Nerd Journey: Career Advice for the Technology Professional
John White | Nick Korte
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A Bridge to Community: CNCF Ambassador and Technical Translator with Julia Furst Morgado (2/2)
How should we use our influence as technologists? For Julia Furst Morgado, it’s not about increasing followers on social media or hitting some kind of metric. It’s a focus on educating and helping others…being a bridge into a technical community for someone else. This week in episode 312 you’ll hear more about Julia’s role as a global technologist for Veeam. We discuss the realities of traveling heavily for work and attending events while continuing to learn and build community. We’ll explore Julia’s involvement in the open-source community as a CNCF Ambassador and how she overcame impostor syndrome as a public speaker. Part of being an ambassador and a bridge to technical communities is also acting as a technical translator, making complex topics easier to understand. Listen closely to hear the full story. Original Recording Date: 12-19-2024 Julia Furst Morgado is a global technologist at Veeam. If you missed part 1 of our discussion with Julia, you can find it here. Topics – Public Speaking and Acting as a Bridge, CNCF and Open Source, Finding Balance and Focusing on Helping Others, Work Travel and Community Building, Global Technologist and Translator, Parting Thoughts 2:28 – Public Speaking and Acting as a Bridge Did Julia know there would be a large component of her work in the role at Veeam that was public speaking? Julia did not realize this would be a big part of her role at Veeam. She was excited to be offered the job even before finishing the boot camp but had also heard one’s first job in tech can be hard when you are changing careers / coming from a non-technical background. While Julia had a strong professional network already, she knew the role would be an exciting challenge. “I said ‘yes, count me in.’ And I love what I do. I love what I do. My team is amazing. I couldn’t dream to do something different. It was perfect. I couldn’t have asked for something different.” – Julia Furst Morgado How did Julia prepare to give public presentations? Julia tells us she used to be more introverted but learned to get out of her shell and not fear judgement from others. It was the same with public speaking. She tells us being prepared helps us be confident to deliver a public presentation. “The problem for me was impostor syndrome. The problem wasn’t getting on stage and presenting and not stumbling or…forgetting the slides. For me it was impostor syndrome because I never worked in production. Even to this day I never worked in production…. And I’m up there talking to engineers, senior engineers, even CTOs, CISOs…. Who am I to be up there without experience? That’s what really bothered me for a long period, but it doesn’t bother me anymore.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on impostor syndrome Julia says it took some self-talk to shift her mindset going into these presentations. She told herself it was ok to be up there speaking. She may not know everything about a topic but can still present confidently on the topic. If someone asks a question Julia does not know how to answer, she can find the right resource to get the person’s question answered. “But I’m just that bridge. I’m a very good bridge from the technical to the external audience…so communities at conferences and events.” – Julia Furst Morgado John highlights the feeling that people expect a presenter to be an authority. He calls what Julia has done being a gateway to other resources like product management or solution architects. To do this, you have to be honest with yourself about what you know and what you don’t and at the same time be willing to direct someone to the right person to get an answer. “I can tell you about this technology, but if you want to go deeper, I can tell you who you can talk to.” – Julia Furst Morgado Julia isn’t ashamed of saying she may not be the right person to answer specific questions that pop up during a session. Julia considers herself a generalist and tells us she doesn’t want to be “just technical.” Her desire is to bring business value into the technical discussion to become a gateway to CTOs and other C-level executives. 7:09 – CNCF and Open Source A lot of what Julia does is organizing events. Julia organizes both the Kubernetes Community Day (or the KCD) and the AWS Community Day in New York. She also organizes the CNCF meetup in New York. Julia is involved in the CNCF community and AWS community. She is a CNCF Ambassador, and an AWS Container Hero. Julia also mentions being an ambassador for Google’s Women TechMaker Program, an ambassador for GirlCode, and also an ambassador for Civo. All of these achievements came over a span of 2 years. Many people want to know how Julia achieved so much without having the previous technical background. She is trying to show people they don’t have to be only technical and that they can add value with other skills. Becoming a CNCF Ambassador doesn’t require someone to be a senior staff engineer, for example. What is a CNCF Ambassador expected to do and be? A CNCF Ambassador is a spokesperson for the CNCF and may give talks about some of the open-source projects (a presentation at a conference, a YouTube video, etc.). Julia says it’s like being a subject matter expert on the CNCF. People can come to her and other ambassadors if they have questions about open-source projects. There are certain perks to being a CNCF Ambassador like discounts on certifications, a discount and special room / lounge at KubeCon, etc. An AWS Hero is similar to a CNCF Ambassador. They are experts and thought leaders who create content and try to build community around a specific topic. The CNCF Ambassador program requires people to apply for it. This would be similar to the Veeam Vanguard program. John describes it as being recognized for creating a portfolio of work that you need to keep working on to stay in the program. The AWS Hero is not something you can apply for but rather something you must be nominated for by others. Julia says you can apply for the AWS Community Builder program, for example, but being a “Hero” is a higher status because you cannot apply for it. Where can people begin if they want to get involved in open source in some way? If you’re not sure, you could reach out to Julia or another ambassador for guidance. She says the answer of where to start depends on a few things. Think about how you would want to contribute to open source and how much technical experience you have. What type of technology are you using? Passion for a technology you’re using can be channeled via contributions to an open-source project. Contributing to code may not be something you have the techncial experience to do yet. Try contributing to documentation or translation / localization. Other ways to contribute could include triage or fixing bugs. After thinking about how you would like to contribute and the technology you want to target, you can filter the list of potential projects. Take a look at their documentation. The majority of projects have documentation that tells you how to get started as a contributor. If there is no documentation on how to contribute, reach out to the project maintainers. Often times open-source projects will have their own community within Slack or Discord. Don’t be afraid to express your interest in contributing. Julia tells us all these projects need contributors. “If you’re curious, and you know a project, go for it.” – Julia Furst Morgado, on contributing to open-source projects Julia also has a blog about contributing to open source that can help if you don’t know where to start. She also has posts about how to get started in cloud or just in tech and continues to act as that bridge. 13:22 – Finding Balance and Focusing on Helping Others How does Julia keep herself from getting overwhelmed or taking on too much? Julia isn’t sure she has a good answer to this one. It’s been 2 years, and she has been putting in tremendous effort at a fast pace. Julia is scared of burning out and tries to slow down when possible. At the time of this recording, Julia already has a number of events booked for 2025, including being invited to do keynote speaking engagements and to be on other podcasts. “It’s just really hard because I’m trying to surf that wave, you know? …I can say no, but I don’t want to. I love what I’m doing, and the opportunities are coming my way. So, it’s really hard, that balance…work-life balance.” – Julia Furst Morgado Right now, Julia says things are going well. She is trying to learn how to say no. Will it help? Instead of answering 10 messages about how people can get into tech, Julia wrote a blog post and will send people the link. Maybe in a year or more we can talk to Julia again and see if she has a different answer. What about community interactions and balancing participation in several of them? Julia has friends who are learning serverless technologies and want her to do the same. She tells the story of giving a talk at AWS re:Invent about running containers on AWS. Julia is now working to learn Lambda and serverless. Sometimes Julia wonders if she should keep going or if she is going too deep in an area. “I’m still learning. I don’t know if what I am doing is right, and I tend to try to do a lot, put a lot of my plate, and want to learn everything.” – Julia Furst Morgado Julia also mentions she has ADHD and has lists of many things to learn. John highlights the difficult balance between following everything you are interested in, developing a passion, and burning yourself out trying to do too much. Nick says there are many positive indicators about what Julia has shared. She’s still excited about what she is doing. She is learning the things which are interesting. None of this feels like a chore from the way she described them. Part of Julia’s job is traveling to attend
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