I joined k6!
Hola! It has been a bit since I last blogged here, but I think it is good to do it regularly again. Especially as I am starting this new journey. I am now a DevRel in the k6 family who advocates for excellent performance practices. In other words, I joined k6! A perfect way to begin this is to tell a story about how I ended up here. I mean, for some, it is no secret that k6 and I have been good friends for a while now. But how exactly did it all start?
A while ago.
A long, long time ago, in a galax… Ehm… How about: Once upon a time…
For over 10 years, I was a performance testing and QA consultant providing testing services to multiple organizations, polishing and growing my knowledge and expertise. It all got up to the point that I started to want to share that knowledge.
I created a secret identity to do it. I would wear casual shirts, khakis, and blazers during the day. But at nights, I would wear a fake mustache and start blogging that knowledge, fighting against performance malpractices and ignorance as Señor Performo. Of course, by now, it is not a secret identity anymore. But hey, the costume is not a fake mustache anymore!
That journey evolved into attending conferences. I gave it a try at ridiculing myself onstage by doing presentations. Then, I even got invited to host my own podcast to rant about performance.
Then, things started to get interesting while I was at some of those European conferences.
People!
I met many fantastic people (which I still hang with at least virtually) in those conferences and many other venues. People who also preached the word of the performance practices. Some friends spoke Spanish (among several other languages) and were willing to collaborate for the podcast and many other cool things I have been doing.
I learned a lot with those interactions, growing my knowledge and a better understanding of performance practices and creating better content. That included a boiling interest in ways to create video content. But bouncing tween jobs and the not-so-secret identity was a lot! I was not ready yet.
But, what I was managing to create was getting attention. I got some more followers and exciting approaches.
One lucky day, one of those came from k6 in Stockholm, Sweden. They were looking for a person that could help k6 by preaching the word of performance.
I was just a newbie in content creation and was unsure if I would be capable of doing it. But as a coincidence, I had travel arrangements on those days to go Europe (actually to Vienna). Checked how hard would it be to add a Stockholm visit, and there I was, in beautiful Stockholm.
I got a chance to meet the incredible k6 environment and its people. But was still unsure if I could deliver on the need. I mean, I was just a scripter/tester playing at this knowledge-sharing thing. What if I am not good at it? There are bills to pay, cats to feed, and a girlfriend I wanted to propose to.
Let’s collaborate, I said. And that we did here and there over the years.
In the meantime, I kept polishing my skills and knowledge. At work, I started to use more OSS tools. Got captivated with tool integrations to pipelines, got some chances to use k6, and got enamored at alternatives to visualize my ongoing load tests. Particularly with a tool that I started to use even for personal projects, named Grafana (Woah! Look out! A Checkov’s gun!).
Cov-shift-19 happened… A blessing in disguise?
No one foresaw the upcoming chaos (maybe except Bill Gates), but we all know what happened. The last in-person conference I went to was already giving antibacterial gel swag. My final on-site project was canceled, and I was given early approval to fly back home to be safe.
The lockdowns started, all work and projects stopped, and furloughs came to be. It was time to polish the content I was already doing, like the podcast’s sound engineering, online presentations, and writing. But there was also a chance at scratching the video content itch.
We all kinda had to get on video content. Zoom meetings and webinars became the standard. I started doing webinars with a tiny webcam.
Then I borrowed an old camcorder to officially start a YouTube channel. As I was beginning to learn, we had poor quality in terms of video and audio. I began to understand and improve the art of video recording-editing and pairing it with good audio. The possibilities were huge!
I upgraded the camcorder into a Canon M50. I learned a lot about lenses, takes, scenes, audio differences from podcasting, and rudimentary special effects. I loved it! I could die happily doing just that!
I had to get better at it!
At events
I kept learning and improving for the next few months. I was learning so much and applied each improvement to my process. Getting better and better.
Suddenly, news came up. Grafana had just acquired k6!
Grafana, the company that made that other tool that I was getting a bit obsessed with (Ha! told ya about the gun!). They had just acquired another product (k6) that seemed to bring so much of the modern best practices I was figuring out!
Right there and then, my mind was blown, thinking about all of the possibilities! Both tools and companies were an incredible complement to each other! I was so happy and could not wait to see what would come from that coalition.
The moment of truth
After a while, I was stunned when I got a heads up that the DevRel position was back. I must admit I froze for a bit. Those cinematic moments when your background zooms out from you. The moment had come to make a decision.
After over a decade of doing it, leaving the consultant life behind was a tough decision. But there were so many factors pushing towards doing it and taking the step! A leap of faith!
But I may say, three main things helped me.
On the one hand, I already knew good friends and great people in k6.
Adding up, I liked both products. There was so much energy from both being together.
And last, I felt more comfortable creating content.
All right. It was decided. I had to do it.
Once decided, I applied. Then started to check information about the company. I kept noticing incredible company culture, environment, energy, and a growing list of attributes as I read. I couldn’t be more excited.
The adventure begins
It has already been a few weeks since I joined, and I can already say I made a great decision. But before I begin my babble, I must clarify something. I have not been asked to say anything about what I am about to write. This comes all from the bottom of my soul.
First of all, as I already had the feeling, my suspicions were confirmed on my very first day. Both organizations come from different places (from the same country), but each had an incredible culture that mixed perfectly. This includes the pillars and principles of the organization such as transparency, empowerment, open source-ness, high say-do, diversity in perspectives, progress orientation, and fantastic collaboration. I paraphrased them from the company’s site, but trust me, they mean it!
Second, the way that both solutions mix up drives me crazy! Each is in a growth and development state. k6, and Grafana, both have tremendous potential to keep growing and expanding.
Grafana, on the one hand, is not anymore just the graphing solution I love. It has expanded its functionalities and even extended into other solutions like Loki or Tempo. As well as many different data sources and systems. The team just keeps adding stuff!
k6 (yes, lower case k) is also growing. The performance automation tool continuously adds new features and functionalities with each release. The cloud platform as well is improved frequently. And they have just released a new automation tool that drives browser-based tests! All of it is oriented at developers, who IMO, should be the first line of defense in test automation.
And last! They just onboarded a (not so) bad-hombre to help them spread the gospel of the performance assurance best practices!
As I climb this fantastic new mountain, I just can look at the horizon and be perplexed by the tremendous outlook ahead. The view reaches far, everywhere, and is full of possibilities!
Be prepared for what is soon to come!
Besos <3
SrPerf
