May 2026 marked the end of my inaugural Community & Advocacy Fellowship with the eBPF Foundation, awarded in recognition of my ongoing contributions to the eBPF community.
During the first half of the fellowship, I focused on expanding my community efforts across multiple formats, including eBPF podcasts, local meetups, conference talks, and hands-on coding labs.
In the second half, I focused on the initiatives which I identified as generating the most impact: interactive eBPF Coding Labs, eBPF 1-on-1 mentorship and technical talks that help developers and platform engineers learn eBPF.
A particular highlight was speaking at KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 in Amsterdam alongside two colleagues, where we shared state-of-the-art eBPF attack and defense techniques with the cloud native community.
On top of that, I continued to speak about eBPF at local meetups, where I gave talks on building an eBPF-based firewall and load balancers from scratch.
I also released several new hands-on eBPF Coding Labs on the Iximiuz Labs platform, complementing the existing Skill paths for developers at different experience levels:
- eBPF Beginner Skill Path
- eBPF CO-RE Skill Path
- eBPF/XDP Network Skill Path
- Building a Minimal Service Mesh with eBPF and Envoy
The ideas for these labs came from recurring questions and knowledge gaps I observed while 1-on-1 mentoring developers around the world.
All in all, the inaugural Community & Advocacy Fellowship with the eBPF Foundation not only enabled me to dedicate more time to promoting and teaching eBPF, but also helped strengthen eBPFChirp’s position as a go-to resource for all things eBPF.
I’m incredibly grateful for the opportunity, and especially for the support, feedback, and encouragement from Bill Mulligan throughout the fellowship.
It was a rewarding experience from start to finish, and if the opportunity arose again in the future, I would gladly do it all over again.