Why I speak at conferences
Conference speaking is not about being on stage. It is about giving back to the community that taught me everything I know. Every tool I use, every pattern I apply, every solution I build — it all came from someone who shared their knowledge at a meetup, a blog post, or a conference talk.
Here is my speaking journey over the past few years.
Ansible Berlin 2023
My first major community talk was at the Ansible Berlin meetup in 2023. Berlin has one of the most active Ansible communities in Europe, and presenting there was a turning point.
The topic: practical Ansible automation patterns for real-world infrastructure. Not the “hello world” playbook demos, but the patterns you need when managing hundreds of servers across multiple environments — roles, collections, dynamic inventory, vault integration, and testing with Molecule.
What I learned: the Ansible community is incredibly welcoming. The questions after the talk were not gotchas — they were genuine curiosity from people solving real problems. Several conversations continued for months afterward.
This experience led directly to my Ansible content and deeper involvement with the automation community.
CfgMgmtCamp 2025
Config Management Camp in Ghent, Belgium is one of the most respected infrastructure conferences in Europe. It brings together the people who actually manage production systems — not vendor evangelists, but practitioners.
Speaking at CfgMgmtCamp 2025 was special because the audience genuinely understands infrastructure automation. When you talk about Ansible at scale or Terraform state management to this crowd, they have opinions. They challenge your assumptions. They share their own war stories.
The hallway track at CfgMgmtCamp is legendary. Some of my best professional connections came from conversations between sessions — people who are solving the same problems in different ways, at different scales, in different industries.
Cloud Native London
Cloud Native London is one of the UK’s premier Cloud Native meetups, consistently attracting engineers from across the Kubernetes and CNCF ecosystem.
Presenting there gave me the opportunity to share my work on Kubernetes platform engineering with an audience that lives and breathes cloud native. London’s tech scene is incredibly diverse — engineers from fintech, media, government, and startups, all bringing different perspectives to the same Kubernetes challenges.
The energy of the London cloud native community is infectious. If you are ever in the UK and working with Kubernetes, this meetup is a must-attend.
FOSDEM 2025
FOSDEM in Brussels is the largest free and open-source developer conference in the world. Thousands of developers descend on the ULB campus every February for two days of talks, hallway conversations, and the legendary beer event.
Speaking at FOSDEM 2025 was a career highlight. The open-source community at FOSDEM is different from any other conference — these are the people who build the tools everyone else uses. The audience includes kernel developers, package maintainers, language designers, and infrastructure engineers.
My talk focused on the intersection of AI and open-source infrastructure — how teams are using open-source tools to build and manage AI workloads at scale. The questions were deeply technical and incredibly insightful.
FOSDEM 2026
Returning to FOSDEM in 2026 felt like coming home. The conference continues to grow, and the energy is unmatched.
This year I focused on the evolving landscape of AI infrastructure on Kubernetes — how the open-source ecosystem is adapting to handle GPU scheduling, model serving, and the unique challenges of AI workloads on shared infrastructure.
FOSDEM remains my favorite conference for pure technical depth and community spirit. No badges, no expo halls, no vendor pitches — just developers sharing knowledge.
Open Source Summit 2025
The Linux Foundation Open Source Summit is where industry meets community. It brings together enterprise leaders, open-source maintainers, and the organizations that depend on open-source infrastructure.
Speaking at Open Source Summit 2025 gave me the opportunity to reach a different audience — decision-makers and architects who are evaluating how to adopt open-source solutions at enterprise scale. The conversation is different from a pure community event: it is about governance, security, compliance, and the EU Cyber Resilience Act’s impact on open source.
This experience reinforced my belief that open source needs advocates who can speak both languages — the technical depth of a FOSDEM talk and the business context of an enterprise summit.
KubeCon EU 2026 — Amsterdam
And now, this week: KubeCon + CloudNativeCon Europe 2026 in Amsterdam. 15,000 attendees. The biggest Cloud Native event in the world.
I am speaking about Multi-tenant GPUs on Bare Metal OpenShift AI — a topic that sits right at the intersection of everything I have been working on: Kubernetes, AI infrastructure, multi-tenancy, and platform engineering.
The journey from Ansible Berlin to KubeCon has been incredible. Each conference taught me something different:
- Ansible Berlin taught me that community talks matter
- CfgMgmtCamp taught me that practitioners want depth, not demos
- Cloud Native London taught me that diversity of perspective makes talks better
- FOSDEM taught me that open source is about people, not code
- Open Source Summit taught me that enterprises need open-source advocates
- KubeCon is teaching me that the Cloud Native ecosystem is ready for AI at scale
What I have learned about speaking
For anyone considering submitting their first CFP:
Start local. Meetups are the best training ground. The Ansible Berlin meetup, Cloud Native London — these communities are welcoming and the feedback is genuine.
Share what you know, not what sounds impressive. The best talks come from real experience. If you spent three months debugging a Kubernetes networking issue, that is a talk. If you migrated 500 servers with Ansible, that is a talk.
The hallway track is the real conference. The conversations between sessions — with people like Artem Lajko, Pepijn Oomen, and Lian Li — are where ideas become collaborations.
Give back more than you take. The open-source community runs on generosity. Share your knowledge, support other speakers, and the community will support you.
What is next
After KubeCon, I am looking at speaking opportunities around AI infrastructure, digital sovereignty, and the evolving platform engineering landscape. If you are organizing an event and these topics resonate, let us talk.
Check out my KubeCon EU 2026 talk on Multi-tenant GPUs, the Cloud Native Rejekts 2026 recap where I co-hosted as MC, and the KubeCon 2026 Leaders shaping the ecosystem.
