Building credibility in the Kubernetes community through consistent contributions

Bart: So, first things first: Who are you? What's your role? And where do you work?

Prasanth: I am Prasanth. I'm one of the contributors of Harbor and I work at 8gears, a company that packages Harbor as a SaaS product.

Bart: And how did you get into Kubernetes? Tell me about your journey. How did it start?

Prasanth: My contribution journey started with a mentorship. I'm here to make good contributions to Kubernetes. For Harbor, I've been contributing for the past two years. I started by addressing small issues and then progressed to more significant ones.

Bart: Can you tell me how you got into the LFX mentorship? Walk me through your journey. What were you doing before Kubernetes, and what sparked your interest in trying out this mentorship?

Prasanth: For me, the mentorship was the first starting point of my contributions. It started when I found out you can do open source and get paid for it, which is a good starting point. The main spark of my interest was when I started using Linux and its open source. Then I started looking into other source code. I found this vibrant community, and the main reason I'm contributing to CNCF and other things is because I get to go to KubeCons and meet a lot of people. The KubeCons and the experience were one of the trigger points for my involvement.

Bart: And you've been to a couple of KubeCons now. Can you tell me about your KubeCon experiences?

Prasanth: I just gave a talk at KubeCon India. It was a Project Lightning talk representing Harbor, and this is the first time Harbor has been presented by a contributor from India. I'm proud of the experience, which was tremendously good, with many people reaching out, curious about Harbor, its internal workings, and how to integrate their tools with it.

Bart: And for people who haven't attended KubeCon, why should they attend?

Prasanth: You should definitely attend if you want to expand your network, knowledge, and get to know people who are really interested in working and helping you with your contributions.

Bart: Now, the Kubernetes ecosystem moves very quickly. How do you stay up to date?

Prasanth: One of the main things is to follow blogs, podcasts, and YouTube videos. Also, attending meetings and meetups where the sessions will let you know about the new things happening in the industry/field.

Bart: Kubernetes. Are there any blogs, podcasts, or YouTube channels you would like to mention in particular?

Prasanth: Podcast-wise, KubeFM is one, and the Kubernetes podcast from Google is another. There is also a blog called Last Week in Kubernetes Development, which would be a good place.

Bart: Now, who is someone in the Kubernetes community who helped you level up?

Prasanth: Obviously, Vadim is my mentor and helped me out a lot. Huge thanks to him and also the entire Harbor community.

Bart: And for people who don't know Vadim, can you explain who he is and what he does?

Prasanth: Vadim is one of the maintainers of the Harbor Project and runs the company 8gears container registry. He is also mentoring people in the LFX mentorship. He has been in this field for the past 10 years, so he has extensive knowledge about containers.

Bart: Can you be more specific about some of the ways he has helped you level up? What has he done that's helped you improve your skills? Has it been providing feedback? Has it been teaching you concepts? Can you tell me all the different things he's done to help you level up?

Prasanth: The first thing I learned is that writing is helpful. It doesn't give you the answer straight away, but it projects you into a way of thinking about why the answer is good. For example, when choosing tooling to solve a problem, he has knowledge of multiple tools. It's like picking the right tool for the right job.

Another key learning is that people matter more. The business is fundamentally about relationship building. The final lesson is to be consistent, and you will find your way out.

Bart: Now, the question we're asking everybody: What is Kubernetes? It's a surprisingly simple question, but there are many right answers. There's no wrong one. What is Kubernetes for you?

Prasanth: I view it as the godfather of cloud-native and cornerstone of cloud-native projects. It's just the base of all these cloud-native projects.

Bart: Now, getting into more about your experience and the things you've done to build credibility: How did you first start building credibility in the Kubernetes ecosystem? What were some of the actions that you took that made you stand out, that made people take notice?

Prasanth: First, be regular in community meetings. I'll be there in most meetings and start making small contributions and getting involved with hardware. This slowly builds trust. People will think, "This is someone I've been seeing for the past three to four months." They start to recognize you, and then people begin assigning you tasks because they see you regularly and get to know you.

Bart: It's a really good point that some younger folks sometimes struggle with because they might expect to be doing something the very first week. But in your experience, it's much more important to wait, get knowledge about the project. What were some of the resources you used to get immersed in Harbor so that you could be more productive in meetings and then be given a chance to contribute?

Prasanth: One thing I do that most people might not do is watch previous meeting recordings. I will go through the meeting notes. If I see an issue, I will check if the issue has been resolved. If I don't have prior knowledge, I will check if there are any similar closed issues or ongoing discussions. I will go through Slack threads, email threads, and probably previous meetings in case of new problems. This way, you can understand how the community works internally, how people communicate, and how the entire community is orchestrated and keeps going.

Bart: Now, what role did conference speaking and writing play in growing your visibility in the Kubernetes ecosystem?

Prasanth: It added a bunch of credibility and moved my career towards better opportunities.

Bart: Could you give me some specific examples? Could you tell me about things you've written? Could you tell me about the first time you gave a talk? Anything like that will be helpful for the audience to have concrete examples so they can get inspired and perhaps do the same thing.

Prasanth: At my last KubeCon, I was on the Harbor maintenance track. I was explaining Harbor and its sub-projects. The talk was scheduled for a 30-minute window, but I completed my presentation in 15 minutes. The remaining 15 minutes were dedicated to discussion, with people geeking out and showing genuine interest.

I sparked something within the audience—they saw solutions to things they had been wondering about in the past. The interaction was so engaging that it motivated me to continue presenting, to get more people excited about Harbor, Kubernetes, and the entire ecosystem.

Bart: And the process of preparing the talk: Was it difficult? Was it easy? How did you prepare the slides and the information that you were going to share?

Prasanth: Preparing the slides would be the time-consuming part because speaking is easier. Discussing conversations is better. But the slides need to be accurate and technically correct. People often revisit slides if they find the talk useful, so you need to ensure quality. Don't just generate slides with AI-generated content and showcase them. Make sure the slides are revisitable, allowing the audience who attended the talk to revisit and take notes, continuing to learn from the material.

Bart: When it comes to recognition, what's the value of formal recognition—like ambassador programs or being a core contributor or maintainer—compared to informal credibility?

Prasanth: Formal credibility puts you in the spotlight. Everyone will approach you. If you are a Cloud Native ambassador presenting at KubeCon, people will find your badge and come to talk to you. They want to learn more about your achievements and journey. Informal recognition and credibility are necessary to obtain formal recognition. These are two sides of the same coin.

Bart: Could you talk about that in your process? You attend weekly meetings. You get informal credibility for showing up, for having questions, for being active. I want to know more about the element of trust, about building trust in a project so that someone will give you something to work on. For people that want to build that trust, what are your recommendations that they can follow?

Prasanth: Be active, be consistent, and be persistent. Don't give up after just a month or a week. Wait for your opportunity to come. You will surely get a chance if you're patient. Show what you do by putting it out there so people can see your work, rather than constraining it within yourself or keeping it in a private repository. Write a blog, make a video, and create posts to let people know what you're doing.

Bart: That connects to the next question very well. How do you advise others to balance online presence with real contributions? Some people like to post a lot on social media, but we can see that many posts can mean less time for real contributions, such as attending meetings or tackling different issues. What's your advice about balancing these two things?

Prasanth: For me personally, I share processes such as a release done. I use social media more like an announcement channel rather than putting out all my work. Instead of posting "Come, everybody. See," a good social media post would be: "I have tackled this entire problem. Here is how I did it."

To create a good online presence, background tasks require research and substantial work to back up the post.

Bart: Now, last question: What's one lesson you learned about reputation building that surprised you?

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Prasanth: Then you start helping others by being consistent. Once you start helping others, you also get to learn many things. So, just share and help others.

Bart: Could you give some examples of different ways that you've helped other people?

Prasanth: One of my roles is being an LFX mentor. I mentor people in a three-month term and help them understand open source contributions, including how to contribute, manage projects, and participate in community meetings. I teach skills such as how to present effectively, write clear Slack messages, and draft proposals—emphasizing being short, concise, and clear. The main lesson I've learned is to be patient and consistent, as progress takes time.

Bart: I noticed that the transcript content is missing from the input. Could you please provide the full transcript text so I can apply the hyperlinking guidelines?

Prasanth: One thing everybody does is think of it as a grind, like 30 days of DevOps or 100 days of coding. But coding is not something you complete in 100 days. Coding is a lifetime of learning. It's not like learning Java for 100 days will suddenly enable you to contribute to Jenkins. It doesn't work that way. For example, learning Go in two weeks and then trying to contribute to Kubernetes—a project with 10 years of work—means you can't make a meaningful contribution within a month or two. It's going to take time. People often overestimate and aim to achieve things within a short window, which is the main problem.

Bart: Prasanth, what's next for you? What can we look forward to seeing you doing in the coming months?

Prasanth: In the upcoming months, I can see more developments on the Kubernetes side. I've been contributing to Harbor and have been completely focused on Harbor OCI containers and the OCI specification. I'm slightly moving my focus towards Kubernetes in its second decade and also working on standardizing AI packages.

Bart: And if people want to get in touch with you, what's the best way to do that?

Prasanth: Hit me up on Slack. I will be there on the CNCF Slack channel and Kubernetes Slack. I'll be on both, whichever is your preferred. Just message me. I'll be under Prasanth Baskar.