 Thank you everyone so much. It's great to be here back in person at KubeCon and CloudNedCon I see so many people that I know and it's wonderful to see all of your fantastic faces For those of you that don't know me, however, which I'm sure is quite a few of you My name is Ren Oliver and I am a technical community builder at Komunda I am non-binary, multiply neurodivergent, and you can find me on Twitter at the handle above or on GitHub at the other handle there And I'll leave those up for a second in case anybody wants to write those down But feel free to contact me. I am happy to hear from you and very excited too So you're an open-source contributor now what? How will you level up those skills? How are you gonna use those in real life to actually get a job? many people see Open source as a way to start a career kickoff a new one Change careers entirely like I did or for example just level up their skill set in some way But it can be hard to figure out how to put that into practice to make a meaningful impactful change in your life Fortunately open source at your back. No worries But before we get into that I would like to preface this with the fact that you all matter your presence is impactful and appreciated in this community And I'm grateful for you being here and always remember that you know more than you think you do You are the expert on your own experience. Oh There's a box. Hello box fun. I love the internet Thank you. I will do that. I will go back Is it really technology if it's not completely broken. Thank you. I Love how it says presented speaker mode, but it doesn't hide the speaker window Would it really be my presentation if something didn't go wrong Fantastic Yeah, anyway, thank you back to the point as We've figured out technology sometimes doesn't work how you wanted to for example Google slides You can however use technology to your advantage and you can use your skill set to your advantage and you are worth all of the good things that happen to you in your life and more and With contributing to open source you can bring in not only a wonderful community into your life But wonderful experiences that you can take with you to create wonderful amazing things Particularly in this open-source ecosystem. There's amazing opportunities out here and what you can do the sky's the limit So you're new you're switching careers. You might just get you might just be getting started in open source You've never contributed to open source project before this is a huge ecosystem and it can be really daunting to get started Don't worry open source contributions can really help you shine and so can the community And that's really what this landscape is all about is helping people Connecting them and making sure that you have the tools to build up your career and build up your community in the best way possible To build the best version of you So create that greatness How can we do that? Everyone has greatness and you can do that in a lot of ways Collaboration and community are two of those pillars that will help you bring that to life So if you're not in the kubernetes slack, you're gonna want to join that. That's where all the fun is That's where all of the SIGs have their channels and a lot of them have switched over to asynchronous stand-ups And you'll find a lot of fun information there and you can connect with the SIG tech leads and everyone in that community So if you're not in the kubernetes slack, please join it kates. slack.io It's pretty great and then there's also SIG meetings if you're not attending SIG meetings I highly recommend you do so. They're welcoming. They're friendly and there's always people that are definitely needing your help So if you see a SIG and you like it definitely join their meetings and they'll be happy to have you For example contributor experience we're a wonderful group, but please join the contributor experience SIG or fun. I promise You can also do things like review pull requests And if you're not a member of kubernetes yet if you find some PRs that you make and you get a member to sponsor you Congrats, you'll be a member of kubernetes if you find two sponsors and We will be happy to help you do so so if you make your five PRs and you want to become a member and you want to go along that contributor path to becoming a reviewer and You can do that by reviewing other people's PRs and then it gets even better. You can become a Approver and all of those other pathways that lead through the contributor experience ladder Which is a wonderful thing that outlines your journey in kubernetes And the best part is you can take that as quickly or as slowly as you want. There is no timeline Other things you can do are issue triage and a lot of issue triage has actually been Automated in a lot of ways by the wonderful Lori Apple and if you don't know Lori you really should and The ways that issue triage have been revolutionized over the last couple years since we were last together in San Diego I would be here all day talking about the wonderful work that Lori and that team have done over on the issue triage So check out issue triage help out burn down some issues and make sure that everything's getting triage in an appropriate amount of time Another thing you can do if you really want to start small is you can attend and organize meetups That can be just your local community It doesn't have to be going straight to kubernetes the main org You're not super overwhelmed with a ton of new people You can start your actual community in your hometown in your city You can attend meetups you can start a meetup and there's ways to do so and there's a lot of resources to help you So for the community in terms of that this could this kubernetes community is amazing You can put yourself out there if you're comfortable doing so you can do things like podcasts you can write articles You can even just get on Twitter and talk about your experience what you've learned today contributing to kubernetes But you've learned about the ecosystem cool projects you've checked out. It doesn't have to be One thing it can be anything People will want to hear about your experience because you're the only one that has that experience and you have knowledge that matters and That content it's important that you create it in your own voice because As I said before you're the only one that can tell your story and the stuff that you've learned and the things that You are an expert on you have that knowledge that you can share with others So that's very important that you tell your own unique story about this landscape because there are people that want to hear it Another thing you can do of course is submit to CFPs such as the coupon CFP if you need help writing a proposal ask Especially in the kubernetes slack. There's a bunch of people that will help you I'm one of them. If you need help writing a CFP, please do reach out There's a lot of us that would love to help you get a proposal in Another thing you can do is become a coupon pod mentor There's an amazing mentoring and mentee program that goes on it a couple coupons now I believe started in Seattle And you can become a mentor or if you're still new you can be a mentee that's happening this Friday So feel free to join that and if you'd like to get involved talk to a windy west and windy will get you all set up You can also unify this community You can teach people in this community and you can inspire the community as a whole and These ecosystems allow you to share your expertise and you can connect with others as I said before you can Connect with not only your local community, but the broader community You can also make progress towards a common goal Joining the ecosystem of the broader cloud native landscape and remembering that we're all in this together when one of us wins We all win it's not a competition And another thing you do is celebrate everyone's wins There is more than enough joy and more than enough fun out here for everyone and Celebrating people's wins really helps to bring us together Communication is huge as well And you've got to remember that not everyone communicates in the same way you do some people likes talk Some people prefer learning by reading some people prefer learning by getting hands-on really deep in the code trenches Read in those get logs and really figure out what's behind the scenes others They're just happy to do review in a Google Doc So figuring out how everyone on your team and in your community communicates best means that that community will thrive in the long run Remember also when you're communicating to pause and think because having those few moments of reflection can really save you in the long run When all of its fails remember to breathe That's important to take some time to slow down and remember what you're doing pause and reflect Another thing is of course success. Everybody wants success. How do you get it? You can ask first of all, what does that mean for you? What does it mean for me? That's important defining what success means to you on an individual level is key to putting those contributions to Kubernetes into practice because without a clear path to success You won't really see that so you have to define what that actually means. Where do you want those contributions to take you? What is your end goal when you have that goal in mind and that clear vision towards the future? You can put those Contributions and focus your efforts so that you'll ultimately achieve your goal of success And then another thing too is don't compare yourself to others You are the only you there is no one else like you in this world and you and your experience matter So even though there might be 20 30,000 other people out there Doing DevOps doing CI CD doing documentation. There's one you That's it, and you're the only one can do the things you do and trust me. You're the best at it Another thing too is if you're an underrepresented person in tech, please remember to negotiate job titles matter and You can play hardball because you deserve it Get the title you deserve and if you don't know how to fight for it There are many people out there that will help you do so I'm one of them So if you need help ask because your job title matters and it will dictate how far you go in the future So please keep that in mind especially if you are a recruiter or you're hiring that titles matter and Another thing to keep in mind is progress as much as we'd love it to be is not linear It is not a straight line and I am going to go for the Zelda reference This is not your traditional Zelda dungeon. It is not a linear You will go here and do this and this and this in this particular order. We're talking breath of the wild The world is open you can do anything you want to climb them out and you can do it But the problem is you get then what what do you do when you get there? so in 2019 I Lost my job and that's where most of you saw me in San Diego. It was dark times and it was not great Don't recommend it and I actually paused a lot of my Kubernetes open source work So that was a really really rough period of time for me and I stopped doing anything But in 2020 I actually came back to open source got back involved in the Kubernetes community And I actually won the big off that they had for the contributors And that was super fun and it really reinvigorated me to really get involved in this community Is the fun things that we do together we do things like the contributor summit We do things like the bake-off and it's a time where we get to all come together and say we're contributors working on this Wonderful amazing project known as kubernetes, but more than that It's like I get to see a bunch of my friends at least once a year Whether it's virtually or in person and that's really awesome and having the kubernetes community is Wonderful so all of you here are fantastic and It's just been a joy so 2020 was great got back into things 2021 I got amazing new job and now I'm here with all of you at kubernetes So that was my progress journey. It was by no means start here and there it was it was definitely the Absolutely nonlinear journey But the key thing to remember is that you don't have to be perfect you just had to keep going and When I was out of a job, I thought this is the lowest I'm never ever gonna get nothing is gonna get better I don't know how to come back from this And I put in 200 applications 300 applications. No Just no didn't even got the auto response. You know how it is the one that says sorry. No But eventually all it takes is one yes and You have to believe that you will get that one yes because you deserve it and do well You just have to keep going and you have to keep believing in yourself because you're worth that and then of course The thing is 2022 is coming up already and I would love to know how you'll take what you've learned here today and Use it to make this community better use it to make yourselves better and your lives and To inspire one another and come together to contribute to kubernetes and build this community and make it better in the long run You and all of us here have built amazing wonderful things as you saw this morning at the keynote that huge Landscape that almost filled that entire theater screen We all did that all of us here did that and that's an amazing accomplishment. We should all be very proud of So take some time reflect applause. You're amazing Whether you've written docs you've reviewed code you're pushing new PRs or you're participating in a SIG You have created and will continue to create Wonderful things that have brought this community together and it brought us all here today. So thank you Now with those things you've created. It's time to go out there show the world What you've done show yourself to the world because you are worth knowing and through the open source community You will find a way to show yourself to the world and the things that you built and the community that you built And you are very much worth knowing and your presence here is felt and it's very much impactful Thank you so much everyone if you have any questions