Reflections: On being Part of Kubernetes Release Team for 1.17 and Joining KubeCon North America 🇺🇸 2019
This year I do travel a lot. A lot of difficult life choices been made, especially when I decide to be more active as a part of community. However my current path is not a new journey in my life, my journey in open source world began in my years as undergraduate student. At that time I discontinued because I was afraid.
Disclaimer:
I believe not all people might like the idea of open source. I agree to some extent we can’t simply use it right away for our use cases. I do understand that. What I write is simply on my own perspective of joining effort to tackle common problems that we have as an engineer. Not solving more problems that need to be tackled with more specific approach or use cases.
I receive a lot of support from the community as well as from those who always care about me. A lot of critique coming on the basis of these several questions I’ve always continued in asking myself:
“What kind of things that I owed to have this kind of privilege?”
I never find the answer. I never thought I was really capable of doing something. I decide to be more active in the term of public speaking, presenting on my own (perhaps collaborating with people whom I already knew) may be next year. I don’t know. I don’t like being in the “spotlight”.
These past 6 months, the only things that I tried to do right now is trying to be more active in brainstorming, trying to connect people who might be have the same feelings as I was back then. I simply to try to think stay in the present. On September, I gather my courage to join the Kubernetes Release team for 1.17. I simply curious on how we managed to collaborate and working on certain project handled by hundreds or may be thousands contributors with different time zone. In fact at first I was terrified to the idea that I should be more active in the first few weeks of the release cycle, I’m a reserved person, by nature. I tends to be more of a listener than active speaker. Part of me still not confident of giving an idea, reminder, etc. that may be normal for some people. My lead always encourage me that things will run smoothly in the end.
“Chill, things will be alright”, I still remember she said that on the first meeting we had.
Now I’m glad I’m still survived somehow in this second cycle. Just keep doing what I can do in the future.
If one asked me what I felt for these past months.
“I’m glad I do that”, honest confession that I have.
Sometimes it takes a lot of sacrifice to achieve what I want. It’s not only being able to see how’s the events are going (which can be watched online without doing miles away journey), but I can meet new people I’ve never imagine before and new opportunity. And.. new hope.. that someday perhaps I can applied this kind of things in my home country. I know it can’t be applied directly as it is. We need to make necessary adaptation to the culture and regulations. Especially for the Cloud Native Indonesia Community. I tried to connect people, well, I’m not social butterfly so I tends only to have a deep conversation with few people, at first.
San Diego
Honestly it’s far.. even when I decided to flew from Paris it took about 22 hours flight plus lay over in Istanbul for 2 hours and Houston for about nearly 5 hours. I’m kind of wasted and jet lagged when I arrived.
Honestly I need to take a walk from my apartment for about 20 minutes one way. So next time I should be careful when I decide to choose my accommodation.
Contributor Celebration Night
Basically it was fun, new contributors will have a session to know current contributors better. I have a conversation with Lucas Käldström, SIG Cluster Lifecycle co-lead about how to create a meetup as a code and Joe Beda. I also meet Guinevere Saenger lead for 1.17 Release Team, Zachary Sarah (maintainer for SIG docs), Nikhita Ragunanth (co-steering committee of Kubernetes), and Davanum Srinivas (part of test-infra team).
Zero Day — Co-Located Events
It was fun to learn more about kubectl, lately I’ve been interested with API machinary and network.
code location:
K8SROOT/staging/src/k8s.io/kubectl/
K8SROOT/pkg/kubectl
K8SROOT/staging/src/k8s.io/cliruntime/from k8sroot:
bazel test //staging/src/k8s.io/kubectl/…
bazel test //[kg/kubectl/…
bazel build //cmd/kubectlbinary location:
bazel-bin/cmd/kubectl/make kubectl
make kubectl WHATT=./pkg/kubectlgit remote add kubecon-workshop git@github.com:seankubecon/kubernetes.git
git fetch kubecon-workshopgit checkout kubecon-cs-workshop
ls staging/src/k8s.io/kubectl/pkg/cmd/foo
bazel build //cmd/kubectl
Using this you can learn on how to create a new command, create schema, and how we can create unit test for this.
PS for new contributors:
https://github.com/kubernetes-sigs/contributor-playground
https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/18LcwvqyNn74HgqIk7O-ChgfSsJAqDIYm7obguEXto4Q/edit
The Conference
It was fun to be part of the conference, I join the Diversity Lunch + Hack. We have discussion about Operator and Sidecar container pros and cons. I have the chance of talking with Paris Pittman as well. Spending time in fellow Open Source project within CNCF such as Vitess, Helm, etc in the sponsor booth. By the way if you’re looking for job CNCF also providing this link right now: https://jobs.cncf.io/ 😉. As for ambassador awards, congrats for my friend Reda Benzair who was selected (PS: he helps me to meet few maintainers that I haven’t met before also help giving me an advice for my meetup community in Indonesia). Thanks for Hippie Hacker for your advice about pair programming.
PS: you can find all the slides in there https://kcsna2019.sched.com/
The end of the conference I have a discussion with Bob Klien about how we can improve automation and sync between kubernetes/kubernetes and kubernetes/website so that the release tracking enhancement for both repo will be easier. I think until the metadata and schema is fixed, this still need a long time to go.
In the end I’m thankful for those who always support me and step in when I really need it the most. I think KubeCon is a way to knows people you’ve never met before, learn from them, gain new perspective.
My intention of writing this is actually simple. I don’t know how much people who feel the same as me. But I hope what I share can show you that sometimes it’s better to try something new and then said I’m glad I did that, instead of letting the possibility of doing something new and then regret the decision that have been made in the past. Don’t hesitate to contribute just because you feel intimidated especially if you’re planning on contributing on CNCF projects, I think CNCF and Kubernetes have very nice people who eager to help you during your journey as a fellow contributors.
By the time I write this, I should take a rest because I’ve been unwell for these 2 weeks, however I’m still committed enough to have my journey through the year.
May be this is my last journey this year, may be not.
Merci beaucoup pour ce merveilleux voyage. A bientôt 👋👋👋
PS
For Indonesian folks who is willing to contribute.. we need your help for this orgz:
We won’t bite 😸😸😸😸😸
