43 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
43 lines
4.1 KiB
Markdown
---
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title: "Expanding User Support with Office Hours"
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date: 2018-03-14
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slug: expanding-user-support-with-office-hours
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url: /blog/2018/03/Expanding-User-Support-With-Office-Hours
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---
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**Today's post is by [Jorge Castro](https://twitter.com/castrojo) and [Ilya Dmitichenko](https://twitter.com/errordeveloper) on Kubernetes office hours.**
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Today's developer has an almost overwhelming amount of resources available for learning. Kubernetes development teams use [StackOverflow][1], [user documentation][2], [Slack][3], and the [mailing lists][4]. Additionally, the community itself continues to amass an [awesome list][5] of resources.
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One of the challenges of large projects is keeping user resources relevant and useful. While documentation can be useful, great learning also happens in Q&A sessions at conferences, or by learning with someone whose explanation matches your learning style. Consider that learning Kung Fu from Morpheus would be a lot more fun than reading a book about Kung Fu!
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![][6]
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We as Kubernetes developers want to create an interactive experience: where Kubernetes users can get their questions answered by experts in real time, or at least referred to the best known documentation or code example.
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Having discussed a few broad ideas, we eventually decided to make [Kubernetes Office Hours][7] a live stream where we take user questions from the audience and present them to our panel of contributors and expert users. We run two sessions: one for European time zones, and one for the Americas. These [streaming setup guidelines][8] make office hours extensible—for example, if someone wants to run office hours for Asia/Pacific timezones, or for another CNCF project.
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To give you an idea of what Kubernetes office hours are like, here's Josh Berkus answering a question on running databases on Kubernetes. Despite the popularity of this topic, it's still difficult for a new user to get a constructive answer. Here's an excellent response from Josh:
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[](https://www.youtube.com/embed/Aj0yozuQ0ME?ecver=2)
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It's often easier to field this kind of question in office hours than it is to ask a developer to write a full-length blog post. \[Editor's note: That's legit!\] Because we don't have infinite developers with infinite time, this kind of focused communication creates high-bandwidth help while limiting developer commitments to 1 hour per month. This allows a rotating set of experts to share the load without overwhelming any one person.
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We hold office hours the third Wednesday of every month on the [Kubernetes YouTube Channel][9]. You can post questions on the [#office-hours channel][10] on Slack, or you can submit your question to Stack Overflow and post a link on Slack. If you post a question in advance, you might get better answers, as volunteers have more time to research and prepare. If a question can't be fully solved during the call, the team will try their best to point you in the right direction and/or ping other people in the community to take a look. [Check out this page][7] for more details on what's off- and on topic as well as meeting information for your time zone. We hope to hear your questions soon!
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Special thanks to Amazon, Bitnami, Giant Swarm, Heptio, Liquidweb, Northwestern Mutual, Packet.net, Pivotal, Red Hat, Weaveworks, and VMWare for donating engineering time to office hours.
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And thanks to Alan Pope, Joe Beda, and Charles Butler for technical support in making our livestream better.
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[1]: https://stackoverflow.com/questions/tagged/kubernetes
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[2]: https://kubernetes.io/docs/home
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[3]: http://slack.k8s.io/
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[4]: https://groups.google.com/forum/#!forum/kubernetes-users
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[5]: https://github.com/ramitsurana/awesome-kubernetes
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[6]: https://3.bp.blogspot.com/-Iy2GaddJp78/WqnFbVUu9FI/AAAAAAAAAM4/xUzhOSIlRDEMMZNl3SzPBd1Pa0T5y0pKQCLcBGAs/s400/24xkey.jpg
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[7]: https://github.com/kubernetes/community/blob/master/events/office-hours.md
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[8]: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1jHSnRzoOxwd1urgxwbANhNgXjMV8fb0B4NS3ZUL10IY/edit
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[9]: https://www.youtube.com/c/kubernetescommunity
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[10]: https://kubernetes.slack.com/messages/office-hours
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