Homebrewing a Kubernetes Bootcamp: From College to K8s Support Engineer

Tips for Building an Effective Boot Camp for Learning Kubernetes

• Include a mix of learning materials such as blog posts, visual guides, summaries and explanation videos, hands-on exercises, documentation, and stories
• Organize the materials in a way that each new thing learned sets up for success and topics that follow it
• Consider the architecture of the Kubernetes cluster and how it will be used
• Familiarize with load balancers and different hosting options for Kubernetes
• Constantly get feedback and improve the boot camp
• Introduce other cloud native technologies or more advanced topics like networking

The speaker mentioned that hands-on experience can be one of the most effective ways to solidify information, but it should always be given as a follow-up to that information itself. Putting a lab into a boot camp where participants play around with Kubernetes quads and services won't be an effective teaching exercise if they don't have enough information about pods and services to understand and appreciate what they're doing, which can lead to a lack of understanding about what's happening and more confusion.

Alice Wasko is a Support Engineer at Ambassador Labs who started her career not knowing anything about Kubernetes or the CNCF Landscape. In this talk Alice will share how she has learned about the many different cloud native topics that seemed overwhelming at first glance to someone without experience. Alice will also explain how she has taken part in helping to improve the learning and onboarding process for new hires and community members. Her “homebrewing” of a Kubernetes bootcamp has been both a great teaching tool and also a great learning tool. She aims to share her experience as a developer who recently learned Kubernetes and other technologies in the cloud ecosystem with others who are beginning their learning journey or are interested in educating others.