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/

Welcome to Amsterdam! 🇳🇱 KubeCon is here, and the city is packed with amazing side events. Join Luca as he breaks down the ultimate schedule for the week—from conferences and book signings to canal cruises and epic tech parties! https://lucaberton.com/blog/kubecon-europe-2026-side-events/ If you're in town, make sure to connect with Luca to get his full master list of all the incredible events happening around the city. 🗓️ Luca’s KubeCon Week Schedule: - Saturday, March 21: Kick off the week at Cloud Native Rejekts—a full-day conference and a great chance to mingle with the locals. - Sunday, March 22: Welcome the KubeTrain! Meet tech enthusiasts traveling from all over Europe by train to attend the conference. - Monday, March 23: Co-located events day! Check out Red Hat OpenShift Commons, Microsoft, and GitHub events. - Tuesday, March 24: The official CNCF KubeCon begins! - Wednesday, March 25: Time to get serious with the fun! Bowling, canal cruises around Amsterdam, and karaoke! 🎤🎳 👇 Let's Connect!Are you in Amsterdam for KubeCon? Drop a comment below or connect with me directly, and I’ll share my massive list of must-attend events! #KubeCon #Kubernetes #Amsterdam #CloudNative #TechEvents

KubeCon EU 2026 is coming to Amsterdam 🇳🇱 — and the side-events calendar is already 🔥 I put together a date-sorted guide of KubeCon Europe 2026 side events (meetups, workshops, parties, boat cruise, karaoke… yes 😄). If you’re in town March 18–26, don’t wait: most of these are free but fill up fast. My highlights so far: - Platform Engineering MeetUp | Human Intelligence (Mar 18) - Cloud Native Rejekts EU 2026 (Mar 21) - KubeTrain (Mar 22) — arrive together, sustainably 🚄 - Red Hat OpenShift Commons Gathering (Mar 23) - House of Kube Amsterdam (Mar 23) - #KubeCrawl + #CloudNativeFest (Mar 24) - Kuberoke Spring Party (Mar 24) 🎤 - Afterdrinks + receptions (Mar 25) + Cloud Cruise boat party 🛥️ - LangChain NL community event (Mar 26) Full list + RSVP links in the blog: https://lucaberton.com/blog/kubecon-europe-2026-side-events/ Hosted / sponsored by (tagging everyone mentioned):@Red Hat @OpenShift @Cast AI @Port @Tailscale @Chainguard @Cloudsmith @NetBird @Syntasso @TSC Labs @FikaWorks @TrueFullstaq @Sidero Labs @The New Stack @Dynatrace @Akamas @Excelien @Datafy @CloudZero @LangChain See you in Amsterdam 👋— Luca #KubeCon #KubeConEU #CloudNative #Kubernetes #CNCF #Amsterdam #PlatformEngineering #DevOps #Networking #Community

🚀 Just back from FOSDEM 2026 in Brussels — and still buzzing! 8,000+ open source minds, 65 beers, 1013 talks… and enough hallway track conversations to fuel a year’s worth of ideas. This year, I had the chance to connect deeply with the teams from DeepComputing and the RISC-V International Foundation, and I must say: the momentum around open silicon and custom compute is real. Seeing the energy in the RISC-V devroom and chatting about hardware/software co-design reminded me how far open innovation has come — and where it's going. From Red Hat OpenShift AI to edge GPU orchestration, it was also great to swap stories from the field — especially how we’re applying these architectures at scale for enterprise-grade AI/ML workloads. Big thanks to everyone who made this weekend not just about code, but about community. If we met, let’s keep the conversation going. If not, see you next year — or sooner in the next devroom! 💡 Key takeaways: - RISC-V is getting real traction for AI at the edge. - Hardware is getting more open — and that unlocks a new class of innovation. - Still amazed by how strong and welcoming the open source community is. #FOSDEM2026 #OpenSource #RISC_V #DeepComputing #Ansible #Kubernetes #OpenShiftAI #EdgeAI #InfraAsCode #DevRoomBuzz #FOSS #MLOps #Belgium #Bruxelles #AI #Innovation #InfraAsCode #CloudNative hashtag#CNCF

Hi everyone, Just a quick note to say that I’ll be attending FOSDEM this year. FOSDEM is the largest free open-source conference in Europe, bringing together thousands of developers to share, learn, and collaborate. If you’re around, I’d love to meet up—whether it’s to talk open source, cloud-native infrastructure, automation, AI platforms, or simply to exchange ideas and experiences from the community. Feel free to reply to this email or reach out during the event.Looking forward to great conversations and inspiring talks. See you in Brussels! Best,Luca