 Welcome to Amsterdam and KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2023. Join John Furrier, Savannah Peterson, Rob Streche, and UPSconn as the Cube covers the largest conference on Kubernetes, CloudNative, and open source technologies together with developers, engineers, and IT leaders from around the globe. Live coverage of KubeCon CloudNativeCon 2023 is made possible by the support of Red Hat, the CNCF, and its ecosystem partners. Good afternoon, everyone, and welcome back to fabulous Amsterdam. We're here at KubeCon EU. And I am super excited about this panel, low key, just like the last one. I may have pulled some strings to make this magic happen. Thankfully, these brilliant women surrounding me were willing to jump in on the fly. And I am just, I'm just really excited. I'm pumped. I've got Ishelle next to me. Ishelle, welcome. Hello, how you doing? Thank you very much for having me here. I'm super excited. I can tell. You're actually giving me that day two mid-afternoon energy that I think we all need. I like low key, want to like take an IV off you and just under the table, stick it in my arm. Aparna, thank you so much for being here. How you doing today? Happy to be here. I'm doing great, thank you. This is kind of your moment. Is that how it feel? Yeah, I mean, it feels great. This is my first time being a co-chair for KubeCon. And, you know, first time attending a KubeCon in Europe. Amazing. Second time attending of KubeCon, Cloud NativeCon in North America. So, super excited to be here. Yeah. And, Kasselin, how you feeling? Welcome. Feeling pretty great. This is my people. This is, I think, my 11th KubeCon. These are our people. I know. It really does feel like that. And you, I'm going to give you the award today. You have the best earrings. Thank you. For going pear accessory. Also, like, between your shirt and your earrings, which is really... Thank you. Ashley Willis made the earrings. Handmade. Love that. A little shout out. That's like a little designer shout out. This is going to be awesome. Ashley is in the tech community, and she just likes to do this stuff. I know, it looks like fun laser cut. I just work in 3D printing, and I'm like, oh yeah, I can see what she did there. They're amazing. That's very exciting. I'm glad you decided to rock them today without even knowing that you were going to be here hanging out with this fabulous panel of women. Kasselin, I'm going to keep it on you for a second. In case the audience doesn't recognize your beautiful face, what is it that you do? I am a developer advocate at Google, where I focus on GKE, their managed Kubernetes product, Google Kubernetes Engine, and open source Kubernetes. I've been a part of open source for quite some time, though I really started contributing in 2020, and I was recently nominated to become one of the new co-chairs of Sig Contrubex. Whoa, congratulations. That's very exciting. Thank you. You feeling good? You having all the positive vibes from that? Yes, though it's a little intimidating, but I've got a lot of support, so. I love that. I think you're going to crush it. Thank you. We'll talk a little bit about allyship in our panel. Aparna, you mentioned your role here at KubeCon CNCF. You wear a lot of hats and have about eight jobs, just like all the other women on the panel. Can you tell us a little bit more about your background and what you're doing? Yeah, I'm director of production engineering at Shopify, and I'm responsible for the platform engineering team there. Within the community, I'm also co-chair of the CNCF end user developer experiencing, where I have the opportunity to work with the amazing group of end users of CNCF, and we get together and discuss all things related to building and operating a Kubernetes platform. So this community has really helped me learn so much and do my job better. Love that. The community is so helpful. I think that's one of the real magic things. You can feel the energy being here. You're obviously helpful in joining me on this panel last minute, but it is a different culture. I mean, I've lived in the Silicon Valley forever. I'll just say it. It's not the most helpful ecosystem. There aren't a lot of people who are reaching out. Hey, how are you doing? What's going on? You want to learn about this new technology or this new complicated thing like Kubernetes and really lifting you up in this open-source community? It's just different. Michelle, you're really repping the brand strong here. Tell us what you do for the Frog. Well, actually, I'm a CNCF developer. I also develop for Advocate, but I like you wearing a lot of hats. Quite literally. Literally. So punny. Yes, yes, of course. No, yes, I help organize conferences and conferences. I work a lot in open-source. I'm part of different foundations. Right now, I'm part of the OSSF Foundation, the CDF Foundation. I'm an ambassador. I sit down in so many working groups that sometimes I'm like, where am I? Where are we? Yes. Yes, sometimes it's like that's my stage. You know, you know what, I'm just going to have a next. But I'm really passionate about open-source, about developers, like how to make our lives easier. Like for crying out loud. That's the objective here. All the snaps for that. I think making things easy and decreasing complexity. Big themes of the show. Big themes with Kubernetes in general, by and honestly. And KubeCon's kind of a celebration of the whole ecosystem that does make those things easier. I love that. Just before U3, we had wonderful Cassandra, the 19-year-old woman who teaches at Kids Day, which is extraordinarily impressive. She's a little bit of a gateway for folks, for young people to get into tech. And as she says, we don't even talk about Kubernetes. She just shows them how to make cool stuff. Which I really loved. We are here to at least discuss a little bit about diversity. And this isn't going to be your average women in tech panel because we're all old enough to know what those have been like. And that no men watch them. So we're going to go ahead and make sure this is a different dialogue. When I asked Cassandra, I thought this was really interesting. So Cassandra started teaching when she was 12. That was, which is casual, right? Yeah, I mean us too, right? All of us. And when I asked her, what's her goal? What does she hope happens seven years from now? She's 19 now. When she's 26, what's the conversation we're having here? And it actually kind of broke my heart, but it's true. She said, well, I hope we're not doing women in tech and with diversity panels anymore. Now, I don't know about you three. I'm curious about your hot tick, but I've been in the industry for 15 years and it's not a lot's changed. I would say, I mean, it's wonderful to be around three women in positions of power and leadership here within our community. And I do think there's a lot of reasons to give hope and we're certainly all our allies for each other. But what, I mean, do you agree? Do you feel like we're, do you feel like things are getting better? Aparna, what's your opinion? You're looking at the whole community, quite literally. And you probably have some data. I mean, I think the key is really to think about it as like, okay, what, what, even if it's small, what can I do to make a difference, right? Because like you said, I've been in so many women in tech panels and I'm like, I got into this last minute. I'm like, what, what are we going to talk about? Like, is it going to be the same old, you know? Not with this girl. Heck no, we don't do that. We don't do same old everything. Yeah, so, yeah, I think it's really important to think about, you know, no matter what, like how can I make the ecosystem, the, you know, the micro environment around me better? And I've had the opportunity to work with some amazing women who I've learned from and who have helped me build that network and, you know, get those connections and advance in my own career and, you know, community as well. So I think it's important to think about it as, what, what can I do? And not just women, right? Everybody has to think about it. No, I love that. And the little things, I mean even just saying, one of my company values that my company is to say the nice things out loud. When we think about so many times, you know, you haven't given that compliment or whatever or like, you know, bros will like give each other the elbow up like nice one bro, you know, and whereas like, we're like, oh, it was okay. You know, we all like sheepish about it. Cass, when you're in a role of extreme advocacy, you're looking at developers, what's your opinion? Yeah, I 100% agree with that take. I would love to see in seven years, I don't know if that might be a little ambitious, unfortunately, I'm moving with Cassandra. Maybe we're moving as fast as, you know, quantum. Maybe we are. But I would love to see us stop doing those. And I think issue of women in diversity in general, in technology is a very difficult one to solve as we've all talked about before. I think something that's challenging about it is that there is some nuance to it. You can't just throw out there, oh, we're going to talk about women in technology. We're going to talk about how to protect our officer, like everything's going to be fine now. That doesn't help, it actually hurts a lot of the time. Not even close. Not even close. Because when we're calling out, we need to do this special thing because there is a problem. We're calling out that there is a problem to begin with. So there's always this fine balance of we need to fix the problem, so we need to talk about it, but we also need to not make it worse by making it feel more real by doing, I don't know, things that exacerbate the issue. So we have to be careful. I love that. Give me some examples of some action steps that you're taking that are nuanced like that. Yes, so I am a volunteer for Ada Academy, which is a program for training gender diverse people who are working their way into technology from other fields. And I volunteer with them as an industry mentor. So folks in this program get two mentors. They get one person who's been through the program before and then they get an industry mentor who can be anyone from the industry, someone who is going to help them understand what this industry is and what they're getting themselves into. And I talk to a lot of- I think it's actually a big part of the barrier too. Yes, so true. And I talk to a lot of men actually who want to help out with these kinds of things. And they're like, oh, but can I? Is my voice one of the ones that's welcome in this space? Would I just be getting in the way of these people that we're trying to get in? I'm always like, no, we need to support them. We need mentorship and we need the folks who are there to share their knowledge. And have you seen some folks come through that program and go on to be super successful? Oh, absolutely, yeah. The folks that I have worked with coming through that program. I've been a mentor for like six or seven mentees now and they are so driven. They do such amazing things. It's awesome. I tangentially find the underdog sometimes has a little extra drive, a little extra fight. I've even seen some of them present at KeepCon. Love to hear that full circle on your stage coming out of your program. That's fantastic. Yeah. Isha, what do you think? Oh, so many thoughts. First of all- I can't wait to hear them all. I had bad news. We are actually moving sometimes in the last three years. We moved in the wrong direction. Went in the wrong direction? Yes. No, I can't say. Yes, we had more women living and not returning after the pandemic. So we did go- Are those the ones that teach the kids at home? Yes. So we are still moving in the right direction but not as fast as possible. So that's, that's impresses me a little bit because I know other community. It impresses me a lot. I have seen other communities where they have this ratio that it's like, how did you do it? Like, I honestly go and ask, how did you manage? Like, what is the secret sauce? What, what should we be doing? Because in the Java community where I'm from, we are actually worse than this one. Let me tell you that you are teaching us some things that the Java community doesn't have. Our ratio is even lower. So I'm the one that is like- You should be the face of Java then. Feel like- We should be doing something here. Like, well, anyway. What do you think is the resistance in that? Why do you think, why do you think we're not changing? Why do you think it's not getting better? So many reasons. First of all, people do not recognize that we have a problem. I sit down with a lot of men- They think we solved it when we put- Yes, exactly. Three women in power and- Like, what you said. We already have an officer. We have a program. That's it, isn't it? Like, that's the only thing- Right, it's all times. Women feel empowered at the organization, right? Yes, no, no, no. And for example, you still have these confusing ideas. Like, this is a women in tech breakfast and men shouldn't go. I'm like, no, you should go because we need allies. You need to be a mentor. Of course, I also part of the mentorship program online. Not for like a little bit like that, but it's for refugees, for example. People that really want to go into technology and they are like learning hours of the day. So that's an interesting one. So, I think that's actually a great point. Yes, yes it is because they need, like, they are- Schedule flexibility. Exactly. It's so simple, but some companies are so rigid about stuff like that. Exactly. Being fully async or having flexible hours, it makes a big difference. Totally, and totally. And the learning process can be at different hours. Of course. And everyone's brain is more excited at different times of the day. You know, we don't know what we're doing. We're all jet-lagged. Nobody even knows what day it is at the time when we go to shows like this. So, I mean, we're all just doing our best. You talked about something that I think is really, actually, all three of you did, I want to talk a little bit about ally shit. And I am the first person to admit I would not be sitting where I am today or doing what I do if it weren't for a flock of middle-aged white men who have gone out of their way, identified what they saw as potential. I won't put words in their mouth, but they weren't wrong. And helped elevate me or helped coach me through certain moments or empower me. And what I don't like about some of the conversations that we've been having and even through some of the last few years is to your point, men feel scared to be a part of that conversation. They don't know if they can attend. They don't know if they're welcome. You know, they're just trying to get out of our way. It can't just be a conversation we're having in the ladies' room, which is what it feels like half the time and what it's been for a really long time. And it really, I mean, it deeply disappoints me. One of my friends did something actually extraordinarily clever. Matt, I'm giving you a big shout out right now. In the UK, he had a, he did a college, they call it Silicon Beach over there. I'm not exactly sure he's going to the beach in London anyway, we'll just leave that. But he had a, the lineup was all women, but he didn't tell any, he didn't make a big deal out of it. So when people just showed up to the event, all female lineup, and he brought it up at the end. And the gender ratio is 50-50 pretty much in the room, which was cool, because the women will bring, we do bring out the other women at least to come see us. But on the flip side, what I really loved about that, when I asked him, I was like, you didn't want to advertise? Cause for him, it would have been a good advertisement, right? I've got this whole power pack, female lineup, blah, blah, blah. Because if I did, the men wouldn't come. And it totally broke my heart because how many times have we been on an all-male lineup forever? So true. But I think, yeah, I mean, I think it's really, I don't know, there's, to your point, we're going sometimes in the wrong direction. And I don't think we're as far along the path as we might think we are. And I think seeing is believing. So I'm hoping that if you're a young woman right now, watching this program, or anyone of any gender diversity, first of all, we celebrate you, we're here to empower you, we're here to be your ally, but more importantly, keep fighting the good fight. We're definitely out here, we're definitely going to try. What, what have been some of the stepping stones? You're all in like, extremely cool. I feel like, I feel cooler sitting at this table right now having you all here. What have been some of the stepping stones that have helped you get to where you are? Parna, I'm going to start with you. This is your show. Yeah, sounds good. And I'll start with the example of like, how CNCF does it, right? Like, when we do the review the proposals and invite, decide who to invite to speak in the conference, we are really intentional about gender diversity. We are very intentional about giving the opportunity to first-time conference speakers, right? Because like, you apply to speak at any conference, they're like, give me the video of your previous conference talk, but I don't have one. So what do I do, right? And then also being intentional about like, this is Amsterdam, so we really prioritize European speakers so that they are able to speak within their own community and share ideas among themselves. And bring their community in. Yeah, bring to this community. Yeah, exactly. So I think it's really about like, being objective about things. And I'll give you an example, like when there's a really important project at work and you want to identify your leader to drive the project, the obvious choice would be like, the loudest person in the room. And more often than not, it's not the woman who's the loudest voice in the room. So again, it's about coming up with like a very objective criteria. Like, okay, what do we want this leader to do? And what are the qualifications of this leader? And then cast a wide net. Look at all the leaders in the organization. Look at the women, because they are probably not going to raise their hand and be the loudest voice in the room. So I think just turning everything objective and being intentional about things really helps. What are, so you mentioned, you know, really being strict in criteria for speaking, I love that, because holy, I became a host and a speaker because I saw too many boring guys on stage. And I literally just sat there one day and I was like, I can do better than they can. Forget this, like I'm just going to make a career out of this. Oh my God. Yeah, go ahead. I feel like you just had a moment. No, you say something because usually one of the critiques, and let me tell you that at the beginning, it affected a lot of my career. They were like, people coming up to me and say, you have that spot because you're a woman. I'm like. Oh my God. You just felt that in my soul. Yeah. And I'm like, oh my God. I mean, women, we're damn good. We are not loud, but we are damn good. And if you see a woman in technology, like listen to her because she's flourishing in an environment that is totally against. The entire time. Okay. And probably sexually assaulted her and God knows what else. So if you want somebody that knows how to solve problems, that's her. Do you know someone that is enduring and knows how to continue? Resilience. And it's passionate because you require passionate. You require intelligence. You require love for technology and to give out to the community because if you see all ourselves, we're giving back to the community. Yeah. So I'm with you. You have to be objective. You just nailed it. You have to be objective because the place that we are having here is not because we have something, the friend here. Yeah. It's because we are good from here to here. Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's it. I just got goosebumps. First of all, that was like, whoa. But you're absolutely spot on. It was actually a theme of KubeCon. I was there in October, 2021 in LA. Totally different vibes. Sidebar, we've come a long way since then. But the theme was resilience realized, I think, or something like that. And it really, as you were thinking about that, I'm like, wow, how appropriate is that? Because you're right. We have had to fight harder and to endure so much like, oh, because you're a woman, or I mean, I'm a tall blonde woman. You know what they say about that? Yeah. Oh, how'd you get here? Yeah, I'm sure. No, I didn't suck my dick here, actually. I thought I could use my mind. And believe it or not, that's the most powerful thing that all of us have here. And I hate that like, that phone call, I'm sure all of us have gotten that phone call. Well, I guess you kind of got that phone call yesterday. This is different, as I'm sure you can tell. But get that phone call, you know, they're like, oh, there's three men on a panel. Can you join us to be the woman? Oh, but we don't have any more speaker budget, or we don't have any more or whatever, but well, you know, like, you can just come up and do it. I should have a day since calendar. Yeah. Oh, man. Yeah. Seriously though, it's one of those things, like don't do that if you're an organizer. Start with the right people. For the stage. So just quickly, what was, was there a lot of diversity? I've been sitting here on our stage, unfortunately, and so not getting to see a lot of your stage. What was the diversity like for the lineup this year? The foundation will publish a transparency report, like shortly after. I always look forward to that. Yeah. I read them. But again, I don't remember the numbers top of my head, but we had specific goals, like numbers to meet, and we met or exceeded like all of those goals this year. So yeah. Oh, that makes me feel really good. Yeah. And I think the other thing I would like to highlight is, when we are selecting the talks, we are very intentional and try to avoid groupthink. Like, you know, all three co-chairs, we individually review all of the talks and we say yes, no, or maybe independently. So we're not getting biased by each other and we're not going like, oh, like, you know, this baker, like, yeah, he's great. Yeah, of course you should have it. And, you know, not to be abstract. Oh yeah, we always have so. We all know the same 10 men who speak it all. Yeah, yeah. They're so named, they're smart and lovely too, but they're also like... Yeah, and I think I learned. Yeah. Yeah. Try the yes. Yeah, and I learned that, you know, that's a great thing, right? Because like, you know, in an interview panel, what happens is like, everybody gets together and then the loudest person influences the group. So I think it's about being intentional and, you know, countering bias. It really is. It really is. Wow, I don't want to end this panel. Unfortunately, the nice white gentleman in my ears are telling me that our time is up. Had to do it, baby, that was just for you. But I know we're really, really sad to do this. Ishelle, Aparna, Kasselin, seriously, thank you. Genuinely, both as a human being and as a host, we're really grateful that you were able to make the time, bring your energy. And I love the realness, the rawness, the authentic opinions. We need more of it on theCUBE. John Furrier, I hope you're listening. And thank you, the audience, for coming along this ride. I hope you learned something fun and new from all of us. You should definitely follow these ladies, follow their work, follow their leadership, and know that we're rooting for you in whatever journey you're trying to be resilient in your current life. My name's Savannah Peterson, coming to you live here from KubeCon EU and Amsterdam where theCUBE, the leading source for emerging tech news.