Cheryl Hung, Director of Ecosystem, CNCF, sits down with Stu Miniman and Corey Quinn at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon EU 2019 in Barcelona, Spain #theCUBE #KubeCon #CloudNativeCon https://siliconangle.com/2019/05/28/cloud-computing-community-needs-women-join-says-cncf-ecosystem-director-kubeconeu-womenintech/ Cloud computing community needs more women to join, says CNCF ecosystem director Warning: Open source can be addictive! Today, Hung is an open-source evangelist on a mission “to increase the adoption of Kubernetes and cloud native by fostering sustainable open-source communities.” Her journey toward the containerization grail began when she was a software engineer on Google Maps in London. Offered a free diversity scholarship to KubeCon Europe in 2017, she took a plane to Berlin. Attending the event changed the course of her life. “Just that little first step can go a long way into getting people into feeling like they’re part of the community and they have something valuable to give back,” Hung said. “Once you’re in, you’re hooked.” Returning to London, Hung started a Cloud Native London meetup. She soon had a “strong, open and diverse” community, with over 3,000 members and regular meeting attendance of 200 to 300 people. A little over a year after attending her first KubeCon, she became the CNCF’s director of ecosystem, and KubeCon Europe 2019 saw her on the stage, giving a keynote address in front of 7,700 people. Jumping from scholarship attendee to keynote speaker in just two years may seem like a stroke of luck, but Hung had already proven she has what it takes to beat the odds. She holds a masters in computer science from Kings College, Cambridge. Famous as the incubator of modern computing theory, and for being the academic home of the “father” of artificial intelligence Alan Turing, the King’s College computer science program is ranked best in the United Kingdom and has the highest admissions standards. Scholarships make it possible for hundreds of people from underrepresented groups to attend KubeCon events across the world. But, “there are other things that need to happen” in order to increase the user community and encourage more companies to become cloud native, according to Hung. One of these “other things” is reaching out personally to introduce more minorities to cloud computing. Hung quotes from a GitHub survey from 2017 that showed women were just as interested in contributing to an open-source project as men but were much less likely to ask questions on a public forum — or to receive unsolicited help. This is a statistic she aims to change. “This is a community effort. We’re all part of the same group of people … trying to work on the same things. And to do that, we need to get this mindset amongst the community that we need to reach out to more individuals and help them and pull them in,” Hung stated. End-user participation is key to the growth of the CNCF There are three bodies that form the CNCF: the governing board, the technical oversight committee, and the end-user community. “In theory, these three should be “co-equal in power,” Hung said. Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the KubeCon + CloudNativeCon event. (* Disclosure: The Cloud Native Computing Foundation sponsored this segment of theCUBE. Neither the CNCF nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)