“As a developer, it’s exciting and challenging to stay up to speed with the latest trends in technology. Every day, new languages, frameworks and devices capture our attention and spur conversations in meetups, forums and chats. However, our developer community is made of people, not tools, and it’s fascinating to explore its sociopolitical aspects. We are always beginners at some things and experts at others. Along the way from beginner to expert, we ask a lot of questions, but it can be intimidating to ask for help.”
This is how Sonia Singla, Cloud Native Computing Foundation intern and mentee, kicked off her talk at this year’s Kubecon+CloudNativeCon North America. Fresh off her CNCF internship with Thanos and Outreachy placement at Mozilla, Singla took the lessons she’s learned over the last two years in both toxic and welcoming environments to offer advice for both how to give and receive technical help in open source communities.