From Novice to CNCF Contributor: A 17-Year-Old's Journey into Backstage

Embarking on the cloud-native journey as a student can feel like standing at the foot of a fortress. At 16, I was just learning to code, and the world of CNCF projects seemed impenetrable. Today, I am an active contributor to Backstage, a Google Student Ambassador, and a passionate advocate for open source.

This session shares my transformative story of going from a complete novice to shipping code for one of the most popular projects in the cloud-native ecosystem.

Cloud-native communities thrive on fresh perspectives, yet many students are held back by "imposter syndrome" and complex tooling. In this talk, I will demystify the contribution process by breaking down my real-world journey.

We will explore:

• My journey in the community : I'll explain how I started to contribute to Open source .

• The Power of Collaboration: How to effectively communicate with senior maintainers, handle code reviews without losing confidence, and find your place in a global community.

• How to start and where to start from : I'll explain on how dense are the CNCF projects are I'll explain the CNCF projects ecosystem , and where to start contributing from .

This talk is a call to action for the Mumbai FOSS community. It serves as proof that you don't need a degree or a job title to start contributing—you just need curiosity and the courage to open that first Pull Request.

• A Roadmap for Beginners: A step-by-step guide on how to find, claim, and submit your first PR to a CNCF project.

• A good reason to start contributing to open source : They will now the worth of Open source contributions

• Community & Mindset: How to interact with maintainers effectively and overcome the "imposter syndrome" that stops most people from contributing.