 Thanks, you know We really appreciate you kind of last minute jump it into a car ride with us And can you tell us a little bit about you know, you know introduce yourself who you are, you know and what you're doing Yeah, so my name is Donna. I'm 33 years old We keep we keep getting the I'm not trying to do the dating app questions. You know, I'm just general profile I heard you were 33 we had another one who was 31 earlier today I So I'm based in Tel Aviv in Jerusalem and I work in a day tree. It's a startup preventing this configuration in Kubernetes. Cool. I'm doing like business Development partnership, but the main My heart is with the community leader. Okay So I work with influencers from all over. Yeah, and then when I arrived to To the corporate net is world. I was like shocked starting to learn online with all those amazing influencers Mm-hmm, and I was like, I think I should start going to meet ups Start to hear and getting more professional But so what what kind of like why Kubernetes like what brought you to that kind of particular community in the first place? it's actually like I used to work with technologies in the army and before that and I was doing AI before that UX UI and I was looking for something that will make a big impact The technology world in the history of technology, right? I'm sure that like Kubernetes is that thing like it's the next big thing It's already right right and so I got to the meet ups and I was shocked not so many two three ladies sitting in the crowd no speakers and I felt like I think I can make an impact because I'm a People's person and I love to organize stuff. Yeah As I told you I'm part of the Burning Man community was doing a foundation parties Well, I didn't you know to be honest I'm not that familiar with Burning Man and I didn't realize that there's There are other burning bands besides the one in the US. Yeah, so that's kind of interesting So is that is it Israel or is it a bunch of other countries as well? It's called midburn, okay Israeli Burning Man. Yeah, all right so yeah, taking part of those type of events you need to to to make an in an event and kind of like operations like a Making a conference like I did a month ago. Yeah, and with our CNCF Israel group and so either way I got into this world the By wanting to effect and to bring the the ladies voice Yeah, I thought that I saw around me a lot of ladies like programmer DevOps. There is a big DevOps leaders Women group. Uh-huh. Oh trying to get them to talk and they don't want to right slowly I'll start I call it hunting the ladies all over. Yeah, even now in the conference. I'm like, you're Israeli You want to give a talk you want to give a talk? Please come to our meet-ups github CNCF I'm in those both communities organizers. Yeah So yeah, and actually I managed this year in the github user group where the biggest github community in the world Oh, wow, that's crazy. Yeah, and we have every month's a meet-up and we managed to have every month One man one lady. Oh nice. It's That's hard to do. Yeah Yeah, I run a conference. It's it's a small like four or five hundred people of conference every year in the US that's based on a conference in the Czech Republic, but Called devconf.us, but the charter like the goal of the conference is for kind of new speakers But you kind of have to like also like offset that with some big names so that you can Get people to show up to the conference, but you know, we have we have very strong. We're like we have intendee Coaching we have speaker coaching, you know, just to try to bring more You know make it a more open community and a big part of it is how do we get more underrepresented communities? involved in particularly open source because we're a little biased but software in general right and so yeah, I Share the difficulty with you in other fields. You won't feel the same sensation in Israel But anyhow, we made a big conference the first case it in Israel Yeah, our CNCF community is already doing meetups for four years. So we decided we should go for it and even in that process in the committee, I was like We're gonna have half of the committee ladies the beginning and say no one ladies enough. I'm like, no No way and then I use my community Contacts like getting the first keynote Lori Larousseau from JFrog. She became a CNCF marketing chair so to get like And to get local ladies as well. Yeah, so we got like 45% ladies. That's awesome Yeah, yeah, I mean, I think it's it's one of those things, you know part of what I I try to help do right is I want More people who don't look like me in my community But it's cuz one of things I think people, you know, there's the kind of straight up obvious kind of equity component Right, but I also think people don't realize that unless we bring multiple viewpoints to building like software You're not you're gonna have huge gaps in your software in the quality of it And the you know things it does well and things it doesn't do well because you're you're just providing one perspective And so I think it's it's like not only like from an equity perspective But it's also that you make better product And so and you know the only way to be able to support that is you put, you know Like women on stage or whatever, you know You need people who are leaders in the community who also look like the people you want to participate in the community, you know Yeah, I think the tech world already on got the understanding that you can't have a team with only like tech people You know that diversity today if you go to Tel Aviv like half of the companies would have I went to law school seven years ago I have a doctor like you would have so many types of other not programmers Right, right getting involved and getting like the and you can feel it when you're doing like Business or product Workflow like when you sit in a in a room and think with people like the different types of ideas people have It's important. Yeah. Yeah, and which I think you end up with with better quality stuff, you know at the end of the day So that's cool. So what you know, what do you think is is kind of next like what are you seeing that? You know, you're gonna be able to try to build on from that work For, you know, I don't know the next conference, you know, are you gonna bring Kubernetes and burning man, you know That's funny I talked to one of the leaders. He was like, let's make a booth Right, so she's like, okay, I don't know we can give out stickers. That's all the engineers Stickers Yeah, so I think that I know that in the last KCD my target was like bringing in Diversity and getting in the green Conference in we were the first green conference ever in Israel. Oh, that's interesting. It Well, it cost a lot. Well only have two places you can drop all those disposable Yeah, it's like three hours away from Tel Aviv, right? It cost a lot of money Yeah, and actually the the knowledge and understanding of green stuff in Israel is very recycling is very slow very slow so It's something that is super important for me Yeah, I feel like I want to get it into the community like in the meetups not to have the the plastic apps and all the stuff Because we're making like two meetups a month. It's like 250 people, right? It's like material amount of stuff Yeah, yeah in a conference. Yeah, 450 people for free free like types of Breakfast dinner and drinking after and yeah, we we actually have a project So I do kind of two things at the university, right? So one thing is I teach some classes, but I also help Drive the projects that the student teams are on and one of the projects this semester is called recyclopedia and Because one of the challenges a lot of people have with kind of really recycling is like, okay Is this thing recyclable and which trash can does it go in right? And so they're trying to build an app that will kind of tell you the answer to that So you can kind of say okay, I got a Starbucks coffee cup. Where do I put it, you know? And I just think it's kind of a neat little concept, you know And well, you know, hopefully they'll build something that that's kind of cool and maybe usable I didn't even know that if you buy like green green Cups, yeah, and you don't take them to a special place. Yeah, yeah to make a compost from it They won't actually get recycled. Yeah, so it won't affect badly the world right, but Nobody knew about it. Nobody knows about it in Israel. It's so I want to say a lot of that's true in the US I mean, you know, like I try to be relatively conscious about it And I know that I throw the wrong, you know trash in the wrong bin Sometimes because I don't know that you know different beans. Yeah. Oh, yeah. Yeah, right, right So, yeah, it makes it even harder. So I really want to Yeah, some reason the music randomly comes on in this car. We haven't quite figured out why It's smarter than us. I think it's what it boils down to. Um, so anyway, yeah to bring this The green conferences in trying to Kind of accidentally impart, uh, you know, some some green awareness into the Yeah, because I was talking to the other community leaders You're not a big country in israel and they were coming to me Actually, I have a few people writing to me after the conference like man, we'd love to learn about the process And we have only one company in israel doesn't yeah. Yeah, only well makes it easy to find a vendor Yeah, definitely. Yeah, you don't have to you don't have a lot of choices to have to deal with and I even thought about taking it one step forward and and Try to make a special place in Tel Aviv Like to collaborate with The municipality right to actually like build an event site for it. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, we should we should Tel Aviv is like very western. So right. Yeah, I think that's uh It's funny with the when you when you can kind of use like a conference or other venue as kind of like a accidental support for, you know Things like environmentalism or whatever is really useful because I think people don't realize that you that it's You know, kind of right there. It teaches them something about it. Even if they're that's not why they're there, you know any and even now in the conference when people try to give me some Information that is printed. I'm like, yeah, no thanks in our conference. I ask not to have it so Small impact can help as well, right? Well, plus they're often, you know single use like as in like it's just for that one event Um, you know, which can be super hard. Um Yeah, there's birds. What do you want? I'm not driving over a pigeon um Yeah, I tend to have doing these car interviews. I seem to have problems with birds We had a bunch of them in Detroit. There were a lot of geese Here I've had multiple pigeons like try to like Walk under the car wheels. Um, like I really don't want to drive over you. Um, but uh, the people behind me just agreed So, yeah, so if you if you heard honking on the uh on the video, that would be why So, yeah, I am definitely not driving fast enough for the neighborhood drivers. I can tell you that much. Yeah, but So, uh, we were talking about uh, so do you think you'll I mean, I presume you'll want to do another kcd When do you think you're gonna go for like a year from now or are you gonna go maybe sooner than that? What do you think's gonna happen? I think we'll We'll take it. We'll take it a year. I worked for six months To get it to happen. Yeah. Yeah, and it was volunteering. So I had no private life in that time. Yeah I was really enthusiastic doing that and I was And and I have some conclusions how How to make it better next time. Uh, yeah, but or how to for my right to make it simpler next time. Yeah Uh, using we had a lot of uh volunteers people after the event asked to volunteer So to make them more involved, right? And this is something that yesterday where the Kcd global event of all the local communities So it was talking to the it was very interesting to talk to the italian guys And the guys from here like what are their conclusions? Yeah So the italian team they're like 50 people. It's like A micro community inside. So yeah, it can be harder as a project manager I know how hard it can be to have multi-plagued like people in charge, right, right? But once you get the people that you know, they can take it And and they really do it from the bottom of their heart, right, right? So yeah, yeah, what we found was uh, you know starting earlier was a big help You know that you know, it's like if you can if you can add some time to the window that it makes a lot less painful and then also What we did was adopt a You know, if you want to add this feature to the conference We are excited to have you do that But you do that right if like you can't just make a suggestion And then expect somebody else to do it, right? And so we have a lot of really cool ideas out of that and and like like action like we ended up doing Because one of the times we did the event virtually You know during the pandemic and but we wanted people to feel like they were in boston where it takes place So we actually had We took a whole we got a whole bunch of people to actually take little video clips around boston And then we did a virtual tour of boston for the conference And but that was like purely somebody's idea and they were like How we could do this and we're like, yeah go for it, you know So it's uh, it's always kind of exciting. Yeah, we had the now Three days ago a meet-up github user group meet-up and I had like a there are a lot of ukraine jewish people or ran away So some of them came up to me and said it would be a great idea because it's in hebrul So maybe you would have like a online sub subtitles Oh, yeah So one of the guys in the community told me we're like four people organizing it So he's like great idea. Tell him to do that. Yeah, and another lady told me and I was like, yeah, great Amazing. They're part of the community tell them they they can promote it right and it's true We need to look at it as a community And people should understand it's part of it We try to to pass the message that Being part of the community is speaking A organizing like me or whatever but being part of it is being a little bit active whenever you can Yeah, yeah and bringing your ideas Without any bureaucracy right and Yeah, you can do anything you would dream of And now i'm trying to Promote the women's swag actually Because we never get anything that is really dedicated for us. Well, one of the things We started doing or when I was working at red hat. We started doing was actually um doing, you know, kind of actually Doing a lot of the shirts for example like fitted or going to other other things that don't have to be sized, you know So I thought that was a really good trend, uh, you know, and you're seeing a lot of organizations doing that You know like doing socks for example, which I think is super cool So, you know, although my kids end up stealing the socks pretty much across the board Yeah So, uh, you know, it's always kind of neat. Um But uh, yeah, so one thing I we were talking about this earlier, but we didn't really talk about it During this discussion, which is kind of like so This kind of community you getting kind of involved with kubernetes, whatever is really kind of what brought you to This like the job you're doing and everything right? And one led to each other to another. Yeah, I started working at the tree Mm-hmm studying kubernetes getting into my role going to meetups two of the founders are The founders of the community as well Oh, okay One of the founders is the community user the github user group and the second one in cnc f shimon tools co so It took some time That you know, they told me you dana. How come you're not getting in and I was like, I don't want to get to pushy Right, right. It will happen whenever it needs to happen and it really did like it happened slowly and I met them really the right people the All of them are here now. Yeah in kubernetes. I met them on zoom and Got the off it went. Yeah. I think that's um One of the things it's something I I've been trying to get like students to do It's like, you know, I went to a kubernetes Meetup in boston the other day and we didn't promote it very well But like one of the things I really because I think the students are a little concerned about going to one of these meetups Kind of alone, you know, even if they're with a cluster of other student friends And so I was kind of like, you know, maybe I can go to the kubernetes meetup and like bring a bunch of students with me Because I like I don't think they realize how many opportunities there are If you especially in the open source world where if you kind of can start to get involved in the community around that open source System whatever thing that you find interesting There's a whole mess of companies that are around it that will often be looking to hire you or like support you working in that community And if it's something you like, you know, that's a really great way to get a job. Um, so yeah, I uh, I highly encourage it Uh, and uh, you know, you're a success story of that example, right? Thank you. Yeah Yeah, I met some Uh, CEO of some VC in israel the last meetup and he was telling me like I was like, what is what is your LinkedIn? He's like, no, I'm I like this type of talk like The the elevator talk. This is how you get to job in my company. Yeah And I was like, yeah, this is how you get to know the the real connection And right in the meetup and you meet the people and you hear them talking even watching on youtube It's not the same right as somebody that Got into the kubernetes world Uh, and I'm a dhd So it's hard to sit and watch youtube But once you see someone like on stage and Infusiastic about it and like passionate about it And yeah, it's I would say I think we talked about it earlier that This is the real burning man of the world the real shared information like the open source it's For someone who got Got into it three years ago. Yeah. Wow That's that's the reason technology Is so fast everything goes so fast. It's All those of the share information right and and all like you kind of All perspectives are kind of enabled and supported and like, you know, and and there's a There's a well understood and this is one of the things that's so hard about open source is actually like Knowing how to make it so that all the contributors can contribute Is actually not easy You know and kubernetes, I think in the cncf have have kind of figured that out and you know They come from a lot of experience in other projects about doing that But I think that's one of the things that people don't realize is the amount of work that's involved in making a contributor community Like work and be accessible and open and you know able to contribute new stuff to it And and you know, I think you benefited from it and you're trying to give back in that same vein But I think like especially engineers don't realize how hard that part of it is because you know A lot of engineers have never run their own open source project And so they don't see the difficulty with with doing that But yeah, I think it's super fascinating But I think maybe we we could kind of end the interview there and we could Unless there was anything else you wanted to add and So regarding the open source, I would just say that in our company the tree we have five-star Project and I was many like I was managing when I arrived the flow the workflow By answering fast and getting all the issues. I like to handle all the open source project like properly and Yeah, that's insane and Again, I would say it's very naive And all the DevOps and the developers are here me saying that are Think I'm super cute, but seeing someone from Australia like saying to a man You need that button in your in your product and someone else from India getting it fixed like It's it's super powerful. Yeah unexplained without any money. It's all our developers at work This is how I understood the the meaning. They're like yeah yesterday I I was a Getting the issue to argos cd in and like getting super excited from it like really Yeah, no, it's it's it's really powerful and it really You know, I think you know like everyone, you know, everyone's always looking for communities of you know Like-minded individuals or people they can you know that they're connected to somehow And you know, I think the open source world just kind of supports that, you know, it's it's really nice And it supports even a bigger picture if you look at it now we have like two companies sponsoring our Our community and This is part of understanding I now in the kubek on I think a lot of big organization understanding they They should advance more money in open source or in the community Of course, they have their own Agenda, yeah For this agenda, but it brings back to the community so much right right So I think everybody it's a win-win situation Yeah, as long as you know, as long as everyone's kind of incentives are aligned You know, it's not bad having a goal, you know So yeah, definitely a fan And it's it's just it's so interesting because you know, you've been exposed to it this way I've been around the software industry for a long time now But uh, I was talking to somebody earlier one of the earlier interviews who's kind of kind of grew up more the way I did like with you know, kind of building everything from scratch in the early days and stuff And we're just so both astonished about like how Open source has has made it Because it used to be when we did development We were like literally banned from using open source software in the early days and now it's like, you know the de facto It's just it's so crazy But it's been so good. I think you know Yeah, even in israel you can feel it even in the army. I'm officer in like communication side So I was doing radio AMF and three years and then we're rather than the cloud is in And the computer are in and like wow We have devops guys in your team in the army and In units that you didn't have it before like so and it makes everything faster better, right Even more secure right and in israel. It's it's a matter of life or death. So it's yeah Well, I mean, you know generally speaking military Kind of feel that way. Um, you know, so I would say that that's not uncommon. Um So kubernetes in the idea as well. Yeah, yeah Cool. Well, again, thank you so much for joining us. We really appreciate it. Thank you And uh, you know, especially kind of last minute, uh, and uh, you know, hopefully we'll see you around in the community And you know more in israel and if you ever Come to israel or you know ladies who want to talk at our meetups, right, right? Um, yeah I used to uh, I actually had I knew uh, a few red hatters, uh, who were in the tele weave office Who, uh, you know, might be a good candidate. So I'll push them your way Amazing, but yeah