 So, welcome everyone, welcome to our, to the KubeCon North America hybrid event 2021. Our hybrid experience here, so for those, for those of us who are joining us here in Los Angeles or who are joining us remotely live. So, welcome everyone. This is the student track of KubeCon and here we have a, we'll have the brief conversation with people who are building our community who have started, who have started being the contributors to our community to the cloud native community, almost from scratch. So, my name is Ihor Veretsky, I'm a developer advocated a cloud native computing foundation and they will speak about the various mentoring programs about the different ways of how can you get started as a contributor to the cloud native projects and obviously we're happy to share some tips and tricks from, from myself and from our panelists. So, now it's the time for me to introduce our panelists here. So, I will start with Kunal. Kunal would like to introduce yourself. Yep, here everyone, hope you're having a great KubeCon. I'm Kunal, I am a student. So, I'm going to be graduating next year as of currently it's 2021 and I work as a developer advocate at Civo. You also started the official CNCF student community. So, we conduct events over there and you can join that get involved and an open source, I love cloud native tech and I also love teaching. So, yeah, that's a bit about me but I'm going to pass it on to Divya. Hello everyone, I'm Divya and I'm a team lead with HSP here. Unfortunately, not a student any longer. So, my involvement with open source began last year with Kubernetes and thereafter with Fiskios as, you know, it's a dog feed. But coming to the aspect of mentoring and mentorship programs, my whole experience with it has been, you know, being on both sides of the coin previously as a mentee on the Google season of dogs and this year as a mentor again on Google season of dogs with Fiskios. So, yeah, I love working on open source projects apart from my day job because it gives me a lot of exposure to things that I would typically not have exposure to. So, that's a bit about me but yeah, I'll hand it over to you. Yeah, awesome. So, hi, everyone. My name is Uchuchukua Basi. I'm a software engineer at Grafana Labs and I'm a past mentee at TANOS. I actually participated in the LFX and at the time it was called Community Bridge. And yeah, I'm also the co-organizer of the CNCF Mentors Meetup and also the Kubernetes communities Africa. I'm super passionate about creating like a very safe space for newbie contributors to contribute, learn and collaborate within the CNCF community. And yeah, I'm super excited to be on this panel and yeah, I can't wait for us to kickstart the conversations. Thank you. Awesome. Yeah, so let's speak briefly about your experience, about your tech experience and about your experience of basically kicking off your Korean tech with being a contributor to the open source projects and I believe that you are with the cloud native ecosystem and you're contributing to the cloud native ecosystem because of the some positive impact that it had for you. So, Uchi, I believe that you have been one of, if I'm not mistaken, you're probably not the first one but one of the first mentees with the CNCF Community Bridge and LFX programs from Africa and you're also the first CNCF ambassador in Sub-Saharan Africa. So, can you share some more details about your experience and how did the cloud native mentoring experience impacted your life in this case? Yeah, I would thank you for that awesome question. So yeah, I mean, I really can't emphasize this enough. I think open source really changed my life. So I would maybe share a little bit of like a very short story of how like I joined the open source, especially the cloud native computing foundation, how I entered the tunnels and how I ended up at Grafana Lab. So I would try to make it as short as possible. So when I was like in second year in college, that was when I got introduced to open source because prior to that time, my goal was just to like build a small agency, you know, here in Nigeria and just like meet small businesses and build websites for them. But when I learned about open source, I was like, okay, let me just try this out and try to know what exactly is this open source. And at the time there was this conference that was happening in Lagos. It was called the open source conference Africa. So I moved from, so basically I'm based in the east. So I moved from east to Lagos. Lagos is like in the west. I spent like seven plus hours on the road. I wasn't really bothered at the time because I knew what I wanted. I knew that I wanted to gain the knowledge and the, you know, everything about open source. So I went to the conference and that was where I learned a lot about the different open source mentorship programs, the different, you know, open source projects out there. And after the program, I was like, you know, I'm definitely going to contribute to open source. And I could remember at the time my first engagement with open source was applying to the Google Summer of Code program. Unfortunately, I didn't get it. It happens. But, you know, I wasn't, I didn't let my guard down. I continued pushing and at some point I learned about the community bridge which was the LFX. So I learned about the LFX. I applied as well and I got into the LFX program. At the time I was meant to join the Thanos community at the time to work on a project at Thanos. So my experience at Thanos was like, it was an unbelievable experience because that was the very first time I was working on a real life project that had real life users. And what it meant was that I had the opportunity to make a huge impact, not just to the project, but then to the community. So at the time it was a three month program. I worked closely with my mentors. We were super amazing. I think one of the best things that open source gives to you is to give you access to quality mentors. People that are always looking out for you. People that are always wanting to make you better at whatever you do. Awesome. Thank you. So Dita, tell us your story, please. My story is not as interesting, probably because I started off wanting to contribute to the Kubernetes documentation last year. And I actually did end up making a few documentation edits and then I actually discovered that there's something called as Google Season of Dogs. So a fun fact, it's I think my ninth year in IT. So I passed out like three long back a decade back almost. So at that time there were no open source projects in general to contribute to. So I recently realized that I wanted to start contributing to open source, understand Kubernetes as a product in general. And I somehow stumbled across Google Season of Dogs and Kubernetes was there as one of the projects that was listed. So I approached the mentors and the very first thing that they asked me was, are you a technical writer? It's like, no, I just work on systems and I really like contributing to documentation. And I can write English, isn't that enough? Perfect. Yeah. And it's great to hear the sort of Kunal, the person who is helping us travel and craft in the students community in the cloud native world. Yeah. I mean, for me, I started with open source ever since I was in my freshman year. I didn't know much about cloud native or anything. I was just looking for projects related to Java. So I found Red Hat, middlewares, Kubernetes Java client. And I was like, okay, I'll start contributing. I was very overwhelmed because at first I only knew like a bit of Java and maybe even a bit of web development. When I first heard about Kubernetes and Docker and containers and stuff, I was like, okay, it's very overwhelming. Then I went to the issues and everything. Every student faces this when they look at a big project. The code base is really large and you don't understand many things right at once. And I think that's fine because it's a long process. Contribute to such big projects, it's not going to happen overnight. You have to give it time. That's when I realized that the community was really helpful. So it was all about how they helped me. They were like, okay, you can learn this, you can learn that. Here are the resources. Here are the good first issues and whatever. Then I started contributing. Started with some documentation, some basic code structure. And then I started adding some examples, test cases and features. And then I got selected in Google Summer of Code with the same project. Then I stayed on with that project. I was then a Google Summer of Code mentor. And then I was a GSOC mentor again last year. So I think it was a great experience and one thing that I have realized from contributing, after that I contributed to quite a few projects, even outside CNCF, so an inside CNCF as well, both code and non-code contributions. For example, recently I was a part of the Shadows program, which was great. So non-code contributions are also a great way to get involved in the community and also very important contributions. So make sure you check out. We have a talk on that during this QtCon, rocking non-code contributions. But yeah, that's when I realized that it's all about the community because if the community wasn't there to help me, I would have found it much more difficult and overwhelming to contribute. That's when I realized that, okay, once you know how to contribute, you can help others get started. That's when you started the channel and local communities and student programs and CNCF community and so many other things. Ambassador's program and CNCF ambassadors. So I think these are great resources to help people. The only thing better than helping people is helping people who help people. So I think, yeah, that has been my journey and that's what we are. You know, as a collectively, as an entire community, me, Uche, Divya, IO and everyone who is involved in the mentoring aspect and even as a normal contributor or who is just getting started. We're working towards getting more young people involved in the CNCF ecosystem. That's why you see this student track at this QtCon. Awesome. Yeah, I was actually about to ask about your suggestions for the students about how to be involved and so on. But Konal has basically provided a brief answer to this question. So Uche, do you have any suggestions for the prospective students or prospective mentees who would like to get started with the open source journey here? Yeah, sure. So for me, I would say, I mean, just like Konal mentioned, there are so many ways you can contribute to open source, both code and non-code. But for me, I would, if I'm to give this advice, I would suggest, you know, try to apply it to different open source mentorship programs. For example, GSOG, LFX, ROTC, Google Summer of Talks. I think the good thing about these different programs is that they provide you with a structure for you to learn and grow as a software engineer or as a writer or as depending on what area you are currently focused on. So yeah, I would say try and embrace these different mentorship programs, apply to them. And I think the good part about the good thing about some of these open source mentorship programs is that they are also paid. So like they give you opportunity to like get students, you know, and all of that. And secondly, I would say one of the good ways, which is of course, the non-code side of things, one of the good ways you can contribute to the community is by writing blogs, writing articles. So you mustn't necessarily have to write code in order to contribute to the community or contribute to open source. So maybe you have like, you know, this particular tool you've been hearing about, and you want to contribute, you can basically just write an article about this particular tool. In one way or the other, you've actually impacted to someone else's life because someone will definitely read that article or that blog. So yeah, I would say mentorship programs and writing blogs is one of the ways you can contribute to open source. Great. Thank you so much, Ocea. So Divya, do you have any tips and tricks for people who'd like to have the same journeys as we did? So there is no shortcut. That is the, you know, line that I would like to get started with. There are no shortcuts to anything. Whatever you put into the journey is what you get out of it. You need to sort of be consistent with your efforts. More often than not, you are going to find it difficult irrespective of wherever you are in your career, whether you're a student, whether you're a working professional or whether you're even just taking a gap around. You're going to find it difficult to make time because life gets in between and we all witness the pandemic over the past two years. So it's going to get difficult. There are going to be difficult times. But the one way to sort of ensure that you get the most out of this journey is to ensure you put in your best efforts, set aside time, maybe just a couple of hours every week. It doesn't even need to start at, you know, five, six hours. I work crazy hours. I don't recommend it to anyone. I work crazy hours. But if you want to get in at least a bit out of the journey in terms of learning experience or whatever, whatever is your annual, you need to start off with putting in efforts consistently. And over the period of time, have your work speak for you rather than go around backing up every issue and just assigning it to yourself. Because you can put your hands into different projects, pick up multiple issues. All of that will give you exposure and you probably might even get a bit of visibility. But to gain your life experience, to understand the project and to help navigate the ecosystem, what you require is consistency. And, you know, you showing up to the meetings or the standups within Slack for that particular project or particular area of the project that you're contributing to. So that's what has worked for me. And I think maybe you know, Kunal and Uche, if you all have anything further to sort of chime and we all go through that. Yeah, please go ahead if you have anything to add, Uche and Kunal. I totally agree with the point you mentioned, like the best way to get started is, you know, just get started. Because you wouldn't know what is there unless you get involved. So even just attending the meetings and just being active and listening to other people, that is also a valid, you know, contribution because you're actually getting started in Kubernetes, you know, SIG meetings, for example, try to attend one, you would not understand anything. There to attend the second one, you may understand something three, four, five after that, you will sort of like understand and actually get started with it. That's actually what happened with me was attending the marketing meetings. Initially, one month, I did not get much. But then after the fifth meeting, people were like, okay, this is what we're doing, would you like to help out or whatever? So yeah. Yeah, well, any tips and tricks for people who are like, not sure which project to select, like, there are more than 100 projects only in a cloud native computing foundation and 1000s, if you're not familiar with open source projects. I just think like before contributing, you should know like what your interests are and this is for any project you're contributing to, you should definitely know what it does if you want to be like a member of that community. And to be honest, yeah, I don't think anyone is there who knows like every single project of the CNCF landscape in detail, because there are a lot. So the projects are also divided into like, you know, categories like monitoring, deploying or security or whatever. So you can select a category based on that and you can also select it on the basis of your, there are two ways to select a project, right? This is the top down approach when it's the bottom. So first you pick an organization, pick an organization, then you learn the skills that are used in that organization and whatever. The second thing is you first learn the skills and then you pick an organization that uses those skills. So I think both of these go hand in hand because if you're a beginner, then you will find yourself in a place where these big projects, you may even know like just 30 to 40% of the things and many other things you will learn on the go, which I believe is great because now you're getting to learn something new, you're also getting to contribute. So I think having an open mind is very important. Yeah, which should they have anything to it on this one? I think Conaola and DJI, I mean, they did an amazing job, given of this point. So yeah, I don't really have anything to say to this. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I have another question to you, which is, so you mentioned that you had experience with Google's remote code and LFX, privacy community bridge. So what are the best approach like when are you selecting, when are you selecting the mentoring programs where you'd like to participate in? So obviously there are not so many mentoring programs that are offering similar opportunities, but drive here. And what are the tips and tricks you'd like to give for the prospective mentees of these programs? First of all, which program to select? What are the brief differences between them? And basically some tips and tricks for those mentees who are selected, but they are not really done now. What to do next? Awesome. Awesome. So yeah, I'm basically out here. I would basically answer this question with my personal experience from a personal experience. So when I applied for GSOC, to be honest, I didn't really know much about the different projects that were on GSOC at the time, but then I had a specific interest. I knew I wanted to contribute to anything that has to do with the web at the time. So basically I was looking out for projects that were within that scope. Fortunately enough, I found one and I applied, but then I didn't get them. Of course, like I mentioned early during the stock, I didn't give up. I tried looking for other different programs and I found LFX. So when I found LFX, because I had an interest already in anything that has to do with web, because at the time I only knew about JavaScript, so I knew nothing about Go or Linux. So I was also looking for different projects that had something to do with web or JavaScript or something like that. Unfortunately, I couldn't see any during like in the, I think in the list of selected projects and community bridge or LFX. But then my approach to that was I wanted to pick one that sparked my interest. So at the time, I knew nothing about cloud identity, but then I felt like this could be an opportunity for me to learn a new scale or for me to learn something entirely different. So I scammed through again, through the projects list and then I found this particular project and I think it was basically during the versioning plugin for the Thanos documentation site. I knew nothing about this particular project, but then it sounded interesting. It sounded like something that could be found and something that could have a lot of impact to people, because me, I'm driven by impact. If this would have impact on people, I would definitely do that. And for me, because I had interest in that particular project, I reached out to the different containers and I started doing research on my own. At the time, I wasn't selected yet, but then because I had interest in the project, I was doing research on my own. I was talking on the issues. I was joining the weekly calls. I was commenting on Slack. I showed a lot of interest in that particular project. And yet, I wanted to use that project to learn skill sets around building a documentation plugin that's like Bash, Hugo, a bit of Golan. At the same time, I also wanted to use that project to have impact. Because the containers had seen how interested I was, I think that was one of the reasons why they decided to give me the opportunity. Trust me, I was scared. I had zero skills when it comes to the different technologies that were used, but then because I was interested and because I was willing to put in the time to learn and to work on that particular project, I think that was what made me to consider me. And yeah, I would say in three different words, I would say show interest and then be brave. And yeah, just go for it, basically. So yeah, these are basically my tips and tricks. Fantastic. Great. So Diva, I believe you also had an experience with the various mentoring programs that you considered a few. So any thoughts and any suggestions from your end? Yeah, so over and about what you said, he has pretty much given an elaborate description of what even I was going to speak about. But over and about what he said, I think what really works is wherever or whatever the mentorship programs you're applying to, please make sure you actually establish a rapport with your mentor earlier on. So I, at least for my side, for Google Seasons, whether it be Google Seasons or Docs, when I approached Kubernetes as a project or even when I approached on as a project, I made sure I spoke to the mentors who are listed against that project. And I believe that's there for all mentorship programs. I'm not really sure about that. I'm really sorry to correct me on this one, but at least Google Seasons or Docs has this. So for my experience, building a rapport with the mentor, speaking to them and understanding what their vision of success would be for that particular project really, really helps a lot. Primarily because you will be able to understand from their perspective as to what is expected of an applicant and if you personally as an applicant would be able to fulfill that expectation. So it sort of sets the baseline from where you need to start from. And honestly, it really helped. I know it would sound really horrible if I say this, but that rejection really helped me because it made me realise that I'm not a technical writer. So how would anybody choose me if I'm not a technical writer and I'm not proficient in doing that particular job for a project? It redirected me into a better route because it showed me avenues that I could explore. And honestly, even when we were taking in applications for let's just give us this other season of Google Seasons of Docs, we were looking out for applicants with similar sort of a mindset because you don't need to be specifically skilled in one area for every, there is no one stop shot is what I need to say, you don't need to be specifically skilled in one area for all the projects. Every project that is listed on a mentorship program, whether it be LFX, whether it be Google Seasons of Docs, Archie Chi, they will have different skill sets and they will require different things out of you. So when you speak to your mentors, when you mail them or even if you just join in the Slack channels and speak with them, they'll be able to give you a better picture as opposed to you making assumptions and you trying to figure out everything with the file lines that's written on the website of the mentorship program. So my first and I think the last recommendation that I would ever give for anyone applying is to actually speak to the mentors. Email is a very traditional, boring way to reach out, but it still works. So yeah, that's it for me. Perfect. Yeah and Kunal, I believe that there are so many prospective mentees and the students community that you help drive in. So I believe you've had enough conversations with people who've been interested in a similar question like which program to select, some suggestions like what to do next and so on. So from your from your standpoint as a community leader, so do you have any insights and anything to share? Yeah, that's a good question. And I'd like to add on my answer to what Uchi said before, Uchi mentioned he didn't get selected in Google Summer of Code for the very first time, but that did not stop him from contributing. So these programs are great. You get like mentorship and you get some nice, you get stippin', you get more streamlined way of contributing and all these things, but it's not like a student cannot contribute to such open source projects without these programs. You can still contribute if you don't get selected. That is what I would recommend you to do. If you're going to get started with open source, you don't have to wait for any of these programs to start when contributing to open source. But then for example, if you talk about Google Summer of Code, so when you already have some sort of contributions and stuff and you didn't really wait for the time period to start to actually contribute, then when you actually apply to Google Summer of Code, it's going to only increase your chances only because the mentors are going to be like, okay, this person has been really active and they are a very candidate and stuff like that as compared to someone who has never contributed before. So that's what the mentors are also looking for. People who are actually there for open source stuff. So the best way I would recommend for you to get started is just get involved. Find the project you want to contribute to like we already mentioned. There's so many projects you can get involved in because the project get involved, start solving issues, then complexities of the issues will then grow and get involved, get more people involved, help others. And after that, when the mentorship programs start, apply and fingers crossed, hope you get selected. But if you don't get selected, you already are already have made a profile in open source. So it's fine. That's okay. Yeah, and some lessons to learn, right? Yeah. Awesome. Yeah, it's almost time for us to wrap up. So probably it's the best way to spend the remaining two or three minutes to share the last insights and the last suggestions for the perspective, for the perspective mentees and for the perspective contributors to the cloud native open source community. Yeah, sure. Yeah. I mean, I've always been saying this and I'll continue to say it. Open source has changed my life. I mean, like, I'm African, I live in Africa, but having the opportunity to work on software that impacts millions of lives, it's an opportunity and it's never something I take for granted. So if open source can change my life, just know that it can change yours too. So when it comes to open source, I will give you this huge takeaway. Number one is embrace the culture of sharing openly. So for me at the time, when I was contributing at Thanos, one of the things I did very important was I always share things I'm learning, the things I'm doing within the Slack and also on social media. I was on Twitter at the time, anything I'm doing, at the time we had this Thanos mentee Friday hangout. So at each point, I would always tweet about the things we learned every week on Twitter and stuff like that. I never knew people were watching, but people were actually paying attention. So try as much as possible to embrace that culture of sharing openly. And the second would be taking responsibility. I think if you want to succeed within the open source space, I think you need to imbibe that culture of taking responsibility. So basically what it means is if you happen to join a community, try as much as possible to take a task or an issue and be responsible for that, help out, make sure that you see it from start to finish. Awesome. Thank you Uche. So Divya, last one minute, suggestions for other folks in the community? Uche again covered it all, but I would just like to add one little point that is, I know it can be intimidating, wherever you are, at whichever stage in life you are. If you're trying out a new thing, it's very intimidating. It was very intimidating for me to go ahead and approach people to understand how an open source community works. And I'm very sure students and people who are professionals and face the same sort of fear as to how am I going to approach that person or how am I going to speak at this meeting. But please be aware that there are no stupid questions, there are no stupid concerns that you are raising because everybody started out as a beginner, right? Nobody came into this world knowing everything. So please don't be intimidated. If you are looking to contribute, please just assess your skills and all these steps that have been shared by the other panelists, please use those steps and use them to get started. That's it for me. Awesome. And yeah, and Kunal, a few words from yourself from your step plan. Yeah, both covered it completely. I would just like to say get involved, best way to get involved is to get involved. Once you get involved, the path will be set for you. Community will help you. And it's not going to happen overnight. If you're contributing to a big project, big project, it will take time. So give it time. Have an open mind to learn new things to one more important point. Learn how to ask good questions and ask questions in public. Because if you get stuck, then just join the mailing list or Slack channel of the project or whatever, Gitter Slack, whatever they're using, ask your questions in public, ask good questions. And Google is your best friend, Google, a lot of things if you are not able to figure it out. Just collaborate, like everyone mentioned, and I'm sure you'll make it. Awesome. So thank you for joining us today at the CNCF mentees panel that we have here at the KIPCon. And hope you're having a great KIPCon. And thanks everyone for making it here, for Uchikunal and for being a panelist here. Bye all. Bye. Bye-bye.