Victoria Nduka wanted to get into tech, but she didn't have a laptop. So what did she do? She made money as a writer, saved up enough to get a laptop, and took a bunch of UX design courses. And when Victoria stumbled into open source by way of a video posted to a friend's WhatApp status. This took her down the path of getting a coveted Linux Foundation (LFX) mentorship, and finding ways to apply her skills as a writer, UX designer and all around Curious Human to contribute to OpenTelemetry, Prometheus, and Meshery. Join Adriana as she talks to Victoria about her undying curiosity and her surprise love for cloud native.

About Victoria Nduka:

Victoria Nduka is a user experience designer who’s passionate about making technology more inclusive and accessible. She recently wrapped up an LFX mentorship where she conducted UX research to understand how users expect Prometheus to handle OpenTelemetry resource attributes.

Victoria writes and speaks about accessibility, open source, design, and more recently, cloud native technologies.

Key takeaways:

  • Not being accepted as an LFX mentee for Meshery didn't stop Victoria from contributing to the project
  • The work that she did as an OSS contributor in Meshery got her into Outreachy, and eventually led to an LFX mentorship in the Prometheus project
  • As an LFX mentee working on Prometheus, she got to interface with the OpenTelemetry community
  • Expanding the OTel End User SIG from 3 regular contributors to 6 took a lot of time and effort, through steady contribution and content creation
  • Open source is only possible because of the people contributing; who are willing to put in the time
  • Victoria continued contributing to OpenTelemetry even after her LFX mentorship was done, and has become one of the key contributors to the End User SIG.
  • Working with people who look like us is important!!
  • Tech accessibility: not having a laptop prevented Victoria from getting into tech for the longest time
  • Doing freelance writing helped Victoria save enough money to buy a laptop to finally get into tech.
  • How can you be expected to figure the course of your entire life out when you're young? Trying out new things is the only way to know what we like and don't like.
  • Contributing to open source: look for areas that need help, with the skills that you have

Find Victoria on:

Find us on:

Links:

Chapters:

00:00 Opening credits

00:26 Guest intro

01:34 Icebreaker questions

04:01 LFX Mentorship

06:41 How being an LFX mentee in Prometheus led to the OTel End User SIG

12:21 Victoria's tech career journey

21:48 Contributing to the OTel End User SIG

24:29 The ups and downs of being a writer

26:53 Contributing to Meshery

29:59 Outside of open source, what's your day job?

31:49 Parting words of wisdom

33:20 Peace out and geek out

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