Workshop | Introduction to Kubernetes

From “What’s a Pod?” to Production Confidence

Buy your ticket & join the workshop

Abstract

“I’ve been meaning to learn Kubernetes for two years.”

 

Steve Wade hears this from engineers at every conference. Smart people. Shipping code every day. But Kubernetes keeps sitting in the “I’ll get to it” pile, somewhere between that side project and the gym membership.

 

Here’s the problem: every Kubernetes tutorial starts wrong. Deploy a pod. Expose a service. Congratulations, you’ve learned nothing about what happens when that pod dies at 3am on a Saturday. The gap between “hello world” and “production confidence” is where engineers get lost, get frustrated, and give up.

 

Steve has audited 50+ platforms and trained 6,000+ engineers worldwide. The pattern is always the same: teams that learn Kubernetes from tutorials can deploy. Teams that learn Kubernetes from production can debug, scale, and sleep through the night.

 

This workshop closes that gap in one day. Not theory. Not slides you’ll forget by Tuesday. You’ll build a real cluster, deploy real workloads, break things on purpose, and fix them under pressure. Six hands-on labs, each designed to teach you the thing the tutorial skipped. Then you’ll watch AI talk to the cluster you just built.

 

“All of it was completely new for me.” – Dainius, Data Engineer, carVertical (beginner, rated 4/5)

 

“The expert, Steve, was incredibly kind and patient in answering all our questions, which made the workshop very effective.” – Damir, Backend Developer, Business Solutions (beginner, rated 5/5)

“All of it was completely new for me.”

Dainius, Data Engineer, carVertical (beginner, rated 4/5)

“The expert, Steve, was incredibly kind and patient in answering all our questions, which made the workshop very effective.”

Damir, Backend Developer, Business Solutions (beginner, rated 5/5)

This is the workshop that fixes your weekends

What You’ll Walk Away With

A cluster you built, broke, and fixed yourself.

Not a sandbox. A real Kubernetes cluster you deployed to, scaled, and recovered from failure.

Your own GitHub repo to keep.

Every manifest, config, and lab you build during the day lives in a personal GitHub repository. Fork it, adapt it, run it on your own cluster on Monday. Yours forever.

The ability to debug calmly.

Something breaks. You know where to look, what to run, and how to fix it. No Googling in a panic.

Applications that scale and survive.

Not a sandbox. A real Kubernetes cluster you deployed to, scaled, and recovered from failure.

A glimpse of the future.

Every manifest, config, and lab you build during the day lives in a personal GitHub repository. Fork it, adapt it, run it on your own cluster on Monday. Yours forever.

A clear next step.

Something breaks. You know where to look, what to run, and how to fix it. No Googling in a panic.

Agenda

Morning: Foundations

09:30 – 10:15
The Kubernetes Reality Check.

The Kubernetes Reality Check.

Why most tutorials fail you and the mental model that changes everything.

The Kubernetes Reality Check.

Why most tutorials fail you and the mental model that changes everything.

10:15 – 11:25
Your First Cluster.

Your First Cluster.

Deploy, break, and fix your first application. Roll back a failure in 30 seconds.

Your First Cluster.

Deploy, break, and fix your first application. Roll back a failure in 30 seconds.

11:25 – 11:45
Break

Break

Break

Afternoon: Production Patterns

11:45 – 12:45
Networking.

Networking.

Make services find each other automatically. No hardcoded IPs. No manual wiring.

Networking.

Make services find each other automatically. No hardcoded IPs. No manual wiring.

12:45 – 14:00
Lunch

Lunch

Lunch

14:00 – 15:00
Scaling and Storage.

Scaling and Storage.

Applications that grow under load and survive restarts.

Scaling and Storage.

Applications that grow under load and survive restarts.

15:00 – 15:20
Break

Break

Break

15:20 – 16:15
The Complete Application.

The Complete Application.

Everything comes together. One three-tier application. All the patterns. Working in your cluster.

The Complete Application.

Everything comes together. One three-tier application. All the patterns. Working in your cluster.

Closing: Operations and the Future

16:15 – 16:30
Kubernetes + AI.

Kubernetes + AI.

Steve connects an AI to the cluster you’ve been building all day. “Show me which pods are failing.” “Why did that deployment not reconcile?” “Scale the frontend to 5 replicas.” You understand what the AI is doing because you did it by hand all morning.

Kubernetes + AI.

Steve connects an AI to the cluster you’ve been building all day. “Show me which pods are failing.” “Why did that deployment not reconcile?” “Scale the frontend to 5 replicas.” You understand what the AI is doing because you did it by hand all morning.

16:30 – 17:00
Ask Me Anything.

Ask Me Anything.

Your questions. Your learning path. Your “what should I do next?” plan. War stories from 50+ platform audits. No question is too basic.

Ask Me Anything.

Your questions. Your learning path. Your “what should I do next?” plan. War stories from 50+ platform audits. No question is too basic.

Bonus Labs (Self-Paced, Post-Workshop)

Three additional labs ship inside your take-home GitHub repository: DaemonSets, Network Policies, and Role-Based Access Control. Run them on your own local cluster (kind, k3s, Docker Desktop) whenever you’re ready.

Is This Workshop For You?

Yes, if you’ve ever:

 

  • Said “I’ll learn Kubernetes next quarter” more than once
  • Closed a Kubernetes tutorial halfway through because it assumed too much
  • Nodded along in a meeting about pods and services while quietly lost
  • Wanted to learn but couldn’t justify a paid training course

You’ll fit right in if you’re:

 

  • A developer who keeps hearing about Kubernetes and wants to understand why
  • Early in your career and want hands-on experience with production tooling
  • Working adjacent to Kubernetes (QA, data, security) and need to understand what the platform team is talking about
  • Someone who’s done a tutorial or two but doesn’t feel confident with real workloads

What you need to know before you arrive:

 

  • You can open a terminal and run commands (cd, ls, that level)
  • You have a basic idea of what a container is (you don’t need Docker expertise)
  • You’re willing to break things on purpose

That’s it. If you can type a command, you’re ready.

 

Technical Requirements

Bring:

 

  • A laptop with a modern browser (Chrome, Firefox, or Edge)

We provide everything else:

 

  • Pre-configured Kubernetes cluster per participant (lives for the workshop day)
  • All tools pre-installed (nothing to download or configure)
  • Complete lab guide with step-by-step instructions
  • Your own personal GitHub repository with every manifest, config, and lab you build

No local Kubernetes installation required on the day. No Docker Desktop. No fighting with minikube. No, “the first two hours are just setup.” You’ll be running commands within 15 minutes of sitting down. Everything you build is pushed to your GitHub repo, so it travels with you.

Your Trainer

Steve Wade rescues failed Kubernetes migrations. 50+ platforms audited, over £100M in complexity prevented. He’s the engineer organisations call when cloud-native promises become expensive nightmares.

6,000+ engineers trained worldwide. Speaker at KubeCon, DevOpsDays, and Bit Summit. CNCF certified (CKA, CKAD, CKS). Running Kubernetes in production since before it was boring.

His 2025 Bit Summit talk, “The CFO Question That Exposed £2.3M in Hidden Risk” was called one of the most engaging sessions of the conference. This workshop is the hands-on version of that same philosophy: stop adding complexity, start understanding what you already have.

“All of it was completely new for me.”

Dainius, Data Engineer, carVertical (beginner, rated 4/5)

From “hello world” to real confidence — in one day

When buying your ticket, you’ll have the option to add the free workshop at checkout.

Sign up for the workshop