IstioCon blog post (#8984)

Co-authored-by: Frank Budinsky <frankb@ca.ibm.com>

.spelling

@@ -82,6 +82,7 @@ Acmeair
 addon
 addons
 AES-NI
+Airbnb
 AKS
 AKS-Engine
 Alibaba
@@ -102,6 +103,7 @@ appswitch
 AppSwitch
 args.yaml
 AssemblyScript
+Atlassian
 AttributeGen
 Auth0
 AuthenticationPolicy
@@ -294,6 +296,7 @@ FQDN
 frontend
 frontends
 gapped
+Gather.town
 gbd
 GCP
 GCP-IAM

content/en/blog/2021/istiocon-2021-program/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,29 @@
+---
+title: "IstioCon 2021: Schedule Is Live!"
+description: Learn about sessions, panels, workshops and more on the IstioCon website.
+publishdate: 2021-02-16
+attribution: "Istio Steering Committee"
+keywords: [IstioCon,Istio,conference]
+---
+
+[IstioCon 2021](https://events.istio.io/istiocon-2021/) is a week-long, community-led, virtual conference starting on February 22.
+This event provides an opportunity to hear the lessons learned from companies like Atlassian, Airbnb, FICO, eBay, T-Mobile and
+Salesforce running Istio in production, hands-on experiences from the Istio community, and will feature maintainers from across
+the Istio ecosystem.
+
+You can now find the [full schedule of events](https://events.istio.io/istiocon-2021/schedule/) which includes a series of
+[English](https://events.istio.io/istiocon-2021/schedule/english/) sessions and
+[Chinese](https://events.istio.io/istiocon-2021/schedule/chinese/) sessions.
+
+{{< image width="75%"
+    link="./istiocon-program.png"
+    alt="IstioCon logo"
+    >}}
+
+By attending the conference, you’ll connect with community members from across the globe. Each day you will find keynotes,
+technical talks, lightning talks, panel discussions, workshops and roadmap sessions led by diverse speakers representing the
+Istio community. You can also connect with other Istio and Open Source ecosystem community members through social hour events
+that include activities on the social platform [Gather.town](https://events.istio.io/istiocon-2021/networking/), a live cartoonist,
+virtual swag bags, raffles, live music and games.
+
+Don’t miss it! [Registration](https://events.istio.io/istiocon-2021/) is free. We look forward to seeing you at the first IstioCon!