For our last KBE Insider episode of the year, we spoke with Kaslin Fields. If you missed it, you can watch it on-demand and make sure you sign-up for notifications (our next episode is with Liz Rice!).

Here are the top 6 takeaways:

• #1 Be honest. Truthfulness matters in tech, especially open source. Your honest opinions matter when it comes to decisions made within the community. So don’t hold back because something you bring up can spark a discussion that can have a huge impact on the future of the project.
• #2 Non-code contributions matter too. Just because you’re not contributing code, doesn’t mean you can’t contribute. Non-code contribution could be a great introduction into contributing and getting to know the community better. As Kaslin reminds us, there is a lot of behind-the-scenes work that keeps this project and community running.
• #3 The Kubernetes community likes to be social. Engagement is important with the project. Kaslin points out that the community is always communicating in open spaces, such as slack, twitter, GitHub, Meetups, etc.
  • Kaslin mentions the CNCF ambassadorship and how that has really helped with engaging with the community in various channels, such as the CNCF Twitch channel, making technology more accessible to more people. Learn more on how you can become a CNCF ambassador or reach out to them to speak at your next event!  
• #4 Developer Advocacy has been around for a while. Organizations are putting more value on developer advocacy. During the episode, everyone mentioned they’ve been doing developer advocacy work for some time, but in the beginning a lot of that was while doing your primary job because being the advocate was just secondary. Nowadays, developer advocacy demands it’s on headcount and is in high demand, check the CNCF job board for the latest job openings within the community. 
• #5 We all make mistakes, get over it! Kaslin refers to a book she recently read, that the reason a lot of people don’t contribute to open source projects is because they fear they could make a mistake in such a public forum. It has nothing to do with their skill set or if it’s too technical. She was referencing the book, “Working in Public: The Making and Maintenance of Open Source Software” by Nadia Eghbal.
• #6 Read Kaslin’s blog post on, "The KubeCon CFP - How to Speak at KubeCon” before you submit your CFP. It’s one day before the deadline to submit your CFP for KubeCon Europe in Valencia, Spain next year, so chances are you’re waiting until the very last minute to do so on December 17th. Before you hit that “submit” button, make sure you read Kaslin’s blog post, she’s got some pro tips! 

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