Keynote: Reflections - Kelsey Hightower, Staff Developer Advocate, Google

[Music] so it's February 25th 2015 I met the kubernetes gatherings so this is where all the kubernetes contributors come together and help define and push kubernetes forth and then we go upstairs the very first kubernetes meetup and I got the first speaking slot I got my laptop on the podium it's being where fusion this time I launched the cluster the first set of machines come up I typed the first command to connect to the cluster to show Cooper names off I can literally hear the music stop my demo breaks I'm like a deer in headlights there's 10 minutes left I look over and I see Brian grant and Clayton Coleman in the audience see I respect these two they're the people who taught me what distributed systems look like these are the folks that help review my poor request when I was just an impostor in the kubernetes community there's only 8 minutes to go Clark's kicked Tippin chicken I can't figure out what's wrong kid is waving me off the stage because there's now only 4 minutes to go I do like any respectable presenter would do I look over and pretend I didn't see him there's three minutes left now the demo is still broken I look out to the audience and they ask would you guys like me to finish the demo so the crowd says yes I pick up the pace now I shut everything down and Brian grant and claim Coleman are leaning forward see I don't want to let him down the cluster comes back up I register the first three nodes so this is before Cooper nays had autumn node registration so you had to do it by hand the nodes are connected and then I run coop CFG get nodes and nothing shows up and I would do this repeatedly stalling for time the audience is wondering why I'm not using the watch commands and then somehow a node shows up and the crowd goes wild and I'm thinking to myself wait did they see the rest of the different I execute a few more keystrokes and everything is moved at this point everything's working now just as I have planned it one more keystroke and the demo is finished I look out in the audience and I say thank you and I think that was most important about that day is that all the contributors are kubernetes were sitting there and even though my demo was broken they were on my side they wanted me to succeed we worked at different companies and then they were patient with me why I struggled and learned from my mistakes to resolve the issue and then when everything started working they also celebrated with me and join me in the victory that day would define how kubernetes community would gather and support each other going forward time will go by and we have a new gathering it will go by a different name this time we will call it coop Kong I'll give a shout out to Patrick Reilly and Joseph Jax for coming up the name and they even did the little logo and the first cube Connolly had about 500 people so that's about this side and then we will go from 500 to now I heard 12,000 people here at coop con and the funny thing is I almost missed it see around 2017 I was getting tired of this how many times can we talk about pods coming up if someone shows me one more canary demo I'm going to scream we're in London now that I'm given the keynote not court sure what I said but I'm pretty sure it sounds similar to the first one I walk offstage and Joe bata is eager to meet me at the floor something about Yama vs. JSON I can't remember we all walk out to the sponsor area and we're in what they call the hallway track so you step back and you form this circle job ATIS to my left and a bunch of new people that I had the pleasure of meeting and when you're in the hallway track sometimes new people show up in this case a new person did show up and then what you do is you pivot to make room for them so they know that they're welcome just like that first cube cot event in San Francisco he would join the circle and he would ready himself for a question see I was ready I'm like three years into this kubernetes thing you can ask me anything SCD kuva's scheduler I got it and we would go and he had a Trimble in his voice he said Kelso have a question for you what is it like being the only black person in the room now I'm stunned because I wasn't ready for that one so you think is I'm different at most conferences but I don't actually experience it I actually get the benefit of the doubt people look at me and say oh that's Kelsey Hightower he probably knows what he's talking about I get preferential treatment and in the midst of that question I thought back to a speaker or dinner that I was at that koukin but we're at the bottom of the staircase looking up see the speaker dinner was up maybe nine ten flights of stairs and one of our speakers was in chair and all she wanted to do was go and attend the speaker dinner with everyone else and people at the dinner offered to pick her up out of the chair and carry her up the stairs but that's not what she wanted all she wanted to do is participate just like everyone else see what happened no one planned for anyone in the wheelchair to be a speaker at the conference so when they picked the restaurant that was not top of mind that's what it's like when you're different at a conference and no one knows who you are you tend to be forgotten about so I'm not sure what answer that I gave him but I understood what he was asking he would then go on to say I never thought I needed someone to look up to until I saw you on YouTube you're on stage giving this keynote and is the first time someone that looks like me was leading such an advance set of technologies now at this point I'm starting to tear up a little bit you know allergies and I look over and Joe bata is tearing up too you must also have allergies and at that point we realized that this conference isn't about technology it's part of the job as Paul the tool says we used but the more important part is the human beings that we're doing this for and then he would do one more thing he would bring his sound from behind him see we didn't notice the young fella and we bring his son in front and say hey I brought my son with me and I wanted my son to have a chance to meet you I wanted to show him that not only are we allowed to attend the conference we can also lead and at that moment I never had a chance of thinking for that but the one thing that he did for me was he reminding me of what my purpose was see I'm not just talking to you all I'm talking to the screen I'm talking to the person maybe on the other side of this whole thing being motivated to attend for the very first time they're gonna find that courage to say you know what I can do that too and what's beautiful about that is when they do muster the courage up to come and show up we support them and we make them feel welcome so they come back they bring someone with them that's what koukaon is all about throughout the years someone who always tell me it's not a race it's a marathon and I've never been able to put that into any sort of context before what does that even mean if you pay attention to the sports world there's what's considered to be the greatest marathon runner of our time Laila Eliot kept chogi he holds the world record for the marathon he's won so many races he has almost ever every accolade you can think of for marathon runner except for one experts believed that no human could run 26.2 miles in under two hours is impossible and all of these races people run as fast as they can can remember and the race is a zero-sum game the goal is there's only one winner you run faster than everyone else and you win but he wanted to run under two hours so guess what there's a little bit of technology involved if you care about it like even made special shoes for anyone that wanted to endeavour to run 26.2 miles in under two hours the latest technology there's even a pace car that runs and drives in front and it projects lasers on the pavement creating this nice formation on the pavement to be filled by humans see technology alone wasn't going to get it the problem is as you're running you can hit and draft and slow down so you would need other runners in front and they would take five were the best runners and they were run and create this inverted V in front of him and there would be two runners behind him creating the perfect running conditions to push them further and faster than he ever could see these are the pace setters there would be 41 in total but good guess what that one group could never finish the race and run that fast so what they would do is they would orchestrate the seven would take turns every step of the way you would have a new group come in with fresh legs and remind him of what the actual Gold is we have to do this under two hours and they will swap out and not skip a beat and then he will continue to move forward one hour 59 minutes later it crosses the finish line in this case there was nothing to win because this is not an official marathon it's not in the rule books to have a group of runners collaborates but guess what they still won because the mission was actually defining what the new human boundaries were and pushing the whole thing forward when I look back over time all of us are just pace setters none of us are the actual marathon runner the marathon here is what can we do with these ideas and with these tools you're just pace setters it's not about where you rank on the contribution list it's not about how big your sponsorship is you do not run yourself into the ground you're going to burn out you orchestrate you come in you help set the pace and it's okay to step aside for a moment and make room for the next person to push the thing forward and even when you're standing on the sidelines you can always remember that you did your part to move the whole project forward and no matter what you will always be a part of history no matter how big or how small your contribution was or just pace setters as a much bigger vision and if you remember one thing out of this it's not a race if we're all on the same team thank you [Applause]

Channel: CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation]

Views: 15,898

Rating: 4.9585919 out of 5

Keywords:

Id: jiaLsxjBeOQ

Length: 13min 6sec (786 seconds)

Published: Fri Nov 22 2019