Friends of Dorothy

About Friends of Dorothy

Friends of Dorothy is a CNCF community initiative dedicated to creating a welcoming, supportive space within the cloud-native ecosystem. Our goal is to empower community members, whether you’re already active in open source or just getting started, to grow, connect, and thrive.

This effort is part of Merge Forward, a CNCF Technical Community Group focused on building a diverse, inclusive, and collaborative cloud native community where every voice is valued. Join our effort!

How to join

• 🗓️ Monthly Working Group Meeting: Every last Tuesday at 2 PM ET (sign up below)

• 💬 CNCF Slack channel: #friends-of-dorothy

• 🔔 Stay connected: "Join" this group above to receive updates

Why a Friends of Dorothy initiative?

In any community, if you don't see individuals "like you" thriving in a particular field, it can be difficult to envision a path for yourself. Without visible representation, we may not even know that such opportunities exist.

To cultivate greater representation across all communities, we must establish pathways that welcome diverse individuals into the cloud-native and open-source space. By paving the way for a critical mass of individuals from different backgrounds to succeed in these fields, we can inspire and empower them to become role models within their own communities. In turn, these role models will serve as catalysts, motivating a new generation of engineers to join them on this journey.

Our goal is to foster a more welcoming and vibrant tech community, where everyone has the opportunity to contribute their unique perspectives and talents.

Our goals

• Create pathways for Dorothy's friends into cloud native and open-source

• Empower them to become more visible members within the cloud native community

• Build Friends of Dorothy community to network, learn from, and support each other

Leads

Lead: Or Navon