A Saturday at the CNCF & AWS Meetup in Kochi

I spent my Saturday at the CNCF & AWS Meetup in Kochi. I’ve been part of the organising team for years, and this was my second talk for CNCF—the first one was during the community’s inauguration. The day felt a bit special, maybe because I was both organising and speaking, and also because I knew I’d finally get to meet a few people I’ve been wanting to see in person for a long time.

I talked about Observability as Code with Grafana. It’s a topic I’ve been spending time on, and even wrote an article that got published in a well-known DevOps blog recently. With everyone using IaC and leaning into zero-trust models, it felt like the right moment to bring it up.

Here’s the article: devopscube.com/observability-as-code-with-grafana-git-sync/

This time, we had a really good audience. Many of them were high-profile folks from strong engineering backgrounds, and it showed in the way they engaged.

This meetup went longer than usual. The talks wrapped up by noon, and after the photo session people split into small groups and continued their own discussions. Everyone stayed back for a good while just talking and catching up. I was with Adharsh, listening to his usual engineering stories from Rapido, and I also got to meet a bunch of new faces.

Thanks to Sreedhan for managing the coordination, and to Devika for handling the emcee part. They kept the day running smoothly.

I finally got to meet Abin in person. We started as a simple LinkedIn connection, and over time it turned into an easy friendship. Our calls often go beyond tech into things like mental health and community work, so meeting him face-to-face felt long overdue.

He works as a Relationship Lead at Packt, mostly around author acquisitions and developer relationships. He also gifted me a copy of Kubernetes for Generative AI Solutions by Ashok and Sukriti working at AWS. That was a nice moment in the middle of everything.

I met a Technical Project Manager from Wipro during the networking time, and she had actually come to the meetup for head-hunting. She’s hiring bunch of Kubernetes experts for their Kochi team, so if you’re a Kubernetes expert or planning to move back and settle in Kerala, just DM me and I’ll connect you with her. Moments like this are a nice reminder that meetups can open unexpected doors.

One of the nicest parts of the day was meeting my friend Adeeb, who’s been living in Japan for the last eight years & working for Toyota. We first met online while working on a Dark Web Monitoring Tool for Kerala Police Cyberdome, and since then we’ve somehow never missed meeting whenever he’s in India. This time, the meetup itself became our meeting spot. He travelled all the way from Trivandrum and later joined me and my sister for lunch at the Marriott. He also mentors her, so it felt good for all of us to sit together.

Lunch was mostly Japan stories and Toyota work culture, and somewhere in between he gave my sister a bit of guidance. She recently graduated and had been interning at IBM, so he told her not to run behind job titles like Python developer and instead focus on the basics that matter—system design, algorithms, math. He also shared how top product companies care a lot about culture fit. Nothing heavy, just the usual real talk we fall into every time we meet.

Before the day ended, I was already thinking about what’s next. The next DevOps Malayalam Meetup is brewing in Kozhikode on the first Saturday of December. It’s still early, but things are slowly taking shape. New city, new faces, and a different vibe. Should be fun.

✍️ First blog done, and I might even go back and write about a few moments I never posted earlier.