Open source communities are a celebration of our different cultures. The single reason open source communities are able to build and ship software like Kubernetes, which is used so widely, is because of the collaboration of people from all around the globe.

This also means a lot of challenges when people are working together, like language barriers, cultural differences and timezones. In this talk I'll be sharing some lessons I've learnt about fostering open source communities amidst the differences. In the last two years, serving in the K8s release team and as the SIG Docs New Contributor Ambassador, I've experienced first hand how challenges like language barriers can hinder enthusiastic contributors. This talk is about these different challenges and how we can overcome them.

In an effort to inspire everyone in the open source community to embrace our differences and welcome everyone as we work together, I'm learning Nihongo to attempt giving this talk in the Japanese language.