Blog: add interview with Anushka Saxena

content/blog/lfx-mentorship-documentation-anushka-saxena/index.md

@@ -0,0 +1,55 @@
+---
+title: "Updating CloudNativePG's documentation"
+date: 2026-01-12
+draft: false
+image:
+    url: anushka-saxena.jpg
+    attribution:
+authors:
+ - fdrees
+tags:
+ - mentorship
+ - lfx
+ - cncf
+ - PostgreSQL
+ - Kubernetes
+ - documentation
+ - docusaurus
+summary: "Meet the mentee: Anushka Saxena worked with the project maintainers on transforming 
+the documentation for CloudNativePG, as part of the LFX mentorship program."
+---
+
+CloudNativePG was back for the September-October-November term of LFX Mentorship with  [several projects](https://cloudnative-pg.io/blog/2025-term3-lfx-cncf-mentorship/). 
+One of them was around the Docs. 
+
+[Anushka Saxena](https://www.linkedin.com/in/-anushka-saxena/) is a Software Application Development Apprentice at Google, and is based in Bengaluru, India. She worked on improving the project’s documentation automation and multi-version support with mentors and CloudNativePG maintainers Gabriele Bartolini, Leonardo Cecchi, and Francesco Canovai. 
+
+I had a chat with Anushka about her work, and about how she got into Tech in the first place. 
+
+## Start at the beginning
+
+Anushka has always been motivated by curiosity and the desire to understand how systems work. "Over time, open source became a natural extension of that curiosity because it offered a way to learn by contributing, asking questions, and building things that real people use." What really drew her in was when she realized that great software often faces issues not because of poor engineering, but because it’s hard to understand or adopt. "That realization shaped my interest in documentation and contributor experience as first-class technical problems."  
+
+Anushka is a contributor to the Cloud Native ecosystem, with a particular focus on developer-centric projects where infrastructure, documentation, and community intersect. With a background in community leadership for major cloud providers, she remains active in CNCF initiatives, open-source projects like AsyncAPI, and the broader Developer tooling landscape.
+
+"One community that’s especially close to my heart is [Data on Kubernetes (DoK)](https://dok.community/). I first got involved during my college days as a volunteer for DoK Community Days, which was my introduction to cloud-native data workloads and open-source communities by [Bart Farell](https://bartfarrell.com), a mentor and a very well-known personality in the CNCF space. Coming back to the CloudNativePG ecosystem as a mentee later on felt like a full-circle moment!"
+
+## Docs contributions
+
+Anushka worked on automating the import of versioned documentation into the CloudNativePG docs site so that new operator releases automatically trigger the correct documentation build. It started with a major "housekeeping" task: she wrote and executed a series of Node.js utility scripts to sanitize over 60 Markdown files. This involved converting MkDocs-style admonitions to Docusaurus syntax and fixing MDX spacing issues to ensure the build wouldn't crash.
+
+She also worked on the Sidebar Position Multiplier, a script that intelligently re-indexed our documentation pages (10, 20, 30...) to allow future contributors to insert new pages without breaking the order. Finally, she helped architect the Auto-Sync Pipeline, a GitHub Action that automatically pulls documentation from the main repo into the docs repo whenever a new release is published. This involved writing a reusable import script, integrating it into a GitHub Actions workflow triggered by upstream releases, and validating the output in a Docusaurus-based documentation setup. 
+
+"A key part of my approach was treating documentation as production infrastructure: iterating locally, validating assumptions, opening pull requests, and refining solutions based on maintainer feedback. The goal was not just to make things work once, but to reduce long-term manual effort, and make the documentation workflow more contributor-friendly and reliable."
+
+Anushka says that working with mentors Gabriele, Francesco, and Leonardo was the highlight of her mentorship. "We had a very collaborative rhythm!" Through Slack, GitHub issues, weekly sync calls and pull requests, the team was responsive and generous with feedback, making it easy to iterate and improve. Anushka appreciated that discussions were clear, constructive, and focused on long-term project health rather than quick fixes. "Gabriele, Francesco, and Leonardo constantly provided the overall high-level vision that helped me see how my small scripts would affect the project as a whole."
+
+Seeing my contributions become part of CloudNativePG’s documentation workflow, and knowing they would support future releases, is very rewarding. The trust the maintainers placed in me, and their encouragement to take ownership of complex pieces of the pipeline, really made me feel included; not "just a mentee."  
+
+## Lessons learned 
+
+While debugging the MDX sanitization, Anushka realized that Docusaurus is much stricter than standard Markdown. A failed build because of a single unclosed `<td>` tag taught her about how modern documentation engines render content as React components, and changed how she now views "docs as code". "Also, realizing how deeply documentation is tied to release engineering made me ponder upon how docs aren’t just reference material, but a critical part of user trust, operational safety, and adoption, especially for something as production-critical as Kubernetes-native PostgreSQL!" Certainly something she'll be taking into her next projects.
+
+## What's next
+
+Anushka is keen to stay involved in the project, particularly around documentation tooling, automation, and contributor experience. She's excited to continue working at the intersection of Kubernetes, databases, and community-driven development. "My next big goal is to refine the SEO and AI grounding for the site by making sure that when people ask an AI for CloudNativePG help, they get the most accurate, up-to-date documentation."