Every conference recap I write ends up being about people. Open Source Summit Europe 2026 in Prague was no exception. As a media partner for my interview show Udienza, I had a full calendar of ten-minute recordings. The best moments, though, often came in between: in the corridor, at a booth, or at the reception at Žofín Palace.
Here are the people I met, roughly in the order the week happened. Thank you all for your time.
The Udienza crew
None of the interviews would exist without Marcin Czupryniak, who filmed and recorded audio for Udienza all week. We started Wednesday morning in matching black t-shirts and kept going until the last hour before my flight on Friday.
Udienza was listed as a media partner on the event website. That is worth a photo in front of the sponsor wall.
Wednesday: kernel people and the first booths
Greg Kroah-Hartman, the Linux stable kernel maintainer, met me by the badge desk on Wednesday morning. He also wrote the foreword of the State of Open Source in Europe report launched that day. More in Kernel Maintainers in Prague.
Carol Chen, a speaker at the summit, stopped for a photo with Marcin and me just before the press panel started.
Around midday I stopped at the Percona booth, with its view over Prague, for a quick Udienza conversation about open source databases.
Arnaldo Carvalho de Melo of Red Hat, maintainer of pahole and perf tooling, recorded with us in the afternoon. He was still wearing the lavalier mic when we took this photo.
Kavitha Daula, VP of Engineering at Edera, hosted us at their booth for a conversation on hypervisor isolation for containers and AI agents. See Isolating AI Agents.
At the end of the day I found the OpenBao crew near the OpenSSF booth: Toni Tauro (Adfinis) and Andrii Fedorchuk, with Marcin in the middle as usual.
I also met benny Vasquez, chair of the AlmaLinux OS Foundation board, on the floor on Wednesday. We set up a proper conversation for the next day.
The evening belonged to Žofín Palace and the 35 years of Linux casino reception. I wrote that up separately in 35 Years of Linux at Žofín Palace.
Thursday: foundations and the show floor
Thursday started with Ben Potter, Head of Developer Relations at Coder, for a recording on cloud development environments and AI coding agents. Thanks to Cassandra Jowett at Coder for setting it up.
In the afternoon I ran into Ralph Squillace and Marco D’Angelo (Radixia) in one of the lounges.
Then came the CNCF session with Bob Killen and Daniel Krook, arranged by Haley White and the Linux Foundation PR team. The highlights are in my write-up of the interview.
After that I visited the AlmaLinux booth for my conversation with benny Vasquez on community-governed enterprise Linux. See Neutral Governance.
Near the OpenSSF area I met Alex Scheel of Control Plane with Toni again. Control Plane is one of the contributing vendors behind the OSERA initiative I wrote about in AI-Speed Exploits.
A few minutes later, on the same floor, I met a group that included Petr Hodina, a speaker, and Michelle Willemse of Adfinis.
The day ended at the Igalia booth with Mario Sánchez Prada, who had just given his WPE WebKit session. More in Embedded Linux in Prague.
Friday: Linus, Flatcar and the last hallway
Friday started with the Linus Torvalds and Dirk Hohndel keynote. After that came my slot with Thilo Fromm of Flatcar Container Linux at the Microsoft booth, and a planned catch-up with Paula Grzegorzewska of Linux Foundation Europe, who had reached out to Udienza herself during the week.
Before lunch I bumped into Diana Todea of VictoriaMetrics and a fellow attendee in the main hall.
Then a last stop at the openEuler booth before heading to the airport.
New connections after the event
The LinkedIn requests that followed tell the story of the week. They included Nithya Ruff, Chair of the Linux Foundation Board; Johan Linåker of RISE, her co-presenter in the Open Source at a Crossroads keynote; Juliette van der Laarse, founding director of the AI Flower Foundation, whose Friday keynote argued for moving “from a thousand private agents to one open garden”; Brian “bex” Exelbierd; Andrew Randall of Azure; and engineers from Red Hat, SAP, Ericsson and JetBrains.
What I learned about the hallway track
- Book the interviews, but leave gaps. Half of the people above were not on my calendar.
- Wear something recognisable. The Udienza t-shirt started more conversations than any business card.
- Follow up within 24 hours. By Friday afternoon, the people I had messaged on Wednesday evening were the ones I had real second conversations with.
If we met in Prague and you are not on this list, it is my memory, not you. Send me a message on LinkedIn. For the format of these roundups, see also People I Met at AGNTCon + MCPCon Europe 2026.
