Destiny O’Connor and Rob Koch, CNCF DHCF WG | KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2023

This is Textron tv. Hey everyone, welcome back. We're here live, we're live in Chicago with KubeCon.

It's day two and this is a, a special segment that I've been looking forward to bringing to you all out there. You know, uh, the CNCF and Linux Foundation in general really eats their own dog food when they talk about trying to be all inclusive and, and enabling for every segment of, of our community. And one of the vital segments in our community is our people who have, uh, are hearing impaired, the deaf and, and hard of hearing, uh, community, which is part of the bigger CNCF.

And, and they're represented here at Cube Con, cloud Native Con, and I'm very happy to have two of the leaders of, of that community to my immediate, my right is Rob, and to my far right is Destiny. Hello. And if we could say, and then off camera, 'cause they said they didn't have as pretty a shirt as I do.

Um, off camera are, are two, uh, sign language interpreters who are signing what I'm saying right now to Destiny and Rob. And look, we're, we didn't rehearse this to, we're going give it a try, but we're going to ask Destiny and Rob some questions. They're gonna sign their answers to our interpreters who are micd up and we'll, we'll give the answers for you and our audience.

So we hope this works. If it doesn't, we may stop and start. We'll give it our best shot.

So first of all, Rob and Destiny, thank you. Thank you for coming here today. I wanted to, um, ask you first a little bit about your background.

Rob, you mentioned you were doing Cobalt, uh, programming many years ago. Tell us a little about your background. I graduated school with an economics degree.

I came into work and I was seeing, the workflow was very slow. It was paper-driven. It was just not efficient.

So then I came up with on, just on the side, I went to the bookstore at that time, you know, this is when we had good bookstores. And so I got a computer book and got a copy of the book and started studying it and learning how to program just from the book. And then I asked my boss, do you mind if I have some time to develop an idea that I have?

And came up with this idea, turned it over to my boss and they were overwhelmed. They loved it. Um, you know, here I had all this power in my hand, so it was quite amazing just in my fingers.

So that was it. I was hooked in software development from that day on. And so now I've kind of worked my way up.

I do more managing now, but I will, you know, always cherish looking back on those days. Fantastic. And Destiny, what about your journey?

Well, I just started in tech. I'm learning and studying up right now. Uh, I am involved in the deaf and hard of hearing working group for the past couple of months and it's been amazing.

Fantastic. Um, so we mentioned the deaf and Hard of hearing learning group. If you could share with our audience kinda what is the mission?

What, what, what is the deaf and hard of hearing group trying to do? Do you wanna go or do you want me to answer? Well, I guess I say our mission right now is to educate conferences and anyone really about what to do to accommodate us and provide accessibility for us.

Also, helping the deaf and hard of hearing advance their tech careers by providing and being able to request for accommodation for accessibility. So just make open doors for us. And then also adding tools and giving back to the community where, you know, if they have better tools, better tooling.

If there's better ways to do things, maybe there's a faster approach or a cheaper approach. We wanna share that information within the community. That's fantastic.

Um, besides the CNCF, uh, cloud native Con CubeCon, what other events are you involved in in trying to, you know, bring this to the deaf and hard of hearing community? We have, each member of the group hosts a monthly meeting, Like a happy hour, and we set up, we have that set up globally. And then we also have, you know, we try to accommodate for all the different time zones.

And then it's also really not because the sign language, you might not realize, people might not realize it's different in different parts of the world. And so I'm learning signs from other countries and people in Europe, um, Germany, maybe Belgium. 'cause the way they sign is different.

And so we're able to exchange signs and share information about the tech world. And that is amazing because then we can actually come up with signs. It's really hard for, there's not a lot of signs out there for tech.

You know, I sign, but at times it can be awkward the way that we, uh, the sign that I use and then I get what they're using in Europe and I'll apply their sign to what, um, we have in the us. So the, the programming language, Python, we, for a long time in the US were signing snake, but it wasn't really, it's not a snake. So they, over in Sweden, they used this sign, um, Python.

So I was able to adopt that sign and use that. So it just depends on the context. Yeah, I think, uh, like I said, this is my first time at CubeCon and first time at a conference.

So the whole thing is new and I'm happy to join. And, uh, we do the monthly meeting, like he said. And yeah, so I've been able to come here and I've been really enjoying my journey so far.

I love it. Destiny, you know, there's people out here in the audience, maybe they're a deaf or hard of hearing or, or they have family members and friends who are, you are new. How did you talk about how you got involved and how people who, maybe there's someone out there who says it inspires them to get involved.

What advice would you give them? What should they do? I would say go for it.

If you see an interest in something, just go for it all the way. If you can't find support out there, find us. We will fully support you.

We have a whole team. Before I had no support and I joined this group and I have had this support from day one. And so I've been able to pick up all of these things.

And now here I did a keynote, which was fantastic. We really wanna be a resource center for everybody out there for the community. So anybody out there that's interested, we're resources for, for you.

So is, is there a website or anything that people can go to to get information? Yes, we do have one. And What, what's the website?

It's a cloud native. Uh, so CNCF under accessibility. That's where you'll find our deaf and hard of hearing working group information.

Love that. So go there. Now let's talk about, you know, in many ways, uh, coding makes no difference if you could hear or not, right?

'cause you're just coding. And so it's a, an in many ways an equalizer. Um, why don't we see more deaf and hard of hearing people you think in the, in this field?

To be honest with you, uh, many people don't think that we're capable of doing that type of work. We need role models for people to be seeing out there so that we can really fight to have that awareness out there that we can do it. But yeah, I guess I look at it differently because I would think that, look, we all have challenges, but when it comes to coding, you know, I I would think regardless of a person's hearing or not, they, whether they code well is what they code.

Well, I mean that's, Yeah, because, you know, to be honest with you, again, many deaf people out there, uh, in tech are invisible and people don't, maybe don't know that they're deaf. Okay. Could be.

So Yeah, there was a guy who came here, uh, named Wess. He's amazing. He, uh, is involved in Gen AI and all this stuff, but we've never seen him before.

And we, you know, maybe he hasn't been around, uh, particular parts of the deaf community. So people are out there. We just need to get them aware and show themselves, you know.

I love it. Let's, um, let's talk a little bit about, are there any special tools or special programs, courses like I, I, I know from personal experience, right? There are schools and programs for deaf and hard of hearing people, children.

Are there any courses or programs that maybe the CNCF that this working group can help bring to these schools so that we can get more deaf hard of hearing children started early? 'cause starting early is, is key to this. Yes.

No. And if so, where? org, I believe.

Is it? Yep. Yes.

And they have courses online that are posted Deaf Kids Code, you can register and then it'll teach Python, it'll teach how to interact with databases. Uh, I should probably add Kubernetes, I think to that. Yeah.

Well, we're here at CubeCon. Yeah, maybe. But there are materials slowly going out there and many companies are providing courses online.

Most of the courses are pretty good. They're well, well built and they have subtitles for the most part. And so that's number one for us.

That's the accessibility that we need. As long as we, there are subtitles for all of the courses, that's super beneficial. Yeah.

And so we contribute, I'm hoping to contribute to deaf Kids code in the future as well. So I wanna make sure we got that right. org, right?

Correct. Yes. So besides giving a keynote, what's been your favorite part of the conference?

Networking. Networking. Meeting people, knowing what they do, getting to know all of them and just interacting.

It's been really amazing. And finding people that we know. I, I think people I know in past lives, I'm like, oh my gosh, who are you?

I recognize you, you, but I forgot your name. But seeing them again and then also there's new faces, so it's just, it's great just meeting people. It's a Real community feel here, just being around it.

I love it. That's fantastic. Very good.

Um, so the next q con of course is in Paris. Paris in March. Will the working group have people there or is it just North America?

We're hoping we are very, yeah. Very much hoping. That would be great.

No promises, but I feel like there will be at least three. Yeah, That should be there. The working at least group at We, we have European members, so I'm sure they would, should be able to go.

Excellent. org was one. org/accessibility, uh, deaf and hard of hearing working group.

Right? That's where people can get more information. Yep.

Yep. Well, Rob Destiny, thank you for coming on today. We appreciate you coming out here.

We appreciate our, uh, interpreters and speakers off camera. And, um, thank you very much. And we're, we're so glad to have you part of this community And Thank you.

Thank you. Thank you for having us. Alright.

We really appreciate you having us, and thank you for, you know, sponsoring and supporting us in this. It's our pleasure. Hey, one of the great feel good things about CNCF, they, they talk the talk, they walk the walk.

They do try to be inclusive. Check this out. If you know anyone maybe who's deaf or hard of hearing, coding is a great career for them.

And there are people here who are living examples that they could be successful. So go check it out and um, we'll be back in a moment with our next guest here at Q Con.