ADAM GLICK: Hi, and welcome to the "Kubernetes Podcast" from Google. I'm Adam Glick.

CRAIG BOX: And I'm Craig Box.

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I did tell everyone change was afoot.

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHTER] Well, hopefully, it has two feet at least. Otherwise, buying shoes is going to be a little awkward. You've got some change coming, don't you?

CRAIG BOX: Any excuse to have you back on the show. I thought I'd pull the nuclear option at this point. I can really only do that once.

ADAM GLICK: True enough. It's always great to be back and meet with you.

CRAIG BOX: I want to ask you about what it's like to not work at Google anymore.

ADAM GLICK: Google's an amazing company. And it was a fantastic place. I met so many great people like yourself that I've maintained friendships with since then. What I will say is you're going to have to learn to make, pack, or order your own food now.

CRAIG BOX: I've been working remotely for long enough. It's second nature really.

ADAM GLICK: No mini kitchen. [LAUGHTER]

CRAIG BOX: That was always the trade off that I had to think about in London is do I travel all the way into London, get a free lunch for the price of 10 pounds of my rail ticket? Or do I just walk down to the supermarket at lunchtime?

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHTER] That is probably the most clear and obvious thing that changes in your lifestyle. It's like, OK, I've got to think about feeding myself now, which seems kind of silly to say but is actually, just from a day-to-day part of it, is one of those things of, you're like, oh, lunch is different. Breakfast is different.

CRAIG BOX: I will say one of the things about the pandemic, and thus the remote work it's spurred for a lot of people, is a lot of people did change jobs. They didn't change much. They didn't go anywhere different. They sat in front of the same computer. It was a very interesting transition. And it'll be quite similar for me, I guess, working remotely.

ADAM GLICK: Same with the people that you stay connected with. Like I said, I met so many wonderful people there. And, even post-Google, I stay in touch with so many of them. I keep in touch with what's going on. We still text. And so the relationships are always the most important thing, at least for me.

And many of those endure beyond the time at any particular company because Google has a thing called boomerangs, I know you're aware of. So just because you're leaving doesn't mean you won't come back to Google at some point.

CRAIG BOX: Well, unfortunately, because I'm leaving, it does mean that this is my last week with the show. But as I did point out last time, there is always the possibility of bringing people back as guest hosts.

ADAM GLICK: It does happen. I can attest. And as a listener who has listened through the entire catalog and been there for a good portion of it, I do hope that I get to hear you on the podcast as that podcast moves forward.

CRAIG BOX: Well, that is very kind. I hope to pop back up here in the future. And also keep your ears open to a few other places in the tech industry because it's very likely I might pop up there too. We do have a couple of new hosts who are going to be taking the show forward from this point. And now let's have a chat with them. First up on our new team, it's Abdelfettah Sghiouar. Abdel, how are you?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: I'm good. How are you doing?

CRAIG BOX: I'm very well. Thank you. It's great to see you. You've been in Morocco this last week at Devoxx. What was that like?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: It was pretty cool. It's my third edition in this conference. I've been coming here for many times, getting a little bit more and more involved. And I have a community here of people that follow me. And it's pretty cool to be with people.

CRAIG BOX: Is this one of the first major events you've been to in person in the last few years?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: No. I've been to a couple of events before. But this is the first edition of the Devoxx Morocco since COVID. So the last one was 2019. And this was the first time after a two-year post.

CRAIG BOX: It was one of my metric degrees here last night. Does it ever get down to one degree in Morocco?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: It depends. Where we are right now, no because we are by the coast in the south, so closer to the Sahara. In parts of the country where it's more mountainous, it might. But not Swedish below zero, let's say.

CRAIG BOX: Yes. I should say that you're normally based in Stockholm. Was there a big transition going, first of all, from Morocco to Belgium and then to Sweden?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yes. And let's just say I'm not looking forward to go back next week so.

CRAIG BOX: Well, I worked in Google for almost nine years. That's a little less than you as it happened. And I never set foot in a data center. That's probably reassuring to our listeners. I didn't try very hard. But they are famous for their colored pipes and bicycles and all that kind of thing. You, I believe, have spent a lot of time there. Tell me what they're like.

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yeah. I spent the first four years of my nine years Google in the data center in Belgium. I worked in data centers before Google. Our version is quite different. They are big and noisy warehouses with hundreds and hundreds of machines.

CRAIG BOX: Come on, that must be a little bit of a low estimate, Hundreds of machines?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yeah, like a couple of thousands. [LAUGHTER] That's a very good point. A couple of thousands of machines. Fun facts, we don't call servers "servers" at Google. We call them machines. So it's a physical thing. The physical hardware, we call that a machine. The software is what we call a server, usually.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. That concept does carry through to Kubernetes as well. As all those things that have [INAUDIBLE] They're servers.

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yes. That's actually very funny when I do talk about machines. And people come later to me. And they're like, what do you mean by a machine? Because people, when they think about machine, they think about a thing that does stuff, like a physical machine that makes things, not a server.

CRAIG BOX: Do you have a robot vacuum cleaner?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: I do. And that's also a machine.

CRAIG BOX: Do you have a house over more than one floor?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: No. I have an apartment. But I have a balcony. And my robot vacuum cleaner have tried to suicide once.

CRAIG BOX: I'm very sorry to hear that.

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: So I had to block it in the [INAUDIBLE] [CHUCKLES].

CRAIG BOX: When I was in England recently, I saw one place that looked like it had a robot lawnmower. And it seemed like the same concept basically, just put a Roomba out on lawn but put a blade on the bottom of it and hope that the cat stays far enough away.

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yeah. What can go wrong, right?

CRAIG BOX: Now, does this mean that turnabout suggests that I now get to be a guest on the cloud careers podcast?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yes, when that thing restarts, hopefully very soon. But yes, anytime.

CRAIG BOX: Was that a pandemic project?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: It was. Very true, it was. There is a little bit of story for that podcast. I started it as a way to address all the questions I got on LinkedIn about cloud, and what does it mean to work in cloud. So it was a way to introduce my network to an audience and let them see what does it actually mean to work in cloud. I had to take a break because I got busy. But hopefully, we'll be back soon.

CRAIG BOX: I believe you got busy in terms of joining developer relations.

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yes. A little bit before with other stuff, but yes. When I joined DevRel, I got very, very busy.

CRAIG BOX: Now, one of your talks I will have to take exception with as someone who has worked here on service mesh for many, many years, you like to tell people that you don't need a service mesh. Why, why must you break my heart in this way, Abdel?

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: OK. Let's make something clear. My talk title is “You probably don't need a service mesh.”

CRAIG BOX: Oh, there we are, hedging.

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Yes. I gave that talk to Morocco, Devoxx Morocco. I gave it in Dublin. I gave it in a bunch of other places and online. So I think I'm sort of spreading the message around. But, so the purpose of that talk really is to kind of give the audience my four-years distilled experience of implementing service mesh, when I was in PSO, about all the pitfalls, all the things that people have to pay attention to before they go hard on the technology.

Because it's an all-or-nothing technology that, once you turn it on, there are things you can't just turn off. And you have them. And you have to take care of them.

CRAIG BOX: Well, that's the good thing about this new ambient model. We fixed all that for you. So you mentioned PSO there. That's Google's Professional Services Org. You were helping customers there for the past four years figuring out how best to implement all this Kubernetes stuff. So I feel you're going to be in a great position to take on the show going forward. So congratulations and welcome.

ABDELLFETAH SGHIOUAR: Thank you very much. I hope I'll do a good job.

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CRAIG BOX: Our next new co-host is Kaslin Fields. Welcome to the show, Kaslin.

KASLIN FIELDS: Hi. Thanks for having me.

CRAIG BOX: This is an audio-only medium. So of course, the first thing I want to talk to you about is illustration. Are you available for commissions?

KASLIN FIELDS: I do get that question sometimes. And I have actually done a few commissions.

CRAIG BOX: Tell me, though, about the process of teaching Cloud Native to people visually.

KASLIN FIELDS: I have one particular analogy that I have kind of started with and really grown over time, which is about containers and cookies. And the origin of that was, I was working at a company where I was the main container person. And the main folks that I worked with were sales folks. And they were hearing about containers from their customers and looking to explain to their customers how that related to the kinds of deals that they were trying to set up.

So I had to explain it in a way that was easy for anyone to grasp, regardless of their familiarity with the technical area, and that would stick with them enough that they could then go and explain the high-level concepts to customers. So that's kind of how it got started.

CRAIG BOX: So how are containers like cookies?

KASLIN FIELDS: The way that I like to describe it is that containers are all about applications. And I am a chocoholic.

CRAIG BOX: Fair enough.

KASLIN FIELDS: So my favorite part of a chocolate chip cookie is the chocolate chips. So just like chocolate chips are the best part of a chocolate chip cookie, your applications are the part that makes your container worthwhile. All of the rest of it is kind of like the other ingredients of the cookie. You take all of the dependencies that that application needs, you mix them all together, and bake them up into a convenient, portable package. And so that's our container.

CRAIG BOX: In my country, cookies are called biscuits. How far can we draw this analogy out?

KASLIN FIELDS: You know, the first time I gave this analogy as a lightning talk it was actually at KubeCon EU. And so I felt very awkward using the term cookies when everyone there normally used biscuits. But I just went with it. And it worked.

CRAIG BOX: I think "Sesame Street" has done its part to make sure everyone around the world knows what a cookie is.

KASLIN FIELDS: Seems like it.

CRAIG BOX: Cookie is good, obviously, because it's a global word. And if I were to go give a talk about biscuits here in New Zealand, that'd be fine. If I were to take that to the US, they eat them for breakfast with gravy. And that would be strange.

KASLIN FIELDS: Yeah. That is one of my favorite American dishes that I feel like folks outside of the US might not know about or might not have ever had. I make a mean biscuits and gravy. So if you're ever up my way, let me know. And I'll make you some biscuits and gravy.

CRAIG BOX: Do you have sweet biscuits? Of course, the closest analogy I can think of is the scone.

KASLIN FIELDS: Yep. Exactly. Scones are basically a sweet biscuit.

CRAIG BOX: Could we put chocolate chips in a biscuit?

KASLIN FIELDS: Yeah, absolutely. Actually, one thing that I talk about in my analogy is that there are different types of container runtimes. And they put the pieces of a container together in different ways. So think about it kind of like a chocolate chip cookie versus like a shortbread cookie with a chocolate backing, those types of cookies.

CRAIG BOX: What about oat and raisin cookies that don't have any chocolate in them at all?

KASLIN FIELDS: Well, those are just wrong. And you just shouldn't do that.

CRAIG BOX: Shots fired.

KASLIN FIELDS: [LAUGHTER]

CRAIG BOX: You have a lead for the contributor comms subproject in SIG contributor experience. We've had a lot of people on the show over the years, going back all the way to episode number one, who are involved with that group. You have many different tasks there as I understand it. You were involved in communicating around the steering committee election. But I want to ask specifically about the upcoming contributor summit. How do we make sure that everyone knows where to go?

KASLIN FIELDS: That's a major component of being in charge of comms for the contributor summit. In fact, in Valencia, we had some issues because the contributor summit was in a different building. So literally, where to go for the contributor summit was something we had to communicate.

But the main part of the job is making sure that we're sending out emails regularly so that people know that registration is open so that they know where to find further information, which we have on [INAUDIBLE] When the schedule comes out, we'll release that.

There was a CFP for content for the contributor summit. So we made sure that people knew about that. We use Twitter, email, and Slack, basically, to make sure people know.

CRAIG BOX: If you have a big group of people who are all going to the after party for an event, a good way to make sure they know where to go is to make sure they're all wearing the same hoodie.

KASLIN FIELDS: That is true. And speaking of art, might I mention, the hoodie that we're having for the Contributor Summit North America this year, I actually created the design that's going to be on the back and also on the front of the hoodie. So I'm very, very excited to see them in person.

CRAIG BOX: You'll see those wandering around the streets of Detroit. I'm sure. Motor City, you've got their Motown influence there.

KASLIN FIELDS: Yeah. There's going to be a little bit of a Motown theming to them. So if you see really cool hoodies around with a bit of a Motown theme plus Kubernetes, then you'll know where they came from.

CRAIG BOX: Does it make it less cool to have Kubernetes plastered all over it?

KASLIN FIELDS: Depends on who you are.

CRAIG BOX: Do they still make cars in Detroit?

KASLIN FIELDS: I don't know.

CRAIG BOX: We hope so.

KASLIN FIELDS: I've got to find out while I'm there.

CRAIG BOX: Sounds good. All right. Well, welcome to the show family, Kaslin. It'll be great to have you here.

KASLIN FIELDS: Thanks so much for having me. So nice talking with you.

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CRAIG BOX: As I mentioned last week, I will say again, it has been one of my greatest privileges in this role to be able to talk to you all each week. And it is one of my great regrets that I will not continue that going forward. But it is always nice to be able to reminisce and to talk to people that you've been involved with on the show, that you've met through the show, that have listened to the show. And so, Adam, I thought you and I might like to do a little bit of looking back at our times together through the four years of the show.

ADAM GLICK: There's so many things that coming together. Have we ever talked about the origin of the show, like how this came to be?

CRAIG BOX: No. That would almost come dangerously close to us interviewing each other.

ADAM GLICK: Well, you still have a chance to get that MoMA badge for being both the guest and the host, a coveted double badge.

CRAIG BOX: Remind me of how things came about to start with.

ADAM GLICK: What many people probably don't know, because you and I are and continue to be such great friends even outside of this, was that we didn't start off as great friends at Google.

CRAIG BOX: Not at all.

ADAM GLICK: We worked in different groups, worked together on a bunch of things. But we often were coming up with similar ideas, thinking about things in similar places. And the podcast was one of those that, I had an idea to do a "Kubernetes Podcast." I thought there was a real opportunity for us to use audio as a way to help the community and reach out to them. And you, at the same time, literally had the same idea.

CRAIG BOX: I did.

ADAM GLICK: And we started talking about it. And I forget who I mentioned it to. Because someone knew that you were thinking about the same thing. And as I was working around in Google to try and kind of turn this into a 20% project, someone said, oh, well, you know, Craig's working on something like that.

And so we got together. And we met, or at least virtually met, and took our two ideas and put them together. And that's what actually made the podcast. Do you remember? When you were thinking about it, you and I had slightly different visions on what it could be, and those came together.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. We did. I will say that what I had envisioned and the kind of things I enjoy listening to and the kind of content I was looking to make was more what is now the second half of the show, was the interview piece. I think there's a certain timelessness to that. And I think it's interesting to learn the social part about why people do certain things.

A lot of people have come to me in the time that I've been hosting a podcast at Google and said, hey, I want to make something to teach people something. And I'd say, I don't think people learn from podcasts. I think that if you want to learn something, that needs to be the thing that you're focused on.

And Google obviously has a video platform that's really good if you want people to sit down and focus on a thing. Podcasts are consumed by people who are out listening while they're walking the dog; while they're driving to work, if that's a thing people still do; while they're doing the dishes. And I've always found that just having something that's interesting but you're not trying to go too deep into learning something. That, for me, is the sweet spot at least.

ADAM GLICK: And I remember that I was, at the time, looking at all the time that I spent. I'm a huge podcast person, was then as well, listen to a ton of them. And I spent a significant amount of my time every week looking at news, staying up to date on what was happening because the Cloud Native community is so dynamic. There's so many things going on.

And I was like, man, can there be some place where I can just listen to a curated set of news and understand what are the big stories that are going on and then know what I need to drill deeper on?

And so I was like, I want to do news, which is like the exact opposite. I want something that's super timely, that three years from now, I don't know if you really care what the news was. But you certainly care about it this week. And you had the flip side of it of you wanted evergreen content of really interesting conversations with luminary folks.

CRAIG BOX: Why can't we have both?

ADAM GLICK: Exactly. We married the two of them. And that literally was the format. And I think it worked out pretty well.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. I will say, though, the thing that I've found is that the thing that people listen for, that they tell me about at least, is the thing that you brought to the show. And I think that people have told you the same in return. It's that a lot of people say, hey, I listen to this because I need that download of information. They love the interview segment as well. But the timeliness is super relevant to them. And that's something that I just wouldn't have brought to the show myself. It's brought a lot of people in.

ADAM GLICK: That was our instant product market fit, part of the design of what we got a chance to build. But we also had a lot of conversations about what should the content be. And in particular, although you and I were both working at Google, was this going to be Google's view? Or were we going to try and make a community podcast? And you had a lot of really good insight there.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. I mean, I like to think that we say "from Google" as in the official name of the show for trademark reasons at the beginning of the episode. But from that point on, it's basically a community show. It's completely neutral. We've always made sure to have a very neutral focus in terms of how we report the news and who we talk to. It's definitely not Google's mouthpiece. It's definitely not Google is only who are encouraged to be on.

We definitely cover everything as fair and as community of fashion as it is. And I hope that's always come through in what we're trying to do.

ADAM GLICK: That's one of those things we looked at. And there was a lot of questions that we got both from other companies. Like, I remember we were talking to folks who are big in the Cloud Native community but weren't at Google that were very skeptical about coming on to the show. They're like, hold on, does that make sense for us?

And both internally, the company and hats off to the folks — obviously, a big company, you have to go and work and make this process happen, work with a lot of folks, get approvals. And folks gave us the bandwidth to say, hey, you're going to build something that's great for the community. We think that's good, go ahead and do that.

And we got to bring on people from Red Hat, and from Microsoft, and from VMware and all sorts of other players, both big and small in the community. And I just don't think we would have been able to do that at many other places. And along with that, we never took sponsorship, obviously.

CRAIG BOX: No.

ADAM GLICK: We were approached about it numerous times, about sponsorship and placement. And we always wanted it to be noncommercial. We wanted it to be a community thing.

CRAIG BOX: I guess if I'm leaving, that means I can take sponsorship now. If anyone wants to send me a t-shirt, I'll wear it on my home office.

ADAM GLICK: If you need some stickers, by the way, I do still have a few of the "Kubernetes Podcast" stickers.

CRAIG BOX: Tell me the story of how we came to have the "Kubernetes Podcast" stickers.

ADAM GLICK: If you have the first generation of stickers, they look just like the icon you see in your podcast player. The first generation of those were just straight promo pieces. We went and — taking a step back, what many people also don't realize — I've had people ask me like, how many people work on it? Who's doing all the research for it?

They don't realize the show is literally you and I. And then a couple of years into it, we got some program management support. And we've had an editor. But that's kind of it.

The research was the two of us looking each week, the workflow. This was before a lot of the regular tools were out there. And so we literally built the tools ourselves that do all the production pieces of it. The website, I think you worked with Amit on it?

CRAIG BOX: I did. Shout out to Amit there for helping out.

ADAM GLICK: It was a DIY kind of thing. The original XML was literally crafted by hand for the feed as we built it.

CRAIG BOX: Artisanal hand-crafted XML.

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHS] There we go.

CRAIG BOX: Tell me, Adam, that sounds like a lot of work for two people. I hope one person doesn't leave throughout this process.

ADAM GLICK: Oh, no, maybe two. But the stickers were much the same way of like, hey, we've got a graphic. Let's do it. That fits with that. And then we had different generations of it. And as we went into the second generation of the graphics, one of the things that you and I decided is this was about the community. It wasn't about us, at least outside of this episode. And so if you take a look at what we did, many podcasts tried to brand the personalities. Our pictures aren't on the front of the website. You've got to drill down before you find any of that stuff.

It's not on the icon for it. This wasn't about us. It was always about the technology in the community we both share an incredible passion for. But when we did the second generation of them, we did end up with some anthropomorphic animals. Do you recall?

CRAIG BOX: Some members of the open source team here had been working with a design company that specialized in cartoon logos. And they'd designed the gRPC dog. I think it was called Pancakes. It was a golden retriever named Pancakes. gRPC, that's a deep cut for anyone who's interested. But we met with them. And they sort of came back with some animal icons that were thought for the show and thought, well, hang on. They've sort of got this whole bird theme here. We both come from places that have a national bird. Let's see if we can bring that in, reflect a little bit of the host personality.

ADAM GLICK: Yeah. I don't think we ever named them. But there are some stickers out there that have a kiwi and a bald eagle.

CRAIG BOX: Why does the eagle have to be bald, Adam?

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHTER] I think they mapped it after me. For the record, I always say it's a shaved head and not bald.

CRAIG BOX: OK.

ADAM GLICK: You know, you've done a tremendous number of these episodes. I'm curious if any of them stand out in your mind. Any interesting ones, favorites, things that you think back on?

CRAIG BOX: As I mentioned before, the stories behind how things came to be are very interesting to me. And I try not to ask too many questions about the specifics of technology because a lot of the people we talk to work on different things. And something else that we don't explicitly point out, but we might mention at this point, is we basically have a rule that says people should only be on the show once. And we don't go back and bring a guest on, with a couple of exceptions, which we'll talk about later on. But we have that one opportunity. And so it's nice to get a bit of background and history and so on.

And so the ones that stand out to me are the ones that sort of differ from the whole "person comes on and talks about their own technology." And a lot of people have interesting stories. In the most part, we've done the recordings remotely. But on occasion, we've done them in person with people. Those ones, I think, stand out a bit more for me because just they're different obviously.

But a couple of things, first of all, we can be in the same room together, which is something else that we'll touch on in a minute. But some of the people we've met, which is generally when we've been at conferences, had interesting stories that we've been able to tease out in a more personal environment.

One I think that came up for both of us when we were talking about this before was talking to Mark Shuttleworth.

ADAM GLICK: Oh, yeah. That's the episode that I always — if people haven't listened to the podcast before, and especially folks who aren't deep in the Cloud Native community yet — I tell them start with that, because. Though we talk about technology, we talk about many broader topics there. He's a great person to talk to. He's super interesting.

CRAIG BOX: Oh, and he's been to space.

ADAM GLICK: Yes. Yes, which we talk about in the episode. There are those fun episodes that kind of, for me, stand out of, like Mark Shuttleworth. And that's always, to me, when people ask, who are just kind of part of general population, check out that episode. It was episode number 60. And it was just one of those really great conversations.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. It can be really hard when you've got someone who has such an interesting background in something else. And they're working on something new and technology relevant to the audience and so on. But you really just want to say, well, hey you made two number-one records. Let's talk about that for an hour.

ADAM GLICK: Yeah. Or there are certain guests, we interviewed a Dan Ciruli on Istio. And for any of you who haven't had a chance to meet him, he is a blast. And he is an amazing person, really quick wit. And again, another one of those where just you find yourself laughing and smiling through the entire time. And so those both shown for me.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. Some of them that I remember for the process as much as the actual content of them. Do you remember that — I may be going something different than what you think — do you remember when we interviewed Joe Zou from Tencent in China?

ADAM GLICK: Oh, yes. I do. We were at KubeCon And I think it was the only episode that we had done where we had a translator as part of the process.

CRAIG BOX: We did. Ray Wang, who is PM team lead here at Google, very kindly volunteered to translate for us. But we would ask our questions in English. And Ray would translate them into Chinese. And Joe would answer. And we recorded all of the channels of this. And our editing friends — big shout out to Paul for all the work he's done throughout this entire run.

I still refuse to believe that there's only one Paul. It might be an entire team behind that. But our team did a great job mixing in a little bit of the original answer in Chinese and then figuring out so that our English speaking audience was able to hear Ray's translation of the answers.

ADAM GLICK: That was a really interesting one. Most people don't know, but you and I actually, I don't think ever met in an office and only got together a few times in the years that we'd worked together. One of those times was, when we think of interesting episodes, I refer to as the episode that wasn't. So there are a few episodes that we've recorded but never made it into the feed. And I remember we were at KubeCon in China.

CRAIG BOX: Same one.

ADAM GLICK: And really got the honor and privilege to talk to Brendan Burns. But it turned out afterwards that we had technology problems and that we only actually had half the interview recorded.

CRAIG BOX: Recording in China is quite difficult. We didn't want to be journalists. We didn't want to bring in gear with us which may have triggered the rules at the border that apply to journalists. So basically, we turned up with our laptops and some headsets as people are wont to do.

And we just had some conversations with people. And we tried to record them as best we could. But the challenge that we had was that a lot of the recording software that we use that synchronize between computers sends stuff off to various cloud providers. I don't think it was our cloud provider. But it was another one.

ADAM GLICK: A cloud provider.

CRAIG BOX: And a challenge that you have working in China is that not all connections to American companies are always allowed.

ADAM GLICK: We never had a chance to get him back onto the show. But that was one of the interviews that — he's a very interesting person. He has lots of interesting things to say. And I was always sad that we couldn't find a way to get that interview and that content together, because I thought it was definitely one of the more interesting conversations we had.

CRAIG BOX: When we talk to people on the show, we prepare them in advance a little bit with a few things that we want to do. And I always tell people it's not a script. We don't want to go through everything top to bottom. It's more, come the end of the show, I would hope we talked about all these things. And if we haven't talked about them, then we'll bring them back up there.

Do you remember we had one guest who decided that they would write out every word they were going to say in response to every one of those things in what must have been a 12-page script?

ADAM GLICK: I don't remember who it was. But yes, I remember that they were very nervous about it. And we use a shared Google Doc. And so they can see all the questions. And they can edit. And I just remember going into the doc and being like, oh, wow. Oh, wow, they've scripted this all out.

CRAIG BOX: And you can tell the difference between someone reading a script.

ADAM GLICK: Who was it?

CRAIG BOX: I'll tell you afterwards. I'll protect their privacy. But I will say that I warned this person in advance. I warn everybody in advance who wants to do a bit of planning. People can tell the difference between people talking off the cuff and people who are reading a script.

And I tell you, for someone who was a little bit worried about their public speaking ability, they nailed this. This person just managed to deliver the whole thing as if they were doing it off the cuff. I was so impressed. I thought, no, you're going to be able to tell for certain that they are reading the script beginning to end.

But, coming through the process, I listened two or three times to each episode as I go through and do the editing process. Not at all, I couldn't tell at all. No one ever mentioned anything about it. Congratulations, you know who you are. You've got away with it. Well done.

ADAM GLICK: You know, what I'd say is that person is clearly bound for greatness. If they can do that, executive keynotes, that's going to be their thing.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. I'm pretty sure you were here for that one. And you don't remember who it was. So they succeeded perfectly.

ADAM GLICK: Exactly. We've alluded to it a couple of times. But do you remember the secret "Episode Zero?"

CRAIG BOX: I do remember the secret "Episode Zero." We have a theme tune which we've had on the show since day one. But it wasn't quite day one where we had the theme tune on the show. We had to put something out there before we started the process of recording just to submit the feed to the Apple Podcast directory and so on. So we came up with "Episode Zero."

ADAM GLICK: That's right. It's the only show that has a different theme song than all the rest. I don't think it's in the feed anymore. But the file might still exist, for those who do a little bit of reverse engineering. And there's an app I have on my phone for those who are music lovers, Kaossilator app. And I just kind of like threw it together in that. And it's on there. And you had the good sense to say, hey, why don't we have someone write a song? Which was the nicest way to say this is not going to be our music. [LAUGHTER]

CRAIG BOX: No. I'd say you're a talented guy. And you could have given the brief, turned something around. But I also think that I probably edited that one myself in terms of the audio which will, again, be the only time that one of us had to do all the mechanics of lining everything up there.

ADAM GLICK: Yeah. That was back, I mean, people don't realize how handcrafted the show was of like, we wrote the XML feed ourselves, literally recording the MP3s, editing them, going in and doing the ID3 tagging. The whole bit was manual. And then we started to actually write our own automation to do that, which I think you still have a lot of that automation running, right?

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. So many of the pieces there are still what you were lovingly calling "marketing guy code" earlier.

ADAM GLICK: Yeah. Yeah, you were talking about the fact that some of them have static names. You'll notice every episode has the same name. And they're separated by what the episode number is. But there's a whole process. And you can go in and change that. I wrote the code, stuffed it in a container so it was easily portable, and then just gave it so that whoever's running the process could go and execute that. But that's marketing guy code. You don't want to trust that for production, do you?

CRAIG BOX: We are both present and past and future hosts of the "Kubernetes Podcast." Do you want to know what the first thing I did was with the code that you just mentioned that you gave to me?

ADAM GLICK: What?

CRAIG BOX: I pulled it out of the container and just ran it locally on my laptop.

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHTER].

CRAIG BOX: It's so much quicker. All of this container malarkey.

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHTER] The irony in that is not lost on me.

CRAIG BOX: Do you remember the occasion where we were at KubeCon in San Diego? And my laptop decided that a day before publishing the KubeCon episode it was going to fail.

ADAM GLICK: I believe it was thirsty if I recall the failure mode for that.

CRAIG BOX: I hadn't remembered that. What did I do? No, I couldn't have.

ADAM GLICK: I think you spilled a drink on it, because I think you had a very wet laptop. And you were pouring it out. And it was not to be revived.

CRAIG BOX: Yes. That was a shame. I was able to get hold of a Chromebook pretty quickly. And even the screen was at fault. So we thought, if we're able to get enough pieces that I was able to plug it into a TV or a monitor or something else, I might be able to get to the point where I can do all the publishing stuff without needing to re-evaluate my security settings and get access to something else at short notice.

But again, the episode, I think, went out pretty much on time. And in the most part, if I hadn't mention it now, no one would ever have known.

ADAM GLICK: Yeah. The way that the tech was pulled together, and now we use an online recording tool for it. We did before, I think, that was switched, I don't know, in the episode 120, 130 time frame. But the online tools are pretty good these days. The one thing we'd always tell people and for any of you out there whoever start your own podcast, or go on a podcast, the one most important thing — get yourself a good microphone.

CRAIG BOX: Absolutely.

ADAM GLICK: Almost everything else can be papered over. But if you've got bad audio, that's very hard to fix. It's a good rule in general. Even with my teams now, what I say is you're on a ton of meetings all the time, get a good webcam, get a good light, get a good microphone.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. And not in that order, I should point out. You can look like a potato. But as long as you sound nice, people will take you more seriously.

ADAM GLICK: At least in podcast land that's true.

CRAIG BOX: We talk there about meeting in San Diego. And we've referred back to it a number of times. I did the math. I went through. And my theory, at least for how I should prove this, is, when we've been together in the past, we've taken selfies or had pictures taken of us. So if my calculations are correct, we have been together in the same place on six occasions.

ADAM GLICK: Wow. And we did, what, like 130 episodes or so?

CRAIG BOX: At least.

ADAM GLICK: So yeah. I don't think people realize, not only were we not together, but in most cases, we were separated by an ocean. So time zones and latencies were all sorts of interesting factors as part of the process. And hopefully, none of that came through.

CRAIG BOX: It wasn't always the same ocean either. I remember at least one occasion. I was recording a part from Hong Kong. And it was a giant, echoey room. And we were trying to do something about that. But I think you weren't even in Seattle at that time. I can't remember where you were that week. But remember, when we used to travel places? Weren't those the days?

ADAM GLICK: They were indeed. Tons of episodes and two kids. So…

CRAIG BOX: One each.

ADAM GLICK: Lots of things have come out of the show.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah.

ADAM GLICK: We talked a little bit about music. And you and I are big music fans. And you and DJ Fresh brought up one of the things that we've noticed is the love of music and people involved in music in the Cloud Native community.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. We talked a little bit. The outtakes of the show which we keep for the special B-sides album which will drop later this year. But about the people we've spoken to on the show obviously, we had David Pait who was a touring band for a while. We've had various people, Guinevere and Melanie, who are classically-trained musicians in the past. Then you've got Mr. Kaossilator, the theme-tune man, here.

ADAM GLICK: I remember Ed Wang was the guy from PingCAP who was into metal. And we just had a bunch of folks, plus you and I and our dalliances in it. And I don't think that's an accident actually. I think there's a crossover there that makes a lot of sense if you think about it. Many of the people that we've had the good fortune to meet in the community are incredibly creative folks of which music tends to play a big part in their lives. And also, music is one of those things where you can really build it yourself.

Well, if you think about, other than if you have like a giant orchestra, in most cases, you're talking about DJs or people building their own stuff by themselves in terms of musical orchestration or working with a fairly small group. And that's fairly analogous to what people do in terms of software creation and working in tech of.

For me, I loved music. I love playing music. I also like coding. And those are both things where I can build whatever I'm imagining, that the friction between what you can think of and what you can create is much lower than, say, if you are a civil engineer.

Because if you're going to go build a bridge, you're not just going to go, pour the concrete and build the bridge yourself. You need a lot of people to do it. But if you want to write code for something, you just go write the code for it. And same thing is true with music. So I think that there is a really a logical tie between.

And also, many musicians throughout history have been hackers in the most positive sense of that word, whether it be Jimi Hendrix going and slashing parts of the speakers in order to create more distortion for what he's doing, people that have wrapped their own coils for their guitars to give themselves different sounds, DJs that go in with synthesizers and actually literally craft the sound that they want to do.

That's the same thing developers and IT folks, people that are working in tech do, is they're taking these primitives and turning them into whatever the creation they want to make is. So it doesn't surprise me at all that there's that overlap. But it was only in hindsight that it started to dawn on me after we started to see so many people who were that way.

CRAIG BOX: If you do play an orchestral instrument, you can still play it yourself. And you can, like a trumpet player or a violinist or something, probably a little bit less if you're the tympani or the triangle. It's possibly not something people are going to go watch a solo performance of.

But you can be part of a greater whole. And you can do interesting things. And you can work on a smaller scale. Like, as you say, though, if you need to be part of a team building a tower. Perhaps you can build one at home out of your LEGO if that's what your thing is, which I'm sure you do a lot of these days.

ADAM GLICK: Indeed. But you could also work together with a community. I mean, it's one of the great things about the Open Source and Cloud Native community, is that you have a bunch of people that all come together and contribute what they can to build a bigger whole.

CRAIG BOX: As I've mentioned at length, one of the pleasures of the show has been getting to know and to meet a lot of those people. And one of the things that is a little bit different from our perspective is the fact that we have a lot of people who listen to us that we don't know about.

From where we sit, which, again, is in two different small rooms in two different parts of the world, we're just recording a thing and pushing buttons and putting it out there. Even when I did a little bit of work at a radio station when I was younger, it was weird to think, all right, well, this tiny, little room is reaching all of these people. But you really don't know it when you're in the room.

ADAM GLICK: True enough. And funny, you and I both also share a little bit of radio background. But the fact that people hear our voice and that we've had the great privilege to be able to be that voice for people doesn't necessarily put a face on it. And so have you ever been at an event where someone has recognized you?

CRAIG BOX: More than I might have been comfortable with.

ADAM GLICK: That's always one of those wonderfully serendipitous moments. I remember being at a KubeCon. And I'm just sitting down in one of the sessions, sitting next to someone because I'm attending. I love it. And introducing myself to the person who's sitting next to me and we're talking.

And he does this look at me. And then he looks down at my badge. And then he looks back at me again. He says, Adam Glick. I said, yeah. He's like, as in the "Kubernetes Podcast." I was like, yeah. It was just because there's no way to know what you or I look like. And so there was kind of that recognition moment.

And it was wonderful to have someone who recognized you but also to meet the people that listen because it's the whole reason that you and I did it. This community is just so full of such great people, not only to get the great stories and talk to people, but also be able to share that with such a wonderful community, such a gift.

CRAIG BOX: I believe it was Stephen Fry that said he wants to be able to separate the ideas of being rich and being famous. He said it's great to be one, but not necessarily great to be the other. And one thing that is very true about the things that we've done here is that I could walk through a room of people and those of whom I've met before or maybe who have seen me talk might know who I am. But even if everyone in that room listened to the show, I just need to keep my mouth shut. And I'm fine.

ADAM GLICK: I had the inverse experience, too, of one of the people — we won't say who it is. But one of the folks who was a guest on the show, I actually was flying back from a KubeCon and was sitting next to them on a plane, didn't know that they would be a guest that came up a couple of weeks later.

And we literally had a three-hour conversation just talking about the world, kids, work, all interesting stuff. And then we were thinking about our upcoming shows. And this person ended up being a guest. And they came on the show. And of course, I recognized the name. I knew exactly who it was.

And they had no idea who I was and hadn't connected that they literally spent three hours talking to me on a plane. And I don't think we ever mentioned it in the show. It was one of those things, there's that interesting anonymity in that as well.

CRAIG BOX: Was this just a conversation that you struck up at random with the person next to you? Or did the two of you at least know you'd been at the same event?

ADAM GLICK: If I recall, I believe that they had a sticker or something from KubeCon that kind of identified that they were at the event. So I started talking to them about Kubernetes and what they did. And I can spend hours talking tech with people. But also, we branched into all sorts of interesting things, just like a lot of the conversations do where people that have multiple dimensions, and just learning about their family what they do at job, their creative aspect as they were also someone who was very creative, was trained in the arts.

CRAIG BOX: KubeCon people do tend to be easy to spot at airports. There are a half dozen t-shirts. If you're wearing one of these, then, you know.

ADAM GLICK: It's a big community, but a great community. So as we're digging through the archives here, let me hit you with a trivia question. In general, we don't tend to have a person on more than once. But that isn't a hard-and-fast rule. How many times has someone been on the show more than once who wasn't a host?

CRAIG BOX: Yes. Well, for a period after the show, I did have people who had been guests in the past come back and join us as guest hosts. So I know that's not what you're talking about here. I like this rule. I think it's an important thing to make sure that we have a diversity of guests. There are so many people who we could talk to every time. And I remember that there was one exception that we explicitly made and then one other that happened by chance. So I'm going to say the answer is two. Is that right?

ADAM GLICK: Yes. I think you remember who both of them are.

CRAIG BOX: Yes. So the first one was a deliberate choice. Our very first guest was Paris Pittman, who was a community manager working at Google at the time--

ADAM GLICK: That's right.

CRAIG BOX: --and was our very first guest. Not the first episode we recorded, I should point out.

ADAM GLICK: But the first one we published.

CRAIG BOX: Indeed.

ADAM GLICK: It's number one in the feed.

CRAIG BOX: When we had our 100th episode, we decided that we would bring Paris back on. I think she may have left Google or have been in the process of leaving Google at the time. And that's one of the great things about this community is that you do keep in touch. And a lot of people who continue to work in the Cloud Native community, even when they change companies-- wink, wink, nudge, nudge.

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHTER]

CRAIG BOX: But we bought her on as our episode 100 guest and got her perspective on how things had changed. And it was a nice way to cap that off. And so it's a shame, obviously, that this is episode 192. We only had eight to go. But we'll have to see what the new people do when that milestone rolls around.

ADAM GLICK: Google is full of such great people and great talent. And Google has a good view of what they want to do. So I'm looking forward to what those shows are, and very optimistic that I think that it'll continue to be a great resource for the community, and that I'll continue to listen and hear great stories and news from people who are bringing the broad view.

CRAIG BOX: Tell us then about the second repeat guest.

ADAM GLICK: So I was going to ask you that. If when you think about guest number two was on twice. But the first time that they were on, it was a little different than the second time that they were on.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. So, again, in this particular case, it was a subtle difference that I think allowed me to make an exception. So two things we like to do. We like to have people on who are the co-chair of the KubeCon at the time. And of the people who were available to us, because the first rule effectively says don't repeat people, they rotate through chairs. But one person will do two or three events in a row.

So the person who was most available to us at the time for the KubeCon in EU was Ricardo Rocha. And he and I did an interview together in person at the event, which was nice.

Again, only a few of these that we do get to do in person. But Ricardo had been our guest again in person at a previous KubeCon in EU, quite possibly the one before that happened in person because there were those couple of COVID years that the gas leaked, and we don't really talk about anymore. But he was one of three guests at the time with the CERN team who had just done a keynote about their use of Kubernetes. And we had the three of them join us in the same recording sessions as we did Mark Shuttleworth, if you recall.

ADAM GLICK: Mm-hmm.

CRAIG BOX: I will link a picture in the show notes of Adam. One of the things about Adam, those of you who have met him in person, he's a lovely guy, has a completely normal-looking face. But you point a camera at him. And he just does that thing, you know, with the grimacing and the fingers or whatever. It's like, look at me. I'm having my picture taken.

ADAM GLICK: Now, oh, my gosh. [LAUGHTER]

CRAIG BOX: Can you see that?

ADAM GLICK: [LAUGHTER] Oh, my. I think that dates back to that interesting bit of the total early trivia of when I was in college, I looked around. And I was in a fraternity in college. And you look at these pictures on the wall. And you have all the members. And they're all dressed up. And they all kind of look the same in their suit and that. And then you look back 20 years, 30 years. And of course, they're wearing clothes that are for their time frame. And so they don't always age well. And so I was like, well, if you do something funny and fun, it'll always be remembered. It will stand out. It'll be fun.

And so I was like, I'm not going to be on the front of any magazines or any catalogs. But I can have fun with the pictures. And to this day, normally, when I'm taking pictures, even like with my wife and our daughter, I'll always do one with goofy, funny faces.

CRAIG BOX: Have you ever had your picture taken with Corey Quinn?

ADAM GLICK: I have not.

CRAIG BOX: I'm not sure the world could stand that much.

ADAM GLICK: I was about to say. I mean, I think he's cornered the market on that one. You need a straight man in order to be the funny guy. And in that case, I'd have to be the straight man. I would love to meet him someday, though. Corey, if you're listening.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. Corey, again, in one of those we-may-or-may-not-remember situations, Corey and I actually met on a bus in Russia.

ADAM GLICK: Wow. How did that come together?

CRAIG BOX: We were both talking at a conference over there. It's called DevOops. It's like DevOps. But it's like, oops, we didn't mean to do that.

ADAM GLICK: Do they play Britney Spears at the kickoff?

CRAIG BOX: I don't recall. I may not have made it to that one. But I'm going to pretend that they did. But anyway, we had a city tour was arranged for the speakers the day before. And I remember having a chat with Corey on the bus and hearing a little bit. And I didn't think either of us really knew who each other was. I'm not even sure. This may have been just before I was doing the podcast, actually.

But it's just interesting to hear people, again, their perspective on things when you don't really know who each other are. And then, as you go on over time and things diverge, it's like thinking back to some of those conversations.

So it helps you put people in perspective. And again, the person you spoke to on the plane, I don't know whether or not that impacted some of the questions you asked them and the interview for example.

ADAM GLICK: It did, though. Again, we never brought it up. But it's the people you meet and the things you do. And even across the podcasting sphere, if you even look across the world of quote, unquote "media" that we are all being a part of, and it's a small, tight-knit world. I remember we'd do recording.

And the folks from the news stack would literally be in the room right across from us. And we'd come in. We wanted to see what kind of gear they had. And they'd be telling us how they're doing pieces. And it's a very congenial world. And that's one of those things, if I look back, for me, it was the people, the people in the community.

It always comes back to the people, the people in the community that we got to meet, that we got to share with, that we got to help educate, the people that reach out on Twitter and just, like, hey, I got into the community because I was listening to what you're doing. Hey, you guys inspired me to go and switch jobs and get something that was better for my opportunity.

That's the thing that just warms my heart to think that we're doing something better and bigger than ourselves. And for me, that was the biggest takeaway and the thing that I walk away with my heart just full of love about.

As you look back, and as you're moving on to your next step, what do you remember most about it? What will you take away from the show?

CRAIG BOX: Well, similar to what you were saying there, it's all very well seeing a dashboard that says this is the number of people who download the episode. The reality of podcasts is that people will have them automatically downloaded because they subscribed once. But there's no guarantee that that person listened to it. And even if they did, there's no guarantee that they took anything from it.

But occasions where we've mentioned things on the show, where we've talked about concepts and things, and people have come up to me and said, hey, I really appreciated that thing. Or even just in announcing last week that I'm leaving the show, I had people ping me and say, hey, after hearing you on the show, I did this thing.

I have a colleague that I work with who had been a guest on the show afterwards as well who was a fan of the show. And that's how they decided that they wanted to come and work at Google. I've had people who decided that's how they want to get into developer relations.

ADAM GLICK: That's awesome.

CRAIG BOX: There are so many people at Google who have been into this. One thing that is a shame that we never really got around to is, for a period, the building, there were a bunch of buildings on the Moffett place campus. And so they were all numbered MP1, MP2, et cetera. And all of the people working on Kubernetes were in the third building. And so as podcast hosts, I thought Adam and I needed to get t-shirts made for everyone that said we're big in MP3.

ADAM GLICK: Yeah. I was going to say, do you have any things that you wish you would have done? That that certainly sits in that category of things. You and I talked about a lot. I always wanted to try and find a way that we could crowdsource an intro or an outro to the show. And we never found a way that we could make it work, and we could get consistent audio quality. And something that's one of those things that I look back. And hey, to the new hosts, as you come in, maybe that's something you'll be able to do.

Because I think it's a great way to help the community be a part of this, because this podcast really is not Google, it's not Craig, it's not me, it's the community that really is the genesis in what makes this podcast real. And I always thought that would be a great way to start bringing more of the community into it, more than just the interviewees, but some of the people that are even just listening but really love it and be able to be a part of it.

CRAIG BOX: Yeah. We'd always talked about doing segments of some sort, so a support ticket of the week, or a tool of the week or something like that. We kind of fell into our formula. And then we kind of got feedback that those were the things that people liked. So we haven't really diversified too much from that. But that would be another way to bring a different set of voices and aside from us every week. And there will obviously be two new voices on the show going forward. So it'll be interesting to see where they take it.

I do also want to thank anyone who made the effort to come and see us when we went to KubeCons. We would quite often do a listener meet up. And we got some gifts as well, some great gifts that people brought to us. And yes, we enjoyed that. It's something I really wish we were able to do more of.

And unfortunately, with the way things panned out over the last couple of years, there's been a lot less of that. But just a way of putting these faces to names and saying it's all very well that occasionally five or six people will ping. But it's really only when you trigger something that's very specific to someone that they have the opportunity to reach out.

And the whole 1% of your audience might do this kind of thing. It's like, well, 1% of that 1% cared enough to come and find us at our KubeCon booth meet up. And I really appreciate those people who did.

ADAM GLICK: Yeah. That was great. And people who reached out online, I won't be at this upcoming KubeCon. But I hope to start being at KubeCon starting at the KubeCons next year. And so hopefully, we'll get a chance to still meet up with folks. And hopefully, the new hosts will have a meet up. And I can be there as someone who's an aficionado of the show and shake their hands.

And I had that weird experience of, I started a radio show long, long ago. And I started it as a thing I did as a summer whim at a radio station. And then I handed it off to one of my friends. And then they did it. And they handed it off to someone.

And it ran for 13 years. It was only shut down a few years ago. And I don't know, like, 6 years into it, and it'd been handed off to a number of different people. And I remember seeing a promotion for it. There was a street music festival in Minneapolis where I'd started the show. And I went up, and I met the person who was doing the show then. And they, of course, have no idea who I am or where it come from.

And it was just interesting to see that they'd put their own kind of touches on it. They made it their own. But it was still the same show, same style of music that we'd focused on, and to see something evolve and grow and breathe and all the energy that people had brought into it.

So, from my standpoint, I wish all the best to the new hosts and look forward to the life that they breathe into it and the new, fresh things that they help make this a great part for the community for. And thank you to all of you who have listened and for your indulging us and allowing us to be that voice in your ears.

CRAIG BOX: Absolutely. And that feels like as good a place as any to say thank you, all, very much for listening. I've been Craig Box.

ADAM GLICK: And I've been Adam Glick.

CRAIG BOX: We won't be back with you next week. But I'm sure you'll hear from us again. Thanks very much for listening.

ADAM GLICK: Take care.

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