We Didn’t Start the Fire: Communication Breakdowns and How to Prevent Them

The presentation discusses the importance of continuous improvement and effective communication in the Kubernetes community, using examples of past incidents and failures as learning opportunities.

• Continuous improvement is essential in the Kubernetes community
• Effective communication is crucial to avoid panic and misunderstandings
• Lessons can be learned from past incidents and failures
• The Docker shim deprecation and Pod Security Policy deprecation are examples of communication breakdowns
• The Contributor Comms Committee was formed to improve messaging to users around changes and deprecations

The speaker shares a personal anecdote about a Twitter drama involving the Docker shim deprecation announcement, which caused panic among users and taught the community the importance of understanding other people's perspectives and communicating effectively.

When the Kubernetes project was smaller and fewer people used it, core maintainers could assume shared context, and we didn't have to think about communication as much. We've grown a lot since, but we haven't always adjusted these assumptions. We don't all know each other anymore, and can no longer rely on everyone sharing the same context or concerns. With more growth, communication becomes more critical.Design decisions and the way we communicate about them are affected by the assumptions we make about each other. If we aren't careful, problems can arise for everyone. The Dockershim deprecation conflagration is one example of how this can go wrong, but it wasn't the first or the last communication breakdown of its kind. Let's look at this history together, learn from it, and figure out how we can prevent such breakdowns in the future.It's on all of us to work together to address this. We can do better when we come together, communicate more, and check our assumptions. We've got this.