Geeking Out with Adriana Villela Adriana Villela, Hannah Maxwell

Adriana geeks out IN PERSON and on-location at KubeHuddle in Toronto with Lian Li! On the heels of delivering her amazing “Owning the Stage” workshop earlier that day, Lian shares her journey into giving technical talks and how theatre and public speaking complement each other. She also talks about biases in selecting conference speakers and theatre roles alike, and how giving new voices a chance can lead to fresh perspectives. Finally, Lian emphasizes the importance making tech more inclusive by using simpler language to communicate technical concepts.

NOTE: This is the first of two episodes recorded on location at KubeHuddle in early May, and the second last of our season before we go on summer break!

Adriana geeks out with fellow CNCF Ambassador, Nancy Chauhan! Nancy, the founder of Women in Cloud Native, talks about what inspired her to start this group, and how it went from a Discord community to being recognized as an official CNCF group. She also talks about how her interest in sustainability in tech led her to join TAG Environmental Sustainability. She dives into what this group does, and what projects and organizations can do to be more mindful of their environmental impact.

Adriana geeks out with former On-Call Me Maybe guest, Marylia Gutierrez about what it’s like to be an OpenTelemetry contributor. Marylia talks about what it’s like to go from OTel end user at her last job, to OTel contributor at her current job, and how her past experiences with databases and Observability have helped her hit the ground running in her new role. She also talks about how staying technical as a manager in her last role made the transition to IC in her current role go smoothly. Finally, she gives some tips for folks looking to contribute to OTel for the first time.

It's a very special episode of Geeking Out! We were live at KubeHuddle on May 7th in Toronto, Canada for a mental health panel featuring host Adriana Villela, joined by Tim Banks, Lian Li, Diana Pham, and Marino Wijay. We discuss three key topics:
1. What are some of your indications that you or your co-workers are suffering?
2. How can we prioritize & take care of our mental health, while advocating for others to do the same?
3. What changes in the industry and our environments would be beneficial to mental health going forward?

We close off with some audience questions!

Geeking Out will be doing a LIVE episode at the KubeHuddle Conference in Toronto, Canada, on May 7th at 16:25. We will be doing a very special mental health panel featuring Tim Banks, Marino Vijay, Diana Pham, and Lian Li.

You can catch us either live in-person, or streaming on one of our socials: YouTube, X, or LinkedIn. For links to these, go to https://bento.me/geekingout.

This week, Adriana Villela geeks out with Helen Shen on why it's important to ask "WHY?" They talk about how being curious helps create empathy, challenge the status quo, and make change actually happen in a productive way. They also talk about how trying to understand a problem from someone else's perspective brings new insights on why something is important or is done a certain way. Finally, they discuss how it's impossible to please certain team members, even after explaining why to them, but how you can still support them.