I’ve learned a lot of valuable lessons in 2019, this blog post it is just a quick summary of the year and my experiences while working with Open Source technologies such as Kubernetes, Zeebe, Jenkins X, Spring Cloud, Camunda BPM, JHipster, KubeBuilder, etc.

Stay Focused / Reduce Stress

During 2019, I’ve faced a lot of challenges around finding the right activities to focus on. Being on the road presenting, being involved in several projects which require active development, preparing new proposals, and engaging with different communities lead me to not being able to make progress or even finding which were the key initiatives that really deserved my attention.

Lucky, in the second half of 2019, I was fortunate enough to meet new friends that helped me to stay focused and reduce stress levels. In general, this was achieved by choosing the right things to do, the right conferences to present at and the right way to scope and measure progress around my work.

Company Culture is a must

It can make such a difference when you are in a company that has the right culture, you immediately notice the change. Camunda has over-delivered in this angle. I’ve definitely learned a big lesson in 2019, technology matters but without the right culture, it is impossible to sustain or even find the right path and speed to achieve great things. As has been said before, culture is ever-shifting and based on people, so it feels to me that I am up to keep learning on how the company cultivates and improve its culture as it grows.

Keep Learning + Keep Sharing

In 2019, I’ve decided that I wanted to be out of my comfort zone and I set up some projects to learn new things. After being in the Java ecosystem for such a long time, I’ve decided to start with GoLang and this opened the door for a lot of new interactions and also set me up for learning new things in 2020.

A big part of 2019 was to go out and meet other developers and smart people to understand how they are tackling their Cloud-Native journey, I had the pleasure to present in the following conferences/meetups:

• MadridJUG, Spain, Dec 19
• CoimbraJUG, Portugal, Dec 19
• Jenkins World Lisbon, Portugal, Dec 19
• Jenkins X Webinar 19 (Online), Nov 19
• KubeCon US San Diego 19 / CD Foundation Summit, USA, Nov 19
• SouJava Webinar 19 (Online), Nov 19
• GeeCon Prague 19, Prague, Czech Republic, Oct 19
• London Java Community Meetup 19, London, UK, Sept 19
• Jenkins World San Francisco, USA, Aug 19
• JHipster Conf Paris, France – June 19
• JBCNConf, Barcelona, Spain – May 19
• La Plata University Meetup, Mar del Plata, Argentina – March 19
• Healthcare in Gov Meetup, Buenos Aires, Argentina – March 19
• London DevOps Meetup, London, UK – March 19
• Alfresco DevCon, Dublin, Ireland, Jan 19

Where my last presentation of the year focused on the path from a Java Monolith to Kubernetes focusing on two tools that can make your life easier: Jenkins X for CI/CD on Kubernetes and Zeebe for MicroServices and Functions Orchestration in Kubernetes.

I am still blown away by speaking at KubeCon US in front of 4000+ people. So it is worth mentioning that I had a lot of fun Learning and Sharing being part of LearnK8s.io, in 2020 I expect this relationship to grow and I hope to be able to meet all the LearnK8s team face to face.

What’s next

There are several things coming my way on 2020, Kubernetes and Orchestration is still my main focus, but I want to focus on getting heavily involved with new communities where I am still a newbie. You can expect the Zeebe Kubernetes Operator to evolve iteratively along with the Zeebe Helm Charts as there is a lot of work to do on those fronts. I am really interested in making the life of Developers using these tools as simple as possible, so if you are looking into these tools get in touch and we can work together on some cool projects.

I will not spoil too much now but stay tuned for more news. I will try to keep my twitter updated with 2020 conferences, so I am looking forward to meeting you all.