Cloud Native Rejekts EU 2026 · AI DevOps Ansible Community

Cloud Native Rejekts EU 2026

From speaker to Master of Ceremonies 🎤

Cloud Native Rejekts EU 2026 in Amsterdam on 21st March was special.

When the organizers asked me to MC the event at Miro HQ, I immediately said yes. Rejekts has always been one of my favorite parts of KubeCon week: raw technical content, zero marketing fluff, and a room full of people who genuinely build, run, break, and improve the cloud native ecosystem.

Together with Julia Hahn, I had the pleasure of welcoming 300+ engineers for a full day of Kubernetes, open source tooling, security, platform engineering, runtime stories, user experiences, and the kind of talks that deserve way more visibility.

That is what makes Cloud Native Rejekts so important.

Many talks do not make it into KubeCon + CloudNativeCon simply because there are thousands of submissions and limited slots. Rejekts gives those ideas a second stage — and often, some of the best technical conversations of the whole week happen there.

MC-ing taught me something new:

Being a speaker is about delivering one story well.
Being an MC is about connecting every story, keeping the room alive, respecting the schedule, supporting speakers, reading the audience, and creating space for the hallway track where the real magic happens.
A few lessons I will take with me:

- Energy is contagious.

- Brevity is respect.

- Names matter.

- Timing matters.

- The hallway is part of the program.

- Community is built in the spaces between talks.

Huge thanks to the Cloud Native Rejekts organizers, all speakers, volunteers, sponsors, and everyone who showed up with curiosity and energy.

If your KubeCon CFP gets rejected, do not stop there. Submit to Rejekts.

And if you are attending KubeCon, block the day before for Cloud Native Rejekts. You will not regret it.

https://lucaberton.com/blog/master-of-ceremonies-cloud-native-rejekts-2026/

0 comments