I learned English very late in my professional career. I enjoyed the process, and #Kubecon became the trigger for my learning! ๐๐ข๐
In 2018 it was the first time that I traveled to another country. I decided to attend KubeCon Seattle ๐ก. I was very excited! Wow... first time in another country! I thought my poor English was enough to "survive", but when I landed in the United States, it was totally different ๐ .
On the first day in Kubecon, I had problems registering; I couldn't understand what they were saying. Of course, it was embarrassing for me, and I had to deal with similar situations during the week; everything was too much for my head, a whole language that I did not know ๐.
I am not ashamed to say that I did not understand most of the talks, but I decided to try, make it different, and get something out of it:
๐พ I started saying "Hello" to everyone to try to introduce myself at least.
๐พ In all the talks, I sat in the first chairs, very close to the speaker, to see and read their lips and understand at least the main idea of the talk.
๐พ I stayed until the end of the talks to see the section of questions where I could listen to them closely.
๐พ I am not forgetting my notebook, where I used to ask someone to write down what I was not really understanding, and I could see the fruit on the face of the person I was talking to, and my frustration was greater because I couldn't communicate.
I don't regret having done it. Despite this, I made wonderful friends who understood my situation; that's how I met Rajakavitha Kodhandapani, my friend, the friend who made me feel comfortable in an event as huge as Kubecon, my best friend at Kubecon Seattle. She also told me about the KubeCon Scholarships ๐ฌ๐ง (But this is another blog post)
Thanks, Rajie, for sharing it! ๐
I returned to my country thinking about everything that I had missed by not knowing the language, and that was when I decided to prioritize my learning in English, I started to take action and invest in my education. ๐ง๐ฒ
In 2021, I received ๐ง๐ต๐ฒ ๐๐ถ๐ป๐๐ ๐๐ผ๐๐ป๐ฑ๐ฎ๐๐ถ๐ผ๐ป ๐ฆ๐ฐ๐ต๐ผ๐น๐ฎ๐ฟ๐๐ต๐ถ๐ฝ to attend Kubecon Los Angeles in person ๐ ๐๐๐ Wow, first in-person event in months! : ').
This time was different ๐, I attended without having much difficulty with the language and making more friends, the first time asking questions in public speaking, the first time speaking in front of cameras in cloudnative.tv ( Thanks to Bill Mulligan for your support and Chris Short for making the interview easy for me ) ๐ฑ.
This time was my first time in Kubecon Europe, Amsterdam and I attended as a CNCF Ambassador and as member if Percona booth. How happy this makes me, surrounding myself with people from the community.
Each #KubeCon is truly a challenge for me, proof of how much I am improving each year and how, and how immensely happy I am to see so many friends and make new ones along the way.
The Linux Foundation and CNCF [Cloud Native Computing Foundation] are organizations that gave me opportunities to grow professionally. They were part of my adventure to learn a new language. Thank you! ๐๐ผ ๐ธ
๐๐ What I learned: Never too late or too early to start something; there will always be people around you supporting you and trusting you (sisters and brothers you will make in your journey). Do the best you can! And then share it because it can also be the best chance in someone else's life like it was for me!
Follow the Linux Foundation and CNCF also consider following Dan Brown from Linux Foundation and Bill Mulligan from CNCF
they are always sharing awesome resources and opportunities.
โจ๐ตThis post is dedicated to my grandmother, who learned to paint and write her name at the age of 93, and she died one month after I traveled to Kubecon in 2021 and Dan Kohn who was the executive director at Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), thanks for the opportunity Dan :')
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