On 17th May 2022, I had the pleasure to contribute to the KubeconEU 2022 colocated events Openshift Commons. My contribution was regarding a particular customer community, the Red Hat Accelerators.

Youtube video of the talk:

Slides:

The key takeaway I wanted to deliver was the mutual benefits of being active in communities such as Red Hat Accelerators, Kubernetes, CNCF and OpenShift Commons to your peers and oneself the learning, the giving back, the shared community responsibility, there are many benefits one can share and get around by being active. Not to mention the positive energy and feeling good. The mental health of going out and about, learning from each other, and caring for each other.

However, first, we need to agree on what is a community. We in the technology world do across and bridge many communities. Each of us needs to find thier definition of what it means to be a member of the community and why this was done interactively during the session. I wish I had these written in sticky notes so we could learn from the collective input of the openshift commons attendees.

Moving on, I have introduced myself in terms of my achievements in the recognized communities, being recognized by AWS as a container hero, and have passed and failed many certifications to reach the higher level of RHCA II and Linux foundations CKA, CKAD, and CKS certifications, among other system and operational certifications. However, what I cherish most is my role as a member and leader in the local Arabic community of K8sAraby and AWS MENA communities helping our community enable learning technologies and share a purpose, connecting and networking people together.

In return, this helped me make friends, excel at my daily job, feed my passion for continuous learning, and feel good by giving back or getting. Thank you messages in my inboxes and direct messages.

I would not be me, the current personality, the person, the knowledge, the learning and who I am now without the help of many people from the community that inspired me and kept me going, kept me motivated, kept me learning, I thought that would be the easy slide, just started focusing on one community and how I become who I am, I realized that many, many people inspired me, some with a simple tweet, some with encouragement, some within a particular company-community around learning new technology and connecting people "WaslTech" is an internal company community by my female colleague Haya to have an informal interactive talk while connecting people from different division and departments together to network and benefit from each other. Then there are the book club meetings maintained primarily by Eric Smalling and Carlos Santana that brings us together once weekly without recording, so we are in a safe space to ask stupid questions or share our experiences freely. I have learned later that such an activity is very inclusive of many people from different levels of skills and backgrounds, including neurodivergent people that sometimes shy away if there is a recording or based on what level of the spectrum and mental disorder they might have might not learn by reading, however, know better by watching, discussing, and visuals, and taking notes. this keeps the memory and the experience alive and vivid.

There are the containers from the couch team. With thier trials and errors as well, the openshift TV is now revamped and expanded to be Red Hat Straming show, again with being heroes and advocating that the best way of learning is by experimenting and trials and errors, These programs and shows were run by inspiral people like Justin Garrison, Chris Short, Christian Hernandez and many more.

it's not just about the technology and learning; its also about the culture

It's also about mental health and wellness when I follow my online friend Rich Burrough and his journey with ADHD, among other cultural and wellness issues.