Series: Getting to know the wonderful Continuous Delivery Community
Giorgi Keratishvili
Pronouns: He/Him
Location: Tbilisi, Georgia
Who are you?
Hmm… I would say I am a person who enjoys understanding how things work on a technical level (I guess that is what led me to engineering paths initially) and on a human level (tinkerer would be the best word to describe me).
Over a decade of experience spanning development and operations. My expertise encompasses a wide range of areas, from managing bare metal infrastructures to implementing advanced automation strategies. I have played pivotal roles in Agile transformations, container orchestration, platform engineering, site reliability engineering (SRE), incident management, and advancing cloud native maturity.
Beyond my professional endeavors, I am deeply committed to community engagement. I serve as an AWS Community Builder and leader in Tbilisi. As an ambassador for the Continuous Delivery (CD) Foundation and a CNCF Kubestronaut, I actively contribute to the cloud native ecosystem. Additionally, I lead the CNCF chapter in Tbilisi, hold the title of IEEE Senior Member, and represent the Institute of DevOps as an ambassador. My dedication to fostering knowledge-sharing is evident through the meetups I organize, aimed at enhancing awareness and understanding of DevOps, SRE, and platform engineering within the Georgian tech community.
What are your hobbies?
I am a big fan of traveling and I really love to combine it with meeting new people. When I travel I always try to meet some local tech community members or travel for their meetups or events. Besides that I love nature, swimming, hiking, and riding an enduro motorcycle.
What did you want to be when you were a kid?
I wanted to become a chemist or an astronaut, unfortunately I became neither, but at least I managed to become a Kubestronaut.
What led you to a career in tech?
During my early childhood I was a trouble maker. I was always disassembling something with my small fingers starting from house outlets, toys, mobile phones and PC parts. As a teenager, I had to choose between becoming a lawyer or learn how to reassemble all things that I tore down… so that’s how I became engineer. I used to disassemble outlets, now I disassemble Kubernetes clusters.
How did you get involved in the Continuous Delivery Foundation?
The first time I got involved was when I joined the CDF Ambassador program. At that time, I was working very closely with CI/CD tools and doing agile transformation for a large enterprise and love of Jenkins passing CJE sparked the love for open source and CD Foundation.
What is your favorite thing/project/tech to work on?
Anything related to cloud native and containers.
Tell us about the thing you’re most proud of and why?
I am really proud to be part of many communities.
What is your #1 top tip for getting involved in the community?
I remember vividly when I started my career journey there was no such thing as community, especially for DevOps or anything related. After watching a gazillion KubeCon + CloudNativeCon recordings on my night shifts, I was excited to attend one in person. Unfortunately, there was no such event near me. I decided to start hosting events myself, but funnily enough, I couldn’t find any speakers. I became a host and speaker at the same time. It taught me many things, including how hard it is to organize meetups and speak in front of an audience.
Now there are many communities you can get involved in. I suggest volunteering to get involved and grow with a community you like. This allows you to explore collaboration options with other tech groups.
What’s your favourite open source conference?
I am a big fan of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon, maybe I am a bit biased. It was my first big conference in 2022 in Valencia. I had the great opportunity to be a part of the Dan Kohn scholarship program, for which I am grateful. It helped me to connect with many great people, whom I had previously only seen on YouTube. I could have a quick chat with them and ask some general questions which inspired me to grow the community in my region.
Where can we find you?
More from Giorgi
Giorgi was on our most recent panel: AI Native CI/CD. The panel outlined the core features of AI Native CI/CD, it’s opportunities and challenges, and how open source and the foundations like CDF can support its adoption. Watch it on the CD Foundation’s YouTube Channel 
