Navigating the CNCF Landscape, the Right Way

The presentation discusses the importance of contributing to open source projects, particularly in the cloud native ecosystem, and provides tips for beginners on how to get started.

• Learning in public and documenting one's journey is common practice, especially during the pandemic
• Non-code contributions, such as writing blogs and documentation, are valuable
• Initiatives like the CNCF student track help newcomers navigate the ecosystem
• Submitting a PR to contribute to an open source project requires outlining the problem the project solves and providing good documentation
• Learning by doing and contributing while learning is recommended
• It's important to pace oneself and avoid burnout
• Maintainers may be busy and response times may vary

The speaker shares their own experience of attending meetings for six months before feeling comfortable enough to contribute, emphasizing that everyone's journey is different and there is no one solution that fits all.

CNCF is the vendor-neutral home for cloud native projects. Including the most famous open source project in recent times, Kubernetes, it currently houses ~1,019 cards with a total of 2,957,938 stars. With a growing ecosystem, at an initial glance, the landscape may seem intimidating to newcomers, especially students. Journeying through the entire development and operations lifecycle, this panel aims to take a guided approach to cover the various projects involved right from the creation of the application to the deployment & monitoring. With various pit stops & forks along the way, the speakers hope to leave the audience with a fair idea of how to navigate the landscape effectively and embark on their cloud native journey. Should they also wish to contribute to any of the projects, the session also covers various tips & tricks on how to take their very first steps in the ecosystem as well.Click here to view captioning/translation in the MeetingPlay platform!