AI
The Project Pavilion as a Community Hub
The project pavilion sits apart from vendor booths. It houses open source projects and their maintainers. Sirchia, who maintains Kubewarden and Helm, opened by thanking attendees directly. The pavilion matters to maintainers who traveled to be there, and to those who couldn’t. George Castro was scheduled to present at the small stage inside it. Helm was considering an additional presence. The pavilion is where conversations happen without a sales pitch attached.
Finding a Project Worth Contributing To
Sirchia’s advice: find a project where maintainers come from only one company and you’re from somewhere else. Walk up. They want to talk to you. Projects with a single-company maintainer set are actively looking for contributors from outside. Talking to them at the pavilion takes five minutes. If you heard something in the lightning talks that caught your attention, go find the booth and have the conversation. Open source relies on this kind of in-person introduction to pull in new contributors.
Surviving Your First KubeCon
Sirchia saved the last minute for first-timers. Hydrate. Wear shoes you can walk in all day. Relax and don’t overdo the evening events. He admitted his first KubeCon left him rough the next day. The open source community at this conference is large and the schedule dense. Project maintainers are accessible in the pavilion, but you have to show up with energy to make those conversations worthwhile. Pacing through the week matters.
Notable Quotes
the project pavilion means a lot to all Robert Sirchia · ▶ 00:08
they’re interested in talking to you. Robert Sirchia · ▶ 00:52
hydrate. Hopefully you have good shoes. Robert Sirchia · ▶ 01:02
Key Takeaways
- Visit the project pavilion to meet open source maintainers without vendor-booth pressure.
- Projects with single-company maintainer sets are actively looking for outside contributors.
- First-timers: hydrate, wear good shoes, and pace yourself through the social calendar.
About the Speaker(s)
Robert Sirchia is Director of Technical and Community Marketing at SUSE, with over 20 years in technology. He spent most of his career in .NET and Microsoft tooling before moving toward cloud as .NET became a first-class citizen on cloud platforms. At KubeCon EU 2026, he represented both Kubewarden and Helm as a core maintainer.