end user blog (#4813)

* end user blog

* end user blog

* end user blog

* end user blog

* end user blog

* end user blog

* end user blog

* end user blog

blog/config/nav.yml

@@ -47,6 +47,7 @@ nav:
           - articles/build-deploy-manage-modern-serverless-workloads-using-knative-on-kubernetes.md
           - articles/set-up-a-local-knative-environment-with-kind.md
       - Steering Committee:
+          - steering/knative-and-endusers.md
           - steering/cncf.md
           - steering/knative-cncf-donation.md
           - steering/2021-end-user-election.md

blog/docs/steering/knative-and-endusers.md

@@ -0,0 +1,133 @@
+---
+Title: "End Users and Knative"
+Author: "[Murugappan Chetty](https://github.com/itsmurugappan)"
+Author handle: https://twitter.com/itsmurugappan
+date: 2022-03-08
+description: Knative from the lens of an end user
+folder with media files: "images/enduser"
+blog URL: "https://itsmurugappan.medium.com"
+labels: Article
+type: "blog"
+---
+
+**_Author: [Murugappan Chetty](https://twitter.com/itsmurugappan) (Optum,
+representing end users @ Knative Steering Committee)_**
+
+Knative is an open-source community that values end-user
+contributions/interactions highly, this is evident in PRs, monthly meetups,
+slack interactions, etc. To top it all, recently Knative opened an end-user seat
+in the Steering Committee. This is very significant for a couple of reasons
+
+- Instills confidence in end-user organizations to use Knative in production
+- Very few OSS communities have end-user representation in the steering
+  committee
+
+I am pleased to share that I have been elected as the first end-user
+representative in the Steering Committee. In this blog, I would like to share my
+organization’s Knative experience so far.
+
+## Why Knative?
+
+First things first, Knative was not picked for being the next shiny object. The
+whole process was organic. The following factors led to the need for a
+Kubernetes abstraction.
+
+- Mature container ecosystem.
+- Serverless workloads
+- Need for better developer experience than vanilla Kubernetes (deployment +
+  service + ingress + ...)
+
+The situation was ripe for building a new platform on top of Kubernetes. Before
+doing that we wanted to check if we could leverage an existing open-source
+solution, there were a handful of them at various maturity levels, Knative was
+the one that stood out for us
+
+- Best scaling performance compared to all its peers.
+- Developer experience (single Knative service resource yields Kubernetes
+  deployment + service + ingress + certificate + custom domain).
+- Robust Primitives for building a developer platform.
+- OSS Community with a good governance model
+- Backed by multiple vendors
+- Great support for an open and free project
+
+## Implementation
+
+To cater to developers with varying skill levels we built an abstraction on top
+of Knative. This layer kept the barrier of entry low for new users and could be
+bypassed for advanced users. We also built components to integrate with our
+enterprise applications. The below pictures shows our deployment model and
+integrations we have built in-house.
+
+![Platform Architecture](/blog/steering/images/enduser-platform-architecture.png)
+
+![Enterprise Integration](/blog/steering/images/enduser-enterprise-integration.png)
+
+With the above deployment model and integrations, we were able to give clean
+code to URL experience for our internal users. With just a few params,
+developers were able to deploy their services and receive a TLS enabled URL in
+seconds.
+
+## Interaction with Community
+
+Two years since our first Knative service deployment, our platform has grown at
+a rapid pace serving hundreds of developers. This would not have been possible
+without the Knative community support. There are various avenues to interact
+with the community.
+
+### Slack
+
+To this day, there is no slowing down the momentum in the slack channels, most
+concerns get addressed almost immediately. Slack is the place to get started on
+Knative.
+
+### Hacky Hours
+
+If you ask me to choose the best experience of Knative so far, weekly hacky
+hours would be on the top. These casual/virtual meetups used to be on Friday
+afternoons. Every week there were several 'aha' moments with demos by Knative
+maintainers/contributors/end-users. In these meetings, I could get 1 on 1 with
+the who's who of Knative and validate our implementations.
+
+### Monthly Meetups
+
+Hacky hours might have been paused, for now, monthly meetups do happen every
+month. This is a great place to know the project TLDR and some neat use case
+demos.
+[I had the privilege of showcasing our Knative implementation here.](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dfWZRXtVa6M&list=PLnPNqTSUj2hKH5W7GWOZ-mzcw4r3O4bHj&index=3)
+There is no better way to validate an implementation than giving a talk at a
+meetup/conference. For end-users, I definitely recommend demo'ing the solutions
+here.
+
+## Contributions
+
+During our implementation, we did hit some hiccups and some missing features,
+which gave us the chance to open PRs and contribute upstream. The maintainers
+were receptive to our issues and most of them got merged, for the ones that
+didn’t there were valid reasons and good discussions around them to learn. I
+have contributed to most of the repos, but some of my significant contributions
+are to client repo where I was eventually elevated to a reviewer.
+
+Apart from upstream contributions, we have built
+[custom Knative channel](https://github.com/optum/kafka-topic-channel)
+implementation and
+[Knative event sources](https://github.com/itsmurugappan/gql-source) and
+open-sourced under our GitHub org.
+
+Our Knative implementation gave me the opportunity to
+[speak at conferences](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLnPNqTSUj2hKH5W7GWOZ-mzcw4r3O4bHj).
+Most significant being Kubecon and IstioCon. Now with
+[Knative in CNCF](https://knative.dev/blog/steering/cncf/), it should open more
+doors for the end-users to share their story at Kubecon.
+
+## Closing Thoughts
+
+In closing thoughts, I would like to share what Knative has been for me. A
+couple of years ago, I started experimenting with Knative not knowing that I
+would be on the Knative Steering Committee one day. I have not contributed to
+every single OSS project out there but have been part of various communities,
+raising issues, providing feedback, being on the slack channel, etc., with that
+experience I can confidently say being part of this community has been rewarding
+on every front. It wouldn’t be an exaggeration to say that Knative has been one
+of my driving forces during these covid times.
+
+![My Knative Timeline](/blog/steering/images/enduser-timeline.png)