This article is part of a series of articles focusing on SUSE Documentation and the minds that create the manuals, guides, quick starts, best practices and many more helpful documents. The content of this article has been contributed by Amrita Sakthivel, Senior Technical Writer at the SUSE Documentation Team.

Bonjour mes amis, I am Amrita. I am Indian by descent but an African by heart. My dad was a professor in Physics and Electronics, and he worked as an expatriate in Tanzania and Zambia, both well-known countries in Africa. I was born in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania, and brought up in Zambia.

We were a small family of a younger brother and I plus two Dobermans. Over the course of time, we had rabbits, Guinea pigs, cats, birds, and an unwanted snake.

Growing up as an introvert

My childhood and teen years have been in Zambia, and I was obviously influenced by the culture. I could speak Bemba, which is one of the 72 languages in Zambia. There was a small community of Indian people whom we used to meet on a regular basis for occasions.

I spent my entire teens trying to find my identity and blend in with societal expectations. In the process I lost the true essence of me. It is only when I read Quiet: The Power of Introverts in a world that can stop talking by Susan Cain, I realized how important it is to be myself and, most importantly, to understand I am an introvert. I really identified with what I read and being authentic to myself.

I truly appreciate my upbringing I am a mix of both and very happy with that.

My true calling?

Growing up, I was not yet sure what I wanted to do. I ended up doing a Bachelor of Science in Land Economy. It was a five-year course and in the first year, I had to choose a specialization. Dad was keen on me doing Architecture but somehow, I struggled with layouts, diagrams etc. Thus, I chose Land Economy.

The path is never clear when one is a teenager. Post my degree, I went to India, Bangalore where I studied e-commerce. In 2000, it was a much in demand expertise and I ended up with a company named EASi, now known as Actalent. I worked there for one year. It was there that some colleagues recognized my flair for English and the written word. But at that point, I was not focused or serious.

Moving to the UK

Then I moved to the UK and lived there for five years. During my first year, I worked in a retail company, specifically on their Web site on sales and orders. Daily I used to take the train and tube to commute from East Ham to Central London. It was a great experience working with people from diverse backgrounds.

Writing is my true calling

Since my daughter was small, I worked as a freelancer for upwork.com mostly on content writing assignments.

Since my childhood I have been a voracious book reader and fascinated by complex words. I went into full time work as a content writer when my daughter was old enough.

During a research phase, I came across ‘real technical writing’ and the more I read I got hooked.  Thus, I decided to invest in a three-month tech writing course where I learnt all the ropes.

Introduction to Fedora, RHEL and OPEN SOURCE

The first time I heard about open source and Linux was when I joined Red Hat. I related so much to the principles of open source: collaboration, transparency, inclusive meritocracy and community. Being able to make a difference is what resonated with me. And Red Hat advocated open management principles and flat hierarchy.

As a technical writer, my platform was initially Red Hat Enterprise Linux. Then I switched to Fedora, and this was my first introduction to Linux projects and distros. Coming from a Windows background, using the bash shell was terrifying. But after three and half years of using it, I would never go back to Windows.

I worked on two products portfolios during my tenure; software defined storage and OpenShift Container platform – a platform to develop and build container applications.

My most notable achievement is contributing to the GA of the Agent Based Installer via documentation – and I was the only writer for the project. I learnt a lot from collaborating with the engineers, QE, product manager, content strategist, and all stakeholders.

One fine day I was contacted by a SUSE recruiter via LinkedIn. I was aware of SUSE before as well mainly because SUSE is Red Hat’s competitor in the Linux ecosystem. During the interview phase, I observed a lot of similarities between Red Hat and SUSE specifically as to open source and communities. I cleared the interviews and joined the SUSE documentation team at the beginning of March as a Senior Technical Writer for the products and solutions vertical for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server. And it feels like being part of the team since ages 😃.

What does a technical writer do?

Speaking from my experience, my job is to document a feature, technology or solution from the user perspective, so I must be aware of the user audience that I am targeting.

I must understand the workflow of this feature, technology or solution and the optimal usage of it. I also test the technology to be described in a simulated environment, currently on a virtual machine via KVM (Kernel-based Virtual Machine). Then I work on a draft content description. This is then reviewed by SMEs (Subject Matter Experts). And when my write-up is good to go, it finds its way into a guide, manual or article.

For my workflow I use:

• Bash Shell
• Git
• GitHub
• KVM
• VS-Code

My interests

I’m into art, specifically sketch notes as it’s very therapeutic. I listen to a mix of music and not any specific genre. I am a fan of Alan Walker and David Guetta. Growing up, I have been influenced by Snoop, Dr. Dre, Bon Jovi to name a few artists. I also like to read books and The fountainhead by Ayn Rand is an exceptional one. I am a cat lover and have a five-year-old Persian named Pluto. I am a mother to a teen, she’s 18 and getting into university in August.

I love to travel to experience different cultures and ways of living. I have been to Zambia, Thailand, the UK and Ireland. Next on my bucket list is Vietnam. One day I hope to travel to my birth country, Tanzania and explore countries like Egypt and Turkey.

The content of this article has been contributed by Jana Jaeger, Project Manager at the SUSE Documentation Team.

Most of the SUSE doc folks ended up on the team by happy accident. That is exactly what happened to me. Not to bore you with my bio too much, here are some (random) facts about what makes me tick. 

Pre-SUSE

For as long as I remember, I have been utterly fascinated by science. My earliest dream job was becoming an astronaut flying around in space doing all sorts of cool experiments. That dream was shattered pretty quickly when I witnessed the Challenger disaster on live TV.

Much to the horror of my parents, my next career plan focused on becoming an archeologist after my secondary school history teacher got me hooked on anything (pre-)historic. The probability of ending in a giant fireball somewhere between Earth and outer space is next to zero for archeologists, but so is the probability of making a living as an archeologist.

Once I started having biology and chemistry lessons in school, I discovered a new passion. I had excellent teachers who encouraged us to go for the behind-the-scenes aspects of things, to really dig deeper, to come up with our own theories and then successfully prove or disprove them. That got me hooked then and still does that to this day. Maybe no more in the field of biochemistry, though.

So, when I got my A-levels, it was really a question of choosing between archeology and biochemistry, and after a serious chat with a career counsellor, I moved to Kaiserslautern and studied Botany, Biochemistry and Molecular Genetics. These years will forever be the best of my life, including a three-month internship at the Alfred-Wegener-Institute of Polar Research.

I loved the field work, building my own experiments—hell, even the endless hours spent on a remote terminal connected to a VAXstation aligning DNA sequences.

When writing my diploma thesis, I encountered my first S.u.S.E distro ever (probably 6.1 or 6.2). Fiddling with LaTeX, gnuplot and xfig still took less time than what my mates spent on wrangling their MS Office or FrameMaker into submission. 

After that, I was pondering whether and where to begin a possible PhD when SUSE started looking for an editor for their fledging SUSE Linux Knowlegde Portal…

Early SUSE days

In October 2000, I joined the SUSE ranks as a portal editor for the SUSE Linux Knowledge Portal with no editorial experience at all. The following months are among the most stressful ones of my entire life. While my then boss, Frank Rennemann, worked furiously to get the software up and running, I had fun writing 3+ articles per week, translating some of them, and doing my own editing. For a few glorious months, we had great fun and enjoyed the overall enthusiastic reception of our work from the public and, after some initial skepticism, even from our SUSE colleagues. I loved researching topics, putting myself into our readers’ shoes, and tailoring our content to their needs. When the portal was discontinued in 2001, I had surely gained tons of writing and editing experience. Thanks to all folks at SUSE who put their faith in me then and really encouraged me to go for new challenges.

After a brief stint at Tanner AG where I met my friend and then and now colleague, Tanja Roth, I rejoined SUSE to spend the next 8 years writing for SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for IBM zSeries, and for what later became SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop. The next years were fantastic—writing and fighting alongside as part of the best team of writers in the world ;). 

Post-SUSE

When I left SUSE after my first maternity leave in 2009, I joined B1 Systems GmbH where I started out writing and editing training materials but ended up doing all sorts of things including (tech) writing and editing, marketing and graphics design, and project and event management. Not one day in all the twelve years at B1 Systems was boring, and I feel very proud to have been a part of their extraordinary team.

Current day

In Summer 21, I was offered to return to SUSE for the second time to serve as a Technical Project Manager for Documentation along with Tanja—and this is what I’ve been doing since November 1, 2021. It’s great to be back, it’s wonderful to catch up with all the things that have changed and developed into something far more complex than back in the old days.

Off-duty me

Most of my time off is devoted to sports activity (tell that to my fifth-grade PE teacher and he’d die of laughter and wouldn’t believe a single word). When my kids started taking Taekwondo classes, I was surprised to notice that I became increasingly envious of them. So, I took up Taekwondo as well. The early days were pretty hard because my motor skills and coordination resembled those of a panda bear on speed (sorry, pandas), but almost five years later I am still having fun and just got my first black belt. (more…)

This article is part of a series of articles focusing on SUSE Documentation and the minds that create the manuals, guides, quick starts, and many more helpful documents.

Would you have told me 30 years ago that I would work soon in the area of Information Technology, I would have boisterously laughed at you. Yes, I have a master in ‘IT’ – however, in my case, this means I studied Italian Language & Literature plus Theater & Mass Media. Somehow I ended up in real IT, which is my playground for the past 27 years. But first, back to the beginning …

Start in life

I was born in Freising in Bavaria – but we lived there only for a short time. Usually I’d say: Here’s what you get when a girl from the very South with Polynesian roots meets a boy from the very North with Nordic roots – a Swabian (who are known as the ‘Scotch of Germany’). I grew up in a cute small town in Baden-Württemberg (capital: Stuttgart), I still feel ‘Swabian’, I went to school there, first elementary, then (humanistic) high school – the usual career as pupil. I definitely hated Maths and Physics. My favourite subjects were Art, Music and English, and my teachers were convinced one day I would run a gallery.

When I was young, I just wanted to be … grown-up ?. And then … a famous dancer. After I was over that, I wanted to become a movie director, journalist, foreign correspondent. And after that, I thought I should be a politician or work for the diplomatic/foreign services to help change the world for the better, and have a big impact. Until I realized that most of these guys usually don’t change the world for the better – but only for their own mastery. Finally, I decided that, whatever work I would do, the most important thing would be to like doing it and to have some impact in my own tiny little world.

Speaking about impact: I have been asked several times who (or what) had influenced me most. This is really difficult to answer. Influence happens rather unconsciously. I’d say my direct environment, parents, family, friends, even colleagues played a role here. I grew up in a household with defined values, my parents were quite liberal but communicated ethical principles. I am sure that influenced me quite a bit. Also, I don’t have real ‘role models’ or icons. But there are people that impress me, and who I admire at least for a certain character trait. Honestly, my parents are among them. My dad was a protestant pastor – more or less a 24-hours-job. Still, he always was approachable and empathic, but at the same time ‘grounded’. My mom just worked with him on all things needed. She was there, also 24 hours a day, for her family and for the parish. She always kept calm, had clear ideas, and acted accordingly. I admire Mother Teresa, the nun who devoted her life to serving the poor and destitute around the world, for her selfless work and her attitude which she put into the following words: “Not all of us can do great things. But we can do small things with great love.” And I was deeply touched by Malala Yousafzai, the Pakistani school pupil and spokesperson for women’s right to education, who was shot in the head by a Taliban gunman. During her famous UN speech she said: “I’m here to speak up for the right of education for every child. One child, one teacher, one pen and one book can change the world. Education is the only solution. Education first.” Adorable!

Life before SUSE

My very first job, when I was 13 (extra approval was needed in Germany to work at that age!), was cleaning my own school building. I so much loved to dust the skeleton in the biology hall. During my time at school and university, I then had various jobs in the gastronomy, as an assembly-line worker, in a fitness center, as interpreter at trade shows, etc.  Erlangen (Middle Franconia/Bavaria) became my city of choice, here I went to University, and here I am still living. My major fields of study were  Italian language and Mass Media. Thanks to a scholarship, I could spend parts of my student life in Parma/Italy. I also wrote my master thesis in Italy – about Silvio Berlusconi (!!) and his media empire. This was shortly before he decided to muddle the Italian politics scene up. I had the chance to personally conduct two interviews with him, and believe me (or not): at time being he had quite some charisma.

Peterhof, St. Petersburg

Right after my university degree, I lived for a while in Saint Petersburg in Russia. By chance, I had got the wonderful opportunity to do kind of an internship at the Academy of Arts and help install a small publicity bureau attached to the Academy. Living in Saint Petersburg not too long after the Iron Curtain had fallen was an exceptional experience. And better don’t ask me about the 5000 km travel by train from St. Petersburg through Russia, Belarus, Ukraine, to Caucasus – and back.

Moscow, friends from academy

Hiking Crimea

The first ‘real’ employment I had at Siemens AG  was way too cool: I was part of the team established to push the “continuous improvement process” (KVP) inside the company. This meant that, for example, we held workshops with employees to enhance the work environment, the loyalty, and ultimately the satisfaction in and productivity of the department. Then I moved to a local software engineering company because they wanted me to handle their press relation. The funny part is that I ended up doing a divided job: some press relation AND documentation and training. Not only I published press releases, but I also worked on data flow diagrams, developed user training material, and held the trainings myself. And, for the very first time, I got in contact with (drums) … LINUX and SUSE! The entire idea behind open source and a community collaborating worldwide on one common goal immediately thrilled me.

Life with SUSE

Linux and I share the same birthday – it probably was just kismet that we met. No wonder that I seized my chance when I saw a job opening from SUSE in the newspaper – they were looking to hire somebody into the Marketing /PR department for press relations. I applied for the job, and got it – strike! This was in 2000 – more than 21 years ago. The first 6 weeks I worked as PR manager, and published my first press release about SUSE Blinux, a Braille screen reader developed by our former colleague Marco Skambraks. In the meantime, we had got a new Marketing director. One fine day, he asked me if I would move over from PR to Product Marketing. Quite overrun, I said “why not, let’s try it”. And for the next years, I worked as a product marketing manager on many different and interesting topics. I am very proud that, in 2000, I was among those that brought the very first Enterprise Linux server to market – it all started in 2000 with SUSE Linux Enterprise Server for S/390 (IBM mainframes). The mainframe (today IBM Z and LinuxOne) was my first love, but I also was responsible for High Performance Computing for a very long time, and I am still addicted to this technology area, as HPC is so much impacting our daily life without us realizing it. Other topics I worked on were UNIX to Linux, SUSE Linux Enterprise Server in general, SUSE Linux Enterprise Point of Service, and also SUSE Manager. Already during my time in Product Marketing, I wrote technical feature guides, and together with subject matter experts, technical whitepapers focussing on many different topics (A NUMA API for Linux from Andi Kleen, for example, is still out there, and regularly referred to).

I passionately did the Product Marketing job for nearly 16 years. Until the documentation team “made me an offer I couldn’t refuse“. The former documentation team lead had the idea to publish a regular technical document series which would not focus on pure product documentation, but on solutions and topics not covered with our product manuals and guides. As he knew I had some experience in this field, he asked me if I would like to take over the responsibility for such a new series of documentation. Another reason to hire me into the team was the wish to increase the visibility of documentation and the importance of it in general, and to help spreading the word about the work and projects done by the engineering teams to the outside. Now I am a ‘Documentation Strategist’, and in this role, I am

• responsible for the SUSE Best Practices
• working with our colleagues from Global Solutions on the Technical Reference Documentation
• helping to standardize technical documents across our company
• trying to find new channels or media for documentation, to make it interesting and easy to access
• spreading the word about the great work that is done in documentation and engineering in general

I really love the collaboration with many different people, be it during my work on the SUSE Best Practices or Technical Reference Documentation where I cooperate with experts (from SUSE, customers or partners), on toolchain improvements with the documentation team, or on blog articles about upcoming or forgotten technologies with our engineers. They all are so experienced, they have so much knowledge to share – we just need to ‘get it out there’. And this is also where I am coming from: Communication, networking, interaction are surely my biggest strengths. I somehow have the feeling that I can still get things moving. We definitely make a difference here at SUSE – we just need to let ‘the outer space’ know! And I am in an especially privileged situation, because my SUSE documentation team is amazing – each and every single one of the team members – which makes it easy ‘going’ to work every day.

Life outside of work

Aitutaki, Cook Islands

Upolu, Western Samoa

Outside of work, my passion is traveling and getting to know other countries & cultures & languages. We’ve been to Polynesia, Melanesia, Micronesia, Latin America, North America, many parts of Europe, Asia – but not Australia so far, and there is still a lot of ‘terra incognita’ on our world map. Quite often I found myself ending up in planning travels for others ?. Of course this did not happen during the past roughly two years, unfortunately. In another life, and if I would not have been working for SUSE, I probably would own a SATA aka Special Adventure Travel Agency. Well – currently, under the pandemic situation, this would definitely not be the job with the brightest future.

Dancing is another big thing for us. Yes, ‘dusty ballroom dance’, both Standard and Latin. Rumba, Cha Cha and Paso Doble definitely drive me to the dance floor. Of course you don’t do it every day. But it is fun, takes the stress away, and helps to keep you mentally and physically fit. I fear I own more technical gadgets than my husband has shoes. I love dogs, I like snakes, and I REALLY HATE spiders! My heart beats for (and with) Queen, The Beatles, Whitney Houston, Michael Jackson, The BeeGees (yes!), Marc Anthony and generally Latin American music, but also for Björk, Puccini and Mozart (NOT for Wagner though!). I love Star Wars (NOT parts 7-9 though!) and Avatar, but also Who Am I, Forrest Gump, and Dead Poets Society. Currently, my favourite TV shows are Endeavour, Midsomer Murders, but also Dark or The Boys. I am happy when I have time to read books like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, The Great Gatsby, or Lord of the Rings, but also Boccaccio’s Decameron, de Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince“, or a novel from Hermann Hesse (NOT Kafka though!). I am addicted to (good) Musicals, but I also love to visit rock concerts or a good play.

My biggest hobby, however, probably is ‘chilling’ with my family. When we have the chance, we just sit and talk, listen to music, or sing ourselves. My son plays the guitar really well – listening to him definitely relaxes me. And this is exactly what I will do right now ?!

Disclaimer: The text at hand has not been reviewed by a native speaker. If you find typos or language mistakes, please send them to me (meike.chabowski@suse.com) – or if you like them, just keep them and feed them. ?

This article has been contributed by Julia Faltenbacher, Technical Writer at the SUSE Documentation Team.

It is part of a series of articles focusing on SUSE Documentation and the great minds that create the manuals, guides, quick starts, and many more helpful documents.

From north to south

My first job as technical writer

My name is Julia, I was born in Bremen. This beautiful old Hanseatic city is situated in the north of Germany, close to the North Sea.

When I was six years old, my parents and I moved to Rosenheim in Bavaria, which is on the southern end of Germany. Rosenheim is a rather small city, close to the Alps. I consider this my first “experience abroad”, as Bavarian people are very different to the Northern German people. They have a very strong accent and a special dialect.

It took me years to understand the Bavarian dialect, and I still can’t talk like them. And still, I am learning new Bavarian words I have never heard before.

From west to east

Maybe this very first experience of learning a new “language” created my curiosity in languages, so I signed up for translation studies in German, English and Spanish at the University of Applied Sciences in Magdeburg. This town in eastern Germany was part of the former German Democratic Republic – until the reunification of our country in 1989.

Out into the world

Skateboarding in the U.S.

While I was still at high school, I worked as an au pair in New York for a year. I lived with a lovely family in the Upper West Side. Being 18 years old, spending a year in this stunning city was one of the best times of my life. I made friends with a bunch of people, they got me into skateboarding, and I spent all my evenings and weekends hanging around and practicing my skating skills in Central Park. So I am one of the very few that did not return from the U.S. with some extra kilos ?.

If you asked me what I miss the most from this time, it would definitely be Central Park and all its people – if it fit into my suitcase, I would have taken this great spot with me back to Germany.

During my studies I spent a year in Valencia, Spain, which was just the right thing to do to gain expert level of the Spanish language… and of course I enjoyed very much the Spanish way of life, dancing and music. One of my most sparkling memories is the inauguration ceremony of the Ciutat de les Arts i les Ciències where there was a free concert from Björk – her music and the stunning architecture went together really, really well.

Mount Bromo, Java, Indonesia

I also spent half a year in Puebla, Mexico, where I did an internship as a translator at Volkswagen de Mexico S.A. Puebla is located south of Mexico City, at an elevation of 2.135 m, and close to the volcano Popocatépetl. Amongst all the places I have been to, I like Mexico the most.

I love this place – they just have everything: forest, jungle, the most beautiful beaches, volcanos, and many, many amazing historic sites. I love Mexican music, I love the Mexican people, and I adore the food (always with «sal y limon» on top). This is also where I discovered my love of volcanos. And since then I (almost) only choose travel destinations where there is at least one volcano – like Indonesia, Cabo verde, and Sicily ?.

Back home and into the world of Linux and open source

After I finished my translation studies, I first worked for a translation agency which also develops translation tools. During my studies I focused on terminology work, so my first job was to advise customers on terminology questions, and help them to implement terminology tools and processes. In 2008 I moved to Nuremberg. Since then I have worked for several software companies, setting up translation tools and processes for the localization of UI -strings, user documentation and marketing materials. I also did further training in technical writing at the University of Applied Sciences in Karlsruhe – then I changed to the topic of writing user documentation. Localization and terminology topics were always part of my working duties.

Now it looks like I got finally settled here in Nuremberg. I don’t feel the urge to move any more. I am really happy that I’ve found such a nice town, where I now live with my little family. 

But I still wasn’t settled enough when it comes to my career: in January 2021, I joined the SUSE documentation team. Linux and open source are new to me, and I would have never thought that one can explore a new culture and new worlds without traveling or moving – but this is just how it feels to me at the moment.

I am glad that I joined the chameleon family. I was given a very warm welcome by my team and hope I can get settled here as well.

The content of this article has been contributed by Alexandra Settle, Technical Writer at the SUSE Documentation Team.

It is part of a series of articles focusing on SUSE Documentation and the great minds that create the manuals, guides, quick starts, and many more helpful documents.

A dream of ice cream shops and Lego stories

My name is Alex, I was born in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia and grew up on the north side of the river – which is a very important distinction to anyone from Brisbane. Brisbane is more commonly referred to as Brisvegas, or Brisneyland, depending on who you’re speaking to. It has a cute town feel with the added bonus of being big enough that you won’t bump into anyone you don’t want to talk to.

I lived in Brisbane my whole life until recently, attending primary and high school local to the area I lived in. My favorite subjects were English, Art, and Information Technology Systems (which was mostly learning to use the Adobe Suite, but it was all for the grand prize of a Cert 2 in Information Systems). My least favorite subject was Math, but I admittedly didn’t try very hard.  As a child, I envisioned myself working at the local ice cream shop and eventually studying journalism. I loved writing and had been writing stories since I was about eight years old – mostly focused around the daily lives of my Lego characters. The only thing I was ever really sure about after graduation was that I’d go to university.

A barista majoring in creative writing

I started my first-ever job at the age of fifteen at a Brisbane-based coffee chain called Zarraffas – my mother thought the experience would be “character building”. I continued to work there for nearly six years on and off, at different locations. I’m a fully-qualified Barista but I prefer to drink plain black coffee. Until I was twenty-one, I studied full-time and I went through a variety of jobs in six different companies in the hospitality industry.  My worst job was at a Turkish restaurant when I was sixteen. The location was hugely popular, very busy and I had no idea how to properly be a waitress. I received little guidance on what exactly I was supposed to be doing, so I spent more time on my phone instead of serving customers. Getting fired for the first time was certainly “character building”.

My parents worked incredibly hard to get where they are, and I am insanely proud of their success as individuals. My mother was a shift work nurse who raised three kids while working in Pediatric Oncology and my father is a civil engineer. I have two younger brothers, and my father was desperate for at least one child to end up in an engineering field. On the other hand, my mother was encouraging of everything and anything, provided it paid for my (clothing) bills. She often would come up with strange occupations (such as crime scene clean-up) and educate us on how to get into these lucrative businesses. Regardless of all this, I started a teaching degree in secondary education (not at all related to the ice cream shop dream) to teach English and History. But that only lasted 18 months after I figured out I wasn’t prepared to put in the work to be a teacher, and I switched to Creative Industries (BCI) and majored in Creative and Professional Writing, minoring in Journalism (half of my dream coming true).

A writing career in IT

My first job after university graduation was at Red Hat. There I met two people who hugely influenced my career in the IT industry: Lana Brindley (who later moved to SUSE), and Dan Macpherson (who is still working at Red Hat). Lana hired me as an intern at Red Hat, and subsequently as a full-time employee after I graduated. Dan was my mentor while I was an intern, and he shaped my love for the industry by letting me ask 54 million questions a day and introducing me to cowsay so I could show my friends. My next job was at Rackspace as a technical writer for OpenStack upstream. During that time, in 2016, I moved from Brisbane to London, where I am still living today with 3 dead succulent plants, a high-maintenance plumbing system (see here to read about London’s fatbergs), and my partner in crime, Andy.

A year ago I moved to SUSE after my friend Lana, already working as a technical writer at SUSE, forwarded my resume to the SUSE documentation team lead. For the past year, I’ve worked on cloud documentation for upstream OpenStack and for SUSE OpenStack Cloud and recently, I made the switch to focus on documenting our SUSE Enterprise Storage solution.

One of the best decisions of my career so far has been working for OpenStack. I’ve had the opportunity to become a large part of the community as Project Team Lead and an elected Technical Committee member, serving as vice-chair for the first six months of my tenure. I have learned so much and met so many smart and interesting people from varied backgrounds. Last year, I went to the Dublin Project Team’s Gathering (PTG) and the snow storm (“The Beast From The East”) that hit the UK and Europe happened while we were there, and we all got trapped in the hotel from 4pm onward. The drinks were flowing, and everyone was having a great time. Long story short, I ended up in a snowball fight outside where I fell over and badly sprained my ankle. The fall was documented by a good friend, who so kindly decided it was my best angle for a photo shoot.

Technical writing was clearly not my first choice in career, like many of my colleagues who had other interests and ideas for their futures. For starters, I didn’t even know it was a career option when I graduated. Technical writing is a lot about self-discipline, self-teaching, asking questions, and putting yourself out there and recognizing you don’t know the answers to many things (and you’re not supposed to). Communication can be hard when you’re working across time zones and cultures. But it’s also incredibly rewarding to meet so many amazing people (Shout out to Dmitri Popov for asking to include a shout out to him, and also because he’s pretty cool and made my first year at SUSE a breeze).

Winnie-the-Pooh, my favourite honey eating bear, says it all: “When you are a Bear of Very Little Brain, and you Think of Things, you find sometimes that a Thing which seemed very Thingish inside you is quite different when it gets out into the open and has other people looking at it.”

A deeper look inside

Photo by Dmitri Popov

Going forward, I am not yet sure if I have ultimately decided what I want to do with my life, but I’m looking into further study into communications and public relations. I’m hoping that I can use my experience with the industry, and my love of communication, to create a career that incorporates both my creative dreams and my accidental love for working in tech. Maybe one day I’ll get to work for that ice cream shop.

If someone gave me £1 million today, I would pay off my mortgage and student loans (how boring am I?) and tick off a couple of my travel bucket list items: Africa (yes, the whole continent), Russia via the Trans Siberian Express, South Korea, and India.

My favorite thing to do is watch really bad romantic comedies that have awful story lines with a nice Australian red wine. Some of my favorite songs are “Bleed to Love Her” from Fleetwood Mac or “Caribbean Blue” from Enya. I currently can’t stop listening to “Die Young” by a Brisbane-based band, Sheppard, and “Here You Come Again” by Dolly Parton.

The content of this article has been contributed by Liam Proven, Technical Writer at the SUSE Documentation Team.  It is part of a series of articles focusing on SUSE Documentation and the great minds that create the manuals, guides, quick starts, and many more helpful documents.

The wanderer

I am a wanderer. My name is Liam Proven. I’m an Englishman with an Irish citizenship, living in the Czech Republic, working for a German company – that pretty much says it all, doesn’t it? But there’s more…

I was born in the North-West of England, just outside Liverpool. But my family moved to Nigeria when I was small, and stayed for nearly 10 years. Thus many of my early memories are from there. When we came back to England, or rather Liverpool, my parents couldn’t find a place they liked. And if that weren’t enough, unfortunately one day I got shot in the back riding my bicycle after school. So my parents decided to move somewhere quieter – and safer – than Liverpool. They picked the Isle of Man, a little independent island nation with the world’s oldest continuous government. That’s where I spent my teens.

I went to lots of different kinds of schools, in England, West Africa, and finally the Isle of Man. Most subjects I was good at – except mathematics, history, and French. Somehow I even passed French. But only because I was pig-headed: The teacher asked me to drop out as I was bottom of the class. Of course, that made me determined to prove him wrong! In addition, I thought French would be more use than, for example, Religious Studies. To paraphrase Terry Pratchett, at least there was empirical evidence that France was real – I’d been there.

Things never happen as planned

My mum wanted me to be a doctor, and my dad wanted me to take over running the “family business” – running an old people’s home. I wasn’t interested, I’m afraid. My heroes predominantly were several leading scientists. Botanist David Bellamy, who later became a climate-change sceptic and so fell off my list. James Lovelock, who formulated the Gaia hypothesis. Richard Feynman, not merely for his giant intellect but his wit and humor, ability to explain things, and his curiosity. Richard Dawkins, who I’ve seen speak once . My plan was to be a biologist, possibly a marine microbiologist. So I started to study biology.

Things turned out differently. Unfortunately I crashed my bicycle at the end of the first year, smashing my right forearm. It needed three surgeries: First they implanted screws and metal plates, and when those snapped, I got a bone graft from my right hip. I couldn’t use my arm for roughly a year, but being 18 years old and cocky, I didn’t listen to the advice of my parents, my doctors and my tutors. I went back to university and did my second year with one hand. (I’m left handed. I thought I could cope. I was wrong.) That was my first big life mistake. In just one year, I went from winning the department prize for best student to being at the bottom and threatened with expulsion. No wonder I nearly failed and messed up my degree. But even more important, I discovered that there were no jobs in biology without a doctorate!

Tech times

So I went off to do stuff with computers instead. They were only my hobby so far. But people would pay me money to make them work. My first real job was a “junior software support” position. I had applied for a junior hardware engineer job, but they quickly worked out I knew little about hardware. I taught myself the PC and Mac by porting my home-grown suite of fractal-graphics generators to DOS and System 6. Since then I had a dozen different jobs or so. My most stressful job by far was running a stockbrokers’ dealing room in the City of London. That’s the equivalent of a heart-surgeon in IT. My systems were extremely reliable, but when both the uplinks to HQ failed, we lost hundreds of millions of dollars per hour, and there was nothing I could do about it.

And I spent a long time freelancing, doing IT consultancy and technical journalism. I’ve been published around the world, on at least 4 continents, in multiple languages. I have two tiny specialist books on Amazon for download. That does feel good. There were some British IT journalists I hugely admired, and who had some influence on my career. The late Guy Kewney sticks out, and Dick Pountain. I was lucky enough to work with, and become friends with, both. But regrettably, in my view, the tech journalism market is dying.

Even if I was an early adopter of Windows – I used Windows 2.01 – these days I strongly prefer working with Linux. I first tried Linux in 1996, with Lasermoon Linux-FT – the first ever live CD distro. I installed it but wasn’t brave enough to change my bootloader. I thought that Linux was going to be the next big thing. That was a good call. The first distro I used as my main desktop for a while was Caldera OpenLinux, with KDE 1.0. It was interesting but a lot of stuff didn’t work back then in the late 1990s. By 2001, I was using SUSE Linux Professional full-time. I had a multiprocessor PC at home and I didn’t like Windows XP much. At that time I had also already started to install and write about SUSE and Red Hat server stuff. Computers and building up technical knowledge were my hobby for a long time. I played around and learned. Now, to be honest, I use a Mac at home. I got tired of fixing my own computers. My laptops are second-hand ThinkPads with Linux, though – as I like 1980s and 1990s mechanical “clicky” keyboards.

Starting again …

About a decade ago, I decided to switch from tech journalism to documentation. SUSE is my third such role. As mentioned, I used to be a SUSE user in my early days with desktop Linux. Thus I was delighted to be offered a role with a FOSS company again, and it feels good to be back. What I like most about my job as a Technical Writer is that I get to use two of my skills at once – technical knowledge and being able to write. SUSE somehow feels “pleasantly anarchic”. My colleagues are all absolutely wonderful. And the products work extremely well.

Nevertheless, sometimes I’m generally tempted to ‘start again’. I’m always keen on learning. Languages are a major interest (Czech is proving an exceptionally tough one, though). In all likelihood, I would study linguistics, or computer science. Contrary to popular belief, I think modern computers and software are terrible and we’ve lost a huge amount in the last few decades. We’re also approaching the next big paradigm shift in computing, after the minicomputer to microcomputer shift – and I’d like to help prepare for that.

Until Brexit, I was never engaged with politics at all. However, in the current worldwide political mood where freedom of expression can turn into a real risk, and where human rights are spurned, one cannot look away anymore. If I could have three wishes, my first wish would be a sudden end of the current mass dullness that paves the way for despotism. Secondly, I would ask for extra lifespan and perfect health.  And my third wish would be to get more wishes! Then I’d ask for super-human power, which would let me add a few dozen extra Earth-like planets to the solar system and seed them with life. Perhaps something smarter than us can evolve before the Sun explodes.

If I won $1 million today, I would buy a Harley Davidson with a sidecar, and ride it round the world, while listening to “Chasing Rainbows” by Shed Seven. And of course with a copy of “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy” in my pocket.

The content of this article has been contributed by Tomáš Bažant, Technical Writer at the SUSE Documentation Team.  It is part of a series of articles focusing on SUSE Documentation and the great minds that create the manuals, guides, quick starts, and many more helpful documents.

‘Humanistic approach’

I was born in Příbram in Czech Republic, 60 kilometers southwest of Prague. I grew up in a small town called Jince about 12 kilometers away from Příbram. After the elementary school in Jince, I went to the Gymnasium in Příbram. I liked English, Mathematics and Physical Education as I didn’t have to prepare for those lessons at all. Psychology and Philosophy later on, in higher grade levels, were funny as well. But I didn’t like Geography and History because we had to learn scads of dates and facts by heart.

My dreams and goals for a life at and after school were quite simple: I wanted to have a lot of fun (… hedonism in the late 60´s spirit …), and hang around with good friends. Although I spent lots of my time with a ZX Sinclair computer as adolescent, I didn’t give a damn about computers during secondary school and University. Rather I favored ‘the humanistic approach’. I definitely wanted to be a musician, preferably a guitar player. Maybe just to show off in front of girls. In my early twenties, I sometimes identified myself with Bernard Sumner, the singer of New Order (I am listening to their songs even while writing this – good old times ☺️).

When I was 18 years old, I had no real clue what to do with my life. My father, a former soldier, advised me to join the army to be on the safe side – for reasons such as ‘getting a predictable and relatively high salary’, ‘job security’, and ‘honor’. I just considered it a bad joke ☺️. As I was good at English and Mathematics,  I decided to study English and Mathematics to become a teacher, and I picked the school that offered exactly this – teaching Mathematics and English: the Technical University of Liberec. Although I taught for a while, as a young teacher, naughty kids drove me crazy.

Somehow, maybe by miracle, I passed University. I don’t remember all that much, because we focused mainly on ‘socializing’. But one thing during that time indeed changed my life a bit – the Twin Peaks series. My mates at the dormitory and I were watching every single episode – I was really inspired by its uncanny tone, the wit and the offbeat humor, and I think I embraced some of it.

SUSE is calling

Photo by Elena Koycheva on Unsplash

Teaching English to individuals and companies was one of my first jobs, and I liked it. It was a bit stressful, but I traveled a lot across Prague. After my teaching experience, I got a job as a webmaster at the Czech Radio. There, already back in 1996, I started to use Linux – Red Hat Linux 4 was the first distribution I played around with. Apparently I liked Linux in general, because roughly 10 years later, I applied for a job at SUSE, and got accepted. Unfortunately Novell, the new owner at time being, stopped the onboarding process. But I was lucky – after a couple of years, SUSE called me to ask if I was still interested in getting hired by them, and of course I was! Since then I have been working as a Technical Writer, and from time to time I do some coding (odd things such as Drupal or Vim).

Learning keeps you ‘agile’

My job is quite technical. Obtaining the required information and technical input from development teams can involve lots of waiting and be tiresome. Software development has tight schedules. Developers are under pressure, their first priority is to deliver their code in time. They love to write code, but not all of them necessarily like to explain it.  All documentation team members had to learn how to deal with the lack of information flow. Just like the others, I am continuously building up my knowledge via ‘learning by doing’: I usually start with the download of the ‘still-under-development’ software code, set up my own virtual machines, install the ‘work-in-progress’ products, try out the stuff and see what happens, and start to document that based on my own experience.

For the fact that I ended up in IT you might partly blame my ex-mate at the Czech Radio, Petr Khun, who influenced me fairly much by showing me the wonders of the UNIX world and piquing my technical curiosity. Another former colleague at SUSE, Jakub Friedl, made me understand that work can bring a big deal of fun. During my years at SUSE I realized that (probably) slower but consistent team work is far better than hurrying up on your own, and making lots of unnecessary mistakes. My colleagues Frank, Tanja, and Markus – to mention some of the amazing people with diverse personalities I work with – mirror all values I appreciate most: They are kind, helpful, and open to new ideas. They do not push things forcefully, but rather give subtle hints and wait for responses. All of my team mates are very open, flexible and modest people, with a strong will to support others.

Joining SUSE – and not having left it yet ☺️ – was probably the best decision in my career. Sure, the job did change a bit over the years. But not that much, as the core writing tasks did remain nearly the same: research, discussions, drafting, reviewing, editing, discussing again, re-writing, etc. I really and truly appreciate the independence I am given in my current job. Learning makes me happy and keeps me ‘agile’. And I am proud that I am still able to continuously build up new expertise and additional knowledge. None of that knowledge, however, prevents me from occasionally committing exactly those mistakes myself I have warned others against many times. But I tend to see that as a source of delight rather than desperation – because such own mistakes actually crack me up.

Parallel universe

Photo by Dmitri Popov on Unsplash

If I had three wishes, they would be: Let all beings be happy, let all beings be happy, and let all beings be happy. Thus it should not surprise you that, in a second life – or better: in a parallel universe – I would possibly study Yoga, Sanskrit and Ayurveda, combined with biological horticulture, food preparation, and cooking. But I guess there is no school offering all these topics in one subject of study ☺️ … During my – of course extensive – spare time I’d work on paper models, care for my garden, cycle across the countryside, and play chess at least once a week. In periods of more sensitive times, I’d carefully touch my ‘inner constellation’ while reading “The Little Prince” or watching the “NeverEnding Story” for the umpteenth time. Finally, in a relaxed mood, I’d enjoy listening to songs such as True Faith by New Order, while tasting a good beer.

In this spirit: Cheers!

Fei Huang and Gary Duan co-founded NeuVector in 2015 right at the start of the Kubernetes container security era. Not only colleagues at work but also friends in life, Fei and Gary bring over 35 years of combined experience in enterprise security, virtualization, embedded software, networking, and cloud. But their passions and interests in life don’t end with security: soccer, hiking, snowboarding, traveling, and photography are their hobbies (and we’ll let you guess who does what!) Fun fact – the soccer field was where they started brainstorming business ideas that led to founding NeuVector.

During this interview, Fei and Gary answered ten questions, ranging from how they met, their views on the Kubernetes security field, best approaches on getting things done, and how to build a successful security business.

What did you want to be when you were a kid?

Fei: “When I was a kid, I wanted to be a scientist. I was always fascinated by science and wanted to invent something cool.”

Gary: “I can’t remember what I wanted to become, but Maradona greatly inspired me. That’s probably where my passion for soccer comes from. Both Fei and I love soccer and play often.”

How did you meet?

Fei: “We met around 20 years ago. When I arrived in the United States, my friend brought me to his apartment in Fremont. Gary was living there, and that’s how we became friends and later roommates.”

Gary: “We became good friends soon after because we liked to be active and do things together.”

Fei: “I remember on the first weekend, Gary brought me to the soccer field, and we started playing. This continues to this day.”

Gary: We also went on a photography trip in Lassen Volcanic National Park and got to explore some other national parks in California.”

How did you start NeuVector? 

Fei: “When I worked for VMware in 2014, containerization started disrupting the traditional cloud environment. I could feel that the migration path to get into distributed computing was a container. It was the right way to do the migration path for cloud for distributed computing, achieving high scalability, the right flexibility, and the right speed. That path attracted me, and I was excited to see the big change for the cloud.”

Gary: “Fei was in virtualization, and I was in networking. Gradually we found out that a container is a unique place where we can share our knowledge combining virtualization, security, and networking and build a product.”

Fei: “We were living in Silicon Valley, and everything here is about innovation and new ventures. We would meet at the soccer field and bounce ideas around. By that time, I had already started two startups and was eager to do something new and different. Gary had a cool idea about building some network security for containers, I got interested, and we decided to give it a shot. We saw a big change ahead of us, and a big change means a big opportunity.”

What’s the best thing about NeuVector?

Fei: “The best thing is our team. Our people have more than 20-30 years of virtualization, security, and networking space experience. They are at the stage where they already learned enough lessons and now come together to do great things.”

Gary: “We are very proud of our team. It’s small but very efficient: great product builders and marketers.”

Fei: “All the core team is friends and teammates that we have known for many years of working in Silicon Valley. We got to know not only each other but also each other’s families. We know we can work together.”

Gary: “In Silicon Valley, everyone loves technology and doing things no one has done before. When there is an opportunity, people are willing to sacrifice a stable lifestyle to work with new and exciting startups.”

What is the market like, its challenges, and opportunities in container/Kubernetes security?

Fei: “There are a few challenges. First, it’s a young and a fast-growing market. Kubernetes is open-source with too many people involved, so things in this field change every day. To stay ahead of the game, we also have to be fast. Secondly, it’s a hot space with many vendors getting in that generate many misleading messages, confusing customers, and adding some hurdles for us. But we know where we stand: we’ve built our solution for container security right at the start; we pretty much invented it. I believe that in the end, it’s about delivering the true value to customers and helping solve the real issues.”

Gary: “The speed of the industry and the developer-driven security practice is both a challenge and an opportunity. Security used to be very clumsy, hard to manage, slow and required many human interactions. Now it’s about making it fast and easy to use.”

Is an open-source model for security good or bad?

Fei: “Ten years ago, nobody believed that you could do security with open source. That sounded just like a conflict by nature. But now the world has changed. Everybody accepted that you could do a great job with open source for commercial use. And the same thing for security: it takes a while, but people accept it and believe in it because of proven success from the big players like Google that do a good job in security too.”

What does it take to create a successful business in security?

Fei: “I think it’s about setting long term and short term goals and rethinking them very frequently: weekly or sometimes even daily, evaluating your decisions from all the angles. Also, it’s about rethinking those goals from the customer’s perspective and not just your own. Innovation has to come from us but to create a successful business, you have to put yourself in the customer’s shoes and understand their problems and values.”

Gary: “For a technology company, you need to build a very unique and advanced technology that solves customer challenges.”

What’s the best piece of advice you’ve ever received? Why?

Fei: “One of the best ones was to think big, but start small. You have to think hard to come up with a big idea, but you have to take baby steps for execution. It’s all about execution. Anyone can have many ideas, but not everyone can make it happen.”

Gary: “We’ve been growing NeuVector for the last five years now. What I learned is to be patient and persistent. Everything takes time, from building the product to getting it out to our customers. Sometimes you might want things to happen fast, but you need to be patient first.”

How do you get things done, plan your days and prioritize?

Fei: “For me, it’s about how you execute and prioritize as there are too many things to do and too little time. I rely on my calendar, note down all my tasks and prioritize them. For something that’s not urgent, I still locate time in my calendar two weeks later to make sure I don’t forget it. Also, it’s about continually reviewing things, adjusting and changing. The world is changing fast and especially in the software space. If I made some decisions today, they might not be the right ones two days after. We have to keep adjusting ourselves to fit in.”

Gary: “For me, it’s all about project management. We take small steps; we do faster iteration so we can fix errors quicker. It’s essential not to be afraid to make mistakes but try to fix them quickly.”

Fei: “Absolutely. We all make mistakes. It’s impossible to be 100% right all the time. It’s ok to make small failures as long as we keep changing, learning, adjusting, and trying. The difficult part is to avoid making big mistakes because those can fail your business.”

Finally, a book recommendation that changed your life and why.

Fei: “When I was young, I liked to read books about science. But since college, I became more interested in biographies and history books. I recommend looking for wisdom there.”

Gary: “One of my favorite books is “The Last Place on Earth” by Roland Huntford. I’ve visited Antarctica during my travels, and this book is about the race to the South Pole. It’s about having the careful preparation and rigorous execution, and those insights can teach you a lot for business as well.”