My Vision: Diversity in Engineering

My name is Nicklas and I am a brain! A brain? What is he talking about? Being a brain 🧠 or a heart ❤️ is a term coined by Jessica McCabe, better known on YouTube for her channel How to ADHD. I am a brain, because I have been diagnosed with ADHD.

Learning about, living with and embracing neurodiversity has taught me a bunch about myself, my habits, my strengths and my weaknesses. I have always been tried to be inclusive. However, learning about this major part of myself that I always knew was there, but didn't really understand has helped me grow.

Being diverse in any way may give a sense of loneliness and cast an unfair shadow on accomplishments. This is why I want to be an ally!

I know how it feels to struggle with mental health, feeling like an imposter or lonely. I want to contribute by creating space, where we can all be the humans we aspire to be. Lovely, Nicklas, what's your great plan?

1. All my projects are and will always be licensed via either the MIT or the Apache 2.0 license.
2. Except for being free of any form of discrimination my projects have no guidelines for contributing. This may seem hindering, but it allows people with similar struggles related to executive functioning to learn coding by contributing. I have often wanted to contribute, but the complexity of the process overwhelmed me. I want to meet other people where they are at and help to lift them to the next level.
3. I don't care about academic titles or years of experience. I am a young engineer and I want to encourage the growth of other engineers by challenging the status quo while being respectful and humble. In my opinion, you do not earn respect based on your title or your experience. You earn respect based on kindness, friendly explanations, support and inclusion.

My Mission: Homelabs Data Centers at Home

Did I mention that I am extremely passionate about data centers? They somehow fascinate me, because they are what drives a lot of our modern world and yet only very few people are aware of them and understand them. The first time I was able to step into a data center, I was 24, but I have been hosting servers since I have been 14. In this context I am now building a set of software and hardware to build your own small data center at home. My goal is to get as close to a real data center as possible in terms of automation, while keeping the costs low. I want to enable students to learn about all the cool tech that makes up our internet, while also inventing new ways of doing things.

1. Software-defined networking (SDN) at home
   As a part of this I am currently building netadm, a tool to interact with consumer-grade network switches. This will then be used to build a Kubernetes Operator-based DHCP server and SDN controller.

2. Infrastructure as Code
   Some of my proof-of-concepts, such as my nftables-based firewall configuration can be found in my infrastructure repository.

3. Kubernetes
   I am a massive fan of single-board computers. They provide an incredible platform to deploy real-world Kubernetes cluster cost-effectively. In this context, I build k3se which allows you to declaratively bring up Kubernetes clusters with a single command.

In an ideal world, I would love to work on these projects with a full-time team as part of a foundation. This is why your funding matters. As soon as I can sustain myself from the sponsorship, I want to hire diverse humans to support me on this journey.