Community post by Xie Ziyi, Kubernetes Upstream Training Japan Organizer, Cloud Native Community Japan Organizer, and Software Engineer, NEC Solution Innovators, Ltd.
What is Kubernetes Upstream Training Japan
Kubernetes Upstream Training Japan is a training course held in Japanese that introduces the tasks, procedures, and concepts required to make contributions to the Kubernetes community (also known as the upstream community), a project hosted by the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and provides hands-on experience with actual contribution process.
Since community members are required to communicate with foreigners in English, it takes a lot of courage for Japanese folks who do not speak English well and who face cultural barriers to joining our community. For those who would like to join the community but are unable to take the first step, we are organizing this event to first create a place in Japan where they can communicate with local experts in Japanese and gradually familiarize themselves with how the community functions.
Starting in 2019, the event has been held once or twice a year, even during COVID-19, and as of May 2024, it has been held a total of 10 times. We believe that this event is meaningful, as we have been able to communicate with folks from all over the country and some of them have started their contribution activities because of this event. From this year, this event will be a SIG of CNCJ (Cloud Native Community Japan), and we believe it will further promote the culture of open source more powerfully.
What is Cloud Native Community Japan (CNCJ)
CNCJ was established on November 7, 2023, as a vendor-neutral forum to connect CNCF upstream with the Japanese community, companies, and organizations, to promote CNCF and cloud-native technologies in Japan, and to encourage OSS contributions and innovation in cloud-native from Japan.
As of September 2023, there was only one CNCF Ambassador in Japan, and the number of Japanese speakers at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon was in the single digits. There was also no Japanese community working with CNCF. Therefore, volunteers from the CNCF and the Japanese community co-founded CNCJ.
Since its inception, each meetup and sub-chapter has brought together people interested in cloud native technologies, allowing us to listen to the voices of people from various industries.
Recap event on March 13, 2024
The first event as CNCJ was held on Wednesday, March 13, 2024.
Active maintainers and contributors were running the lectures, almost all of them belonging to different repositories, and they were able to share their real experiences, which was well received by the participants.
We had a large number of Japanese company employees and students attend this year’s event. Of the 50 slots available, 47 folks signed up for the program, with a maximum of 35 participants. The majority of them submitted PRs and proceeded to the merge, and we had a lot of questions and a lot of excitement.
We plan to continue organizing this event once or twice a year, and each time we will also share some new trends as well.
If you would like to be notified of these events, please contact CNCJ or Kubernetes Upstream Training Japan and register as a member. You will receive an email notification as soon as the event is scheduled.
In addition, as a SIG of CNCJ, we have updated our materials and workshop recordings and and they are kept in the kubernetes-sigs/contributor-playground/japan/adhoc folder. The recordings as well as the advance preparation and slides are in the same folder, so those who cannot attend the event can study on their own, watching the recordings whenever they want.
Growing the Cloud-Native Community in Japan
In doing so, we hope to be able to help more people join our community, promote the development of cloud-native technologies in Japan, and help the cloud native community grow.
Next Event on August 26, 2024
The next Kubernetes Upstream Training Japan is scheduled for Monday, August 26, 2024, and we are currently looking for participants. By participating in this training, you will not only gain an understanding of the Kubernetes community but also learn specific contribution methods through hands-on experience!
This event will be a great opportunity to take the first step in contributing and you will gain valuable tips, so if you are in Japan and interested, we look forward to your participation!