KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2025 | Savvy Swag Segment

In this special “Savvy’s Swag Segment” from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Atlanta, theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson and Rob Strechay close out day two with a fast-paced tour of the show’s most coveted swag and activations. From the CNCF project skateboard and Linux Foundation’s collectible Phippy figurines – including ultra-rare gold editions – to Dash0’s sold-out red-jumpsuit-powered backpack giveaway (complete with “OpenTelemetry for Dummies”) and Kubiya’s on-brand backpack speakers, the segment captures how vendors turn Kubernetes, observability and AI themes into playful, practical giveaways. Along the way, Savannah spotlights standout pieces like Tintri’s cassette-style portable speakers and a wave of witty AI and Kubernetes tees, including “AI didn’t read,” “AI wrote this shirt, vulnerabilities included,” and peach-themed designs that nod to Georgia’s hometown pride. The conversation then shifts to travel-and-comfort gear and community culture, from Groundcover’s beach-club tote and a favorite beach towel to Exoscale’s inclusive LEGO giveaways, Fastly’s contoured eye mask for frequent flyers, AWS’s fleece-lined beanies and WSO2’s scarves to battle Atlanta’s chill. Rob puts three different hot sauces from Pepperdata, Doppler and Backblaze through a live taste test, ultimately giving Backblaze top marks for flavor and thoughtful packaging, while Savannah highlights Google Cloud’s 10-year Kubernetes anniversary swag – bucket hats, puzzles and “friends of the cloud” bracelets – plus a visual, color-coded Kubernetes book that resonates with the co-hosts’ shared neurodiversity. As KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 spotlights how cloud native technologies are powering the next wave of AI, platform engineering and open-source community growth, this segment shows how those same themes and personalities come alive in the swag that developers, operators and sponsors will actually use long after the show ends.

Savvy Swag Segment

In this special “Savvy’s Swag Segment” from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Atlanta, theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson and Rob Strechay close out day two with a fast-paced tour of the show’s most coveted swag and activations. From the CNCF project skateboard and Linux Foundation’s collectible Phippy figurines – including ultra-rare gold editions – to Dash0’s sold-out red-jumpsuit-powered backpack giveaway (complete with “OpenTelemetry for Dummies”) and Kubiya’s on-brand backpack speakers, the segment captures how vendors turn Kubernetes, observability and AI themes into playful, practical giveaways. Along the way, Savannah spotlights standout pieces like Tintri’s cassette-style portable speakers and a wave of witty AI and Kubernetes tees, including “AI didn’t read,” “AI wrote this shirt, vulnerabilities included,” and peach-themed designs that nod to Georgia’s hometown pride. The conversation then shifts to travel-and-comfort gear and community culture, from Groundcover’s beach-club tote and a favorite beach towel to Exoscale’s inclusive LEGO giveaways, Fastly’s contoured eye mask for frequent flyers, AWS’s fleece-lined beanies and WSO2’s scarves to battle Atlanta’s chill. Rob puts three different hot sauces from Pepperdata, Doppler and Backblaze through a live taste test, ultimately giving Backblaze top marks for flavor and thoughtful packaging, while Savannah highlights Google Cloud’s 10-year Kubernetes anniversary swag – bucket hats, puzzles and “friends of the cloud” bracelets – plus a visual, color-coded Kubernetes book that resonates with the co-hosts’ shared neurodiversity. As KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 spotlights how cloud native technologies are powering the next wave of AI, platform engineering and open-source community growth, this segment shows how those same themes and personalities come alive in the swag that developers, operators and sponsors will actually use long after the show ends.

Share this session

Clips
More from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon NA 2025

Savannah Peterson

Principal Analyst & Host

SiliconANGLE Media, Inc.

play_circle_outline Wisecracking Wearables: Fun Hats and Stylish Backpacks That Capture KubeCon Humor and Utility

Info
Transcript

Savvy Swag Segment

Savannah Peterson

Principal Analyst & Host SiliconANGLE Media, Inc.

HOST

In this special “Savvy’s Swag Segment” from KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America in Atlanta, theCUBE’s Savannah Peterson and Rob Strechay close out day two with a fast-paced tour of the show’s most coveted swag and activations. From the CNCF project skateboard and Linux Foundation’s collectible Phippy figurines – including ultra-rare gold editions – to Dash0’s sold-out red-jumpsuit-powered backpack giveaway (complete with “OpenTelemetry for Dummies”) and Kubiya’s on-brand backpack speakers, the segment captures how vendors turn Kubernetes, observability and... Read more

explore Keep Exploring

What kind of hats and items are being discussed, and what is the significance or humor associated with them? add

bolt Powered by CUBE AI

Savvy Swag Segment

search

Savannah Peterson

>> Good evening CUBE community and welcome back to KubeCon here in Atlanta, Georgia. We're here closing out day two of our three days of live coverage on theCUBE. My name is Savannah Peterson. Excited to bring you a fan favorite segment here. We're talking about swag with my favorite co-pilot and in this case potentially victim, Rob Strechay. How are you doing?

Rob Strechay

>> Awesome. Glad to be here. Been a great day.

Savannah Peterson

>> It is.

Rob Strechay

>> And I think this is going to be the cherry on top.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. I actually want to start us off, our good friend and occasional CUBE guest, you put up or created stickers for everybody that I think pretty much sum up the entire show. AIDR, AI didn't read like the TLDR. You know what I'm saying? But this kind of sums up everything that we've been talking about this week, frankly, everything that we've been talking about this year.

Rob Strechay

>> Absolutely.

Savannah Peterson

>> No kidding, which is really fun. Got to start off with what's in front of me right now. Sorry for the strength there on cam. This is actually a CNCF. This is a CNCF project skateboard, which I think is really cool. There's actually another skateboard activation going on here at the floor, but you see that? This is all the projects-

Rob Strechay

>> That is wild....

Savannah Peterson

>> that have done really well. And it's nice to see something that is promoting fitness honestly and getting outside. We don't always see that at tech shows, and it's pretty lovely.

Rob Strechay

>> I'm looking for which ones are missing.

Savannah Peterson

>> Do you have a favorite?

Rob Strechay

>> Well, OpenTel's missing. OTel is missing, but Falco is here. Falco is a new one that really is a very neat project, if people haven't checked it out. It was on the main stage earlier this week. Really good stuff.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, it is really good stuff. Super excited. Speaking of really good stuff, let's just stay with the Linux Foundation real quick here, because they've got a collectible game going on. I'm sure you recognize Phippy. I have dressed as Phippy many times and they got a bunch of little porcelain collectibles, which is pretty cute. But something that they're doing that's also very exclusive is when you buy one of these, they are a couple of them, only 20 of them are gold. They have the gold versions here, total collector's item for the Kubernetes family. Thank you to Natasha at the Linux Foundation for bringing over all of these goodies. Now, real quick, just because it's one of the biggest things that we had on the show floor. Dash0 did an incredible activation. They were in jumpsuits. It was super iconic, bright red jumpsuits, and I think they had one of the most popular pieces of swag at the show. They are these full on super sweet backpacks. Their head of marketing was actually nice enough to let me borrow it for this segment because they are completely sold out, but it's got all these super sweet pockets in the back, laptop on the side here, right here. It's clearly made for travelers and nerds like us.

Rob Strechay

>> And great branding as well. Great branding.

Savannah Peterson

>> Super great branding and I love things that we're actually going to use. They also dropped in some OpenTelemetry for dummies on the education front there, which is super cool. I love to see it because I could tell they were doing a ton of demos over there. The booth was always packed, super on brand, and again, very useful. Talk about a piece of swag that isn't going to end up in the landfill-

Rob Strechay

>> Correct....

Savannah Peterson

>> which makes me very happy. So shout out to that whole team. You all did great. You had the pleasure of interviewing Amit from Kubiya and he came around and gave us all these little backpack speakers. This can be nice, because we don't always get to pump up the tunes in our hotel rooms or do anything like that, so I appreciated that. And of course, it's on brand.

Rob Strechay

>> Very on brand. They're always on brand.

Savannah Peterson

>> Do you travel with a speaker, Rob?

Rob Strechay

>> I do not.

Savannah Peterson

>> But maybe you will now.

Rob Strechay

>> But I might will now.

Savannah Peterson

>> Maybe you will now. Now, I know how you love your hats with fun puns.

Rob Strechay

>> Oh, yeah.

Savannah Peterson

>> And we had a lot of fun with Big Data Energy a few shows ago, so I thought you might like this one, especially given a little bit of an inside joke that we have. So zero bugs given y'all. The KubeCon community has an incredible sense of humor and they certainly don't mess around, so I actually picked this one up explicitly for you.

Rob Strechay

>> Awesome.

Savannah Peterson

>> I hope you enjoy that. Also, competing in the speaker game. I really like this one. Tintri always brings the heat. They won our swag competition in Salt Lake City. They actually got second place in London, but I do love these little tiny, it's a cassette tape, for those of you who might not know what this is, depending on your age. But for those of us who've been around the block, it's just a great way. These are little portable speakers similar to this, but I love that we're bringing the audio. You could attach it to your Dash0 backpack, go for a big hike and have a really great time in the beautiful outdoors. So I'm here for that. All right, Rob, I got a new one for you that I don't think we've seen at the show, and I'm going to need your help rolling it out there. We've got a beach towel. These folks actually do really great T-shirts. I love their marketing team. I've gotten to say hello to them many times. Oh, hello. I can do this. I promise. We've got artificially intelligent shirt. Actually have one of these that's in gray and green already, but I thought this was ... We're just going to fly a little flag right now. I love this for us. I thought it was kind of nice because again, coming back to useful, picking out, designing a T-shirt that everyone is going to use can be really complex and hard. I live on the ocean, so this for me is definitely very high on my favorites. I know you too enjoy a good beach.

Rob Strechay

>> I do like a beach.

Savannah Peterson

>> You love a good beach. Sticking with the fun T-shirt theme, you know how hard it is for me to be impressed.

Rob Strechay

>> I am just going to say, this is like two T-shirts. I'm very impressed that-

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, no, we're keeping the tees rolling here right now, but only because some of these were so fun. So Sonatype just went through a rebrand. AI wrote this shirt, vulnerabilities included, which I thought was pretty great, super fun, bright and they're really going for it. It's so different at this show more than any other show how pithy some of the things can get. And on that note, actually with the tees. Last tee, I promise, guys. I love when folks embrace the theme.

Rob Strechay

>> Yes, you do.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes I do. And so peaches should be fuzzy. This is very fun. A whole little Kubernetes shirt. Our Georgia peaches. If you're not familiar, the peach is quite the symbol of Georgia. So those are great.

Rob Strechay

>> And they are fuzzy.

Savannah Peterson

>> And they are fuzzy. So for the next part of this and then we'll continue to go through the swag. We had a fun situation. That's why I'm going to do these so you can get started tasting. There were three different companies this year that came with hot sauce. Now, I know you and I both love a good hot sauce. We were putting it on our lunch earlier. Our friends at Backblaze who had on earlier are one of these segments and they're all really lovely. So I'm actually going to have Rob taste the three hot sauces while I continue to show you some of the swag. Don't worry. I also have a Google Cloud water bottle here.

Rob Strechay

>> I was going to say, do I have my water in here?

Savannah Peterson

>> In case you need some water to wash it down. I promise that, that's clean and safe for you.

Rob Strechay

>> Cheers!

Savannah Peterson

>> Cheers is right. Cheers is right. Okay. Well, wow, you actually just chugged it. I love this for us. I absolutely love this for us.

Rob Strechay

>> I'm not loving this for me tomorrow morning, but it seems like a good idea right now. This may end really-

Savannah Peterson

>> So this is contestant number one. Who's a buy?

Rob Strechay

>> This is Pepperdata and it's real-time automated resource optimization for Kubernetes and burn your mouth off. It's apply sauce, reduce your costs. Very good. That was a cute little saying on there.

Savannah Peterson

>> That was. How's it taste?

Rob Strechay

>> It's pretty good. It's pretty good. I probably should have shook it up a little bit beforehand, but we do that with the next one.

Savannah Peterson

>> All right. Well, I'll let you get rolling on the next one. I do got to give a shout-out to our dear friends at Google celebrating the 10-year anniversary of Kubernetes. They've really gone all in. This is a two-layer bucket hat. They've got the Google branding on this side and then it's all cloud on the inside.

Rob Strechay

>> Wow, look at that.

Savannah Peterson

>> Which is pretty great. Bucket hat is still having a moment. Kind of surprises me as someone in the fashion world, I'm a little ... Not sure how I feel about that.

Rob Strechay

>> Contestant number two.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, contestant number two, here we go. Let's go. Okay, what are we thinking? Talk to me goose.

Rob Strechay

>> Okay, this would be ... It's not as spicy. It's got a more Chipotle kind of pepper thing going on a little bit.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah. So when I went over there to the Doppler folks, thank you for sharing your hot sauce with us. She said it was a hot sauce for everyone, rather than being-

Rob Strechay

>> I could see that. It's definitely wild....

Savannah Peterson

>> over the top. I told her what we were going to do and it was cute. He was like, "Am I going to kill my co-host and dear friend Rob if I give her that?" But it's all good. All right. Coming back to Google. We've also got a little Google Cloud puzzle. There's a lot of Legos in the house. Very popular with the nerds all the time as we know. And last but not least, because it is their big 10-year anniversary. Congratulations, Google. Happy double-digit birthday. Huge deal for the team. We had an exclusive series of six segments on the show and we've even got a little bit more coming on that front. So very exciting. And thank you to all of our friends and fans at Google. Contestant three. Here we go, ladies and gentlemen. I really appreciate that you're chugging these. I thought we might put it on our finger or do something light, but you're just taking it to the house.

Rob Strechay

>> So contestant number three has the most flavor. It happens to be the Backblaze one.

Savannah Peterson

>> We love that.

Rob Strechay

>> That is good. That is good. I'm liking it.

Savannah Peterson

>> Did Jeff pay you to say that?

Rob Strechay

>> No, he didn't. But you know what, it's got good consistency to it. And I will say-

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, I like that. The viscosity is right.

Rob Strechay

>> The viscosity is on point. Also, I give them extra points because they had the pull tab. They paid a little bit extra for the pull tab.

Savannah Peterson

>> That's such a good point.

Rob Strechay

>> And you can see kind of this one. Unfortunately, this-

Savannah Peterson

>> I couldn't get it off. I had to ask for your help.

Rob Strechay

>> I have some nails, thankfully.

Savannah Peterson

>> I know. I mean, I have nails and I couldn't do it.

Rob Strechay

>> Best one.

Savannah Peterson

>> I was very much impressed. No, that was super cool. Oh, also shout-out to Google on my wrist. They gave us all friendship bracelets, because we're all friends of the cloud, which is really nice. Okay, so this is kind of a fun one. And I think this stood out along with the Dash0 team. The ground cover beach club bag was everywhere. They had a whole beachy vibe going on at their booth. Beyond the swag companies here really go all in. Did you notice these guys walking in?

Rob Strechay

>> I did. I noticed the shirts that they're wearing.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah, that one and Dash0 I feel like really iced.

Rob Strechay

>> I did.

Savannah Peterson

>> Just the full brand takeovers. Very cool. I'm not sure where the beaches are in Atlanta though.

Rob Strechay

>> There's islands down south.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah, but they're not in Atlanta. That's like Tybee Island.

Rob Strechay

>> Yeah, Tybee.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yeah. I've been to Tybee and, of course, I've been to Savannah.

Rob Strechay

>> There you go.

Savannah Peterson

>> Which is why I've been out there. More Legos. These guys were really sweet. Exoscale. So a lot of booths give away Legos, but they give away one set and they make you watch a demo and then do a whole raffle. These guys brought Legos for everybody, which I thought was very inclusive.

Rob Strechay

>> I agree.

Savannah Peterson

>> And quite cloud native, which is super fun. I know you're going to like this one because you and I are the ultimate travelers.

Rob Strechay

>> Those are outstanding by the way.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes. Our friends over at Fastly have the full on super nice eye mask that actually has the little eye holes and the whole thing. It's really soft. Check that one out. I knew you would like that one. It's definitely one of the things we like to see. It has been, quite frankly, Arctic here in Atlanta. A lot colder. Yes. I knew you were going to put it on. It has been so much colder in Atlanta than we were expecting. So of course, I went up to the AWS team. This is beautiful. Let's just do this segment.

Rob Strechay

>> This is great.

Savannah Peterson

>> Do you guys have anything else for him to taste? This would be a fun game. Let's see what happens. Let's see.

Rob Strechay

>> We could have gone that way.

Savannah Peterson

>> Let's see what happens next. Let's see if he still likes the same three hot sauces he goes to next time. But I like these beanies, because they're not just branded, they're actually fleece lined.

Rob Strechay

>> Oh, nice.

Savannah Peterson

>> So they really will keep us-

Rob Strechay

>> It's 65 degrees out now, so it would've been great couple days ago though.

Savannah Peterson

>> It was not 65 degrees-

Rob Strechay

>> It was not 65 degrees....

Savannah Peterson

>> yesterday. It was savage.

Rob Strechay

>> 29.

Savannah Peterson

>> It was absolutely savage. This is fun. I'm really playing a lot of games. I'm sure the audio guys are loving this right now. One of the other things I thought was cool, given that it was absolutely freezing was WSO2 gave out little scarves. So Rob, I'm going to let you accessorize with that while we're here. I think that's great. Ooh, you're going to love this one. I didn't even get a chance to tell you about this one before I found it. So this is awesome. Rob and I are both neurodiverse. I hope you don't mind me throwing you under the bus. We're two lovely ... It actually looks good on you, Rob. We're two wonderful, wonderful dyslexics. And what I like about this book is it's all about understanding Kubernetes. That's not the most visual in a visual way. So it's color-coded, I write in multi-color pens. Shout-out to any of my other dyslexics who do that. But it's drawings, it's cartoons, it's beyond just the code. And I thought this was just a really nice, approachable way. We're always talking about how to make it easier. I felt like this was educational, lovely. Oh, I got to keep the hats going. I'm not even sure who was giving these out, but we are in the home of Waffle House.

Rob Strechay

>> I was going to say that is a Waffle House.

Savannah Peterson

>> We are in the home of Waffle House and they were giving out the Waffle House hats. So in case you really want to embrace your Atlanta ... Wow, your looks really sending me positive energy right now. I'm going to go ahead and take that off. That's just lovely.

Rob Strechay

>> It's like cruise ship.

Savannah Peterson

>> It is serving real world cruise ship vibes. And along with the ground cover beach club, they gave a bunch of accessories, which I really enjoy. It's a Frisbee. They've got cards. I mean, is this making you want to take a vacation? Because it's certainly making me want to take a vacation.

Rob Strechay

>> It absolutely does.

Savannah Peterson

>> Yes, I know. That is absolutely lovely. Well, Rob, I think that's going to wrap it up for us here, although I'll give you one more. Buddies at Tintri really did crush it. Here's a Yeti water bottle. I know you are occasionally forgetful of your water bottle at shows and I want to make sure that you could have one.

Rob Strechay

>> Stay hydrated.

Savannah Peterson

>> That you stay hydrated.

Rob Strechay

>> After I have a lot of hot sauce.

Savannah Peterson

>> Especially after all that hot sauce. All right, Rob, so what do you think is the best?

Rob Strechay

>> I mean, I'm a big fan of the hot sauce because I needed it desperately with the food here today. I mean, it was great on it. I also really liked the eye mask, because to your point, very good branding. Not over the top, but I would always see that every time I opened it up on a plane. I am a big fan of that. And gold Phippy is always a good thing as well.

Savannah Peterson

>> Oh, yeah. Phippy takes many forms. I know, I'm a little bit torn. I mean, I was actually jealous. We normally get to keep the swag and Dash0 is out of the bags. I would've used one of those, the show, which I really love. I think for me, it's just because it was probably the most unexpected and legitimately the thing I will use the most, I'm going with the beach towel.

Rob Strechay

>> Good idea.

Savannah Peterson

>> Because who doesn't want to spend more time on the beach? All right, Rob, this has been super awesome. We have one more day.

Rob Strechay

>> One more day.

Savannah Peterson

>> One more day of live coverage. You can get rested for it with that eye mask and hopefully survive that hot sauce ride.

Rob Strechay

>> I was going to say they all need to tune in to see how this turns out because this may have been a critical mistake.

Savannah Peterson

>> We might have to debug Rob in the morning.

Rob Strechay

>> I might have to de something me in the morning.

Savannah Peterson

>> Well, either way, we'll be here back for our day three in Atlanta, Georgia at KubeCon. I'm excited to share it with you, Rob.

Rob Strechay

>> Same here. Can't wait.

Savannah Peterson

>> Thank all of you for tuning in to our fantastic coverage, celebrating our sponsors Red Hat and Google Cloud. My name is Savannah Peterson, signing off from Atlanta, Georgia. You're watching theCUBE, the leading source for enterprise tech news.