 First time presenting at KubeCon, it's a big milestone for me. And I hope you're not too tired after lunch. I'm going to try to entertain you with my story. And yet today I'm going to talk about my journey from a non-technical person to becoming a CNCF ambassador and how you can do it too. So just to introduce myself, my name is Julia. I'm a global technologist at Veeam. And you can find me on all social medias at Julia F. Morgado. And feel free to connect and reach out. I'm always happy to answer questions or anything. And before we start talking about my journey, I want to go back and talk about my father. My father told me when I was just a child that education is the only thing that no one can take away from you. Like education, the more you study, the better you get. And you like beauty fades and money goes away. But education, no one can take away from you. So this is something that really stuck with me. My dad, he was one of 16 children in a rural area in Brazil. I'm from Brazil. And all the children, he and his brothers and sisters, they all got ahead in life through education, through studying. So he was always my role model. And I always, for me, studying was always very important. So like I told you, I'm from Brazil. And I went to law school. I'm actually an attorney. A lot of people, they don't know that. I worked as an attorney for one year in Brazil. And I told myself, no, this is not for me. This is not the world I want to work in. It's not like suits that TV show. Not at all, at least not what I was doing. So after one year, I decided, no, I'm gonna leave. It's not gonna be in Brazil. Because in Brazil, whatever you study, this is what you're stuck with forever. You don't have opportunities outside of the area that you went to college for. So I went to Berkeley. I went to study business at Berkeley. I gained some weight as well, as you can see. Inevitable. And I studied there for a few years. I was learning a lot. I'm a very creative person. So I loved my marketing classes. And you're gonna see that's what I worked after. I graduated from Berkeley. But while I was at Berkeley, I worked as a waitress to pay the bills, et cetera. So I've done a little bit of everything. Going through everything. And then after I graduated, I started working marketing. And my last job in marketing was at an MSP, Managed Service Provider. I was the marketing manager there. So doing everything, I was the only marketing person for that company. We were 60 people, but wearing many hats and working with a lot of engineers. So I, and also coming from Silicon Valley, I already knew about software development and all these big companies, Facebook, et cetera. And the money is there. So that's a dream. I would love to become more technical, but I don't know how to, this is something people struggle. We don't know how to start. That's the problem most of the times. And I didn't know how to start. So I went up, I was looking online. And on Reddit, I found this post. It was someone posted that they were gonna start a free coding bootcamp. And this was two days before the coding bootcamp started. The bootcamp is called 100 Devs. You might have heard it on Twitter or online and teaching JavaScript and the Mern stack. And what I like about this bootcamp is that it doesn't only taught me coding, it also taught me how to get my first job in tech. You know, all the networking, the projects that I had to do, the hackathons I should participate. So all the things that I'm gonna mention here, a lot were from this bootcamp, homework from this bootcamp. So this is what changed everything for me. And it was in January 2022 last year. I created some videos about that. If you're interested in doing this bootcamp, if you're not technical and you want to start, I always recommend people, you can do it on your own pace. It usually, it went from January to October, but if you're not working, you can do it every day. And it's a great bootcamp, I really recommend it. After that, we were all on Discord. All the group, we were like 7,000 people doing that bootcamp on Discord. And we had channels on Discord and there was the Northeast channel. And we decided to get together every other week at a bar in Brooklyn to help each other to go over our projects and to talk about what was going on. Because it's hard when you're going through that journey alone. I know it's hard, you want to give up, but when you have other people struggling with you, you keep going. So that's what we started, New York Code and Coffee. If you're ever in New York, you're more than invited. You can see, we have Twitter, we have the meetup and I have created a vlog about that as well. And nowadays we get every other week, we get 150 people. So from a small group of five, six people that we started, people started seeing on meetup and friend of a friend told about this meetup and you should check it out, there are classes, et cetera. And he started as a development meetup but now I'm trying to bring more cloud native talks and DevOps, even Ashley here, she's from New York and she gave her first talk in person at our meetup about DevOps. So it's also a great place for people that wanna practice public speaking or meet other people networking in a safe environment. So yeah, more than invited to come visit us. And meanwhile, I was also learning public. So learning public is a term some people they don't know and a friend of mine, Swix, he has a very good article explaining that it's basically documenting your journey while you're learning, create content about it. Whatever you wish you had found and you didn't find, create that content because other people are gonna find it valuable as well. And it doesn't matter if it's incomplete. It doesn't matter if it's not that technical. It doesn't matter if it's not perfect. Just create it because as you teach other people that's how you're gonna learn. The more you teach other people, the better it's gonna stick in your head. So this is the best way. I was writing articles and creating YouTube videos and it really helped me get that foundation of all the concepts in tech. Also, I was going to events. So I even brought here the lanyards from the past year. I have more at home, but I wanted because I'm gonna show you the timeline. This is from the past year. So I've gone to a lot of events. And there are events that don't give a lanyard. So these are just a few. How many do you think there are here? 32, yes. So a lot. I really put myself out there. Some events I volunteered and then I got the ticket for free. Some events I got the scholarship to go there at the beginning. And I just, I tried. I went, even events that weren't really my area like the finance. I don't know anything about finance. It was people working at banks, et cetera. I was just starting at doing open source but I went, I got the scholarship. I met people from the Linux Foundation and then I met one of them at the KubeCon in Amsterdam. So it's all about meeting people and those connections. And it's all about that. So it's very important to meet people. Everywhere I go, I try to meet people. I make the effort, my energy. I put the energy into that. So my family, they live in Portugal. Every time I go to Portugal, I try to meet with someone new in the industry. So like these girls, they were doing also 100 devs. We met for coffee. I organized that meetup, can I, can I, yeah. I organized a meetup in Portugal and some people showed up, even Eddie Jaude. Some of you might know him. Great guy, open source. He does a lot. You know, Twitter spaces, calls with other people from Twitter. Kunal, he's not here. He should be here. But because I told him I was gonna put him here, I'm joking. So he came to New York and we knew each other from Twitter and I told him, oh, I'll show you New York. I will go to Brooklyn, we'll walk the bridge, et cetera. And then that's how we built that connection. And now we're friends, you know? So, and he gave me just, it's because of him because I don't get those cases. It's because of Kunal, but anyways. And then people tell me, okay, Julia, you were doing all that, but you live in New York and you travel a lot. That's how you meet so many people. And I say, no, you can do that as well from your own home. So part of the bootcamp that I was telling you was doing coffee chats every week. So we had to do three coffee chats every week. What is a coffee chat? Is reach out to people already in the industry and ask them for 15 minutes of their time. Jump on a Zoom call, Google Meet, and ask them about their journey. What does their day-to-day look like? Do they have any advice for you on how to get in tech or a specific role? Do they know anyone that work at a company that you would like to work at? There are so many things, but the most important thing is to start that relationship because after you can follow up and start following them and comment on their posts and maybe meet them at an event in person. So again, it's all about those relationships that I told you. So I was doing online and I did more than 100 coffee chats. I did 116, I'm very organized. So I had a spreadsheet with the name of the people that I met, where I knew them from, where did they work, email, did they add them on LinkedIn? Yes, I add them, all of them, comments, et cetera. So, you know, because maybe you remember, oh, I read a hat. I wanna work at that company or I wanna work at Veeam, Casting. And I spoke into that person. Let me connect with them. Let me follow them. Let me see who they know that might be helpful. You know, so everything is good documenting. I have also created written a blog post about that with what I would send, the message that I would send to people be asking for the coffee chat, all the type of questions that I would ask. Like I had 100 questions and I would pick like three or four to ask them and some other tips. So, worth checking it out. And then, July 2022, I went to my first tech conference. Actually, it was my first big event, you know, big conference. It was the AWS Summit in New York. Marino, he's a great friend, also helped me a lot throughout my journey. He told me two days before, oh, Julie, I'm gonna be in New York. There is this free conference. Why don't you come? I wasn't sure if I should go because I was still working full-time at that time. I forgot to mention, I was doing the bootcamp, but I was still working at that marketing job, having to commute and studying. The classes were Tuesday and Thursdays from six to nine and we had office hours on Sundays. So, you know, putting in the work after work. So, I said, oh, maybe I ended up taking the day off and I went to the AWS Summit and I saw that there is a whole world out there. There are so many opportunities and I can be one of them and people are so helpful. Everyone that I talked to at the summit, they said, oh, just like reach out to me, I'll help you and let's take a picture, ta-da-da. So, I had a great event there, a great moment and I told myself, yeah, I wanna keep going. So, one of the things that happened and it was like a little blocker for me, I got COVID in August. So, I kind of missed some classes, but you know, it's that thing, you give up or you continue, you catch up and that's what I did. I caught up whatever people had studied already. I kept studying more days and at the end, everything worked out. So, in October 2022, someone from the community invited me to go to KubeCon in Detroit. They gave me a free ticket because we had become friends through all these coffee chats and networking and they said, Julie, do you wanna come to KubeCon? And by the time, I didn't know what Kubernetes was. I was like, you know, trying to become a developer. I knew a little bit about AWS Cloud but nothing about Kubernetes. And I said, okay, why not? I'm gonna go, you know, AWS Summit was nice, let me go. And that's where I met Michael Cade, my colleague now. We knew each other from Twitter, but we met in person there. And you know, that's how you forge those relationships. After that, I wrote an article and I was a keynote at all these DevOps. They wanted me to tell my story there. So it's also recorded if you wanna check it out. But it's all about that, you know? And that's when I started contributing to open source. And this is something I really wanna highlight. I didn't start coding, you know, contributing to open source with code or anything technical. I started contributing to the documentation of Kubernetes, translating the glossary, the CNCF glossary, translating the documentation of Kubernetes. So I started with small things that anyone can do, you know, even like you find the typo, open a PR for that, and then the community will see that you are interested in, you know, helping out and learning more. And each time I translated something or I created a documentation for something, I was learning because you cannot translate a page, a file if you don't know what it's talking about. So I would do my research and then, and for me it was a win-win because I was learning the concept in English and then in the other language as well. But there are a lot of other things that you can do. In the end I'm gonna give some tips. A lot of other things that you can do that are not actually coding, programming. And don't be afraid of starting, you know? Sometimes people, they are afraid of, you know, Git and GitHub doing commits. I have some videos that, you know, they show step-by-step how to do that. And there are people in the community that are more than willing to sit down with you and show you that. That's what they did with me. I didn't know, I started without knowing anything. And they sat down with me and they said, no, you have to go here. You have to click here because of tarara. So there are people, this community, this industry is very helpful. They wanna help you succeed. So remember that. And then in January 2023, I got my first technical job at Veeam. So, Cast and you've probably seen our booth up there. It's our backup for Kubernetes. But Veeam, yeah, we do backup for everything. VMs, AWS, cloud, Salesforce. If you need backup, come talk to me. Talk to us. Part of my team is here supporting me. But I also have a video, you know? I'm always enthusiastic in creating content so people can see my journey and they can feel inspired in, oh, she made it. Maybe I can also make it. It's not easy, but everyone can make it. And yeah, basically, you have to put yourself out there. Get out of your comfort zone. You're not gonna grow in being in your comfort zone. And I know it's not comfortable putting yourself out there, challenging yourself. But in afterthought, you're gonna feel like, oh, I should have done that earlier. You know, it wasn't as bad as I thought it would be. Because it's not, nothing is that bad. You know, it's uncomfortable, but you have to keep going. So I applied to give talks. This was at Civil Navigate. This was a Kubehoto conference. I helped organize in Toronto. This was an AWS community event. This was DevOps World, this was the AWS Summit in Toronto. So I gave a talk at one of the summits, you know? Like this is a meetup. You don't have to start big. You can start in a meetup as well. You know, like go out to a meetup. People are looking for speakers at meetups because they want content. So go to them and they'll be more than happy to bring you on board and then you can start, you know, engaging with the community. You're gonna meet people. So yeah, this is a great, great way to get out there. And then finally, in March, I became a CNCF ambassador. I got the email. I have a motto. For me, I already have the note. So I applied for everything. All those talks, I applied thinking that I wasn't gonna get accepted. And then I got accepted and I prepared for it and it was great. Same with the CNCF ambassador. I applied, I thought I wouldn't get it because I compare myself a lot to others. And a lot of the ambassadors, they are very technical. I admire them a lot and I hope one day I'll be like them. But I didn't think I would get in. And then I got the email and I've spoke to Katie a lot and she told me we're also looking for people. There are like you, you know, with your journey that are not that technical, that can bridge that gap between the non-technical and the technical, that can inspire the others to join the CNCF community. So my hope is to be that person that can inspire you if you're not technical but you wanna learn more about CNCF. You wanna maybe change jobs. It is possible. It is possible and doesn't matter your age. Doesn't matter anything. It's possible for everyone. And then I created a vlog again. I create a lot of vlogs at the conferences I go to. And this was the picture of the ambassadors last time in Amsterdam. And this is a saying that, oops, yeah. A friend of mine sitting here as well, Orelie, she told me and it's pretty true. Like to be an ambassador is a recognition. You already are one. You're already doing the work of one. They're just gonna give you the title but you're not gonna do the opposite. You're not gonna work to become an ambassador because you're already doing everything. They're gonna see that. So do what you think is right. Do what makes you, gives you pleasure and people are gonna see that. They're gonna recognize, you know. If you put in the work, I assure you, it's gonna come, they're gonna see that. So I love this saying. And basically, yes, in 17 months, I became a CNCF ambassador. I became an AWS community builder, girl called ambassador, Google women tech maker ambassador, see a lot of ambassadors. Wrote 42 blog posts, 83 videos, 29 talks. So I have a GitHub repo with all my talks. This is my site, my blog. I have four YouTube channels because I speak Portuguese, French, Spanish, and English. And for me, when I create one piece of content, it's easy to create in the other languages and it also helps me. So that's why I have 803. It's a high number but usually it's the same piece of content in the other languages. And I started this meetup in New York and I helped organize a huge Kubernetes conference as well. So yeah, I did a lot. It wasn't easy. As I told you, we started around 7,000 people in the bootcamp at 100 devs. The last class had 1,700. So it wasn't easy. I, if you know me, I don't swear. Oh, sorry. If you know me, I don't swear at all but sometimes you need to. You need to swear. Especially when you see this. I know this is overwhelming. The CNCF landscape is very overwhelming but I know probably this about the CNCF landscape. You don't need to know it all to start. You can know just one little block and then you start and you get to know people and they will explain you the other things and it adds up, et cetera. You don't have to know it all. You don't have to bite more than you can chew. So this is something I tell myself every day because I'm like everyone. I want to do everything. I want to be an expert already. I see my colleagues, I see other people, they know so much and I don't. You know, so imposter syndrome, yeah, the trough of sorrow. So you think you're doing great, something happens, people quit. That's where most people at the bootcamp, they quit. But you have to keep going and it's a bumpy road and then you see I added this line because it goes here and it's infinite and you can succeed. So it's not easy. And yes, imposter syndrome. I have a friend, she tells me, Julia, you speak so much about imposter syndrome. Like you shouldn't, but I don't mind. I want to be real and show you that we all have imposter syndrome. Even the most senior people in this room, in this conference, everyone has imposter syndrome. It's not, it's normal, you know. You just have to live with it and keep going. Don't let it be, hinder you. You have to use it as something to motivate you to get better. So you feel like the others are better than you. So you need to keep going, keep studying, keep meeting other people. So you can get to a point where you feel more comfortable but you'll never get to that point because you know you want more and then it keeps going. Anyways, so yeah, I have a video about imposter syndrome on YouTube. And another saying that I love, while you're busy doubting yourself, other people are out there inspired by you, by your strength, by everything that you're doing. I appreciate you all being here. I have imposter syndrome even right now. So you all being here gives me, inspire me, you know, like they wanna hear my story. So this is really nice. And just some final tips if you wanna, if you're starting your journey or if you're in the middle or if you wanna create more content, whatever it is, just start studying, learn how to study, have a schedule because it can become with the CNCF landscape you saw, it can become very overwhelming. So have a plan, a roadmap of what you want to learn. Start with the basics. Commit to it, tell your family, hey, I wanna study this year because I wanna do this. And tell them, so they are aware that you're gonna be studying. I told my partner, I'm gonna do this bootcamp a hundred devs, I'm gonna be busy every evening but I wanna become a software engineer. By then, back then I wanted to become a software engineer. Now I don't want anymore. But I wanted, and I told him, and he had to accept it. And now I'm here, you know, and he's so proud of me. So they have to understand that and get hands-on, build projects, break things, you know. This is the best way to learn and be a lifelong learner. You have to learn forever. So some resources online, all the ambassadors, they create content as well. You can go to the CNCF website to find other ambassadors, go to their profile, message them. Say, hey, I saw Julia mentioned you. How are you? Can you help me with something? Whatever, message them. And they all have content and there are a lot of free resources out there. And also the CNCF, they give, I just wanna make sure, 40, I didn't wanna say it wrong, 40% discount to everyone here for their certifications and trainings. So you should take advantage of that. You know, if you wanna improve, if you want a certification, but you need to use the code within one week, pay for it and then you can take the certification, the training within a year. But just remember, you have to do it within a week. And then there are other people out there doing amazing content. My colleague, Michael Cade, he did 90 days of DevOps. If you don't know how to start, he has 90 days showing you step by step what you have to do to learn DevOps. So you know, just go online and you'll find free resources. Don't pay for things. And create content, yeah. Create content, leverage what you're learning, document your journey, learning public, leverage what you already know, explain things, create tutorials, videos, speak at meetups, start a newsletter, leverage what other people know, interview them, go ask questions, questions online on Twitter, ask them questions here. You can ask me anything. So you know, leverage that and create content is gonna help you. Community contributions, engaging communities, collaborate with other people, attend events, volunteer to help, do these coffee chats. They really help, they really help. Otherwise I wouldn't put it there. And contribute to open source, it's very important. Some things that you can do that, contributions that are not specifically technical, fix documentation, translate, we call it localization. These are some of the projects that needs translation. So if you wanna check it out, create content, open issues. You know, there are so many things. If you find a bug or if you find a typo, that's also a contribution. If you're starting to use a tool, you can document how to use it and then you can commit. They will use that for their blog. They will use that for their documentation. This is also a good contribution. So there are a lot of ways I have some blog posts about these guides, very helpful as well. And just there to be, imposter syndrome is normal. We all have it, we know that. You don't have to do it all and spread yourself too thin. Take your time because burnout is real. So you know, I've done so much you've seen and I tell myself, Julia, slow down because it's not a sprint, it's a marathon. I don't have to be anywhere next year. I have so much time to learn everything. So I think it's the fact that we compare ourselves to others so much and we wanna be like them. We wanna know as much as they know that we speed up but it's not healthy. So you know, take your time, lean on the community. They're amazing and they want you to succeed and don't forget your self skills. So this really helped me to start my journey. I'm a good communicator, I'm a good problem solver. I had my marketing skills as well. So you know, I'm sure everyone here, you have skills that are helpful for a technical job even if you don't have technical skills. So this is something that I do. I have a list of accomplishments. So every time something happens, something good happens, I put it on my list. And every time someone messages me saying something nice or they post something, I also, I put it on a folder. I save it on a flow folder. So I can remember when like tough time comes and I'm not feeling great, I see that I can inspire some people. So this is a good tip for everyone. And yeah, thank you, thank you all for being here and thanks to these people as well because I wouldn't be here if it wasn't for these people and some others, but yeah, thank you so much. Questions, open for questions if you have, feel free. If you want to go on the mic or you can shout and I'll repeat it. Great presentation. Thank you. My name is Mustafa Shia'la from Saudi Arabia. I'm trying to record myself. Although I'm 45 years old, I consider myself senior and old enough, but I found your presentation very influencing and very inspiring to me, especially in networking and communication. Great job, Julia. I have a question here. Through your journey, did you experience disappointments and fears? How did you deal with it? Sorry, if I experienced what? Disappointments. Disappointments. Like, for example, losing opportunity, failings. Of course, yeah. Whatever and fears, what do you usually do? That's why I have that sign, sometimes swearing will help. I did experience a lot of disappointments, even like small bugs. I've stayed days trying to fix a bug and I couldn't and I just wanted to give up, but I knew if I didn't find what was wrong, I was never gonna learn. So I reached out to the community. I asked people, they know more than I do, hey, can you check this code for me? Or can you explain what's wrong? Can we go over? And people, they want to help you. I don't know what it is because I come from marketing and law and there's no community, basically. The industry, they don't wanna help you because you're gonna steal their idea, whatever. These community people do want to help you. So if they see you're putting in the work and then you go ask for help, they will help you. But if they see that you want them to do the work for you, then probably they won't help you. So that's the thing, you need to put in the work, show them, hey, this is what I've done so far. Can you help me, like figure it out? They will definitely help you and there are disappointments, but you need to have some friends that are going through the same journey as you because they're gonna help you. Have some mentors as well that they will motivate you and they'll tell you that disappointment is valuable, if you should be disappointed with that or not. So that's why I say lean on the community. You know, the community is here to help you. Oh, great. Thank you so much. Of course. Other side of the burnouts and eventually having to walk away from a community that I had helped found, this is 2008, I post on Twitter, hey, there's no user groups by me, Bunny, Mine, Corey Haines says, well then start one. And then I started my first user group in 2008 and ended up being involved with a bunch of local conferences and what I learned after a failed startup and that imposter syndrome and reality and life and it had been going on for several years, you know, it kind of culminated in 2015 and I had to walk away from everything. I had 300 interviews I had done with technical community leaders. I tore down, I took down all my sites, all my, and I eventually had to go into therapy. It was too much, but what I had was is my user groups, I had friends that had started and I ended up, it was a little abrupt, didn't happen the way I wanted it to, but they kept it alive and they're still meeting to this day. And you still talk to them? You still see them, yeah, exactly. But the point is is that don't underestimate that you'll lean on your friends, but strategically find the people in your community that are there with you, the ones that show up when nobody else shows up, the people that are really invested and those kind of connections can get you through those imposters and those kinds of times where it's too much. But I'm restarting the internal group. It's actually, I'm in one year of running an internal user group at my company and it's crazy because they're financial work and they hate collaboration too. So I'm sorry, I'm just- No, no, thank you for sharing about your story. But, you know, being out there with the community, sometimes you're not always in a big, vibrant community like this and you're working with people that where it's new. The idea is harder to get and that there's gonna be months where you might be having a meeting but it's you and one other person or you and nobody. But like today, I know my colleagues are running what the meeting I would normally be at today. So, you know- Keep going. Keep going through those times where it seems like nobody else cares. Yeah, it's a bump. Like I said, it's a bumpy road, right? I started the meetup four or five people and there were times it was just two people showing up and now we have more than 150. So, yes, it's a bumpy road but in the end it's worth it, right? Yeah, exactly. It's not easy, yeah. Any more questions? I'm gonna be here all day as well and you saw my social media. Oh, wait. If you can also answer this survey, CNCF asked me to put this there. So, if you can, if not, that's fine. But yeah, for feedback, we love feedback. And yeah, thank you so much for being here. Cheers. Thank you.