We’re excited to introduce one of our first k6 champions, Carlos Gauto (or Charly), and put him in the spotlight. Carlos has spread the word about k6 via his YouTube and Twitch channels to Latin American communities. Apart from being a k6 champion, Charly is also a Playwright Ambassador and a BrowserStack champion, which shows his passion for helping the community. Let’s get to know him more!
Tell us a little bit about yourself
I’ve worked in the IT industry for 16 years and have extensive experience in web, API, and mobile test automation. I’ve worked as a QA Automation Practice Manager providing testing services to different industries. Currently, I work as a Project Leader at Mercado Libre. I love sharing my knowledge with the community by delivering test automation-related content.
What do you do outside of work?
Outside work, I like to watch animated series with my family and play restaurant games with my son, who is fantastic at creating beautiful lego models. I also enjoy playing video games, making instrumental electronic music, and getting together with friends to have a good time and a laugh.
What made you decide to become a k6 Champion?
I've been talking to people on my different channels for a while now about how powerful k6 is. Then, I received an invitation from Leandro Melendez (aka Señor Performo), who is one of the Developer Advocates at k6, to speak on his podcast, and very kindly, he told me about a future possibility of being part of this beautiful community. Without hesitation, I wanted to be part of the k6 community to meet and continue learning from great leaders in the industry.
How are you currently helping the k6 community?
Since k6 is gaining a lot of momentum and interest from developers or software testers, I have spoken on several occasions and done live streams on my Twitch channel, which is always well received by the audience. I show people how to set up k6, get started, and implement various use cases of integrating k6 in CI/CD environments. Finally, I also have a community on Discord where people can ask questions about k6.
What do you love about k6?
I started my performance testing journey when the performance-related tasks were just assigned to a few people because of knowledge silos, the complexity of performance tools, and licensing, among other issues. I had to live through times when performance-related tasks were limited to a few people. What I love about k6 is that it removes these issues and builds a bridge of easy access to performance testing tasks for the entire development team by introducing the concept of performance testing as code, which allows for greater control and traceability.
What’s your favorite k6 feature?
I like many features of k6, but one of my favorite features is its simplicity in building and simulating a load workload. We can design different tests with a language as popular and widely adopted as Javascript, which allows for greater strength to the adoption.
I also like the possibility of extending k6 core with various extensions to allow the community to expand their use cases regarding performance testing.
What advice would you give to someone who wants to become a k6 Champion?
I encourage everyone to be curious, explore and contribute ideas that will improve the experience of the performance test engineers and the entire development team so you can better serve your customers.
I also encourage you to spread the word about what an excellent tool k6 is, whether answering questions on Slack, writing an article, or giving a demo to different users. All of these add up and provide excellent value.
About the k6 Champions Program
The k6 Champions Program aims to recognise performance testing experts within our community from across the globe and amplify their contributions. To learn more about this program, check out our launch blog post or visit our official k6 Champions Program landing page.