It’s a bittersweet day for me as I step down from the Cloud Native Buildpacks TOC. There’s never a good moment to step away from a project, but as I look around and realize that others are contributing far more than I am, the time feels right. I’m immensely proud of the work we’ve done over the years and am constantly amazed that we’ve taken something that started as an informal discussion over drinks to a healthy multi-vendor CNCF project on a great trajectory.

I want to take this opportunity to thank everyone in the CNB community for all their incredible hard work getting us to where we are today. Whether you’re a consumer, a contributor, a maintainer, or a TOC member, everyone has come with their best selves to make the project successful. I’d also like to specially thank my co-founders Joe Kutner, Terence Lee, and Stephen Levine for taking the chance and putting in the hard work to get the project off the ground.

I won’t ever be far away and if nothing else, you’ve all gained the biggest cheerleader you could possibly imagine. I will always believe in the leverage that Buildpacks bring to development teams and if KubeCon was any indication, the rest of the industry is starting to catch up. I can’t wait to see all of the great things in store for the project!

-Ben