Habeeb Babasulaiman's Speaker Profile @ Sessionize

From Barriers to Breakthroughs: Building Cloud-Native Impact from a Low-Resource Environment

Contributing to open source can feel intimidating—but it’s the fastest way to 10x your growth as a developer. In this session, I’ll share how I went from coding, struggling with devops and deploying production grade applications on a phone (https://x.com/iyanda2234/status/1812110963711050097) to contributing to LinuxFoundation projects like OpenStack Ironic & Bifrost: bossfreeman9@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://review.opendev.org/q/owner:bossfreeman9@gmail.com
and patch bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/~freemanboss mentoring at She Code Africa Lagos: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sca-lagos_scalagos-devops-technicaldeepdive-activity-7342914010343792640-Gr2y
, authoring tutorials: https://medium.com/@habeebbabasulaiman_39135/.
We’ll explore how beginners can start with programs like LFX, Outreachy, MLH, and OnlyDust, stay consistent until they become core contributors, and leverage CNCF projects like Kubernetes, OpenTelemetry, and OpenStack to unlock global opportunities—from mentorship to international conferences.

This talk draws from my lived experience of learning, building, and deploying production-grade applications entirely on a mobile phone using Termux and Neovim for two years (https://x.com/iyanda2234/status/1812110963711050097
), before eventually contributing to large-scale open source ecosystems like OpenStack Ironic & Bifrost (bossfreeman9@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://review.opendev.org/q/owner:bossfreeman9@gmail.com
) and reporting bugs on Launchpad (https://bugs.launchpad.net/~freemanboss
).

Technical Requirements: Projector, stable internet connection, and permission for live demos or pre-recorded videos showing open source contribution workflows (Gerrit + GitHub).
Target Audience: Early-career developers, DevOps engineers, and students from underrepresented or low-resource regions looking to enter open source and cloud-native communities.
First Delivery: Adapted from open source mentorship sessions conducted at She Code Africa Lagos (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sca-lagos_scalagos-devops-technicaldeepdive-activity-7342914010343792640-Gr2y
) and technical mentorship at ALX Africa (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_as-a-community-champion-at-alx-while-tutoring-activity-7294235175490617344-B1E9
).

Community & Advocacy Work:

MIT AI Global Hackathon Ambassador – promoting African participation in global innovation (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_mit-hacknation-ai-activity-7382700188538146816-8OAR
)

AWS Cloud Club Maintainer (UNILORIN) – leading contributions to the official website (https://github.com/AWSCC-Unilorin/Official_website
)

Open Source Contributions: NFTOPIA (https://github.com/NFTopia-Foundation/nftopia
), Veritix-Python (https://github.com/Lead-Studios/veritix-python
), and Layer5 / Meshery (https://github.com/layer5io/layer5/pulls/FreemanBoss
)

Preferred Duration: 25 minutes (20-minute talk + 5-minute Q&A).
Presentation Format: Storytelling, technical walkthroughs, and practical strategies for beginners to enter and grow within CNCF and Linux Foundation ecosystems.

Previous Speaking Highlights:

Hacktoberfest 2025 – Open Source 101: https://bit.ly/alx9ja-se-hub-Open-Source-101-HacktoberFest-2025

AWS Community Day West Africa 2025: https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf

DevFest Ilorin 2025 (Volunteer & Speaker): https://gdg.community.dev/gdg-ilorin/

Demystifying CI/CD: A Hands-On Journey with GitHub Actions

CI/CD (Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment) is the heartbeat of modern software delivery — but for many developers, it still feels complex and intimidating. In this session, “Demystifying CI/CD: A Hands-On Journey with GitHub Actions”, we’ll break down the concepts into simple, actionable steps that anyone can understand and apply.

Drawing from my experience teaching CI/CD pipelines at She Code Africa Lagos, I’ll guide attendees through building a real-world CI/CD workflow with GitHub Actions. We’ll cover:

The fundamentals of CI/CD and why it matters for developers and teams.

How to automate testing, deployment, and monitoring directly from your GitHub repository.

Common pitfalls developers face with pipelines and how to overcome them.

Practical demos that show how CI/CD can accelerate development and improve collaboration.

By the end of this session, attendees will not only understand CI/CD — they’ll be ready to implement their own pipelines with confidence. Whether you’re new to DevOps or looking to refine your delivery process, this session will give you the knowledge and tools to ship faster, safer, and smarter.

This session is inspired by my DevOps mentorship and technical training experiences at She Code Africa Lagos (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sca-lagos_scalagos-devops-technicaldeepdive-activity-7342914010343792640-Gr2y
), where I’ve taught over 100+ women engineers the fundamentals of CI/CD using GitHub Actions and Docker. It expands on the same practical principles applied in my projects, including Handyman App (https://github.com/kiuvert39/Handyman_backend
) and Personal CRM AI project (https://github.com/FreemanBoss/personal_crm
), demonstrating real-world DevOps workflows.

Target Audience: Developers, DevOps beginners, and technical teams aiming to understand or adopt CI/CD automation practices using GitHub Actions.
Technical Requirements: Live demo of GitHub Actions pipelines or pre-recorded video walkthrough with YAML configurations.
First Delivery: First presented during internal DevOps bootcamps and mentoring sessions at She Code Africa Lagos.
Previous Speaking Sessions:

Hacktoberfest 2025 – Open Source 101 (https://bit.ly/alx9ja-se-hub-Open-Source-101-HacktoberFest-2025
)

AWS Community Day West Africa 2025 (https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf
)

DevFest Ilorin 2025 (upcoming session).

Community & Open Source Involvement:
Contributor to OpenStack Ironic & Bifrost (bossfreeman9@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://review.opendev.org/q/owner:bossfreeman9@gmail.com
), Layer5 (Meshery) (https://github.com/layer5io/layer5/pulls/FreemanBoss
), and AWS Cloud Club UNILORIN Maintainer (https://github.com/AWSCC-Unilorin/Official_website
).
Also served as an MIT AI Global Hackathon Ambassador (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_mit-hacknation-ai-activity-7382700188538146816-8OAR
) and ALX Backend Tutor (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_as-a-community-champion-at-alx-while-tutoring-activity-7294235175490617344-B1E9
).

Presentation Format: Live demo and code walkthrough using sample GitHub Actions CI/CD pipelines, Dockerized apps, and deployment to a cloud environment.

Demystifying Bare-Metal in the Cloud Native Era with OpenStack Ironic

As AI, edge, and high-performance workloads surge, teams are rediscovering that cloud-native doesn’t always mean virtualized. Bare metal is powering modern Kubernetes clusters—from training LLMs to running latency-critical edge apps—but its role is often overlooked.

In this talk, I share how OpenStack Ironic brings bare-metal provisioning into the cloud-native conversation. Attendees will learn how Ironic integrates with CNCF tools such as Kubernetes, Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and Argo CD to deliver secure, observable, and automated hardware-level orchestration. Drawing from my real-world contributions to Ironic & Bifrost and community mentorship, I’ll show how to bridge legacy infrastructure with cloud-native pipelines using Terraform, GitOps, and CI/CD.

This session blends story and strategy—from writing code on a phone to contributing upstream—to demonstrate that open source levels the playing field. Participants will leave with practical patterns for deploying and managing Kubernetes-ready bare-metal clusters, reducing cost while increasing performance and transparency across environments.

This talk builds on my direct contributions to OpenStack Ironic & Bifrost, core projects under the OpenInfra Foundation (now part of CNCF), where I contributed to code reviews, bug reporting, and release documentation efforts:

OpenStack Ironic Contributions: bossfreeman9@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://review.opendev.org/q/owner:bossfreeman9@gmail.com

Launchpad Profile for Reported Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/~freemanboss

Technical Requirements:

Projector and stable internet connection (for optional demo showcasing provisioning via Ironic and Bifrost).

Pre-recorded or live code demo highlighting integration of Ironic with Kubernetes and GitOps workflows.

Target Audience:

Cloud engineers, DevOps practitioners, and contributors interested in bare-metal provisioning within modern CNCF ecosystems.

Open source developers exploring interoperability between OpenStack, Kubernetes, and CNCF observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and Argo CD).

First Delivery:
Based on learnings from my contributions to Ironic, and mentorship experiences at She Code Africa Lagos (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sca-lagos_scalagos-devops-technicaldeepdive-activity-7342914010343792640-Gr2y
) and ALX Software Engineering (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_as-a-community-champion-at-alx-while-tutoring-activity-7294235175490617344-B1E9
).

Community & Advocacy Work:

Contributor to CNCF and Linux Foundation ecosystems via projects such as Layer5 / Meshery (https://github.com/layer5io/layer5/pulls/FreemanBoss
), NFTOPIA (https://github.com/NFTopia-Foundation/nftopia
), and Veritix-Python (https://github.com/Lead-Studios/veritix-python
).

AWS Cloud Club Maintainer for UNILORIN (https://github.com/AWSCC-Unilorin/Official_website
) and community speaker at AWS Community Day West Africa 2025 (https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf
).

Selected MIT AI Global Hackathon Ambassador, promoting African participation in AI and open innovation (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_mit-hacknation-ai-activity-7382700188538146816-8OAR
).

Preferred Duration: 30 minutes (25-minute talk + 5-minute Q&A).
Presentation Format: Technical walkthrough combining demos, visual diagrams, and narrative storytelling—from low-resource environments to contributing upstream to OpenInfra and CNCF.

Previous Speaking Highlights:

Hacktoberfest 2025 – Open Source 101: https://bit.ly/alx9ja-se-hub-Open-Source-101-HacktoberFest-2025

AWS Community Day West Africa 2025: https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf

DevFest Ilorin 2025 (Organizer & Speaker): https://gdg.community.dev/gdg-ilorin/

Breaking Into Open Source: How GSOC, LFX, Outreachy, MLH, and OnlyDust Can Transform Your Career

Breaking into open source can feel intimidating, especially for beginners — but it doesn’t have to be. In this talk, I’ll share practical, proven strategies on how anyone can get started in open source and use it as a launchpad to grow their skills, build global networks, and unlock life-changing opportunities.

We’ll explore how programs like GSOC, Outreachy, MLH Fellowship, LFX Mentorship, and OnlyDust lower the barriers to entry, giving contributors structured pathways to meaningful projects while connecting them with world-class maintainers. I’ll highlight CNCF’s and opensource ecosystem — from OpenStack, Kubernetes, and OpenTelemetry to newer projects shaping the AI-driven era — and show how they’re not just tools, but communities driving the future of technology.

Drawing from my own journey — contributing to OpenStack Ironic and Bifrost, mentoring with She Code Africa Lagos, and engaging with AWS Cloud Club Unilorin among other community — I’ll share actionable tips on:

How to craft applications that stand out for open source programs

How to get your first PR merged and stay consistent in a project

How open source contributions can lead to international opportunities like KubeCon, OpenInfra Summit, and beyond

Why loyalty and persistence in a community can 10x your developer growth and even lead to paid open source work

Attendees will leave this session with a clear roadmap to kickstart (or scale) their open source journey, plus the confidence to transform from consumers of tech into global contributors shaping the future.

This talk builds on my direct contributions to OpenStack Ironic & Bifrost, core projects under the OpenInfra Foundation (now part of CNCF), where I contributed to code reviews, bug reporting, and release documentation efforts:

OpenStack Ironic Contributions: bossfreeman9@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://review.opendev.org/q/owner:bossfreeman9@gmail.com

Launchpad Profile for Reported Bugs: https://bugs.launchpad.net/~freemanboss

Technical Requirements:

Projector and stable internet connection (for optional demo showcasing provisioning via Ironic and Bifrost).

Pre-recorded or live code demo highlighting integration of Ironic with Kubernetes and GitOps workflows.

Target Audience:

Cloud engineers, DevOps practitioners, and contributors interested in bare-metal provisioning within modern CNCF ecosystems.

Open source developers exploring interoperability between OpenStack, Kubernetes, and CNCF observability tools (e.g., Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and Argo CD).

First Delivery:
Based on learnings from my contributions to Ironic, and mentorship experiences at She Code Africa Lagos (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sca-lagos_scalagos-devops-technicaldeepdive-activity-7342914010343792640-Gr2y
) and ALX Software Engineering (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_as-a-community-champion-at-alx-while-tutoring-activity-7294235175490617344-B1E9
).

Community & Advocacy Work:

Contributor to CNCF and Linux Foundation ecosystems via projects such as Layer5 / Meshery (https://github.com/layer5io/layer5/pulls/FreemanBoss
), NFTOPIA (https://github.com/NFTopia-Foundation/nftopia
), and Veritix-Python (https://github.com/Lead-Studios/veritix-python
).

AWS Cloud Club Maintainer for UNILORIN (https://github.com/AWSCC-Unilorin/Official_website
) and community speaker at AWS Community Day West Africa 2025 (https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf
).

Selected MIT AI Global Hackathon Ambassador, promoting African participation in AI and open innovation (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_mit-hacknation-ai-activity-7382700188538146816-8OAR
).

Preferred Duration: 30 minutes (25-minute talk + 5-minute Q&A).
Presentation Format: Technical walkthrough combining demos, visual diagrams, and narrative storytelling—from low-resource environments to contributing upstream to OpenInfra and CNCF.

Previous Speaking Highlights:

Hacktoberfest 2025 – Open Source 101: https://bit.ly/alx9ja-se-hub-Open-Source-101-HacktoberFest-2025

AWS Community Day West Africa 2025: https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf

DevFest Ilorin 2025 (Volunteer & Speaker): https://gdg.community.dev/gdg-ilorin/

Achieving Zero-Downtime Delivery on EKS with Argo Rollouts: Blue-Green and Canary in Practice

In modern DevOps, zero downtime isn’t a luxury—it’s a necessity. This session walks through how Argo CD and Argo Rollouts enable seamless, production-grade blue-green and canary deployments on Amazon EKS. Drawing from real-world experience leading the Zero Downtime Deployment on EKS project, I’ll share how GitOps principles, observability tooling, and Kubernetes-native automation come together to ensure reliability at scale.

We’ll break down practical workflows for integrating Argo into CI/CD pipelines, achieving automated rollbacks, and validating progressive delivery strategies—without vendor lock-in. Whether you’re a DevOps engineer, SRE, or platform builder, you’ll leave with actionable templates, mental models, and a repeatable playbook for safe, continuous delivery in cloud-native environments.

This session is based on the Zero Downtime Deployment on EKS project (https://github.com/FreemanBoss/zero-downtime-deployment-eks
) and accompanying technical article (https://medium.com/@chisomjude0205/zero-downtime-deployments-on-eks-blue-green-and-canary-strategies-c30bd49f2316
).
linkedln: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_kubernetes-aws-devops-activity-7381973530562863104-kT4V

It demonstrates hands-on implementation of Argo CD and Argo Rollouts for progressive delivery and rollback automation on Amazon EKS clusters using GitOps best practices.

Target Audience: DevOps engineers, cloud-native developers, SREs, and platform teams seeking reliable CI/CD deployment strategies.
Technical Requirements: Live demo access (optional) or slides with YAML configurations and ArgoCD rollout visuals.

Previous Speaking Sessions:

AWS Community Day West Africa 2025 (https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf)

She Code Africa Lagos – DevOps Deep Dive (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sca-lagos_scalagos-devops-technicaldeepdive-activity-7342914010343792640-Gr2y
)

Hacktoberfest Open Source 101 (https://bit.ly/alx9ja-se-hub-Open-Source-101-HacktoberFest-2025
)

Community & Open Source Involvement:
Active contributor to CNCF and Linux Foundation projects such as OpenStack Bifrost (bossfreeman9@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://review.opendev.org/q/owner:bossfreeman9@gmail.com
), Layer5 Meshery, NFTOPIA (https://github.com/NFTopia-Foundation/nftopia
), and Veritix (https://github.com/Lead-Studios/veritix-python
).
Mentor at She Code Africa Lagos and maintainer of AWS Cloud Club UNILORIN (https://github.com/AWSCC-Unilorin/Official_website
).
Also served as MIT AI Ambassador (https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_mit-hacknation-ai-activity-7382700188538146816-8OAR
).

Presentation Format: Technical deep dive with visual workflows, YAML samples, and real-world CI/CD architecture diagrams.

Breathing New Life into Documentation: Lessons from Revitalizing OpenStack’s Docs

In large open source projects, code often evolves faster than the documentation meant to explain it. Over time, critical docs become outdated, fragmented, or forgotten—leaving new contributors struggling to find their way.

Drawing from my hands-on experience contributing to OpenStack Ironic and Bifrost under the OpenInfra Foundation also under Linux Foundation, I’ll share the real-world process of bringing documentation back to life in a complex ecosystem involving hundreds of contributors and multiple release cycles.

This talk will walk attendees through:

Spotting decay — how to identify documentation debt and prioritize what truly matters.

Building collaboration — practical methods to align maintainers, developers, and writers around shared documentation goals.

Sustaining momentum — using versioning, contributor onboarding, and review cycles to ensure documentation stays relevant long after the first update.

More than just improving text, this session explores how documentation can shape community health, drive inclusivity, and reduce contributor friction—making open source projects easier to navigate and contribute to.

Whether you’re a developer, writer, or project maintainer, you’ll leave with concrete techniques and cultural insights to help you build and sustain better documentation practices—one commit at a time.

This session targets technical writers, developers, and open-source contributors who want to learn how documentation can scale sustainably across large distributed teams.

This talk, but is rooted in my hands-on experience contributing documentation and code to OpenStack Ironic & Bifrost, major OpenInfra Foundation projects under the Linux Foundation

Gerrit contributions: bossfreeman9@gmail.com" rel="nofollow" target="_blank">https://review.opendev.org/q/owner:bossfreeman9@gmail.com

Bug reports: https://bugs.launchpad.net/~freemanboss

Technical setup: Standard presentation projector and audio; slides will include documentation architecture, community workflows, and real contributor examples.

Preferred duration: 30 minutes (standard conference slot).

Target audience: Technical writers, engineers, DevRel professionals, and community organizers involved in documentation-heavy open source projects.

Previous speaking engagements and community impact:

Hacktoberfest Open Source 101 (ALX Nigeria): https://bit.ly/alx9ja-se-hub-Open-Source-101-HacktoberFest-2025

She Code Africa Lagos (DevOps Deep Dive): https://www.linkedin.com/posts/sca-lagos_scalagos-devops-technicaldeepdive-activity-7342914010343792640-Gr2y

AWS Community Day West Africa 2025 volunteer Speaker: https://www.youtube.com/live/2k2kd0njoTY?si=yXXAaMiQHj-EPEqf

MIT AI Global Hackathon Ambassador: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_mit-hacknation-ai-activity-7382700188538146816-8OAR

ALX Software Engineering Tutor & Community Champion: https://www.linkedin.com/posts/habeeb-babasulaiman_as-a-community-champion-at-alx-while-tutoring-activity-7294235175490617344-B1E9

Why this session matters:
As a maintainer, writer, and open-source advocate, I’ve seen how documentation drives adoption and diversity in global projects. Through initiatives like AWS Cloud Club UNILORIN (https://www.meetup.com/aws-cloud-club-at-the-university-of-ilorin
) and mentorship at She Code Africa, I help newcomers bridge the gap between contribution and comprehension — ensuring docs remain a living, evolving part of open source.

Goal:
To inspire a new wave of documentation contributors in Africa and globally by showing that good docs don’t just explain code — they build communities that sustain it.

Speaker

Habeeb Babasulaiman

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