Updated: This article was updated to reflect current news about KubeCon Europe.

The Cloud Native Computing Foundation has two messages for the enterprise tech community: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe, set to be held in in Amsterdam, will be postponed until summer, and attendees should be prepared for a few changes in the program tracks.

“The health, safety, and wellbeing of our attendees and staff are our highest priority, and we know that what makes KubeCon + CloudNativeCon such a great event is the people who gather there,” according to a statement released on March 4 by CNCF staff. “Thus, after discussions with many community members, we have made the difficult decision to postpone KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Amsterdam (originally set for March 30 to April 2, 2020) to instead be held in July or August 2020. (We’re finalizing the date and will announce it shortly.) We expect that by mid-summer, there will be more clarity on the effectiveness of control measures to enable safe travel to industry events like this one.”

“The tracks for KubeCon have been pretty stable since the inception of the conference,” said Vicki Cheung (pictured), engineering manager at Lyft Inc. and co-chair of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon. “Use cases have started shifting. This is the first year when we started talking about adjusting the tracks.”

Cheung spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, at theCUBE’s studio in Palo Alto, California. They discussed plans to manage health concerns, potential changes in conference content, and the value in participation by larger firms. (* Disclosure below.)

Managing health and new tracks

The spread of coronavirus worldwide has led to corporate travel bans and prompted cancellation of some technology events. As with many global conferences this year, organizers have taken steps to educate attendees in advance.

“The message is don’t panic and be reasonable on how you interact with people,” Cheung said. “Respect personal space and don’t shake hands.”

One popular session track may split in keeping with the growing popularity of Kubernetes as a key container orchestration management tool, according to Cheung.

“Application development has always been a really large track,” Cheung said. “There’s a lot of things people are building on Kubernetes, so we didn’t want to be too proscriptive.”

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon will still include participation by many of the larger companies, including major cloud players. It’s a dynamic that Cheung believes adds important value to the overall conference experience.

“They just have a lot of experience operating many clusters and large infrastructure, and their experience in scaling that out is helpful to companies like Lyft or other startups that are just trying to scale their deployments,” Cheung said. “I see them contributing a lot to the community. They definitely are very open to collaboration.”

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s CUBE Conversations. (* Disclosure: Cloud Native Computing Foundation sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither CNCF nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE