OpenClaw in Amsterdam: AI Agents at KubeCon Europe 2026

Taking My AI Agent to Amsterdam

KubeCon Europe 2026 is in Amsterdam this March, and I am bringing something unusual in my backpack: a Raspberry Pi running OpenClaw, my personal AI agent that manages my website, monitors my infrastructure, and handles routine DevOps tasks autonomously.

While everyone at the conference will be talking about AI agents in theory, I will be showing one that actually runs — on a $60 single-board computer.

What Is OpenClaw?

OpenClaw is an open-source AI agent framework that turns language models into persistent, tool-using assistants. Unlike chatbots that forget everything between sessions, OpenClaw maintains memory, runs on a schedule, and integrates with real infrastructure.

Think of it as the difference between asking ChatGPT a question and having a junior DevOps engineer who never sleeps.

Key Features

• Persistent memory — remembers context across sessions using structured markdown files
• Tool integration — executes shell commands, manages Git repos, calls APIs
• Multi-channel — connects via Discord, Telegram, WhatsApp, or web chat
• Heartbeat system — proactively checks on things without being asked
• Sub-agent spawning — delegates complex tasks to isolated worker sessions

Why a Raspberry Pi?

The cloud-native community talks a lot about scaling up. I am more interested in scaling down.

Running OpenClaw on a Pi proves several points:

1. You don’t need GPUs for useful AI agents — the agent calls cloud APIs (GPT-4, Claude) for reasoning but runs its orchestration locally
2. Personal AI should be personal — your agent, your hardware, your data
3. Cost efficiency — my Pi draws 5W and costs nothing to run after the initial purchase
4. Always-on — unlike a laptop, a Pi sits in the corner and just works

# Install OpenClaw on a Raspberry Pi
curl -fsSL https://get.openclaw.ai | bash

# Configure with your preferred model
openclaw config set model claude-sonnet

# Start the gateway
openclaw gateway start

The entire setup takes about 10 minutes.

What My Agent Actually Does

At KubeCon, I will demo the real tasks my OpenClaw agent handles daily:

Website Management

My agent manages lucaberton.com — this very website. It writes blog posts, fixes SEO issues, updates event listings, and commits changes to GitLab. The KubeCon Europe 2026 Side Events Guide you might have seen? My agent helps maintain it.

Infrastructure Monitoring

# HEARTBEAT.md — agent checks these periodically
- Check GitLab CI pipeline status
- Monitor website uptime
- Review Cloudflare analytics
- Check for new Ahrefs alerts

Content Operations

The agent generates technical content, optimizes metadata, fixes broken links, and manages cross-site SEO across my network of educational websites including Ansible Pilot, Terraform Pilot, and CopyPasteLearn.

The Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────┐
│   Raspberry Pi 5 (8GB)      │
│   ├── OpenClaw Gateway      │
│   ├── Memory Store (files)  │
│   ├── Git (workspace)       │
│   └── Node.js runtime       │
└──────────┬──────────────────┘
           │ HTTPS
           ▼
┌──────────────────────┐
│  LLM API (Claude)    │
│  Discord / Telegram  │
│  GitLab API          │
│  Web Search          │
└──────────────────────┘

The Pi handles orchestration, memory, and tool execution. The heavy reasoning happens in the cloud via API calls. This hybrid approach gives you the best of both worlds: local control with cloud-scale intelligence.

Conversations at the Conference

If you are attending KubeCon Europe 2026 in Amsterdam, I would love to chat about:

• AI agents for platform engineering — automating toil with persistent AI assistants
• Personal AI infrastructure — why running your own agent matters
• The intersection of Ansible and AI — using automation tools alongside language models
• Edge AI deployment — running intelligent systems on minimal hardware

You can find me at Cloud Native Rejekts on March 21-22 where I am serving as Master of Ceremonies, and throughout KubeCon week at various side events.

Getting Started with OpenClaw

Want to try it yourself? OpenClaw is open source and runs on any Linux machine:

# Quick start
curl -fsSL https://get.openclaw.ai | bash
openclaw gateway start

# Connect to Discord
openclaw config set discord.token YOUR_BOT_TOKEN
openclaw gateway restart

Check the OpenClaw documentation and join the community on Discord.

See You in Amsterdam

KubeCon Europe runs March 24-26 at the RAI Amsterdam, with co-located events on March 23. Check out my complete side events guide to plan your week.

If you spot someone with a Raspberry Pi at a conference party, that is probably me. Come say hi — my agent might even respond faster than I do.