Stay Human on Aleskandro

No borders, no strangers - Stay Human

Wed, 12 Mar 2025 13:19:02 +0200

Restiamo umani (Vittorio Arrigoni)

I grew up in a small town in southern Italy as a child of the Erasmus generation. I never knew borders - not in the way past generations did. Thanks to the European Union, I could move freely, study abroad, live, and work in different countries without a passport or visa. I was never a foreigner - only a person among people.

And yet, despite everything we have built together, despite decades of peace, unity, and progress, we are watching it unravel. Since 2008, we have seen the signs: the economic crisis, the rise of far-right movements, Covid-19, nationalism, protectionism, and militarism. Today, governments speak once again of borders, tariffs, and walls. People I meet from day to day are living the wars directly in Palestine, Israel, Ukraine. Some countries are reintroducing compulsory military service. They invest in weapons instead of education, research, and welfare - fueling conflict instead of cooperation. They are dismantling the very foundation of the EU - not just economically, but in spirit.

Beyond the Great (Fire)Wall: A Journey Through Forbidden Landscapes and Cultural Wonders

Thu, 12 Oct 2023 00:19:02 +0200

For years, I collaborated with Red Hat colleagues remotely, forging connections and driving projects forward from opposite ends of the globe. But it wasn’t until my trip to China that I finally had the opportunity to meet them in person, to put faces to names and share experiences beyond the confines of virtual communication.

I could meet with my first manager, the teammate just promoted from the intern position after months of work together, some of the historical leads and managers of the Openshift QE group. The experience of meeting and discussing of work with them and especially having beers, dinners, Kao Rou in particular, has been one of the most grateful times of working in my current team. It also is the beauty of such an international way we have of organizing our teams: it is technical need as anytime there is at least one person awake and working in the team, but it also is a way to share and enrich our culture and knowledge by exchanging experiences and traditions from our countries.

Hello World

Sun, 12 Jun 2022 00:19:02 +0200

Yet another (Web1.0+) blog. Why should someone make a blog in 2022, after the social networks era reached (and is likely going to lose) its steady state? After participating in KubeCon22 in Valencia, Spain, I thought of implementing it. It’s been my first experience as a Red Hatter to get in touch with hatters in person. I just joined Red Hat for one year, remotely, from a small town in southern Italy, in the time of COVID-19. Since then, I have known many fantastic people remotely and for reasons related to my work: contributing to the enablement of OpenShift deployments on ARM64 servers. We are good at building teams and relationships remotely. However, you don’t share coffee, a beer, or a dinner with a colleague if you work in a remote setting like ours and in a team displaced around different timezones of the Earth. Not sharing a coffee also means that you only have a little chance to get in discussions beyond the work, even related to it but more to disguise and enjoy the possibility of knowing more through relaxed knowledge sharing.