 Welcome to Amsterdam, and KubeCon, CloudNativeCon 2023, join John Furrier, Savannah Peterson, Rob Streche, and you, Peasecon as the Cube covers the largest conference on Kubernetes, CloudNative, and open source technologies together with developers, engineers, and IT leaders from around the globe. Live coverage of KubeCon, CloudNativeCon 2023 is made possible by the support of Red Hat, the CNCF, and its ecosystem partners. Good afternoon, open source community, and welcome back to KubeCon Europe. We are in fabulous Amsterdam here in the Netherlands. I am joined by a Dutchman on my ride. You, how's it going? It's going well. It's just been a blast co-hosting with you. It has. I feel lucky. We're also a little cheeky and sneaky. I hope you all are enjoying this at home. Super excited about our next guest. I actually personally requested that we do this segment because it matters to me, as well as you, that we empower the next generation of folks in the technology space. Cassandra, thank you so much for joining us. How are you doing today? Doing well. Thank you for inviting me today. Hey, it's our pleasure. We really appreciate you making the time. Your dad, Steve's been a super help in curating. We've got some really interesting props on the table and you're also wearing a kids day shirt. So before we get into all the good stuff, actually we should also introduce Fippy. Fippy, welcome to the show. It's nice to have you here with us today. It's alright if you're a little quiet, but you're looking great. Love that. Tell us, what is kids day? I don't know that most people know that kids day happens. Kids day is an event. It actually happened this Sunday and about 80 kids showed up. If you include their parents, much more people. Yes, and so this is a co-located event as a part of KubeCon. You did this when we were in Detroit, as well as here. What goes on at kids day? Tell the adults what happens. In kids day, we teach kids workshops. So there were actually three kids workshops running simultaneously. I taught a Fippy workshop with raspberry pies. What else was going on? What are the other two? There was a scratch workshop and a Minecraft workshop. That's pretty awesome. So when we say kids, what age are these kids? They're like middle school to high school age. That's pretty awesome. And you said you had 80 kids in your class? Well, my class had like 20 kids, but it's 80 kids for the entire event. Wow, that's pretty special. Those kids must be really smart. Were your kids there? No, unfortunately not. I unfortunately did not know it was happening. This is why we have Cassandra on the show. Exactly. If I knew, I would have brought them for sure because both of my kids enjoy programming. They have raspberry pies. Shocking. I don't know what happened there. They have their own raspberry pies. So if I had known, I would definitely have brought them. So what do you teach in the workshop? What's going on there? What do you help them with? We teach them how to code and how to wire. So we have this setup here. There's this display touchscreen. And behind it, which you can't see, is a raspberry pie mounted on it. Can confirm. There's this breadboard in the back, which you may or may not can see. So to really introduce them, I want to do a hands-on approach. Yeah. Because I find code very intimidating and boring. You know, I think you're not alone there. So we start them with just wiring this up, very interactive, fun, colorful. And once they do wire it up, the screen boasts. It's very satisfying. Yes, love that instant gratification. Yeah, yeah. And then what happens? They type a few commands to get the game running. And more instant gratification, that you see a nice colorful game. But after playing the game for a while with these arrow keys, they'll realize they can't actually win the game. It's a trap. Yeah. Oh, wow. What happens then? So then they'll have to actually listen to me. Nice. You're not only good at game design, you're good at experience design. Clearly, I love that. So how quickly do you take them from having no knowledge to actually running a game on a raspberry pie in your class? Um, to go from, like, zero to this setup worth the game running, but they can't beat it, maybe 20 minutes, it's pretty fast. They just plug it in and wire. That is really impressive. I bet that's such a gateway. So tell me a little bit more about the students. Is are they all the children of wonderful tech nerds? Are they, is the gender split pretty even? What are some of your observations? I think they grab the kids from the local schools. Oh, that's great. So they're all local kids. I find that sometimes the foreign, when I go to, like, foreign countries, the gender split is better because they just grab them from the schools. I mean, you would think if they grabbed them from the schools in the United States, it would be the same too. But it's a little bit different ecosystem. I think in the United States, they're less likely to take the kids from the schools and more likely to have it so that the parents have to sign up for the kids. Oh, there's so many things I could say to unpack that. You must be proud to be a European dad right now. Absolutely. Yeah. So tell us a little bit more about the game. What happens in the game? Who is Fippy for folks who might not be familiar? Fippy is this giraffe. My favorite part is his stubby legs. I find that hilarious. It is pretty cute. We actually had him doing a little bit of a nosedive here earlier, which is a bit scary. And so Fippy is the main character in the game, correct? Yeah. So there's this boat with Captain Cube on it. I can see that. It's right over here, folks. So they crashed into an island. And Fippy is tasked with a mission to, you see these pods running around? Yeah. Those are the guys who escaped off the ship. Oh, wow. Little rebels, little pirates, pirate pods. So they're holding containers with the little boxes on their heads. And inside the containers is Fippy's friends. I love that. And Fippy is a part of the CNCF open-source narrative, right? As a character? Yeah, he's like the main character. Yes. So how did you come up with the inspiration for this game? Well, this event is all about the CNCF. So I think it would be wonderful to really promote Kubernetes to the children. Because Kubernetes is so complicated. I don't know how you can explain it to a child. Honestly, a lot of adults struggle to explain it. So I think that you, I am smiling both inside and quite literally because I don't think I've heard the sentence, I want to bring Kubernetes to the children before. Have you? I have not. That feels like a first. So OK, so let's break that down. How do you decrease the complexity of Kubernetes for a young person just getting excited about this tech? I think they don't need to learn about Kubernetes. They just need to learn about Fippy and the animals. And when they see these animals, maybe they'll ask their parents what Kubernetes is because they keep hearing these words and it's kind of related to their favorite characters. I love that. It seems like you're starting them off on a journey, very kid-friendly. And Kubernetes may be in their future at some point. What I'm curious about, what's the next step for a lot of these kids? What do they go on and do? What's kind of the expected learning path for them? Well, the best-case scenario is their parents buy them a Raspberry Pi. But I think just bringing this experience back to their friends at school, talking about it, maybe it'll get something going. Yeah, that's absolutely true. And I think Raspberry Pies are just so versatile. It'll help them kickstart a project like this, but then there's a million different things they can do with them. I think it also sets the expectation that programming is not just a geeky white guy thing. Anyone can do it. Louder for everyone in the back. Did everybody hear that? Just making sure. Yeah, just slam dunk on that front. I love that. So do you mind if I ask how old you are? Yeah, so I'm actually 19. I'll be turning 20 soon. And you told me that you've been teaching since you were 12. Yeah, so around the start of middle school. Casual. What were you doing when you were 12? Not teaching. Yeah, I don't think I was anywhere near that. Certainly not at 19 either. That's fantastic. OK, so you obviously love being a gateway and a facilitator of bringing new tech to folks who are going to interact with it, whether they realize it or not for the rest of their lives. You started teaching seven years ago. What do you hope we're having a conversation about seven years from now? Seven years from now. I hopefully don't have to talk about gender diversity. Should just be the norm? Yes, absolutely. Couldn't agree more. I've been doing women and tech panels for 15 years, and it's the same darn ratio. Why do you? OK, let's talk about it. Why do you think we still have the gender diversity challenges that we have right now in our sector? Well, it's a tough question, I know. But I'm curious. I'm not really sure how to describe it. When I was in elementary school, I didn't think about it. It seemed normal to have tech for everyone. And once you hit middle school, you kind of see the boys try to be cool, and the girls try to put on makeup. So once they puberty hits, they think that's somehow related to their hobbies and they want to fit in. I mean, yes, I would say social norms and puberty are to blame for a lot of things in this world. I really hope we're not still having this conversation, and I'm sure you've had a million of these conversations. How did you decide to be, I mean, it is extremely complex to do what we're doing. You teach a variety of different things. Like you said, you can't even remember how many different workshops you've done. How did you decide that Kubernetes and the CNCF open-source community was the next group of young people, or at least their offspring, that you wanted to help educate? Well, I don't think the kids know about Kubernetes yet. Like originally, I was teaching a Pokemon workshop that was really popular. Pretty sweet, yes. But I wanted something more, not just to learn coding, but to get something more out of it. Actually, dive into a specialized technology without knowing it. You know, I use the analogy of Intel inside a lot. Most people aren't thinking about the chipset that's inside there. I mean, what we all know, it's an M1 or an M2 in our particular max. But point being, I think the average person is not necessarily thinking about what's going on inside, but there's so many little details and technological pieces that make our lives easy and fast and smooth. You mentioned that you love collecting plushies at the event. And I know that Fippy is your number one favorite. Have you seen anything else on the show floor that you enjoyed? Probably my second favorites are any reference to the Go-Gofer. They're pretty popular. I saw one with a little green hat earlier. I'm going to have to start looking for more references then. It feels like almost like a little Easter egg hunt. What else has you excited about the show? You've already taught, so the pressure's off. What is interesting to you during these days? Just meeting new people. I get to see people in the workforce, ask what they do for their jobs, decide if I want to be like them or not in the future. I was just going to say, how is that affecting your career? What do you want to be when you grow up? Well, I'd say you're already pretty grown up. Probably something to do with technology. Maybe. I want to start with coding. So I have a foundation. And from there on, I can choose something different. Do you think that we're going to continue to code the way that we currently code? Or do you think that things like AI and some of the other tech are going to make coding a lot easier? I think we'll continue just coding. Because in my college courses right now, I'm learning some Java and Python. And I hear that 20 years ago, they were learning Java and Python. I can attest to it. I was in uni 20 years ago, and I learned the same things. Unless they rapidly change the education system, I don't think anything's going to change. Which is, I think, why we need to have programs like this to kids' day. Because there's such a diversity of things people can learn. And there are so many different fun things that they can do. Learning Java and Python is not necessarily part of that fun journey. Even though it may be something that you need to learn because they're foundational knowledge. But going back to programming like this, something very tangible, something that has instant gratification, I think that's a very worthy cause of helping kids. AI have fun, but also learning them the foundational things that'll start them on their journey. I think that is a very good thing to do. Even though that in the end, they will have to learn Java, and they have to learn Python. I think it's part of it. I think it's interesting. What else excites you? When you're not teaching or learnings code, what are you doing? What do young people do these days? I go to college. What other classes, besides some of your computer science classes, have you interested? Interested? None. It's pretty boring. I'm taking online college. So all my peers are actually adults who want a second chance. Oh, that's really interesting. Is that a challenge for you as a student? Not having peers to connect to, or is it? No, it doesn't bother me. Yeah, that's nice. I actually find it easier because I'm used to really hard content from my high school. So somehow it's easier now. The expectations are lowered a bit. Where did you go to high school? I went to Carmichael High School. It's kind of prestigious. I was going to say, you obviously went to a different school than I went to in the state of California. Can't say I was that challenged. I'm impressed that you were, though. Yeah, that sounds lovely. So how do people find out more about what you're teaching next? Because you do a variety of different things. Is it all event-based? Do you have some stuff online? What's your secret? So far, I just go to different conferences. And I talk to the organizers. And they bring in the kids. I teach a workshop. That is fantastic. How many kids do you hope to have at your next workshop? Well, I have a max capacity for my class alone because I use physical hardware. And I have to bring in a suitcase of hardware. I mean, yeah, I can imagine. We joke about all of our gear and camera gear. I'm sure the entire crew can relate to you having to bring that type of hardware with you everywhere. Thankfully, it's all pretty lean now. Raspberry Pi's pretty small. I have 15 kids. So maybe two to three kids to one kid would be a good number. That's pretty sweet. All right, yeah, so you kind of max out at about 30, 40. Excellent. Cassandra, you are an incredibly impressive guest. We really appreciate you taking the time. Fippy, thank you also for joining us here. Quite the mascot. We hope you stand up with those little stubby legs moving forward. And I hope that your next few classes are absolutely jam-packed. People are lucky to get the opportunity to learn from you. This was a gem. It was awesome. This is just a little treat. Your little grin is telling me everything I need to know. And you are now a CUBE alumni. You're now VIP. And I think you might be one of our youngest guests. Production, yeah, definitely one of our youngest guests. Teenage guest, first teenager I've interviewed on the show. Very exciting. Thank you again so much. And if you all didn't have your hearts touched and don't feel motivated after watching this segment, well, you're dead inside. My name's Savannah Peterson. We're here at KubeCon EU. I'm in Amsterdam, Netherlands. I'm feeling a little sassy this afternoon, apparently. You're watching the CUBE, the leading source for emerging tech news.