[Group Request] Create a new group

### City or location name for your CNCG

Chicago

### What country do you want to start your community group in?

United States

### Tell us about yourself. List your name, email, company, GitHub URL, LinkedIn URL, CNCF Slack workspace name (or if you need to be invited), and your required profile link on community.cncf.io

Name: Pavan Madduri

Email: pavan4devops@gmail.com

Company: W.W. Grainger, Inc.

Role: Senior Cloud Platform Engineer @ Grainger - CNCF TAG Workloads Foundation Tech Lead

GitHub URL: https://github.com/pmady

LinkedIn URL: https://www.linkedin.com/in/pavanmadduri/

CNCF Slack workspace name: Pavan Madduri

CNCF Slack email: pavan4devops@gmail.com

Credly LFC102 badge: https://www.credly.com/badges/6a723959-31eb-4cc8-a22e-956f29adf51f/public_url

Credly profile: https://www.credly.com/users/pavan-madduri.2f163cf7

Newsletter: Cloud Native AI Weekly
https://www.linkedin.com/build-relation/newsletter-follow?entityUrn=7498851884196233217

About me:
I am a Senior Cloud Platform Engineer at W.W. Grainger, Inc. and active in the cloud native community through technical writing, demos, community participation, and open source learning content focused on Kubernetes, CNCF projects, AI infrastructure, GPUs, MCP, K8sGPT, and platform engineering.

I recently launched Cloud Native AI Weekly, where I share practical patterns for building safer AI platforms on Kubernetes using CNCF and open source technologies.

My goal with Cloud Native Chicago is to create a local and virtual, vendor-neutral community where practitioners can learn, demo, contribute, and share practical cloud native patterns around Kubernetes, CNCF projects, platform engineering, AI workloads, and production infrastructure.

### Inclusive

- [x] I/We agree. To ensure this, I/we have recently completed the [Inclusive Open Source Community Orientation (LFC102) course](https://training.linuxfoundation.org/training/inclusive-open-source-community-orientation-lfc102/)

### Link to your LFC102 Credly Badge

https://www.credly.com/badges/6a723959-31eb-4cc8-a22e-956f29adf51f/public_url

### Tell us about your co-organizer. List their name, email, company, GitHub URL, LinkedIn URL, CNCF Slack workspace name (or if they need to be invited), and their required profile link on community.cncf.io

_No response_

### Link to your co-organizers LFC102 Credly Badge

_No response_

### Tell us about your co-organizer. List their name, email, company, GitHub URL, LinkedIn URL, CNCF Slack workspace name (or if they need to be invited), and their required profile link on community.cncf.io

_No response_

### Link to your co-organizers LFC102 Credly Badge

_No response_

### If you already run a meetup, please link it here

N/A - this is a new group request. I do not currently run an existing Meetup group for this community.

### What is your mission statement or objective for this new group?

The mission of Cloud Native Chicago is to grow a local and virtual community for engineers, SREs, DevOps practitioners, platform engineers, open source contributors, students, and AI infrastructure builders in the Chicago area.

The group will focus on practical, hands-on cloud native topics including Kubernetes, CNCF projects, platform engineering, observability, workload automation, service reliability, GitOps, security, AI infrastructure, GPUs, K8sGPT, MCP, KEDA, Volcano, Kueue, OpenTelemetry, vCluster, and safer AI-assisted operations.

Our goal is to create an open, welcoming, inclusive, and vendor-neutral community where practitioners can learn, demo, contribute, and share real-world patterns for building production-ready systems with cloud native and open source technologies.

A key focus area will be cloud native AI platforms: how Kubernetes and CNCF projects can support AI workloads, GPU scheduling, autoscaling, observability, troubleshooting, and agentic AI workflows safely.

The group will host regular meetups, workshops, demos, study sessions, and community talks. We will encourage participation from local practitioners, students, maintainers, platform teams, and open source contributors.

Our first proposed session is:

K8sGPT + MCP: Safer AI Troubleshooting for Kubernetes with Guardrails

This session will explore how AI-assisted Kubernetes troubleshooting can be done safely using the pattern:

Read → Explain → Recommend → Human Approves → Act

The session will include a practical demo using a disposable Kubernetes playground and will cover K8sGPT analysis, MCP tool boundaries, read-only diagnosis, privacy, anonymization, human approval, and why auto-remediation should be treated carefully.

Future topics may include GPU autoscaling with KEDA, scheduling AI workloads with Volcano and Kueue, OpenTelemetry for AI platform observability, vCluster for isolated AI platform workspaces, GitOps patterns for platform teams, and hands-on introductions to CNCF projects.

### Code of Conduct

- [x] I/We agree to follow the [CNCF Code of Conduct](https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/code-of-conduct.md)

### Where organizers reside

- [x] I/We confirm I/we am/are local to, or live near, the city of the above-proposed group.

### Organizers' companies/affiliations

- [x] I/We agree that if there is more than one organizer now or onboarded in the future, the majority will come from different companies.

### Vendor neutral

- [x] I/We have read what [vendor neutrality means](https://contribute.cncf.io/maintainers/community/vendor-neutrality/) and agree that the main content of our meetups will remain vendor-neutral.

### Agree to use CNCG branding

- [x] I/We agree to use the CNCG logo in my/our group and social branding.

### Registration through CNCF platforms

- [x] I/We agree to host free registration on the main CNCF platform.

### Remain an active group

- [x] I/We agree to have a meetup at least once every 90 days, or else communicate the reasoning for upcoming inactivity.

### Collaboration with other groups

- [x] I/We acknowledge CNCF's right to approve additional groups in my area based on this criteria.

### Aim to have a diverse representation of speakers in your meetups

- [x] I/We will do our best to host diverse speakers throughout the year.

Review the completed CNCG application fields, especially the Cloud Native Chicago mission statement, proposed K8sGPT and MCP session, and confirmations about inclusivity, vendor neutrality, branding, registration, and activity. Check that the required organizer information and LFC102 badge are present. Done means the request is reviewed and the new group can proceed through CNCF’s registration and approval process.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.