Three months after speaking at FOSDEM in Brussels, I brought my family to LinuxFest Northwest in Bellingham, WA. What I found was a college town bursting with craft beer, open-source energy, and one of my personal heroes.

A kid from a small Mexican town dreamed of finding real-life hackers. Two decades later, he flew his family to Brussels and spoke at one of the world's largest open-source conferences. This is that story.

Entering the tech industry is a mix of opportunities, skills, and pure luck. For many of us, breaking into BigTech felt more like winning a lottery ticket than ...