[00:00:00] Nicole Huesman: I would like to welcome both of you, Vino and Diane, to the program.

[00:00:05] Diane Mueller: Oh, thanks for having us.

[00:00:08] Vinothini Raju: Thank you.

[00:00:09] Nicole Huesman: Absolutely. So Vino could you tell us a little bit about where you are in your personal and professional journey?

[00:00:18] Vinothini Raju: First of all, thank you, Nicole, for giving me this opportunity to speak in the She Lights the Way community. So I'm the founder and CEO of a low-code IDE for [00:00:30] Kubernetes. So we have been working with companies like HPE, Canonical, SUSE, and Docker.

We have hundreds of subscribers on our platform and we have thousands of users downloading our solution across different marketplaces. And in the recent past, we have actually, we are liberating regenerative AI technology to help our users to troubleshoot Kubernetes issues much faster. So, you can actually look at [00:01:00] having, you know, local LLM on enterprise infrastructure and people can build their own offload, it's called the RAG Pipelines, which is called the Retrieval Augmented Pipelines, where, you know, they can have their own data sources and they can use that information for the chat bots. So we are kind of bridging these two technologies, which is the cloud native and the generative AI to solve some of the real-world problems.

[00:01:25] Nicole Huesman: Can you talk a little bit about what got you [00:01:30] to where you are today? What were some of the pivotal experiences that landed you, you know, in the area that you're working in today?

[00:01:42] Vinothini Raju: So throughout my career, I think I have made a lot of pivots. And every pivot has been very challenging and a learning experience. 

So the first pivot I had to make was to move out of a comfortable job and then start a company on my own, which happened many years ago. And I was [00:02:00] actually doing consulting and services in the devops and cloud space for a while.

And then COVID hit. I made another pivot to move out of the consulting business and then do something in the technology [realm] and build a platform that could actually, it's more like a repeatable business, right? So that's another pivot and the recent past. 

In fact, there is another pivot, which is more or less like a pivot, but we're kind of liberating this generative AI, and then bringing into some of the works that we already [00:02:30] do. So I think this is, it's actually gotten us to where we are today.

[00:02:34] Nicole Huesman: So when you think about your early years and then, you know, as you've gone on this, both this personal and this professional journey, what are some of the things that have shaped your philosophy about what you want to pursue and how you go about pursuing it?[00:03:00]

[00:03:01] Vinothini Raju: so, I personally take a lot of people's lives as inspirations and I watch a lot of movies. And two such movies really, you know, made a huge impact on me. You have seen this movie by the name, The Walk, which is about a French high race wire walker. So it's a pretty amazing movie and it's a real person's life story where this French wire walker crosses the twin towers in the global trade [00:03:30] center. That actually says a lot about risk taking and how to balance, you know, while you are actually walking on the wire while you're glued to the ultimate goal, right? It's all about how you balance and how much confidence you must have when you're taking such risks.

And another movie that made an impact on me was this movie by the name The Icebreaker. It's about a Russian ship that gets caught in the middle of an[00:04:00] Antarctic ocean, and it's in the sub zero degrees, right? And there is a huge iceberg that damages the ship and the whole crew is caught in the middle of this ocean. And, you know, the captain of the ship comes up with some brilliant idea of how to make use of the same iceberg to escape and save the lives of the people. So, it's all about how you make use of your own adversities to work the best for [00:04:30] you, right? I think you can relate this to experiences as well as to career, right? 

So, basically, you know, you have to be risk taking, you need to have confidence, you need to know how to balance, and you need to know how to make your adversities work the best for you.

[00:04:48] Nicole Huesman: Wow. I love that because we all have these points in our lives where we've taken these [00:05:00] risks, we've had some sort of challenge, or challenges, that we've needed to overcome to arrive at where we are today. And I love that you took such inspiration from these movies.

Can you talk a little bit about how this has manifested in your own work life and the challenges that you needed to take and the adversity that you needed to [00:05:30] fight through in getting to where you are today?

Vinothini Raju: Absolutely. I think the upbringing did have some influence on what I'm doing today. So my dad was a self-made entrepreneur. He was doing textile business in a tech hub in India. And my mom was a staff nurse at a government hospital in India. So I think I derive a lot of this risk taking and entrepreneurial spirit from my dad and a lot of [00:06:00] compassion from my mom, how to care for others, and that manifests in the way I manage my team [00:06:07] and also, like, when it comes to, you know, how I landed in the tech industry. 

So I was at a point where I wanted to do something on my own and I wanted to start up something, right? So I was leaning more towards the food industry. And that's when my husband, you know, was suggesting that, why don't you do something in the tech world? Because you have the [00:06:30] background.

Nicole Huesman: And how wonderful that you had that support.

[00:06:33] What are some lessons or insights that you think others might benefit from?

[00:06:40] Vinothini Raju: All throughout my journey, I have seen that there was this one learning that made a huge impact, and that is the way we show our gratitude to others. We really appreciate when people help us out. But the moment we are vocal about it and we show that gratitude, the world changes around us. And I have [00:07:00] seen a huge impact of how it has helped me a lot, you know? And that also means that we are more open-minded and we are more receptive to ideas from people. And I think this is a great lesson that I want to share with people. If they want to change something in their lives, I think it starts off by expressing their gratitude for people.

[00:07:19] Nicole Huesman: Oh, wow. Beautiful.

So I would love to bring Diane into the conversation. One of the impetuses for me around [00:07:30] the She Lights the Way platform or project has been to light the way for others. And when I heard about the relationship that the two of you share, right? I think there's such this beauty in women helping other women. Can you talk a little bit about what the mentee and mentor relationship has meant to you.

[00:07:59] Diane Mueller: [00:08:00] So, well, again, thanks, Nicole, for having us on and for bringing this mentee / mentor relationship up again and again in our conversations. It really has been part and parcel of the way my career has flowered and how I've been able to help other people.

I think the first time we met each other in person was at my very last KubeCon in Detroit, where it was like days away from announcing that I was retiring from Red Hat. And what that gave me was this wonderful opportunity [00:08:30] to really connect more deeply with her and to understand where she was and where her company was and where it was going.

And even though I'd mentored a lot of people and been mentored by a lot of people, until I retired, there was always a little something in it for me, you know, in terms of career-wise. And then once I retired, I was no longer self-motivated. I don't care if I become a CTO of a company. I don't want to become a CTO of a company. I don't want to do a startup. Now I just want to share the knowledge and [00:09:00] keep learning.

I have to say one thing about Vino: she's incredibly pragmatic. She's doing some really innovative work, but she wanted to see a practical application of this work. So in this, it was great. It was like this teaser of a trailer of a movie that you want to see how this is going to turn out.

And so, I stepped in and started doing an advisory role with gopaddle, her company, and a lot of, we had a lot of people in common that we knew, a lot of, [00:09:30] and then a lot of, I, what I keep saying about being retired at some point, my Rolodex is going to expire, because I use the term Rolodex, you know how old it is, but I wanted to be able to leverage those connections and help her out.

But also to learn all about this idea around generative AI that I had been exploring. I've been following and partaking in some of the OSI's work around AI. They're just doing some amazing work, bringing lots of [00:10:00] different disparate communities around AI and creating a culture of open source and openness around generative AI tools.

But not a lot of people are really successfully integrating them into their products in a way that's compliant and, you know, manages the risk, makes sure that it's obvious that you're using it, and creating enterprise class tools and the opportunity to work with [00:10:30] her.

I'm also working as the Director of Research for Bittergia. We are very curious about how we're going to track and metric code open source projects that utilize AI tools. But this was different. This was something that Kubernetes runbooks, which is sort of the short term for what she's doing, and adding generative AI into it to customize the run books and doing it in a way that was compliant with anyone's, any [00:11:00] enterprise using its risk and audit team.

Not only is it, do we get to philosophize about the, the evils and the goodness or the badness of generative AI, but there was actually a practical, well thought out application of it, and use case that we could use to describe to other people how you could use this for good within enterprises without, you know, getting in trouble with your compliance officer.

So it may be a mentee / mentor relationship, but what I get out of it is an [00:11:30] incredible learning experience and real-world experience in this space. And for the little bit of advice, really, that I'm giving her, she could probably do this without me, but it's been pretty amazing to do this with her.

[00:11:48] Nicole Huesman: Yeah. And Vino, I know having mentors like Diane has certainly been important in my journey. [00:12:00] Can you talk a little bit about the mentor / mentee relationship from your perspective?

[00:12:10] Vinothini Raju: Yeah, certainly. I think having Diane as an advisor is huge. I'm very lucky. And I know in many ways, I mean, I think we have worked together and Diane has given good feedback on the product strategy when we wanted to bring in generative AI into the product. We [00:12:30] wanted some advice on how to make it more reliable, right? 

And that's where Diane's inputs came in from a community perspective. She has vast community experience. She has built a huge community around OpenShift, and her experience and her knowledge actually has given us inputs on, okay, how do we take this generative and make it more usable for enterprises and for IT operations? One suggestion was to add a disclaimer saying this is [00:13:00] content that is generated by AI. And so, users can actually use it with discretion. 

And the next opportunity that time has put forward was to take this product and showcase it to a larger audience. I've attended KubeCon many times, but this is the first time that I had the opportunity to go present with Diane. So we made a proposal. She has done really good hand holding from [00:13:30] the talk submission all the way till the talk was delivered. We had an amazing reception. And putting us in front of the right audience and conveying the right message was the second help actually, which happened very seamlessly over the last few months.

And she has also been helping us to work with some of the customers, beta customers and users, who are trying out this generative AI. And making connections with other partners. So we are able to [00:14:00] leverage her partners and her network to establish a larger partner network for us.

So I think in many ways, I'm seeing that we are reaching many milestones over and over again.

[00:14:12] Nicole Huesman: What do you think have been some of the most critical components of your relationship? What comprises a successful mentee / mentor relationship that benefits both people?

[00:14:29] Vinothini Raju: I've worked with [00:14:30] many people and, as a startup founder, what I look forward to from a mentor is somebody who does not judge you and who really wants you to succeed. [00:14:41] And I think I'm very lucky to have Diane as a mentor.

[00:14:45] Diane Mueller: As a mentor, what you look for is someone who brings a lot of expertise and domain knowledge that you don't have. It's not as much fun to go in and mentor someone that you're not learning from. So, [00:15:00] this has been a really interesting experience for me because, as we all know, gen AI and AI in general and large language models and, you know, Meta Llama this and ChatGPT this, you know, you can read all you want and do all the deep diving you want to do, but actually getting to be part of a project like this is pretty exciting and a very good learning. The openness that Vino shares, her ups and downs, [00:15:30] and she questions things openly and transparently, is really incredibly wonderful. It's a mutual learning, a lot of mutual respect. And this has been very rewarding for me.

Nicole Huesman: The work that you're doing actually in AI and in generative AI, if we step back and just talk about some of the real-world risks and [00:16:00] some of the ethical implications of AI and of generative AI, can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:16:10] Vinothini Raju: We come from a more deterministic world, which is the IT operations where, you know, you have to make decisions based on data, right? And AI is this probabilistic world. Now, we are trying to bring it into the deterministic world of how we can take this output from this [00:16:30] generative AI and make decisions to manage the operations.

Can we use the outcomes from AI to make decisions? And what are the security and the compliance challenges that come along the way? I think that's the biggest challenge that we have today. And once we have the data, how accurate is that? What are the data sources from where this actual data has come from? Who is accountable for that? 

[00:16:57] Diane Mueller: When you're productizing it, you're integrating it into [00:17:00] your product, putting the guardrails in, first of all, making sure that the people using it are aware they're using it, that it's, they're bought into it, making it visible, being able to turn it on and off is, you know, whether you use it or not is, is a thing.

I'm not an accountant but I can write accounting software, but I can't judge whether the accounting software is doing the right thing. You need domain expertise. You have to have the context. You have to be a developer. You have to know [00:17:30] that that code is right, or that it's going to run through the compiler. But you also need to know the data sources at the root of it, you know, what were the large language models trained on, and were they trained on things that had the appropriate licenses. It's about context and domain knowledge and, and making sure those guardrails are in place when you're embedding it into your product offerings. It's just like any other tool right now. If you don't know how hard to [00:18:00] hit that hammer on the nail or whatever, you're gonna, you're gonna use it improperly.

Nicole Huesman: What are some of the things that we should be aware of from an AI perspective?

[00:18:12] Diane Mueller: The really primary issue is privacy. [00:18:14] Anything you type into it, it becomes owned and fodder for the large language models and training models. It's not a new challenge. It's just, you should be aware of it.

Vinothini Raju: The security and the privacy aspects are [00:18:30] certainly critical when we are using generative AI. As a platform, we have put forward a workflow where users can use generative AI much more comfortably. Before we even send any data to AI, we do a process of reduction where we mask all the sensitive information. [00:18:44] When the users are about to share this information with the AI, there is a process where they can review and approve. They get a chance to see what information is really getting to the AI. And once we get the output from the AI, there is a disclaimer that says, this is an [00:19:00] AI-generated output. This workflow is primarily targeted to make the developers much more comfortable in using this.

Nicole Huesman: We're at such a hype cycle for AI, and you are doing such amazing work and really critical work to make sure that we develop this in such a way that it is ethical, that it does have human oversight, that things aren’t getting out from [00:19:30] underneath us. So, that's really amazing work and applaud you for all of that.

[00:19:38] As you look back over your years in tech, what are some of the most rewarding experiences you have had from both a professional and a personal perspective?

[00:19:55] Vinothini Raju: Yeah, I think getting the first customer or a user subscribing to [00:20:00] your product and using the product over and over again is the most rewarding experience I would ever call out because you spend day in day out as a team, so much of the thinking happens, so much of work happens, in the background. And then you see that you have really made something useful that people are willing to use repeatedly. That's the most rewarding experience in my opinion.

[00:20:25] Diane Mueller: The most rewarding thing is working with people like Vino and continuously learning. [00:20:30] I think mentoring is one of the most rewarding things you can do in your career and post-career. We talk about team building when you're inside of a company, you're building your own little unit, but when you stretch outside of it, and I think that's what open source makes us do is stretch outside of our little comfort zones or, you know, our paid-to-play-here zones, and really cross over community barriers and really reach out and learn from other people.

For me, the most rewarding thing has been being able [00:21:00] to really explore all of the sides of the open source technologies that have been incorporated in the different products and places that I've gotten to work. And it's huge, you know, mentoring has done amazing things for me. For my career I've had some amazing mentors and it's made all the difference.

And I think that's really what I would give for advice. Ask people to mentor you, ask to be mentored, and make sure you show your [00:21:30] gratitude. As we talked about earlier, gratitude is a wonderful gift for acknowledging the work that people do and the work that people have done for you and the work of the people behind you, that you're standing on the shoulders of giants.

And that's really, it's a wonderful, wonderful way to do this journey with other people.

[00:21:50] Nicole Huesman: How do you define success? Success. What does that mean to you? And I understand it means something different for each of us, and [00:22:00] it may even change for each of us over time. But I'd love to hear from both of you in terms of what, what, what does success mean to you?

[00:22:14] Vinothini Raju: So when I started out, I think the way I looked at success was in terms of revenue and the headcounts. At some point, and especially after COVID, my definition of success has changed. And today I look at success as [00:22:30] more about being purposeful, whether we are really adding value and whether we are able to keep going in spite of all the shifts in the market. And today it is AI; tomorrow it could be something else, right? And whether we are really, you know, solving a problem, a pressing problem for our customers. So being more purposeful is my metric for success these days.

[00:22:56] Diane Mueller: For me, eventually I'm going to actually get to retire and [00:23:00] use that camper van that I bought and actually go somewhere with it.

I do think true success will be actually getting to the point where I'm not retired, but I can't imagine not mentoring people and not being connected to this community of folks.

Getting to do stuff with Vino is success, you know, and getting to choose who I work with. This feels like success to me right now.

Nicole Huesman: So as we wrap up, I would love to hear from each of you [00:23:30] what She Lights the Way means to you.

[00:23:35] Vinothini Raju: She Lights the Way is the one who shows the way, like people like Diane, the mentors. I think it shows the initiative behind She Lights the Way is to bring out inspirations through mentoring and being mentored.

So, [00:24:00] you know, it kind of helps you, you know, influence, make a positive influence on people who really want to start something on their own. So by sharing such stories and our experiences, I think that inspires people to do something on their own.

[00:24:21] Diane Mueller: There’s a thing that we always say is, if you don't see yourself [00:24:30] in the room, you don't feel like you belong in the room, right? And so, you know, for most of my career, I've been out and in the room and openly queer and there, and now I'm retired and, you know, there's all kinds of ageism in the tech field. And I'm like, Hey, I'm 62. Get it. Get used to it, kind of thing. 

The light is really being there for people and, you know, being a present whether it's doing what Vino is doing and [00:25:00] really standing up and saying, you know, this is, this is a powerful application for what we're doing in the Kubernetes space. This is the right way, or the right way we know now at the moment, for incorporating Gen AI and saying, this is a pragmatic, compliant use case, get used to it. We're going to be here, kind of thing. I mean, she's really kind of shining the light for a lot of people on how to interact with enterprises and [00:25:30] partners and, you know, marketplaces. Everybody's going to put AI in on their label, but not a lot of them are actually really deeply integrating into their product offerings in a way that's not just a one-off. 

I think she's lighting the way for a lot of other people, not just me as a mentor learning about this space. But I think she's actually, and I think that's what in the Kubernetes talk that she gave in [00:26:00] Paris, I think that's why there were 400 people in the room because people really wanted to see a real-world use case and application integrated into a product that people could walk away and use right away and give feedback. I mean, that's the other thing is like, if you've got feedback or if your compliance officer came down on you hard, we want to hear about that. But I think we've done it with the best practices as of today, and it will change, and we will change with it. That's what pivoting is, and [00:26:30] she's good at this.

[00:26:32] Nicole Huesman: You both have been so inspiring, to have you both on the program, each from your different perspectives, it truly has been such an honor to have you both here. And I thank you for spending your time today and your energy and sharing your thoughts with us.

[00:26:54] Diane Mueller: Well, thank you for being the light that you are.[00:27:00]

[00:27:01] Vinothini Raju: Thanks for giving this opportunity to us, Nicole.