Intro

Contributing to Open Source is easier than ever - especially because contributions are needed for documentation, demos, tutorials and code. But how to get started? Where to look for "first good issues"? Is everyone welcome? What are the prerequisites?
Tune in and hear from Diana Todea, Developer Experience Engineer at Victoria Metrics, on how within a year she made it from Zero to Developer and receiving the Contributor Award for OpenTelemetry 2025 at KubeCon Atlanta. Diana shares her journey, how she started, how she found the right topic and how she keeps herself motivated. Diana is also the Co-lead of the Neurodiversity CNCF Working Group and gives us insights into the Merge Forward community. 
And don't forget: Call for Papers for Cloud Native Days Romania and Austria are open and both Diana and Andi would be glad to see your proposals!
So - what are you waiting for?

Links we discussed:
Diana's LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/diana-todea-b2a79968/ 
From Zero to Developer Talk: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nPrxpEE5GpY 
Contributor Award: https://siliconangle.com/2025/11/13/accessibility-meets-open-source-collaboration-kubeconna/ 
Her latest CNCF Blog Post: https://www.cncf.io/blog/2025/12/04/my-first-kubecon-cloudnativecon-a-journey-through-community-inclusivity-and-neurodiversity/
Start contributing to Open Source: https://contribute.cncf.io/contributors/getting-started/ 
Diana's Conference Talks: https://github.com/didiViking/Conferences_Talks 
Diana on Medium: https://medium.com/@dianatodea/ 
Articles on OpenTelemetry for beginners: 
https://medium.com/@dianatodea/the-unofficial-guide-to-contributing-to-opentelemetry-where-to-look-and-who-to-talk-to-9de04ae75fe0 
CNCF Merge-Forward: https://community.cncf.io/merge-forward
CNCF Neurodiversity initiative: https://community.cncf.io/neurodiversity 
Cloud Native Days Romania: https://cloudnativedays.ro/
Cloud Native Days Austria: https://cloudnativedays.at/