Open Source Survival Guide

Abstract From navigating different incentive structures to fostering healthy collaboration, this practical session delivers hard-earned wisdom from 25+ years of open source experience. Whether you’re a newcomer curious about contributing or a seasoned maintainer, “Open Source Survival Guide” offers concrete rules that help technical professionals, community leaders, and companies work effectively in open source environments. Learn how to build trust, share knowledge, handle contributions, and avoid the pitfalls that can damage projects and careers. ...

March 26, 2025 · Chris Short
Happy 10th Birthday, Kubernetes | Photo from Kubernetes Contributor Summit San Diego 2019

Kubernetes Likely Saved My Life

Kubernetes and I share something: We were born on June 6th (I didn’t pick the date; I probably would’ve though to take more attention away from me). I’ve contributed to Kubernetes for 70% of its life. Today, Kubernetes turns 10. There are many things I could write about to commemorate this day. It has improved my life (like every other open source project I have worked on) by giving me desirable skills in an emerging space. It also allowed me to lead again (I’m a co-lead of the Kubernetes Contributor Comms subproject). Today, however, I’m writing about a personal story that would not be befitting of Kubernetes’ websites (K8s.io and K8s.dev). As it’s personal and my life is eventful, there’s been a lot of twists and turns ...

June 6, 2024 · Chris Short

2021 Learnings, 2022 Expectations

Photo by Aaron Burden from Pexels It’s been one of the more challenging years of my life for many reasons. Please allow me the space to do some healing in this intro. I promise the juicy tech bits are a header away. If 2020 was hell on earth (which, while close, wasn’t quite there), 2021 asked us all to hold our collective beverages. Vaccines and boosters aside, the pandemic was a staunch obstacle to tackle along with every decision. A thorn in the side of everything at this point, we tried to live as normal a life as a family can that has young, unvaccinated children amongst us. But, how do you reduce human interaction in a world that needs more humans to be human to each other? We have to figure out the answer to this question. In the face of a pandemic, government spending buoyed the economy here in the United States. Abroad other nations took stock and saw a world where everyone looked after themselves first. I am relieved that adults have returned to the White House, but I fear it might be short-lived given the stalling in Washington DC the past few weeks. ...

January 8, 2022 · Chris Short

On the Passing of Dan Kohn

We’ve had a tragic loss in the cloud native community. Last weekend we lost Dan Kohn. Dan Kohn is the former Executive Director of Cloud Native Computing Foundation and was leading up COVID-19 response for the Linux Foundation. He passed away after losing his battle with stage four colon cancer. Dan’s passing happened far too soon. I knew Dan was battling something, but we hadn’t been in the same place for quite some time. It’s not one of those things you necessarily want to initiate a conversation about either. I did not know of Dan’s blog about it until he was gone. I would encourage all of us to look at our physical ailments as we age (perhaps more rapidly because of 2020) to take care of ourselves. ...

November 7, 2020 · Chris Short

Live streaming on OpenShift.tv and some lessons learned

This post intends to share what I’ve been up to the past couple of months. Also, what it’s like to be live streaming on OpenShift.tv. We’ve been in a startup mode for over two months now. We’ve been on air for a almost two months. I’ve learned so much. I want to share some lessons learned along the way. Live streaming is a hot topic these days due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The topic has been so hot in fact that Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) has done two webinars on about live streaming and using Open Broadcaster Software (OBS): ...

June 24, 2020 · Chris Short