Introduction
As long term participants in Cloud Security Office Hours (CSOH), we (Kyle Ingersoll and Michael Basil) were asked to give a session about the fundamentals of Open Source and GitHub.
We accepted, and decided that instead of writing a reflection article completely afterwards to use the article itself as the collaborative training vehicle.
Real CSOH Community Member Quotes
The following quotes are reflections of the small group breakout session:
Here is our demonstration of a reflection quote contribution:
“Cloud Security Office Hours feels like group therapy for defenders in the career maze—and a quiet commons where we learn how we actually want to do this work together.” - Kyle Ingersoll
Making this contribution demonstrated the connection between the repository and the rendered output through GitHub Pages. We worked through forking the repository, enabling GitHub Pages, modifying the local fork, inspecting to make sure it was rendering properly, making a upstream pull request, and negotating the contribution to merge.
Here is a contribution from a breakout session authored by a community member who was eager to engage the training and the most direct initial requester of the session:
“YAML hates it when you forget double spaces. Also, this was fun! I hope. I think.” ~Stryker
Here is another contribuion from the breakout session:
“No more static keys, Cloud roles grant temporary trust, tokens pass, work flows” - Dane Kantner
Here’s a playful contribution from one of the breakout groups in line with the spirit of security professional humor:
TG9yZW0gaXBzdW0gZG9sb3Igc2l0IGFtZXQgY29uc2VjdGV0dXIgYWRpcGlzY2luZyBlbGl0LiBTaXQgYW1ldCBjb25zZWN0ZXR1ciBhZGlwaXNjaW5nIGVsaXQgcXVpc3F1ZSBmYXVjaWJ1cyBleC4gQWRpcGlzY2luZyBlbGl0IHF1aXNxdWUgZmF1Y2lidXMgZXggc2FwaWVuIHZpdGFlIHBlbGxlbnRlc3F1ZS4=
Training Insights
Giving the training session:
- The time was rather tight, so doing it again would extend to 90 minutes.
- There wasn’t enough instruction entering the breakout session, to obviate that next time, make sure there is a reference guide as well as a guide person in each of the breakout rooms to help out struggling members.
- Training breakout groups worked great, some groups decided to deep network instead of doing the exercise, which serves the spirit of the community and a less obvious intention of the session overall.
- The hour following the session was the real training for the people who stayed behind. We increased training reps, networking depth, and co-ideated interesting CSOH opportunities for next year.
- As a supporting facilitator, the presentation was exhausting but being present and staying for the hour after was worth it.
- The supporting facilitator went too fast when presenting for other people to follow easily due to their prior experience.
- Compared to the previous co-presentation, the supporting facilitator successfully assumed more responsiblity overall.
Conclusion
There will likely be a follow-up session with the CSOH Python Study Group coming soon!
If such an experience resonates, consider joining the CSOH Commmunity Zoom Call on a Friday morning!
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