Building Strong Tech Communities Through SUSE Engagement with Robert Sirchia | AWS re:Invent 2025

We are back here with some more, uh, coverage from our AWS Reinvent recent, uh, video stand. Uh, if you haven't seen some of our other AWS reinvent, uh, coverage, you know what, at this point, most of the videos are up. You can catch 'em on text, drunk tv, on the text, drunk tv, YouTube channel, or on our text Drunk TV OTT app.

If you've got Amazon Fire or Roku or Apple tv, or even iOS or Google Play, I, you can get the OTT app there. Um, but let me introduce you to our guest here. His name is Robert Cilla.

Sia Cilla. Yes. Close.

Rob. I was close. I left the S out.

Robert Cilla. First of all, Robert, welcome to Text Drunk tv. Thanks for having, it's the first time he's been on, so glad to have 'em on.

Robert, you're with suse is, unless you just took the shirt. It is a great shirt. Possible shirt.

It is a great shirt, but I am with susus. Okay. And tell us what, what's your role at Suse?

So I am the Director of Technical and Community Marketing. So I handle our community efforts around, mostly around our consumer community. And we, 'cause we have multiple communities.

Um, it's like that with any tech company. So direct to consumer kind of stuff versus, Uh, no, when I say consumer, it's people who consume our technology Okay. Is the primary focus.

And then our secondary focus is people who contribute and on the open, SSUS aside, their focus is slightly different. Where they focus on contributions and less on people adopting, you know, it, they, you know, they kind of build it, it they will come Yeah. Up on that side.

So they cater to making sure the project package maintainers are taken care of. Um, and the needs of these two communities, don't, they overlap, but they're not the exact same. I love it.

You know, we've, over the course of AWS reinvent, I bet you I interviewed a half a dozen to 10 SUSE people. Mm-hmm. Not one of them really spoke about the, they mentioned the community, but they never really spoke about the community.

And so let's start right there if we can. When we talk about the SUSE community, and you mentioned there are different facets, aspects of the community, but how do you define this community? Can you give us sizes?

Give us, you know, I don't even know how you would define it. We, I, I define our community as a large group of practitioners who enjoy the technology and that is the binding glue that brings them together in our community. Um, to count it, it's hard, um, because you people are in certain channels and they're not in others.

And we estimate anywhere between, you know, 45 to 65,000 people, um, who are active, who, um, they participate in Rancher Academy, which is a LMS platform. We put out, we want people to learn about our projects that, that are out there, or they're in our Slack channel, or they're engaging with us on social media and we understand there's crossover. So that's why it's an estimation.

'cause I don't, we don't track exactly who's who. That's just kind of creepy. We just want you to show up for it.

Well, But that's, that's part of that open source mantra. Right? We, we don't track.

Yeah. You know, we're not looking for your blood type or DNA samples like that. We don't wanna know What your kids' names are.

We don't exactly Like that. Or even your birthday. Yeah.

But, um, so a lot of it is online it sounds like. But then like in an event at AWS reinvent, are there any kinda suse community activities tied to it? We Do a few videos that we post out the community, um, does crossover with AWS slightly.

Um, when it comes to some of the projects, AWS does have a, a large user community and there's, there's some crossovers there with that. And we see it more so on the consumer side, very little on the con contribution. Um, for us here, it's just, you know, showing what's the latest and greatest on AWS because we understand that comm there are community users who, you know, they're not customers, but they use our, our projects in AWS and we wanna make sure that we, I won't wanna say meet their needs, but know we acknowledge that that's where they're at.

And you know, that's The portal. They, and they matter. They, they matter.

I get that. What about in-person events in the community? Not just at AWS three event, but, So when we have any large event that, that we try to attend, that piggybacks whether what our com, where our community's at, whether it's here at Reinvent or Co con or Open Source Summit, we like to engage with our community, let 'em know that we're there.

Um, we always have community team members on staff at these events to ensure that, you know, like they can meet the people that they talk to online. Like these, these are kind, I don't wanna say they're, they're rock stars in my mind because they're, they're great individuals on our community team. But I, I wanna make sure that they can connect, you know, in person just 'cause you know, it's post COVID world.

You know, having that interpersonal connection is, is nice sometimes. Sure. Absolutely.

Let me, um, I, I I, one of the companies I had started was called the DevOps Institute. We sold it about three, four years ago. Mm-hmm.

But we had a, a nice community. It was very simple. It was very easy.

Well, it wasn't that easy, but one, one part of the community, the people who actually had taken our certification classes and our courses mm-hmm. And those, we did know their children's name and their date of birth and all that. 'cause we knew who they were.

They had a, you know, they took classes and they were certified. The bigger part of the community though were just people who maybe, you know, didn't take a, a real certification class, but somehow consumed our content or, or what have you. And it was always the discussion we always had at the exact level is why would those people want to be in our community?

What would, like, what, what's the advantage of being in a community, if you will? Uh, Well, I, I'd like to, I will speak, I mean it in any community, but I wanna speak towards the, the, the technical community. 'cause you know, it's what we're talking about and it's fairly relevant is that it individuals have to take some of these skills to work.

And they don't want to know that. They don't want people to know. They don't know.

So being anonymous, being able to go and adopt, learn and grow outside of your normal work environment, to come back in and say, I, I, I don't, I know this so I can talk to it. I'm, I'm participating in it. And I think that's where you see it.

And it does cross over to non, I'm a, I'm an avid cook. I love cooking, I love cutlery. I'm in, you know, a community about, you know, cooking and so, you know, new knife skills or something like that.

'cause I want to learn and grow and not think my wife thinks I don't know what I'm doing in the kitchen. But that's just the same thing. It's the same adoption that you want to have.

And it's not judgemental. Someone comes to the community, they don't know. It's like, can you point 'em in the right direction?

People love to come in and answer questions for them, and they take that back to work or they take it back to school. Absolutely. So there is the, the, the help you grow and especially from a work related mm-hmm.

Point of view. There, there, look, there are plenty of people who are hobbyists when it, especially things like open source and Linux Yep. And, and so forth.

Um, but it is, it, it, it, it's a way to advance your personal career path. Let's, let's call it that way. I, I, you know what else I, and this is me talking now.

I don't have anything to back it up. Sure. But I think it's part of human nature to, to want to feel part of something, part of a community.

And, and as you said, it could be cuddly, it could be cooking, it could be anything. But you always wanna feel like, I'm not the only one who feels this way, who has this problem, who, you know, is working on things, solutions to a particular issue. I, I think there's, there's something intrinsic to humanity that wants us, that, you know, drives us to be part of community.

Yeah. It's a, it's a sense of belonging. Yeah.

So when you, you, you talk to people like we have our regulars in the community, and you talk to 'em and sometimes they will just wanna say hi. Yeah. And, you know, and or they will bring you something that they did and they want, they wanna show it off.

And I love that because you're seeing someone who has the same type of passion. And I, it, it makes me feel better. 'cause it's not me going, like, I'm just a nerd here.

There's, there's other nerds like me out there. Absolutely Love it. Look, I built my whole business here on those nerds.

Right. I mean, they're, they're the people who watch our stuff and, and consume this. But it, it's, it's part of being in a tribe.

Yeah. Right. It's tribal at, at it's very nitty gritty.

It's tribal. Right. These are people who are in my tribe.

It, it, it may not be a tribe that I live with or, or something like that, but we share that common bond, that common interest and, and they become part of your tribe. And It goes down, it goes even down further where it's like, I, I only like Linux. I don't like Cloud native.

Yeah. And, and that's okay. And we have a lot of people who are like that.

And that's, and it kinda, and you know, there's always rivalries in any type of community, so, you know, we're better than you kind of thing. Mm-hmm. And it's, I it's akin to sports fans.

Right. And then as a Cleveland Browns fan, you know, I don't really fully understand what it's like from a sports perspective, but I'm sure like Eagles fans or someone else out there, you know, with, you know, a better team behind them would understand that level of, you know, rivalry that you have with the technology. Yeah.

My sympathies to you by the way. Thank you. Okay.

Looks like you can have a good pick at a quarterback. Again, though, this I'm only, let's not get into football. Let's, I'm a Steelers fan.

I have my own trouble. But, um, and I, I actually, my, when my brother who's is, he's one of a fire toing guys, and I say, Hey, be careful what you wish for. 'cause look at the Cleveland Browns, right?

Mm-hmm. But it's all relative. But it is, we we're tribes.

It football fans are definitely community and tribal. Yeah. We, we still love, it's in that crossovers.

We, we each love our teams. Yeah. The Steelers and Browns.

We would, we would love our teams and we have those rivalries and we can say, oh, we do this better. And you have, we even have it in the Linux communities where, you know, they don't, there's, there's certain schisms that you have and sometimes they get toxic because, you know, we're in an online community. Right?

Yeah. And when you don't have the interpersonal things go get, they get dark, but they usually recover the, and that's what the beauty of a community, it, it like naturally recovers. I I think part of that though is, is, and, and you hit on something when you have a virtual community mm-hmm.

You know, it's easy for people to sit behind a computer and say something that they would never say in person. Yep. And it's easy to misinterpret what someone else wrote and may not, they may not be the greatest written communicator and they, maybe you're taking it the wrong way or they just rode it the wrong way.

And, and this le look, I've been in online communities for a long time, maybe 40 years. And, um, well You also f you you didn't mention, but you know, we're international. Right?

Right. And you Right. You guys are there.

And so there's, there's language things. There's language. Oh, really?

Barriers. But you know this. No, no, but there's, there's miscommunication All the time.

And sometimes I come into Slack and I'm like, what's going on? Why is there a dumpster fire today? And I'm like, oh guys, he missed, he meant this.

Right. Like, that's not that word that you think, But it doesn't take, It doesn't take long much. Nope.

It Does not. There's people over the edge. Robert, let me, we're, we're running lower on time, but for people out here who say, you know what, I've been a Souse fan or I've been a rancher fan.

Mm-hmm. Both or, or what have you. I'd like to be more involved in the community.

Sure. What's the best on-ramp farm? io, you can go sign up and you, you get dumped into our general chat and people, and we see, we see people who get put in there and just say hi.

And someone from the community team or someone from the community will do and explore what they have going on in there. There's a, there's a lively chat. Um, there's random stuff that people, you know, post, there's technical checks.

So, you know, if they wanna learn more about K three s or rancher specifically, um, those, that's generally the, the best way. And, you know, I am, I'm in that slack more than our work Slack. So really that's my world.

Well that is, that is, that's your work. That's my world. So, uh, I come, I go back to work.

It's your tribe. I go, it's yes. And I go back to the work one when I have to, but that's where I I you'll catch me.

Um, is that, that's probably the best way. And again, this is for the consumer side. When you're getting started in the community, uh, you don't have to come and contribute right away.

I always tell people that just come and say hi and, you know, find where you want to connect. You know, and it doesn't have to be contributions right away. It doesn't have to be consuming right away.

It's just showing up and just being, just taking part. Excellent. Is this your last show of the year?

This is my last show too. Um, I'm getting, uh, a very busy with a, and I'm gonna do a shameless plug on Scon coming up April 20th to 23rd in Prague chea. Um, that's what's consuming most of my time now is the planning for that, um, on the CFP committee.

So I'm going through, um, uh, me and a group of individuals, atsa going through a ton of talks with a lot of great topics. So if anyone is in Europe can make it. I do.

Well, I hope to see you there. I'm hoping to be there as well. Okay.

I'm thinking maybe I should submit something. Has anyone submitted anything on AI yet? Oh, I'm kidding.

I Kidding. That one right there is, uh, I think, I think that's the, the vast majority. And I think when I saw, I saw one that wasn't AI related, I was excited.

I was like, Wow, I, I get that way too. It was brave enough to put that one in, put Something in. Not with It's crazy time to be alive.

I know. It is. Everything's ai.

But yes, if anyone can make it, I would love to see you there. com, find out more information about that. I Love it.

Rob, thanks for coming on. Thanks for having, thanks. Talking with us today, man.

This is great. Hey, go check out the rest of our AWS reinvent videos. Scon is coming, I believe it's April 20 to 23rd, as Rob mentioned, in Prague, which is a great city.

You don't have to be in Europe to go to that though. They do have planes that come from here to there. Yep.

And, and, uh, it might be worth your while. It's, uh, I've done Susko actually, the last scon I did was in Orlando near our house. Yep.

But it was a great event as well. So highly, highly recommend it. But that's it for here.

I hope you've enjoyed our AWS Reinvent coverage. This is Alan Shimmel for Textron tv.