Speaking #

Past Talks #

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon US November 2023 - From Desktop to Production, Build Applications Everywhere, All at Once on Kubernetes #

Rancher Desktop, The SUSE Enterprise Linux Base Container Images, and Epinio (a Kubernetes based PaaS) are covered as we show you how to effectively use them in your development environment. Note, this was a sponsored session. Read More

The slides and video is available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon US November 2023 - Keeping Helm Reliable and Usable #

Helm is a foundational part of the Kubernetes ecosystem. With so many building on top of Helm, we look at how we keep it reliable, usable, and stable while still iterating on the development. Read More

The slides and video is available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon US November 2022 - Keynote: CI/CD Isn’t Reserved For Software #

In this Keynote, Erin Boyd and I provide updates on what the CNCF Technical Oversight Committee has been doing. This includes the continuous updates and improvements the TOC has been implementing. Read More

The video is available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon US November 2022 - Learn About Helm And It’s Ecosystem #

There is an ecosystem of applications and tools that surround Helm, the package manager for Kubernetes. In this session we look at how this ecosystem is enabled and the types of tools in it. Read More

The slides and video is available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU May 2021 - Taking the Helm: Becoming a Maintainer #

Helm, like other CNCF projects, is managed by maintainers. In this session, attendees learned what it takes and what’s involved with being a Helm maintainer. Read More

The video is available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA November 2020 - Helm: Past, Present, Future #

What will Helm 4 look like? This session looks back at Helm’s past then moves to the present and what the future may hold. Read More

The video is available online.

Note, this was also presented at QCon Plus in November 2020.

Orchestructure July 2020 - Helm 3 #

A look at Helm v3 that including a comparison to Helm v2, a look at migrating from v2 to v3, what happening with the community charts, and more. The video is available online.

Kubernetes Forum Seoul 2019 - Keynote: Getting To Know Helm 3 #

Helm version 3 was recently released with new features and a new architecture to support those features. The changes to Helm and charts were based on feedback, changes to Kubernetes, and lessons learned in the past couple years. Read More

The slides and video are available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019 - CNCF Project Updates - Helm #

Given during the CNCF project updates during the first day keynote, the Helm update covered what has happened with the Helm project in the past year including the Helm v3 release.

The slides and video are available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019 - Intro: Kubernetes SIG Apps #

Kubernetes SIG Apps covers developing, deploying, and operating applications on Kubernetes with a focus on the application developer and application operator experience. In this session we will focus on the Workloads API (e.g. Deployments, StatefulSet, DaemonSet, Job etc.), the Application CRD, and the supporting elements to make application developers and operators successful with Kubernetes. That includes using the Kubernetes API to run your workloads and leveraging Kubernetes resources to develop Kubernetes native applications. Read More

The slides and video are available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2019 - An Introduction to Helm #

CNCF Helm is a package manager that provides the tools to find, share, and install and manage software in Kubernetes. In this session you will learn the basics about using Helm. We will look at the makeup of charts, the packages for Helm. From there we will explore the ways to share and consume charts. To complete the lifecycle, we will look at installing and managing charts in a Kubernetes cluster. Helm is a project that was first introduced in 2015 and was part of Kubernetes prior to the creation of the CNCF. It entered the CNCF as part of Kubernetes and grew to eventually became a sister project, alongside Kubernetes, in the CNCF. Read More

The slides and video are available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 - Helm Intro #

Helm is a package manager that provides the tools to find, share, and use software built for Kubernetes. The package management features allow you to define, install, and upgrade applications while also handling dependencies on other applications. In this session you will learn about: - Why Helm and package management are useful to applications in Kubernetes - A brief history of Helm - The different parts of Helm and how they work together - Publicly sharing applications through charts - Where Helm is headed. The slides and video are available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2018 - SIG Apps Deep Dive #

Kubernetes SIG Apps covers developing, deploying, and operating applications on Kubernetes with a focus on the application developer and application operator experience. In this deep dive we dove into technical topics those in attendance wanted to cover including the Application CRD/Controller, the workloads APIs, and more. Read More

The video is available online.

Orchestructure October 2018 - Exploring the Future of Helm #

Helm, the defacto package manager for Kubernetes, is a powerful tool going through a period of breaking development. Join us as Matt Farina, a Helm Maintainer and co-chair of sig-apps will explore some advanced and often overlooked techniques; along with discussing the future direction of the project and the major changes in store for Helm v3. Read More

The video and slides are available online.

2018 Helm Summit - Testing Lessons Learned From The Community Charts #

The community stable and incubator chart repositories have come a long way since they were created. One area that has helped to keep changes coming while keeping the charts stable is testing. Over the past 6 months the testing setup has grown to provide faster more thorough automated feedback. In this session we’ll explore how and why those improvements work so that can apply them in your own environments. Read More

The slides and video are available online.

2018 Helm Summit - Measuring How Helm Is Used #

We measure what we want to understand. Some measure how mobile and web applications are used. Some measure how desktop applications are used. Almost everyone is monitoring who uses their websites and what kind of content is useful. And, some measure how CLI applications are used.

This lightning talk looks at what measuring Helm’s usage could look like and what similar applications have done. Read More

The slides and video are available online.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2017 - SIG Apps Update #

SIG Apps is the Special Interest Group for Kubernetes that Covers deploying and operating applications on Kubernetes. In this session I provided an update of what has been happening in SIG Apps and where it’s going. This includes Helm, Charts, the Workloads API, and more. View The Slides.

CloudDevelop 2016 - Dipping Your Toes Into Cloud Native Application Development #

Building cloud native applications in containers is a new hot topic. Netflix and Google are two prime examples that have been doing it successfully for some time. Some of the new exciting projects like Docker and Kubernetes are focused on cloud native applications in containers… But, what does this look like in practice and how do you start the move to cloud native and containerized applications? View The Slides

CloudDevelop 2015 - A Dive Into Containers and Docker #

Docker, containers, rkt, kubernetes, the Open Container Project, CoreOS, and RancherOS are some of the new buzzwords in cloud. If you’ve read any articles on them you may have been left thinking this is the new hot technology space but you’re unsure of how to leverage it in your own environments. You may even still be wondering how this, in a practical sense, is different from working with virtual machines or the other platforms you’ve been using… View The Slides

CloudDevelop 2014 - Why OpenStack Matters And How You Can Get Started #

Cloud computing is going through a change for two big reasons. The revelations from Edward Snowden are causing cloud and data location strategies to change. And, enterprises are entering the cloud market with new use cases… View The Slides

BDPA - HP Helion #

To help the Black Data Processors Association of Detroit have a better understanding of OpenStack and Cloud Foundry, I co-presented to the local organization on these technologies. Read More

DrupalCamp MI 2013 - Secure Your Site #

Attacks on sites for small businesses are on the rise. According to a recent study by Verison, more than 70% of attacks were for businesses with fewer than 100 people. This is just one of many metrics showing sites are being attacked. Sites of all shapes and sizes are being attacked and successfully hacked.In this session we’ll look at what’s happening and some practical measures to protect sites, data, and end-users. View The Slides

DrupalCon Denver - Front-End Performance Improvements #

According to a study done by Strangeloop, 97% of the time it takes to render a page happens in the front end for mobile devices. For desktop computers it’s at 85% of the time. We put performance as a gate in Drupal to help speed it up. The biggest area for gains is in front end performance… Read More View The Slides

DrupalCon Denver - Faster Mobile Sites #

Mobile websites are not known for their fast performance. This combined with the massive uptake in mobile computing over the last few years has cast a bright light on mobile website performance. While the Drupal community has been focused on performance for many years in the form of technologies like memcache, APC, database clusters, and other serving technologies these only minimally impact the performance an end user experiences. On mobile devices 97% of the time a page takes to load happens in the front end… Read More View The Slides

DrupalCon Denver - Using Sass & Compass In Drupal Theming #

In recent years, front end development tools have come a long way. Gone are the days of suffering through remembering multiple browser vendor prefixes. We can now focus on what matters most: Writing the code that makes our designs unique. Matt Farina and Nathan Smith will be presenting on how to use Compass/Sass in your Drupal workflow, significantly speeding up the processes of working with CSS. They will guide you past the mental hurdle of “not invented here” and explain how Ruby and PHP can be the best of friends. Or rather, how using Sass does not require much Ruby knowledge at all… Read More

DrupalCamp MI 2011 - Building Faster Websites #

Performance matters for websites and web applications. In this presentation we focused on practical ways to speed up a websites performance as seen by the end users. View The Slides

DrupalCon Chicago - Faster Front-End Performance #

Focusing on making web pages render faster in browsers is an under hyped form of performance optimization. While most performance sessions focus on varnish, memcache, and other technologies to scale a site or make the server run more efficiently we will focus on making pages render faster in browsers. This includes image, JavaScript, and CSS optimization as well as some browser characteristics we can use to our advantage… Read More View The Slides

Museum Computer Network Conference 2010 - Event Calendars #

Event calendars for museums, where there are complicated rules, is a difficult problem. At the MCN 2010 we presented a solution built on top of the iCal specification that met the challenging needs of museums. View The Slides

Design4Drupal Boston 2009 - Introduction to jQuery in Drupal #

For designers who want to learn to code this was an introductory session teaching how someone can leverage jQuery as it is present inside of Drupal. View The Slides

Design4Drupal Boston 2009 - How we can make Drupal better #

Learning to contribute to open source in general and Drupal specifically can seem like a daunting task. In this session we introduced the contribution process and discussed hurdles. View The Slides

DrupalCon DC - Building Church Websites With Drupal #

Churches are not like businesses. They’re not even like non-profits. Churches (and other ministries) are unique in their goals, their approach, and their challenges. In this session, Mustardseed Media Inc owner, Bob Christenson, and his Developer and Podcast Co-Host Matt Farina, will present how they build church community-style websites using Drupal on a daily basis, talking about the modules and approaches used to create successful sites… Read More

Geeks and God Interactive Church and Web 2.0 Conferences #

Two conferences that I co-organized and presented at on the topic of websites for churches and ministries. In the conferences we spoke about leveraging the web and web based technologies to enable ministries to be successful.

Creative & Technical Arts Conference 2007 - Podcasting #

At a time when podcasting was relatively new, Bob Christenson and I presented about podcasting. We covered technologies anyone could use along with the process of putting together a show and episodes.