 Okay, so guys, welcome you all. I am Ajit Soni. I'm working as a DevOps engineer too at Forrester now. Apart from that, I do a lot of contributions to community open source and all. So basically I'm C&CF ambassador, one of AWS UG lead and C&CF lead for Jaipur-Adhistan and I'm one of community builder also, okay? So there are a lot of steps I'm doing. Maybe you can connect and check, okay? So, cool. So that handsome guy is me, by the way. This is Abhinav. I am a Kubernetes head with a traveling soul. That's what I call myself. And you can see in the picture, right? I must be somewhere in the George Everest or something in India, basically. So I'm working as a DevOps engineer at Deftron. Apart from just being at DevOps engineer, I'm also C&CF ambassador, AWS company builder. I'm working with different communities, creating different content, churning out different contents for the communities to more engagement. And I'm also author and founder of DevOps Dairy, not in, which you can search on Google, basically. So it's a platform where I'm trying to spread awareness on the collaborative tools as more as possible. Cool. So let's start with the topic, okay? So the thing is like, before starting, I just want to go through with the Q questions. So how many of already contribute to open source? I guess everyone, okay? Okay, a lot of. Okay, that's nice. And do we have any C&CF ambassador in the room? Any ambassador in the room? Oops. We don't have any. Cool. Okay, so would anyone else like to be joined C&CF ambassador corridor here? Okay, yeah. Then this talk will be the best will be for you because we will be going to the all path and we'll be sharing each and every, like how's our journey goes and then how you can make yours. Cool. So you must be wanted to know, right? How you should be getting into the C&CF ambassador. Great. Let's move ahead. So the topic is bridging the open source gap, basically. So starting from the starting point and how do you want to achieve or connect into the open source ecosystem, we're going to talk about everything from new builds to C&CF ambassadors, how we made our path into the C&C ambassador journey and how you can achieve it too. So what's going to be, what's we going to talk about? The first thing is open source and C&C ecosystem that is for sure, right? How we started our journey, basically. Cool. Next. Now, there must be some challenges, right? If you're going to walk on a path, there would be a lot of hurdles. There would be a lot of challenges. So we're going to talk about how we face those challenges, how we have overcome those challenges and yep, now we are C&C ambassadors. And yep, there are tons of open source practices. There are tons of open source opportunities, programs in the open source ecosystem that you can leverage, that we're going to talk about in this talk. Cool. Okay, so our audience begins from like, so let me talk about myself. So I am from a small city of India and then like, so basically if you are also a student or maybe you're going to the same path, so what actually focuses on is like education. Like you should get a degree, you should get all of these things and all of these things. But no one talks about the tech, the main contributions that will help you, okay. So that's the main challenges that anyone can face. So basically maybe getting a job, just get a settle, okay. Or maybe it can be around of, you can, you have to the particular attendance scene that you have to get or like the mindset of the people, like if you will share with someone what you know, so your presence will be degraded or that person will get ahead of you, something like that. So like a lot of challenges are there, similar kind of. So these are the challenges that you can, you might be facing or like we have already faced. So yeah, we have come over that and let's see like how we did it, okay. So if you see this dog, so this is so cute, okay. But the thing is if you relate, there's the board that written below that to be aware of a dog. The thing is like CNC or you can see the, any of the open source journey can start anywhere, okay. The thing is everything is so easy. It just, the people are creating the things like you can't start early. There's a, you have to start early as you want to go the long journey, something like that. So the thing is like you have to take the risk. At least you have to start, you have to start during the time that particular time will help you. So once you're given the time, you will find like, okay, this is so cool. I'm learning it, I'm loving it, okay, something like that. And the next part is the consistency is the key. Once you get started, you have to be consistent. It's not about like today you started and tomorrow you will get some results. It's never like that. Like basically contributing to communities like you don't expect anything in back, but it will come around in many ways, okay. So that's what like I follow a particular quote that I return there like a dedicated mind somehow always ends up lucky. So that's how actually it goes. You have to be dedicated. Cool, get set, go, run. Okay, so the first step is to just get started, right. If you wanna do maybe anything, if you want to write a blog post, go ahead and do it. If you wanna create a video, go ahead and create a video. So the first step is to take the first initial journey, initial point that from where you would be starting up. Let's say if you wanna write a blog, right. So you will just open maybe Google Doc. If you're using Google Doc, then start writing your title, start writing the abstract. And eventually you're gonna be better at the particular thing, right, next thing. The second thing is embrace the continuous learning. So yeah, if you wanna write a blog, then there are tons of things in blog as well, right. You might need to work on SEO optimizations. You might need to take care of the keywords. You might need to take care of the abstract, right. There will be a hundred of things when you're writing a blog. But during the first blog, the first blog that you would be publishing, it would not be the perfect blog. It will not come directly into the Google SEOs, right. That's a continuous journey that you need to embrace. You need to learn from your mistakes. You need to keep on doing the things, right. Actively collaborate with the community. So collaboration is something which you should be, must be focusing on. So community is not about competition. It's about collaboration. That's what I said, I say in almost everywhere. So community is all about collaboration, not competition, right. So you must be, you must be eager to collaborate with other community folks from different, let's say, let's talk about us. So he is one of the leading organizers at Jaipur and I'm here from the Delhi. We collaborated for this event and we are here, right. So you must be actively collaborating with the different communities, user groups, people. That will give you new learnings from the previous mistakes. That will give you new learnings, new approach, new mindset to our things, right. The next thing is be open to feedback. Be open to any kind of feedback. Sometimes the feedback might be really harsh. Sometimes it can be really good. I am open to feedback. If you wanna talk to me after this talk, give one, I wanna give any feedback for the talk. I am open to hear that, right. So be open to feedback for anything that you are doing. And yes, the social presence is one of the most crucial content, one of the most crucial part that you should be focusing on. Because that will give you the platform, that will give you the visibility that you need actually, right. So we're gonna post about this talk obviously, later on LinkedIn and Twitter. So social presence is the other thing that you should be must be focusing on. Yeah, and that's how like the open source call start. So we started our journey around four year back, you can say. So like we were on that time, like we are students only. And the first thing I would like to highlight is like the first contribution that I did that was a known code. I just found some bug in the Kubernetes documentation and I just fixed it. And that's how the PR got merged. So that's how you have to start. It's not something like you have to write an operator, you have to write a particular ham chart and then you have to integrate it, something like that. But just you have to kick a start. That's what Abhinav said, okay. So there can be a small contribution, that can be a big one, okay. And if you see there's the states that we have a test from Abhinav GitHub. So if you see there are lots of PRs, okay. But the commits are less. So that shows like you have to do only the valuable commits. It's not about you are daily logging in, you are doing a commit to show that graph that we showed below, okay. So it's not like that. You have to do something that is really meaningful, okay. At the same time, I'm not sure like how much of you know CNCF Bureau. So previously it was there in CNCF ecosystem, but last year itself they have just archived it. And yeah, I was part of that also. And apart from that, like we are doing a lot of contributions in the cloud captain or you can say like again, we are a CNCF ambassador now. And before that we have got a lot of scholarships for different, different coupons. So yeah, the thing is like if we can do it, you can do it too. It's not that hard to be honest, okay. But obviously you would be looking for the Vs, how you can do that. So yeah, let's go ahead that. Cool. So enough of talking about our achievements, enough of talking about our past journey. Let's talk about CNCF, right? Let's get into the shit. Cool. So this is the CNCF ecosystem looks like. It's very complex, right? Does it look like a complex? Anyone? Anyone afraid of looking this big picture? Okay. It's not that complex, it's very easy. So in CNCF total, there are 183 projects among which five are archived as of today. There are 25 graduated projects There are 25 graduated projects. There are 38 incubating projects. And one of my recently favorite project was graduated. So Keda, if anyone have heard, anyone? Anyone heard about Keda? Worked on Keda? Okay. Now I can see some hands. Now I can see the technical folks actually. Great. So Keda has recently graduated. So before Keda, Argo CDN, Flux CD was graduated. And if you are active in the community then you must have heard about so the incubating project that is Quberno. Recently they have raised a request for their project to be accepted as a graduated project. It was, I think, a week back, if I'm not sure, if I'm not wrong. That's great. So there are three tiers of projects in CNCF ecosystem. The first is Sandbox. So let's say if you have built any project, right, which saw some of the use cases in the clarity of ecosystem, you can submit that particular project to the project as a Sandbox project. If it has less contributions, less attractions, the entire CNCF team will give you the platform to leverage and get more contributions on that platform. They will help you strategize. They will help you shape that particular project so that it can achieve or reach a mass number of audience. The second is incubating project wherein the projects are a bit mature, right? They are being used in the organizations. They are being used. They have good contributions, good number of stars. But maybe they are not good for production use cases, for example, right? In those cases, the projects can be submitted in incubating project. And once the projects are being matured enough to be used in the production environment, so those are under the graduated projects. Cool. So going forward, as Abhinav said, this is looking complex and then you can't get started, but it's really easy to be honest. So how do you get started? So if you see this roadmap, so this is nothing like we have just created from our experiences and looking for some cool blogs that we have got the best practices, I would say. So how you get started? The first thing is you have to start small. That's what we are focusing on. It's nothing like you have to go in the project, you have to search for it and then you will be doing a lot of contributions there. It starts small. That should be a mindset. If you are opening it, then you should be like, okay, I will do something. That should be small. That should be big. Doesn't matter. The thing is, the next thing is, you have to choose a project. The first thing is projects. So how you choose a project? You have to look forward, like what are your basically specialty? Or I would say, if you are working as a DevOps engineer, then you can look around to that path. If you are working as a cloud engineer, you can work around that path. Or maybe if you are not working both, you are working as a graphic designer or maybe you are a content writer. So you can go to the known code project also, okay? The thing is, you have to choose a project according to your specialties. Once it's done, you are good with that. Like you can say like, okay, I am relating with this one and then I can go with this. The next part is to understand the project. So how you will do that? You have to do that with the help of the documentation. In each and every documentation, there is always like all the brief thing you will get. Even if you know like the Kubernetes documentation is the best in all of the open source project and even all of the tools if you go, okay? So you can start with reading the docs. Once you are familiar like how it's working, how you have to install it and all of those stuff, then it's good to go. Okay, then once you are good with the docs, but now the part will be divided. Like you want to do with the known code or code. So let's say, let me like explain you what's the both. So basically let's say if you are a developer, you are writing code daily basis, you are writing the go or maybe Python or something like that. So you can do that on the code contributions. You can write some code, you can test it, you can submit it. But at the same time, if you're not a coder, so how you'll do that? So on that time, you have to focus on the documentation stuff. You have to focus on the main GitHub rapport. They are writing some read me. They're writing some, a lot of files to like give the info who are developers are coming to integrate the project. Okay, so on that time, you have to focus on that part. So let's say if you're going for the code part, then you have to choose a programming language. Once it's done, you have to start, once program language is done, you have to start the contributing, okay? And maybe you can test also because there's always test cases given. And once you raise the issue or maybe once you raise a PR there, then you will get there's option to test and like how the testing is going. And let's say if it's a non-code contribution, then you can go for the documentation or translation. So these are two different things. The first thing is documentation. So you can write some documentation. At the same time, you can work on the translating part. Let's say you are a part of another country that is Singapore, and you want like there's documentation available in English, but you are good at another language. So you can work on the translating part because as of now, you will find a lot of documentation in different languages available. So maybe you can work on that part. That's also count as a, you can see open source contribution. Then if that's not, then you can work on design. So basically design is something that let's say documentation is there. You're looking, let's say you open a Kubernetes website or maybe any other platform website and you're looking like, okay, this diagram I can make a good one, okay? I'm having the capability. I know Canva, I can design this particular architecture very cool. So you can contribute to that side. You can raise an issue, you can raise a PR and then ask them like, this is the thing that idea I'm having in mind and they will accept it after the conversation. So once this is done, you have to raise the pull requests. And pull request, like there will be a conversation that will be going on. You can tag the maintainers over the project. And once it's done, that I guess if it's basically, let's say if it's merged, then yeah, you're good to go. If it's not merged, at least you will be somewhere, okay? It's not the same path you were, okay? So again, there's always a guide that is like published by CNCF also. So if you want to enter the CNCF landscape, you can go to that contribute.cncf.io slash contributors. So there you can find the whole guide. It's just a screenshot we have pasted but you can check out our the website itself. Cool. So that was pretty much about the entire roadmap. I hope everyone got to know about it. Anyone have any questions for that? Roadmaps or anything they don't know about? Perfect. The brilliant minds. We have all the brilliant minds in this room. That's great. So community is the key, right? Key for what? Key for collaboration. Key for success, right? If you want to stand out in the community, if you want to make yourself as a personal brand, if you want to work around a project, if you want to build a community around a project, around a particular organizations, then community is the only thing. And for that community, collaboration is the only thing, right? If you want to build a community, then you need to see collaboration as a single source of truth. Okay, so there are a couple of pointers that we have written here. So the first thing is join and engage in communities, definitely. If you want to talk about, let's say, CNCF ecosystem, right? Then in CNCF ecosystem, we have multiple different events all across the globe. So there are regional events. There are local events. There are national events. There are international events. You can go ahead and collaborate in these communities, maybe as a volunteer or maybe as an attendee or maybe as a speaker by submitting your talk, presenting your use cases, presenting your tools, right? There are multiple ways. Tons of ways if you want to collaborate, then you can collaborate. Next thing is attending events, definitely when you're going to attend an event, you're going to meet a lot of new folks with the same mindset, right? Let's say, if you are into Cube Day, for example, then you must be aware of Kubernetes or you must be exploring around things in Kubernetes and clouded ecosystems. Then you will tend to find more people with the same mindset that will help you grow in the community and that will help you stay active in the community with the latest updates and everything. Volunteer to help at events, meetups, hackathons, whatever you want to do it, right? In your regional area, you can have, let's say, CNC of groups. So we have clouded community groups. So you can host a CNC... You can ask for the lead for CNCG groups. You can host meetups under those groups. You can have KCDs, which are Kubernetes community days, in your regional level. Thereafter, it comes Cube Day that we have here today. At Singapore, few days back, we have it in India. Thereafter, CubeCon, which is the flagship event of CNCV and one of the biggest event internationally. So you can attend those events or you can plan to participate in those events. Contribute to open source ecosystem and contribution is really, really easy. Aditya has told a lot of ways if you want to contribute, then you should be starting right away. You can contribute in any way, be it raising an issue or, let's say, writing a documentation, fixing a bug, anything. Participate in open spaces. So one of the beauty of open spaces is that, so generally, I don't see here an open space in this particular event, but in most of the events, I can see there are some slots given, right? wherein you can have and raise a request and you can host a small kind of meet-up inside the meet-up, right? Those are called open spaces. And in those open spaces, you can talk about your particular niche. For example, we are in the Cube Day, right? We are talking about the Kubernetes. And again, Kubernetes is a very big domain. It's an entire OSIN. So you should be able to see a ton of things in Kubernetes itself. Let's say, talking about security in Kubernetes, for example, it can be a niche or observability in Kubernetes can be one of the niche, right? Anything, right? You can have those small open spaces, participate, give your word, give your opinions, hear from others. That would be more helpful for you, right? To get into the Kubernetes and get some real connections with the same insights. Then networking with PS is something that we obviously are here for. Networking, increasing the connections, talking to different folks. That is something that we are here for and that is something that you can get from the community. So good. Cool. Okay, so yeah. Let's come to the main part. It's the ambassador. So from noise to navigator. So how you can become one and what's the journey, how the basically the benefits, the requirements and all of this stuff. So before going to it, I just want to quickly go through you this particular page. That is cncf.io slash people slash ambassadors. So what you can do, if you want any of the info, you can just go there. You can just check it out. But a lot of infos are not there. Okay, so when I say a lot of info are not there, so if you say about requirements and the benefits and all of this stuff. So those are not here right now. But the next application will be opening in January as far as we have checked. So on that time you can apply, you can check. But how you will check the benefits, requirements and all. So don't worry, we will tell you about everything. So once you go to this page, what you will find here, like you can meet your cloud network ambassadors. So I guess yeah, and keynote Daniel already shows like in Singapore, there are three cnc ambassadors already there. Okay, but let's find them out in this app itself. So if you look here, like there's a graphically there are total number of ambassadors are 208, okay, in worldwide. And you can check by your location itself, like who are in your particular area. So if I look forward, this is the Singapore and I can find the three. And that's the where location is. Okay, even you can just check with this list. Let's say I'm just writing Singapore and you will get those three here. Let's say if you want to connect with them, you want to chat about like how they have become when you can always do. Okay, at the same time, let's say you don't want to filter it without the country. What you can do is you can just go to the expertise. Okay, let's say you want to go for non-technical, you want to go for technical, you can check those. Okay, let's say I'm checking for non-technical. So yeah, I have got the list for the non-technical ambassadors. Even if someone is technical, he can always guide the non-technical path. Okay, so you can always check for the technicals also. And let's say if you are like more interested to particular projects. So you can always filter it out according to projects also. Let's say I'm just doing it for maybe cloud events. Okay, I'm doing it and then I got the list. Like these are the ambassadors. Those can help you with these. You can connect with them over their socials and everything. Okay, so yeah, that's about this, but let's go to the path like how you will basically come and just connect or maybe just start the journey. Okay, so the prerequisites. Okay, so the prerequisite goes like this. So you must be 18 year old or more than that. And you have to basically annually review and sign the ambassador standard of excellence. Okay, so that's the particular document that you get. There's some guidelines are written. Okay, you must should be participating in these one of areas. So let's say you should be active contributor to see instead of projects. Okay, when I say active contributor, it's not always about to the code part. You can be a good or non-good as we discussed previously. Okay, you should have 20 death states score. So how you can check that? So these slides maybe you can download from Cube Day Singapore schedule itself. And then we have just linked the URL of it. And the current voter status, like how basically you are actively contributing and what's the, how about like you are raising PRs or raising issues or your beta profile, something like that. And you should be a CGOT tag member. And let's say if you are not on all of these, so as I mean I've said, like community is always a key. So if you're not able to find any code, non-code. Okay, so that is another path. Okay, so it's not about you should have everything. It's about you should have at least three to four pieces of it. Okay, so if you're not doing all of those stuff, you can go to another route. That is the community route. Okay, so what I would suggest is like, let's say if you're having minimum one year of experience in CNCF or let's say you are contributing, you are collaborating with people's, you can maybe organize events like KCD. You can be a regional meetup lead or you can be a member of the same. If there's already regional meetup and you're not able to find a position as a lead, just start with as a volunteering because that's how you get started. Okay, because even if someone is leading now, he will be retired someday and you can be a lead. Okay, so always look to that path. Okay, and then maybe you can go with the speaking events. Okay, so like there are a lot of events that you can find or sessionize. Just try to fill the CFPs. Okay, that's how you'll get started. It's not about like, we have to look for only the open source events. You can look forward to cloud events or maybe other stuff that you can fill the CFPs, mentoring others. Okay, so let's say you know something but the other folk is not know something. But at the same time, what you don't know that other folks knowing. So at the same time, you can mentor each other and then maybe you can learn a lot. Okay, and this thing you can showcase like how you are doing this and that's how it will make impact. Okay, creating content. As I've already said like you have to write the blogs and all like you have to manage the SEO and all other stuff. So yeah, that will be like a good approach writing a blog or YouTube content or something like that. Okay, let's come to responsibilities. Okay, so let's say you have become one. As of now, I'm the same ambassador. So what are the responsibilities that I will get? Okay, so like if I'll see you the roughly then it's nothing like a burden like on you. It's just you, you have to do the same thing you're doing before. Okay, it's not something these are the another things that you're doing. Whatever you're doing, be consistent and keep doing that. Okay, so let's say you have to engage and enable the community or maybe you have to keep words about the CNC projects and all other stuff. Then you have to improve the experience. Let's say if there is someone who is looking for starting his open source journey. So you can be a perfect person for that. You should be like at the state of the line like, okay, I'm the perfect person. I can help you with that. Okay, and so that's how you can go. Okay. Cool, so we have talked a lot about prerequisites and a lot of things we have talked about. Now, what are the benefits of doing this, right? What you will get out of it. So we are traveling to Singapore from India for a talk. What else do you need, right? Being an ambassador. You are getting funds for that. You are getting a stage like that where you can express your thoughts, where you can talk to different people. You can meet different people from different religions, different backgrounds, with different sectors, with same mindset. What do you want more? Great, so one of the perks of being an ambassador is that you gain recognition for your expertise and contributions in the community, be it as small as fixing a documentation bug, or let's say as big as contributing features to directly projects, CNC projects, right? You get to network with the equally-minded people here. The smart minds I can see here. So everyone is super smart here. They don't have any doubts. They are super talented. So you get to network with those kind of people, right? The same set of minds. You receive support directly. CNC will support you for your work, the good work that you are doing. They will recognize your efforts. They will highlight your efforts, even for the CNC ambassador as well. So we have this monthly meetups where they will guide you about the things that you are doing in the community. They will help you with any support you need. For example, maybe it can be a financial support if you want to do a meetup, if you want to travel and talk about the project. So let's say any use case, if you want to present among the community, they will give you the limited number of funds for that. So you get financial support as well. You get mentoring as well. So a lot of different aspects in terms of trainings and in terms of mentorship you would be getting here. And in fact, if you want to attend events, such as, let's say, Cube Day Singapore itself. So for ambassadors, we get 50% off. For CubeCon, we get 75% off on the coupons. So these are the different ways CNC supports you and backs you if you want to get started into the communities and if you want to help others in the peers. Again, you can partner with CNC restarts to get insights. Again, there are different calls. If I talk about SilverCyber membership, not about the ambassador, then my company Deftron. So Deftron is basically an application management platform for Kubernetes. So we are also a SilverCyber member at CNC of SilverCyber. So you get the benefits as a member as well, wherein you get support in different domains, in different aspects. You might be getting help in terms of blogs. For example, publishing the CNC blog site, you might be getting mentorship. Or you might be getting guidance to frame your marketing, let's say, messaging for your projects, and a lot of different things. It's an entire different discussion. So if anyone want to talk about it, I'm here till 6.30. We can talk about it. Next thing is you enjoy exclusive benefits like Swax. Definitely. That is something that we all are craving for, right? Cool. So this bridge never ends. This will never end, trust me. Even if you are at 10 years of experience, 12 years of experience, learning never stops. You have to keep on learning. You have to keep on building that bridge. So the first thing is document your journey. That's what I did, actually. And that's what I recommend for everyone. Document your journey. Let's say if you're talking at even post about it. If you have done a use case, for example, if you have explored a use case, write a blog around it. If you have explored a project, write a blog around it, maybe specifying what are the things that you liked about it, what are the things that you think can be improved in that particular blog. What are the issues, or let's say, how to find this particular fix? You can document your journey in any way, be it a video or a blog, improve your personal planning that can be done through different collaborations, talking at event, writing content, anything, right? Then content creation can be on different means that we have already talked about. Let's say it can be a blog, it can be social ports, it can be live streams, it can be Twitch streams, it can be talking at different conferences, it can be in tons of ways. Help inspire other. I hope I'm able to help here, anyone. Am I? Anyone here interested? Am I helping anyone here? Okay, good. I can see a couple of hands. That feels good. Collaborate with the community, that is the key that we have already talked about. Ask for help. So one thing that personally I have been through is anyone, basically, if I can relate to anyone. So when you start into things, right, you get this impossible kind of syndrome, right? You think, why should I ask to this person, right? Or maybe I can get in on Google. But the thing is, when you ask something with someone, right, when you ask for help, you get a mentor free of it, right? You just need to ask for help and you get a mentor. You don't need to pay for it, right? That's the beauty. So ask for help if you are stuck at any place, if you want any insights, if you want any mentorship, go ahead and ask the person who has already done it before that will help you get some more good connects in your network. And be open for any kind of feedback, any kind of suggestions. Sometimes the feedback and suggestions might be really harsh on you. Sometimes it can be really, really good. So be open for anything. So the day you step into the community, the day you step into the ecosystem, be open to have some harsh comments on you, be open for that, and be open for all the good appreciations and all the good feedbacks that you would be getting it. So that's all for today. So thank you, everyone, for being so patient and bearing with us. If you have any questions you may wanna ask, we are here. Anyone, any questions? Yeah, as of now itself, like Avina said, like you should be asking for the help, asking for the questions. So it's the time for that. Maybe anyone, any small, big. Cool, I see, I see we have the talented folks as I mentioned in the starting. So I would be here around 6.30. We would be here itself if you wanna talk about anything in general in CNCF ecosystem, be it about ambassadors, be it about membership or anything about platform engineering, IDPs. I'd be here, let's talk, let's meet. Cool, thank you so much.