 Cool. Good work. We're good. We're gonna start it. All right. Good morning, everybody. Welcome to the humans of cloud native panel finding your way in team cloud native. My name is Bart Barrow, and I'm very happy to be moderating this panel today in terms of work. I am a freelancer I'm a content creator a CNCF ambassador and my main project currently is cube FM Which is a podcast for engineers by engineers from engineers focusing on technical challenges and trends in the Kubernetes ecosystem That being said I would like to introduce our panelists or have them introduce themselves So first of all we've got Whitney But Whitney before you introduce a little bit about your background how you got into cloud native. I want to know one thing and one thing only Pineapple on the pizza. Oh Heck yes. Good. Do you have any supporters in the crowd? Pineapple? Yeah I think I had a pizza here in Chicago the other day that was really good and had pineapple That being said though Whitney tell us about who you are what you do how you got into cognitive In one minute a huge question. I'm 44. So it's gonna be this is the panel right just me telling the story Okay, um, I my name is Whitney Lee. I'm a developer advocate at the MWARE I host or co-host three different streaming shows. I speak at conferences I've given two cube con keynotes, so I do pretty well for myself But I also only just wrote my first line of code in 2019 I only learned what kubernetes was at the end of 2019 and I said most of my adult life as a professional wedding photographer Not bad. Yeah, I think that deserves a round of applause That being said two other things to add it we can give the mic to Mitch But one I wanted to mention a couple of things It's 2023 and I have still yet to write my first line of code Which is one of the things we want to focus on this panel is all the different ways that folks get involved So next up Mitch take it away. Hey guys, I'm Mitch Connors I'm a senior principal engineer at avatrix where I lead container networks and platform engineering I've been on the Istio project now for about five years. I lead usability there I've said on the TOC and this year. I'm also serving as a CNCF ambassador, which is pretty exciting I'm happy to be here. Good. Welcome round of applause Last but certainly not least we have Miranda Hi, everyone. So my name is Miranda Jramillo. I'm a software full-stack software engineer at the driver project And I'm also I created a product an open source project for monitoring Coordinated is monitoring tool a couple of years ago with a beautiful team and I also mentor 200 girls in Mexico every month Trot that they're trying to get into the tech field Also deserves a round of applause. Good stuff. So Real quick if you want to take pictures of the names and pictures and all that stuff do so now I'm gonna turn off the projector so we're not blinding our wonderful panelists That being said, this is an open conversation I'm gonna ask questions about our experiences in the cloud native ecosystem The different ways that we can contribute more about our our backgrounds as well, too And the different things that we're doing as you heard from Whitney. She was a wedding photographer I didn't know that until today actually. That's a fun fact But but like I said, we're gonna keep this as interactive as possible and and and also have time for questions If we don't get to all the questions we can continue the conversation the hallway etc. etc All right, so turn off this look at that my first technical contribution of the day Yeah, you can step into the light. Yeah Cool. So I just want to contextualize this Like I said, I'm 38 years old still never written a code in my life I first started interacting with the CNCF three years ago when I was running the date on Kubernetes community What I got started not the imposter syndrome was crushing But I was very fortunate to meet two wonderful people one who's at this event Savita and another person named Rinn Oliver and they explained the opportunity to get involved in the contributor experience group The SIG is particularly focusing on upstream marketing I was terrified when I went for the first meeting, but I have never been more welcome Is as I was at that at that meeting and that's how I got started Since then have done literally hundreds of podcasts talking to lots of people from the Kubernetes ecosystems speaking at kubicons, etc etc But all this starts with a fundamental principle which will push away all the imposter syndrome Every single person in this room despite the fact that some of you don't like pineapple on the pizza All of you have value. I Know it sounds like a really kindergarten teacher thing to say, but it's really true All of us have value all of us can contribute in many many different ways and these are the things that we're going to be talking about All right, Mitch. I want to start out with you Did could you give us a little bit of background on what you studied and things that you did before you got into cloud native? Yeah, so Super prepared for a cloud native career as I graduated in 2005 with an associate's degree in biblical studies round of applause As you can imagine, I don't reach for that particularly often before the Istio meetings So no, I actually most of my preparation I got on the job I spent some time at State Farm Insurance doing data entry, but I'm exceedingly lazy so I automated it And then they gave my automation to 300 other people in the company and said now. How are you going to distribute patches? What's a patch? so sort of Learned by doing and learned by failing and didn't fail enough to get fired. So I guess we call that a success Very very good. And how did that bring you into the how did that? What were your first interactions with the CNCF? So I was working at f5 networks and I was evaluating technologies to rebuild our stack on top of we were looking at next generation products and I was fascinated by the combination of Kubernetes and Istio and the stability you could get in rolling out software with Canaries and be able to say hey, I don't know if this thing's gonna work push it out to production send 10 requests to it It didn't work roll it right back and you've only had 10 requests at it You don't have to worry about you know the majority of your production traffic hitting that and I was pushing and pushing for Istio adoption And I hit some resistance. I happened to be interviewing at Google at the time. I did not know that Google was building the Istio project I had no idea who was contributing to this thing It was this amorphous open source concept that I didn't really understand and it just so happened at Google like Whoever interviews you has nothing to do with the role you're or the particular company or team you're interviewing with It's just Googlers from the office you're in Just so happened that one of the Googlers was working on the Istio project But you don't learn this until the like you know at the 30 seconds at the end of a tech interview They say do you have any questions? It's too late to ask them, but do you have any? So I asked what he did and you sit on the Istio and as he's walking out the door I'm like look this is a little presumptuous, but like if I pass this thing I want to work with you And I thought for sure he was gonna think that was weird and Inappropriate and just sort of note that down in my file, and I wouldn't hear back But but he didn't and I got hired onto the Istio team at Google a couple weeks later. It was great Fantastic good Miranda. What about you? What's your backstory? How'd you get connected to the CNCF? It's all good Hi. Yeah, okay So everything started well, I studied physics that will be important in a couple of minutes, I guess in the academia and in in my university everything was like super Competitive everything it was about like who's the best one? And then that'll be important. That's what I'm saying. So I started to Get into the tech fields and then I was like, okay I need to to gain like actual practical experience and with that I I Went into a tech accelerator Where we created a group of a lot of diverse and beautiful people and then we started looking at open source projects around the world to see like how we can contribute to the open source world and We stumbled to like I mean we saw bunch of projects and we were like super confused and I remember feeling like that fear like What would happen if I contribute and someone tells me like oh, I didn't need it bad like It doesn't matter so What I did was what we did is that we were really into Kubernetes and trying to learn how to use Kubernetes monitoring tools But then we found that it's actually kind of hard when someone is starting in the Kubernetes world to actually Understand Kubernetes and to actually understand how to connect everything into your class in your Kubernetes cluster into everything So we said like, okay, there are these huge giants In in the monitoring tool as Prometheus for example, why don't we create an open source project? A new one but for Learning purposes. So that's what why we created Neptune, which is an open source monitoring tool But it's like a very lightweight and very like simple simple simple Because we wanted to give an experience to the users that are learning how to use Kubernetes and learning how to Also contribute to the open source world because it can seem challenging to get into a huge I Forgot the word do a huge Code repo or something so it can be challenging so we wanted to grow like a like a beginner's experience for Kubernetes and that's practically how I started and I I started to do one of my first contributions was actually talking to all of the people from other Monitoring tools because we wanted to understand what their goals were what their Challenges were and how we can like reduce all of those problems to our end users Very good. I think with that in mind It's a reminder that never underestimate the value of a single action and that something it's going to talk to people That's also a way of being involved that it doesn't have to be straight shot, too I'm really getting into the weeds in a technical sense in my experience in In the upstream marketing group and shout out to castlin fields Chris short Can all catch one a bunch of other people that helped me get on boarded there was going out and talking to people You know, we're gonna do a blog about someone Can you please interview them and then share your notes? Like I said, they're just so there are as many ways to get involved as there are skills that people have Whether it's with language skills, whether it's with technical skills non-technical skills But when what about you you were taking pictures of weddings you show up in the CNCF that happened. I just knocked on the door I So I was a wedding photographer and let me tell you something about for 10 years I photographed probably 500 weddings personally and I also had photographers who worked for me. I Want to tell you something about it? It sucks. I hated it by the end of it. It's very circular very repetitive very emotional There are a lot of assumptions people make about how a wedding should be like based on their own Families and experiences and so I wanted out, but I didn't know how to do it This is and so my brother is a professional musician He had an album that did really well and he needed to put together a live band to tour with so for two reasons Nepotism and I'm a very kind person who's easy to get along with he invited me to be in the band and And go on tour with him. So this was it's that like I quit my job. I dissolved my business I put everything in this storage My partner at the time we'd been together eight years. They weren't supportive. So they were gone, too And I and I lived in a van for a year with my brother and some other musicians. What's this have to do a CNCF? so Storage was it port works or open? Yes, I I Came back to the world after touring in the band I worked at restaurants as a server because I really really didn't go want to go back to photography My son was in college for computer science and he was like mom I think you'd really like coding like mom you would like this and so I wrote I so I Basically looked into going to a bootcamp and did all the pre-work for that and I did my son was right I loved it. So I went to a full-stack web development boot camp that has nothing again to do with cloud native computing I did at some point We needed to get our stuff online and I was the one who put our air recipe app into a docker container and uploaded it and figured out how to do that and so from my boot camp IBM was hiring and they hired a lot of folks from our boot camp I was in the room right now and so they hired me and I interviewed well I learned Kubernetes so I could talk about Kubernetes in the interview with IBM And so as that part of that job what I did was go around we learned the IBM specific products And then we were meant to travel and go to different places and then build out proof of concept stuff But the pandemic happened so the travel part never happened. So I ended up spending learning my IBM specific products I was working with cloud native tech But I had no idea at that point that there was like a community behind it and like people who were going to be my friends behind it I was just like trying to Make sure I earned the money that they were paying me which felt like an adorbent amount after being on tour so When I wasn't busy with cloud native with the Proof of concept stuff. I found my way into the IBM cloud light board studio and they invited me They put out a call for like SMEs like who would like to come teach cloud concepts on the IBM cloud YouTube channel I've been in cloud for like six months at this point. So like surely I'm not qualified for this, but I Like there's a form. I don't have a lot of information. Maybe I just need to perform it It's like I've experienced performing I can do that if they give me a script And so I signed up to learn more and then they found me and they're like, yes We want you to do it and I'm just like Me me and I was like, yeah, we want you to make a video. Are you free next week? Let's do this and so I made my first IBM cloud video It's called what is at CD and it if you look it up if you look up what is at CD right now It's probably gonna be one of your first choices still at that point I'd been in I'd known about Kubernetes for maybe eight months. Definitely less than a year and I Did put together all the content from that video and that video does really well because it comes from someone who know Nothing at the time when she first started researching it So I ended up making so that making that what is that CD video is my that's my first Contribution to the open-source community although I still had no idea it was at the time Great point there and something that comes up a fair amount too is that a lack of knowledge is also a way of contributing because it Getting those questions on the open 100% so I've made seven IBM cloud YouTube videos and like it look like there's one is what is Kafka and from this Crazy beginner perspective, but that actually makes it so accept accessible to people So from that I was able to get a job. I didn't know what a developer advocate was But once I got into VMware, that's when I started to actually understand the community and get to know The awesome people behind all the tech if I can tack on to that a lack of knowledge is not just a skill It is it's a skill and that's wonderful It is a skill that no one who's currently in the community has it's true I can never look at Istio with beginners eyes again and see the glaring flaws for Onboarding or the things that make absolutely no sense in the docs because I wrote those docs. They make intuitive sense to me I probably recite some of them in my sleep If you all are new to Istio or if you're new to any project in the CNCF Which you know, there's hundreds and hundreds of them So we're all new to some project you have a skill that no one who's working on that project currently has what they need You to do is to show up and ask the dumb questions I'd try to tell you that there aren't any dumb questions. You're not gonna believe me So we just won't have that argument show up and ask that question that makes you nervous It feels like it's gonna out you as somebody who doesn't really know what you're talking about You'll find out two things one You'll find out that seven other people in that room had the same question and a few of them even maybe have Expertise in the project and still don't quite get it and two you'll find out that you by asking that question Are gonna make it easier for the person behind you to come and on board to that so Leverage that skill because it's something that you have that no one else can bring I love that and I think it says a lot too about the fact of being a global community with people from so many different parts of the World and with different backgrounds on top of it academically as well as professionally It means that different eyes are gonna see different things and so it's what makes things more robust more resilient more resilient Words that we're using a lot of times to talk about infrastructure But also applies to the richness of the community and the strength of the community now something I want to you touched on you know beginners something we talk about a fair amount is you know documentation and good first issues How how to make it easier for folks to get involved also different open source projects having a contributor ladder So people can map out that journey I say this because of interacting with and mentoring young folks who a lot of times just want to Do everything all at once and as much as I would love to see that happen as much as I admire that passion I really try to explain that before getting involved. It's best you slow down. It's not a raise It's not a rush We are we're not looking for people to come in for three weeks and then just get burned out and overwhelm I think it's not for them. It's really really important to take this one step at a time And so there are different ways to do that and different open source projects Guide folks into that Miranda. Could you talk about how you're doing that in your open source project? Well, there are like many ways to start and I would like to give some Advises for everyone because I know it can be challenging and of course you'll make that that question that is what I'm doing like actually important and One of those things like the best import the most important thing is actually Finementor how do you find them find a mentor talk to everyone here in this room or outside like? I'm not kidding you like go ahead and say like hey Can you be my mentor like that way go to the speakers like talk to everybody everybody in here is so So approachable and that's where the physics thing comes into these into my argument the physics connection exactly because In here the community the difference that I have is that for example in my in my in my physics field I'd never felt completely comfortable asking questions and in here you can ask all of the dumb Questions and all of the non dumb questions so go ahead ask and actually contribute that way That's the first thing so find a mentor ask questions and I have my bullet points here because I don't remember a thing about myself The first one that I have is don't be afraid. Please. Don't be afraid. You know, it's It'll be like a curve of learning like a learning curve So be be aware of that everyone goes through that we all vane through that And you can start small like you don't have to do like huge coding Contribution is at first like for example your first contribution was a video and that was I'm pretty sure that they'll be like super helpful For everyone so you can start by even organizing Understanding the code everything can be super useful. So start small Have clear communication with your mentor or with whomever is like revolving the project Look, okay. I said already that look for your mentor practice empathy because we don't know the time that the other person has for you or for the project and Also, like the situations that the person is going through so always have empathy And of course, don't overdo it like sometimes a lot of folks get like super excited I got super excited with my project and spent like hours of my time doing it And I've heard that sometimes it's like a 20% of your time 10% of your time. That's enough Don't overdo it because I know that a lot of software engineers have this tendency of Of course, you you already have a job probably and This is outside of your your working time, right? So where does your social life and your mental health time comes around? So that's really important. Please take care of yourselves. Don't don't overdo it Everything needs to be in balance. That's very very important What else slack Send a message in slack in the in the cubicle You'll find a lot of help if you're like too afraid of going to a person and just talk to them You can send a message just like to a random person. I promise you if that person doesn't have an answer for you They'll they'll Give you another contact or another thing. So yeah Yeah, the CNCF slack workspace is a really kind place and At VM where I host a show where I need to have guests from projects come on and Explain their project to me from scratch to a beginner although I'm not that much of a beginner anymore but we still start from a square one and when I and The way I find guests from that episode is by going on CNCF slack and saying hey Can someone teach me about Istio and put just putting a just posting as whoever into their channel And I've got nothing but kind responses like at this point. I've randomly Talked to over a hundred people in the CNCF slack and without exception. Everyone has been kind so Very very good points. Yeah, the thing is if if Don't don't suffer in silence, you know, if you're not sure about something either a someone else has had the same question B if you ask one of us for example, if I don't have the answer I will find somebody who does you know, I mean or the resources that will be adequate Take advantage of the fact that you're in a you're in a space where people really care about each other And they've all been there, too And you've heard from all of us no one when they were you know, five years ago was thinking I'm gonna plan a direct route You know to Kubernetes and the CNCF to things like that. We've all kind of arrived here, you know from different angles Yes, and it's more than like oh, they'll take pity on you. They'll help you They're genuinely excited that someone is excited about their projects like this is something they're passionate about and they want to share So you're not even a burden by asking Really agree also something that Miranda mentioned is to not overdo it. It sounds simple and it's easier said than done Why is it important to say because lots of people are overdoing it? I'm someone that I would say also has over done it at times I remember it was two it was in 2021 at coupon L. A. It's Steven Augustus said stop signing up for stuff And I didn't take it to heart then but I have taken it to heart much more In the last six months of the year and it's been very helpful is that you know get that balance you need to go for walks You need to eat healthy food you need to have time to not be thinking about this kind of stuff That'll make you more productive when you're actually working on it burnout is a thing It happens to a lot of people and what you may consider to be burned out Maybe much more drastic than what burnout really is all right So there it takes many different forms so it's something to keep in mind No one wants to see you suffer when you do commit to something always, you know Underpromise over deliver try to be very clear about what the expectations are whether it's with a mentor Whether it's contributing to an open-source project or being in the The shadow program for the release team lots of different ways to get involved But just remember no one's gonna say you need to commit, you know a hundred hours to eat to this No, no, no, you need to be realistic with your other commitments So these contributions can be sustainable other things in terms of dos and don'ts that you would mention Mitch what are some of the common mistakes that you see for newcomers in the CNCF ecosystem? Let's see the the the blind poll request is a common one It's someone who maybe hasn't attended our community meetings to hear what's going on in the project doesn't have necessarily a connection to one of the maintainers to be able to ask hey Where can I get involved? But instead just like pulls up the code base and says hey like here's a here's a data dog plug-in for Istio We're going well. We We're not a telemetry system like we don't need a data dog plug-in data dog integrates in their own way with Istio Like thank you. It's interesting what you did But we would encourage you to keep it in your own repo and we're not we're not going to bring it into ours Because it's not something that the project necessarily needed It's also not something that the project really wants to take ownership and maintenance of in case it's a drive-by commit Here's this one commit and you'll never see me again And now I'm left keeping somebody else's code running and bug fixes and whatnot So if you want to get involved start with talking start with showing up in Slack Almost every project has weekly community meetings. I know Istio. We do all of our meetings on Wednesdays join us Hear what we're working on and just say hey like I just want to get some I want to have make a contribution Where should I start? Docs are one area that I've almost never seen a drive-by commit or a commit that we didn't want When we get docs committers we like are we have a small party in the Istio community because We know and every tech project I've talked to across the board. What are we all asking the CNCF for more funding for? tech writers So when we get a docs PR That's one of the ways of making sure that it's going to stick And then it's going to be valuable to the community because again who's it who else is reading our docs? People who are new to the project people who haven't been here before people who don't think the way that we do so It's much better to get those from new contributors. Very good. Yeah with the docs thing with something I've seen and heard time and time again is The overwhelming amount of typographical errors that seem to make their way into documents and so correcting those is helpful Also with docs when I mentioned something that's been the CNCF I think for now two years, you know the localization project through the cloud native glossary if you speak another language That's another way to contribute. All right I don't know how many languages been translated into now But I think over 12 or maybe even more and then once again These are the really cool things of celebrating the richness the wealth and diversity of having a global community of people from so many different backgrounds That being said Bart. Yes, even more than writing multilingual docs reviewing Multilingual docs we get plenty of contra contributions to the Istio docs in Chinese However, the number of Istio contributors who speak both Chinese and English and can take our English docs Which are usually larger and more or less the source of truth for the project and make sure we're saying the same thing When we write our Chinese language docs I think the number around the globe is two So if you happen to be multilingual not just authoring but helping review and say like Here's what this person is writing in this doc and here's how it matches with what's written in this other doc So we're getting a consistent experience across those languages is super critical I love that and I think it also echoes what Miranda was saying earlier is that you can't you just can't underestimate the impact of of these actions You know because someone who may have thought this is absolutely not for me like don't worry It's in your language like where where where these steps are being taken and I think it's I think it's extremely important Miranda, can you talk a little bit about what the Trevor project is if we're talking about once again? Be thinking about folks from from different backgrounds who perhaps don't feel as represented in other areas And what that means to them in places like the CNCF Yeah, of course. So representation is super super important Everywhere, you know, like it empowers people to feel represented and to feel like we belong Sometimes like even if you see like in these tech conferences, you see like a huge difference between like the gender Attending these conferences and it's it's something that matters And I know for example that CNCF is doing a lot of efforts To try to have like these 50 50 and not only gender but also another efforts for example I really recommend you really recommend you to go to give me one second To check the CNCF deaf and hard of hearing working group because they have like a great initiative of Creating a community of deaf and hard of hearing people here in the CNCF because it's so challenging To to have a disability like my mother is hard of hearing and I can understand how hard it is to be seen to be heard Not only by race by religion by Gender or anything but also for disabilities. So I really recommend you to check that out because it's it's it's important And it's also important for us to give To recognize that every every one of Of that that that every one of us have A privilege and we also have a power so we need to identify that power and to use that power to Help others that have less power than us I cannot believe that we're giving this panel with these beautiful people and in some other places of the world There's war, you know So we really need to acknowledge all of our privileges and all of our Yeah power and to help others. So yeah, I think that's a great point Also goes back to what you were saying about empathy is the person who's across on slack that maybe their name isn't You don't you just don't know who they are You don't know what they're going through and so keeping that in mind when you're in these spaces And if you have any doubts about that, of course go back to the code of conduct Like you said using privilege and understanding what they are And that also makes it easier to help you pay it forward and to know what it is You can give to others based on what you may have and that they might not So like I said, there's there's great stuff there now Going forward, right? This is something because this is a conversation that could last 10 hours, right? But what are concrete steps? These are some things that we talked about with the wonderful folks from the scenes here Is that, you know, how can we make this easier? All right, what solutions do you think could be provided? We've spoken about perhaps having a slack channel just for newcomers There are some other things, you know, an onboarding kit What do you think would be concrete steps that we could take? However small they are, right? Because we don't need to boil the ocean right away Whitney, what do you think we can do? Uh, hey, one thing you touched on at the beginning that really resonated with me is imposter syndrome So that was some I worked in restaurants and in a band right before I started in cloud native And I felt big time. I don't deserve to be here I don't deserve to be making this kind of money. Who let me in the door? And I went to like specific therapy around imposter syndrome And I also read a book called range That really really made a difference It helped me understand that all my varied and wildlife experiences leading to this moment They're a strength and they help They help me be more round, more well rounded But to see things in a way that no one else will So I think addressing imposter syndrome head on and maybe even having a in terms of concrete steps Like a book club or or a support group or something would be helpful if that doesn't already exist That's good. I like that I have like a small tip for that. That helps me a lot Just create a folder like a google drive folder and put in there all of your messages That someone has like written to you like, oh, thank you for doing this Like all of the grateful messages that someone has sent you or I don't know like even recordings anything that anyone has told you that you are Like the best version of yourself or whatever Just put them in there and sometimes when you feel bad imposter syndrome Just read through all of those messages and all of those screenshots. That's great. And remember that you have value That's great. Good. All right, Mitch I'll give a two-part answer because I really liked what you said about that folder As you mature in the community and as you go on and as or as people help you to mature and mentor you Don't forget to say thank you And to talk to them about who they are as a person not just about what we're doing It is so easy with video conferencing. It's the worst and best thing ever You get into the meeting and you immediately say, okay issue 1392 we were talking about earlier today We don't ask. Hey, how is your morning? You know, how's your family doing or do you have if there's a favorite pet that you have what's going on with them these days? How are your hobbies going? reserve that first 60 seconds for that and reserve the last 60 seconds for saying thank you so that that person too Can have a folder to start filling up and to remember that they're appreciated The other thing is maintain a good first issue list. This is more of a technical thing But almost all cncf projects have a label in github called good first issue And most projects have no issues labeled with that label In istio, we're working on it and actually if you come to the istio contributor meeting tomorrow I don't know precisely when it is but you can check your schedules We have I want to say about 50 issues labeled good first issue Ready and queued up along with istio maintainers ready to help you get contributing on those As soon as you start contributing though as soon as you've fixed a good first issue You need to go and label as many first issues as you fix That's how we're going to keep from running out as a project because it is something that we tend to to slack off on Good that being said we've got a short amount of time for questions Does anybody dare to step to the mic? We can also bring the mic to you any questions? Yes Hi, this is less of a question more of a comment but So much of what you're talking about resonates really specifically with me because Last year I was brand new to kubecon and bart. I don't know if you remember me We spoke at the data on kubernetes booth. I came up to you and I said I do data I want to do it on kubernetes and you said you should go talk to the pipe kid booth I went talk to the pipe kid booth. We hit it off now a year later We're running all of our workloads in kubernetes and I have like found my people in this community like so wonderful. You put me in touch with Melissa Logan At the data kubernetes group. I got to talk at one of the dok community days I got to connect with the app delivery folks and I spoke to them yesterday like It's so striking to me last year. I was brand new. I didn't know anybody and this year I have like real friends and like real connections in this community and all it takes is You know going and introducing yourself and saying like I'm interested in this. Where do I start? You know like that's that's what it was for me. So that's awesome The the beautiful thing is along that journey you're going to find that kubecon is your twice a year family reunion These are our teams. We're working and interacting and over video conference all year long And we're teams that are completely virtual. We never see each other except for twice a year So when we do it's there's a reason it's a big party. You just walked on the highway high five high five Other questions Yes Hi, thank you for giving this talk um one question I had is this is such a global virtual community on obviously the last few years have made that Even more so I guess I'm curious maybe outside of the you know the meetings or the usual channels How have you stayed connected to folks from the community stayed learning from others? I guess outside of those regular meetings I struggle with that I struggle with that a lot I'll find that if I'm getting a little bit frustrated in a poll request like oh You're nitpicking my code or I wrote it this awesome way and you want me to change it this ugly way I have to take a step back and go. Oh, wow the last time I had coffee with that person was 16 months ago Maybe the problem isn't actually the code Or the review but the lack of coffee. We we shouldn't be living without coffee. It's like a biological necessity So but but actually achieving that can be quite difficult It is difficult In some sometimes I'll just put her I'll put a reminder Or I'll like scan my linkedin messages occasionally or slack messages to see like oh because I don't want to I don't want to let Some of that slip you can even use something more like a crm It can be tough though It can be tough and also too is like the value of being here in person I'm not going to deny it I I really get a lot out of it about being able to see the people who I talk to a lot who I interact with a lot But everything changes when you're here in person that being said because of I'm rocking my cncf Boucher because this is the local meetup that I run where I live in Spain Go to a local meetup or if you can't go to meet up go to an online meeting All right, and you can go to an online meeting and say hi I'm just here to listen you can have your camera off your mic off And that's it and no one is going to get angry and you can be there Just as an observer trying to figure things out and asking questions and and really taking your times that you No one is asking you to rush into these things. All right. Um, that's not what this is about That's bad for you. It's bad for the project is bad for everybody. All right Good any other final thoughts before we wrap it up because I think we don't have too much time left You must have something written down to your notes like a good physicist. Sorry. Sorry. So you got a question Yeah, uh, thank you for the talk while you were speaking I joined it the cncf slack And I had to ask you like if there is a place where you can find mentoring there Uh, I was thinking that maybe I can look for a project that I like and maybe I want to contribute But is there like a place in a channel or something? Do you know if there's a channel and cncf slack for mentoring? I will throw I will throw the cncf ambassador channel under the The most Buses but what you can do write me a message. Yeah, seriously, and I really mean it Yeah, and and it's the same thing as well too is any of us We yeah, we can we can talk and then based on that to say like I think you'd be better suited to be with this person you can focus on that project But yeah, there is the more formal pathway, which is the lfx mentorship program. Um, I You would talk to these wonderful humans over here for more info about that. Um, but but like I said There are many many different ways to get involved and a lot of it as this gentleman was saying as well too It just taking that first step and saying hi. I'm interested in x y or z Where where should I go and it's fine? Um, but yeah, please talk to any one of us The projects pavilion at the expo has all the open source projects have a little booth And those are great great people to meet in terms of what you're interested in or uh, yeah To get a better idea and see how well it's gonna fit. Yeah, how well it's gonna fit with what you're trying to work on Um, good, uh, I think we're I think we're getting close to our time Um, but any final thoughts you want to share? I would like to say that For example, if you're struggling to find a project that You don't you don't know if you want to contribute to that project or not Just think about what are your personal goals? In your career and also if that aligns with what you want to build in that project because sometimes like It has to work the both ways That's a great point And also this relates to something that came up in the keynotes in terms of the value that people provide No matter where they are in this world or in another universe Is uh, has anyone read chris nova's book hacking capitalism? Somebody should go and read it because it's really really good I never had the privilege of meeting chris, but I'm really enjoying the book And one of the things that she talks about though is is what miranda just mentioned is having an objective and your objective can change That's fine, too Just because it's one thing today doesn't mean it can't change in six months But I would like to learn this technology. I would like to start working on this kind of an open source project I would like to become a technical writer and help out with the folks in istio think about that first Give yourself permission to have that change and that flexibility as well But it makes things a lot easier All right in terms of what are the targeted steps that I should be taking to give me one You know one bit closer to uh to that objective mitch anything we haven't mentioned so far that you'd like to mention Well, I want to thank you for bringing us all together and for hosting us today Her faults Thank you I think one of the things here too is that which I didn't say in the beginning You should never let someone with adhd moderate a panel because they're always in hurry and they want to interrupt people I also want to say regarding that if it weren't for the cncf I never would have gotten diagnosed for adhd so i'm really grateful for that Then and being able to interact with other folks You could say that they're either more people that are neuro diverse in this ecosystem Or maybe people are just more open about it than they would be in other ecosystems That's been really really helpful for me. What I didn't say in the beginning is the humans of cloud native initiative It was just fantastic. All right, because it's kind of what when mitch was saying The first part of your conversations and the last part of your conversation shouldn't be about technical stuff And humans of cloud native helps us get to know each other better as people So then you see oh you like that sport or you sing or you like cooking or you like And then the the bonds that might just be through a poll request get a lot stronger So the more we get to ask questions and get to learn about other cultures other people their backgrounds Whether they were a physicist a wedding photographer or got their their degree in biblical studies All these things like I said is what what makes us a wonderful place. It is Whitney I want to say thank you Thank you for being here your time and your attention are both really valuable And it means a lot to everyone here that you shared it with us today. So thank you for that Thank you. Good. Um one thing that we did say we're going to do at least Whitney and I did Was that another way to contribute? We're going to create kubecton history right here. Oh, no Yeah, that's right. I would invite you to sing Oh, no, I tried I tried everybody Uh, nobody else wants to sing we will do 20 seconds of freeform interpretive dance. All right So we got our time people over here You're invited to the the audience has to do it too. Yeah, we invite all audience members I will shame you into dancing This is about what it looks like when I do that's okay That's my right. I think It's important that we that was more than 20 seconds So we'll be we'll pass the hat around afterwards for tips But um, we'll also be at kubaroke tonight if you want to check that out But I think like I said, it's why why do that because it's okay to feel silly It's okay to this is an open space where you really don't need to feel ashamed You shouldn't feel uncomfortable if you're not sure about something talk to one of us Like what Mitch said as well to your ambassadors all over the world So if you feel more comfortable speaking to someone in your own language rather than Doing everything in English. That's totally fine as well So really just know that you have a home here I consider myself to be really lucky to be a part of this I never imagined something like this existed before getting involved And I want everyone to be able to experience that as well. Um, so yeah, I think I think we kind of covered it Thank you. We are in time Last last thing is that just so if you didn't get our names There you can see everybody Sorry about that So if you want to take a picture you can do so But like I said find us on slack find us in the hallway track will be around all week and thank you. Yeah