 Good afternoon, cloud community, and welcome back to KubeCon, CloudNativeCon, here in wonderful Chicago. My name is Savannah Peterson, and I'm very excited about a super special segment highlighting the inclusion and accessibility of KubeCon. Now, if you've been in an event like this, it can be super loud, there's a lot of moving pieces, and there's a lot of emphasis within the community to be inclusive and to celebrate the diversity. Now, it's one thing to say that, but it's an entirely different thing to actually do it in practice. Now, this KubeCon, they took the accessibility for the deaf and hard of hearing to a whole another level, and I am thrilled to welcome Rob and Destiny to the show. Thank you both so much for being here. You are the co-chairs of the Deaf and Hard of Hearing working group at CNCF, correct? And yes, that's correct. So how many years has that group been together? Not long, actually. About three months now. Oh my goodness. Yeah, so we are growing in a big force here in the community. I feel that way. I mean, we've already made a huge impact, and Destiny was on the keynote stage today. I'm guessing she made history, or yesterday, rather. I guess she made history on stage to be part of that conference and have, she's probably one of the first to be a signer on the keynote stage of a major conference, so it's pretty great. Yeah, it was amazing. How did that feel, Destiny? Were you nervous? Of course, of course. Yeah, yeah, I was practicing like crazy the whole time. My mind was running wild, and then the keynote got there, and I saw all of my working group in the audience, and I felt at home. It was really nice, and then I just went forth and did it. That's great. So how did the working group come together? How'd you find each other? Sure, so Catherine Paganini, she just won the Taggy Award this year, actually. So congrats to her. She works for a company called Boyant, and those are the people that are behind Linkerdee. So we thought why not maybe include and make things more inclusive and friendly to folks like us. We have a deaf professional Slack group, and we had sent out different messages and asked who was on it, and we asked Destiny to join, asked me to join, and a few other folks to join, and then it just, yeah, Destiny's saying it just grew. Yeah, and then there was a lot of enthusiasm behind that. Soon after this interview, we'll have a happy hour meeting on Zoom, where we all get together and all over the world, where we have people for an hour, show them around the conference. You'll see people from Europe, and then yes, of course, Paris for next year. So I really do want to thank Catherine for really getting the idea out there, and then just planting the seed, I guess, and then it just blew up from there. Love to hear that, and you can tell I can feel your energy and the excitement. One of the first things I noticed when I got to the show floor was if you scanned your badge, they donated a dollar to Deaf coders, which I thought was really impressive. Yes, so there's- Yeah, it's called Deaf Kids Code. Yeah, I thought that was so cool. So did you work with some of the vendors and other people to be more inclusive as well? I know you mentioned that you've created a very cool resource that's obviously open source for other conferences looking to be more accessible for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. Can you tell us a little bit about that? Sure, yeah, of course. So with cloudnative.io, we're under the accessibility page. So if you're looking for anything Deaf and Hard of Hearing related, that's there, and we're providing a lot of resources there and recommendations of what to do. Basically just educating all of them more and offering different suggestions. Everything is there. So you can use that as a resource. And since we've been here, we've learned a lot and we've put it all there. So it's really been amazing. Yeah, so we're hoping to get other companies and other conference organizers and people who manage those and organize those small and large. To get online and be more inclusive and make conferences more accessible for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing. I love that. So what does it mean for you to be able to do this? To be able to empower other, not just in the cloud community, but anyone watching or wanting to learn in the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community? Representation. Yes. 100%. Representation and having that here. Everyone should be represented from the majority minority all the way to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, everywhere in between, in keynotes. Yesterday we were talking about some people were struggling with language and everything here is in English, obviously. So having a little bit of trouble understanding what's going on clearly with the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community, we're always trying to push for closed captions. We're also making a point to say that it benefits other groups, not just the Deaf and Hard of Hearing, like ourselves, but really it's KubeCon. Oh, it's the curb cut effect. So when you have things like sidewalks where they've cut that curb for wheelchair users, seems now that everybody uses it. People on scooters, on bikes, with strollers. You name it, right? It benefits everybody. So accessibility and accommodations really help all of us. That's such a good point. And I think the diversity in that representation, it's great. It's one thing to talk about inclusion and diversity, which a lot of folks in a lot of spaces do, but the tech space historically isn't the most diverse. And I think it's so special that you're able to be here and to represent. What would you say, let's say there's a young Deaf coder out there curious about CNCF and this community, what would you tell them? You're a new coder, so what would you say? Perfect! I would say do it. If someone says, oh no, it's impossible. You can't do that. Tell them to fuck off, just go for it. Listen, do it. Whatever you say, you know, whatever you want to do, go for it. And we will support you. If you're looking for other Deaf and hard of hearing in tech, find us, we are there. So just 100% go for it. Yeah, and also, you know, in the STEM world, representation can be an issue. And so we really want to implement and make a powerhouse of CNCF community members. So people can look at us and say, wow, look at those young kids doing that. We are represented out there and people see that in the community for the most part, you know, contributing to the community as a whole. So they can see that and say, hey, I can code. And then things just kind of snowball from there. Finding mentors, that will be a part of that, inspiring that process. We've got some other ideas for the future to kind of expand on, you know, all the kids that code and with Deaf kids code as well. So, yeah. Anyone who says you can't, tell them to fuck off. Louder for the people in the back, Destiny. That is the spirit. That is definitely the spirit. So this is the first time you were involved as a working group at the actual KubeCon event here on the show floor. What have you learned to apply to Paris? A lot. A lot. We learned, we did a lot for accommodation and accessibility here. It's been pretty impressive. The community really rolled up their sleeves and collaborated together and provided us with the best and greatest experience really at this conference. So because of that, the experience there, we can use that approach and that what we're using here at this conference to apply to Paris. What works, what didn't work, et cetera. Yeah, I think that KubeCon set the tone for and the foundation for what we need here. So for Paris and everything going forth in the future, hopefully. What's one thing that those of us who can hear can do to be more accommodating in general just in our daily lives to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing community? How can we be more inclusive? If, for example, you're trying to come into a space where we're trying to communicate, don't be afraid. Really, I would say just we can write back and forth, we can type, we can text, we can do all of these. There's many ways to communicate with us. I would say just don't be afraid. Really, just come up to us. What's up, what do you need? Ask us these things. And then going forward, that's really the first step. After that, then the communication happens. We'll get what we need. If you're not sure, find us. Find us on the website, find us in person, look around. There's many different ways. But I think that, yeah, being accommodating and accessible for us, figure out what that person needs, I think would be a huge thing. And I also want to add that let us help you solve your problems. Yes, we know how to communicate. We have a uniqueness in the way we communicate, but the hearing world 99.99% can speak and interact, but the deaf folks, we know how. We know how. Just let us take the lead, I would say. Do you think that AI, I've noticed with Instagram, for example, and the caption feature that they have in Instagram stories, do you think that AI and the ability to do that is going to create more inclusion for the deaf and hearing impaired community? What I think really, in general, that's for everyone. I think it helps a lot of people, like in general. Maybe you have an auditory processing problem or anything like that. I think with Apple, Instagram, a lot of different companies, a lot of different platforms, they're providing automatic captioning features and it's awesome. And for a long time, we didn't have anything like that, so people put on a video up online and were like, okay, we're just missing all of the content, we have no idea what's going on, but now we do, and so that's really, really nice to have. Yeah, and with those various apps, GenAI in all of our apps, it's integrated now, right? So a person speaking, if you ask them to speak this particular thing, then they'll see the captions come up. It's like, oh, this is great. So GenAI also, there's various projects out there in the works to try to help sign language being translated and things like that. It's really in its infancy right now. That technology is on center stage. Sign language is a 3D language. It's very spatial. So with that, the AI and machine learning, those groups will have a challenge with that, but that's really exciting to us because we're still, like I said, in the infancy of GenAI, so. Very much. So we'll just see where it goes from there. We're looking forward to see what and how things get going with it. Yeah, I'm really excited. I think we're all excited. And to your point, it really does help us all. I think it's a big deal. And I've never thought of sign language as a 3D language before, but you're so right. That's such a fun way to put it. All right, so last thing I'm going to ask you to do, could you teach us a little sign language? Perhaps teach us how to say cloud or cube. So this is cloud, like this. Ooh, I like that. Cloud like this, yep. It's like. And poor interpreters, they can't say Kubernetes all the time, right? Oh my goodness, yeah. So we come up with various tech signs that we kind of agree upon. When we go back and forth, if there's a word we use often enough, we make up something for it, make up a sign for that particular word. So like, we sign K8 for Kubernetes. I was wondering, yeah. Yeah, like this, K, if you want to try it, yep. Why can't I move my head, yep. And then eight. Eight, middle finger. Yep, yes. So we leave out the S, sorry for those folks who really want it to be perfect, but we sign fast, so we do K8 for Kubernetes. I love it. Well, thank you so much, Rob and Destiny, for being here, co-chairs of the Deaf and Hearing Impaired Working Group at CNCF. So insightful and really special. It's a privilege to get to have this conversation with you. I look forward to attending your future keynotes and hopefully having you back as guests of theCUBE. And Amelia, thank you for being such a wonderful interpreter sitting next to me. Thank all of you at home for tuning in to our wonderful coverage here at KubeCon, CloudNativeCon in Chicago. My name is Savannah Peterson. We'll be talking cloud for the rest of the afternoon, folks. We'll see you soon and thanks for tuning in to theCUBE, the leading source for emerging tech news.