Kyverno at ContribFest: Community, collaboration, and the power of open source in action

Why ContribFest matters for open source Sharing the Kyverno story Three groups, three journeys Learning together, across experience levels Community, sustainability, and the role of supporting organizations Looking ahead to Europe Posted on December 23, 2025 by Cortney Nickerson, CNCF Ambassador and Head of Community at Nirmata CNCF projects highlighted in this post A few weeks ago at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Atlanta, the Kyverno community had the opportunity to participate in ContribFest , one of the most energizing and community-driven initiatives in the cloud-native ecosystem. While ContribFest sessions are listed on the official event calendar, many people across the broader community still don’t realize these experiences exist—let alone understand how impactful they can be for networking, learning, and truly “finding your place” within open source. Kyverno has been a longtime host of ContribFest at KubeCon, and our Atlanta event proved to be one for the books with 60+ participants joining in the fun. ContribFest is one of the many initiatives supported by the CNCF that reflects what makes open source truly special: shared learning, collaboration across company lines, and a welcoming on-ramp for people at every stage of their cloud-native journey. As a project, Kyverno strongly believes in these types of programs, not only because they help grow individual projects, but because they also strengthen the entire cloud-native ecosystem. Open source thrives when people with different backgrounds, goals, and experience levels come together. ContribFest events create the perfect environment for this to happen in a way that is both inclusive and deeply practical. At our Kyverno ContribFest event, we welcomed a wide range of participants, including: People new to open source who wanted to understand how projects function behind the scenes and learn to contribute to the community Practitioners exploring Policy as Code and evaluating Kyverno for future adoption Current end users refining their existing implementations and hoping to learn more advanced ways to deepen and optimize their setups Long-time community members and advanced adopters building complex, production-grade workflows excited to contribute to the roadmap and meet other community members for collaboration and learning opportunities The result of this mixture of folks coming together is always the same: an experience that is enriching for everyone involved! Newcomers gain confidence, experienced users deepen their understanding and find ways to give back, and maintainers walk away seeing their work being appreciated, valued, and with a renewed energy for growth and innovation based on the invaluable feedback received from real-world environments and end users. We kicked off the session with a brief project overview to ensure everyone, regardless of background, had a shared foundation. We introduced: The Kyverno maintainer team and how we collaborate How the project is organized and governed Where the repository lives and how the codebase is structured The many ways people can contribute beyond writing code How to connect with the Kyverno community and participate in discussions This framing helped demystify open source, especially since it was the first time seeing what actually happens “on the inside” of a CNCF project for many attendees. After the introduction, we split the room into three focused discussion groups based on experience level and use case. This group explored the fundamentals of Policy as Code and Kyverno adoption.