Last year the event was called KCD Warsaw and took place under the wing of the international organisation CNCF. This year the Polish community organised it on its own for the first time, on a non-profit basis. One of the organisers, the CNCF ambassador Wojciech Kocjan, told Polish Radio for Ukraine how the idea was born, who makes the conference happen and whether Poland needs its own AI
“So this is now the second conference we’ve put on here, locally, in Warsaw. Last year we had KCD Warsaw — a conference we co-organised with the CNCF, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. It’s an organisation that supports various IT solutions related to cloud native — that is, you could say, it supports more modern technologies and the use of the cloud in all kinds of applications. This year we’re doing it under our own banner. On the one hand, we’re more independent in this area now. On the other, we’re still doing it together: the CNCF remains our partner, as we mentioned in the opening remarks.
And there’s an interesting story here. The CNCF really did help us a lot, but we wanted a bit more autonomy — over dates, for example. The CNCF had certain dates we would have had to fit into, and they didn’t suit, for one thing, the realities of the Polish weather: it’s better to hold conferences while the weather is still like it is now. So we changed the name slightly, because KCD is the CNCF’s own name, and we couldn’t use it unless the conference was organised strictly jointly with the CNCF.
They’re our partner now, so we’re still on good terms: we have some swag and various other items that we’re giving away together with the CNCF, and they’ve also given us media support. So this is our second conference. We were the first KCD in Poland — people had been trying for several years, but we were the first to actually pull it off. Now we’re running something on this scale on our own, and we’re confident there will be a third year. So far we’ve had positive feedback both from the people at the conference and from our sponsors. And, as everyone knows, you need both to be able to carry on at all, for people to trust you with this. And here we are in our second year, hearing positive feedback.”
Where did the idea come from, and why does Poland need a conference like this? What is the strategy here, anyway — is it just a friendly get-together of people from the industry, or is there a business angle as well?
“A very good question. We started by working with the CNCF, and they’re the ones building a whole format of smaller conferences called KCD and promoting it in different parts of the world — in Europe, in Asia and in the Americas. So the CNCF is building these smaller conferences, smaller communities, as a complement to its big conferences such as KubeCon and the many others it organises. The idea is for this to be a more local community. In our case, we always wanted to bring the Polish community together. There are eight of us organisers now: three from Warsaw, three from Kraków and two from Poznań, both women. So even our own internal community is already very spread out.
There are lots of people here from different places; some of the sponsors are from Kraków too, others from other cities. Basically, a year ago we already wanted to build this kind of Polish community. Some of us had been thinking about it even earlier: the first attempts to set it up go back to before Covid, to 2019. You can find that in the history on GitHub — where the various CNCF-related projects live, because they keep a lot of things on GitHub.
So our first attempts were in 2019, then we had to put everything on hold because of Covid, and only now, with essentially the same line-up, have we come back to it. And it really was about founding a community. What’s important is that we do it on a non-profit basis. Before, it was done together with the CNCF; now we have our own foundation, non-profit by design, and we do this not for money but for the sake of the community. I suppose each of the organisers makes some contacts through it or gets something out of it that helps them grow in the industry. But none of us is actually paid for it. On the contrary — it’s almost a year of preparation so that someone else can, so to speak, benefit from it. What we get out of it, rather, is the fact that we’re building a great community.”
And is this community international, or mostly Polish? Are there people from Ukraine, for example?
“There are people from Ukraine — quite a lot of them. In the room where I was hosting, I think at least two of the speakers were from Ukraine — though of course that’s just my impression. Overall the event is definitely international: first of all, all the talks are in English, which immediately opens the door to anyone who isn’t from Poland. Naturally, conversations in the corridors are more often in Polish than in other languages, but it’s also perfectly normal for people here to talk in many languages.
Warsaw is a city with a great many people from Ukraine, and personally I’m glad of that. I think it’s great that they can come to events like this too — they’re definitely welcome here. As I said, we’re building a community that is local in terms of place. Because when every country has similar conferences on similar topics, people from Spain tend not to come to ours — they might come from Germany or the Czech Republic, which are geographically closer. But whether someone who lives here in Warsaw is Polish or not really doesn’t matter at all. If it’s convenient for someone to come here, everyone is welcome.”
A bit more about the community itself: these are people who work with specific technologies, then, rather than with IT in general?
“Yes, it’s a conference first and foremost about cloud native — that is, about technologies related to the cloud in general, to modern cloud technologies, if you like. But right now the whole industry is also moving very strongly towards AI, so we combine these two technologies — cloud native and AI. Our name is still CND, Cloud Native Days, so as far as the name goes, that’s still where we put the emphasis. At the same time, around 30% of the talks were related to AI to some degree. Some were related to cloud native. But the natural consequence of what has been happening over the past few months — months, mind you, not years — is that this conference is turning towards AI as well, just as, it seems, every company is turning towards AI right now. So the market itself is probably pushing us to make it more of an AI conference a year from now. But that will only become clear later, when we talk about next year.”
There’s also a lot of talk now about Polish AI. Some speakers stressed the importance of, for example, storing data within the European Union — in other words, the split between China, the US and Europe. From your perspective, where does Poland stand in this context, and does it need a national AI, so to speak, at all?
“An interesting question. Poland has a Polish AI called Bielik, but I haven’t used it personally, so it’s hard for me to comment.
I’d say it’s Europe, rather, that needs its own solutions — as a larger union of countries, so to speak. Or in this context perhaps even the European Union, though I’d hope all of Europe — the more Western part, so to speak, meaning pro-Western politically, mentally, whatever you want to call it. I don’t want to get too far into politics here, but in today’s world it’s clear that relying too heavily on technologies from countries further away from us, whether politically or geographically, carries the risk that we could be cut off from those technologies. It once seemed hard to understand why banks or other regulated industries should store data locally, or, I don’t know, why Poland set up Operator Chmury Krajowej [the National Cloud Operator], which also offers cloud services.
Admittedly, it offers them through other companies, but one way or another — in local data centres. A few years ago there were debates about whether this was necessary; now there aren’t any. And I think it’s needed in AI too, because in the IT industry as a whole it would now be impossible to compete without using AI.
And very often the problem is that when we use AI, by default we’re actually using two or three American companies. And I’m very happy to use these companies myself. I’m also in a slightly different situation, because I’m a co-founder of a company headquartered in the United States, so in that sense I’m torn.
But I think many institutions in Europe need to use European solutions. I spoke to a company that operates in Germany and is involved in, among other things, supplying certain items to the military. They had a very clear criterion: a very high percentage of the software has to be made entirely in Europe. And using, say, any AI or any technology that de facto requires infrastructure in the United States means it’s no longer a fully European solution. In the statistics it counts towards that minority which, ultimately, has to be as small as possible.
And I think it’s a good, conscious approach — the fact that we’re moving precisely towards Europe acting as Europe. Because I think it may be hard for Poland to do such things entirely on its own. Of course, if it’s possible, it’s good to do so — but at least as Europe we’re moving towards greater awareness that there is, I don’t know, Mistral, and many other technologies that run entirely in Europe. That’s a very good step.”
Dr. Myroslav Trofymuk
Born in Lviv. Designer, director, musician, researcher, founder of ZEMLA STUDIO. Master of classical philology and digital marketing, PhD in the history of Ukrainian literature. Member of the National Union of Journalists of Ukraine. Since 2022 he has authored the CENTRUM MUNDI audio show for Polish Radio for Ukraine, continuing the same research into the contemporary music scene in Ukraine and Poland.
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