Karen Chu leads Swift community initiatives for Apple’s Open Source Program Office. With 10+ years in OSS, she is a CNCF Ambassador, Helm community manager/maintainer, emeritus Kubernetes Code of Conduct Committee member, meet-up organizer, and conference organizer. She has also worked on The Illustrated Children’s Guide to Kubernetes book series. When she’s not connecting dots in the community, you can find her pursuing photography, cooking, and sipping on chai lattes.

Presentations

23x

Workshop: Swift Server Fundamentals

Swift isn't just for iOS anymore—it's a powerful, memory-safe systems language that's gaining traction in Linux server environments. In this hands-on workshop for Linux developers, we'll build a production-ready REST API while exploring why Swift's combination of compile-time safety, modern concurrency, and C++-level performance, without garbage collection, makes it compelling for Linux services. You'll learn how Swift integrates with familiar Linux workflows, from package management to containerization, and leave with a working API ready to deploy on your favorite Linux distro. No prior Swift experience required—just bring your laptop with Swift installed and ready to code.

See Presentation
18x

Seven Hard Truths about Open Source Community

In OSS, managing a project may not get easier as it gets more successful. We like to think that attracting lots of users means success, & success means spreading the workload. But sometimes managing a successful OSS project actually comes with unexpected work. In this talk, we cover hard lessons learned from managing several OSS projects.

See Presentation