In this talk, members of the Kubernetes Steering Committee and Kubernetes Code of Conduct Committee walk through what it takes to lead a community from a technical, cultural, and community perspective, and how that stewardship improves camaraderie, code quality and longevity. Get a peek under the hood of the two community groups chartered with defining, evolving, and sustaining the values of the project.

1. Bob Killen, Steering Committee
Aeva Black, Code of Conduct Committee
Shaping Kubernetes
Community Culture

2. Who we are
Bob Killen / @mrbobbytables
[ he / him ]
Program Manager @ Google OSPO
Steering Committee
Aeva Black / @AevaVoom
[ they / them ]
OSS Program Manager @ Microsoft
Code of Conduct Committee

4. The year: 2017

5. 400+
Subproject
Owners
1,275
GitHub Org
members
148
Group
Leads
56,000~
Unique Contributors
Since 2014
19,886
Unique Contributors
In the last 12 months
Contributor Community
36
Community
Groups
10,300~
Committers
Since 2014
Sources: Devstats | kubernetes/community/sigs.yaml

7. We are on our third generation of leaders.
What does it mean to embody our values
and intentionally pass them on?
Gen 1
Google launches
Kubernetes & CNCF
forms around it
Gen 3
Kubernetes matures &
new leaders emerge
… and face new
challenges
Gen 2
Bootstrap Steering &
Conduct Committees
formed

8. Community Growth
As a community, we’re at a
crossroads.
Photo by Ryoji Iwata on Unsplash

9. Social groups
have scalability limits, too!

10. Dunbar’s Number(s)
~150
~ 20
~5
You regularly anticipate their actions
or finish each other’s sentences.
You know what they’re working on
and have confidence you share the same goals.
You remember their name and might
know what they’re working on.
You vaguely trust each other.
You have to re-establish context every
time you meet them, which isn’t very
often anyway...
~ 1,000

11. Pandemic Contributor Health
*2019 Release Cycle Average (1.14-1.17) vs 1.19 Release Cycle
Average Daily PR Reviews 1.19
-15% -24%
Kubernetes Orgs Kubernetes Repo
Average Daily Committers

12. Fatigue
“I miss everybody”
“Please, no more screens”
“I just want to hang out”
Contributor comments regarding
hosting a virtual event
“I only want to join if
its 90% social”

13. BLM: Two lenses
Aeva please put a photo you took from the
BLM protests in Seattle here thank you <3

14. TRANSPARENCY
&
ACCOUNTABILITY

15. “In order to maintain a tolerant
society, the society must be
intolerant of intolerance.”
- Karl Popper

16. We are on our third generation of leaders
Gen 1
Google launches
Kubernetes & CNCF
forms around it
Gen 3
Kubernetes matures &
new leaders emerge...
… and face new
challenges
Gen 2
Bootstrap Steering &
Conduct Committees
formed

17. Community Initiatives
Unconscious bias training for leads
Ensure leaders understand how unconscious biases can
influence decisions and interactions in the community
Code of Conduct Process docs
Provide transparency into the incident report handling
process
Public Code of Conduct Channel Public engagement point for questions and discussion
New Contributor Course Launch an improved accessible new contributor course
Code of Conduct Transparency Report
Provide visibility on general outcomes of Code of
Conduct reports
Outreach
Expand mentoring & internship programs for
underrepresented groups
Completed
In
Progress

18. Thank you!
Steering Committee
Ask us about: Governance and project
policies
● Email: steering@kubernetes.io
● Slack: #steering-committee
SIG Contributor Experience
Ask us about: Mentoring and Getting
started
● Mailing List
● Slack: #sig-contribex
Code of Conduct Committee
Ask us about: things you see happening
that negatively impact the community or
might violate the CoC
● Email: conduct@kubernetes.io
● Meetings: Not public
● Slack: #code-of-conduct
● Policy: k8s.dev/coc
● Process: k8s.dev/coc-process
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