Show notes
About our guest:Abdel Sghiouar is a senior Cloud Developer Advocate @Google Cloud. A co-host of the Kubernetes Podcast by Google and a CNCF Ambassador. His focused areas are GKE/Kubernetes, Service Mesh, and Serverless. Abdel started his career in data centers and infrastructure in Morocco, where he is originally from, before moving to Google's largest EU data center in Belgium. Then in Sweden, he joined Google Cloud Professional Services and spent five years working with Google Cloud customers on architecting and designing large-scale distributed systems before turning to advocacy and community work.Find our guest on:BlueskyLinkedInTwitter (X)Find us on:All of our social channels are on bento.me/geekingoutAll of Adriana's social channels are on bento.me/adrianamvillelaShow notes:All Things OpenGoogle Pixel 9 FoldSamsung Galaxy FlipBlue Screen of Death (BSOD)Blue Screen of Death T-shirtSilicon Valley - Tabs vs. SpacesSIG BobaLeigh CapiliThe Kubernetes Podcast from GoogleKaslin Fields (co-host of The Kubernetes Podcast)On-Call Me Maybe PodcastKubeHuddleHumans of OpenTelemetryLicence-master (LMD)NagiosSimple network management protocol (SNMP)Apache MesosOpenStackDEVOXX Conference (Morocco)Additional notes:Adriana's blog post on OpenStackTranscript:ADRIANA: Hey, fellow geeks. Welcome to Geeking Out, the podcast about all geeky aspects of software delivery, DevOps, Observability, reliability, and everything in between. I'm your host, Adriana Villela, coming to you from Toronto, Canada. And Geeking Out with me today, I have Abdel Sghiouar. Welcome, Abdel.ABDEL: Hello. I should have. I should have known so I could brought my American accent. So, hey, y'all.ADRIANA: Hey, y'all.ABDEL: Hey, y'all. I'll try. I'll try.ADRIANA: It's funny because the first time I heard y'all. So my husband worked in Jacksonville, Florida for a couple of years. He. He's in consulting. And one time I came down to Florida with him for. For the weekend because he had some work stuff to do. And we stop off at a gas station and they're. They're like, how y'all doing? I was like. I started. I. I think I started laughing because I'd never heard, like, "y'all" in real life.ABDEL: Yeah.ADRIANA: And I'm like, this is the most glorious thing ever. And I now just love saying "y'all". And my daughter bugs me about saying "y'all". She's like, don't say y'all. I'm like, "it's so much fun to say.ABDEL: It is. It is. I love it. So. So, yes.ADRIANA: A little sidebar. So where are you calling from today?ABDEL: I mean, I'm home, surprisingly, because each time I talk to somebody, they're like, you're home. You're always on the road. I'm in Stockholm, Sweden. So that's where I'm based. But, yeah, usually I am somewhere.ADRIANA: I know every time I see you on, like, on Twitter, I'm like, it's always a different city. You are definitely globetrotting.ABDEL: Yeah, I am doing the way I say it is. I'm doing DevRel the hard way.ADRIANA: Yeah, no kidding. But, you know, I have to say, like, we met in person last year at All Things Open. And I remember it was like, just before. It was definitely before KubeCon EU. And you were, like, giving me tips on. On, like, places to. To stay in. In Paris. You're like, don't stay too close to the conference venue, because then it's like, it's kind of a boring area. You want something that's a little bit further out so that it's closer to the cooler, touristy stuff. And I'm like, yes. So that was such great advice.ABDEL: And I think we ended up being in the same hotel now.ADRIANA: We did. We did. Yeah. Yeah. You recommended. You recommended a hotel to me, I'm like, that looks like a good spot.ABDEL: Yeah, I remember that we shared like a. We shared like a walk and we had some croissant on the way to. To KubeCon at some point.ADRIANA: Yeah, that's right. That's right. On one of the days we. We ran into each other. I'm like, ah, staying at the same hotel and running into each other. What are, what are the odds? Right?ABDEL: Yeah, no, that's. That was fun. KubeCon Paris was fun.ADRIANA: That was. I'm looking forward to the next KubeCon. Are you going to be. Are you going to be in Salt Lake City?ABDEL: I am trying, but yes, most probably, yes, because I got accepted. I have a talk. Accepted. So finally. Thank you.ADRIANA: Congrats.ABDEL: Thank you. And yeah, so hopefully, hopefully I'll. I'll be there. It's going to be fun. We are planning some stuff for the podcast and me and, yeah, me and the colleague were accepted and then Kaslin is going to be there. So it'll be fun.ADRIANA: Yay. That's awesome. Cool. I have many questions, but before. Before we get started, I'm going to start with the. With the lightning round slash icebreaker questions.ABDEL: Sure.ADRIANA: Okay. You ready?ABDEL: Sure. Go for it.ADRIANA: First question. Are you a lefty or a righty?ABDEL: I am a righty.ADRIANA: Okay. Do you prefer iPhone or Android?ABDEL: iPhone. I've been experimenting with the Pixel 9 recently, the Fold one. Because I'm getting old and I need big screens and I do have to admit I like it, but I am not ready to convert yet.ADRIANA: Yeah, so the folding one, that's cool.ABDEL: Yeah, Nine Fold. The new model. The. Yeah, the big one, that is cool.ADRIANA: You know, like, I actually miss my flip phone. As much as I love my smartphone, there is something so satisfying about, like, flipping.ABDEL: Yes.ADRIANA: Flipping your phone off, flipping your phone up to talk and then just closing to hang up and. Yeah, I miss those days.ABDEL: Yeah. Unfortunately, the Fold doesn't open that way. Right. It opens like a book, but it's still.ADRIANA: Oh, it's that kind of a fool.ABDEL: Yeah. Yeah. So I think. I think that the one that you're talking about, the only model that exists is the Samsung Flip, they call it.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, that's what I was thinking.ABDEL: But yeah, the Fold is like basically a big phone, but double because when you unfold it, it's like. Yeah, just a large. A small tablet, essentially.ADRIANA: Yeah, I was going to say it sounds like a small tablet.ABDEL: Exactly.ADRIANA: Thing. I'd be curious to see one in real life. I don't think it'll make me convert from my iPhone, but I would still be curious to see it in real life.ABDEL: I am still on iPhone just because it's just so easy when you have everything Apple and so, yeah, we'll see. We'll see if I get. If I ever convert.ADRIANA: Fair enough. Fair enough. Okay, well, that leads to my next question. Do you prefer Mac, Linux or Windows?ABDEL: I'm both a Mac and the Linux user. I've been a Linux user forever, since my start of my career. Like, I started with Mandrake, which then became Mandriva, and then eventually Fedora and Ubuntu and Debian, and then eventually a few years ago converted to Mac just because it's easier for work. But I still have a Linux laptop and I still use Linux daily. So Windows, I have never used Windows in my life.ADRIANA: Really? No way.ABDEL: If you put me in front of a Windows computer, I wouldn't know what to do.ADRIANA: Oh, my God. Lucky you.ABDEL: Well, I don't know. Yeah, sure. Lucky me. Thank you. I guess.ADRIANA: I'm sorry to the Windows people out there. No, I don't know. I've told a few people, I'm like, I have a bit of Windows PTSD. I grew up on DOS and then Windows 3.1 and the succession of the Windows. And then I discovered Ubuntu in the. I don't know, early. I want to say early 2000s. I had it running as a VM. I discovered Ubuntu and VMS at the same time. I'm like, "whoa".ABDEL: Yeah, you could run a VM? Yeah. If somebody gets offended, I have three words to remind you. Blue screen of death. Or that's more like four words.ADRIANA: You know, I have a blue screen of death T-shirt that I wear to conferences sometimes. And it's great when people are like, oh my God, that's so cool. I'm like, these, these are my people who recognize the blue screen of death, of course, and can relate.ABDEL: Yes, yes, exactly.ADRIANA: Absolutely. Okay, next question. Do you have a favorite programming language? And if so, what is it?ABDEL: Um, I'm a Python developer. Always been a Python developer for a very long time. I picked up Go a few years ago. I am learning Rust, and if you would have asked me this question six months ago, I would probably not even mention Rust because Rust has this like, learning cycle where you are fighting Rust and Rust is fighting you for a few months. And once you get the heck that, like the heck out of it, it becomes actually enjoy, enjoyable to write code in it. So in order of if in in order, I would say Python, my preferred language, go, obviously, I love Go. And right now I'm really having a good time actually learning and coding stuff with Rust.ADRIANA: Right on. Yeah, I've heard, like, people who like Rust like Rust, but I always hear the learning curve is just outrageous. Yeah. I have not dipped my toes into Rust-land. I'm with you on the Python thing. I love Python. I came up in the Java world, did Java for a really long time, 15, 16 years. And then a friend introduced me to Python. I'm like, how could I be introduced to Python in such like a late stage of my career? But it's all good. And then I'm like, I've fallen in love with Python. It's like such. I don't know, it's like a nice. I. I think it's a pleasurable language to code in.ABDEL: You know, there is one thing I, I really like. There is one thing that I really appreciate about Java, which existing go that makes me appreciate Go even more, is chaining functions. Like, you can chain functions like, you know, in Java with the way. Chain functions with the...ADRIANA: Oh, yeah, the dot. Gotcha. Yeah, yeah.ABDEL: And that exists in Go, and that's really amazing. It makes code so easy to read instead of like having to use variables to capture the output of one function to feed into another function. It's just one long line. It's just super amazing. Well, long, no pun intended for Java, but you get the point, right?ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true. I do agree. That's nice. I think it's fun from a writing perspective, but if you're reading someone else's code, you're like, what the fuck is happening here?ABDEL: That's true. Then with that comes the challenge of learning how to debug code and how to use breakpoints to debug code so you understand what's going on. But yeah, it's. It's both a blessing and a curse sometimes, I would say.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I definitely agree with you on that. Cool. All right, next question. Do you prefer Dev or Ops?ABDEL: Oh, that's a very good question. You know, it's funny, I studied software engineering, so I'm by training or by degree, if degree matters in this context. I am a software engineer. Yeah, I never really wanted or liked the idea of just doing pure developments as main occupation, just because I always liked the interaction with hardware and the automation parts and all that stuff. When people ask me a lot of time about my career, I always tell them I used to do DevOps before DevOps was cool because I was always in this intersection of how do you use software to automate infrastructure? Right. And that's. That's at the base of it, what DevOps is all about. Right. So I would say in between, I never really was in a job that, that required me to write applications, like purely, like just backends. And I never was in a job where I did just system administration kind of, kind of work. So I was always between the two.ADRIANA: Ooh, that's awesome.ABDEL: So, yeah, I love that.ADRIANA: I love that. Yeah. It's funny, the way that you describe it is. That's what I love so much about DevOps too, is you get the software stuff, but you're getting to automate infrastructure and I don't know, it's so neat.ABDEL: Yes. You get to understand how things actually work after they are developed.ADRIANA: Yeah, exactly. It's funny, I went through a period in my career, I had left tech for a bit, and then when I returned, you know, someone asked me, like, what do you want to do? What do you want to do, like, with. With your career now that you're back? And. And I'm like, I really like the infrastructure side of things. I really like writing code. I wish there was a way to marry the two. And this was like before, you know, DevOps had become like, you know, like a household name. And then, and then, like, I learned about DevOps, I'm like, what? Where have you been all my life? You know?ABDEL: Yes. And I mean, putting aside all the, you know, the how to say all the things that people have to say about DevOps, because people have opinions about it, of course, but like, just not going too much into what people think DevOps is or it should be, I think at the most basic idea of what it is, that's what I enjoy. It's anything that is intersection between the two worlds.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, I agree. I love that. Okay, next question. Do you prefer JSON or YAML?ABDEL: Oh, that's a very good question. I saw somebody today asking this question of like, what's your preferred programming language? What's your preferred configuration language that is not YAML. And don't tell me TOML.ADRIANA: I saw that. I have to agree. I don't like TOML.ABDEL: All right. I had to do something. Have you ever had to configure Containerd before? No, I haven't, because Containerd is TOML-based and it's horrendous. I would say configuration YAML for coding, JSON data exchange, JSON configuration, YAML.ADRIANA: Yeah, that makes sense. I have to agree with you on that.ABDEL: Cool.ADRIANA: Next question. Do you prefer spaces or tabs?ABDEL: Aren't they fundamentally the same thing? Aren't tabs just a combination? I mean, I'm just remembering, like, I have flashbacks to Silicon Valley right now, so.ADRIANA: Exactly. Well, honestly, that's why I ask the question. I'm like, it's either going to be very polarizing. Polarizing where people have opinions, or some people are just going to be like, meh?ABDEL: Doesn't matter. Right. What was that. What was that phrase? Like? At the end of the day, the compiler treat them the same way. So it doesn't really matter. Technically, I'd say I'm a tabs person. Yeah, Tabs is probably my most used. One of my most used keys on the keyboard.ADRIANA: All right, two more questions. Do you prefer to consume content through video or text?ABDEL: Oh, definitely video. Yeah. I hate reading. I mean, if it's short text, yes, but long text, no video, for sure.ADRIANA: My daughter's the same way. She, like, she refuses to. She's like, I don't want to read books. And. And she learns all this, like, ridiculous stuff on YouTube. It's so cool. Like, she'll be like, today I learned about financial planning and today I learned about, like, you know, amputations. Like, not a joke. These are like real life examples. And I'm like, what?ABDEL: It's like a wide spectrum of topics that she is interested in.ADRIANA: I know the most random stuff, but, like, she learned some really cool stuff. I'm like, I am not going to interfere. Like, I'm not one of those parents who's like, you, you don't read, therefore there's something wrong with you. I'm like, no. Like, this is how you learn. And it's like, it's glorious. I love it so much.ABDEL: So, you know, I. I like, since we're geeking out here, in my. One of my internships, I had to build an app for a person who is a PhD. Like a....doc...like a doctorate, right. Doing. Doing some research. And the research was in pedagogy. So the way you teach people. And there is this, like, I don't know if it exists all over the world, but in at least where I'm from, Morocco, it's like a methodology for teaching kids, which essentially is based on the research from the 1950s, I guess, or something. Some dude at some point came up with this like 44 questions questionnaire or survey that you can ask people and based on their answers, you can classify them in either visual learner, auditive learners, you know, like, do you learn by text, you learn by audio, do you learn by reading, do you learn by Applied, etc. Etc. Right. And which at the time, it was so cool because I had to build an app which was like a survey app. So I was learning was pretty cool. But then later I learned that this was actually bullshit. That research is BS. It has been debunked over, over and over because, like, no one is one style of learning where all multitudes, like, we're all multi. Multi, to use a term which is very popular these days, we're all multimodal. Like, we learn using multiple ways. So the reason why I'm saying this whole, this entire long story is what's interesting about, for example, video. YouTube. Right. You would assume that people watch YouTube, but I am quite sure that there are people now that just listen to YouTube. As in you launch YouTube in the background and they're listening to it.ADRIANA: Yeah, like a podcast.ABDEL: Yeah, that's hilarious to me because, like, like, okay, so let's say, for example, you are listening, listening to a video which explains how jet engines work. Did you actually learn how jet engine. Like, did you look at the animations that explains how it works or did you just, like, hear about it?ADRIANA: Yeah, and that. That's the shortcoming of it because, like, my dad loves to send me YouTube videos. And I'm like, if you send me a YouTube video, chances are I'm not going to watch it because I don't have the patience to, like, sit there and watch a video. But then I'm like, if I just put it on while I'm, you know, like, doing dishes or whatever. And so that worked fine. He sent me this video about, like, I don't know, something to do with, like, the Moon's orbit and how it's, like, moving further from. From the Earth, I think something to that. Something to that effect. And so it was. It was all good until, like, they got into a part where they're showing diagrams. I'm like, goddammit. Now I have to, like, I have to pull out my phone and look at what they're showing in the animation.ABDEL: Yeah, it's. It's actually pretty interesting. Yeah, it's. It's pretty interesting how people are actually consuming content in YouTube these days.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. And. And then don't forget the YouTube shorts. Like, my daughter watches so many YouTube shorts, like, constant. I'm. It's like in either Instagram short, what are they called? Instagram Reels or YouTube shorts. And. And that. That's how she does her Learning, Sure.ABDEL: Whatever works for your daughter, I guess.ADRIANA: Exactly. Exactly. Yeah, that's. That's cool. Okay, final question. What is your superpower?ABDEL: Oh, I don't get asked this question quite a lot. I think I know how to be sarcastic. Like, I know how to use sarcasm in. In a way that is, like, makes a point without being hurtful. Sometimes people get hurt, but, like, you cannot. You cannot. You cannot accommodate everybody's feelings, I guess. But I can use sarcasm in a very good way, I guess. I guess that would be one of my superpowers.ADRIANA: That's great.ABDEL: So, yeah, otherwise, I cook very well. I'm a really good cook. They just. Yeah, the simple superpower. Like, if. If the world goes south, I am going to be fine.ADRIANA: Okay, so I got to ask, what kind of stuff do you cook?ABDEL: A lot of Moroccan food, since I am from Morocco, but I experiment quite a lot. I like to try out all sorts of cuisines from. From different parts of the world. So probably second to Moroccan would be Mediterranean food in general. A big fan of Asian food. Korean, specifically, a lot of Korean food. But, yeah, generally speaking, just whatever. I like experimenting. I like, you know, blending and mixing stuff together. And probably a big part of my money wasted, if that's such a. If that's a correct term to use, goes into, like, kitchen stuff.ADRIANA: I mean, come on. Kitchen gadgets are so much fun.ABDEL: They are, yes. But, like, how many knives do you need when you are a home cook? Right. Probably not 10. So. So. So, no, it's. It's. It's. It's fun. I don't know. I feel like it allows me to get out of the. Like, do something with your hands. Like, be kind of tactile in a way.ADRIANA: Yeah.ABDEL: So. So, yeah, So I have cooked for big parties before. My biggest party is, like, 40 people.ADRIANA: Oh, wow. Does that include dessert?ABDEL: No, I don't do desserts just because I don't eat sugar. I avoid sugar, generally speaking. So usually I don't. Or if I invite people, I ask them to bring dessert, but I can cook for big groups.ADRIANA: Oh, that's very cool.ABDEL: Yeah.ADRIANA: All right, so party coming soon, your way.ABDEL: Yes. Oh, my God.ADRIANA: There should be, like, KubeCooking or something.ABDEL: Yeah, we should probably do something like that. You know, there is, like, a boba. There is a SIG Boba now.ADRIANA: That's right.ABDEL: Yeah.ADRIANA: I love SIG Boba. Yeah, I'm a big fan. I've got my bubble tea right here.ABDEL: Yeah. We like to claim that SIG Boba started with the Kubernetes podcast because it literally started with an interview on the podcast.ADRIANA: No way.ABDEL: Yeah. It was, I think, Leigh Capili, if I remember correctly, interviewed during one of the KubeCons, and Leigh was talking about the fact that we need parties without alcohol. And it was Kaslin who was interviewing, and they were like, boba and then a SIG Boba and then another, like, a KubeCon after. It was like, a thing.ADRIANA: Yeah.ABDEL: So.ADRIANA: Oh, my God.ABDEL: So we like to claim that we originated the idea.ADRIANA: Oh, that's so great. And this is actually a great segue into one of the things that I want to ask you about, which is like, your podcast.ABDEL: Yes. Yeah. So I'm a co-host of the Kubernetes podcast. Me and Kaslin Fields. Been doing it for almost two years now. Slightly more than two years. And, yeah, it's a lot of fun. You get to talk to a lot of interesting people. It's a challenge. I mean, as you understood, you know, keeping something running is a challenge. And we do have, like, help and producers, and we only do audio and where we're gonna start doing videos soon. So, yeah, it's a lot of fun. It's a lot of fun.ADRIANA: That's great. Yeah, it. It's. It's funny. Podcasting is so much work. Like, when in my previous podcast On-Call Me maybe, we had a producer, so she would edit everything and she would do audiograms, send stuff out for transcription. But this podcast is, like, everything me.ABDEL: Yes.ADRIANA: And the. That. The extent of the help I get is, like, my daughter edits the videos, but, like, everything else is me. So I have to, like, I have. I have to send stuff out for transcription. I have, like, an AI tool that I use for that, but I still have to check to make sure that it's, you know, not spewing crap. So I still go through the script and, like, you know, sometimes it misinterprets words, especially OpenTelemetry. When someone says "OTel", it thinks it's "hotel" constantly. So, yeah, it's. But it's fun. It's such a great way. A great way to. To meet, like, really cool people is through podcasting.ABDEL: Yeah. And I don't know, I feel like podcasts are one of these things where you can actually get access to a lot of people. I feel like people like just sitting and discussing for some time, so we can get pretty much anybody we want on the show. So it's pretty cool. Pretty nice.ADRIANA: That's awesome. And did you. Is this a podcast that you inherited, or is that a podcast that you started?ABDEL: We inherited It. So there used some. There was somebody else before us, and we took it over, like, 22 years ago. Yeah.ADRIANA: Oh, cool.ABDEL: And we've been. I mean, we changed a little bit. Some stuff. We reduced the schedule, like, the frequency, and we started doing some stuff. So one of them is the whole story behind the SIG Boba is we started doing interviews during KubeCon. So we go to KubeCon and we interview people, right? Oh, and, yeah, and then we produce an episode about. And then we do every KubeCon. So. So that's. That's, like, one of the things we do. And then we do a bunch of other things. It's. It's. It's fun to experiment also with different kind of contents to try to, like, try to attract different people. So. Yeah, no, it's pretty cool. It's a lot of fun.ADRIANA: That's great. So when you. When you do the KubeCon episodes, like, do you find, like, a room where you record? Are you, like, on the floor, and just, like, chase people down with a mic and record?ABDEL: We record on the floor, actually. So you have the background noise.ADRIANA: That is impressive.ABDEL: Yeah. So. And. And we are. One of our plans is to start doing video as well. I think that's going to be fun to just, like, stop people randomly and ask them, but not, like, I have a bunch of, like, fun things that I want to experiment with, so we'll see how that goes. But, like, yeah, I'm looking forward. It's going to be fun.ADRIANA: That's cool. Yeah. I have to say, like, when. So my previous podcast, On-Call Me Maybe was audio only. And so when I started this podcast, I'm like, I want to do audio and video because I know there's some people who love podcasts, and there are other people who are like, I hate podcasts, but they'll watch video. So I offer it in both formats. And also, like, the fun thing about doing it, doing the video is, like, first of all, you can see some really cool office setups. Sometimes you can see some, like, awesome outfits and hairdos that you just don't get to experience if you're just recording the audio. So that's been. That's been kind of fun to experience. Experience as well.ABDEL: Yeah. Yeah, that's. That's definitely. Yeah, that's. That's part of the plan. The other. Also part of the plan is to. I mean, if you have a phone, you can literally record anywhere. Yeah. So if you can, since I travel so much, it would be fun to be able to, like, try like travel and record in different parts of the world and just have, you know, some fun background or. I'm. I'm mostly interested in recording outdoors I think.ADRIANA: Oh yeah, yeah.ABDEL: Depending on the weather. So. So it be. It'll be fun. Yeah.ADRIANA: Yeah, that's great. I, I did my last season of, of this podcast. I ended up with two episodes that I recorded during KubeHuddle and I recorded those like on site, outside and that was fun. It was like I'd never done an on site recording, but there was like a couple my, my two guests that I had on there. I've been trying to chase them down, like trying to align schedules. I'm like, we're going to be in the same place. I'm going to sit you down, we're going to record.ABDEL: I've been, I've been to an event in Berlin a few weeks ago and during this event they had a podcast studio that anybody could use and that was actually a lot like, I really like the idea. I mean that's like most more professional. So that's was kind of triggered this idea of doing video because. Doing video on the go because then you can have different backgrounds and you can have, I mean maybe the quality of the video is not as important as far. As long as you can get the audio right and then you can get like people visible on camera, that's. That's all it matters.ADRIANA: Yeah, I agree. I would definitely say like invest in a decent mic because I did last KubeCon North America in Chicago. I did a series called Humans of OTel, like for OpenTelemetry and I had these like really crappy Amazon mics that I had gotten. Like these, I guess they were, they were crappy lavalier mics and oh my God, like some of the sound quality was so bad. I, I had to like cut out a couple videos because I couldn't make out what the people were saying. And then, and then the next KubeCon, one of the OTel guys, Henrik Rexed said, he, he messages me. He's like, you know, I have some really nice recording equipment that we could use for the next KubeCon. I'm like, I'm like, oh, he's being so polite. Basically saying like, my audio quality was not that great. Please let me help you. And I'm like, I am happy to take the help. And his setup, like when we did the Humans of OTel for, for KubeCon in Paris was so sweet. Like he knows his shit, so...ABDEL: Yeah, I saw, I saw, I remember, I saw the setup. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I remember like, yeah, So I, I used to. We used to record for the KubeCon episodes with the Rode Wireless 2. And I recently got a pair of the DJI DJI wireless microphones.ADRIANA: Oh, nice.ABDEL: Just because I like them, because they come in like a very nice case with both the receiver and the transmitters. But the case also double up as a charging case.ADRIANA: Oh yeah.ABDEL: And I did some experiments and the audio quality is pretty good. So I'm looking forward to start using that one and see how it comes out.ADRIANA: Ooh, fun. New toys.ABDEL: Yeah, of course. It's always a good time to use new toys, right?ADRIANA: I know when people are like, oh, you have to get this mic. I'm like, okay.ABDEL: They're not very expensive, so.ADRIANA: No, they're not too bad. Yeah. I, I also like, after. After that incident at the. That first KubeCon in Chicago with Humans of OTel, I'm like, I need better mics and I need to obviously pay more than 50 bucks for. For my wireless mic. So yeah, it's definitely a worthwhile investment to get a decent set of lavalier mics.ABDEL: Definitely.ADRIANA: Definitely. The other thing that I wanted to ask is, you know, you mentioned that like you had studied. You said you studied software engineering in school, right?ABDEL: Yes.ADRIANA: But you now work and you found your way into the DevOps space. You work as a developer advocate currently, right?ABDEL: Correct. Yes.ADRIANA: In the Google Cloud space, right?ABDEL: Yes.ADRIANA: Yeah. So can you talk about how you found yourself in this role?ABDEL: It's. Oh, it's long story. Okay. I'll try to make it short. So a little bit of background. So I studied in Morocco. Right. So I am originally from there. I was born and raised there. I studied my master's degree in software engineering in one of the schools we have in Morocco. Morocco, for those who doesn't know, we follow the same. The same system as the rest of Europe. So that's basically high school bachelor, masters. Right? That's. I think that's the American version. But we say licence-master. It doesn't matter. Like three years you get a bachelor, five years get a master's. Right. So I got my masters in software engineering and my first job. And this is where things started being interesting for me in my career. My first job was actually in a data center.ADRIANA: Ooh.ABDEL: Yeah. Like an actual physical data center.ADRIANA: Oh, damn.ABDEL: Like, yeah. Yes, pretty much.ADRIANA: So you were cold all the time?ABDEL: Actually, it's a very interesting point. A lot of people think that you need to run data centers at sub zero temperature. You don't hardware, like data center grade Hardware is made to sustain very high temperatures.ADRIANA: Oh, good, Cool.ABDEL: We definitely had customers that wanted us to run their server rooms at like 10 degrees, 10 degrees C. I don't know how much is that in Freedom units.ADRIANA: I'm a Celsius girl, so.ABDEL: Okay, from the right part of the world. So. Which is too cold. It's cold even for humans. Right. So that's just. Yeah, but no, we run our. I mean, of course, the colder you want your data center to be, the more energy you're going to spend or waste. Right. So yeah, but yeah, I joined this company that was looking for. Initially they were actually looking for somebody to help them set up their internal systems because the data center was new. So you have, you know, your ticketing system and your CRM and all your tools that you need to actually make the thing operational. Your monitoring systems and all this stuff. And by monitoring, I'm talking back the days, Nagios time and you know, SNMP and old school before it became cool and we started calling it Observability, I guess. So I started there and yeah, that role was little bit of software engineering, little bit of automation, so kind of DevOps, right?ADRIANA: Yeah.ABDEL: And then through that role, I got contacted by Google and they actually hired me to work in their data center in Belgium. So that's how I joined Google. Yeah, we have data centers obviously all over the place, so Belgium is one of the biggest ones in Europe. So I joined that team and continued doing same thing. So a little bit of, you know, a little bit of automation, a little bit of system administration. Then a few years later, cloud started becoming a thing, at least for us. I mean, I guess it existed all over for other companies. But Google started being kind of more serious about it. And in 2017 they wanted me or they hired me to join a consulting team, an internal consulting team. So it's a team that basically works with external customers and help them architect, migrate, whatever, whatever that needs to happen to get stuff from where they are to Google Cloud. Right. So I joined that team initially to work on infrastructure because that's my background.ADRIANA: Yeah.ABDEL: But like very quickly I started working with Kubernetes. This is Kubernetes in 2017. So it was not as complex, I guess, as it is today, and I started learning it. I had no idea what containerization was. I had no idea what I. I think the only experience I had before was Mesos. But Mesos is like it's an orchestration system, which is similar to Kubernetes, but it's orchestrates virtual machines and not containers. Right. And I did work a little bit on OpenStack before. So conceptually it's the same idea. You are still orchestrating workloads. It just had different levels of the stack. Right. And yeah. And then just started learning Kubernetes and somehow became an. I'm putting air codes, SME, subjects matter, experts.So, so then. And then parallel to this and back in the days when I was still living in Morocco, I was all. I was very active in the Ubuntu community because I started with Linux, right. So I was a member of the local user group. So that's like, yeah, the user group for, for Ubuntu. And we were doing Linux parties events, you know, install parties. We just go to university and people come with a laptop and we will help them deploy Ubuntu, help them sort out drivers, you know, give them like functional environments where they can like, you know, play with Linux. And then in my role as a consultant, I started actually doing conferences and my first conference was back home.So there is a conference in Morocco called DEVOXX. It's a large conference and in 2017 they invited me and 2018 I joined the committee and I am in the committee since that 2018. So I was like, damn, I like this idea of like, you know, presenting public speaking, talking to developers, understanding what people are trying to solve. More understanding what people are trying to solve than actually talking to them. Really. Yeah. And yeah. And then in 2022, I basically, five years in consulting, I was like, I'm looking for something new.And I talked to the DevRel manager for eme. I was like, hey, I would like to give DevRel a go. And he was like, we don't have anybody in cloud native, so why not? And that's how I became joined DevRel.ADRIANA: Oh, that's so great. Wow.ABDEL: Yeah, it's a pretty, I think it's a pretty interesting transition in the sense of. The way I like to describe it is that I've been over time going up the abstraction layers from the hardware all the way into containers.ADRIANA: It's so cool to see like basically everything in your life had been building up to that moment, right?ABDEL: I guess, yes. Yeah.ADRIANA: So then you were like, by the time you became a DevRel, it was like, it felt like a natural fit too for you.ABDEL: Yes, yes, in a way. And also because I've always been comfortable talking in public, I guess I like, it always came natural to me. I think when I was actually back in my university time, I was doing tutoring for my colleagues in, like, in my class. So I would like, help people, you know, understand concepts, like after. After the actual class. And it always came natural that I think it's more. More coming from the fact that you just like to help people, not really wanting to talk at people. It's more like, hey, if I explain something and you understand it, I'm happy. Right?ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's such a satisfying feeling. Like, you know, you get it and now they get it.ABDEL: Exactly.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Compared to like, I don't know if you had this experience in university. I had professors who, you know, were too smart for their own good and couldn't explain anything.ABDEL: Oh, of course. Oh, yeah.ADRIANA: You know, I. One of my memorable moments was I had. I had this midterm and I go to the professor during his office hours and I'm like, can you explain, like, why I got this wrong? And he's like, well, it's easy. Obviously, if you don't understand the question, then I can't explain it to you. I'm like, what just happened here?ABDEL: Sounds like a Karen.ADRIANA: I'm like, all right, well, thanks for nothing, buddy.ABDEL: Yeah, I think that that's. That's probably. I mean, it's interesting, like the, the academic. I have friends in academia right now, like, we're in Sweden. I have. We have a lot of friends who are like researchers and, you know, postdocs and stuff like that. And, and they're like young and our age, and they had to all suffer through some of what you're describing eventually. Right. At some point. And I think that the. Probably one of the reasons is because when you are studying to become a professor, you have to build up so much knowledge that you end up not having to apply all of it. So you feel you are like, better than everybody else. Like, you obviously know more than your average students, right?ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah, for sure.ABDEL: And so I have a friend who is a bio. Biochemist. She's like post doc and she does research and stuff and she has to teach. So she has one semester every year that she has to teach.ADRIANA: Yeah.ABDEL: And she. Sometimes she starts complaining about these kids, they don't understand anything. And I'm always like, remember when you were in their shoes, you also did not understand much. Right. So.ADRIANA: Yeah, so true.ABDEL: So I think that that's. Yeah, I had to experiment. I had to go through that as well. So. Yeah, whatever.ADRIANA: I mean, I think we come back more resilient and I think then, you know, for. For people like us, where it's like part of our job to explain how things work in an accessible manner. I feel like you almost tap into that feeling of helplessness, of like, oh my God, it was horrible when I didn't understand this concept and I was so lost. And then, you know, the whole. The whole thing just got away from under me. Right. Versus, like, having someone who can explain things in a. In a way that's accessible, where, like, you're like, oh my God, I finally understand how this works. Like, it makes such a difference. Having that aha moment and seeing people get it, I think is so satisfying.ABDEL: And that's exactly what happened to me six months later after I started learning Rust, right? So the aha moment, they're like, oh, now I know. Now I get it!ADRIANA: This gives me hope. This gives me hope if I ever want to touch Rust.ABDEL: I mean, you know how it works. Like, you start learning something and you go like through hello world, and it works and then it stops working and you don't understand what's going on. And I'm like, oh my God, I'm stupid. Oh my God, I'm stupid. Oh my God, I'm stupid. And you build up the stupidity and they're like, oh, no. I know, it's so true.ADRIANA: It's like, you know, it. It's almost like if your program works the first time around, like, first of all, when that happens, I'm like, I'm shocked. Why? But then also, yeah, right? Like, are you sure? Yeah. Are you sure? But, but the other thing too, in some ways, it's like, it's almost like you're robbed of the experience of. Of the failure, which leads to, like, so much more insights into the problem compared to like, getting it right the first time. Like when you fail so hard that you've broken your system and I can't tell you how many times I've broken things beyond repair. And then you kind of have to like, just start building it from scratch, one thing at a time, and then you finally understand, oh, this is where it broke. Like, I feel like that is such a validating experience. Even though I, you know, I spent the last, like four hours, like in panic mode. Like, why isn't this working?ABDEL: Yeah, yeah, that's true. I think learning to through failure is valuable. But also, like, you don't always have. And that's actually, I think you can relate to this. Like, in DevRel, you don't always have that luxury, right? Yeah, just sometimes you just. So I think my favorite thing that I would do in my current role is actually go on Stack Overflow. I am spending quite a lot of time there because I find that that's a really good resource for understanding what people are struggling with and trying to replicate the error and then walk my way back from that to try to figure out what was the intention of the user to start with. And then how can we solve this for the user, but how can we solve it for everybody else? Right? And that's like, that's so much. I get so much joy from that. Right. But that's something you can do. You can control your time, you can take time, you can do it, you have time to do it. You don't have pressure, you don't always have that. And the downside, I think, of DevRel is that you live in. I mean, I hate using this word, but you live in the cutting edge of the technology, that sometimes you are required to build stuff. And by stuff, I mean content about things that no one knows how to use yet.New features, new stuff come out and you are expected to teach people how to use it. But, like, you don't necessarily understand how it works. Right. And we live in this space right now. Right, like AI. So it's definitely a very interesting kind of role to be in. And knowing how to balance these two things is quite challenging, but quite good to learn from, I guess.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, it is exciting. And you make a really good point about, like, being on the cutting edge means that you're probably one of the few people who is tackling this problem, which therefore makes you one of the few experts, even if you're not an expert in that at the time, which is a little bit terrifying. And I've definitely found myself in. In that position. Like, even. There was something in OpenTelemetry the other day where they had, like, they had updated the API for something, the OpenTelemetry Operator. So I was like updating my YAML manifests for it and I'm like, unfortunately, the documentation in the readme was not up to date, so I had to chase down the answer by going. It was a combination of going into the code, but also...Googl...not Googling...searching through Slack messages to find my answer.ABDEL: What changed?ADRIANA: And then I'm like, yeah, yeah, exactly. What changed? And then, and then once I got it working, I'm like, okay, now I'm going to go back to the readme and fix this. Because, like, if. If I was confused, someone else is going to be confused.ABDEL: Yeah, yeah. And like, a lot of times when that happens to me, the same thing around GKE, which is our product, I mean our Kubernetes product. It's usually some change log that just slipped through the cracks that like that change happened somewhere. There is a comment, but it was not in the release notes. Right. The talk is not up to date. You know, different lab, but like to a large extent, I don't, I always think that that's something that would happen to anybody. Like any developer would eventually be faced with that kind of problems.ADRIANA: Yeah, definitely.ABDEL: And it is definitely part of your job as a DevRel to figure that out and figure out how that could be improved going forward. Right. Because like a lot of times people see DevRel as, oh, we just like travel and talk to conferences. No, no, no, no. There's a lot of time spent talking to engineering teams.ADRIANA: Yeah, that's true.ABDEL: And telling them like this is how, this is how things are supposed to work. I know that you don't think so, but let me tell you so it's a lot of, it's a, it's a two ways role. You talk to people outside your company, but you also talk to people inside the company.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah, yeah. Which makes it a very, a very sort of unique role. You're, you're, you're basically bridging, bridging the gap, right? So that you're, you're, you're like telling the engineers like this is how people are actually using it.ABDEL: So you better listen to me.ADRIANA: Yeah, yeah. Which sometimes is hard like you know, putting yourself in the shoes of the engineer and getting that feedback where you're like, you kind of, you know, it's your baby. You've invested your time into like writing it a certain way and being told like that's not how people are using it. You have to sort of put, put your feelings aside. You know, I, I have this, the, this mantra that I try to live by. I don't always succeed, but I, I try to live by like never fall in love with your code because you know, you just, you never know like someone's gonna come along and, and do it better and, and you have to be open minded enough to be like, yeah, this is a better solution. I gotta let go of, of you know, what, what I wrote and not be so, so possessive about it, so.ABDEL: Exactly. Exactly.ADRIANA: Yeah. Cool. Well, we are coming up on time, but before we wrap up, I wanted to ask you if you have any pieces of advice or hot takes that you want to share with our audience.ABDEL: Does AI count as a hot take?ADRIANA: Oh, sure.ABDEL: Uh, it's actually interesting. I am in the process of. I'm. I'm involved in some startup programs that are AI startups where we're supposed to review what the startup product is all about. And my hot take is the following. Not AI is not. Is not gonna solve all the problems that people think they are gonna solve. I feel like people are trying to shove AI like in places where it shouldn't, and it comes out very obvious. A lot of times when you look at something and they're like, but can't you just solve this in a different way? Why do you need to put AI everywhere? But, yeah, I know.And my other hot take is Kubernetes is here to stick around. I think that a lot of people think that it's a faded technology. It's not. It's going to be around for a while. So just, I guess the more people learn to live with this and accept it, the better it's going to be for everyone.ADRIANA: What are some quickly, some things that you kind of look forward to seeing in Kubernetes in the next little while?ABDEL: Maturity, for sure. There is quite a lot of interesting. I mean, again, in the AI space, there is quite a lot of improvements happening in Kubernetes itself that are happening for AI, but I see use cases for them beyond just AI. Right. Like the community is definitely shifting and adapting to accommodate kind of AI workloads, AI and ML workloads. But the ramification of this is going to go beyond. Beyond the beyond. I mean, speaking of observability, just in the last version of Kubernetes, they have added quite a lot of things around device observability.So if you have a GPU attached or a TPU, how can you expose metrics through the node and how can you monitor those? And that's pretty cool. But there are use cases where you have to attach all sorts of hardware to a node and monitor how that hardware is performing, and that's going to help solve other types of problems. And yeah, it's evolving and maturing at a very slow-ish pace, but it's at a very steady pace and I'm very excited to see what the future brings. And also there is a lot of things happening in networking space because that's kind of one of my areas of focus and I'm really excited to see how that goes.ADRIANA: That's great. Looking forward to seeing more cool things come out of Kubernetes in the next little while. Yeah, well, awesome. Well, thank you so much, Abdel, for geeking out with me today. Y'all don't forget to subscribe and be sure to check the show notes for additional resources and to connect with us and our guests on social media. Until next time...ABDEL: Peace out and geek out.ADRIANA: Geeking Out is hosted and produced by me, Adriana Villela. I also compose and perform the theme music on my trusty clarinet. Geeking Out is also produced by my daughter Hannah Maxwell, who, incidentally, designed all of the cool graphics. Be sure to follow us on all the socials by going to bento.me/geekingout.