This transcript captures the opening remarks and welcome address by Kevin Nilson, MC and Program Chair, at GRPC Conf. The address celebrates GRPC's 11th year of continued relevance and growth, highlighting significant community engagement, upcoming features like early access Rust support, and the project's pursuit of CNCF graduation, the highest level of maturity. Nilson acknowledges key sponsors (Google Cloud, CNCF) and committees, provides an overview of new developer resources, and showcases impressive download statistics, emphasizing GRPC's sustained adoption and evolution in the cloud-native ecosystem.
GRPC Conf: Welcome and Key Updates
0:00 Welcome to GRPC Conf: Kevin Nilson, MC and Program Chair, kicks off the event, introducing himself as a GRPC steering committee member.
0:26 Diverse Speakers & Conference Legacy: The conference features talks from major companies like Apple, Cloudflare, Mastercard, Netflix, and LinkedIn. GRPC is celebrating its 11th year, having marked its 10th anniversary last year, demonstrating its continued relevance.
1:46 Audience Demographics & Engagement: Attendees include local Bay Area residents and international visitors. Many are first-time attendees, while some have joined previous conferences, including one in Detroit. Free Wi-Fi is available for Alphabet guests.
2:43 Expanding Language Support: A quick poll reveals widespread use of GRPC in Java/Kotlin, Go, Python, .NET, and C. The newest and most exciting development is early access support for Rust, which includes previews and a dedicated code lab, a feature requested by the community at previous conferences.
3:36 High Polyglot Adoption: A significant majority of attendees use GRPC in more than one language, with many using three or more, highlighting its versatility in multi-language environments.
4:05 Google Cloud: Diamond sponsor, providing the venue, food, t-shirts, and bags.
4:26 CNCF (Cloud Native Computing Foundation): Recognized for significant support to the GRPC project and conference.
4:42 Pursuing CNCF Graduation: GRPC is in the final stage of the CNCF project lifecycle, signifying the highest level of maturity, adoption, and community support. The graduation application will be submitted within the next week.
5:08 Governance Rework: With CNCF's help, GRPC has completely rewritten its governance and created a new steering committee to guide its future. Richard Belleville will give a talk on these changes at 1:50 PM.
5:40 Program & Organizing Committees: Thanks extended to the program committee (Antoine, Eric, Trrenthi) for content selection and the organizing committee (Kathy, Celia, Cheryl, Stacy) for logistics, with a special shout-out to Kathy.
6:26 GRPC Steering Committee: The newly formed committee, comprising long-term contributors, is presented as the driving force for GRPC's future direction.
7:27 Notable Community Contributors: Lucio Franco is recognized for his significant contributions to the Rust implementation, and Antoine (from Data Dog) for major contributions to the Go codebase, earning him a promotion to maintainer.
8:10 Community Resources: Key links provided for engagement:
Documentation: grpc.io
Google Group: groups.google.com/grpc.io (for user discussions and ideas).
YouTube Channel: Actively updated with new video content as a modern documentation format.
Meetups: Sunnyvale (Google campus), Bangalore, and virtual meetups.
Announcements: Posted on X (Twitter).
9:31 Enhanced Developer Guides and Code Labs: The team has made significant improvements based on user feedback, including six new user guides, new examples, and new, easier-to-consume code labs (including ones for Rust), which will be offered throughout the day.
10:32 Impressive Growth and Adoption: A growth chart of the main GRPC repository clearly shows continuous growth in relevance and users over its 11 years, driven by maturity, bug fixes, and performance improvements.