Introducing Runbook: Less Sitting Through, More Getting Into It

Service Mesh Academy workshops have been part of Buoyant's educational program for years. Live monthly sessions with “getting started” instructions, a GitHub repo, and a couple hours of hands-on tinkering with Linkerd. We've been running that same format for a while, and it's time for something new. So we're retiring Service Mesh Academy and launching Runbook.

The Runbook program

The live workshops are now Runbook Live, the on-demand courses Runbook Labs, and the escape room Runbook Escape. Runbook Live is the part we are refreshing. Runbook Labs and Runbook Escape aren't going anywhere, but you'll see more added to both over time with a broader scope. 

What's changing

Attending a live workshop required some commitment. You had to block off 90 minutes, follow along with a repo, and sit through a full workshop even if you were only interested in one part. Runbook Live will lower that friction. Timeboxed within 30 to 45 min, each session will follow a format that fits the topic. One month it will be a fireside chat + Q&A with a practitioner or project maintainer. Sometimes it will be a live demo. And in other months it'll be an AMA or a war story, someone walking through a real production incident and how they found and fixed it.

We also want these sessions to be interactive. Instead of a one-way discussion, we want to hear from you. Whether through live polls or asking us questions, you get to shape the direction of the discussion as well. 

Just because the format is more loose, it doesn't mean we're going soft on substance, though. We aim to offer you deep technical discussions, with no fluff.

Beyond the service mesh

The Runbook will cover more ground than Service Mesh Academy did. We will still cover Linkerd and open source projects that play well with it, but we're expanding into new ground, including the challenges companies are running into as they start self-hosting AI inference themselves.

These are actually not new problems: Scaling, reliability, security, and observability. All of these are challenges Linkerd addresses in the networking layer. So how do you tackle all that in an inference setting? 

First up: The Runbook Crystal Ball

Our first Runbook Live session is The Runbook Crystal Ball on October 15. Our guest is Istio maintainer Keith Mattix. Istio and Linkerd are competitors, so getting Istio and Linkerd folks chatting about the future of service meshes doesn't happen often. It will make for an interesting conversation about where service meshes are actually headed. We'll close with an AMA, so be sure to bring your questions. Register for The Runbook Crystal Ball. It will be fun!