Episode 110 Maria Ashby, developer advocate at Botkube

Today, Richard speaks to Maria Ashby, developer advocate at Kubeshop. She talks all things Kubernetes, community building, and how developer monoculture is a thing of the past. Back in the days of an early version of Voxgig, Richard and the team got a crash course in Kubernetes which left more questions than answers. If Maria's work with Kubeshop had been around then, that might not have been the case. Kubeshop is a Kubernetes accelerator, which applies the power of Community and collaboration to open source projects focused on Kubernetes tooling. A major benefit of Kubeshop? Speed. In a world where the first to market is essentially the "winner", speed is essential. The way we used to do this was to simply onboard more people. More people means more code, right? However, the work from Kubeshop, and other accelerators means that even the smallest teams of developers can now complete mammoth sections of work in a fraction of the time. Another element of this is community. The way of holing yourself up in a dark room by yourself for 3 days is out and the way of sending out an email is in: "Can anyone help me figure out "x"? I'm really struggling with it?" Maria touts the benefits of asking for help and support instead of trying to power through it alone. It makes sense, as before getting into DevRel, she was teaching Python to kids. A tough crowd as Richard notes, but an excellent training ground for the work she's gone on to excel in. The conversation also covers events and speaking, another notch to Maria's belt. She speaks about the power of connection online vs in-person, and how if you want people to come to your event, you have to offer them something on the day itself - something they can learn, that they can get excited about. She hits on a note we come back to often on Fireside; progress is not linear. You can have a thousand viewers one day and five the next - but if those five people are there because they care about your work, that is totally invaluable. Reach out to Maria here: https://www.linkedin.com/in/maria-ashby/

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