 Okay, I just got to get something my pockets We're doing really what we're doing really well to don't worry about it. We got it. Just I mean people will still be coming. It's okay Yeah, so You know, this was such a mess Karsten, you know, I don't like being on You know, I know Jen, you know, I really don't like it either But I mean I can't even really fall back on the self-accordination of ADHD and my public shaming for all my shortcomings of which there are many Because it really is just the way things are this time No one is at fault. There are no real mistakes have been made. We're just here to do the best we can Of course, I know that haven't I said this name to you many times when you worried about something in a community event? Yeah, I guess so it well it must be it must be something we've got going in the open in the open source way guidebook for community But just I've got it right here. We look it up to confirm Carson Presentation right now. I'm sorry can that wait, you know, isn't it getting a little old to keep referring back to the guidebook? We've really envisioned what an open source community in its events can look like just take a look around you You've gone gone folks. Don't you agree? This place is amazing. Yeah I Well, but what do you mean by old guidebook? We just updated it to the doodado version last year and the chapter in governance It includes the very evolution from projects such as those in the cloud native ecosystem So you see it's really all just derived from what we've all been doing for two and even three decades I mean wrote it down the guidebook. It'll take me just a few moments to find it. Okay What did I do? What did I say? Karsten No, I suppose you don't I'm sorry. I'm I'm not myself this morning. I'm just Really stressed and just falling into conditioning, you know It and that was pretty kind of condescending of me and dismissive to to treat your hard work in all of these communities Where you've been enabling massive cross-pollination with your community event strategies And I know the folks who've learned so much from ear to mouth have created the quality of user and Contributor experience here in the cloud native communities. It's really impressive. It's also a little sad to me What's about it? Well, you know, Jim for the last three years since since we wrote this the guidebook and I've been publicizing this new version You know, I've been on this for about 15 years now, right? I've been and I've been having hundreds of these conversations on these topics like just in this last year alone and and I've been attending talks by other community managers and People folks I'm really recognizing how the job is this role of stewardship and caretaking and and there's this one universal truth That I'm finding is that everyone is doing the similar right things They've even greatly involved some of the very same practices I've been parroting for 15 years with just the same automatic line like lower the barriers or to participation so users can see themselves become contributors and La de la de yada and and I'm seeing people take that to the next level with their user experience work with the data science work And with so many great tools at hand and in each case when I come up and I and I humbly ask, you know I don't say I've got a book to show you I'm just like how did you learn all of this? Where did you get it off from and they say almost universally trial and error? Sort of figured it out with myself after talking with a lot of people Okay. Do you see why I'm sad though? There's so much missed opportunity to mentor each other to capture and share knowledge and to build community For people who are stewarding communities, you know So many people having to go it alone While focusing all their energy on enabling others to be successful and a little time on enabling themselves And those like them to be successful Wow, yeah, I know what you're saying. I feel that For white folks aren't coming it's dungeon masters like yourself to learn at your feet Hmm, I have a feeling it's something to do with this vision of people learning at my feet That's right Carson, maybe not you personally because you know hashtag not all men But plenty of people from your generation of open source contributors start with RT FM and get worse from there Do you know what happens when someone he's just used to running the barriers everywhere because of their color or gender? Our sexual orientation gets hit would work whatever is the modern equivalent of RT FM. It's like just make the pull request It's easy here the doctor now. Hmm Yeah, honestly, and I really don't know that I mean my privileges have helped me largely avoid those barriers and And and mask myself when we know when I'm faced with things that That were my identity might have been blocked, you know I get I get that and you know person. I'm glad you understand that. I mean, you first thing so So I'm sure they heard from people how hard it is to get shut down by RT FM and an open source community Even if you felt welcome up to that point I know you've seen the research results of the meter's cheating from all an open source is getting Where marginalized people are successful. It's most often in spite of supposedly lowered barriers than due to them Or it comes from starting their own actually inclusive communities as a way to feel the sense of belonging Right, right Okay, so then here we are minutes in this presentation. Where are we trying to get to? Well You know, Jen, I don't think we're too far from the intended path The one I wanted to focus on was was how this old and a new Haven't been finding ways to communicate and are isolated and duplicating efforts and the need of a person in a similar situation to share a coffee or tea with and Talk and it feels like we're starting to communicate better between the two of us So how about if you tell me more about the role that you've played in open source communities What has it taught you and how do you conduct things as a result? What would you be putting into a how-to guide or a good conversation with somebody and and I'll keep an open mind and see if I can find Maybe a little bit less about the comparisons to the guide and more about my first experiences in open source And that led me to my awareness and knowledge and we can see where we can go from there. All right Yeah, so let me talk about my story a little bit. I'm going off script here So I work with a number of open source communities I work with dozens of them from the perspective of event marketing. I'm embedded at the office of the CTO at Red Hat within the open source program office My journey in tech has been non-linear. I started out and arts management. I was a nonprofit I was in higher ed. I was a barista. I was a retail worker I was a housekeeper and so I had no direct pathway to being an open source communities But one thing that keeps me in this space and I've been in it for the past eight years is Knowing that I'm here to enable other people's people to succeed I'm here to make sure that I leave the world a better place than what I left it and The aspirational aspect as it makes me feel like I belong here despite all the barriers of which there are many So of course, I want to recognize my intersectionality I'm a woman I'm a person who is a daughter of immigrants from the Philippines. I am a first-generation I worked five jobs while I was in college. I too have ADHD with its co-morbidities. Yay including anxiety I Identify as bisexual even though I'm married and I'm passing a straight There are all sorts of things they bring in to this work That I'm allowed to bring into and I'm for that. I'm really really grateful I joked that sometimes I've found my Island of misfit toys and I love that you're one of my fit toys Not broken just funny-looking yeah, and so Like hearts and said one of the things that we want to do right to promote diversity equity inclusion within the open source communities to talk more about our personal stories and It's hard right because it means Revealing vulnerability it means letting access to parts of ourselves that maybe that we haven't revealed to others publicly before and so You know, I'm here to say I'm ready to work and with you and with you and with you Because I'm going to embrace your difference. I'm not going to embrace that difference because it's going to bring the best things to me I will always only expect the best things of other people and to me That's the joy of open source That's what keeps me going when I have to deal with an a-hole when I deal with someone who says you don't belong here. I realized that you know what everyone's dealing with issues of belonging and I want to say I belong here, but you know what not only do I belong here? I want to say to other people You belong here, too. So I'm in a non-technical role But I help make communities successful Like I said, I work with dozens of communities like fedora like kubernetes And one of the things that I just love about the kubernetes community is how accepted I am and how valued I am for my Non-technical contributions. I'm seen as a cross-polliner and seen as a connector I'm seen as someone who will help you find the answers and really I think that's what we're all Trying to do is just find the answers for what we need That's um, I I didn't know what you're gonna say today. So thank you But there and and there and but I didn't without even knowing what you're gonna say I knew such that I could write in the script that there was so much in there That was like my own experience and so much that is different, you know, I've Alluded to the masking earlier, you know, some of the details like I I I stopped working in restaurants I was a chef for for about five or six years in Santa Cruz and I never finished my college degree and and I needed to get a job right get health insurance for my family and so I started working in tech and my long hair and my White guy bro in the Silicon Valley meant that people didn't question my presence in the room And I wrote down everything I didn't understand in the margins of my notes of every little list And I went I studied and I came back with answers again and again and again until I understood what I was doing So I faked it until I made it right and and the The level of difficulties it's not about I mean this isn't the contest right? It's like I have experiences that helped me understand yours. I haven't been to the same things that you've been through but by sympathy my empathy It's solidly there for it because it makes you know, it's And I think it's really always that it's something that's really helped me see During the time that I've been working in open-source communities that when I started working in for door Docs project and as a You as a Docs contributor and took on a leadership role and and the main thing for me was just always noticing that I Suspected the other people at least to some part headed in their minds some self-doubt like I did That they then when they heard other people Seeming like they all were felt like they belonged and knew what they were doing and felt left out that I figured Everybody had some degree of that as well. So I just always focused on Going to address the feelings and other people that I was worried about of myself now Honestly, we call that codependency and I have to admit to having had a 20-year codependent relationship with open-source that I am working on Really working on working on fixing right now But thank you all for giving me a little dose of being here today because that really helps my my presence of things Yeah, that's really that is really interesting and I think that the that for me always keeping always being being willing to to come back to first To remember what it's like to to be new in the room at all times and No, the lesson that I remember from my keto practice that I really enjoyed That just made sense to me was that the the black belt the people who knew the most were always in the room a Learning when the when the basics were being taught every day They were always working on the basics, you know, never forgetting to go back and practice over and over again these these essential core things and and and recognizing that the deal the Excuse me, there's not the difference between Somebody who was new to a space and somebody who's been there for a while is just that someone's new and someone's been there for a while You know, everyone's got something valid and and every year I learned things in open source From from two new people that I had even known before so And I think I can say that that Just in terms of feeling like and trying to understand how we get here how we got here today, you know It just definitely feels like it's this combination of this human is societal conditioning, right that has our It's kept our senses all focused on what's going on in the moment of time when I'm delivering what's going on with it I've got to get to this event. I've got to make something happen And not being able to see where we are also in the context of history, right? And so it's we all have a duty on both sides of that to question where we are in the context of history and to answer That question for each other And so I think we may have a root cause analysis, you know in some way forward You know, I think we do You know, we're beginning to turn the tide in many ways the welcome this and inclusive nature of the Kubernetes community Really exemplifies that it is happening, but we still have a long way to go In fact, one of our big risks on that journey is forgetting why we're doing it of Leaving people out because we get too busy to share out of stories with each other and you people a Danger of focusing too much on repeat before me as a how to get things done the what done But we also need to deeply know and understand the why and to share the shared why with fellow practitioners Yeah, and you know, I could have said it better myself, which I you know, I think is also the point I I've learned if I sit in a room and just listen a lot of times people will say the thing that I wanted to say Right. So and and and it's just been like that since the last two decades every year I feel like I'm learning new things about open collaboration from people who are on just their first days and in Participating in open source somebody's very first question will open my mind in a way I hadn't thought of before and and that's because this isn't a fixed knowledge base It's there are truths and practices that do seem to hold up to the test of time and others that have simply gone to the wayside I mean take the term our TFM for example There was a time when people people like myself might have thought that there was a kindness to suggest that people go through the Useful experience of being productively lost in code or content There may even be some honest heart in it not one to just let people know the right answer But give them a chance to discover the purpose in the answer But even when that is true It's also true that hitting people to teach them not to hit people is stupid and doesn't work So correct So I think I know what we should do now, but let me ask you and see if we're at the same conclusion What's next You know Carson, I don't think we need another chapter or a vision of the open source way right now. Oh, thank god. I agree. Yeah Yeah What I really think is that we all need to reach out to each other to other community stewards other community caretakers Especially the ones from outside of your community and just ask them to have coffee or TV with you and just talk Talk about how it is how it feels What you need what you like what you want to see change what your vision is for the future Let's build some actual community for ourselves amongst us practitioners for a change Let's just start with that, you know, let's not try to bite off and chew a massive community vision You know from experience if you bring these kinds of people together the vision will just come Fucking right it will Fully agree with you Jen. In fact, let's start right now. Do you want to go grab a cup of coffee and continue this conversation afterwards? Does anybody else want to join us? So come join us at the red hat booth after the q&a here to talk more how we can caretake our own community caretakers And thanks everyone for joining us for this bit of experimental theater. I mean cube con talk Okay, then bye everyone say bye karsten. Bye karsten Thanks everyone. So any questions We do have a few minutes for q&a questions if anyone Do you deal with um imposter syndrome? So you talked a little bit about having some getting into a community and not having feeling sometimes like you're not being able to bring Like you're talking about like black belts for example Sometimes when you're going into a room you're like man, I can't contribute. I'm overwhelmed. I'm feeling like I'm Potentially worthless or having to even like self-doubt. How do you in a open-source community tackle some of those feelings? There was a certain way of doing open stars and characterize that doing open stars is treated like a hazing process Right and it was accepted for many years. But hey, that's the best way. We want to toughen people up We want people to get through the paces. We want them to earn their stripes And Oh, should I just hold it? Okay. Yeah, it's just getting lost in my hair So, you know, I think part of it is it's actually not just on the individual an individual contributor To look out for themselves, right? So the entire purpose of community Is that everyone's looking out for everyone, right? And so, you know, kind of what karsten was speaking to is that, you know, those of us who have been in community for a while really I know this word has been overused, but we need to pivot. You know, we have to look at a new way of doing things And sometimes there's a fairness issue, right? People say it's not fair. Why Why would I want to pivot when it worked for me? Why? Why do I? Sorry Why do why do I need to to change because you know the way that I did things worked Um, but that assumes that the world is static that assumes that community is static um, and it's not right so One thing that I observed said like I said used to work in education is um, I've observed That current generations generations are up and coming They question the way things are done. They don't accept it anymore. And I will say that as someone who is a gen Xer um, I was just kind of told to shut up and keep working, you know, and I don't know that I was fully aware of that but when I talked to other gen Xers, I realized Hey, that's what we were taught, but we were all thinking, you know what this stuff is crazy You know, what a bunch of shit, but we just didn't ever say it And so I think what it took is it took a group of people to actually Finally call out the bullshit so to speak being brave enough to do that Um, but you can't do that. I think always as an individual sometimes you have to Like for me, I had to put a stake in the ground There around DEI stuff like I co-founded the asian network at red hat and we didn't have one which people think How is that possible? Well because we're we're a company. It's 82 white And it's based on north carolina and so people are always super shocked that you know, you need an e or a g Aren't there a lot of people From asian communities and tech In certain parts of tech so it's not uniform, right? So part of what I would also say is that you know, if you're feeling a sense of imposter syndrome and I'm Super guilty of that, right? And part of it is that when you are feeling imposter syndrome, we're also looking for external validation We're looking for someone to affirm our worth We're looking for someone to say, hey, you know what your contribution is awesome But that's only one part of the story, right? And the thing is all of us are going to screw up all of us screw up, right? And the part that I think is super important is the part that comes after screwing up Right, do we go and put people in the middle and stone in the back? Are we saying, you know what? It's okay. It's like, you know fall down seven Get up eight, right? So we got to re-center the vision as a community In terms of making sure people are supported and feel like they can be Um Able to say something without being killed emotionally or psychologically because let's let's face it I think there's a bunch of us in this room who've had to encounter that, you know And we're lucky enough maybe to find our own resilience But you know, we've lose lots and lots of open source contributors Because maybe they don't have that same kind of resilience. And so, you know what? Let's let's create another pathway. Let's create another way of being Let's create a new infrastructure for onboarding people Yeah, um I was I'm so glad I get to go after you Um The That's I mean like a like that was perfect. Thank you. So the because my short answer is I drank Right, like I and and I suppressed the feelings of not belonging and not being there And I never looked sideways to the other people around me Which I think is part of what I was hearing from what Jen was saying is that As a gen X or like am I you know, I was so focused on What I was supposed to be doing and trying to ignore what was going on in my context and the feeling I wasn't looking to catch that other people were having these experiences. So the um Which can be good. It's one of the way, but Sorry a story came to mind, but that's not appropriate for today. I think the The the the part that that somebody started looking sideways somebody called out the emperor's clothes It has no clothes, right? And it's had the effect of allowing all of us to turn sideways and to talk to each other And so so to me the the kind of the I was going to say simple solutions Yeah, I almost used the word simple the solution to me is to try to reach out to other people to acknowledge where we're at and and And and know that know whoever you are as an individual the odds are that there's somebody else in the room who is feeling a similar feeling and maybe Uh, and maybe it maybe it has another is it marginalized in another way even more so or it's feeling something And so there's this degree in which that's that's the peer mentoring like we can be there for each other So that's simple like I'm I'm feeling this I'm feeling awkward and so so I I will often uh So I get the flip side of it I get you know, so I can I take advantage of my experience and expertise and and my my whiteness And so my ability to speak and so I will speak up and say the thing that's I'm like I'm really don't understand what that was about. Can you explain to us or You're there's call out the things that I know that people's brains aren't getting probably like mine Best ability so that's like one side of it. I will basically call out that I'm that I'm lost and I'm feeling like I don't know I said like I don't belong right The but I didn't used to do that So that's and and I can do that now because I'm that comfort of that very solid privilege of Of I've actually earned what I've done is and I'm not earned it I mean I've actually at the point where I've done the work I'm like I've done the years now instead of I had a behind me kind of thing so Oh and I stopped drinking I mean that was part of the Yeah, but that was part of what I started which was really to say that I stopped trying to do things to mask What was going on with me internally and I started trying to address those underlying underlying causes for the behaviors In the questions we have a give room for one more One or two. Yeah, thanks I was just wondering if you have any recommendations for like how to How to protect or safeguard your emotional energy when you're dealing with community and Like I find it if if there's somebody who's struggling I will over worry about the person who is struggling and that will warp my own Right recommendations around that I mean, I want to say only two things on that one one is we We do have a chapter in the community open source way that tried to address that right and the problem with that chapter is It doesn't it's it's all about how what you can do as an individual Right and and so the first response is like is Is that it's not it's the organization that's supporting you who's who how are you who are you here representing for How are they what can they be doing to help take care of you? That's one part But in this moment, that's like a lot of a big ask to have so Yeah, I mean that maybe we don't have a lot of control over, you know, you may have a workflow That's meant to work you to death Like I'll just be honest There are a lot of this in community that we're just expected to do every like everything And and then people want us to also be their emotional caretakers to right like that Does happen Um a lot especially because if you're an emotional, I mean if you're a community manager You're you're at least for me. I feel like I have to responsible I have to model uh responsible emotional centeredness And I think that's where the exhaustion comes in is that we don't have a way to like let go of the stuff that we're feeling Upset about because we're caretaking the community We're caretaking um members and we're all human beings And I don't know that those of us who are doing the community building And the community management stuff. We're not really allowed to let our hair down. So we're not allowed to To show hey, I'm anxious about this too Hey, this is kind of scary too because you're trying to maintain a sense of um equilibrium I think for your community, right like you don't want people Uh to panic But honestly, we have to also just acknowledge those things and one of the things that I found like during the pandemic when I You know, I have a team of people under me Anxiety was like the number one thing I was dealing with in my team just anxiety It wasn't even like anything specific. It was just anxiety around the uncertainty of the world And I just thought I said, you know what I'm feeling it too Like I have no idea what's going to happen next You know, everyone keeps choking about like the you know, the locusts and everything coming and I'm like That might happen, you know And so, you know part of being community is actually dealing with uncertainty a lot You know, and then now it's exacerbated by everything that's happened The past few years, but I think also just means that we're awakening right And this is part of the reason we're having this talk is that you know what? Let's go ahead and see if we can find a way To build an infrastructure for those of us that are doing the caretaking Because maybe we're good at taking care of others But maybe we can find a way to take care of each other To maybe redistribute the workloads that it's not just us in our community But it's a whole community of caretakers and then we can collectively have some sort of knowledge base To care for ourselves as well as our communities And in case it wasn't obviously continual references back to the guide Because the joke of how we all immediately dive to a tool when they're like We need a solution and we all start pulling the tool out for it This is the time to just put the tools away Let's just build that sense of conversation between us and see what comes from it The tools are there when we need them Yeah, we at the time do you have time for one more question? We have the one minute mark, okay Yeah, I think that that's probably We'll be here the rest of the week, you know find us on the twitter on the linkedin You know, we want to talk to you and so don't be shy about talking to us Because we want to help you and we want you to help us Yeah, exactly. You know really thank you everybody. Thank you everybody