A Non-Technical Kubernetes Talk (KubeCon EU 2020)

Kubernetes and Community

Transcript

1. A Non-Technical Kubernetes Talk KubeCon EU August 2020 Tim Hockin Google Cloud @thockin (c) Google LLC
2. Who is this guy?
3. The first Kubernetes developer meetup* Once upon a time, we all fit into one room * not really, but it did feel that way
4. Community is the beating heart of our success When we all fit in one room, it was easy - we all knew each other Now: one of the largest OSS projects in history • Contributors on almost every continent and timezone • Hundreds of sub-projects and thousands of spin-offs Large communities are VERY different from small ones People are WAY harder than technology Community, community, community, community, community, community
5. Harder to trust people you don’t know Harder to communicate effectively Harder to reach agreement Easier to fall into “us - them” Easier to forget something or someone Easier to assume ill intent I have PERSONALLY fallen victim to all of these Harder & easier, and not in a good way
8. Commit to making our community stronger Look for opportunities to fix cracks, rather than make them Give people the benefit of the doubt Over-communicate on purpose Become aware of “us-them” language, and avoid it at all costs Help someone else do work that you could have done yourself Call to action #1
10. We’re at the hardest phase of a project - and will be for a long time All the easy stuff is done, anything “obvious” has been already been considered We have REAL users and customers: • Fortune 10 companies • Banks • Mega-retailers • Websites that serve measurable percentages of the internet’s total traffic The users are part of our community Day-to-day
12. The project is not as robust as we need it to be Norms and processes are still evolving Tools are getting better (think back just 1 year!!) but they are not done Testing is not where we need it to be We have a thousand features that intersect in very subtle ways Growing up
14. Chop wood and carry water Part of our project’s ethos since forever Before you build a feature: fix a bug, improve a test, help with tooling Make yourself part of the community Have patience - see call to action #1 Call to action #2
15. Excitement around k8s comes from people seeing where it can take them Meet them where they are but also show them a future As systems mature, it’s VERY hard to keep that property We can not stand still - users’ needs are evolving We must not stagnate! Evolution
17. Skate to where the puck will be Look to the future, don’t just react Don’t design to hypotheticals, but do try to get ahead of the curve Give users what they need, not just what they ask for Reliability is a feature, too Call to action #3
18. Community is people We need YOUR help 1) Make the community stronger 2) Chop wood and carry water 3) Skate to where the puck will be