 Awesome. Awesome. Thanks a lot, Batman, for the awesome presentation. So, yeah, I guess it's my turn to present. So, I'll start by introducing myself. So, my name is Uchechukui Manualobasi. I am a software engineer at a company called Grafana Labs. So, Grafana Labs is the company behind the opening of the popular open source project called Grafana. And I also happen to be the co-organiser of the Kubernetes Community Days Africa event. And today I'll be talking about my journey and how open source changed my life for good. So, yeah, I'll be sharing my screen in a bit. Cool. Can you also see my screen? Yes, we can. We can see your screen. Cool. Yeah, so, like I said, the topic of my topic today is embracing open source as a catalyst for good. And this is the very first personal story on how open source changed my life. In a very positive way. So, yeah, I'll be sharing a lot of details about how I moved from being a very focused developer to actually working in a world-class company, basically, and how open source was part of my role as an engineer. So, yeah, it's like the integral of content. So, diving into how it was before I found open source. I'll also be talking about the open source festival, which happened last year, 2020. I'll also be talking about how I was able to get into the LFX mentorship program, and how I was able to join the Fana Labs, how I was able to also join the CNCF ambassadors program, and lastly, the final words. So, yeah, so before I dive into sharing what life used to be for me prior to learning about open source, I would want to actually tell you a story of something that happened recently. So, I think that was like two weeks ago, or three weeks ago, a very cool Saturday morning. I was basically on my couch, and I was reflecting back on how I started basically. How I was able to move from 0 to 100. And it struck me how open source was a big part of what people took me from being a media core, both as a developer to being a very good developer. And then it just came to my mind that open source actually changed my life for good. And then I went on Twitter and I tweeted about it and to my greatest surprise, it had subtractions. I mean, you could see like 100 and 75 lives, and I think the most interesting part was this particular comment. So someone commented on the thread and actually mentioned that open source community changed his or her life too. And that actually struck me. Actually, I thought it was just me, but after seeing this comment I actually knew that, oh, it's not just me. Actually, there are a lot of people that open source has actually had some impact in their lives in one way or the other. And yeah, that brings me to how it all began basically. So basically, before the dawn, before I knew what open source was, I was 30 in college, studying computer science in school. And I wanted, at the time, I wanted to just be a freelance web developer. I just wanted to start up my own web agency and just hire people and just build websites for people and make money. That was basically what I dreamt to be at the time. And at the time I had zero understanding of what and of course I had no opportunity for career. So that was the position I found myself up until, yeah, so basically up until I think January, January to February 2020. So at the time I moved to my 40 year college and I was asking myself a lot of questions. So how do I move from here? Actually, is this enough for me? Is being a freelance web developer enough for me? Is that where I want to go? And at the time I had zero opportunities. So what it meant was even getting someone that I could build websites for was very very difficult. It was very difficult. So of course I was young, I was dumb, but I was broke at the time. So I mean forgive the little type of people that I had but if you could see this routine on February 2020. So I was so devastated. I wrote this with anger. I actually needed more. I needed something more. And yeah, first of all to the same February 2020 I think I went on Twitter and then I saw the open source community Africa and then I noticed that we are planning an event called the open source festival. And I had never heard of open source before, but although taking a look at it to know the listeners, speakers and what the plan was and everything, I was super pumped that I wanted to attend the event. And just a little bit of background contest. I lived in the eastern part of Nigeria currently in Enugu Nigeria and Enugu to Lagos it's very long journey. And at the time like I said I was broke, but I wanted to be there. I wanted to actually be there live to learn more about open source. So I took this and with the help of the open source community Africa, they gave some sponsorships for travels and a competition at some point then I was able to attend the event in Lagos, Nigeria. So these are like images of memories and the experiences we had. I mean like I'm part of the Oscar emo chapter and basically these are my friends and we went together and just in part the amount of content I was able to absorb, the amount of knowledge I was able to gain at the event like I learned in a lot of open source, I learned a lot about open source licenses, I learned a lot about different communities within the open source and how I could leverage open source to do my career. This was an awesome event. I mean huge props to the organizers of this event. It was really awesome. And after this event, I went back home and I was thinking, I thought to myself no so after this what next? I mean now I know what open source is, how do I go from here and then I told myself enough is enough. Let's just get serious. Let's get things done basically. And from this slide you can see an image of what happens to be my goals for the year but 2020 so I took some time, I went down and told myself I was going to master these skills, I was going to code every single day I was also going to contribute to open source because I had already learned what open source was and of course some books and coding tests I would do as well. So I was super pumped I was highly motivated to push and become the best version of myself. And yeah, that actually drove me into coding every single day. So I and my friends we actually started this thing called I think on ending days of code basically. So like we are coding every single day until we get into the cap to how long we would be coding basically. So along the line I learned about the LFX mentorship program. You know as probably as you have seen on previous slides my plan was to continue to G-SOC and I applied to G-SOC of course but then I didn't get into G-SOC. Along the line I learned about the LFX mentorship program and it was actually true the community I belonged to on WhatsApp so at the time I was on this WhatsApp group a few weeks a young vibrant open source enthusiast and eventually that was where I got the link to the LFX mentorship program. Of course I applied and prior to the application I went to do like a list of projects that I was expecting and one project caught my attention and that was the Thanos project. So basically I've always been doing fronted web engineering for a very long time and projects, project topics related to that and then looking for me I found this issue on Thanos which was a building for the Thanos implementation site. And then I was super excited because I saw a project that I felt I could contribute to and immediately commented on the threads and right from there I started picking up interest on that project and I started doing research immediately and trust me at the time I had zero expectations that I would be selected. I was just genuinely interested of course I was being hopeful to get selected of course and I wanted to just contribute to this project and basically I think you don't have to start big basically you just have to start more and show love and interest sorry so of course eventually I got accepted into the program and I spent a couple of months, three to four months contributing to the Thanos project and while I was when I joined, while I was contributing to Thanos, I noticed there were some other mentees that were also contributing to Thanos as well and I wanted to work with them because I felt I was working inside of just me trying to work on this project and I felt maybe I could reach out to this other mentees and probably just sync up and just work together and collaborate together and then I reached out to them and then we bonded right from the first day so we created so I was able to create this initiative called the Thanos Eye and my friends of course so we created this initiative called the Thanos Mences Friday Hangouts so basically we would try to reflect on what we are able to achieve for that with what our plans are for the next week and of course we also have chats about our careers and how we could basically improve ourselves and from time to time we invited open source maintenance within space so we invited maintenance from the cheese project, from Cortex project from Thanos of course and from Gibranatis and so on so it was fun, it was really fun I think it was the highlights of my stay as a mentee at Thanos and yeah eventually I completed my project of course it took months and it took a lot of hard work because I have not done something like that before, I mean like I've always been a front-end developer but then building a completely automated tool that could do some form of versioning for the Thanos dimension site or something I had zero clue about but then I was I believed in myself, I knew if I could put in the time and hard work and experience I could get something done and of course I did and when my project was finally merged to the Thanos core or to the Thanos repo, I really jumped onto that and I tweeted how excited I was and to my great surprise it also got a lot of traction as well, I mean for all you can see here you can see it was huge, it was huge and yeah after I shared this tweet I basically I knew the next step for me was to get a job because basically I was currently on my final college, the next step for me was to join a company and because I had contributed to open source to Thanos, I wanted to remain within this space, I wanted to work with a company that is open source I wanted to work on a open source project and basically I wanted to remain within this space and then I learned about a company called Grafana Labs and basically my encounter with Grafana Labs was through the observability con event that Grafana Labs do I think every year so I learned about the observability con, I registered and of course the events really opened my eyes into the observability worlds and the opportunities I was in the observability space and that actually contrasts into me diving deep into the company and getting to learn about the company and getting to know how I could be part of the company and the interesting part was it actually ticked off most of the things I was looking for in the company so I may like a completely open source company, they were first, they had a great engineering company and the products, really great products, they had a great community it promises a career opportunities and a lot more and I was excited because I never knew a company like this existed so eventually I moved to their jobs page and I sent them my application, of course at some point before sending the application I was scared because I felt I wasn't good enough I felt, I mean I'm basically based in Nigeria how can I get employed in a global company like this but with the help of my friends they pushed me to just apply and I did and of course I got into Grafana Labs as a software engineer I currently work on the Amazon 10 platform seeing Grafana Labs and soon after I joined Grafana Labs I was still very much active in the CNCS space and along the lines I learned about the CNCS ambassador program so I was quite excited about it and I felt I could be part of this and then I applied as well, I applied to the CNCS ambassador program and at the time I didn't really know how it was I didn't really know the calibre of people that have been accepted as ambassadors so after I sent in my application I went to the CNCS site and then I saw a list of the ambassadors I mean I lost too basically I mean I was seen by engineers like Microsoft and Google, Chief Cloud, I think people that have lots and lots of experiences I was like there is nowhere I was going to get in basically there is no way but to my greatest surprise I got a mail that I was accepted into the Amazon ambassador program and at the time I think we had a CNCS ambassador from West Africa so what it meant was I was like the first West Africa which was huge for me because it basically promises an opportunity for me to make a lot more impact because I've always been value-driven right from day one so yeah of course I went on Twitter as well how excited I was about getting into the Amazon and yeah basically I will end the story here but I would want to end with some few key takeaways so basically this is my journey, this is my story and I know it's different for different people but then I actually took out time to reflect on my journey and document what I think helped me get to the level I am here and I feel if you should follow the same it could help you. So the number one is share openly. So because it opens us it's highly important to you to cultivate that open culture in yourself, make it a part of your personality I mean from what you could see I've always been tweeting, I've always been sharing basically what has been going on and trust me people are watching, people are actually watching, people are actually monitoring you and yeah just share openly, basically embrace open source as your personality and the second one is take responsibility so take responsibility is quite an important skill both as a software engineer and also as an open source enthusiast or anyone interested in open source because basically in open source it is expected you take full responsibility of whatever you are planning to work on whatever you are assigned to do so I think it's a very very important skill set to embrace and then the next is if you can apply to open source mentorship programs so there are a lot of a couple of open source mentorship programs like the LFX mentorship program which is for both students I think experienced engineers as well so long as you are quite new to the open source so I think you can participate within the LFX mentorship program I don't know if that's still the case but during my own time that was how it was structured you know there is G-SOC for students in the university there is outreach for basically underrepresented folks in the community there are a lot more, there is Google summer of docs I mean if you are interested in technical writing and technical teaching you can contribute to open source by participating in the Google summer of docs program and a lot more and then another point is to collaborate with others I mean from what I mentioned you know while I was contributing to the TANAS project I was able to reach out to others and trust me trust me it was the blessed decision I have made till date I mean we still talk today we meet once every month discuss and share ideas and we've become best of friends basically so it's very important to learn how to collaborate with others and that brings me to the next point which is joining a community I mean I can't emphasize like how community has really been a huge part of my growth as a software engineer and I think you know if you are really interested in going far and if you are really interested in becoming the best fashion of yourself I would highly advise you to join the community and there are a lot of communities within the ecosystem I mean like now we have like CSEF community for most of us interested in community if you are interested in open source you can join the open source community Africa and there are a lot more open source communities within the continent so feel free to join in one of them and of course be kind so open source is people you know it's used to work with people on a day to day basis and because you work with people it's very advisable to be kind to people because you'd want to treat someone how you would want to be treated so yeah please be kind and reach out you know reach out to people reach out to mentors, reach out to containers don't be scared everyone is like that you know just like you feel free to reach out to anyone basically on twitter on the projects television platforms anywhere just try as much as possible to reach out to people and the last but not the least is paying it forward I'm a huge fan of the community and basically I feel the community has really done a lot for me and I feel they need to pay it forward and that's why I happen to be a co-organiser of KCD Africa event and that's why I do the things I do today and yeah final words I have for anyone that is really interested in embracing open source that is really interesting in my career my final words are in the words of Helen Hayes I would say the expert in anything was once a beginner and in the words of Steve Jobs, keep pushing, don't settle and in the words of Pigs and Welp, code is hard but don't give up I hope we all embrace open source as part of our culture and I hope to see you all basically the world stage, the world class stage and yeah, good luck Thank you Awesome session Uche, it was great listening to you and also watching lots of the glowing comments that have been coming on yeah I think Iho shared the link to Metronid in the chat, if anyone is interested in CnCF mentoring programs the URL is mentoring.cncf.io and also we have a comment from YouTube let me just pronounce good man let me not spoil the rest of the meme, he says great session over it and I think there has been quite a lot of glowing comments on Twitter also. Now, a quick question how have you dealt with imposter syndrome I know it's a major thing that most people struggle with, especially when you come from an environment where you probably struggle or feel as if you are not capable with Dean in a particular group and you now get to an international company, how do you manage imposter syndrome Yeah, I think that's a very wonderful question, actually I wrote about it on my personal blog about it on there, so maybe I could also share the link probably after this session So when I joined Grafana Labs, of course I felt like an imposter, in fact I still do but I think what has helped me was me taking time to reflect on other achievements how far I've come, so basically what I try to do is I try to actually reflect back and say ok, I've actually done this actually done that, actually done this in the past because I've been able to do this in the past I can actually pass this all, so that is one second part is I try to have conversations with people I know for sure, like I work here I know for sure that most of the seniors must have gone through that particular stage and I try to have some conversations with them and tell them that hey, this is how I feel, this is what I'm doing and it's so reassuring to actually learn that they also feel the same way and they also have felt this in their career, so I think basically speaking up and reaching out also helps in seniors and then of course believing in yourself it's hard to believe in oneself but I think you just have to believe in yourself because if you don't, no one will so yeah, I think that sounds like my few tips on how to fight in this awesome, yeah, another question, one thing I think most people struggle with is taking feedback, because most times we are from different cultures and we speak differently, there are some people who are direct when they share their opinion directly you can feel offended sometimes but they don't know it as an offence or something wrong because that's how they share, that is how they communicate, what's your experience with feedback and how do you manage when someone is direct to you or not necessarily confrontational but the feedback looks direct? Yeah, that's a very very good question, so I've had a couple of experiences about receiving feedback and I think for me personally it's basically me knowing that I know nothing, so the fact that I know that I know nothing means that I know for sure that there are a lot of experts, there are a lot of people that knows really more than I do and what I try to do is I try to have loosely held beliefs basically, so I know for sure, okay this is my belief, this is what I think it is but then it's completely because it's loosely held, so I'm a huge believer in experiences, so the facts that I know that I've had a couple of experiences means that you know this more than I do and in scenarios like that I know for sure all I get to do is just to listen and to just take whatever you're actually trying to tell me basically, so yeah I think basically what has done what has on the truth for me was knowing that I know I know nothing, it's not like I know nothing basically what knowing that I'm still starting out and this journey has actually made me absorb feedback and also I try to make sure that the person giving the feedback has like has some kind of domain on what he or she is giving in the first place because if you have zero knowledge about this and then you're giving feedback on something you claim that you have knowledge about then makes no sense basically because you have zero knowledge, so I try to as much as I want to make sure that the person on the other hand has a lot of experiences and I could actually make me to like absorb their feedback so yeah having with the help please I think it does mention also one last question I want to ask is there's this thing that happens quite a lot lately there are lots of announcements on Twitter, people are doing a lot of great things which is really exciting for our community apart from people are companies raising funds a lot more people are getting international opportunities that is what we want and that is what as a community we want to happen because there is a lot of thought leadership on the continent but that access to opportunity is not there but there's one other thing I also term announcements driven development where people push themselves not to grow or to build a career but just to put something out there on social media and at the end of the day instead of focusing on building their career and building themselves they end up just looking and struggling for the next thing that they want to push to social media what do you think about this have you experienced it or what advice do you have on managing social media managing such Prince Joe from social media that's a very good question so for me personally I've always had dreams and even when I contributed channels and joined Grafana Labs I knew there was more to what I could achieve and because of open source I've been able to work closely with exceptional principal software engineers software architects I've been able to work with really experienced people and what I noticed at all times is yes it's good to share my story but then it's also important to bear in mind what your destination is so the fact that I know that I still have a very long way to go I tend not to focus on my achievements now and right from day one I've always been someone that is value driven so yes the noise is quite important but then I focus on the end results so yeah basically I think my advice for anyone having such challenges is first things first I think should be ambitious have very good ambition if you have a big enough goal then you know that the things you achieve now it's not in conflict with where you want to be in the future and then I think the second one is basically focus on the end results what's the end result are you sharing it just to make people know that you've arrived or are you sharing it just to motivate people are you sharing it just to inspire people basically so have good intentions have a very good end result and then last but not least be authentic it's not like sharing it's awesome because it gets people motivated but try to be authentic try to share value information not just because everyone else is sharing and then you just want to lie about your achievements actually before you choose that's basically what I think about awesome and for the community don't get me wrong it's not wrong to celebrate your wins we should all celebrate our wins and be confident in some of the things we achieve and sometimes when you put yourself out there that is when people can know this is what you are good at you can work with you but it's also important to know what the goal is and stick to the goal make your announcement share with the world but let your I.B. on the goal and not get carried away with social media I always say social media is the place where people put forward their facade what you are seeing might not necessarily be what is true but trying to celebrate our wins is also very important for us to put our eyes on the goal and make sure we achieve our core objective so I don't see any other questions in the chat let me see once again thank you very much for joining us here awesome Uche will be moving to the enterprise stage he's our track manager for the enterprise stage he had to come here to share with us his experience while he is moving to the enterprise stage I will touch base with our next speaker