 All right, so final tutorial session of the day, last but not least, I'm very excited about this program that we announced a couple of months ago. I think we have a couple of great speakers to talk about GitLab Heroes, so John, Emily, I'll turn things over to you, start off with an intro, quick intro, and then feel free to share your screens, and I'd love to hear more about the heroes. Awesome, thanks, Ray. Emily, do you want to introduce yourself quickly, and then I'll go into my bit. Sounds great. Hello, everyone. My name is Emily. I am a program manager for the Technical Evangelism Program, which you'll learn more about shortly. Thank you, Emily, and I'm John Coughlin. I work on the community relations team here at GitLab. I'm based out of New York City, and in addition to our Heroes program, I also run our Meetups program, so if you have questions about that, you can always reach out to me through our evangelists at gitlab.com email address. But today, we're here to talk about Heroes. Heroes is a program that is, let me just put this in person. Can everyone still see my screen? Yep. All right, cool. So here's the program that we started in July, and it's been really fun. It's been a great way for us to kind of engage with the community a little bit more. So today, I just wanted to kind of walk you through some of that. So I think GitLab's story is really part of like how the Heroes program came to be. And so I just want to walk you through a little bit of, I'm sorry, I'm having some technical difficulties on my end. A little bit of our story around GitLab for people that aren't familiar, and then we'll get into the details of the program later. So GitLab started as an open source project. It later became a company when our CEO, Sid, shared GitLab.com as a show hacker news post. And we've, that kind of hacker news post generated a lot of interest in the company. And so Sid informed Dimitri, who was one of our other co-founders and the creator of the open source project that he would be monetizing GitLab.com. And Dimitri was just happy to get exposure for his open source project. And so it was a really kind of interesting creation story where community was very much part of GitLab from the beginning. And open source and engaging with our community on hacker news was critical to the early growth of the company. And it's still something that's really important to GitLab as we've continued to grow. You can still see our CEO commenting on hacker news posts from time to time. And GitLab's still an open core company, which everyone on the sack of those. And we want to thank you for your efforts and the other contributions that you make to GitLab in our community. I'm sure Ray shares these stats with the community all the time. But we have more than 200 merge requests for our 12.3 release. And we're hoping to continue building on those numbers. And the hackathon that's happening right now is part of that. Just one other aside, earlier this year in May and June, I spent two weeks with our CEO, Sid, as part of the CEO shadow program. And one thing that was really interesting was that in nearly every meeting with someone who was kind of learning about GitLab or external to GitLab, Sid would share metrics around our community and their contributions to GitLab. So all of you that are contributing during this hackathon or contributing before or after this hackathon, just know that our executive team, our CEO, and lots of people around the industry will be hearing about your contributions because Sid always is mentioning those numbers when he's talking about things and metrics around the company. So just wanted to share that with everyone here, that your contributions are really important to us and get a lot of visibility beyond GitLab. So yeah, so next I just wanted to talk a few minutes about our values for folks who are new to GitLab. So GitLab has six values, which together spell credit, our collaboration values about helping others and working together. Our results value is about doing what you promise and what is best for our organization and community as a whole. Efficiency is about working on the right things and doing what's best for our community. And by working on the right things, we're able to achieve more progress. Diversity and inclusion is around fostering an environment where everybody can thrive, and that's part of our company's mission is that everyone can contribute. And we work to make folks feel welcome and to try and increase participation of underrepresented minorities and diverse nationalities in our community and our company. Iteration is around doing the smallest thing and getting it out as quickly as possible. And I think that's a good thing to mention during the hackathon. Like every merge request is appreciated, so it doesn't have to be a huge contribution. Even folks who are making changes to typos in our documentation or translations, we value all those contributions that help us to improve even if the change seems relatively small. And then transparency is something that GitLab has been known for. It can be challenging, but we try to be as open as we can about as many things as possible. And by sharing information publicly, we believe it reduces the barriers to contribution and makes collaboration easier. So GitLab's grown tremendously over the years. We were up to more than 1,000 people on our team across 65 countries. Right, you can correct me if I'm wrong, but I think we have more than 4,000 contributors. Is that right? Yep. More than 4,000 people have contributed to our open source project. We have 7,000 meetup members. Globally, I talked about the Meetups program earlier, but we encourage you to get out and find those groups near you and get involved. And more than 100,000 organizations are using GitLab with millions of users. So here's a sample of some of the companies that are using GitLab. I'm sure some of you are familiar with some or many of these companies, they even work for some of them. Over time, the community has really continued to grow. Both the number of contributors and the number of contributions have been really impressive and something that our team and GitLab as a whole is really proud of. And so we hope those numbers continue to grow. So next hackathon, you got to invite a friend to help out and participate. Here's just another kind of visual on the contributions per milestone. And that trend has been growing nicely over the last few years. The GitLab Meetup community has global distribution. We have 34 groups with 7,000 members. There's lots of groups in kind of every continent geography. But if you don't see a group near you, feel free to reach out to me and we can talk about getting one going. And that's just kind of like an overview of GitLab as a whole and our community. I think it's important to have that context as we get into this conversation around heroes. Because a lot of what we're trying to do with heroes is enable, you know, support and recognize the folks that have allowed us to achieve some of those important milestones. The growth that we've experienced both as a company and as a community couldn't have happened without, you know, the top contributors. The folks that have really driven GitLab forward through their contributions, whether it was giving talks about us at local tech events or advocating for GitLab in their organizations, writing blog posts about some of the features that we're releasing or starting, you know, meetup groups to bring the GitLab community together in their hometown. There's so many ways that people have contributed to that growth and everybody that's, you know, on the call today has been a part of that. So we thank you for that. And heroes is really the next evolution. So GitLab Heroes, you know, the goal of the program is to engage support and recognize the members of our community who are making outstanding contributions to GitLab. You know, we're hoping that the program allows us to connect, you know, and strengthen our bonds with those top contributors. So folks who apply and can demonstrate those exceptional contributions, I kind of gave a few examples earlier, will receive support and rewards from GitLab to enable and sustain continued contribution. You know, the idea is like we want to provide you with the resources and tools and access that you need to be successful as you help us share, you know, the GitLab community and grow the GitLab community. So, you know, moving forward, you know, if you've made great contributions, you know, to our open source software, written blog posts about migrating to GitLab, and you want to, you know, share your story at a conference or write a blog post about it, you know, heroes, you know, and our tech evangelism team, now we're here to help. You know, maybe you've been contributing, you know, to, you know, the open source project and now you want to start a meetup group to get more folks contributing to GitLab. We're here to help with that too. Or maybe there's something else, you know, that we don't know about that you're doing that's really cool, you know, and we want to, you know, help you kind of amplify those efforts, whatever it is that you're doing to help the community, you know, we want to help and Heroes is just one of the ways that we've kind of created to do that. You know, some of the rewards that we offer to Heroes are access to our team, connecting them with speaking opportunities, whether that's just making them aware of interesting opportunities near them or pairing them with meetup groups that are looking for a speaker potentially working on submissions for conferences together. There's lots of different ways that we do that. Heroes also get invites to GitLab events, you know, and of course there's special Heroes swag for our Heroes so that they can show off to their co-workers and friends. But, you know, the real value add, you know, in addition to, you know, those perks is the opportunity to develop new skills, meet new people, make new connections, and kind of elevate your profile in the GitLab community. And we think those things are really valuable for people like it for personal and professional development. So I mentioned, you know, some of the ways that folks can get involved, I just wanted to kind of reiterate, you know, how we look at things. So contributions in the form of merged MRs, you know, are kind of one of the, you know, criteria that we look at, technical content that could be a blog post, a YouTube video, a demo, a tech talk for a meetup group, or a conference, you know, are all kind of different, you know, contributions that we consider as, you know, important criteria for our Heroes. And then folks that are organizing meetup groups, or co-organizers of an existing group, or, you know, giving a talk about GitLab at a meetup group, are all different ways that you can, you know, kind of meet the criteria that we've set for the program. But I also want to add the caveat that, you know, as we've gotten, you know, hundreds of applications for the program already, we recognize that there are people that are doing some interesting and surprising things that we hadn't thought of or weren't aware of, and that's awesome. So please don't let, you know, my kind of imagination or, you know, knowledge limit you when applying. Make sure, you know, you include all the great contributions that you're making to our community. We've heard from folks who are giving great feedbacks to our product team, or contributing to our forums and Gitter conversations, you know, setting up a GitLab instance at a local university, or all some of the surprising contributions that we've heard, and we're open and excited to hear more about what you're doing that we're not even aware of. So I mentioned, you know, some of the rewards already. We talk about, you know, heroes with kind of three different levels in mind. So we have the contributor level, the hero level and the superhero level, and you know, the kind of travel through those three levels we call the hero journey. So it'll start as a contributor, move up to a hero, and eventually become a superhero. So people might start at the hero or superhero level, depending on their, you know, existing contributions. We have a number of our core team who have applied for heroes, and you know, they kind of qualify at that superhero level because of their contributions and ongoing contributions to GitLab. But for most folks, they'll be starting at the contributor level, and then there's corresponding rewards that go along with those levels. So everybody gets hero swag, our heroes get these free GitLab goal or ultimate licenses, you know, the superheroes are the ones who, you know, will get the most support from Emily's team. But you know, you can see more about that on our heroes page on our site. So Emily, you know, is on the call today. She's from our technical evangelism team, as she mentioned earlier, and she's going to share some of, you know, the process of how her team supports the hero's program and other folks in the community. Thanks, John. Yes, the technical evangelism team is super excited to work with heroes in the greater community, and just like harnessing all this great energy and passion that's already out there. So as John mentioned, some of those benefits include support from GitLab team members, and then coaching to really build up your, as in our speakers, and our community members, and the brands, as you're as you're getting comfortable speaking of the community, starting groups, etc. So just a quick step back. What exactly is technical evangelism? So my team's job, we're really trying to centralize all the efforts that people are putting into creating great content, creating expertise, streamlining preparation, helping to facilitate really polished proposals, and final presentations at the end. So we want to focus in on the content side of things, whereas the community side is really focusing on the enablement, right? Getting the word out there. So how technical evangelism can help? I'm here, you can always tag me, my GitLab handle is at each end, like the bottom of your face. But if you ever need support with proposal creation, we actually have a template called cfp-open, and just use that, fill it out, tag me, again that's each end. And we're happy to provide feedback to help brainstorm to think through flow content and give suggestions there. For smaller events or meetups or more intimate events, you can just share your slides via Google Slides. I'm happy to provide feedback for larger events. We can also schedule practice sessions. Doesn't matter the time zone, I'm happy to get up at all hours of the day or night to chat through your ideas, to practice, and give any feedback. I'm happy to provide just a different perspective, a different point of view. And we also want to help you promote. So we have lots of great influencers within GitLab who can help retweet or share your content, share your blog posts, talks, recordings. So add that hashtag GitLab, let us know when you're going to be presenting, and then technical evangelism can really help to elevate your brand. And then if you want to chat more or have any questions, as John mentioned, the best way to find us is just emailing evangelist.gitlab.com. I'm also on that email so I can see those messages. Feel free to reach out, happy to chat through what technical evangelism is and how we can really partner with our awesome heroes. With that, I will hand it back over to John. Thanks, Emily. And for folks who are wondering where they can find that template, is that in the corporate marketing project? I believe so. Thank you for checking. And maybe we can add a link. Yep, that's great. Yeah, so I'll just quickly share my screen. If you go into the corporate marketing project and go to issues and create a new issue, you can choose that CFP submission template and that will have all the information that you need to share with Emily to help her give you great feedback on anything you're working on. Thanks, John. Cool. Yeah, it looks like in the template you got already have all the mentions in there in case people forget. Yep, so before we wrap up, I'm sure everyone's wondering, you know, how do you apply? So if you go to our Heroes page on our website, there's an application form. You can, sorry, I was taking a second around there, you can input your information here. And for folks, you know, we may need to follow up and kind of collect more information around your contributions, but the form is how you indicate interest. And then one other call I'd like to make is that, you know, we're actively working to increase the diversity of the program. So if you know of people from underrepresented minorities, you know, who would be a good fit for the program, I would love for you to share the Heroes page with them, encourage them to apply, or you know, you could even kind of flag them for us. Another option would be sharing, you know, the page on your social network to help us get more visibility from the program from all types of folks. So those are some action items for, you know, our viewers to take if you want to help us spread the word to increase the diversity of the program. Cool. Thanks, Sean and Emily. So if people have any questions, let me feel free to type them in the chat or verbalize them. I mean, I just wanted to make a couple of comments while in case people are thinking of questions. I think I mentioned this during the kickoff session. I mean, people that are dialed in or listening to the recording later on, probably, I mean, you've been making a lot of great contributions in terms of code or documentation fixes and that's great, but I also wanted to highlight through the heroes program other ways you can contribute to GitLab, whether it's giving talks or writing blog posts or writing articles about it. And like John mentioned, hopefully this helps find other ways for you to increase your contribution and raise, I mean, your profile and visibility, not just within the GitLab community but in other open-source community in general as well. And also want to give a quick plug for Emily. She's been very helpful with my CFP, so I can certainly recommend her input on guidance in case people are working on these submissions to various conferences or talks and it's been absolutely valuable for my write-ups, so I just want to leave it there. Brian, any questions or comments? No, none from me at the moment. All right, thanks, Brian. Cool. Yeah, if there's anything else, like John, Emily, any any parting thoughts before we wrap up or? Just want to say thank you for the opportunity to, you know, speak with your kind of code contributors, Ray, and yeah, just re-emphasize the point that you made which is, you know, I think there's a lot of different ways that folks can contribute to GitLab and this program is designed to kind of recognize folks that are making any of those types of contributions but also help folks who are contributing in one area get the support that they need to be able to contribute in multiple areas. So if you're contributing code and you've never written a blog post before but that's a goal of yours, you know, Emily and I are here to help you achieve that goal, you know, and vice versa. If you're watching this video and you're been writing blog posts around GitLab and other technical content but you want to start contributing to open source, you know, Ray's here to help you with that and so, you know, at GitLab we're just trying to provide as much support as we can to the community and Heroes is another way that we're doing that. Cool. Awesome. Well, thanks very much. Thanks for joining and listening and hopefully we'll see you guys again soon. Thanks John and Emily. Thank you.