The New Stack Podcast

Ukraine Has a Bright Future

Episode Summary

Ukraine has a bright future. It will soon be time to rebuild. But rebuilding requires more than the resources needed to construct a hydroelectric plant or a hospital. It involves software and an understanding of how to use it. Ihor Dvoretskyi, developer advocate at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and Dima Zakhalyavko, board member at Razom for Ukraine, came to KubeCon in Detroit to discuss the push to provide training materials for Ukraine as they rebuild from the destruction caused by Russia's invasion.

Episode Notes

Ukraine has a bright future. It will soon be time to rebuild. But rebuilding requires more than the resources needed to construct a hydroelectric plant or a hospital. It involves software and an understanding of how to use it.

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi, developer advocate at the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF), and Dima Zakhalyavko, board member at Razom for Ukraine, came to KubeCon in Detroit to discuss the push to provide training materials for Ukraine as they rebuild from the destruction caused by Russia's invasion.

 

Razom, a nonprofit, amplifies the voices of Ukrainians in the United States and helps with humanitarian efforts and IT training. Razom formed before Russia's 2014 invasion of the Crimean peninsula of Ukraine, Zakhalyavko said. Since the full-scale invasion earlier this year, Razom has had an understandable increase in donations and volunteers helping in their efforts.

 

Individual first aid kits for soldiers, tourniquets, and medics supplies are provided by Razom, but so is IT training, materials to train the next generation of IT, translated into Ukrainian.

 

The Linux Foundation is participating with the Cloud Native Computing Foundation (CNCF) in participation with Razom for Ukraine on its Project Veteranius to provide access to technology education for Ukrainian veterans, their families, and Ukrainians in need. 

 

"We've realized that basically, we can benefit from the Linux Foundation training portfolio, including the most popular courses like the intro to Linux, or intro to Kubernetes, that can be pretty much easily translated to Ukrainian," Dvoretskyi said. "And in this way, we'll be able to offer the educational materials in their native language."

 

Ukraine has a pretty bright future. 

 

"We just need to get through these difficult times," Dvoretskyi said. "But in the future, it's clear the tech industry in Ukraine is growing. Yeah. And people are needed for that."

 

Every effort matters, Dvoretskyi said.

 

"A strong, democratic Ukraine – that's essentially the vision – a European country, a truly European country, that is whole in terms of territorial integrity," Zakhalyavko said. "The future is in technology. And if we can help enable that – in any case, I think that's a win for Ukraine and the world. Technology can make the world a better place."

Episode Transcription

Colleen Coll  0:08  

Welcome to this special edition of the new stack makers on the road. We're here in Q con North America and discussions from the show floor with technologists giving you their expertise and insights to help you with your everyday work.

 

Alex Williams  0:25  

Everyone, we have a real opportunity here to have a discussion with two people who were living in much different worlds in here in Detroit right now, really, Dima, and er, and I would like you to each introduce yourself, just so the community can be aware of who you are what you do.

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi  0:44  

Sure. Thank you, Alex. My name is Sue hora, you heard wretzky. I'm a senior developer advocate at a Cloud Native Computing Foundation. And these days, I'm serving for the armed forces of Ukraine.

 

Dima Zakhalyavko  0:57  

i My name is Dima Dima Slavko. I am a board member at Rosland for Ukraine and nonprofit 501 C three organization in us.

 

Alex Williams  1:07  

Here I talk about these different worlds that we live in all the time. And I remember talking with you in places like San Francisco, and in Portland. And now I looked across the hall and I saw you with a support because you're obviously you've been injured. And I just want to say that I've never ever experienced anything like that in my life. And I just can't imagine what that must be like, for you as an individual for you as a person who has family and dear friends. And tell me why you're why you're needing to have this support right now.

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi  1:45  

Not so much stuff has happened. So it's kinda like directly injury during the duty. Yeah, in the middle of the night. I was stepping stepping in in full darkness. And then you slipped. Yeah, you fell. Yeah. And it's that's that's it. So Oh, good. I'm not saying nothing crazy, no hero stories here.

 

Alex Williams  2:05  

That's I just wanted to make sure you know that to give a picture of what it's like to be there. I didn't know if that added to the picture or not. But, Dima, you're here because you're working with rosin. And can you tell us a little bit about Rossum?

 

Dima Zakhalyavko  2:19  

Sure, we are a nonprofit that was formed out of my done revolution back in 2014. So before the war started the full scale invasion. It's been eight years that we've been at promoting and Amplifying Voices of Ukraine in us and helping with humanitarian efforts, helping children of soldiers helping in IT space and training, in that respect. So that's a little bit we've been on a smaller scale before the the war broke out. But that all changed. And we've blew up in terms of number of donations and people engaged in the project volunteers, that all came together a lot on a bigger scale, once this full scale invasion happened.

 

Alex Williams  3:12  

Since the full scale invasion, what's it like for a developer? How can you relate it to developers who are not in the Ukraine, and I asked that because I spoke with someone, for instance, the other day, who is from Taiwan, and they don't feel especially okay with living in Taiwan right now. And it made me aware that there's this thread that everyone faces at any time where their lives can be changed dramatically due to forces beyond your control. And I'm curious, what would you say to those developers around the world by how they can relate to you? Because they come from such different worlds right now?

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi  3:56  

It's probably not something that I can clearly describe from my personal experience, because I've clearly split it My life before and after. Yeah. So basically, I've joined the armed forces of Ukraine almost immediate, left it with full scale version of the full scale invasion has started, right. And basically, I literally spent zero days as a person with my previous Tech experience during the new times, right. However, what I heard from other folks who are not in the DOD and are still doing their day jobs in tech, so their lives have changed significantly. So even those folks who are living in relatively safe areas, yeah. And speaking about the road to safe areas, I'm speaking about those areas that are like geographically far away from the act of battle zones, right from negative combat zones. So you still may have multiple air raid alerts during the day when you have to hide somewhere yeah, from the potential missile strike. For example, these days, the There are some critical infrastructure issues in Ukraine after the missile strikes have hit multiple places in in Ukraine, including the electricity stations and so on. So basically, like the electricity may be caught, like anytime you may have some issues with the fresh water in some areas may have some limited access to the internet in some areas and so on. Even that cannot compare with the lives of those folks who have to flee from the errors with the active combat zone, or those areas that have been pretty pretty much immediately occupied by Russia, and the end of February or beginning of March. So I would say that even those people who are continuing doing what they do and continue to work in and contribute to continue contributing to tech, especially to the open source world, they're doing a lot these days. So this is something that probably so many people in the world cannot understand completely, just because it's one of those unique and unpleasant and unnecessary experience that anyone has to pass through. It is unpleasant,

 

Alex Williams  6:09  

it's it's unnecessary. And in that unpleasantness, and that unnecessarily as DMR, what are you trying to do for people? Who are veterans who are in the army now and you still need to support their families? What is it that you're doing?

 

Dima Zakhalyavko  6:27  

Yeah, so we are focused on on a couple of areas, we've been trying to help with some of the humanitarian aspects, our biggest aspect is saving lives, right. And what's important is to save lives of people on the battlefield, right with things like individual first aid kits, having a tourniquet is a critical aspect of saving lives of people who are in danger. Enabling medics to save lives as well is another effort that we're focused on, as well as educational efforts, right, we are just today announced a continuation of a project called veteran news, which is focused on bringing veterans, their family members, maybe younger children into the technology, so they can have a career in the future in technology. Ukraine has a big presence in the world of it. And it's actually it is, I think, second after agriculture in Ukraine by the income will at least pre war in that respect. So Ukraine has a lot to offer. And we would like to enable Ukraine even more so and help revitalize Ukrainian economy to enable people in it.

 

Alex Williams  7:46  

I think at your, at your roots. You're a Developer Advocate. Right, right. Yeah. So how are you thinking about developer advocacy, and helping people of Ukraine both, you know, in the army or otherwise, just as

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi  7:59  

something that's I'm trying to do these days. So even being on the on the active duty, I've been able to stay in touch with some folks in Ukraine was my friends from Rossum, who have been driving the bitterness initiative for quite a while, even before the full scale war has started, we came to a random idea that they should be a way, how can we get started with offering the free and open education access to the different groups of people with special veterans and family members and so and we realized that basically, we can benefit from the British big Linux Foundation training portfolio, including the most popular courses like the intro to Linux, or intro to Kubernetes, that can be pretty much easily translated to Ukrainian. And in this way, we'll be able to offer this information this educational materials Ukrainians in their native language, because unfortunately, Dylan which gap is sometimes it's one of the biggest brokers for folks in Ukraine, to get started in tech. But in the case, if you can understand what this what this technology is about, and in parallel, if you can enhance your English skills, you can move forward with diving deeper into into the tech world.

 

Alex Williams  9:22  

How are you then nuts and bolts? Who's doing the translating? How are you preparing those documentation? How you bring the documentation, how you distributing it in a place where as you say, there may not be internet access.

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi  9:37  

Yeah, sued, distribute control materials will be available online. More details coming soon. And we have a pretty solid team of volunteers, people who want to share the experience. They specifically they experienced in tech, and they experience in pretty much fluent knowledge of Ukrainian and English languages. those people who are able to use their skills to convert the existing English educational materials into Ukrainian and make them available to everyone who is a native Ukrainian speaker,

 

Alex Williams  10:15  

what are some of the topics? And he said Kubernetes, agenda Linux intro to Kubernetes. What other topics? And your sources for that information? Are they of people who are volunteering? How can developers out there, you know, help out.

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi  10:30  

Speaking about the resources, we're using the at this point of time, we're using the Linux Foundation training materials. This can grow up later, maybe Dima can provide more slides into into like what Maduro nurses doing? And like, how does it work during this interaction was the local developers and management experience in general. So our goal at this point of time is to benefit from the pretty big Linux Foundation training portfolio, the courses portfolio, and to provide folks in Ukraine with at least some basic but necessary tech skills, like Linux, like get like some of the programming some some of the basic programming languages like Kubernetes, and so on. For example, if you will take the intro to Linux course. It's basically one of the most essential courses for everyone who want to get started in tech. Because these days if you, if you don't know Linux, you basically cannot understand what's going on at the higher levels of the stack, right? So. So basically, in this case, like, if you're pleased, have some Linux knowledge, and translated courses will allow you to get this knowledge. So you'll be able to move forward with some with some new and essential skills.

 

Alex Williams  11:46  

What's next them for the organization? Know, where are you on this journey?

 

Dima Zakhalyavko  11:51  

Our first and foremost, task is to help turn around war and help ended soon, right, we are doing that as much as possible within the constraints of being a US nonprofit, right. And hopefully, the sooner the war war ends faster, we can focus on things like rebuilding Ukraine, rebuilding schools, rebuilding hospitals, rehabilitation centers, educational efforts, scaling veteran us to a bigger aspect of things, getting engagement from other technology companies to invest into Ukraine and the technology field as well. And help Ukraine rebuild both from physically but also economically. So

 

Alex Williams  12:40  

now I'm starting to see more of a deeper connection then. Because as Ukraine rebuilds, you will need people who understand Linux, you will need people who understand Kubernetes, you will need people to understand the intricacies of networks and software development. Right.

 

Ihor Dvoretskyi  12:59  

If you look into the future. So Ukraine has a pretty bright future. We just need to pause this difficult times. Yeah. But in the future, a clear let's see how the tech industry in Ukraine is growing. Yeah. And people are needed for that. Yeah. Especially those people who had some experience in this area, or those people who had experienced in the different areas. But what has switched to something different, something new, right, and Samsung, like some some some perspective, like the tech industry. And this initiative, and this program is one of the few probably minor opportunities for them. I'm not speaking about the major opportunities. This is like something minor that we can do for the for the Ukrainian society, this this point of time, but was the clear sign in the future, and what we can do better and what we can we can do together for the for the for the brighter future of Ukraine. I love

 

Alex Williams  13:55  

that Ukraine has a bright future. And that's a beautiful vision to look at. Right? And DMOZ. So how do you see that bright future?

 

Dima Zakhalyavko  14:03  

strong, democratic Ukraine, that's essentially the vision and truly European country that is full from territorial integrity, strong in terms of economical and technologically enabled, I think the future is in the technology. And if we can help enable that in any case, I think that's a win for Ukraine, but also to the world as well as the technology can make the world a better place.

 

Alex Williams  14:35  

Well, I'm sure you hear from people all over the world. And I'm one person who lives in Portland, Oregon. And I'm a daily we're the cube independent. So I'm with you. I know there. millions of others, like myself are with you, too. And I know there's millions of developers out there who are with you as well. Just know that I find some Nice outcomes and when you talk about Ukraine's bright future, because that's the best way to think about it. So I just want to thank you both for your time and your discussion.

 

Dima Zakhalyavko  15:09  

Thank you. And thank you for your support.

 

Alex Williams  15:12  

Thanks for listening. If you liked the show, please rate and review us on Apple podcast Spotify, or wherever you get your podcasts. That's one of the best ways you can help us grow this community, and we really appreciate your feedback. You can find the full video version of this episode on YouTube. Search for the new stack and don't forget to subscribe so you never miss any new videos. Thanks for joining us and see you soon.

 

Transcribed by https://otter.ai