✨ Getting to know the wonderful Continuous Delivery Community
Name: Pawel Piwosz
Pronouns: he/him
Location: Krakow, Poland
Who are you?
I am a Developer Advocate at UpCloud, an European sovereign cloud provider. In 30 years of my career I went from SysOps, through DevOps, DevOps lead, DevOps coach and mentor, manager, architect, delivery manager and finally I found my place – Developer Relations.
Your hobbies?
Oh, this is hard. As a person with ADHD, I have too many hobbies. I love model kits. I used to make plastic models, now I “play with Lego”. I am a big fan of Star Wars. I still try to learn how to play electric guitar and still plan to come back to drawing and painting. Photography… Yet another.
Today I love trainspotting, but in the past I even was a “professional wedding photographer”. And I am collecting. “What are you collecting?” you might ask. Well… Depends on the mood, time, weather,.. Anything. Stones, minerals, Star Wars unlimited cards, Lego sets, stickers, pins.. And DUCKS! Rubber ducks slowly become the thing that people recognize me…
What did you want to be when you were a kid?
I don’t remember the preschool times, but then, very quickly, I was 8, or so, I wanted to be a Jedi. Of course. At that age it didn’t matter if it was Luke or Vader, but I think… Vader won then and… still can win today 🙂
But when I started to think more seriously about myself – I wanted to be an astronomer.
What led you to a career in tech?
I was too weak to be an astronomer 🙂 My math skills weren’t good enough. But I had computers around me for a long time, mind you, it was communist Poland at that time and I was a teenager, so it was “something” here. Having an Atari or Commodore makes you a boss in the block 🙂
Do you remember your first open source contribution?
Very well. I am not a developer and I always thought that I am not good enough to contribute to OSS. Then OpenTofu happened. I was in the team creating it, so I contributed a lot to it (not code, though).
How did you get involved in the Continuous Delivery Foundation?
If I remember correctly, thanks to Garima Bajpai. I don’t remember how we met (online, for sure, I think it was in the DevOps Institute Ambassadors program), but I saw that she is in this community. CD was (and still is) really important in my work, so it was natural for me that I’ll try.
What’s your favourite thing to work on?
I like to think about myself as a generalist. Today it will be IaC, CI/CD and AI. And I love to be involved in the community.
Tell us about the thing you’re most proud of and why?
This might sound a little harsh. I am mostly proud of where I am today and what path I went to be there. Enough to say that almost everything I know today (speaking English included) is my own work. Not school, not courses, not support in my early ages, but just my work.
But to not be so selfish here, I am most proud of my students from DevOps Academy and Mentees from Tech Leads program. Watching how they grow, achieve more and more, makes me really proud of them.
What is the best connection you’ve made through open source?
Oh, there is a lot! But if I have to say about one person, and connected with CDF, it will be Garima. We did a lot together, we wrote the “CI/CD Design Patterns” book together (with Michel and Muktesh), we did a couple of workshops, conference appearances…
What is your #1 tip for getting involved in the community?
Just do it. “There is no try”. Really, just do it. Join the community, talk with people, and contribute to projects. If something goes wrong, the community is there to help, not judge.
What’s your favourite open source conference?
Well, I’ll say – Cloud Native Poland, as I am a coorganizer 🙂 But seriously – Open Source Summit, KubeCon and all smaller events around the main ones. FOSDEM is awesome. And let’s not forget about Rejekts which is… another level of community.
More from Pawel
He’s been contributing to the CD Foundation for years. Currently, he’s a CDF Ambassador and hosts a Polish podcast about IT, clouds, architecture, system design, trends in new technologies… and of course about AI!
