Kubernetes Usability Special Interest Group, 17 Dec 2019

Previous Meeting Next Meeting

⏯

youtube image

►

From YouTube: Want To Contribute To Open Source?

Description

Writing code is not the only way to contribute to the open source project you or your company relies on. Rajakavitha Kodhandapani, Technical Writer at Linode and Co-chair of K8s Usability SIG, talks about the importance of documentation as a great way to contribute to open source. She also talked about the importance of accessibility for open source projects.

Read more about Linode here: https://www.linode.com

Watch all our videos on TFiR: https://www.tfir.io/category/youtube/
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter: https://www.tfir.io/dnl
Become a patron of this channel: https://www.patreon.com/TFIR
Follow us on Twitter: https://twitter.com/tfir_io
Like us on Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/TFiRMedia/

A

Hat is on party and beer here cube cone in San Diego. Today we have with us Lonnie code on the panty. You are a technical writer at Lee node. How long have you been at cube con? Have you been from day one or when they'd arrived here? Well.

B

Yes, I've been here from the day one I came in this this week, Sunday so.

A

That means that you have seen keynotes you have seen other sessions you have walked through the booth. What has been your observation show for for this cube corner? Well,.

B

The weather is perfect. Everyone seemed to have enjoyed the warm sunny days. We also had downpour yesterday, which not many enjoyed, but yeah, it's vibrant and the last tube Conner attended. We had just about 8,000 people, we are now 12,000 people just.

A

B

People in Seattle it was a 8,000 yeah, perfect.

A

So you're also co-chair of you, know, usability C at C. F tell us what have what, at the rule of this thing, yeah.

B

And that's the interesting question because the idea is, we already have people contributing across the globe to the kubernetes project. So we also see that not many people know much about kubernetes yet so the idea was, we should have a usability group that helps user to learn about your product and after they learn about your product. They also need to recall what they've learnt.

B

Once you recall, what you've learnt you should they're able to perform the task better and after they perform the task with minimal errors, the confidence increases and you have a great satisfied user. That's the whole idea of having the sake and also we we are working and making it accessible. We are inclusive community, so we need to have we're working and making it accessible in all aspects. Yeah.

A

Accessibility is something you know interesting concept. I was talking to somebody from national blind foundation Federation and what he was saying was that accessibility, like you know, you build a very tall building and then you take. It would be a good idea to build in left or elevated also their accessibility, not just for people who are disabled but actually improved the whole user experience. Do you agree with that? Absolutely.

B

That's exactly what accessibility is all about: it's not about only people who are blind or who are not able to access it. As the word implies. It is for everyone to be accessible to be able to use it. Yeah yeah.

A

When I use Siri I just talk to it, you know yeah it'll say who it is for people who cannot see so they can interact, but it does improve the whole overall experience.

B

Absolutely it helps a lot more than what it is meant to and.

C

It is for all ciency.

B

Of projects or a specific, no I have been driving the accessibility for the sig website documentation. We drafted certain guidelines around it and how you make the website content accessible to the screen, readers yeah. What.

A

Is the importance of documentation? In you know all a new technology are coming and people don't even know the new buzzwords new paradigms. New jargons yeah.

B

That's the interesting thing about documentation is that you know in last, tubecon I think I read about it somewhere in one of the presentation. Nobody writes nobody reads, but everybody wants documentation. Somebody has to do it, so we do have to have documentation. That's how anybody is going to know about you. Yeah.

A

That's nobody was right, nobody read it, but there still has to be there. What role does a documentation play in in a project? Because you know it's also it's education. You know, you know you need to know how certain pieces of a project work. So what role documentation plays in an option of a project. Yeah.

B

Thank you so way back in my career when I just started, one of my CEOs head told you know, there's no product that is bug free. The only thing I can guarantee to a customer is that it will work the way it is documented. So that's your first product, it's not even the actual product that you're working on your documentation is the first product the customer buys yeah. So that's how important it is right.

A

And it's very well known that developers don't write like to write document because developer like challenges very, is kind of boring. You know so, but somebody has to write it. So do you also, like kind of you know, drive some project or initiatives to get people involved to write documentation? Yes,.

B

We have had contributors across the globe in kubernetes community who were working on localization, so kubernetes document. As you already know, it has about 1.4 million views on an average per week and localization team has been working on making that content accessible to the local communities. So we have now in about 10 language, the kubernetes website, yeah and.

A

Documentation is also very for a lot of people who use a project to contribute, because not everybody, the coder I'm, not a coder I cannot, you know good, but documentation is one of the ways to contribute absolutely.

B

You could contribute, you could be a part of this beautiful community, even if you're not a coder and contribute to the documentation which is critical for any project. How.

A

Can somebody get involved if they want what is like, for example, as you said, look like this on somebody from China or Asia or any part of the world. So do you have like very clear-cut, you know either where they can cool if somebody is using a project and they saw this, this is wrong. This is how it should be done. So is there any any place where they can go? How easy you make it for them to start contributing to the document.

B

Yeah, thank you. So the sig Docs team has been very good with that and that's how we've been able to onboard more than 10 localization projects there now. So we did draft early on in 2018 the guidelines about how you could contribute to localize the content and the guidelines are pretty straightforward and it's easy to on board. People is just about.

B

You know joining us on slack vinegars asking hey, you know what I want to get started on localizing this document and we have experienced members who are guiding and working through the new contributors to start working on it yeah and they became the maintenance of it yeah. That's what we've been doing, yeah as.

A

You said initially, you know nobody wants to write documentation. Ok developers are lazy, they don't want to do it, but there may be a lot of other reasons. Also, so maybe the the bar is too high. So can you talk about some of the actual? Because you have done yourself, you know what are the actual challenges hurdles that people come across when they they try in their hands of documentation and that just discourages them and then how you can mitigate those yeah.

B

One of the things that intimidates people in writing is that you know ever been writing it. Grammatically right is the format right. Is it ok, so I think we are quite flexible that way, because it's important that you have the content trail right there. What you want to express- and you always have people who can help you out in formatting the content and fitting into how you want.

B

We do have a lot of templates that help them in fitting their content there, rather than just writing whatever they think about, or we also encourage writing blogs which they could put in which need not fit into any formats yeah. That's what we've been doing, how.

A

We can do videos also, yes,.

B

Videos are absolutely one of the things that we have been lately. Promoting is videos making videos, that's something everybody enjoys, and everybody likes to watch videos as well, because it's easier to learn and faster, recording yeah. You can recall things faster. Let's.

A

Just love turn the table and we're talking from the contributors part of it. Let's look at from the point of the projects. You know what are the problem that projects face and it comes to documentation things yeah. Some.

B

Of you have very little contributors for projects and that's contribution for projects to write document, and that's one of the challenges that most of the projects under CNC. If we have very little trained tech writers who are willing to contribute their time in making the documents better and that's a big challenge and I wish more companies encourage their come tech writers to contribute to the projects that they are using. Yeah.

A

There should be a project, you know just for content creation. There should be sick for that and.

B

A

Media companies can come as vendors and help you guys. Yes,.

B

Absolutely yeah.

A

I'm also curious about your own journey. You know: can you talk about it a bit about your own journey, that you're only volition as an engineer and why you chose to do this side of the engineering, which is more like helping people yeah.

B

That's interesting: I must say that probably I never got to be doing the cool things like developing or programming and I started off testing and I realized that that you know when I was testing, there wasn't enough documentation around it and that's how I got interested drawn towards writing content that helps things easier for anybody who is working and yeah. It's been a great journey so from being an obscure technical writer in India to somebody who is authoring content on platform, that's viewed by 1.4 million viewers is great yeah. Okay,.

A

This is, this is a personal question: okay, when you're not in the writing, documentation or not worried about documentation. What did you know free time? What are your hobbies if you can talk about those I.

B

Really wish I had that time. I have a son who's, 7 years old, and the only thing I love to do at that time is take a nap. Take a nap perfect.

A

So you don't have any hobbies, but you have a lot of you know a lot of things on a wish list.

C

Then you may be: okay.

A

Thank You rod you so much for coming here and talking to us today and good luck with your India with the documentation. Nobody's writing nobody's eating it, but we hope somebody will do.

B

The job thank you. It was a pleasure meeting. You, sir thank.

A