's of the marketing mix, which I'm going to talk about. And then I would like to see how they match what we're doing in KDE. And actually, I think that a lot of it would also apply to any of our projects. It's not like we're doing all that worse than the rest. It's I really care about KDE. Now, first of all, we need to have the product. We need to define it. When we talk about bag of chips, it's not only like the potatoes, right? It's the potatoes processed in a very specific way so that it's easy for you to consume, not unlike our our software products, right? When we talk about why is KIG important? For example, KIG is a geometry application for educational students. Well, it is important not because people don't have other ways to draw circles and lines, right? It's because we create a product that has been thought from the start so that people can learn, can do their geometry work over that piece of software. What's like Plasma, for example, as well, right? Plasma's idea is to acknowledge that people will want to have a computer or some software and they will want to make the best out of it. And when we try to simplify it by providing a graphical user interface, but a lot of more stuff, right? We have all of the services around it. Everything is geared towards creating this one product that should satisfy whoever consumes it. And while we all know that Plasma feeds in the whole community in a much more complex light, we are all aware of how all of what Linux works, we're still something that people are perceived directly, right? While we are part of the big thing, people expect us to be delivering it as a product and actually be as good as it is. From when they buy it from something more commercial that would be, like I said, a pack of chips.  Something similar happens when the software explodes. Now, second aspect, the second P would be price. So we'll use that when we buy something. We have to pay some money in exchange. Price goes much beyond that. Actually, something that we have seen on the internet. Yeah, something worth noting is that this market makes it something from the 70s or 80s. Well, from before the internet. But while they still apply, it might be a bit outdated in this regard. Google, without going much further, have shown us how money is not the only price that you can pay when you're using a product. You can pay with your data, for example, Facebook. Actually, it's been what the internet has been about over the last 10 to 20 years, at least, right? But there are other prices as well. There is money, there is security, there is privacy. It can also be that you have to go through hoops, installing Arch Linux and then all of that, right? And I think that at the moment, the price of using what we create is going a bit along these lines. That's my opinion for sure. We have a place. Now, when we buy the pack of chips, the place would be the supermarket, right? When we talk about Google services, it's probably Google.com or Gmail or whatever. I don't really know. For us, what is it? And actually, if you saw the KDE, all about the apps talk, if you saw the Wayland talk, I think that there is a lot of effort that we're putting, not just KDE, but overall in the Linux community and free software community to make this place more defined and actually much easier to reach. Because it has been, like I said earlier, and also in my opinion, a bit complex. Especially given the premise has been, in a lot of cases, downloading weird things from websites, buying a computer with an operating system and stopping it for another one that is not really supported. This is a weird place to go to, right? Nevertheless, it's there. It's working. I am sure that out of the 70, many people who are in this room, a lot of us have done it. So it's not that bad. And many of us, we're still also working on the alternative, right? For example, the KDE Slimbook is also another way of looking at that problem. The app source are as well, et cetera. And the last piece is promotion. Now, we have a place. We need to make sure that people go into this place, how to make sure that this happens. For example, we have the DUT, we have Planet, we have the talks that we go to conferences and talk about what we do. We have the community, the Linux user groups that are in every city and they talk to their peers and explain when our software would be good for them. All of these are small pieces into this promotion machine that we are part of in the end podcast. We've all seen also these treat signs for some projects. I remember seeing one from Firefox 10 years ago or so and I felt like it was weird. These logos are supposed to be only in my laptop, but it wasn't the case anymore. There's many ways of doing this, writing books, documentation can be also part of promotion. It's also part of the product as well. Everything is connected and works with each other. Now, I've presented these four things. I'm going to try. I'm going to do my best effort into analyzing how some of our software feeds in the consumer centric world. And maybe we can see, not today, I'm not going to tell you what to do right now, but we can see new ways where we can work further. Like I said, not like we are doing something terrible, but we need to look into the future. Something that brings, like, brights my red light every time that I see it is when I see maintainers, developers that don't really take responsibility of the delivery process. This has admittedly not been very easy to do up until recently, but technology has evolved a lot and our infrastructure is also so much better so that we can start thinking about those things. And someone who clearly has done this very well is Krita, for example. Now, what do I mean by taking responsibility of the creative delivery process? Well, we have some people thinking about how to create software, what it's going to look like, what it's going to feel like to the user. We need these people to be involved into the, well, for one, the feedback that comes back from the user to make sure that they can react when something doesn't work like it should. We don't have to, we cannot assume that we're going to do everything perfect because in this life nothing is, and so it's in our software. So as part of this iteration process, we need to make sure that the people who are responsible in the beginning can also be responsible in the end. Somebody that has frustrated me, and I'm going to give you an example, it was I think it was maybe ten years ago when we were part of the Brazilian education deployment. We had a lot of people using KDE software over there. Some were still KDE edu apps, some others were plasma, but in the end what really shocked me is that while we were having hundreds of millions of people using the software, the amount of feedback we got was still quite minimal, right? And how was this possible? Well, when talking to the organizers of the deployment, they started to tell me about all of these infrastructures that they had to get the feedback from the teachers because good reasons actually, right? English wasn't that good or they didn't feel like they were technically capable of communicating with us. These are all things that we should make sure that stops being a problem over time if we want to make sure that, if we want to be able to continue saying that we care about users, that we care about what people are doing and that we can offer solutions for that. And another very good example about that is KDE Connect where it has two sides. It has the Linux Qt side and then it has the Android side. And when discussing the development feature, the Linux side always needs to be super backwards compatible because people who use Debian will stay on an old un-maintained version for many years when Android people will get an update automatically from Android or Google Play with the last version, which is the thing that has been queued by the maintainers at any point. So it's really awkward that we have a better communication with our users on Android and especially on Google Play than it is on actually the platforms that we are comfortable with using and actually we're telling people to use. I know that there's ways to improve that and many of us are working towards that, but I think that it would be very important to make sure that we keep these as an angle rather than that thing that is happening in parallel with my daily life because in the end, if somebody has a problem, they tell you and you cannot, well, you can solve the problem, but that person will never get the fix or they will get the fix eventually. There is a lot of frustration that gets unresolved. We need to make sure that frustration is not part of our daily lives. Now, we need to make sure that we get to do this as a team. You have a lot of people you can rely on and I use them, talk to us, talk to everyone, and let's make sure that the issues get resolved and that you can do what you want. Now, when thinking about the kind of products we have, we have apps, we have systems, but like plasma, actually mostly plasma, and we have frameworks, which are kind of a weird product in itself, but actually it's a good explanation of what we're talking about. An example of an app, K2 Berlin, I was talking about K earlier, but what is our price, the first pay? Well, the price of K2 Berlin is mostly zero euros and possibly, you could do a donation, that's kind of part of it. You could hire somebody, if it's not doing something that you would like it to do, that's kind of it. Oh, sorry, I was on the first P still. Oh, sorry, I forgot the first P, it was product. What is the product? The product is the app itself with whatever feature it has at the right moment. The place, well, the place actually, it will depend a lot on the platform you're on. If you're in Android, it will be either Android or Google Play. I actually think that K2 Berlin is in Google Play, or at least it was sometime in the past. If you're on Windows, it should be the Windows Store probably, or downloading MSI files. I don't know, I don't really use Windows at all, but if I was a K2 Berlin maintainer, I would have to get involved in that if I want my Windows users to be happy. And that's a good if, right? You can decide that you don't care about something, but then you need to be conscious about it, you cannot say, I'm going to hope that somebody packages my application and hope for the best because it should work, and actually it probably will just work, but you need to know where your application is being used at. And then on Linux at the moment, the answer is very, very diverse. On Debian will be APD, or probably also Flatback Slice Snap. Flatback Slice Snap should work somewhat on everywhere. Well, it depends. Also, it's important to remember that we need to focus on those because we cannot have every maintainer supporting everything ever, right? And then last would be promotion, which would be all the planet. Everyone remember, the planet is super important, whatever you say there, which is a lot of people use it. Now, here I have just one minute. I'm going to go through Plasma very quickly. Or actually, I'm not. I am going to leave you the task of doing it yourself. You can do the process. I think that it's an interesting thought process to do, and you will learn from it. But use the team. You don't need to work alone. Actually, if you're working alone, it's probably because you're doing something wrong. Don't do it. Spread your work. There's people who will be interested in some parts specifically. Use that for your advantage. Do not blame if something is not working, especially since you control the process. It's something that you can fix. We are relying only on free software, and as a team, we should be able to solve any of the problems. If something is not working on Qt, it's not acceptable to tell a user this is not working on Qt. If something is not working on Qt, you send the page to Qt and enjoy your life. And when I'm talking about Qt, it can be any part of our stack framework. It can be Linux. It can be whatever, all right? And thank you. Sorry for being a bit over time. Thank you, Alish. You're almost perfect in time. We still have four minutes left for questions. And if we look into the shared notes, there's actually four questions, so we have one minute each. The first one is, what do you think about Lenovo or Dell selling Linux laptops? I think it's great. It's something, actually, I think that it should be the right place for Plasma. At the moment, though, Plasma is not available over there, something that should be worked on, I guess. And actually, the whole conversation about how that should happen would be really interesting. It's not straightforward, but I think that we should strive to go in this direction. Doesn't need to be the big manufacturers either. I think that the important thing is to have something that we can tell people to use. SlimBook has been a good case for that. There might be others. There are others. The second question is, what do you think about the teddy bears? Something like getting normal users from Twitter to Macedon. I don't really have a strong opinion. I try to be part of every of these networks, because I think that it's the right place to be on. They admittedly cannot really put all of my effort over there, because what I care about is actually people using free software, people about using our software, enjoying our software. And I am not going to put myself in the position of going somewhere where people are not around. As Katie, though, if you care about the teddy bears, I would encourage you to join the Kitty Promo Group. I am sure that they will embrace you with a smile and let you do what you care about. OK, then the next question is a bit longer. Something that has worked for other communities to improve their product focus is to get to know their users by surveying them with simple questions to guide prioritization. As a free software community, we can ask of our users input better than a bug tracker already. Those tools fail to quantify the tendencies. I feel asking what is working for you, where is your software letting you down, et cetera, could guide us. Do you think that could help us? I think that it's super important. Actually, earlier this year, we worked actually with Volker, who is sharing user feedback, which is actually all about that. We haven't really used all of the potential. And actually, the polling thing you're asking about is actually part of it. When we do it, we will do our best to ask the right questions. I think that it's very important, especially because we don't want to only worry for the people who are having problems. I think that it's very important to know what makes people happy about what we do and not have this bias of whatever is not working is important because it's not always the case. And we might be losing opportunities over there. But also, again, if you're interested in working on that, join us and say, this is going to be my turf. OK, then the last question still fits in. How do you see Neon fitting into the idea of KDE taking more responsibility for connecting directly with users? I think that Neon has already done a lot in this direction. I remember telling years ago, Jonathan and Harald, about how I was getting a lot more feedback on Discover, which is some software that I had been working on since a long time from Neon that I was getting from any of the other distros. And actually, at that moment, Neon was just starting. So people were not, well, there weren't that many people back then as there are right now using Neon. There could be more, I guess. The Linux ecosystem is very complex. I am not going to be telling people what it should look like. I know what I want. And I think that if you've listened to me, you will kind of get an idea. I don't think that actually Neon is the end goal. But I think that it's definitely a very interesting tool. Right now, if I want to tell people, I need you to test this feature on Plasma. I think that it's probably one of the best ways to do so. But there are others there's open source at Tumbleweed. It's also an interesting way to do it. And I'm sure there are many others as well.