KCD Toronto Blog

content/en/blog/2026/kcd-around-the-world-toronto/index.md

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+---
+layout: blog
+title: "KCD Around the World: Toronto"
+draft: true
+slug: kcd-around-the-world-toronto
+author: >
+  [Kashish Verma](https://github.com/KashishV999) 
+  [Marino Wijay](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mwijay/) 
+---
+
+
+Welcome back to KCD Around the World, our series traveling through Kubernetes Community Days around the globe to meet the people who make them happen. Talks and sessions are what attendees remember, but it's the volunteers, contributors, and organizers behind the scenes who actually make each event possible, and that's who we're here to talk to.
+
+For our second stop, we're headed to Toronto. And this one's special; it's not just Toronto's first KCD, it's Canada's first KCD ever (yayyyy, big milestone!!!). We caught up with Marino Wijay, one of the organizers, to find out what it took to get there.
+
+## Meet Marino
+
+**Kashish Verma (KV)**: Hello Marino, and welcome. Could you start by introducing yourself and telling us how you got involved with Kubernetes and the cloud native community?
+
+**Marino Wijay (MW)**: Hi, I'm Marino Wijay, one of the organizers behind KCD Toronto. My background is a bit of everything, including physical data centers, traditional networking, the cloud era, and now cloud native. I've been part of the CNCF Canada community for about four years, since around late 2021, when I started showing up to meetups run by the local CNCF community groups.
+
+**KV**: What took you from just attending those meetups to actually organizing them?
+
+**MW**: It started with `<Archie>`, one of the meetup organizers at the time. He invited me to hang out, and I shared what I was working on. That led to a few presentations, and eventually I asked to join the organizing crew. From there, I just kept showing up wherever I was needed, and before long I was opening and closing the meetups myself.
+
+
+## Beyond organizing
+
+**KV**: Outside of organizing, how are you involved in the wider CNCF community?
+
+**MW**: Mostly on the meetup and conference side. Most of my talks and social media activity center on networking technologies. I've spent roughly five to six years deep in service mesh work and have more recently moved closer to the networking layer with tools like Cilium. Beyond that, I try to spend time at KubeCons and helping out at other KCDs when I'm able to.
+
+**KV**: What actually got you into the KCD world in the first place?
+
+**MW**: My first KCD was KCD Berlin in summer 2022. If I had to credit one person, it'd be `<Lexi>`, who I met at a Cloud Native event years earlier. From there I kept attending KCDs, including two trips to KCD New York, in 2024 and 2025. Conversations with `<Julia>` and `<Ahmed>`, organizers of KCD New York, and some encouragement from RBC folks I met there who wanted something similar back home, are what convinced me I could pull this off in Toronto myself.
+
+## Building KCD Toronto
+
+**KV**: With that motivation in place, how did the actual application come together?
+
+**MW**: Around the time we applied to CNCF, RBC, one of the financial services companies,  reached out wanting to be a major sponsor, and committed real funding right away, which helped us lock in a venue before we'd even heard back on our application. Acceptance came in a month later, and by late last year the venue and date were fully booked.
+
+**KV**: Was there anything about running a first-time event at this scale that caught you off guard?
+
+**MW**: Running an event is never fully smooth. You don't know how many sponsors you'll land, how many tickets will sell, or whether every speaker will make it. All you really know is the date is fixed, so your whole job becomes figuring out how not to drop a ball. The biggest challenge for me was managing a larger team, where everyone owns a small piece, and you have to stay informed without micromanaging.
+In the final week, small things kept popping up, like organizer t-shirts that were fully paid for and confirmed on time, but didn't actually arrive until the day before the event. It worked out, but it's a good reminder of how much sits outside your control, especially with a limited budget.
+
+**KV**: With all that uncertainty, was there a moment that stuck with you as especially wholesome?
+
+**MW**: Honestly, how smoothly the whole team operated. We had two teams: a core organizing group and a broader volunteer team covering logistics, CFP reviews, and marketing and communication stayed light enough that nobody was buried in information they didn't need. Disagreements were almost always about wanting more clarity and got resolved quickly. I never ran into real conflict with any co-organizer or volunteer; everyone just took ownership and saw their piece through.
+
+## Event day
+
+![Organizers of KCD Toronto posing together at the event](Organizers.jpg)
+
+**KV**: Take us through event day itself and what was the energy like?
+
+**MW**: Long, honestly. I got there around 7 a.m. and didn't get home until about 12:30 a.m. the next day. Doors opened around 8, and keynotes kicked off just before 9. My co-organizer and I traded off introducing the main stage speakers throughout the day, and we made sure lunch was long enough for people to actually eat and network instead of rushing through it. Energy stayed high overall even if I was pretty drained by the end.
+
+**KV**: Any talks that stood out to you personally?
+
+**MW**: A couple. One was about how a bank handles disaster recovery and multi-cluster setups for its workloads. Another was on golden images, having a known-good state you can always deploy from or roll back to, plus security patching considerations. The keynotes leaned heavily into AI themes this year too. We're hoping to release the session videos by year's end.
+
+**KV**: What was the final headcount, and did it match what you were expecting?
+
+**MW**:We targeted 300 attendees and landed close to 290. Our venue fit that number well. If we are accepted again, we'll be looking at bigger venue options for 2027.
+
+
+## Toronto’s cloud native scene
+
+**KV**: How would you describe Toronto's cloud native community, and what makes it different from other cities?
+
+**MW**: Toronto has a deep bench of companies touching Kubernetes: tech companies, financial institutions, and telecoms. There's also a growing conversation in Canada around data sovereignty and private cloud, which makes this kind of community more relevant than ever to local end users.
+But what really stands out to me is who shows up. Rain, snow, whatever around 20 to 30 percent of the same people are at every meetup, and they're not there for the pizza, they're there to actually learn. That's the part I'm proudest of, honestly.
+
+## Looking ahead
+
+**KV**: So what's next for KCD Toronto?
+
+**MW**: Our application for 2027 is already in, and we're aiming to roughly double in size, closer to 500 attendees. On the agenda side, we've also been informally talking about a possible joint event with AAIF(Agentic AI Foundation) as cloud native keeps maturing, and a lot of the underlying compute is shifting toward AI, so I expect these communities to keep overlapping. Nothing's confirmed yet, though.
+
+
+**KV**: For someone in another city thinking about starting their own KCD, what would you tell them?
+
+**MW**: Start with proximity  if you're within about an hour of an existing KCD, it might make more sense to join forces than compete for the same audience. From there, look at your local companies and whether they're building around Kubernetes, and honestly assess your existing meetup turnout. A consistent draw of 70 to 100 people at regular meetups is a good sign you could support a KCD. And before running your own, I'd really recommend volunteering or organizing with an existing KCD first; it teaches you how the whole system works and gives you a playbook for when you're ready to run your own.
+
+**KV**: Any final words for readers thinking about attending any KCD?
+
+**MW**: Find a way to attend one. If cost is a barrier, reach out to the organizers; discounted or free tickets are usually available. And go with intention: don't try to sit through every talk. The hallway conversations, shared lunches, and casual chats with sponsors are just as valuable as the sessions themselves. That's where a lot of the real networking happens.
+
+## Next Stop
+
+KCD Around the World continues as we visit another community and learn about the people helping Kubernetes grow around the globe. Till then, take care!
+
+
+
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