Hello, everybody, and welcome to another OpenShift Commons briefing. As we'd like to do on Mondays, we'd like to talk about upstream projects and new ideas and new technologies. And today, we're really happy to have Adele Zalook with us, who is a product manager in the OpenShift group at Red Hat. And he's going to talk about some emerging multi-cluster patterns. You've probably heard about Kubernetes control planes and other things along that line that have been being talked about and discussed in different community groups. But this today is Adele's take on it, and I'm really looking forward to it. So Adele, introduce yourself, your background a little bit, and then take us down this path. Sure. Hi, everyone. I'm Adele Zalook, and I'm a product manager for OpenShift. I have, like my experience is a mixture between networking, consulting, development and research, and recently, project management. And today, I'm going to be talking about multi-cluster patterns. And as you see here, the subtitle is a bit confusing, but I'm going to be explaining it along the way. There's a path to virtual, dualistic, logically centralized, physically distributed clusters. And I would like to start by having us look at this figure. The way, and given also my background, I come from networking. So the first thing I wanted to do is, or thought of doing is basically mapping the stack that we have with OpenShift onto something like an OSI model. And that turned out to be the OpenShift interconnection model. And that does not exist anywhere. That is something I came up with. So I'm sorry for the OSI folks. But yeah, the reason I actually did that is because OSI is a representation of layers of what they do. And then there are protocols that are basically interconnecting with one another at different layers of the stack. And there are even specialized stacks like the TCP-IP model that kinds of like, for example, could have an application that would run on UDP or an application that would run on TCP. And then there is IP on the layer, three layer. And then there's a physical layer that everything runs on top. I think of OpenShift or the stack that we provide is basically similar. Red Hat has been historically known for Red Hat Linux. That's the bases where we build on top of everything. And then OpenShift is just an addition that brings all the goodies of upstream Kubernetes to customers and to you. And this is basically comes in different shapes, forms, and layers. If we think about Kubernetes, you'll find a lot of cluster interfaces being defined upstream. Initially, Kubernetes didn't have that, but the more we go with time, the more standards get defined like cluster API, which deals more of how machines get created on a cluster level on any infrastructure provider. Like CNI deals with the networking on the cluster, like container runtime interface, which deals of basically what you use as a runtime to run your workloads, whether that is normal or sandboxed or any other type of runtime that you choose, or the CSI layer, which basically consists of plugins and so on. I don't have time to talk about each of these layers in details, but I can tell you that with Kubernetes that a lot of these and each layer can span an entire session on its own. And with OpenShift, basically, we bring that with support and add on top a lot of layers that help the usability of these things. Then we go a layer up, and then we have modes of operation for OpenShift clusters. We have, for example, self-managed or managed. You can run your clusters in a connected mode or disconnected. You have a standalone version of it. You have an external control plane. That's basically what we're going to a bit explain about today, which is more an architectural pattern, but still bringing OpenShift. And so that choice brings you more and more use cases. And then we go a layer up, and then you have the multi-cluster management and orchestration. There's a lot of things happening here. And I am sure I forgot many things to add here, but I was lazy at some point, and I didn't add. Things like image resistories, GitOps, pipelines, all these things fits as blocks. And the nice thing is, we provide this as choices. We could say it depends on the use case. We have the luxury to say it depends because we have these blocks that could interconnect with one another in any way, shape, or form. And this is, in my opinion, the real value that we provide these building blocks and you come and look at them and say, oh, this makes sense. I have this use case, and I would like to apply, for example, policy or run multi-cluster with a disconnected cluster and run it in an externalized control plane. So you can use it in the same way that the OSI model is built for or networking protocols, basically, that match and run on top of one another.  So let's start. Yeah. As I said, the term was a bit complicated, was virtual, logically centralized, dualistic, physically distributed. I'm going to go and try to explain what I mean by each of these. So bear with me. So the first layer, I'm going to start from the top, which is, I'm going to take part of the multi-cluster management story, very small part of it, not all the blocks. And I'm going to talk about KCP, right? And KCP, to me, represents these two cluster, two blocks on the top. It could present more, but I'm going to be talking only about the two blocks today, which is basically, if you look at the GitHub repo for KCP, you're going to find, it is defined as a minimal Kubernetes API server. It exposes just enough resources, and it extends or makes the API server pluggable enough so that you can also define or get rid of the resources that you don't need. In addition, if you look at the documentation, you're going to find three major use cases that KCP tries to address. The first one is that minimalistic API server that gives you that not normal, like if you look at the Kubernetes API server, you're going to find a ton of resources. You don't necessarily need all these. So it strips out all the things that are needed, only the ones that are needed, and provides you with an interface that you can interact with without all the overhead of Kubernetes, like components, like keep control manager, or any of these things that deals with spot or deployments and all these things. In KCP, you could choose to not have pause even as an understandable resource. The second thing is more about multi-tenancy. So the way multi-tenancy has been presented so far was with the use of RBAC in namespaces, but what if, the question that gets asked is what if we can present that and take it a layer up and make each cluster present a tenant, for example, and then orchestrate multi-tenancy on a cluster level of primitives instead of namespaces, which presents a stronger bubble, which might be appealing to some. And then the third one is transparent multi-cluster, and the argument here is like whatever you want to apply to a cluster should also work with KCP. KCP presents one layer on top. You could attach multiple children clusters to KCP. So whatever gets deployed on KCP layer should not be problematic or should not, it should not be a problem to propagate that resource that you just deployed to the children clusters. That's basically transparency. Also, I like to call it lossless multi-cluster because whatever you apply on the top layer doesn't lose value or entropy when it gets translated into these children clusters. Yeah. And so there is also the stack with a Slack channel for KCP if you want to get more details. I think Clayton, Jason, and David gave a lot of, or talk a lot about a lot of topics that I just mentioned here and go into the details of how things would look like in the future. So if you're interested, go and join that Slack channel on the Kubernetes Slack and join the discussions. They have also community meetings, so please, you know, just get any questions or things, just go and join that Slack channel. Yeah. So the second part that I would like to talk about today, I'm not going to get into the weeds of hypership, but I just want to present, because I'm going to present a use case that is actually more generic and can be used by other products, not necessarily or other projects. It's a pattern more than I'm presenting a product. Hypershift deploys OpenShift, but it deploys it with a slightly different architectural pattern. So that's the dualism here. And the dualistic part is, you know, was in philosophy, dualism is basically you could have the mind and the body residing in different places yet functioning, right? So could we do that? Can we take out the mind of OpenShift and put it somewhere else and still have a functioning cluster? Basically the question that we ask in Hypershift and yet it is possible. So you could take the control plane, the logic of that cluster and deploy it somewhere else. Not even, not only that, but you could also centralize that. So you could have multiple minds of different people work together or under the same body and have that and we call that a management cluster. So you could have one management cluster that hosts the logic of all these control or all these clusters or the control planes on the same place. And the physical distribution is basically you could have your nodes physically distributed across regions, across zones, across cloud providers. It doesn't really matter. So you would get then the virtual part and the dualistic part and the logical centralization by centralizing the control plane of different cluster, separating that from the normal way of deploying the user. Earlier in this course to respond. Sorry, did I get a question or? No, go on. It was just unmuted something. Okay, no worries. Someone is asking a question. Yeah, so with the normal OpenShift you have your nodes, you're requiring a certain minimum number of nodes, which needs to be, or in most of the cases, co-located with the control. With the workers in HyperShift, we're removing that requirement of multiple nodes and potentially we could host more than one logic, more than one mind, more than one control plane on the same node and scale that up or down and use all the Kubernetes primitives to do so. So that the HyperShift repo is upstream and it's open source. You could go to GitHub and also raise issues and try it out. And yeah, it's still early, very early in the early phases. So it's a good time to ask questions and challenge stuff. Why would we want dualistic or separate control plane, like a included here set of some advantages or features? One thing is, because we are getting rid of them or not getting rid of them, we're complimenting the requirement that some customers, some users want that co-location. They don't want dualism. They say, no, I want my mind and body in the same place. I don't want to be like a free. While others see the benefits of having mind separated. So we provide with OpenShift the two flavors. When we deploy with HyperShift, you get immediate clusters because you don't have to comply with a requirement of a minimum number of nodes to get to a cluster. You are running on an existing cluster and you're hosting just the control plane spots. They're getting kind of immediate clusters. The control planes are cheaper because you can host now multiple of these control planes instead of on one control plane per three nodes. You can host multiple control planes on potentially one node. We're using Kubernetes to host the Kubernetes control plane. So it's Kubernetes and Kubernetes. I could scale up the pods and so on. And by the way, the pattern of dualism or control plane and workers separated, this is not new. It has been used. You will find cloud providers and so on using that. But this here is bringing OpenShift. It applies that to OpenShift, brings you all the benefits, that entire stack that I showed you, that choice and brings that to you in that architectural pattern. So it is important to understand that it's not new, but it gives you all these features with OpenShift. You can also have life-cycling the couple because you could upgrade, for example, the management cluster without affecting the workload clusters or the physical node. They could even be on different versions. They could even be on different architectures. You could also have your SREs, like focusing instead of having to memorize the Kube config of hundreds of clusters. You just have one Kube config and then you can log into or have access if you allow them to debug the control plane of your cluster. Or if you are the one providing the clusters, then your SREs are having that benefit of surfing across control planes and easily detecting a problem because observability becomes easier, logging becomes easier, and all these things become easier. Not to say that it's not possible, it is definitely possible with multi-cluster management, the other blocks that I didn't talk about. You could also have multi-clusters, centralized logging, centralized monitoring. It's just the footprint that might be a bit lower. Cool. It comes to the department a bit more about the use case. I'm sure that's not a one-to-one relationship. I'm sure that it's not only HyperShift that loves KCP. I'm sure KCP has a lot of other use cases. As I said, HyperShift is just a pattern that I'm presenting today. Lots of other controllers could reuse that pattern or maybe build upon that pattern or completely do other patterns. KCP could love HyperShift, HyperShift could love KCP. Other things love KCP. Today, we're going to talk about that relationship of HyperShift and KCP. From a higher level, the use case that I'd like to present today is more about, can we have KCP as the top, although it doesn't need to always be the top layer, but can we have it as a top layer and orchestrate how we want to schedule clusters? If you remember the figure on the right here, I know the text is not visible, but that block that I'm highlighting was Kubernetes-native clusters. By that, I mean we want to apply all the Kubernetes concepts, but on a clustered layer. Basically, scheduling. I have a pod, I have a scheduler, keep scheduler, keep scheduler, schedule the pod. Can I apply that to a cluster? Can I apply auto-scaling to a cluster? Can I apply a lease, like leader election, all these primitives that exist with Kubernetes, we want to take them a notch up and do that with a multi-cluster with a virtual pane of glass, which is KCP. KCP would act as the virtual interface to multiple management clusters. As I said, in HyperShift, the management cluster is the place where you host the control planes of your cluster. In that case, I have multiple management clusters. These management clusters would act as the children clusters. KCP is orchestrating the placement, for example, or the scheduling of clusters to any of these management clusters so that they can activate upon and create clusters the HyperShift way, which is by separating the control plane and the workers. A bit of an overview about KCP's internals, because that is needed. KCP consists of mainly a KCP server, an API server, that's the minimalistic API server, and optionally, a cluster controller. KCP server could live and survive without the cluster controller. But when you add the cluster controller, you get a lot of benefits, which is the multi-cluster or the Kubernetes native cluster stuff that I talked about. That cluster controller at the moment has three components, a splitter, which is basically taking care of, when you create a resource, it takes care of making sure it's scheduled or devised that resource like a deployment. For example, if I deploy a deployment and I have a replicas, then I could replicate two different children clusters in a load-balanced way. The CRD puller is, for example, whenever I define a CRD in one of the children cluster that gets pulled up through the virtual cluster, so I build awareness of that CRD. And the sinker is basically more an agent that lives on the child cluster to replicate components that I create. I will go into more details in each. And today, I'm going to be extending a bit the sinker and the cluster controller to kind of match the use case that I have in mind. All right. So, as I said, that's another view of it. The sinker, the reason it is slashed is because it does not live on the or communicate directly to the virtual cluster. It is in the children cluster. So, in the case if you have the virtual cluster or the control center, I call it the control center. It's not really called that, but I call it this for simplicity. And then you have the management cluster and the sinker gets deployed to each management cluster. And that becomes the agent that has awareness of resources that gets deployed on the control center on KCP's virtual cluster. And the KCP virtual cluster is really a light way. It is actually, so the main, the API server plus HDD is now a single binary. And it's very easy to run it. I will show it later in the demo. So, the first thing that we want to do is the resources that like Hypershift defines two resources or defines a cluster by a resource name hosted cluster. So, if I'm a user and I create a hosted cluster, I would like, for example, KCP or use the splitter pattern to schedule and divide the hosted cluster and place it on the cluster that has more resources, for example. In that case, a user creates a cluster. The splitter watches is, huh, let's see. Management cluster one doesn't have any resources. Management cluster two, it has, I could create that. So, this is what I call, or what is usually being called push mode. Why? Because the splitter needs to talk to the management cluster and the splitter has the awareness of budgeting, of resources. In that case, the splitter becomes more or less the scheduler. On the other hand, you could have pull mode. And that is useful in cases of like, let's say, I don't have absolute connectivity between the control center and management cluster. I just want awareness to be one way. In that case, the sinker could then watch resources getting created on the virtual cluster and replicate them locally. In that case, so the hosted cluster becomes virtual. This is why it is called virtual hosted cluster here. And then that resource gets replicated locally to the hyper shift operator, which is an operator that takes a hosted cluster and starts creating clusters and namespaces for each cluster. That is pull mode, because it's pulling the resource instead of being pushed from up. Now, can I use the pull mode to schedule resources for more than one cluster? That's the question I asked myself. And the answer is obviously, well, it was not so obvious for me because I have not put it for a long time. But when I was coding this, I realized, oh, but then you have a resource that gets deployed on a control center or the virtual cluster. And that is being watched by two management clusters at the same time. So the queue for each has that resource. So it will be created no matter what, so that like you don't have time to decide or schedule stuff, like thinkers are going to watch and create at the same time. So it's not useful for scheduling one versus the other management cluster. It is, however, useful if you're thinking about H8, where basically you want to make sure that you have the same resource in more than one place. That's a good pattern if you want to do high availability in any use case. And then there's a mixture of these two approaches. And that's basically the way I used it. So I used the sinker to kind of be an informant, if some form. It tells the KCP server or the controller manager, or it watches the resources on the management cluster it is deployed on. And it tells the controller manager or talks to KCP and says, hey, the budget for this cluster is, for example, seven. KCP has an own cluster resource. So the update actually happens there. And on the same side, the management cluster two actually uses the same pattern, says I have this budget. I have eight namespaces or seven. And then the cluster controller looks at the budget of each. And locally, because it has access to the local resources, it looks at these and finds out which cluster has more budget so that it can create resources. And then it makes a decision. In that case, you see the loop happening here. And you're going to find like for like the decision will say, okay, seven is less than eight. Seven cluster management cluster one has less namespaces, meaning has less clusters because in host and hypershift, a cluster gets a namespace. And so it decides to assign management cluster one, for example, as the owner of the cluster resource or the virtual hosted cluster resource that gets deployed. So the sinker again watches and finds that its name got assigned to that resource. The same way, like this scheduler does was the pod. When a pod gets deployed and the node tells the scheduler, I could host that where I could take care of scheduling that pod on my resources. And it's the same way here. The sinker tells the controller manager, I have more resources to schedule that resource. The controller manager decides to assign management cluster one as the owner of that resource. And then the sinker simply just does its job and replicates that resource locally. And from there on, normal operations happen. Basically, the hypershift operator would then take that hosted cluster resource that got deployed in that cluster and then does its job to create namespaces. So in that sense, it's more or less similar to how Kubernetes does its things. You could even take that approach and shard it a bit so you could have one sinker that covers a region, for example, and then the resources gets deployed. Now, I haven't tried that. And I think this is worth a lot of discussions. But this is just an example of one pattern that is enabled. There's a lot of other patterns because KCP gives you that ability with the controller manager plus the minimalistic API server. It pulls for CRDs. And it is lightweight. So more of these gets enabled. So this is now the scheduling part. And this is what would be the topic of my demo. There's another use case, which is interesting as well, which is auto scaling. Now, I said we want to be looking at clusters the same way we look at Kubernetes resources. So can I actually auto scale actual clusters? And the answer is yes. So for example, in that case, let's go to the hosted cluster path again. So a user creates a hosted cluster. But then management cluster, that is, there's only one management cluster, and it doesn't have resources. So it kind of informs KCP or the controller manager and it then asks to create, using hyper shift patterns, a hosted cluster. And we, the difference here is that a hyper shift operator would then be deployed on the upper layer or the management or the control center. And then basically takes care of auto scaling and creating a new management cluster, which then brings us to the original use case. Because now I have two management clusters, I create a hosted cluster resource. And then these two management cluster will report their budgets. The controller manager will act as the scheduler, assigns one of them, and then one of them picks the resource and deploys it. So I know there's many things that might be unclear at the moment. Hopefully the demo will clear stuff a bit. But yeah, I think yeah, that's basically the conceptual part. Then we could jump to the demo unless, like, maybe we should have questions or see if anyone has questions before we get into the demo. Yeah, let's see if anyone has any questions. There's a bunch of people in the chat right now and I haven't seen anyone post a question yet. So let's give them a minute if folks have one. Let's see. There's a lot in what you've just said. So I'm thinking that maybe a demo might be a really great thing now. Okay. So why don't you power through that and let's see if we can explain. Sure. Cool. Okay. So I have tried to label the pains, according to the architecture that I just talked about. They have the KCP server. Then you have the controller manager. And then you have the control center. And that's the virtual cluster that we're going to be talking through. And then we have management cluster one and management cluster two. And simply what management cluster one and management cluster two are kind clusters. So you see here management cluster one and management cluster two. And I am currently pointed at a KCP cluster. So this is the API server. And the controller manager. So if I get API resources, this is something unique that you'll not find anywhere else. You're going to find this, only this set of resources. This is, this tells you you're in a KCP pointed cluster. For example, there's no endpoints, there's no endpoints slices. There's many things are not there, only really what is needed as basis and CRDs. And from the CRDs, it is important to see hypershift here. So hypershift is a CRD that represent that hosted cluster resource that we have talked about. And additionally, there is one namespace, which is also hypershift where the hypershift resources gets created. So that's one thing. The other thing here is the controller manager. And the controller manager is watching for stuff. As you can see here, it's reporting but budgets for the two clusters. I'm going to explain that now. But before that, let me do something that I have not done to make sure that we are, so let's delete that now. That's the sinker. I'm going to delete the sinker from the clusters to make sure that we're seeing the recent, the most recent logs. And by the way, K is just a QPCTL. Just in case I'm lazy. So yeah. All right. So in management cluster one, we're going to find that there was a new sinker deployed in management cluster two has also a new sinker. All right. So, and now one thing we need to clear is the clusters. So what I have, oh, you'll not see it from okay, because I'm sharing that's then. So this is the resources that I will create. The first one is called cluster. This is a KCP resource, specific resource. So that will get deployed on the control center. It is already deployed by the way. I'm just showing it and the secrets here are fine because these are kind clusters. I'm going to delete them after the demo. So you see kind management two and kind management one. These are the two clusters. And what I'm saying here is basically telling KCP, hey, ingest or I'm defining these two clusters to be aware of them. That's what this means. Cool. And later on, I would be creating hosted cluster. And these are just demos. For example, if I look at hosted cluster resource across W1, I'm just going to find everything test, test, test, test, test, but this will be enough to demonstrate the idea. Okay. Cool. So back to our control view. Right. Let's look at the logs of the sinkers. Here it's telling me that it is aware of a hosted cluster and a cluster resources. And it is setting informers or basically that's the controller pattern on hyper shift clusters and clusters for both the guest and or the or the virtual cluster and the local cluster. And then it said updated budget. What does this mean? It means that it told the virtual control center how many namespaces it has. That's the definition of a budget here. So here I have, let's see. I have nine. And if I remove the headers, eight, I have eight namespaces in that cluster. And if I repeat the same command, I have also eight namespaces. So the budget should be eight. So the controller manager here. So, okay, management one has eight. The budget is eight for management one, eight namespaces, meaning I theoretically have eight clusters. Let's think of it this way. And management one has also eight clusters. So most of them are now equal resources. So I could basically choose when I get when I create a hosted cluster resource, I could basically choose any right. So when I create a host of cluster resource, what I need is on the management clusters, I need a controller an actual controller because on the virtual cluster layer, I don't have a controller. I just like if I literally don't have any pods. So no actual control happens on the virtual cluster. In this case, it is more proxy, right? So the actual controller will be in hyper shift namespace. So that's where the hyper shift operator basically lives and acts on resources. So now if I go ahead and create the host of cluster resource, like one of them, that's the dummy resource again, I told you about. So let's create that. And I'm creating that from the control center. So I'm pointing my kubectl whatever to the kube config of the virtual cluster. So sample, post a cluster, tell me one. So that got created. Let's see what happened. Okay. So we see the budget, the controller manager was aware that the budget was nine. That means that one of these two clusters schedule the hyper shift resource. So in that case, let's get that name. Let's first look at the logs of the sinker. What did it say? So the sinker said has owner annotation. It does not have the owner annotation, but it has a cluster ID. And it updated itself because it's so that it has less like it's so it's name on the cluster resource. So that's something I forgot to show. Sorry. Let's see. So the cluster controller manager will update the hosted cluster resource with the owner. So first it is aware it's picking up the budgets and then it sees which one has less budget. And in that case, both were equal. And it updates the actual resource that wants to be deployed. Let's script for TCP. So the owner got updated to be management to not management one. So I should not find the namespace here. I should find it on management too. There were no cluster namespace, only the hyper shift namespace. But here if I look at the namespaces, I should expect yes. So there was an additional namespace that got created that should represent the cluster. And if I look at the sinker logs, it looks like I'm the cluster guardian provisioning in a second. So it recognized that it is the owner of this by looking at the watching the cluster resource, the hosted cluster cluster, and started replicating that to the local cluster for the hyper shift operator to act upon. So yeah, look at the namespaces as I said, hyper shift example. And in a nice or in a beautiful world, hyper shift. So here I'm not planning to demo hyper shift, but hyper shift. The namespace here is empty, because I literally didn't define anything in the resource. So nothing got scheduled. But it provisioned the namespace, which represents a cluster. And usually, if we're demoing hyper shift, that cluster for the namespace would contain the control pane of these components. So yeah, if I now create a new resource, like now because it shows management too, because management one and two have equal budgets, they both had eight namespaces. So I choose randomly. Now I create another one. I would expect that it gets deployed to one because one had less namespaces meaning less clusters. So it could accustom for more resources. So check again. Nothing got so this is this is all three minutes ago. Check again. 18 seconds. So that the cluster got scheduled to the management cluster that had more or had less namespaces and thus more resources. So that basically just shows that with minimal effort, I was able to apply scheduling mechanisms and scheduling primitives at the cluster layer. And I could do a lot more. I could do auto scaling and basically anything. And I said that relationship between KCP and hyper shift does not want to one. And the reason I haven't shown anything related to hyper shift is because this is more of a pattern. Any controller could literally just use the same thing that I did here. So you could apply, for example, I don't know, an HCD resource that follows the same pattern and gets scheduled to the cluster that has the controls in the back end. So scheduling at a cluster layer. And yeah, that that's basically the demo. Yeah. So I think now we try to take questions. All right. Well, we have one question from Michael is asking if if we can leverage KCP to write a parser to split a cube app, SVC deployment against two distinct Kubernetes clusters. Yeah. So as I said, like, of course, like KCP is just acting as a proxy. And something like the splitter pattern here. So let me, yeah, this splitter pattern, or if we look at the repo, the splitter looks at the deployment, for example, looks at the replica, and it has awareness of the clusters that it ingested. So it could separate, for example, a service or deployment across two different clusters. So that is also possible. There is not 100%, I would say, support for everything now because KCP at this point in time is a prototype, but it's very extensible to match the use case that you just said. We'll see. I think that I think that answered his question. And then I'm going to see if anyone else has any questions here. Give everybody a few minutes. I'll clear here. Okay. It's all clear and all the other ones. I think what's really interesting to me about this whole use case that you're describing is the applicability to so many other use cases. And, you know, I know we're Red Hat and we're all open shifters and so Hypershift is in our bailiwick, but it really bodes well for, I think, the concepts between KCP and applying them across the board, regardless of what the use case is. So the slide that you had earlier with how to get in touch with the KCP community, I think that's probably where you want people to go if they want to continue the conversation, the KCP prototype one, or is there another place where you would like people to reach out to you and talk to you about this topic? Yeah. So there are two things that I briefly talked about here, right? If you look at that layer architecture, that the first thing is the KCP bit, which is the multi-cluster of it, and that you can go and talk to the folks like Dr. Cleat and David and Jason about the use cases. They're discussing that every day or every week, sorry. And there's another place which is also very interesting, which is the Hypershift, which is basically this pattern of decoupling the control plane and the workers, or the management and the workers, and deploying OpenShift in a more centralized, much more centralized, cheaper, faster way. But again, as I said, it is a complementary, like to the existing pattern that we have today. It just gives the users the chance to have that externalized control plane pattern to save costs and to do all these things. There's a Github repo there. The contributions are very welcome. We don't have a Slack channel, unfortunately, but that's another place that I would try to point people. So if you have questions about Hypershift itself, also in the Kubernetes Slack, there is an OpenShift-dev, an OpenShift-user channel that you can pop into and ask questions as well. Have you seen this pattern at all in production, or is it still a theoretical POC kind of thing? So the KCP itself, KCP is unique. If I talked about KCP and Hypershift, KCP itself is very unique in certain aspects, like it tries to do where you have a minimalistic API server. As I said, if I look at the cluster, I immediately recognize it's KCP. I don't see this anywhere else. And you have that transparent multi-cluster use case and the stronger multi-tenancy where you can deploy resources and they get translated. There are efforts like Federation and so on that tackle that, but not from the same angle like KCP was the stronger focus on multi-cluster and transparency or lossless multi-cluster. On the Hypershift side, as I said, that pattern is not new. There are many providers that give that, separate that control plane and workers. And with Hypershift, we're bringing that pattern, all the goodies and benefits of that pattern to OpenShift. So you could have OpenShift clusters following that pattern. So I would say it's not new, but it's new with OpenShift because you get the bonus of features and then it covers more use cases. And you can then mix and match like protocols in the OSI layer, but with the OpenShift interconnection more than instead. And you have all these layers and stacks and whatever use case you have, we have the luxury to say you could pick one block with the other. And that luxury is strengthened by the ability to provide these blocks in the first place. Well, if people want to get a hold of you, do you have a final slide there with your contact information or anything or how should we follow up? Yeah, I could add that, but my handle is then it's worker. So you could follow me on Twitter or you could reach to me on the stack, but I could add it to the slide deck. Perfect. All right. Well, first of all, thank you very much for taking the time to do this today. I know we're all really busy with the 4.8 release and everything else that's going out the door in the next few months. So it really helps to set the playing field here for where these use cases fit and how the different pieces and parts of this back work together. So thank you very much for taking the time today. And I don't see any other questions in the chat, so I'm going to give people a few seconds here before I close it out. And Michael, thank you for your question. If you have other ones, just reach out and ask us in the Slack and we'll be hanging out there or on Twitter where we also hang out too, but it's much better to have a threaded conversation in the Slack channel, I think, these days. So I'm not seeing any other questions coming in. So Adele, I'm going to give you a huge shout out on the Internet later today and we'll upload this video. And thanks to Chris Short for making the production happen today. And we'll call it a wrap and we'll have you back with each new release, I think.  And I'll share this with the KCP prototype channel once it's up too, because I think that'll be a good interesting place for people to give you feedback. Thank you for hosting me. It was really fun. And I will be back shortly with another topic. All right. Take care, guys. Thank you.


In this episode you're going to learn why service design needs to become a more inclusive practice and how you can benefit from that. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, this is Karen Baker and you're tuned into the service design show Episode 160. Hi, my name is Mark Fontaine and welcome back to a brand new episode of the service design show. On this show we explore what's beneath the surface of service design. What are those hidden and invisible things that make a difference between success and failure? All to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business and our planet. Our guest in this episode is Karen Baker. Karen is the founder and president of Boathouse Inks Washington DC office. She's pursuing a doctor of design at the North Carolina State University and Karen was also the host and producer of a live weekly radio show on the intersection between business and design. The reason I'm excited to have Karen on the show today is that we're going to discuss where the recent raised awareness for designing for inclusivity is coming from and what is driving it forward. We're also going to discuss how a more inclusive service design practice is going to help you design services that are better for our communities and for your business and also at the same time, how that is going to help you to get a seat at the table where the important decisions are made. Karen shares some very practical and inspiring examples around this topic, ranging from an inclusive marathon in the metaverse to how LEGO helped the LGBTQ community to design their own vocabulary. Sometimes it can be challenging to translate topics like this into your own daily practice, but I can assure you that if you stick around till the end of this episode, you'll walk away with one simple but very powerful question that has the potential to transform how you look at your own work from now on. If you want to keep growing as a service design professional and enjoy conversations like this, make sure you subscribe to the channel and click that bell icon because we bring a new episode every week or so. That about wraps it up for the introduction. So now it's time to sit back, relax and enjoy the conversation with Karen Baker. Welcome to the show Karen. Thank you Mark for having me. I'm excited to be here. I am as well. We're going to talk about an important topic, which I think we should be addressing more often in the community and we are. We recently had an episode on radical participatory design. I think this closely relates to that. But before we jump into that, as always, I invite the guests on the show to give a brief introduction about who they are so that we have some context. So Karen, please enlighten us. Sure. Again, thank you for having me, Mark. I'm Karen Baker and I'm Found and President of a company called Boat House Group Inc. It's a 22 year old marketing and AI tech firm that has been based in Boston. And I've been charged with opening a DC office, which I've done, and really excited to be able to bring the skills that I have. My background is in design thinking, design research, human centered design. And that is what I'm very passionate about and have been. I've used it a lot in business, which has been a place to design. I think it has not always held. It's been very tech and education based. So it's been really exciting to see the outcomes. I do a lot of work in social impact here at Boat House. So yeah, really has been a great journey in the last year.  What's that about? Ten years. I had a live radio shows every Friday at 11 o'clock. And it was based on design thinking and business. I would bring people together who were in the industry, who normally didn't get the platform to talk about their work, their innovations, their products, the type of impact they would make it in community. So we were live every Friday on a radio station here in Washington, DC. And yeah, it was a joy. It really was. I met amazing people over like 300 and something shows. Awesome. 300. I have a long way to go to get there. And the great thing is you already have that radio voice. So this is going to be an awesome conversation for the people who are listening to the podcast edition. Thanks, Mike. Geron, I didn't prepare you for this. I don't prepare anyone for the lightning round, but we do have a question, a fire soda lightning round. I've got five questions for you. Your goal is to answer them as quickly and as briefly as possible. Just the first thing that comes to your mind. Are you ready? Perfect. I'm ready. Okay. Let's do this. If you could work from anywhere in the world, which place would it be? Oh, that's a great question. It would be the Dominican Republic. What's always in your fridge? Bread. All right. Which book or books are you reading at this moment, if any? Oh, that's a good one. I think it's none. I think that's a first. Okay. Awesome. Next question is, what did I have? Yes. What was your very, very first job? Oh, my very first job was at an NGO that focused on homelessness, community development, and economic development. And last but not least, do you recall the moment you sort of first heard about the term service design? Oh, yeah. The first moment I heard was at SCAD, Savannah Community College of Art and Design. When I was in the design management program, we were paired up with service design students, and that's when I began to learn about service design. SCAD has been a respectable and reputable sort of factory, isn't the right word, but at least a place where a lot of service design professionals from the U.S. emerge from. Not the only place, definitely, but we know a lot of people from SCAD. Thank you for the lightning round, Karen. That's a great question. I have a bunch more we could do another 20 if you want. Let's dive into the topic of today. Hugh shared with me that you'd like to discuss design for inclusivity, inclusive design, and that's what we're going to do. I'd love to know, first of all, what does the topic mean for you? Because it means probably a lot of different things to many people. What does design for inclusivity mean for you? Yeah, that is also a great question because it does mean many things to people. I think the first thing is, initially, when I started looking at design exclusivity and exclusivity for design or designers, I looked at designers being at the table. What I realized when I really, I would start to say I was a designer, was the designers weren't at the table. And it was always kind of fighting for their place to be included within that corporate structure, particularly from a strategic standpoint. They were always thought as the end user. Like we come to them where we thought everything through and we just need them to give maybe some input, but make it look great. So it means that for me, I think that was my initial introduction into it and fighting on that end. But what has brought in for me, and I think it's been the work of being more social impact, being more concerned about marginalized and underrepresented communities and how design impacts them, that's where it's come into me, to greatness or heighten the ability to use design in that way. I do believe that design can change a whole lot. I truly believe that. So I'm also on two rides, I would say, the one to make sure designers are at the table. But then when they're at the table, understanding the knowledge that they need to bring, and the power I think that they hold to be able to impact communities that are not getting what they need when products and services are delivered to them. Both are definitely interesting avenues to explore. I'm curious, if you look back on your journey, how did you arrive at this topic? When did it become relevant for you? Can you take us through your journey? Yeah, I believe that it became most probably at school. Let me say this. When I was doing the masters of design thinking at SCAD, it really opened up for me a side that was already that it's activism, advocacy side of who I was, that I hadn't had the opportunity to do as much work in prior to coming into this space academically. And it just heightened that. It almost brought an awareness to me that this was always there. And so I then dedicated my work at the time I was owning my own company, that I would only take on clients that were impacting community, that their work was set out to do that, and that I would use design in that way. But the initial of it really was thinking from a marketing standpoint, how do we deliver the best aesthetically? How do we make sure people are invited in and want to use what we have to offer? That was really the initials of how I saw design.  Design could do so much more than what I know. And I started to embrace it. And it really took a teacher too as well to say, what's your background? And I was like, yeah, initially, I went to Howard University and I got a degree in political science. He was like, makes total sense. I was like, does it? Because I had not used it in such a long time. But he was like, yeah, this is showing up for you. So it took someone to reintroduce me and see something that I hadn't seen for me to really start to take that journey. I'm really curious to learn more about it. So the political science, how did, what was the connection? How did they explain it? He explained it is, we had an exercise where we were in the process of one delivering our portfolio of what we had learned during school. But I also, we had an exercise where we were taking a tire and redesigning of the way that a tire would be used when people are in rain. And the way that, what I delivered was, I guess, different from anybody else. And he said that the way I was thinking about research, I was thinking about it from the way that it was impacting the person more than it was impacting the outcome of the whole. And he saw that being the connection.  So I, you know, that's the way that he explained it to me. It was interesting. Very. I think it's awesome to see that people from many backgrounds and disciplines entering into the design space, the design field. I think it's so two things. One, it's limiting to think about the designer because in a traditional sense, it's, it's very, it's sort of a privileged thing to be the designer while anybody can contribute to a design, practice in a design space. And I already forgot what the other thing is. I had on my mind. But yeah, coming back, coming in into the design space from different backgrounds, I think, really, really helpful. One question related to this is you sort of got into interested in design for inclusivity, inclusive design. Where do you see that it's currently lacking? So what are some, what do you see around you where you think, well, would have been awesome if this was designed from a more inclusive perspective? Yeah, I think that it really goes back to designers being at the table in the very beginning. So it also goes at what you just said before about people coming from many spaces and places as designers. And when they do come to the table, particularly when you have a diverse table, and that means many, many things that that's gender, that's age, that's culture, that's experience, life experiences, there's just a stream of ideas that can be bought to the table. When I first, again, started to recognize designers not being at the table. And even where I am at Boathouse, a lot of times the designers are usually on the end. We go in strategically, we do all the research, we then give them a brief, then they walk away. And I was like, this is a bit of a gap that's happening. And so I started to bring them to the conversation in the very beginning. This is what they're sitting in on the strategy. They're understanding what the, they're at every phase of what is going on. And that has helped in the project that we're working on now, which is about a marginalized underinsured community in healthcare. And how do we change the trajectory of what is happening to them? Because otherwise, the design team, creative team, they were struggling because they didn't have that connection to why we came up with what we came up with. So we began to lose the narrative, because we became very ad focused, you know, we came very much, let's have it look this way, instead of does it actually accomplish what we're trying to do? We're trying to shift behavior, which I believe design can do. We're trying to make sure that people see this in a better light, that they're able to talk about the disease that they're actually impacted by. Those are the things that I believe can be lacking from the beginning at sitting at the table, having them part of every piece of strategy research that you do, then letting them start to deliver. So that's, that's one thing. And I think a lot of people who are listening right now will recognize this and they would want to be part of more earlier conversations. So being included from that sense. But you also mentioned the other aspect, like not including the communities, not including the end users. Something you can say about that, where do you see death slacking? Yeah, for sure. I think sometimes people are designing so fast that they forget and sometimes purposely to include the community that they're going to be serving. So part of the design justice practice that I started to use probably in the last eight months is that you include that community in the conversation before you design. You talk to them, you ask them questions, then you go back. You know, I've had people say to me, do we have time to do that?  Well, if we don't, it's not going to be for them anymore. It's going to be for us. So that is the part that has to happen. And you have to prepare for that. And that in your time, you have to prepare for that. And if you think of that very much in the very beginning, then you'll have the time to do so. But people start designing, start researching, start strategizing, then they go, did you talk to anybody who is going to actually, you know, be the end user of this? And they go, no, we didn't have time to do that. Or that's not what we do. You know, and that is the problem. That's the problem. Why do you feel, at least I feel that this topic has become more, has come onto the agenda in the recent years, like it's becoming more important. I'm curious if you're also seeing the same, that it's being more addressed now and now. And if so, I'm curious, what is your theory on why now? Like, was it, I would say the problem was even bigger, maybe five or 10 years ago. So why now? What's your take on that? Very true. And that is a really good thing to talk about, I think, you know, and I attribute it to, and I agree with you, because it was a problem before.  You weren't hearing that terminology. I think the disruption of COVID and the disparities that took place during COVID, regardless of people, where people were, regardless of you talk about black and brown communities, indigenous communities, that the light was shined on it, you know, so that it pushed it apart around globally. You know, even though I'm in the United States, of course we heard it, but you heard it globally. You heard that this isn't just where you are. This is where everyone is.  And then I think the conversation started to pick up more. I started to read about it more. You know, I started to see more commercial magazines or articles or, you know, radio or whatever media period. Let me say that, start to have more conversation about what was taking place and how we, as a community, could be impacted. And because I do agree that this didn't start in 2020. And you can have conversations with other designers who, you know, again, 2015, 2014, they were thinking in this way. You know, even for myself, it was 2011. I'm 2011 that I was thinking about things like this. So yeah, you're absolutely right. Absolutely. But I think the pandemic heightened it. Yeah. And in the United States, for us, Black Lives Matter made it even more. Yeah. As it goes, never waste a good crisis. That's a great quote. I hope that we need less crisis is to actually get smarter from these things. But when we do have one that let at least make the most use out of it. Yeah, I agree. You had, I think, a few very interesting examples where it sort of shows what can happen when you do design from a more inclusive mindset and inclusive perspective. Maybe we can just go over some of these stories and illustrate and hear what you find inspiring about them. So do you have a story to share with us? Yeah, one was it is interesting because an intern at Boathouse brought this story to me. And I had not, I didn't know it was happening. It's interesting because we were having a conversation because when I was talking about design inclusive or inclusivity in the metaverse, she was asking, they were asking me as, you know, we had like 50 interns and she was, they were asking me, you know, what was next? And, you know, and advertising and marketing. And I'm like the metaverse, you know, we have to start paying attention to that. And her and I met one on one. And she was like, you know, when you first said that, I was so against the metaverse and so against learning about it. And she said, so I went and checked it out. And she found this article on degree deodorant company. They had done this marathon in the metaverse for people living with disabilities. And it gave them the opportunity to be part of a marathon, whether they wanted to change their disability within the metaverse or keep their disability within metaverse. And some chose both sides. And how that was just a celebration of showing inclusivity, accessibility, you know, and how design can do that, you know, from that and how the metaverse was going to be more pointed and more direct and ensuring that it did a better job of inclusivity in the metaverse. It was really exciting to see it. You know, it was really exciting to see it had really large participation as well. And again, if you're not in that community, you wouldn't have known it had occurred, you know, and I'm not in that community. So I didn't know someone had to bring it to me. But I thought that was just a great story that had occurred. And for a deodorant company to do that, kudos to them. So I didn't know about this example either. And there are, I have so many blind spots and things to learn about. What do you feel is in this example, the thing that inspires you the most? Yeah, I think it what inspires me the most is for me, it feels like good design. But it also allows a community to be in a place where they feel that there's a safe space and a place of like, always I can think of acceptance, like I'm seeing you for who you are, you know, and if design is able to put you in a place where you feel that you're not excluded, that is what was was good for me, you know, and even to me, it also pushed the the thought process, you know, of even going to not do it a marathon where it was able body people to be in the marathon, it could have easily done that, you know, and having a marathon in the metaverse just for able body and not even thought about the fact of how people living with a disability could actually take part. But they said only people living with a disability are going to take part of that. And I think for that, that is the extra step. Super interesting. Yeah, well, we'll make sure to add a link in the show notes to to this example. Any other things that you find inspiring or interesting related to this topic? Yeah, you know, that's been it's interesting because it goes back to your question a little bit about the design inclusive and, you know, how, you know, five years ago this was happening, you know, I think that what we're seeing also the I've spent a lot of time talking about writing about the metaverse. So a lot of things are happening and showing up that are, I won't say behind closed doors, but if you're not in the space, you're not knowing that it's actually taking place. And one thing that's actually happening to is meta, which is people know Facebook, but it's now meta. They have created an immersive learning lab. And they are taking in applications now to be able to do better than what they did. I think it's Facebook to ensure that we have more diverse designers and creators in technology, not only metaverse, but also web 3.0. So they are putting out $100 million to train more designers and creators in this space. And that is their pledge to do that. So I think that that again is very exciting because if we know anything about the history of Facebook, particularly during the last couple years, they have not done well. I will say failed. So this is their thing to try to read, you know, invite, invent themselves and put themselves in a better light in how they've been doing before. So I'm really excited I'm following it very close to see what they do and that they deliver what they say they're going to deliver. So yeah. Have you related to these examples? Do you see a pattern emerging in these communities that are thinking about inclusive design? Like what are some maybe guiding principles that you see emerging from the conversations that are happening? That's a good question. I think the most guidance that I'm seeing is coming from the Design Justice Network, which is that practice that was started to be created in 2015 and they sped it up in 2020, based on what we just talked about previously. And they created principles and the principles were created out of a media center and they all, you know, spent a lot of time creating these principles and how these principles should be grounded in impacting marginalized and underrepresented communities. We're a big focus on Black, Brown and Indigenous communities. And they have been, I mean diligent, they have been diligent. One person asked me, do you think that they they'll be the watchdog? I think with manpower they could be the watchdog because the principles are simple. They're not complicated. They're not anything that even outside of the design community that could be followed. They could be followed in media and marketing and advertising and anything branding, they could be followed in that way. But I think that they have a due diligence right now. They're very charged with ensuring that they're paying attention to what is going on and trying to make sure that they insert their voice in the conversation and change some of how people practice. They're even beginning to do pedagogy. So they recently did a summit at MIT to start to bring social justice into design in higher education. That's awesome. And again, there have been already a few mentions of death here on the service design show, which is only good because I hope platforms like this help to spread the message, create awareness. And, you know, sometimes an episode resonates with one person and then the next episode resonates with somebody else. So sometimes repeating these and these messages is quite important. So thank you for bringing that up again. And I think we'll also be able to link to design justice. I think design justice something that they have a different name, right? Yeah, they said design justice. Is it member network? Yeah, the design justice network. Yeah. Well, we'll look that up. Any other examples that you've seen that do a good job from your perspective on this? Oh, yeah, there are a couple more. Actually, Lego is another one as well too. Lego last year, and maybe the year before, but I think the last year was a big, big impact. Lego did something called A to Z Awesome, in which they allowed the LBGTQ community to design their own vocabulary and terminology using Lego, which was really interesting. So they could come in, and I think it's still, you know, it occurred in June during Pride Month, and they started it then, but I don't think it's over. But they allowed them to really come in and bring the terminology that was necessary, that they wanted people to be able to recognize in regards to them as a community. I thought that that was a really great way to use something like Lego, you know, and doing so, you know, I think that they're just another company that continues to push the envelope and continues to hold true to what their corporate social responsibility is and how they continue to design. And then that was one that came up in June that I was like, this is really exciting to see. Again, purposefully with a meaning, you know, going to a community and making sure that they feel inclusive. Great, very practical, tangible examples. And it's great that these companies sort of put themselves forward as a beacon of light, and so hopefully sort of showing the way forward. What have you seen? You work with a lot of clients and stakeholders. When you try to put this topic forward, what kind of response, what is the common response you get? Because I can imagine that this isn't something that people think daily about. So when you try to address this, what do people say? That's, you know, that's another great question because it's interesting. I think now there's a more of an openness to it, right? And because I'm very purposeful about going after people who are kind of already doing the work, but they may need guidance or even a little more structure in how they strategically go about impacting the communities that they have decided to serve, their mission purpose, you know, corporate social responsibility, whichever it is. They are more open to it. So we actually took on American Diabetes Association and that was their charge. What we were able to do is really narrow down exactly what was happening. Really did dug deep research-wise. We spent like two and a half months in research before we even started with them, which, you know, they had to be open to that. Again, it goes back to how long it's going to take, you know, type of thing. And they were very open to that because what we bought to the table, they were, you know, blown away by because it was some things that had been done, some things that hadn't been done. The response that we got from doing focus groups, talking to the community, talking to the scientists, they just, you know, sometimes, I think sometimes organizations in with their credit, having the time to do that when you're constantly moving, trying to serve members and community, the time to pause and actually figure out why is this not happening? Why are we higher in rate that we need to be? Just doesn't, no one pauses. So we had the time to pause for them. And so when we bought it to them, they were excited, Mark. They were just, literally on the call when we presented it, people were shedding tears because they were like, we are finally going to be able to really make the impact that we plan to make through this particular campaign and program. Any, if you reflect on this, any ideas, what made them responsive to your proposal to approach it in this way? Yeah, that's a good question. I think we had the opportunity to pitch and I'll say this, because you know with us being so virtual lately, people take in RFPs and then they don't get the time to actually talk to anyone to say, maybe what you put on paper versus what we actually get a chance to talk to you about, we really get a chance to know who you are and understand fully how you're going to deliver this. And I'll be honest, again, talking about business world, people don't always bring design thinking into a proposal. And I brought that into that proposal and how we were going to deliver strategy from a different light. That was of interest to them. You know, they didn't know the practice completely in that way. They didn't know the methodology. So that was exciting to actually deliver this program in a different way or in a way that may have brought a different results than what is traditionally bought in marketing particular. Speaking of different things and maybe things that surprise people, I'm curious if you look at the design inclusivity movement network. What is the thing that is maybe surprising you of what you're seeing? Well, I'm going to be honest with you. I was surprised by the design justice. I was really surprised by it. And I learned about it through an article that a woman wrote and she was writing it on the metaverse very early part of this year. And I was like, design justice. I was like, this is such a great combination of terms. But I was surprised by it, you know, that people were actually going to allow social justice and design to actually come together and push this as a practice. I was surprised by it. I think I'm sometimes still surprised by the, I was surprised by the World Economic Forum meeting very early to create governance and guidance and regulation around the metaverse. We didn't do that with social media. So I was very surprised to see that they actually were going to say, we're going to sit down and look at this from an inclusive standpoint and how you all begin to design this space. So we don't have the level of disruption that we had in social media. So those right now are, that's why they are very much on my radar. I'm very much paying attention to them because those things surprise me for sure. And again, a nice leeway into a next question that I had, as you mentioned, governance around the metaverse to ensure that we don't do as much damage as we did previously. What is the thing that you feel could accelerate the adoption of this mindset and practice and philosophy? Is it things like governance, which I wouldn't say per se speed up adoption, but maybe they do. I'm curious how you feel about this? Yeah, I don't know that governance will either. We're in agreement with that. I don't know that that will do that. I really would have loved to be a fly on the wall in that conversation that was had because it was very big brands there like Sony and Lego and Microsoft and Metta and Walmart. And I was like, was anybody small there? That actually could speak to how this is going to really impact. So yeah, I don't know that governance is it either. I think that there's going to be a lot of watching and seeing on how we do this. But I think that's another thing of designers being at the table, to really help with how you govern, really communities being at the table saying this is what is we're seeing when we're taking part in it right now. And these are the things that we're concerned about. These are the things that we think may be disruptive. These are the things that we may see go the same way in which we've seen in past and technology and innovation as it has occurred as well too. So there has to be this step back. And some of you does a step down to you and I to just have a conversation with you and I. But it really is that's inclusivity too. You mentioned there were just the sort of the big players in the room. And I'm really curious about like you're open to this and I'm sure that if somebody from your company brings in an idea that is related to this, there will be a sort of welcomed with open arms. But what would you maybe if you could give some advice to people who also feel strongly motivated to put this on the agenda within their company, but maybe like senior management isn't yet as aware of responsive to these topics like any any guidance that could help here? Yeah, I mean your question is timely because it's interesting. I just had an article come out well yesterday, I guess you were saying I will say in September through Harvard Business Review to talk about exactly that question you just posed to me. And so I went through steps for people from a managerial leadership perspective and what they could do, particularly when you come from as a designer and you walk into that space and you say this is what I want to do. I think the big thing is it's an openness. You have to have an openness to want to make sure that you kind of evaluate what is going on internally. And do you have a design team with a service design design thinking creative graphic that it's sitting there and they're always in designing in a silos, you know, they're not part of the conversation that you're having. And are you going to welcome them in, you know, in that way? So one of the first things I said in the article is diversity at the table. And like I said, it's many lights that are shed on that. And you're going to have to, as a leadership standpoint, look around your table and see who's at your table, you know. And are you being inclusive? Is there equity at your table? All of that.  That's awesome. Because you sort of done already the hard work of communicating the benefits and the value of this. So the only thing people need to do is just forward the HR article to read this. That's why I'm here. Sometimes it works. So yeah, also another resource that we'll definitely link in the show notes. One other question I had around this is what is the question that you feel people should be asking more often? What is the question that people aren't asking enough related to this topic? I think the question people aren't asking, are we delivering good design? You know, and really when you look that up, that is a term, it was developed by someone, are you following good design in that way? And then you can step back and look and say, yes, we are, we haven't been or we're missing the market times or not consistent, you know, and then start to figure out the principles, practices, methodology that I think are going to lead you to good design. I think that's what people have to ask themselves. And then they'll figure out from there, like, okay, we don't have inclusivity. We're not delivering work that's really representative of what our client is asking us to do. Internally, we need to make some changes. You know, I think those are the things that have to be done. But I think just that simple stepping back and asking that word in that phrase. That's super powerful. And I really love it. Like, there are so many ways people evaluate how their organization is performing. But I don't think a lot of organizations ask themselves, are we delivering good design? Some, some out there will and we'll be able to recognize those organizations. But I think most companies don't and developing that awareness that there is such a thing as good design, developing the vocabulary to define what is good design to us. And then how do we evaluate it? It's, it could be a very powerful sort of conversation starter. Yeah, I agree. And I'm like you, I would, that's probably a poll mark for you to take. How many people are asking themselves, are they bringing about good design? You know, maybe independent houses probably do it more than anything. You know, but like you said, bigger companies, I would be surprised. And I would really love to know that, you know, are you stepping back in your team? And it comes from the top. It's not just your design team, you know, asking that it comes from the top and leadership perspective. Are you delivering good design? And then having standards around it, good design standards, like what is your, what is your benchmark like? That's super interesting. That is, that is a question that should be asked more often. I thank you again. Thank you for bringing that up. No, no, no, no, this is great. Absolutely. I'm curious if you, if you sort of follow the trajectory of how this movement is developing, how the awareness around this topic is developing, where do we hope we'll be in, let's say three years? I think we'll still be having a conversation. So I'm going to say that. And it's not about pessimism. I just think we'll still, and I think because we need to continue to have the conversation. And it goes back to your, the quote about the crisis, because that is just human nature, that things will arise. So I think that we have to continue to have, so hopefully we'll be past this hump. And we won't be still having a conversation about things that have impacted from 2020, 2021. We will have used design in a way to kind of help solve that and move into more of a place of delivering good design. But I think if we learn the lessons from 2021, because again, this was global, this impacted everyone. And that has not often happened. Certain locations have been impacted, like the US has had a crisis or another country has had a crisis, but particularly everyone having this crisis, there's a lot to learn from 2020 and 2021. And so I think that if we're having conversations like we learned this, and this is how we'll be more prepared to be able to deal with this, if it happens again, then saying, oh, wow, we didn't learn anything from it. We walked away from it, glad we walked away from it, and that was it. And we have no practice in place. Then I think that we, again, I think that's just failure. I hope people will learn something. I do too. I do too. We need it. We need it. We must. Well, speaking about learnings and lessons, what is the thing that you maybe wish you had known five years ago about this topic? I think the tools being available to me is probably what would have been good for me. I think five years ago I was learning them, learning this. I think the tools would have been great to be able to move very small organizations forward faster. That probably would have been good for me to be able to do, to be able to have a better blueprint. When we talk about good design and really have a better blueprint, that I could have given to very small organizations to enable them to be able to be in a mode that when a crisis hit them, they would have been able to probably thrive a little more or even survive a little more. Both words could be used and not completely collapse in that light. So that thing, that's what would have been good for me five years ago. Well, I would say that maybe most of those tools weren't yet available back then. They're coming right now. I think people are very actively developing these tools, these frameworks, giving us shoulders to stand upon. Yeah, that's a good way to put it. So we covered a lot of ground in this conversation. We went through your journey of how you got interested in design for inclusivity, getting designers at the table from the very start, making sure that community, not just the voice of the community, that the community is represented in the design process, design justice. We talked about good design. Okay, how would you summarize the last, I don't know, 40 minutes? This has been one of the most insightful conversations because normally the conversations are very targeted to one thing, but I think that this is a more broader conversation I've had about design as a whole. It's been amazing, really. It cites me, inspires me to go on through my day to really focus on what it means to be inclusive in design and really good design. I think it really is good design and inclusive. If you think about hierarchy, if you do that, then you'll deliver this, and I think that's what I've gotten most out of this conversation. If my head continues to be on good design, then I'll continue to deliver inclusive design. I like that. Yes, definitely. And if somebody made it all the way to this point in the conversation, what do you hope is the one thing that what is the one thing you at least hope that they will walk away with and remember maybe? Yeah, I think the biggest thing to remember is continue to strive towards being a good designer, continue to fight for your place wherever you are. Because even if I'm not there, I'm still championing you as a designer to have your place within the organization and your voice be heard. Designers' voices have to be heard. That's what I do believe. Yeah, and keep on, like you said, making yourself heard. It's just part of the work, and it will be for a very long time. Don't get discouraged and find others who are doing that as well because it gets easier when you see that more people... I wouldn't describe it as a struggle, but it can be challenging sometimes. Oh, very much so. Yeah, so I think the sum it up to is just find community, a community of designer, whether it's in your professional or you turn around and have to go outside in order to find it. Because this will ensure that you continue to go back into that space and you're able to have a voice. Yeah, awesome. It was a great conversation, Karen. I hope, like with many of the recent topics, we'll be able to address this more often. I think we're not done. We're sort of just getting started on this journey, and a lot of things will sort of develop. So thank you for addressing this and inspiring, and thank you for sharing a lot of the resources. I'll make sure to add everything in the show notes so people can continue digging into this. Thank you, Mark. This has been great. I appreciate it. I really hope that you enjoyed this conversation with Karen. And if you did, take a moment to leave a short comment down below with your highlight. My name is Mark Fontaine, and I want to thank you for being part of the service design community. Thanks so much for watching, and I look forward to seeing you in the next video.


Hello and welcome. My name is Rob Suarez and I'm the Chief Information Security Officer for BD. BD is one of the largest global medical technology companies in the world and we're advancing the world of health by improving medical discovery, diagnostics and the delivery of care, including the fight against COVID-19. And a little bit about myself and my background, I've been in healthcare for more than a decade and I started my career actually in software engineering and in R&D and moved my way into milk and bite cybersecurity and product security and in recent years I've been leading cybersecurity efforts again across all of BD and Enterprise at IT and manufacturing and in our products as the Chief Information Security Officer. And so at BD, we believe that there's a patient at the end of everything we do and patients don't always have a say in what devices they're connected to. Each hospital room might have 10 to 15 different devices from multiple manufacturers. In addition, each of these devices very likely contain third-party software components. And so here's what we know about all software. It ages like the human body and instead of a companion, it develops vulnerabilities, weaknesses that can be exploited by cyber criminals to gain access to a computer system or to various types of data. But in healthcare, we're not just protecting IT systems and data. We're protecting patient safety and the stakes could not be higher. As manufacturers, we integrate and we really need to integrate cybersecurity into everything of our product lifecycle from R&D through supporting the product in use and customer support. But that's not enough. Criminals are working 24-7 to disrupt the production and supply of medical technology to cause reaches and compromises of patient information, protected health information, and to disrupt the clinical workflows and the delivery of healthcare. It happens every day. And what you see on the news, like the ransomware attacks on gasoline, pipelines, and distribution, like on meat manufacturing, it's just a small slice of the cyber attack that happened on a daily basis. And with hackers working in real time around the clock, we have to put, we have to up our date. And that's why we have to work together as mobile device manufacturers, healthcare providers, industry regulators, security researchers, and other stakeholders. So I'm often time to ask by security professionals in other industries is there any benefit to participating in ethical hacking events like the Biohacking Village at DEF CON? And my answer is yes. The Biohacking Village at DEF CON brings mobile device manufacturers and security researchers together for one purpose, which is to strengthen mobile device cybersecurity. And this approach makes us stronger. Really, what I see is three different ways. One is that it allows us to crowdsource cybersecurity. Two is that, you know, it allows us to create a strong community of practice. And three, it really promotes ethical coordinated vulnerability disclosures. So ethical hacking events allow you to crowdsource cybersecurity. And events like the Biohacking Village and the Medical Device Lab at DEF CON, you know, bring together the security community in a way that not many others can. Tapping into the goodwill of a large group of security researchers, you know, that means accessing a broader set of skills and expertise. And at BED, you know, we do our own security research and vulnerability assessment and threat mulling. But we're always asking ourselves, what are we now seeing? And as an organization, we talk a lot about having a growth mindset, you know, viewing challenges as opportunities to grow and improve and having the courage to iterate, try new things and embrace change. And if you've never participated in an ethical hacking event, because you don't want weaknesses or vulnerabilities to come to light, then you're missing out. We all need to put customers and patients first. And what matters is uncovering vulnerabilities and communicating these actions, the actions to your customers need to take and also participating in the Biohacking Village can really save patient lives. It's sad and impactful. So, you know, instead of shying away and collaborating with security researchers, we need to build a strong community practice for advancing cybersecurity. The reality is that cyber attacks are happening more frequently every single year and in fact every single day. And, you know, around the world, many hospitals don't even have a single person dedicated to cybersecurity, which makes it hard to address vulnerabilities that exist in local devices. We can help by creating a strong community practice. And I encourage all of us in the local device community to make a commitment to being collaborative, not just with our fellow medical device manufacturers and their customers, but also last but not least with security researchers. There's no, there's so much knowledge to share. And we work with healthcare and medical technology trade associations around the world. And the information and expertise shared helps us respond more effectively to potential threats and vulnerabilities. And it also becomes a feedback loop that helps us design more secure and resilient products. And it allows us to provide actual guidance to our customers. And security researchers are absolutely a component, you know, to, to these practices and to these benefits.  And there will always be more to learn. So it's not a matter of if you'll take cybersecurity threats, but it's a matter of when. And defensive strategies are not enough. You know, no system can be 100% protected against any and all vulnerabilities. So that's why we need to work together to build a strong community of practice. And events like the biohacking village promote ethical, coordinated vulnerability disclosures and new support, including our processes for, for doing vulnerability disclosures. It's time to take the stigma out of vulnerability disclosures. Every security researcher at the biohacking village, you know, signs the Hippocratic host for hackers, and, and they agree to the biohacking village rules of engaging. And this includes court effort for coordinated vulnerability disclosures. So it's important to know that the discovery of a previously unknown vulnerability needs to be addressed with a sense of urgency and due diligence. FDA guidance direct manufacturers to disclose vulnerability notification within 30 days, and to remediate or provide compensation controls within 60 days. And this allows time to confirm the finding, establish any potential clinical impact if needed, and identify mitigation and compensation controls that we value the relationship with security researchers. And, and so, you know, along the way, you know, make sure to communicate where you are in this process with your stakeholders, including security researchers, you know, trust goes both ways. And remember that your shared goal is patient taking. It's also important to communicate with your customers and patients about your coordinated vulnerability disclosure processes. When cyber street vulnerabilities emerge, provide guidance so customers can manage potential risk properly. And at BD, we do this by posting product security bulletins and patches to our cyber security trust center in our website at bd.com forward slash cyber security. This is something that health care providers and patients should expect from every medical device manufactured. And posting a vulnerability disclosure doesn't mean your organization has a cyber security problem. It means that you're enabling customers to properly manage risk through awareness and through guidance. In coordinated disclosures, in fact, I assign a maturity for an organization. So collaboration and transparency are essential to advancing cyber security and health care. And in health care, cybersecurity isn't just about protecting systems. It's about protecting patient, patient data, patient privacy, and patient safety. Events like the biohacking village allow us to crowdsource cyber security. It allows to build a community practice and develop and mature coordinated vulnerability disclosure in our processes. As a result, we can make our systems products and customers and our patients more secure. Hi, I'm Scott Schindldecker, Chief Product Security Officer for BD. I wanted to share my perspective on participating in events like the biohacking village. It's an exciting opportunity, especially for my team. And if you're looking to motivate your team, I highly recommend getting involved in the biohacking village medical device lab. It's a controlled environment and provides an opportunity for my security team to create a partnership with our product teams and rally around the event. In years past, we've been able to participate in person due to COVID. We're participating remotely this year, but still a great event. One of the benefits is being able to work with fellow medical device manufacturers and security researchers. It's a lot like having external third party independently assess the product and its internal security controls. We know our products and we communicate what we know with customers about how to use them in a secure environment. But participating in an event like biohacking village gives us an opportunity to validate our assumptions. It provides great feedback for improvement. Put simply, it pushes us further on our mission to control risk. We do our own pentesting and threat modeling, but this goes a step further. An event like the biohacking village really serves our customers, making our products and processes more secure. So with that, I want to turn it over to Nastasia Tamari, who will tell you a bit about how events like biohacking village can also help improve coordinated disclosure processes across the industry. Hi, I'm Nastasia and I'm a director of security operations at BD. We focus on security operations for our manufacturing, product and enterprise environment. And at BD, our experience with security researchers has really been overwhelmingly positive. Events like biohacking village really improve communication between BD and other device manufacturers and security researchers. And as a result, we're really able to participate in a more consistent coordinated vulnerability disclosure process. And what we talk a lot about is that our customers can't protect what they don't know. And so when security researchers provide BD and other device manufacturers with research about vulnerabilities, it's an opportunity to provide transparency and awareness for our customers. We're always actively working on releasing vulnerabilities. It's really just something that's part of the software lifecycle. And this is really in alignment with making information available to our customers, which really can shows our commitment to manage reported vulnerabilities. So we launched our BD Cyber Trust Center last year in an effort to increase that transparency. And that collaboration with both researchers and customers, we really want to make it easy to connect with our teams. There are forums on our website where security researchers can go through and report a vulnerability. And then the biohacking village allows us to have those in person touch faces. And so this year, obviously, we know there's a lot of virtual sessions happening. And even virtually, we're able to connect with researchers. So it really is a good experience, overwhelmingly positive for both BD and researchers alike to be able to connect and talk through our process around coordinated vulnerability disclosure.


It's very tight knit, very small units of action, you get to know everybody, you get really personally involved in their lives, you get to watch guys on and off as you move back and forth, just grow tremendously. Once you have the badge on your chest, you're part of brotherhood and it's very, very tight brotherhood. I mean, just that inherent level of trust that you're putting in somebody is the thing that I always wanted to be around. Well Navy OD, the simple answer is that we go ahead and defuse any type of explosive anywhere, any time. So when you say, well what do you do for a living? I parachute. I'm like, okay parachuting is just a way for me to get to an ornest prompt. What do you do? I'm a diver, okay? Well that's great but I dive as a way to get to an ornest prompt and that's when my job begins. When something bad happens then you come back and you train to that exact thing.  So all of these things that have happened in the real world, well that was a natural jump from that point to go ahead and go to other mobility skills and so we were some of the first ones that learned how to also parachute so we could integrate with special forces and we learned how to shoot weapons and go ahead and you do small unit tactics so we could integrate with those forces. Well, once you do that type of stuff, it kind of builds an ethos. If you're dedicated and you want to get through, you'll stay every night after and do night study. You'll come in on Sunday and study all day and you have to want it. So it's definitely a team effort and you have to have that bond with each other, just pull each other through. You want that type of character, somebody that falls off the course and can come back on. You can't be a guy that's out of shape and isn't good at running or wants to sit in the truck all the time. You got to have a certain mentality to get out there and run and get ahead of guys. One of the stress course is to get guys doing routine items that you might have to do when you go down on an IED event, whether that's putting on the bomb suit, whether it's operating the robot, whether it's taking an x-ray to see what's inside a package. Well, we want to go ahead and step that up a little bit because you need to be able to do these skills when you're tired, when you're cold at night, all of these things. So they get down to the end and they're going through and they're trying to remember, am I supposed to pull this handle? Am I supposed to wait this long? Is it a 30-second or is it a one-minute wait time? Should I go ahead and put the suit on? Do I have this right piece on? Am I doing it fast enough? And so there's always that element of time along with it because we're pretty competitive. One of the biggest reasons why I keep ran listing is camaraderie. So are you going to break up? We're running doubles, right? Double doors? Should be quick. Being with these guys, being able to know that they've been through the same training that I have, one important situation they'll be able to handle it and safely execute as the training has provided us.  And when you have that, it's not hard to jump out of that plane. It's not hard to go and dive because you fully believe that the planning has been done because no one would ever send one of their brothers or sisters in harm's way without doing the adequate planning and training and making sure that equipment's ready. That is really to me what exemplifies that EOD personality is. That quiet professional that's just going to get the job done, they're not going to let you know how great they are and they're going to move on to the next thing and just treat it as it's just another thing on my list. This is what you told me to do so I did it and I'm going to go ahead and do the next thing.