This is your community

Your
Community
Karthik Gaekwad
@iteration1

Your
Community
Goal: Case study of tech community
building in Austin, and how to replicate.

•I’m Karthik Gaekwad
•NOT a DBA
•https://cloudnative.oracle.com/
•Cloud Native Evangelist at Oracle Cloud
•Past: Developer on the Oracle Managed
Kubernetes Team
Hello
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Hello
• Been around for a while….
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Hello
•In general, I like building stuff with friends.
• Maintainer for Gauntlt- Open source security scanner.
•Love Teaching and building community.
• Run Devopsdays Austin, Container Days, Cloud Austin.
• Chair All Day Devops Cloud Native track.
• LinkedIn Learning Author for Kubernetes courses.
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Cloudnative.oracle.com
• Blog, Tutorials and solutions
• Mostly cloudnative “stuff”. Send me a note @iteration1 if you really
want us to research something for you or http://bit.ly/iheartcloud
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Community
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“Small or large social unit (a group
of living things) that has something
in common, such as norms,
religion, values, or identity.”
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Community

Austin Tech Community
• Vibrant!
• Various regular conferences in town (Serverless
Days, Longhorn PHP, Devopsdays, Data day,
LASCON, Keep Austin Agile, BSides Austin,
SXSW, Innotech Austin).
• Many many many monthly meetups
(AustinDevops/Cloud Austin for cloud and
devops stuff).
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Story of Cloud Austin
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Cloud Austin Today
• Coming up on ~ 10 years
• Over 2600 folks
• Monthly meetup
• Average ~75 folks attending
• ~2 talks per meetup
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Austin Today
• “Silicon Hills”
• Over 138,000 tech-related jobs in the
Austin metropolitan region.
• $31 billion into the area’s overall economy,
about 35 percent of the total.
• New announcements: Apple expansion
campus, Army Futures Command.
https://www.nytimes.com/2018/12/25/us/
austin-apple-hub-silicon-hills.html
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Things were different 15
years ago…
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15 years ago: Tech Employers in ATX
Primary:
Public Sector:
Major:
Startups:
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10 years ago: User Groups
• Language specific groups for developers…
• Java (Dating back to early 2000’s)
• .NET, PHP
• OWASP Chapter (Since 2006)
• User groups inside companies..
• Java Technical Exchange @National Instruments
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Changes (2008-2009ish)
• Everyone trying to figure out cloud...
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Changes (2008-2009ish)
• Some of us at NI working on building cloud products
• Met some folks doing similar stuff at Pervasive
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Birth of a meetup….
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Journey
• Google Group + Eventbrite
• Google Group + Eventbrite + Meetup
• Google Group + Meetup
• Meetup
• Random Meetups->Monthly meetups (3rd Tuesday)
• Festive end of the year meetup “12 Clouds of Christmas”
2009
2019
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But…not always great…
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• Last minute food sponsor cancelations
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• Jeff Barr Road trip (2013).
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Today….
• Group growth to 2600 folks
• 3rd Tuesday of the month
• Always @Rackspace!
• Food/Drink sponsorships whenever we can
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Internal Tooling….
• Org Team of 8
• Google group with all orgs.
• Emails go to the group.
• Org Slack for communication.
• Google form for speaker/sponsor pitches
• Zapier integration with slack
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What have I learned?
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Content is King
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Say NO to Vendor pitches
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Attendees love free food
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Be Transparent
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Have a code of conduct
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Try the buddy system
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Gratefulness for organizers
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Gratefulness for organizers
• Organizing can be hard.
• Mostly voluntary.
• Need to take time off work to do it.
• If you’re an attendee: Thank your orgs, and ask how you can support.
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Organizer Tips
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Organizer Tips
• Have a fixed venue
• Have a fixed date/time
• Understand what folks are interested in
• Experiment with format
• Be inclusive
• Have a team!
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Organizer Tips
• If you’re an organizer, watch for burnout.
• Get a team, make it fun!
• Try to distribute the effort.
• Give everyone opportunities.
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Build great communities!
• Austin is friendlier today than 15 years ago
• Tech folks know each other (ish)
• Okay to ask questions culture
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Thank you!
This is your community
@iteration1

This is your community

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