Strength and appearance coexist - Interview with Liu Yu, member of Apache Pulsar PMC

Audiences who watched Pulsar Summit Asia 2021, which ended a year ago, will find that in the opening speech on the first day, there was a girl who introduced the Apache Pulsar project and community in a soft voice. This girl is the new Apache Pulsar from StreamNative. PMC member Liu Yu is also the second female PMC member of Apache Pulsar.

Life should forge ahead

Unlike most PMC members, Liu Yu is a non-code contributor. As a Technical Writer (technical documentation engineer), Liu Yu's main focus is to write "instructions" for projects, describing the content of technical development. With excellent documentation quality and community influence, Liu Yu is currently the Committer of two Apache top-level projects.

From the contact with Liu Yu, it can be found that she is willing to challenge herself and learn. Although more and more women are joining the open source industry now, the open source industry was a niche a few years ago. In 2016, Liu Yu began to participate in open source projects. At that time, the domestic open source industry had not yet started. She also hesitated whether to be a "crab eater", and finally decided to meet the challenge, transform from hardware to software, and constantly communicate with programmers, Learn, enrich your knowledge reserve in this industry, and integrate into your new career. The documents that can be seen on the Pulsar official website and some documents of the Pulsar ecosystem are all reflected by Liu Yu's contributions.

Girls watch open source

As we all know, being a Committer of an Apache project is enough to demonstrate a person's professionalism and commitment to the project. Why did Liu Yu join Pulsar after he had already become a Committer of a project? Liu Yu said that he is optimistic about this technology. Under the cloud native trend, storage separation meets the needs of enterprises.

From database (DB) to message system, Liu Yu said that DB is more fun, interactive, and more infrastructure-oriented, but the Pulsar community is more active. From a woman's perspective, she gives full play to the natural advantages of women in the community: listening, empathy, high fault tolerance and flexibility. Liu Yu is a very active open source person: communicate with other influential communities; initiate PIP in the community; communicate with community contributors from all over the world; organize technical documentation engineers to share experience; participate in community operations... It is not a small probability for women to participate in open source. GitHub COOs are women. It can also be seen at the domestic open source annual conference and many activities that many women play the roles of community document engineers and operators. The current open source community is more diverse and interesting, bringing a more complete open source experience for good. Non-coders can also participate in the community and have a lot of influence.

Building a community, making a big difference

As a member of PMC who has been actively building the community, Liu Yu also has many suggestions and reflections on the diversified development of the community. The Apache community has a purpose of "Community over code", Liu Yu brought this interpretation:

• The first layer of meaning: the open source community is not only crowdfunding code, nor is it a personal hero. Many people only believe in technology and do not care about community operations; many people only read books and do not plant trees, separating theory from practice. A good community is reflected in all aspects of content operation and event operation.
• The second level of meaning: the open source community is not only one acre and one third of the land. Open source itself is an efficient production relationship. In order to allow more people to distribute and use good technologies, there are open source licenses and commercial companies; in order to create a better community and ecology, it is not only necessary to cultivate talents and optimize development, It is also necessary to cultivate a good open source concept and environment.
• The third layer of meaning: non-code farmers are also one of the main forces participating in the community. Many non-coders are still on the sidelines. It's better to "get your hands dirty", get more contact and exercise more. Only by taking the first step can we make a qualitative leap. From the perspective of professional document contribution, not only product managers, product operations and other occupations are suitable for document contribution, but anyone can. As a user, whether you are professional or not, you have your own perspective. Issues and suggestions have great value and significance.

The open source community has users and developers from all over the world, so everyone will discuss in English through the mailing list. We have heard many people say it is difficult to cross the language barrier more than once, but Liu Yu is a counter-example. Poor English and timidity are normal human beings. "Don't be so demanding of yourself, and participate . In fact, others will not be as demanding of you as you are of ." Some people also expressed that they did not care or did not want to participate. Liu Yu also had a different view on this: "We need to think more about the value of work instead of just completing it. You will find that there are many things worth communicating with others in the community. and will benefit greatly.”

Now domestic open source communities are actively absorbing female power and optimizing projects from different gender perspectives. To create a diverse community and reach more women, Liu Yu suggested that everyone first try to explore the direction they are good at. At the same time, the community can also initiate women's activities, such as building a women's forum, setting up a women's activity fund, etc., to encourage women to participate in open source.

Building Pulsar Documentation

Finally, Liu Yu called on everyone to make documentation contributions. In the new year, she will actively cultivate the "documentation first" culture, system and concept with the community. At present, the community has launched several PIPs to create a better document experience and make it more self-help like a dictionary: PIP 98, PIP 116 are Pulsar document writing guidelines; PIP 112 is designed to automatically generate release notes; PIP 87 is about updating and upgrading Pulsar A proposal for a framework for a website. The documentation is also categorized by role: beginner, developer, administrator (user), and so on. You are welcome to make suggestions for the document during use, brainstorm ideas, and jointly optimize the document experience.

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