data.js

const TALKS_DATA = [{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"ArgoCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Dan Garfield, Program Committee Co-Chair","speakers":"Dan Garfield","orgs":"Octopus Deploy","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for ArgoCon at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYHY/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"BackstageCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Balaji Sivasubramanian & Andre Wanlin, Program Committee Co-Chairs","speakers":"Andre Wanlin;Balaji Sivasubramanian","orgs":"Spotify;Red Hat","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for BackstageCon at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZLY/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Yuan Tang & Rajas Kakodkar, Program Committee Co-Chairs","speakers":"Yuan Tang;Rajas Kakodkar","orgs":"Red Hat;Broadcom","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZN3/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Cloud Native Telco Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Gergely Csatari & Philippe Ensarguet - Program Committee Co-Chairs","speakers":"Gergely Csatari;Philippe Ensarguet","orgs":"Nokia;Orange","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for Cloud Native Telco Day at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZN6/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"FluxCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Francesco Beltramini & Tiffany Wang, Program Committee Members","speakers":"Francesco Beltramini;Tiffany Wang","orgs":"ControlPlane;","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for FluxCon at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZNO/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Kubernetes on Edge Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Mars Toktonaliev, Program Committee Co-Chair","speakers":"Mars Toktonaliev","orgs":"KGPCo","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for Kubernetes on Edge Day at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZO4/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Observability Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks","speakers":"","orgs":"","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for Observability Day at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYMy/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Open Source SecurityCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Brandt Keller & Constanze Roedig, Program Committee Co-Chairs","speakers":"Brandt Keller;Constanze Roedig","orgs":"Defense Unicorns;fusioncore.ai & SBA-Research","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for Open Source SecurityCon at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZP5/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Platform Engineering Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Paula Kennedy & Stephane Di Cesare, Program Committee Co-Chairs","speakers":"Paula Kennedy;Stephane Di Cesare","orgs":"Syntasso;DKB","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for Platform Engineering Day at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZPc/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:05","type":"opening_remarks","title":"WasmCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Bailey Hayes, Program Committee Co-Chair","speakers":"Bailey Hayes","orgs":"Cosmonic","room":"E106-108","track":"WasmCon","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for WasmCon at CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZPf/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:10","type":"opening_remarks","title":"KeycloakCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks - Alexander Schwartz, Program Committee Co-Chair","speakers":"Alexander Schwartz","orgs":"IBM","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks session for KeycloakCon. Alexander Schwartz is a Principal Software Engineer at IBM working full time as a Keycloak maintainer.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZNz/","tags":["identity","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:05","time_end":"09:10","type":"talk","title":"ArgoCon | Argo Project Velocity Update - Dan Garfield","speakers":"Dan Garfield","orgs":"Octopus Deploy","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"A brief update on the Argo project velocity at ArgoCon, CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2JUey/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:10","time_end":"09:15","type":"talk","title":"ArgoCon | Argo CD Update - Alexander Matyushentsev","speakers":"Alexander Matyushentsev","orgs":"Akuity","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"Brief update on Argo CD. Alexander Matyushentsev is the co-creator of the Argo project and formerly a Principal Software Engineer at Intuit where he led the development of Argo CD.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYHb/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:10","time_end":"09:20","type":"talk","title":"CNCF Platform Engineering Technical Community Group Update - Katie Greenley, Chris Plank, Colin Griffin & Atulpriya Sharma","speakers":"Katie Greenley;Chris Plank;Colin Griffin;Atulpriya Sharma","orgs":"Palo Alto Networks;NatWest;Krumware;Improving","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"Come along and listen to the leaders of the CNCF Platform Engineering Technical Community Group give a quick update on what the community has been up to since KubeCon Atlanta, the initiatives underway and planned as well as what events they are running at KubeCon Amsterdam.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1J/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:10","time_end":"09:35","type":"talk","title":"Federated llm-d: Elevating Distributed Inference Beyond Cluster Boundaries","speakers":"Madhuri Yechuri;Abhishek Malvankar","orgs":"Elotl;IBM","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session addresses how generative AI models can be efficiently served across hardware accelerators. Since accelerators are expensive and scarce, the presentation explores sourcing them from multiple clusters across regions and clouds. It presents a federated llm-d framework which stretches llm-d across multiple clusters, covering use cases for federated distributed inference and presenting a blueprint for the federated stack along with a demo.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1A/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:10","time_end":"09:35","type":"talk","title":"The Shift: Radio Network Functions as IT Applications - Guillaume Nevicato, Orange & Andre Puschmann, Software Radio Systems","speakers":"Guillaume Nevicato;Andre Puschmann","orgs":"Orange;Software Radio Systems","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The telecommunications sector has undergone extensive cloud modernization efforts. Within Radio Access Networks (RAN), Open RAN initiatives are catalyzing this evolution toward IT-based architectures. The presentation demonstrates RAN's transition to IT design through two complementary open-source initiatives: Sylva delivers cloud infrastructure for telecom applications, while OCUDU emphasizes cloud-native network function development. A demonstration presents FluxCD GitOps deployment of an Open RAN Distributed Unit on Sylva's cloud platform.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1D/","tags":["gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:10","time_end":"09:35","type":"talk","title":"Vibe Coding Meets GitOps - Stefan Prodan, ControlPlane","speakers":"Stefan Prodan","orgs":"ControlPlane","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"","description":"This session examines the intersection of rapid iteration in vibe coding with GitOps's disciplined, declarative infrastructure approach. Stefan explores how teams can use Flux MCP and AI Agents to generate, manage, and troubleshoot GitOps pipelines for faster deployments while preserving control and security. The talk concludes with the Flux MCP roadmap and community contribution opportunities.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY11/","tags":["ai","gitops","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:10","time_end":"09:35","type":"talk","title":"Feeding the Cloud: Designing Data-Driven Robotics Systems","speakers":"Nina Polshakova;Aaron Ray","orgs":"Solo.io;MIT","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"","description":"The session explores how contemporary robotic systems transmit substantial data to cloud infrastructure for computational processing and model training. It addresses a fundamental design challenge: determining which tasks should execute locally versus remotely, considering connectivity unpredictability and computational constraints. Speakers examine how cloud-native, distributed architectures can coordinate edge and cloud computation to enable reliable, intelligent robotics in real-world environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY14/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:10","time_end":"09:35","type":"talk","title":"From Mild To Wild: How Hot Can Your SLSA Be? - Andrew McNamara, Red Hat & Adolfo Garcia Veytia, Carabiner Systems","speakers":"Andrew McNamara;Adolfo Garcia Veytia","orgs":"Red Hat;Carabiner Systems","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"","description":"This session examines policy engines consuming attestations at three maturity stages. At the foundational level, implementations verify builder identity and SLSA compliance. The intermediate approach deploys automated enforcement through admission controllers and verification attestations. The advanced stage constructs trust chains across the software lifecycle. Presenters demonstrate implementations using policy engines including AMPEL and Conforma.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1G/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:15","time_end":"09:40","type":"talk","title":"Our Journey To a Unified Developer Experience With Backstage - Symbat Nurbay & Xicu Pinera, Booking.com","speakers":"Symbat Nurbay;Xicu Pinera","orgs":"Booking.com;Booking.com","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"","description":"Over three years, Booking.com deployed Backstage as a central hub where 1.5k employees access 45 custom tools and 400K software assets. However, users perceived it as many separate tools living side-by-side rather than an integrated platform. The team redesigned their approach to create a unified experience enabling cross-tool workflows. They built a centralized dashboard connecting key signals from multiple tools into one consolidated view, transforming how the organization conducts reviews and uses the portal daily.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1P/","tags":["backstage","identity"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:15","time_end":"09:40","type":"talk","title":"Securing Multi-Tenant SaaS Platforms With Keycloak - Ritu Soni & Rishabh Tiwari, SkillBrew.AI","speakers":"Ritu Soni;Rishabh Tiwari","orgs":"SkillBrew.AI;SkillBrew.AI","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses scaling challenges in SkillBrew.AI's multi-tenant platform handling 50k+ concurrent users. The team encountered token validation and authorization sync failures causing authentication drops during heavy load. They implemented Keycloak's Resource Server export/import mechanism for version-controlling authorization configs, achieving a 40% reduction in auth latency and eliminated cross-env drift. The presentation covers architecture decisions, debugging approaches, and best practices for high-availability Keycloak production setups with focus on distributed systems authorization scaling.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1M/","tags":["identity","keycloak","multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:20","time_end":"09:25","type":"talk","title":"ArgoCon | Argo Rollouts Update - Alexander Gaudreault","speakers":"Alexandre Gaudreault","orgs":"Intuit","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"Brief update on Argo Rollouts. The speaker is a Staff Software Developer at Intuit who works on the core Argo team and maintains the CNCF-graduated project Argo CD.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYHc/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:25","time_end":"09:50","type":"talk","title":"Who Built This Platform? Alternative Viewpoints on Platform Design - Diana Todea, VictoriaMetrics & Elif Samedin, AirDNA","speakers":"Diana Todea;Elif Samedin","orgs":"VictoriaMetrics;AirDNA","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"Platform engineering often focuses on tooling, workflows, and infrastructure, but usability and effectiveness depend on the perspectives of those who build and maintain platforms. The session explores how engineers with varied experiences influence design and scaling through discussion of abstraction boundaries, self-service workflows, API touchpoints, onboarding, and documentation. Attendees will learn strategies for improving adoption and maintainability through refined decision-making, optimized feedback loops, and increased team participation in CNCF technical groups.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1S/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:30","time_end":"09:35","type":"talk","title":"ArgoCon | Argo Workflows Update - Isitha Subasinghe","speakers":"Isitha Subasinghe","orgs":"","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"Brief update on Argo Workflows at ArgoCon, CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYM4/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:40","time_end":"09:45","type":"talk","title":"ArgoCon | Argo Events Update - Caelan Urquhart","speakers":"Caelan Urquhart","orgs":"Pipekit","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"Brief update on Argo Events at ArgoCon, CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYM6/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:40","time_end":"09:45","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day | Sponsored Keynote: Building Your AI Factory: Where Data Science and Platform Engineering Meet - Andreea Munteanu, Spectro Cloud","speakers":"Andreea Munteanu","orgs":"Spectro Cloud","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"The session examines how cloud-native architectures and Kubernetes-based platforms provide the foundation for building AI factories that are scalable, modular, and fully automated. The presentation covers essential AI factory components and their self-service consumption across use cases like model deployment. It addresses the challenges enterprises face when scaling AI adoption, including the skill gap between platform engineers and data scientists, resource optimization, architectural complexity, operational resilience, and security compliance requirements.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZMo/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:40","time_end":"09:50","type":"lightning_talk","title":"⚡Lightning Talk: A Case Study in Cross-Ecosystem Security Response - Lori Lorusso, Rust Foundation","speakers":"Lori Lorusso","orgs":"Rust Foundation","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"Beginner","description":"Organizations utilizing multiple open source projects face supply chain attack risks. The presentation examines phishing attacks on Rust and Python as a case study showing how Alpha-Omega strengthened connections between the Rust Foundation and Python Software Foundation, ultimately improving security response times and outcomes when the phishing attacks were launched.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1q/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:40","time_end":"10:05","type":"talk","title":"Air France-KLM's GitOps Takeoff: Real Stories From the Flight Deck","speakers":"Amine ALAOUI ECHERIF;Ravi Ramrattan","orgs":"Air France KLM;Air France KLM","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"","description":"The session explores how Air France-KLM addressed trust concerns when transitioning to GitOps. Teams initially worried about losing control over production systems when moving from centralized operations to automated, Git-driven processes. The presentation demonstrates how they implemented shared ownership using Flux and CI/CD tools, enabling CyberSecurity, Observability, and Network Engineering teams to autonomously manage their infrastructure within secure frameworks.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1V/","tags":["observability","gitops","identity"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:45","time_end":"09:55","type":"lightning_talk","title":"⚡Lightning Talk: Philosophy Meets Backstage: An Unlikely Path To a Plugin - Mathilde Ancay, HEIG-VD","speakers":"Mathilde Ancay","orgs":"HEIG-VD","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"Beginner","description":"The speaker shares her experience building a team mood plugin during a six-week internship despite having no prior TypeScript, React, or Backstage knowledge. Her background in philosophy and media engineering shaped an approach emphasizing human experience over infrastructure. She discusses learning timelines, resource effectiveness, and deployment pipeline setup. The presentation offers a practical reference point with real data, key learnings, and a reminder that creativity and empathy are just as valuable as code.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1h/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:45","time_end":"09:55","type":"lightning_talk","title":"⚡Lightning Talk: The < Meta /> Trick: Connecting Page Load To Backend Traces","speakers":"Wolfgang Therrien","orgs":"Honeycomb","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"The session addresses a critical gap in distributed tracing. Backend services are instrumented with tracing, and browser applications have OpenTelemetry integrated, yet traces miss everything before JavaScript loads. Wolfgang demonstrates embedding OpenTelemetry trace-parent data in meta tags during HTML generation, then reading it client-side to correlate document load, Core Web Vitals, and errors within a single trace. This enables querying complete end-to-end traces for the full user experience.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1n/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:45","time_end":"10:10","type":"talk","title":"Are We Stuck With Helm Forever? A Landscape of Cloud Native CNF Management Options","speakers":"Liam Fallon;Istvan Kispal","orgs":"Ericsson Software Technology;Nokia Bell Labs","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"","description":"Helm was the de facto tool to manage the lifecycle of LCMs for a very long time. It was the first tool to manage the LCM of complex workloads and provided a way to standardize on the management of CNF. But Helm has its limitations and the tool landscape evolved and diversified. There are tools focusing on platform customisation, configuration management or GitOps. Each of them has different benefits and drawbacks. This talk collects the most prominent options for CNF management, explains the differences between them and compares benefits and drawbacks.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1k/","tags":["helm","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:45","time_end":"10:10","type":"talk","title":"The Keycloak-Token-Configuration Mistake, 90% of All Developers Do (and How To Avoid It)","speakers":"Niko Kobler","orgs":"Niko Kobler IT-Beratung","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation addresses a common Keycloak configuration issue. By default, Keycloak puts a lot of information into your tokens: roles, claims, metadata, which creates several problems: tokens contain excessive data, recipients receive unnecessary information, data protection principles are not optimally implemented, and oversized tokens can cause HTTP request failures. Key learning outcomes include understanding why Keycloak defaults to verbose configurations, identifying truly necessary token contents, implementing data minimization strategies, and applying practical configuration settings for lean, secure tokens.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1e/","tags":["identity","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:45","time_end":"10:10","type":"talk","title":"Making Observability Work at the Edge - Julia Furst Morgado, Dash0 & Graziano Casto, Akamas","speakers":"Julia Furst Morgado;Graziano Casto","orgs":"Dash0;Akamas","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"Advanced","description":"This session addresses observability challenges in Edge Kubernetes environments. Sending full traces and metrics upstream doesn't scale when every byte and millisecond count. The speakers present an optimized OpenTelemetry Micro-Collector approach using data reduction techniques like Tail-Based Sampling and Lossless Batching to transmit only essential telemetry from Edge devices. The talk covers deployment of lightweight DaemonSets configured for K3s or MicroK8s using OpenTelemetry Collector Contrib, integration with Fluent Bit for log ingestion, and maintaining data integrity during network disconnections.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1Y/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:45","time_end":"10:10","type":"talk","title":"Running Wasmtime in Hardware-Isolated Microenvironments - Danilo (Dan) Chiarlone, Microsoft","speakers":"Dan Chiarlone","orgs":"Microsoft","room":"E106-108","track":"WasmCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation explores combining WebAssembly's sandboxing capabilities with hardware isolation for serverless environments. Two approaches are demonstrated: Hyperlight-Wasm, which eliminates the OS layer entirely, and Hyperlight-Nanvix, which incorporates a lightweight microkernel that gives you syscalls with kernel-level filtering. The session covers architectural implementation details, performance comparisons, and practical demonstrations of both models. It targets platform builders managing untrusted code, WebAssembly tooling developers, and those investigating hardware isolation technologies.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY28/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:50","time_end":"09:55","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"ArgoCon | Sponsored Keynote: From Kubernetes to Anything: The Evolution of Promotion with Kargo","speakers":"Jesse Suen","orgs":"Akuity","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"Kargo evolved from a Kubernetes-native promotion tool into a universal promotion layer. Originally designed to safely move container images through environments using GitOps, it now coordinates Terraform plans and cloud infrastructure changes. The platform now supports user-defined container steps, allowing teams to execute custom validations, invoke external APIs, mutate infrastructure, and run tests as part of promotion workflows.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYMD/","tags":["argocd","terraform","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:50","time_end":"09:55","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day | Sponsored Keynote: The 2026 Infrastructure, Operations, and Cloud Services Agenda: Scaling Agentic AI with Platform Engineering - Kevin Cochrane, Vultr","speakers":"Kevin Cochrane","orgs":"Vultr","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"This session addresses how infrastructure and operations leaders must embrace AI, innovate, and move faster while managing costs and security risks. The keynote focuses on providing a simple, straightforward path to deliver core platform services to development and data science teams. Attendees will learn how platform engineers can leverage pre-tested development environments, models, and hardened infrastructure templates to connect data pipelines with GPU resources and enable dynamic resource scaling for enterprise AI infrastructure advancement.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZMs/","tags":["ai","platform-eng","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:55","time_end":"10:00","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"From Packets to Pods: Lessons from 25 Years of Open Source Visibility - Open Source SecurityCon Sponsored Keynote","speakers":"Gerald Combs","orgs":"Sysdig","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"","description":"The keynote explores how packet analysis remains foundational to security in modern cloud environments. Gerald Combs, creator of Wireshark, reflects on nearly three decades of maintaining one of the world's most ubiquitous open-source tools, discussing community building and why visibility is still the cornerstone of security in securing Kubernetes infrastructure.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2I9St/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"09:55","time_end":"10:00","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Platform Engineering Day | Sponsored Keynote: Why Kubernetes Node OS Still Shapes Performance, Security, and Scale - Naadir Jeewa, Broadcom","speakers":"Naadir Jeewa","orgs":"Broadcom","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"Containers abstract applications, but the Kubernetes node OS still plays a critical role. Kernel behavior, update strategies, and OS lifecycle alignment influence cluster stability, security posture, and upgrade confidence. The presentation explores why platform engineers should consider the node OS as integral to their Kubernetes platform strategy, examining how deliberate OS selections enable teams to maintain dependable, scalable clusters across varied deployment scenarios.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZPR/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:00","time_end":"10:05","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"ArgoCon | Sponsored Keynote: Argo CD vs the World - Steve Fenton, Octopus Deploy","speakers":"Steve Fenton","orgs":"Octopus Deploy","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"An exclusive look at research data to see how Argo CD stacks up against everything else when it comes to GitOps and software delivery.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYMG/","tags":["argocd","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:00","time_end":"10:05","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"BackstageCon | Sponsored Keynote - AI Can't Use Data it Doesn't Have - David Tuite, Roadie","speakers":"David Tuite","orgs":"Roadie","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"","description":"The presentation examines how AI integration with Backstage requires proper data collection first. It focuses on what it takes for our Backstage catalog to be up to the task by exploring a practical AI agent example and highlighting the foundational data preparation needed before implementing AI solutions.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2Djmz/","tags":["backstage","ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:00","time_end":"10:05","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day | Sponsored Keynote: Production AI Runs on Open Source - Gleb Evstropov, Nebius","speakers":"Gleb Evstropov","orgs":"Nebius","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"Behind today's large-scale AI systems is a layered open-source ecosystem. Kubernetes provides the foundation, Slurm powers high-performance batch scheduling, Ray enables distributed compute, and frameworks like PyTorch and DeepSpeed drive model training. The presentation covers how Nebius integrates cloud-native orchestration with HPC scheduling and discusses Soperator, an open-source project bridging Slurm and Kubernetes. The talk examines how these components function together in production environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2IWNC/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:00","time_end":"10:05","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Observability Day | Sponsored Keynote: Beyond Observability: Intelligent Progressive Delivery with Feature Control - Sean O'Dell, Dynatrace","speakers":"Sean O'Dell","orgs":"Dynatrace","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"This keynote examines how software platforms are transitioning from passive observability toward intelligent software resilience. The speaker explores progressive delivery mechanisms, feature flags and experimentation, that decouple deployment from release. Key concepts include treating features as runtime entities automatically correlated with performance and business metrics, and introducing Intelligent Feature Delivery: progressive rollouts governed by continuous telemetry and AI-driven guardrails.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYN8/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:03","time_end":"10:08","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Platform Engineering Day | Sponsored Keynote - TBA, vCluster","speakers":"","orgs":"vCluster","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"Sponsored keynote session at Platform Engineering Day. Details TBA.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZPO/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:10","time_end":"10:15","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"BackstageCon | Sponsored Keynote - Your Backstage, Our Grunt Work: Migrating to Spotify Portal Without Pausing Your Roadmap","speakers":"Joe Combopiano","orgs":"Spotify","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"","description":"Teams adopting Backstage often find their platform departments shifting toward infrastructure maintenance managing upgrades, security patches, and breaking changes. Spotify Portal offers a managed SaaS alternative to Backstage, developed by its original creators. This presentation covers the migration process, responsibility allocation, and how organizations maintain control of customizations and integrations without operational overhead.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZLb/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:10","time_end":"10:15","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"FluxCon | Sponsored Keynote: Agentic GitOps: Evolving Enterprise Delivery - Andy Martin, ControlPlane","speakers":"Andy Martin","orgs":"ControlPlane","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"","description":"The session addresses operational challenges in large-scale deployments. The keynote explores a two-step evolution within the Flux ecosystem, moving from AI-assisted capabilities to autonomous operations. The presentation introduces the vision for Enterprise Flux's MCP (Model Context Protocol), which transforms GitOps context into a reliable, robust interface that AI tools and agents can query, without having to infer the live state of the cluster fleet.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZNV/","tags":["ai","gitops","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:10","time_end":"10:15","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Observability Day | Sponsored Keynote - Before You Let AI Touch Production: Autoremediation Readiness","speakers":"Colleen White","orgs":"Chronosphere, A Palo Alto Networks Company","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"The session explores autoremediation capabilities in AI-driven systems. The promise of autoremediation is alluring: through the magic of AI, you won't just find issues faster; you'll resolve them automatically. However, foundational requirements are necessary first. The presentation covers three essential implementation steps: comprehensive system coverage at scale, usable navigable data, and rules of the road for autoremediation.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DdrH/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:10","time_end":"10:15","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Observability Day | Sponsored Keynote: TBA","speakers":"","orgs":"","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"Sponsored keynote session at Observability Day. Details TBA.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2Ip2f/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:11","time_end":"10:16","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Platform Engineering Day | Sponsored Keynote - Rebuilding Platforms for the ADLC - Justin Reock, DX","speakers":"Justin Reock","orgs":"DX","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"The session explores how platform teams are evolving from infrastructure stewards into architects of centralized AI hubs as the focus shifts from managing CI/CD pipelines to addressing the AI Development Life Cycle during the transition into the Year of AI Orchestration.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2HsHe/","tags":["identity","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:15","time_end":"10:20","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Cloud Native Telco Day | Sponsored Keynote: Telco's Next Act: Scaling Intelligence with Open Source and Agentic AI","speakers":"Ranny Haiby;Philippe Ensarguet","orgs":"The Linux Foundation;Orange","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"","description":"The telecommunications sector has spent roughly a decade perfecting cloud-native architecture by transitioning from inflexible hardware to adaptable software-based systems. This session examines how the industry transitions from cloud-native infrastructure toward an AI-driven autonomous future, covering how advanced networks will evolve from code-based operations to systems with autonomous reasoning and why embracing open-source methodology serves as the critical pathway for this evolution.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2Hig6/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:15","time_end":"10:20","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"KeycloakCon | Sponsored Keynote: Modernizing Railway IT Architecture: Secure-by-Design with Keycloak - Bernhard Denner, Hitachi Rail","speakers":"Bernhard Denner","orgs":"Hitachi Rail","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"","description":"Mission-critical railway systems face increasing cybersecurity challenges due to interconnectivity. Hitachi Rail rebuilt products using secure-by-design principles, with Keycloak serving as a central component. The presentation examines IEC 62443-4-2 requirements that strain conventional IT setups, demonstrating how Keycloak provides solutions. While Keycloak alone cannot ensure complete regulatory compliance, it supports developing resilient, contemporary secure-by-design infrastructures aligned with NIS2 and CRA regulations.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZNq/","tags":["identity","otel","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:15","time_end":"10:20","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Kubernetes on Edge Day | Sponsored Keynote: Edge AI in Practice: Lessons from Production Environments","speakers":"Saad Malik","orgs":"Spectro Cloud","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"","description":"As AI workloads move closer to users, devices, and data sources, the edge has become the next proving ground — yet expectations often outpace operational reality. The presentation draws from recent industry research examining real-world implementations. Topics covered include infrastructure limitations, workload deployment decisions, model lifecycle management, and operational tradeoffs in production edge environments. The session evaluates how Kubernetes-based solutions support progress versus introduce challenges, and explores evolving architectures for dependable, scalable AI inference outside traditional datacenters. Focus areas include patterns and practical considerations influencing current edge AI deployments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZOG/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:15","time_end":"10:40","type":"talk","title":"Bring Your Own Artifact Driver To Workflows","speakers":"Alan Clucas","orgs":"Pipekit","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Argo Workflows 4.0 introduces artifact plugins enabling integration of any storage backend without modifying Argo's core. Previously, new storage system support required contributing to Argo itself. Plugins are language-agnostic, containerized GRPC servers that run alongside workflow pods as sidecars and init containers. The session covers plugin creation through GRPC server implementation as Docker images. It addresses pod management complexities: ensuring plugin availability to argo-server and during pod initialization and runtime phases. Attendees gain insight into how Argo Workflows orchestrates pods and artifacts.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1z/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:15","time_end":"10:40","type":"talk","title":"GitOps and Secrets: State of the Union","speakers":"Kostis Kapelonis","orgs":"Octopus Deploy","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses a frequently asked question about adopting GitOps: managing secrets. Argo CD version 3.x now offers clear guidance, recommending externalization of secret management rather than plugins during deployment. The talk compares popular secret solutions including sealed-secrets, sops, vault-plugin, external-secret-operator, and csi-drivers, explaining their differences and trade-offs. It also covers common pitfalls of using secrets with Argo CD and discusses the best practices for good secret hygiene, such as secret rotation and storage.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY22/","tags":["argocd","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:20","time_end":"10:25","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"BackstageCon | Sponsored Keynote - Building an IDP in 5 Minutes Not 5 Months","speakers":"Matar Peles","orgs":"Port","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"","description":"The presentation demonstrates building a fully functional developer portal using natural language prompts, progressing from an empty screen to a working platform. It covers a service catalog mapped to real infrastructure, self-service actions with manual approvals, dashboards tracking engineering standards. The session illustrates how portals evolve into agentic systems that act on their behalf, showing progression from catalog, to self-service, to an agentic workflow that triages and resolves an incident. Attendees will gain understanding of where developer portals are heading and practical approaches to implementation.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZLZ/","tags":["backstage","ai","platform-eng","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:20","time_end":"10:45","type":"talk","title":"May the Flux Be With You: Tales From the GitOps Trenches at NatWest","speakers":"Joel King;Lee Coupe","orgs":"NatWest Group;NatWest Group","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Two principal engineers from NatWest's Platform as a Product team share their experiences deploying Flux for GitOps management across multiple complex Kubernetes platforms. Topics include deploying and managing NatWest's PaaP control plane with Kratix and Flux and using the Flux Operator's time-based deployment features. The session also addresses container image security and vulnerability management within their implementation.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1w/","tags":["gitops","security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:25","time_end":"10:30","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Kubernetes on Edge Day | Sponsored Keynote: Edge AI: Because the Cloud is Too Slow and the World is Too Big","speakers":"Said Ouissal","orgs":"ZEDEDA","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"","description":"The session examines how edge AI transforms operations by executing inference closer to data sources. The presentation covers applications across manufacturing, retail, energy, and transportation sectors. Key topics include how Kubernetes is a critical foundation for running AI at the edge, enabling consistent deployment, orchestration, and lifecycle management across distributed environments. The speaker discusses architectures, best practices, and common challenges when implementing AI at the edge while maintaining reliability and security.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZOJ/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"Divide & Collaborate: Creating Scalable and Healthy Backstage Based Applications in a Big Organisation","speakers":"Krzysztof Janota;Dusan Askovic","orgs":"ING Bank N.V.;ING Bank N.V.","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"Beginner","description":"The session addresses scaling Backstage implementation across large enterprises. It explores how to maintain innovation through community-driven development while preventing feature bloat. The presenters share tried and tested best practices on managing Backstage development globally at ING, focusing on enabling numerous developers to contribute meaningfully to organizational success rather than remaining sidelined from the platform's evolution.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2E/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"Ethical Bias","speakers":"Robert Glenn;Diana Zhawn","orgs":"Glennium LLC;Kopacetic Inc.","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"The presentation examines how to design ethical, behavior-aware AI agents that balance personalization with privacy and human autonomy. It explores implementing ethical constraints as design drivers rather than innovation barriers, building systems that learn from behavior while promoting accountability and well-being without enabling exploitation or surveillance. The core thesis frames AI systems as participants in human communication.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2K/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"The Sanity Check: Observability for AI Data Pipelines","speakers":"David Aronchick","orgs":"Expanso","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"The session addresses debugging AI failures by examining data pipeline observability. The speaker explains that AI can confidently give a completely wrong answer due to bad model or poisoned data ingested weeks ago from a rogue data source. The talk draws from experience building Kubernetes and scaling Kinesis to apply SRE principles to AI infrastructure. Attendees will learn monitoring techniques for data freshness, lineage tracking from source to token, and drift detection to prevent silent system corruption.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2H/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"The Autonomous Telco: AI Agents as First-Class Citizens in Cloud-Native Infrastructure","speakers":"Samy Nitsche;Dorian Lenzner","orgs":"Deutsche Telekom;Deutsche Telekom Technik GmbH","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses network troubleshooting in cloud-native telco environments, introducing KubeTrace, a distributed packet capture system for Kubernetes that integrates AI agents into the observability stack via the Model Context Protocol (MCP). Attendees will see AI agents diagnosing 5G core issues autonomously by correlating packet data. The second portion covers AI's impact on telco DevOps, including automated security testing, AI-generated test cases from production traffic, self-healing systems, and compliance auditing. The presentation draws from Deutsche Telekom's practical experience building AI-first observability solutions.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2N/","tags":["observability","ai-agents","ai","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"Model Context Protocol (MCP) Authorization for Enterprise Use Case With Keycloak","speakers":"Yutaka Obuchi","orgs":"Hitachi Ltd.","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Enterprise-Managed Authorization for MCP is proposed as Specification Enhancement Proposal #646 (SEP-646) and has been merged as MCP Authorization Extensions. The session addresses authorization challenges where users need to manually log in and consent to grant an AI agent access to each external resource one by one. Topics covered include: the target problem and SEP-646 solution, Keycloak's implementation for RFC7523 (a prerequisite specification), and SEP-646 implementation using Keycloak. The proposal aims to make MCP authorization enterprise-ready from both user experience and security perspectives.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2B/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","identity","mcp","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"IoT Compute Unleashed: Transparent Offload From ESP32 To Edge Clusters","speakers":"Anastassios Nanos;Charalampos Mainas","orgs":"NUBIS PC;Nubis PC","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session demonstrates how a tiny microcontroller can run inference on a full YOLOv11 model in less than 200ms by leveraging vAccel, an open abstraction layer enabling IoT devices to offload ML inference and signal-processing tasks to edge or cloud nodes. Through a lightweight agent and unified API, the system allows an ESP32 to delegate work to GPU-backed Kubernetes nodes, reducing latency and power consumption while maintaining observability. Attendees learn how open acceleration unifies the Cloud-Edge-IoT stack through standard interfaces.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY25/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"A Practical Blueprint for Evolving Observability Schemas","speakers":"Benedikt Bongartz;Sebastian Rabenhorst","orgs":"Red Hat;Shopify","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"As observability systems grow, evolving telemetry schemas is unavoidable. Even small, backward-incompatible changes can break queries, alerts, duplicate data or harm dashboards. The presentation explores OpenTelemetry Schema evolution challenges including schema upgrades/downgrades, query-time aliasing, and ingest-time translation. Speakers demonstrate strategies for safe automated schema evolution, using Shopify's approach as a case study. Attendees will gain practical strategies for implementing schema evolution in their own observability platforms while reducing maintenance risks and keeping telemetry pipelines adaptable.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2Q/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"Unpacking Your OTel Baggage","speakers":"Dan Gomez Blanco;John Clark","orgs":"New Relic;Skyscanner","room":"E103-105","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores OpenTelemetry Baggage as a W3C-standardized specification for propagating request context across distributed systems. Speakers discuss how baggage carries custom information through your request path and highlight Skyscanner's approach of using baggage to transmit Quality of Service data, enabling Istio to execute intelligent load-shedding based on user priority signals passed through the stack.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2T/","tags":["observability","otel","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"Trust, Tampering, and Transparency: What History Can Teach Us About Open Source Security","speakers":"Lisa Tagliaferri","orgs":"Chainguard","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"","description":"The presentation explores connections between historical information protection and contemporary supply chain security. Drawing from encrypted letters, palimpsests, and reproducible builds, the speaker examines frameworks including Sigstore, SLSA, Wolfi, in-toto, Tekton, SBOMs, and GUAC to demonstrate how verification and transparency principles extend into modern digital systems. The talk addresses both the technical and human dimensions of trust in open source contexts.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2W/","tags":["otel","security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"Creating an IDP for AI Engineering","speakers":"Max Körbächer","orgs":"Liquid Reply GmbH","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The session addresses how organizations can manage AI transformation challenges across people, processes, and technology. It proposes applying Platform Engineering principles to AI through an AI Development Platform (AIDP). The speaker explains that every tool needed to train, deploy and use AI is cloud native but adds complexity to existing infrastructure. The AIDP concept integrates established automation practices with current systems, positioning itself as a unified entry point for organizations developing AI capabilities. The approach emphasizes being the one-stop shop for getting started with LLMs focused on platform infrastructure rather than specific models.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2Z/","tags":["ai","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"Scaling on Satisfaction: Automated Rollouts Driven by User Feedback","speakers":"Thomas Vitale;Whitney Lee","orgs":"Systematic;Datadog","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores using user feedback to guide application rollouts and routing. Presenters demonstrate a platform enabling developers to define success criteria for GenAI operations and capture feedback via OpenTelemetry. They then expand the system using Flagger and Knative, allowing audience feedback to control real-time app routing. The approach applies beyond GenAI, with an interactive component where attendee responses shape the session's narrative in real time.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2c/","tags":["otel","platform-eng"],"priority":2},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:40","time_end":"11:05","type":"talk","title":"How We Reduced the 3D AI Avatar Rendering Latency With WebAssembly?","speakers":"Ritu Soni;Hridesh Sharma","orgs":"SkillBrew.AI;Brudite Pvt. Ltd.","room":"E106-108","track":"WasmCon","level":"","description":"The presentation addresses performance challenges with AI-driven 3D avatars in a React interview simulator. Initial attempts using Web Workers and lazy loading yielded minimal improvements. The team migrated computationally intensive operations such as mesh decoding and emotion mapping to WebAssembly for near-native performance. They encountered memory issues during JavaScript-WebAssembly data transfer, resolved through SharedArrayBuffer and structured cloning techniques. Results achieved 3x faster load times (20s to 7s) with consistent cross-browser rendering. The speakers will detail their WebAssembly implementation pipeline and demonstrate Prometheus-based observability strategies for performance monitoring and optimization.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY1b/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:50","time_end":"11:15","type":"talk","title":"Anatomy of a GitOps Engine: Understanding Your Sync","speakers":"Alexandre Gaudreault","orgs":"Intuit","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation explores what transpires beneath the surface when users initiate a sync operation. It examines the Argo CD sync process, tracing a single Application sync from initial request through final Synced status, demonstrating interactions between sync options, resource hooks, delete policies, sync waves, and retries. Attendees will learn how the engine manages complex, multi-stage deployments and can leverage these features to control dependencies and rollout sequencing. The talk addresses scenarios where a resource did not sync the way you expected it to sync.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2i/","tags":["argocd","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"10:50","time_end":"11:15","type":"talk","title":"Empowering Autonomy: BYD's Journey Taming Million-Task Scale With Argo Workflows","speakers":"Shuangkun Tian;Zhang Bao","orgs":"Alibaba Cloud;BYD","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"BYD's autonomous driving platform processes tens of millions of data records daily and migrated from Airflow to Kubernetes-native Argo Workflows. The system manages 3,000+ GPUs and executes over 1 million data tasks per day. The presentation covers GPU optimization across thousand-GPU clusters, high concurrency management for millions of tasks, extreme-scale stability solutions addressing 300k+ workflow scheduling challenges, and upstream contributions to Argo Workflows. Attendees gain strategies for orchestrating large-scale GPU-intensive workflows with stability assurance.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2f/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:25","type":"talk","title":"Towards Better Canary Releases With Flagger and Gateway API","speakers":"Sanskar Jaiswal","orgs":"Kong","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"Beginner","description":"The session addresses limitations in current canary deployment approaches. Traditional weighted traffic-shifting strategies cause requests to randomly bounce between old and new versions on a per-request basis, resulting in poor user experience and weak developer signals. Sanskar will demonstrate an alternative deployment strategy using session-based routing instead of request-based routing. This method enables a more robust Canary deployment system, allowing servers to be stateless while providing a consistent user experience. The presentation explores how Gateway API facilitates this capability and concludes with a live demonstration of the new strategy in action.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2o/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Agentic Backstage: How To Manage an AI Software Catalog","speakers":"Sam Nixon","orgs":"Roadie","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"","description":"The session explores how AI and Backstage can work together effectively. It addresses challenges faced by AI engineering teams, application engineers, and platform teams in managing AI models and tools. The discussion covers developing agents for Backstage, modeling AI assets in the Catalog, and Backstage's evolving role as agents become more prevalent. The speaker will share experiences and community insights, then provide a practical walkthrough for setting up an AI Catalog and extending it both within and outside the platform.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY30/","tags":["backstage","ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Expl(AI)n Like I'm 5: An Introduction To AI-Native Networking","speakers":"Ram Vennam;Niranjan Shankar","orgs":"Solo.io;Microsoft","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores why practitioners feel overwhelmed by new AI protocols, acronyms, and networking tools proliferating across the ecosystem. It covers communications patterns for training, inference, serving, consumption, and agentic interactions. Topics include MCP, A2A, token-based rate-limiting, and prompt guarding concepts. The presentation discusses how conventional networking such as service mesh, CNIs, gateways, and L7 proxies applies to AI workloads and when AI-aware Gateway API Inference Extensions become necessary for routing, observability, and security of generative AI deployments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4k/","tags":["helm","ai","ai-agents","networking","observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Smarter Databases in Kubernetes: Applying AI for Query Optimization and Self-Tuning","speakers":"Peter Zaitsev","orgs":"Percona","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session examines how artificial intelligence transforms database management within Kubernetes through adaptive query optimization and self-tuning. It covers practical integration of AI and machine learning models into cloud-native database platforms to analyze workloads, identify inefficiencies, and automatically adjust parameters like indexing, caching, and resource allocation. The talk discusses emerging self-driving database patterns that learn from historical performance data. Attendees will gain insights into building autonomous database systems leveraging AI to optimize performance, reduce operational overhead, and enhance scalability across Kubernetes clusters.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY36/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"From YANG To YAML: How We Tamed the 5G Configuration Beast","speakers":"Peter Wörndle;Joel Studler","orgs":"Ericsson;Swisscom","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Discover breakthrough results from a unique telco operator-vendor collaboration on cloud-native 5G configuration management. The session demonstrates a declarative GitOps solution using KRM and Kubernetes operators that simplifies complex YANG configurations for cloud-native network functions. Learn how combining telco operator knowledge with vendor expertise overcame practical cloud-native telco transformation challenges. Results showcase successful integration of a CNF with KRO, SDCIO, and dynamic IPAM hydration - proving operators and vendors can co-innovate effectively within the CNCF ecosystem.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY39/","tags":["gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Bridging the Gap Between Human and Workload Identity: SPIFFE Support in Keycloak","speakers":"Dmitry Telegin;Arndt Schwenkschuster","orgs":"Backbase UK;Defakto Security","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"","description":"The session explores authentication differences between human and workload identities. Human identity authentication involves passwords and second-factor methods, but faces customer experience constraints. Workloads can provide unlimited authentication factors without complaint. Keycloak traditionally supports multiple client authentication methods, though many are difficult to deploy, often defaulting to simple client secrets or complex key pair systems. Since Keycloak 26.4, secure client authentication is easier than ever with added SPIFFE identity support, eliminating the need for client secrets or complex secret key deployments. Users can now leverage SPIFFE identities obtained at runtime.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2x/","tags":["identity","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Proving Trust: Signed Supply Chains and Verifiable Deployments at the Edge","speakers":"Sheldon Lo-A-Njoe;Nicolas Ferrao","orgs":"Spectro Cloud;Airbus Defence and Space","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses how Kubernetes deployments in disconnected and resource-constrained environments require proven integrity rather than assumptions. It presents a reproducible framework for verifiable software supply chains, combining SLSA-compliant builds, signed artefacts, and GitOps automation. The presentation demonstrates using open-source tools including cosign, SignServer, and Flux/ArgoCD to implement hardware-backed keys anchoring cryptographic trust in CI/CD workflows. Attendees learn techniques for continuous attestation from build to deployment, ensuring reproducible, signed, and verifiable workloads anywhere Kubernetes runs.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2r/","tags":["argocd","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Observability at the Edge: State of OpenTelemetry in Kubernetes Ingress Controllers","speakers":"Kasper Borg Nissen","orgs":"Dash0","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"Ingress controllers serve as cluster entry points but often lack visibility. The session explores the current state of observability across the most widely adopted ingress controllers, showing where OpenTelemetry support is strong, and where gaps remain. The presentation covers distributed tracing fundamentals, integration of metrics and logs, and practical demonstrations comparing different controllers to transform ingress from a blind spot into distributed trace origins.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3C/","tags":["observability","otel","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Upstream Collaboration for the Win (of the CRA)!","speakers":"Georg Kunz;Jan Melen","orgs":"Ericsson Software Technology;Ericsson Software Technology","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The speakers contend that vendors with robust upstream involvement can more readily satisfy EU Cyber Resilience Act requirements through developer networks across projects, improved visibility into project health, and enhanced capacity to address upstream dependency vulnerabilities. Kunz demonstrates how an OSPO drives organizational cultural transformation and industry collaboration via OpenSSF. Melen details his team's security fix contributions to more than half of the CNCF projects. Together, these presentations advocate for amplified upstream participation by software vendors, benefiting the broader open-source ecosystem.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3I/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"How To Play Support for a Platform Team","speakers":"Awar Abdulkarim;Roberth Strand","orgs":"Sopra Steria;Sopra Steria","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session examines what it means to provide support for platform teams in modern engineering contexts. It discusses how internal platforms can transition from service providers to trusted partners by utilising their support. The presentation covers enabling teams to build, ship, and innovate faster without becoming a bottleneck and addresses having the meetings no one else wants, creating the solutions no one can be asked to create. Drawing from Bane NOR platform initiatives, speakers share insights on team alignment, autonomy versus governance balance, and daily implementation practices.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3L/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"Promotion Failed: How (Not) To Stage Your (Kubernetes) Platform","speakers":"Nicolai Ort","orgs":"ODIT.Services","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"The session explores practical strategies for establishing staging environments and promotion workflows. It examines several strategies for building and promoting staged environments, from simple replication to declarative pipelines and automated diffing. The presentation addresses challenges in gaining team adoption of Kubernetes platforms and demonstrates how to design promotion processes aligned with platform maturity and operational scale.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8r/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:40","type":"talk","title":"GraalVM: WebAssembly for the JVM Ecosystem","speakers":"Fabio Niephaus;Shaun Smith","orgs":"Oracle;Oracle","room":"E106-108","track":"WasmCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores how GraalVM integrates WebAssembly capabilities into the Java platform ecosystem through two projects: GraalWasm runtime and GraalVM Web Image compiler. It covers GraalWasm, an embeddable Wasm runtime with excellent tooling and exceptional performance thanks to the optimizing Graal JIT compiler, including demonstrations of Rust libraries compiled to Wasm within Spring Boot microservices. The presentation also discusses GraalVM Web Image's ability to compile JVM applications into efficient Wasm modules deployable across browsers, mobile devices, and cloud environments, addressing practical use cases and current limitations.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY2u/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:25","time_end":"11:50","type":"talk","title":"Beyond Argo Rollouts: Boosting Developer Experience With Intelligent AIOps","speakers":"Carlos Sanchez;Kevin Dubois","orgs":"Adobe;IBM","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses how software deployment challenges can be transformed using cloud-native AI alongside Argo Rollouts. Key topics include integrating Agentic AI to analyze rollout failures using AI agents and deploying scalable models within Kubernetes. Intelligent coding agents can generate automated pull requests based on failure analysis. The approach emphasizes human oversight for developer confidence while reducing Mean Time To Recovery (MTTR), creating a more resilient development workflow.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3U/","tags":["ai","argocd","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:25","time_end":"11:50","type":"talk","title":"Don't Do What Donny Don't Does: The 10 Dos and 500 Don'ts of Workflows Success","speakers":"Tim Collins;Becky Pauley","orgs":"Pipekit;Tailscale","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The talk addresses misconceptions about Argo Workflows production readiness. Presenters explain that the real operational complexity happens when Day 2 Operations kick in, where subtle misconfigurations, scaling challenges, and security gaps emerge. The session draws from actual customer incidents to highlight frequent mistakes and their consequences, covering debugging workflow failures, security enforcement, and performance optimization. The speakers promise actionable guidance, hard-won lessons, and field-proven solutions for managing workflows reliably at any scale.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3R/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:30","time_end":"11:55","type":"talk","title":"Talking to Your Cluster: Conversational GitOps with Flux MCP","speakers":"William Rizzo","orgs":"Mirantis","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The Flux project is pioneering a new era, evolving GitOps from simple deployment automation into an intelligent operations platform. With the Flux MCP Server and integrated AI workflows, Platform Engineering teams, SRE and Developers can gain new operational superpowers. The session covers AI-assisted GitOps capabilities including health monitoring, pipeline clarity, configuration drift detection, incident response acceleration, and documentation generation. It previews future multi-cluster rollouts, predictive troubleshooting, and policy-driven automation features.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2ICsA/","tags":["observability","gitops","platform-eng","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"11:55","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: Effortlessly Integrating Keycloak Authentication To Your MCP Servers","speakers":"Lin Sun","orgs":"Solo.io","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"","description":"Attendees learn about securing MCP servers without extensive code modifications. The session contrasts two approaches: the hard way involving code changes and redeployment versus a much simpler method by offloading authentication to Keycloak through an MCP gateway, which allows you to secure your servers without changing or redeploying them. Lin demonstrates both techniques, addressing scenarios where developers must decide whether to rewrite servers for authentication or adopt alternative security strategies.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3g/","tags":["identity","keycloak","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:10","type":"talk","title":"Building Unified Global Load Balancing for the Edge With k8gb","speakers":"Bradley Andersen;Yury Tsarev","orgs":"k8gb;Upbound","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"As Kubernetes expands to edge locations across retail, telecom, and industrial sites, traditional load-balancing tools struggle with intermittent connectivity and strict latency requirements. The session explores how k8gb, a CNCF Sandbox project, integrates global load balancing into Kubernetes using a simple CRD and GitOps workflow. DNS provides a reliable mechanism alongside Kubernetes-native automation. Covered patterns include nearest-edge routing, traffic spillover, and graceful degradation. The presentation also explains DNS inconsistency detection during network partitions. Attendees will learn practical approaches for health-based failover, geo-aware routing, and edge disaster recovery.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3a/","tags":["gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:10","type":"talk","title":"Split Rendering TV Applications Using WASM","speakers":"Timothy Pearce;Rajiv Ramdhany","orgs":"BBC;BBC R&D","room":"E106-108","track":"WasmCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Public broadcasters face technical constraints when developing video streaming apps for smart TVs with limited hardware. The presentation explores using WebAssembly to create flexible applications that offload UI rendering and animation from client devices to edge compute and the cloud. The speakers discuss their approach to making UI-component rendering with WASM modules portable and describe methods for delivering rendered interfaces at low latency to client devices.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3d/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:50","time_end":"12:25","type":"panel","title":"Panel: Building a Healthy Backstage Plugins Ecosystem","speakers":"Paul Schultz;Hope Hadfield;Heikki Hellgren;Peter MacDonald;Aramis Sennyey","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat;OP Financial Group;VodafoneZiggo;DoorDash","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores sustainability, quality, and governance challenges in Backstage's maturing plugin ecosystem. Panelists discuss barriers for new contributors, balancing innovation with maintenance quality, and repository best practices regarding ownership, testing, and dependency management. The discussion examines where Backstage's plugin ecosystem stands today, and where it needs to go next.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3j/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:50","time_end":"12:25","type":"panel","title":"Panel: Kubernetes Networking: Present and Future","speakers":"Gergely Csatari;Lionel Jouin;Antonio Ojea;Surya Seetharaman","orgs":"Nokia;Red Hat;Google;Red Hat","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Networking in Kubernetes is critical for telecom workloads. The available capabilities and solutions in the platform dictate what kind of capabilities can be built on top. The panel examines how revolutionary changes in network consumption within Kubernetes coexist with widely-deployed existing solutions across telecom cloud environments. As AI workloads increase, networking demands are shifting expectations for telecom operations. The experts will discuss the current state of Kubernetes networking and developmental areas, exploring evolution options over 1-5 years while sharing their vision for how Kubernetes networks will be consumed by 2031.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3m/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"11:50","time_end":"12:25","type":"panel","title":"Panel: It's Not If, It's When - Practical Preparation for the Next Software Supply Chain Attack","speakers":"Hannah Foxwell;Justin Cormack;Sal Kimmich;Erika Heidi;Josh Bressers","orgs":"Independent;Independent;GadflyAI;Chainguard;Anchore","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The panel examines readiness for supply chain attacks and zero-day vulnerabilities. It addresses how security teams are outnumbered by developers by factors of hundreds or thousands to one and explores practical, tactical approaches to preparing for inevitable zero-day events. The session emphasizes that organizational preparedness requires coordinated response strategies across security, platform engineering, and cloud-native expertise.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3p/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:10","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: Flux-Powered Bootstrapping a Kubernetes With GitOps and CaC","speakers":"Paris Nakita Kejser","orgs":"Astrona.io","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores how to use Flux as a GitOps-driven bootstrap engine for Kubernetes clusters, orchestrating both foundational infrastructure and application layers. It begins with Configuration as Code powered by Ansible, then demonstrates how Flux manages higher-layer workloads and microservices using GitOps principles. The presentation offers a real-world, flexible architecture that unifies Ansible, Flux, and GitOps into one powerful lifecycle, suitable for production cluster bootstrapping and internal platform tooling design.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3s/","tags":["gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:10","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: Keycloak and EUDI-Wallet: A Match Made in Heaven?","speakers":"Dominik Schlosser","orgs":"Freelancer","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"Advanced","description":"The presentation explores the EU Digital Identity Wallet's emergence and its capacity to enable EU citizens to authenticate to government services via a standardized and decentralized wallet infrastructure. It details how Keycloak implements OpenID 4 Verifiable Credentials Issuance standards. The speaker shares results from developing a first working wallet authentication prototype inside Keycloak for a public services client, discussing implementation challenges and forthcoming developments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3y/","tags":["identity","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:15","time_end":"12:25","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: Airgap-native Identity Management: Lessons From Keycloak in DoD Deployments","speakers":"Sebastian Laskawiec;Michal Szynkiewicz","orgs":"Defense Unicorns;Defense Unicorns","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"KeycloakCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session examines identity management in disconnected environments. It demonstrates constructing sealed delivery bundles using Zarf, then customizing Keycloak with CAC authentication flows, client policies, and Kubernetes authenticators. The speakers discuss meeting DoD requirements including supply chain security, SBOMs, and network lockdown via Istio and Authservice, offering a hardened reference architecture you can apply to your next mission-critical deployment.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4A/","tags":["identity","keycloak","networking","security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:15","time_end":"12:25","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: Beyond ImagePullBackOff: A Stateless, Secret-less Distributed Registry for Edge Workloads","speakers":"Prasanth Baskar","orgs":"8gearsAG","room":"Emerald Room","track":"Kubernetes on Edge Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The session addresses a common infrastructure challenge: GitOps tools report synchronization completion quickly, yet edge node containers remain stuck in initialization phases for extended periods. The presenter argues this stems from applying centralized cloud-native design patterns to distributed edge systems. This approach creates security vulnerabilities through credential management and deployment delays. The talk demonstrates using Harbor Satellite, a CNCF Harbor subproject, to deploy a stateless distributed registry alongside container workloads, enabling local image access without centralized dependencies or authentication secrets on individual nodes.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY44/","tags":["gitops","identity"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:15","time_end":"12:25","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: WasmPulse: Quantifying Wasm Sustainability With WASI Preview 2 Performance Numbers","speakers":"Marcin Ziolkowski","orgs":"Orange","room":"E106-108","track":"WasmCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation addresses WebAssembly's critical performance data gap, lacking the mature monitoring tools and standardized metrics of the container ecosystem. WasmPulse is introduced as an open-source solution providing CPU and Memory metrics in Prometheus format. The talk includes comparative analysis from an IEEE CCNC 2026 paper examining bare-metal processes, containers, and WebAssembly across metrics like artifact size, startup time, network latency, and resource consumption, positioning WebAssembly as an efficient, performant and sustainable foundation for next-generation cloud-native platforms.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY47/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:15","time_end":"12:40","type":"talk","title":"Sylva, Taming Complexity With FluxCD Dependency Management","speakers":"Thomas Morin;Francois Eleouet","orgs":"Orange;Orange","room":"Elicium 1","track":"FluxCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Telecom companies collaborate through the Sylva initiative to develop a Kubernetes solution enabling 5G deployment on bare metal infrastructure. The speakers will discuss how Sylva implements fine-grained dependency management to assemble a fully declarative platform engineering solution. The session covers how GitOps with dependency management enhances predictability, traceability and readability of operations, on how a cluster and its workloads are deployed and upgraded.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY41/","tags":["gitops","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:45","time_end":"13:10","type":"talk","title":"The Day 2 Hangover: What To Do After the Platform Party Ends","speakers":"Cat Morris;Nitish Malhotra","orgs":"Syntasso;Veeam Software","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"The presentation addresses the challenges platform teams face after initial deployment. Often, new platform teams start building for day 1 concerns: new apps, experiments, and cool tech. The speakers share how Veeam addressed operational complexity through platform orchestration patterns, reducing maintenance costs without complete system rebuilds while enabling teams to focus on business value delivery.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY55/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:45","time_end":"13:10","type":"talk","title":"We Broke Free From Cloud-Managed Kubernetes: Now What?","speakers":"Karlis Akots Gribulis;Per Hedegaard Christiansen","orgs":"Saxo Bank;Saxo Bank","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"The session explores Saxo Bank's transition from cloud-managed to self-hosted Kubernetes clusters. Presenters share their one-year experience including: operational outcomes, large-scale workload migration feasibility, reported cost reductions of 80%, and lessons learned regarding resilience, automation, and lifecycle management using kubeadm and Cluster API. Attendees gain insights into the trade-offs, risks, and benefits of self-hosted Kubernetes at scale, plus actionable insights for planning and operating their own clusters.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY52/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"12:45","time_end":"13:20","type":"panel","title":"Panel: Routing Intelligence Vs Traffic Control: Architectural Tradeoffs for AI Inference in Gateway API","speakers":"Abdullah Gharaibeh;Morgan Foster;Eitan Yarmush;Dan Sun","orgs":"Google;Red Hat;Solo.io;Bloomberg LP","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The panel examines how the Gateway API Inference Extension (GAIE) addresses architectural decisions for AI inference scheduling in Kubernetes. It contrasts two approaches: using external processing for scheduling without proxying traffic versus placing the scheduler directly in the data path as a Service. The discussion covers how architectural choices impact performance, complexity, and ecosystem alignment and provides decision frameworks for designing Gateway API extensions.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4J/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:20","time_end":"13:45","type":"talk","title":"A Practical Guide To Inner Sourcing Your IDP","speakers":"Lian Li","orgs":"lianmakesthings","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"The session addresses challenges in bridging developer and platform team communication. It covers treating platforms as collaborative open source projects rather than traditional products. The speaker draws from experience as a Developer Advocate and platform engineer in bureaucratic organizations to share concrete steps to identify contribution opportunities, set up maintainable processes, and measure engagement, aiming to boost adoption and create thriving platform ecosystems.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5r/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:20","time_end":"13:45","type":"talk","title":"Overwhelmed by Scale: How Product Thinking Fixes Platform Teams","speakers":"Dominik Schmidle","orgs":"Giant Swarm","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"Platform teams often begin modestly but face overwhelming challenges at scale. Teams find themselves overwhelmed by support requests, reactive firefighting, and endless system upgrades while serving hundreds of developers. Leadership frequently views platforms as cost centers lacking clear business value. This session demonstrates how product-driven approaches resolve this cycle, enabling strategic prioritization instead of reactive work, vision-guided roadmaps, and effective value communication that positions platforms as strategic assets rather than expense centers.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5o/","tags":["helm","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:25","time_end":"13:30","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Agentics Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks","speakers":"Manik Surtani;Varun Talwar","orgs":"Block;Tetrate.io","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day: MCP + Agents","level":"","description":"Opening remarks session for the Agentics Day track. The program committee co-chairs introduce the day's agenda for discussions on Model Context Protocol (MCP) and AI agents.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYGq/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:25","time_end":"13:30","type":"opening_remarks","title":"CiliumCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks","speakers":"Hemanth Malla;Mahé Tardy","orgs":"Microsoft;Isovalent at Cisco","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"","description":"Opening remarks for CiliumCon by program committee co-chairs, introducing the day's agenda.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZMa/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:25","time_end":"13:30","type":"opening_remarks","title":"KyvernoCon | Welcome + Opening Remarks","speakers":"Cortney Nickerson;Shuting Zhao","orgs":"Nirmata;Nirmata","room":"E106-108","track":"KyvernoCon","level":"","description":"Opening remarks for KyvernoCon by program committee co-chairs, introducing the day's agenda.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZOk/","tags":["policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:25","time_end":"13:30","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks","speakers":"Thierry Carrez;Paula Grzegorzewska","orgs":"OpenInfra Foundation;Linux Foundation Europe","room":"F002-005","track":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks for the Open Sovereign Cloud Day, introducing the program committee leadership for the event.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2H5wv/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:25","time_end":"13:30","type":"opening_remarks","title":"OpenTofu Day | Welcome + Opening Remarks","speakers":"Sebastian Stadil;Helena Spease","orgs":"Scalr;Linux Foundation","room":"Emerald Room","track":"OpenTofu Day","level":"","description":"Welcome and opening remarks for OpenTofu Day, part of the CNCF-hosted Co-located Events Europe 2026.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZPE/","tags":["terraform"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:30","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"Observability for Your Internal Developer Platform: Instrumenting Backstage With OpenTelemetry","speakers":"Ekansh Gupta;Shivay Lamba","orgs":"Bindplane;CNCF","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"","description":"The session explores instrumenting Backstage with OpenTelemetry to gain visibility into internal developer platform performance and adoption. Participants will learn to collect, export, and visualize metrics that help platform teams measure usage patterns, plugin health, and system performance, all using open-source tools. The presentation covers foundational concepts, hands-on implementation using OTel SDKs, and integrating an OTel Collector with metrics backends for live dashboards.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4b/","tags":["observability","otel","backstage","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:30","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"Baby Sitting Your AI Models in Production? STOP!","speakers":"Ram Iyengar","orgs":"Linux Foundation","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation addresses challenges with deploying AI systems to production environments. The speaker introduces ModelPack, a CNCF sandbox initiative providing a standard, open-source way to organize all the files that make up a machine learning model. The talk covers ModelKit, a directory structure consolidating ML artifacts into unified packages, plus automated OCI-compliant container image generation, simplifying final deployment through standard container registries.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY33/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:30","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"Kubeflow Trainer Observability: Real-Time Progress Tracking for Reliable ML Training on Kubernetes","speakers":"Abhijeet Dhumal;Rob Bell","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses how lack of observability in model training creates inefficiency and waste. It illustrates this with an example of hyperparameter searching consuming thousands of GPU-hours. The presenters demonstrate how Kubeflow Trainer v2's native observability unlocks Katib's full potential by showing metrics flow through the Kubernetes API without requiring additional instrumentation. They showcase real-time progress queries via kubectl and how Katib's Hyperband algorithm can terminate underperforming trials, potentially delivering significant cost reductions in distributed machine learning workflows.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4n/","tags":["observability","ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:30","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"Teaching Machines To Debug Machines: Building an AI-Powered RCA Agent for Sylva-Core","speakers":"Mihai Zaharia;Vladimir Braquet","orgs":"Orange Services;Orange","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"In modern cloud environments, operators manage hundreds of alerts daily from Kubernetes clusters, network functions, and infrastructure components. This session covers building an autonomous RCA agent for a Kubernetes-based telco cloud environment using Sylva-Core infrastructure. Key topics include framework selection, prompt engineering, Model Context Protocol, and memory systems. The presentation demonstrates real-world examples of agents investigating pod failures and correlating incidents without manual intervention.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4q/","tags":["ai","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:30","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"Accelerating Science, Decelerating Carbon: Sustainable Computing at CERN","speakers":"Laura Llinares;Amine Lahouel","orgs":"CERN;CERN","room":"E103-105","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"The session addresses how CERN integrates GPU-powered workloads with sustainability metrics. Presenters discuss a metrics-driven framework rooted in Kubernetes and CNCF tooling to measure and improve workload efficiency across on-prem and cloud environments. The talk demonstrates how teams can visualize performance data and infrastructure decisions while making sustainability a first-class metric in observability stacks.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4w/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:30","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"To Make an SLO, First You Must Invent the Universe: OpenTelemetry Collection From Scratch","speakers":"Cail Young","orgs":"Octopus Deploy","room":"Forum","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"In 2025, a team at Octopus Deploy created a multi-region, highly-available, autoscaling OpenTelemetry-based telemetry processing platform. This case study examines the moving parts required to deliver a brand new telemetry pipeline based on OpenTelemetry Collector and Kubernetes, analyzing tradeoffs and implementation challenges encountered during development.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4t/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:30","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"Zero Privilege Architecture - 3 Years Onward","speakers":"Thijs Ebbers;Tadeo Sanchez","orgs":"ING Bank N.V.;ING Bank N.V.","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"","description":"The presentation recaps ING's Zero Privilege Architecture framework introduced at KubeCon EU 2023. Presenters analyze significant security incidents from the past three years, examining how the architecture's controls prevented or mitigated threats. The talk challenges conventional security practices emphasizing overprovisioning privileges and reactive patching, proposing an alternative framework. Attendees gain detailed insights into how this architecture operates within ING's container hosting platform.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4z/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:35","time_end":"13:55","type":"talk","title":"MCP in 2026: Context is All You Need","speakers":"David Soria Parra","orgs":"Anthropic","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day: MCP + Agents","level":"","description":"The co-creator of the Model Context Protocol discusses the ecosystem's current state and future direction. Key topics include adoption trends progressing from early adopters to production deployment, protocol advancements in authentication and task management, operational challenges around context management and OAuth, and upcoming developments for 2026. The session also covers contribution opportunities for the specification, SDKs, and governance structures.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2E7Db/","tags":["ai","identity","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":3},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:35","time_end":"14:00","type":"talk","title":"Analysis in Action: Real-World Metrics Driven Argo Rollouts With AnalysisTemplates","speakers":"Chris Detsicas;Antonio Jimenez Martinez","orgs":"Cisco ThousandEyes;Cisco ThousandEyes","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores safe Kubernetes deployment strategies beyond standard canary and blue-green approaches. It focuses on automated health verification using Argo Rollouts' AnalysisTemplates, which enable checks such as success rate SLOs with Prometheus, business-hour release gates, API health checks and even dynamic E2E tests. Speakers demonstrate real-world implementation examples using Prometheus metrics to build confidence in releases and identify issues early.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4e/","tags":["argocd","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:35","time_end":"14:00","type":"talk","title":"GitOps Your Costs: Automated FinOps Through Argo Workflows","speakers":"Kunal Das;Hrittik Roy","orgs":"Cast AI;vCluster","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session applies GitOps principles to cost optimization through automated FinOps pipelines using Argo Workflows and Events. It covers cost optimization workflows that automatically rightsize deployments based on utilization metrics, implement progressive cost reduction through Argo Rollouts, and trigger cleanup workflows for idle resources. Real-world examples demonstrated teams achieving 45% waste reduction. Attendees receive ready-to-use Argo workflow templates, event configurations for cost triggers, and integration patterns with FinOps tools.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY4h/","tags":["argocd","cost","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:35","time_end":"14:00","type":"talk","title":"Network Flow Aggregation: Pay for the Logs You Care About!","speakers":"Mereta Degutyte;Anubhab Majumdar;Vamsi Kalapala","orgs":"Microsoft;Microsoft;Microsoft","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation addresses the challenge of managing observability costs with Hubble flow logs. Speakers explain how network flow aggregation reduces storage expenses by aggregating flows at the agent level based on user-selected fields rather than storing individual records. The session includes a live demonstration comparing raw versus aggregated flows, practical tuning guidance for different workloads, and coverage of this newly available Cilium feature. Attendees will learn how this approach enables lower storage overhead, quicker troubleshooting, and leaner data suitable for analytics and machine learning applications.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY58/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium","ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:35","time_end":"14:00","type":"talk","title":"Policy & GitOps Unite! Kyverno and Flux Save Cluster City","speakers":"Cortney Nickerson;Leigh Capili","orgs":"Nirmata;ControlPlane","room":"E106-108","track":"KyvernoCon","level":"Beginner","description":"This session uses a narrative framework featuring Cluster City to demonstrate how Kyverno and Flux work together. The presentation covers establishing policy-driven guardrails to prevent configuration chaos, coordinating automated rollbacks and reconciliations for trusted production, and enabling real-time visibility and reporting through MCP dashboards and events. Attendees learn how these complementary tools maintain consistent, compliant, and resilient infrastructure by combining policy enforcement with GitOps principles.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5E/","tags":["gitops","policy","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:35","time_end":"14:00","type":"talk","title":"EU Cloud Sovereignty Framework Explained","speakers":"Emiel Brok","orgs":"SUSE / DOSBA","room":"F002-005","track":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day","level":"","description":"This presentation examines the EC Cloud Sovereignty Framework (v1.2.1, October 2025), addressing EU digital autonomy by moving beyond standard security to tackle critical dependencies on non-EU actors and proprietary lock-in. The speaker decodes the framework's dual assessment methodology: the Sovereignty Effective Assurance Level (SEAL) and quantitative Sovereignty Score. The session covers eight Sovereignty Objectives spanning legal, data/AI, supply chain, and technology domains, mapping progression through five SEAL levels toward Full Digital Sovereignty (SEAL-4). A core emphasis explores how open-source solutions enable highest sovereignty ratings and how EU First policies help organizations regain strategic control over digital infrastructure.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2H5UN/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:35","time_end":"14:00","type":"talk","title":"Organising Your Code and State for Governance and Self-Service","speakers":"John Keates","orgs":"Wehkamp Retail Group","room":"Emerald Room","track":"OpenTofu Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"As infrastructure and its defining code expand, managing numerous dependencies across files and modules becomes challenging. Rather than repeatedly restructuring state through splitting and moving, the speaker describes adopting a separation-of-concerns approach that halted complexity growth. This framework, developed organically during implementation, provides room for growth in the amount of providers, environments and states needed to build resilient, repeatable infrastructure supporting robust governance and self-service capabilities.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5B/","tags":["terraform"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:55","time_end":"14:20","type":"talk","title":"Build Your Golden Path Construction Playbook: A Maturity-First Implementation Approach","speakers":"Atulpriya Sharma","orgs":"Improving","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"The presentation tackles the challenge of implementing golden paths through a Maturity-First Construction Framework. Attendees will see live demonstrations focusing on three critical transitions: evolving scripts into validation frameworks, implementing GitOps integration, and enabling self-service using ArgoCD and Backstage. The session promises participants a proven construction playbook for building golden paths that scale with organizational maturity and deliver measurable developer productivity improvements.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6g/","tags":["backstage","argocd","platform-eng","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"13:55","time_end":"14:20","type":"talk","title":"How We Built an Internal Developer Platform and Evolved It Into Open Source","speakers":"Gang Luo;Kristina Kondrashevich","orgs":"Electrolux Group;Electrolux Group","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"Electrolux Group's engineering organization scaled from 10 to 300 developers with only 5 operations engineers. Rather than scaling SRE practices across diverse teams, they baked SRE principles directly into the platform using Backstage, OpenTofu, and custom APIs. Their internal developer platform automated infrastructure provisioning and enabled self-service capabilities. The presentation covers their transition to platform engineering, architectural decisions, practical lessons, and how open-sourcing reshaped their DevOps approach at scale.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6d/","tags":["backstage","terraform","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"The New AI Coding Fabric","speakers":"Patrick Debois","orgs":"Tessl","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day: MCP + Agents","level":"Beginner","description":"AI-driven development is outgrowing the IDE and traditional build systems. A new layer of infrastructure is forming - the AI Coding Fabric - built to support autonomous coding agents. The session explores infrastructure needs including spec-driven development, coding sandboxes, model proxies, artifact review systems, guardrails with observability, and knowledge bases optimized for development learning. The talk examines how these emerging patterns may challenge existing foundations around IDEs, CI/CD, and service-oriented architectures.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5H/","tags":["observability","ai-agents","ai","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"Forget Rebuilding, Install Plugins at Runtime","speakers":"David Festal;Jon Koops","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses plugin deployment challenges in scaled Backstage instances. Presenters demonstrate how you can distribute and install plugins as standalone, self-contained assets provided to the main applications at deployment time, eliminating repetitive rebuild cycles. The approach transforms monolithic builds into modular platforms, dramatically simplifying the integration cycle, unlocking powerful cloud deployment options, and enabling true distributed ownership. A live demonstration illustrates dynamic plugin loading requiring only a Backstage restart.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5N/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"GPU Reservations: Maximizing Utilization and Fairness Across Teams","speakers":"Thomas Chaton;Sam Huang","orgs":"Lightning.AI;Cantina Labs","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"The presentation addresses GPU cost optimization through reservations. Organizers explain how they merged the elasticity of cloud-based autoscaling with the savings of reserved capacity by building a custom platform on Kubernetes that manages researcher workloads while maintaining cost efficiency. Key topics include adaptive preemption based on team priorities, coordination with hardware providers, and dynamic budgeting for on-demand GPU bursting. The session targets organizations seeking to balance affordability with researcher accessibility in AI infrastructure deployment.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5W/","tags":["cost"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"Sign Language Recognition Improvements Since the London Keynote","speakers":"Rob Koch","orgs":"Slalom","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Before we were identifying static signs, but since sign language is dynamic and has spatial properties, there is a need to capture motions and create inferences from there. This session covers improvements to sign language recognition systems since the London keynote, focusing on dynamic gesture capture and spatial inference for more accurate and inclusive accessibility tools.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5Z/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"Reliability To the Edge: Telco Teaching Cloud Native","speakers":"Priscila Veiga","orgs":"Red Hat","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores how telecommunications reliability practices can inform cloud-native platform design. It discusses how reliability practices and cultural lessons from the Telco world can inspire better ways to design, sustain, and evolve cloud-native platforms, emphasizing that effective reliability depends on operational discipline and teamwork beyond tools alone.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5c/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"Observability in the Matrix: Choosing the Right AI Agent To Escape the Chaos","speakers":"Henrik Rexed","orgs":"Dynatrace","room":"Forum","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores AI-powered observability solutions in Kubernetes environments. Attendees will learn about five AI agents - HolmesGPT, Kagent, Opni, K8sGPT, and Monte Carlo - and how they address challenges like root cause analysis, signal enrichment, and alert fatigue. The presentation uses The Matrix as a metaphor to examine the promises and pitfalls of AI-driven observability while providing practical guidance for selecting appropriate tools for managing metrics, logs, and traces in complex cloud-native systems.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5f/","tags":["observability","ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"Observability Through Users' Eyes and How To Fix the Knowledge Disconnect","speakers":"Iris Dyrmishi;Hélia Barroso","orgs":"Miro;Five9","room":"E103-105","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses a critical gap in observability practices. While teams excel at data collection through OpenTelemetry standards, they often struggle with practical application. The speakers examine patterns they have discovered of how users interact with telemetry data and share strategies to help teams transition from confusion to operational confidence, covering dashboard effectiveness, alert design, and data utilization across organizations.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5i/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:05","time_end":"14:30","type":"talk","title":"Quantum Proofing Sigstore: A Tale of Three Approaches","speakers":"Kevin Conner;Firas Ghanmi","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session examines post-quantum cryptography integration in supply chain security. Implementing post quantum cryptography in supply chain security requires decisions beyond algorithm selection, with trade offs impacting performance and storage. The presentation covers three distinct approaches for adding PQC to Sigstore: hybrid X.509 certificates with dual signatures, classical certificates with PQC signatures in transparency logs, and merkle tree certificates for batch verification. Attendees will see working prototypes and understand each method, providing a foundation for contributing to community discussions around post quantum adoption.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5l/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:10","time_end":"14:20","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Progress Over Purity: Sovereignty That Actually Ships","speakers":"Antoine Tielbeke","orgs":"Team Rockstars IT","room":"F002-005","track":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day","level":"Beginner","description":"This presentation examines practical approaches to infrastructure sovereignty. The speaker challenges all-or-nothing thinking about digital independence, drawing from experience building systems for Volt Europa. Key themes include accepting that perfect sovereignty is impossible and prioritizing achievable migrations over ideological purity. The talk covers three core lessons: portability matters more than perfection, pragmatic migration prioritization, and the importance of starting implementation now rather than awaiting ideal solutions.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2H5UQ/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:10","time_end":"14:35","type":"talk","title":"Argo CD: Previewing Pull Request Changes in SECONDS!","speakers":"Dag Bjerre Andersen;Sergei Shevchenko","orgs":"Egmont;TangoMe","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses how organizations adopting GitOps can visualize manifest changes before merging. It presents an improved method for rendering diffs on pull requests that reduces the wait time from minutes to seconds by connecting previews to pre-configured Argo CD instances rather than spinning up new clusters. Real-world applications include Egmont's visualization of changes across repositories with hundreds of applications, and Tango's preview system for 1,900 applications across 25+ clusters. Participants will learn to implement accurate, fast diff previews enabling quicker code reviews and fewer deployment failures.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8T/","tags":["argocd","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:10","time_end":"14:35","type":"talk","title":"From Canary To Global: Unified Progressive Delivery for Hybrid Cloud With Karmada & Argo","speakers":"Zhuang Zhang;Ryan Wu","orgs":"Huawei Technologies;Netease Cloud Music","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"The session addresses challenges of deploying applications across hybrid cloud and multi-cluster environments. It demonstrates how Karmada integrates with Argo CD and Argo Rollouts to build a unified hybrid-cloud progressive delivery platform enabling consistent rollouts across clusters. Topics include multi-cloud progressive delivery challenges, integration solutions, and canary release configuration workflows.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5Q/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:10","time_end":"14:35","type":"talk","title":"It Is Always DNS… Even at the Edge: Taming Proxy-Only Lookups With Cilium and eBPF","speakers":"Hector Monsalve;Thomas Gosteli","orgs":"Roche;TactumMotum GmbH","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Hoffmann-La Roche addresses DNS challenges in secure environments using eBPF, Cilium, and Envoy. The session explores how they resolved constraints where customer DNS resolvers block public domain resolution, forcing lookups through HTTP forward proxies. The solution leverages Cilium's advanced network policy traffic redirect capabilities, combined with some advanced CoreDNS filtering. A live demonstration showcases these Cilium features addressing DNS-over-Proxy challenges.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5u/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:10","time_end":"14:35","type":"talk","title":"Self-Healing Clusters: When Kyverno Writes Its Own Rules","speakers":"Johan Heimar Prieto Benavides;Oscar Eduardo Castillo","orgs":"CursaCloud;Genius Sports","room":"E106-108","track":"KyvernoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores using Kyverno to enforce policies and automatically generate corrective ones based on real-time system drift. The speakers explain how their platform analyzes repeated violations to suggest policies for operator review, creating a self-evolving governance system where prevention improves itself over time. The talk covers adaptive policy architecture, telemetry pipelines, and how this reduced incidents and configuration drift across multiple environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY60/","tags":["policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:10","time_end":"14:35","type":"talk","title":"Packaging OpenTofu in pkgsrc","speakers":"Leonardo Taccari","orgs":"The NetBSD Foundation","room":"Emerald Room","track":"OpenTofu Day","level":"","description":"The session explores how OpenTofu and OpenTofu providers are packaged in pkgsrc, the NetBSD package system that also supports several other Unix-like operating systems. It also addresses challenges on packaging it together with older Terraform and Terraform providers in order to permit a full migration from Terraform 0.12.x to latest OpenTofu.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5x/","tags":["terraform"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:25","time_end":"14:35","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Designing for Exit: Why Portability Is a Sovereignty Requirement","speakers":"Alireza Rahmani","orgs":"Red Hat","room":"F002-005","track":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses how portability is often treated as a secondary concern, yet in sovereign cloud architectures it is a foundational requirement. The talk examines cloud-native patterns supporting workload portability through open standards and Kubernetes platforms, connecting architectural decisions around packaging, deployment, and dependencies to their impact on organizational flexibility and control over future technology evolution.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2H5UT/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:35","time_end":"14:45","type":"lightning_talk","title":"How I Built My Laptop Into an MCP Server To Create Secure Cloud Native Infrastructure","speakers":"Mahendran Selvakumar","orgs":"Tata Consultancy Services","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day: MCP + Agents","level":"","description":"The speaker demonstrates converting a laptop into an MCP server that generates secure cloud-native infrastructure from plain-language descriptions. Rather than copying legacy YAML configurations, teams provide service details and the server outputs structured, reviewable code with baseline security including probes, labels, resource limits, container hardening, and network policies. The approach separates generation from cluster modification for safer deployments, cutting review effort by about 40% and reducing drift across clusters by about 30%.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5K/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"14:50","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Accelerating Cilium: Our Journey on Offloading Cilium To DPU","speakers":"Vijay Inavolu","orgs":"Marvell Technologies","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"","description":"The session explores whether Cilium can be completely offloaded to a DPU (Data Processing Unit) for primary networks without adding user-level complexity. Key topics include handling clusters with mixed DPU availability, utilizing DPUs as cluster nodes, and quantifying host resource savings. The presentation addresses hardware-accelerated security policies and discusses maintaining minimal Cilium code changes while ensuring vendor-neutral, open-source compatibility. Using Marvell Octeon 10 DPU as a demonstration platform, the speaker will outline encountered challenges, implemented solutions, and provide performance metrics.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY66/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"14:50","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Compliance as Code Meets Developer Portals: Kyverno + Backstage in Action","speakers":"Gaurika Poplai","orgs":"Microsoft","room":"E106-108","track":"KyvernoCon","level":"","description":"The session demonstrates how integrating Kyverno with Backstage brings Kubernetes compliance directly into the developer workflow. Through the Policy Reporter plugin, developers gain visibility into workload alignment with CIS benchmarks and organizational policies. The presentation includes a live demonstration showing how developers can identify failed policies and understand compliance posture within the Backstage service catalog. The approach shifts compliance visibility left, transforming governance from a reactive process into a shared, continuous responsibility embedded in the developer experience.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6C/","tags":["backstage","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"14:50","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Staying in Sync: Managing Upgrades in OpenTofu and Terraform Modules","speakers":"Fabrizio Sgura","orgs":"Veritas Automata","room":"Emerald Room","track":"OpenTofu Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The presentation focuses on optimal procedures for updating OpenTofu and maintaining current Terraform modules. Key topics include version pinning, semantic versioning of modules, and automated upgrade tools. The session demonstrates executing openTofu init and openTofu apply across version transitions and recommends solutions such as terraform-provider-migrate or CI automation to prevent frequent issues. The presentation aims to provide a concise overview of securely advancing infrastructure-as-code setups to maintain compatibility with CNCF's OpenTofu releases.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY69/","tags":["terraform"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"15:05","type":"talk","title":"From the Ranch(er) to the Dev: A Case Study About Simplifying K8s Cluster Setup With Backstage","speakers":"Alex Speranza","orgs":"ImolaInformatica SPA","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores developer portal features, focusing on managing resource states versus executing one-time tasks. It addresses the challenge of cluster onboarding that requires both one-shot configuration and GitOps-based management. This talk follows the exploration of a cluster onboarding process involving Rancher, Backstage, and Gitlab, while also providing a real-world example of how to facilitate deployments on cluster where security practices, like the use of Sealed Secret, make the developers' job complicated.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DrPu/","tags":["backstage","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"15:05","type":"talk","title":"Real-Time GPU Job Scheduling Latency Prediction in Multi-Cluster Kubernetes","speakers":"Sujoy Dutta","orgs":"Bloomberg","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation addresses challenges managing GPU workloads across multiple Kubernetes clusters. Bloomberg employs Karmada to orchestrate ML training jobs. The solution features a production-ready controller delivering real-time queue predictions, converting sluggish processes into streamlined operations. The system processes resource events immediately with strategic Karmada connectivity, enabling users to forecast job wait times with greater precision. By combining live statistics with Kubernetes events and integrating with monitoring platforms like Grafana and Prometheus, attendees learn how the approach achieves O(1) complexity, advancing from daily aggregate measurements to instantaneous metrics.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6L/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"15:05","type":"talk","title":"Running ML Challenges on Kubernetes (Part 2)","speakers":"Hannes Hansen;Paulo Guilherme Pinheiro Pereira","orgs":"CERN;CERN","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores how competitive ML challenges function as community hubs for researchers. While platforms like Kaggle are popular, they require participants to supply their own resources and don't suit environments with proprietary data or internal systems. The presenters demonstrate a framework using Kubernetes, Codabench and KubeFlow designed for hosting particle physics-based challenges at CERN, offering an alternative for organizations needing internal infrastructure control.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6O/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"15:05","type":"talk","title":"Extracting the Last Microseconds of Performance From Containerized Workloads","speakers":"Feruzjon Muyassarov;Alexander Kanevskiy","orgs":"Ericsson Software Technology;Intel","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses optimizing containerized environments through three key elements: resource selection, configuration tuning, and minimizing resource contention. Presenters discuss both established optimization techniques including CPU isolation, memory locality, and bandwidth allocation, as well as newer container runtime capabilities. Combining two new features, container-specific Linux scheduler and CPU power saving state controls, one can reduce processes' wake-up latency even by 99% in certain scenarios.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6R/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"15:05","type":"talk","title":"From Pods To PUE: A Digital Twin Approach To Sustainable Kubernetes Infrastructure","speakers":"Matteo Bunino","orgs":"CERN","room":"Forum","track":"Observability Day","level":"Advanced","description":"The session addresses energy efficiency in data centers managing demanding AI and scientific workloads. It presents a Kubernetes-native approach to building a digital twin for data center energy optimization, combining telemetry from Kepler/eBPF with Dynamic Resource Allocation API. The approach enables dynamic device throttling via RAPL and NVML/DCGM interfaces, uses AI models to assess workload intensity, and predicts scheduling impact on Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE), creating a feedback loop for sustainable, energy-aware data center orchestration.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6U/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"15:05","type":"talk","title":"Parity in Observability Across Different Platforms","speakers":"Kirill Mikhailov;Liam Harrington","orgs":"Riot Games;Riot Games","room":"E103-105","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Riot Games operates games at massive scale across multiple regions with competitive gameplay where latency critically impacts user experience. The company cannot rely on a single observability platform due to technical constraints, requiring multiple solutions across their ecosystem. This session explores how they maintain consistency across heterogeneous observability platforms and leverage both AI and traditional methods to address this operational challenge.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6X/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:40","time_end":"15:05","type":"talk","title":"Tarmageddon: One Bug, Four Forks, and a Disclosure Scavenger Hunt","speakers":"Marina Moore;Alex Zenla","orgs":"Edera;Edera","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation examines a parsing vulnerability in the tokio-tar library called Tarmageddon. The speakers explain how the vulnerability impacted multiple maintained forks of the project simultaneously, creating complexity in responsible disclosure efforts across four separate projects. The session explores challenges in locating maintainer contacts and identifying dependent projects. The discussion expands to examine systemic issues within the Rust ecosystem regarding library fragmentation, fork proliferation, and alternative approaches to feature development. The speakers propose collaborative solutions involving open source maintainers, foundations, and community participation to strengthen overall ecosystem security.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6a/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:45","time_end":"15:10","type":"talk","title":"Decoupling Canary Deployments From DBs With Argo Rollouts","speakers":"Anastasiia Gubska","orgs":"Chase UK","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses deploying stateful applications with databases using Argo Rollouts. It demonstrates how to decouple database migrations from application deployments through backward compatible schema changes to the database that allow both old and new application versions to operate simultaneously during the rollouts. The presentation covers practical strategies for common database refactoring scenarios including column additions, renaming columns and tables, and introducing new data types.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6F/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:45","time_end":"15:10","type":"talk","title":"Network Segmentation at Scale: GitOps-Driven Multi-Tenant Isolation With Argo CD","speakers":"Luke Philips;Christian Hernandez","orgs":"Linktree;Cisco","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"This session explores implementing multitenancy in Argo CD at production scale. The talk covers managing hundreds of tenants without creating network policy nightmare, using Cilium Network Policies through ArgoCD, addressing network concerns, and implementing RBAC strategies for tenant self-service. Attendees will learn best practices, potential pitfalls, and tested patterns from real-world multi-tenant deployments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6I/","tags":["gitops","multi-tenancy","networking","argocd","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:50","time_end":"14:55","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Day-2 Ready: Bringing Agentic Pilots to Production","speakers":"Idit Levine;Keith Babo","orgs":"Solo.io;Solo.io","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day: MCP + Agents","level":"","description":"The session addresses a key challenge in agentic AI deployment. While many organizations have successfully deployed LLM-integrated chatbots and agentic tools into production, most projects remain at pilot stages without clear advancement paths. The keynote presents best practice patterns and architectures for agentic infrastructure drawn from agentgateway, kagent, and agentregistry communities, offering strategies to transition pilots from initial deployment to mature production environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYGs/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"14:55","time_end":"15:00","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Built in the Open: Why Cisco Is Betting on eBPF, Cilium, and Tetragon","speakers":"Bill Mulligan","orgs":"Isovalent at Cisco","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"","description":"The session focuses on how infrastructure standards of the next decade are being built in the open by communities, code, and ecosystems. Specifically, it examines Cisco's investment in three technologies - Cilium, eBPF, and Tetragon - which are shaping networking, security, and observability in multi-cloud environments. The keynote emphasizes how these investments align product development with community-driven standards, enabling consistent functionality across Kubernetes, clouds, data centers, and network infrastructure.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DZMf/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:05","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Rescue Agents From Prototype Purgatory: Operationalize Agent Readiness","speakers":"Ignasi Barrera","orgs":"Tetrate.io","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day: MCP + Agents","level":"","description":"The session examines how enterprises can move beyond experimental AI agent implementations. It addresses the challenge of determining agent readiness for operational use by combining qualitative standards with enforceable control points to prevent endless prototype cycles. The discussion covers maintaining trust, consistency, and accountability while transforming the software development lifecycle to accommodate AI agent deployment.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DYGv/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Beyond Vibecoding: The Coach/Player Model for Actual Autonomous Development","speakers":"Douwe Osinga","orgs":"Block","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day: MCP + Agents","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session introduces dialectical autocoding, an AI-assisted development approach using a structured coach-player feedback loop between two cooperating agents. This method aims to surpass current vibe coding limitations by enabling substantially more progress on complex coding tasks, resulting in better tested, more robust outcomes. Both agents work from comprehensive requirements while maintaining flexibility in implementation choices, targeting goal persistence for extended development cycles without human interruption.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY63/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Beyond GitOps: Building Intelligent Drift Detection and Auto-Remediation in Argo CD","speakers":"Ram Mohan Rao Chukka;Shibi Ramachandran","orgs":"JFrog;ING","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Beginner","description":"Configuration drift in Kubernetes clusters is difficult to detect proactively. While ArgoCD provides basic drift detection capabilities, enterprise environments require more nuanced responses. The presenters explain how to extend ArgoCD using 'Custom Health Checks, ApplicationSets, Resource Hooks, and a custom controller' to intelligently categorize changes by severity, then auto-remediate safe modifications, request approvals for sensitive updates, and rollback when necessary. The session targets platform engineers, SREs, and DevOps teams seeking advanced GitOps automation with policy enforcement.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6y/","tags":["argocd","platform-eng","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Cross-Cluster Progressive Delivery: Rolling Out Apps With Argo Rollouts, Workflows and Events","speakers":"Elamaran Shanmugam;Carlos Santana","orgs":"Amazon Web Services;Amazon Web Services","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses multi-cluster application rollouts across distributed infrastructure. Rather than deploying everywhere simultaneously, the approach treats cluster progression like canary deployments. 'Start with dev clusters, validate success, progress to staging, then production region by region—with automated validation and rollback.' The presentation combines Argo Workflows, Argo Events, and Argo Rollouts to manage cross-cluster orchestration while controlling blast radius. A live demonstration shows deployment across infrastructure tiers with automated validation and failure handling, plus ArgoCD ApplicationSets integration.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6v/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Think Backstage! Beyond Plugins","speakers":"Debabrata Panigrahi;Jenil Jain","orgs":"Parseable Inc.;Harness","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"Beginner","description":"The presentation addresses extending Backstage beyond plugins by enriching core data models. Key topics include defining new Kinds, using processors to ingest data from SCM/CI-CD/cloud/HR systems, extending the UI, implementing granular permissions, and maintaining catalog accuracy. The speakers emphasize creating catalogs that are 'usable, stays accurate, governable, and easy to extend.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6s/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Connecting the World: Your Hands-on Guide To Cilium ClusterMesh and MCS-API","speakers":"Arthur Outhenin-Chalandre;Quentin Swiech","orgs":"Ledger;S3NS","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session uses a canal metaphor to explain how 'Cilium ClusterMesh links Kubernetes clusters into one cohesive, global network.' Presented by S3NS (the French trusted cloud from Thales and Google Cloud), attendees will learn to enforce network policies across clusters, enable service load balancing using MCS-API, integrate with Cilium Ingress and the Gateway API, and scale across hundreds of clusters worldwide. Participants receive 'a GitOps-ready blueprint for deploying and managing Cilium ClusterMesh.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6j/","tags":["gitops","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"From Hallucinations To Hardware: Diagnosing LLM Failures","speakers":"Ryan Peirce","orgs":"Chronosphere","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Generative AI apps can hallucinate—or fail—at the worst possible times. In this live demo session, we'll interact with an LLM-powered application designed to surface both entertaining hallucinations and real-world GPU performance issues. Using open source tools like Prometheus, OTel, NVIDIA DCGM, and OpenInference, we'll troubleshoot problems in real time and trace them from user experience down to infrastructure. See how observability gives engineers and SREs the visibility they need to keep AI systems reliable.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY71/","tags":["observability","otel","ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Kubernetes Meets Climate Data: Designing Analysis-Ready Data Cubes With Kubeflow and Zarr","speakers":"Armagan Karatosun;Anna-Lena Erdmann","orgs":"EUMETSAT;EUMETSAT","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses how Earth Observation data's exponential growth challenges climate research. Presenters explain 'how we built a cloud-native data pipeline using Kubeflow, DuckDB, and Xarray/Zarr to transform EO data into analysis-ready, multi-resolution data cubes.' The discussion covers obstacles like data fragmentation across formats (HDF5, NetCDF, GRIB) and organizational layers, demonstrating how Kubeflow orchestrates large-scale scientific data preparation and object-store-native access.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY74/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Beyond Admission: How Kyverno Extends Native Policies for Full Lifecycle Management","speakers":"Erik Godding Boye;Mariam Fahmy","orgs":"Zenior AS;Cloudflare","room":"E106-108","track":"KyvernoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses security gaps in Kubernetes admission policies by demonstrating how Kyverno provides 'a comprehensive, lifecycle-aware solution.' It covers validating policies before deployment, using MutatingPolicy for admission-time changes, and identifying non-compliant resources already running in clusters—capabilities that native policies lack.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6p/","tags":["policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Designing for Observability","speakers":"George Hantzaras","orgs":"MongoDB","room":"E103-105","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation explores techniques for designing systems with built-in observability. The session covers 'strategies for designing systems that are observable, meaning that they can be monitored and understood in real-time.' Topics include instrumentation, data collection, analysis, and emerging observability tools, with practical guidance for software engineers, architects, and DevOps professionals on implementing observability best practices within system design and architecture.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7D/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"One YAML To Rule Them All: Declarative Config","speakers":"Jamie Danielson","orgs":"Honeycomb.io","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"Jamie addresses challenges polyglot programmers face when implementing OpenTelemetry across multiple languages. She explains how 'Declarative configuration, which uses YAML, was created to bridge this gap' between environment variables and complex configuration needs. The presentation covers an overview of declarative configuration, demonstrates usage in multi-language applications, and discusses current progress and future developments for the project.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7A/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Secure Your MCP Servers With OAuth, JWT, SPIFFE and More","speakers":"Lin Sun;Yi Yang","orgs":"Solo.io;IBM","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"","description":"This demo-driven session addresses securing MCP servers without extensive code modifications. The presenters compare two approaches: the complex method of rewriting server code to add OAuth support, versus a simplified gateway-based approach that handles 'authentication and authorization through an MCP gateway, which allows you to secure your servers using OAuth, JWT, SPIFFE and other identity systems without changing or redeploying them.' The session concludes with demonstrating secure AI agent interaction with MCP server tools.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7G/","tags":["ai","identity","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Sovereignty and Open Source? How To Put Your Money Where Your Mouth Is!","speakers":"Vasu Chandrasekhara;Christian Hüning","orgs":"NeoNephos;BWI GmbH","room":"F002-005","track":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day","level":"","description":"The presentation explores military standardization through purchasing power applied to modern software defense systems. It addresses interoperability challenges in critical systems and proposes 'dynamic, modular frameworks' for field-ready integration. The speakers present Germany Army's Open Defense Cloud strategy utilizing multiple vendors collaborating within open-source foundations (LF, CNCF, NeoNephos), demonstrating how 'OSS ecosystem thinking tied with purchasing power is pivotal for digital sovereignty.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2H5UW/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Debugging Slow Infrastructure Runs With OpenTelemetry in OpenTofu","speakers":"James Humphries","orgs":"Spacelift / OpenTofu","room":"Emerald Room","track":"OpenTofu Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Infrastructure deployments often encounter performance challenges without clear visibility into what causes delays. This presentation explores how 'OpenTofu's native OpenTelemetry integration brings cloud-native observability to infrastructure deployments.' The speaker discusses practical examples where distributed tracing identified performance bottlenecks—including slow provider downloads, inefficient state handling, and API rate limitations—that remain hidden in conventional logging systems.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY6m/","tags":["observability","otel","terraform"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Backend-First IDP: A Production Roadmap With Argo CD, Crossplane, and OPA","speakers":"Abhinav Sharma;Aditya Soni","orgs":"KodeKloud;SailPoint","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session critiques 'portal-first' architectural patterns as limiting scalability when UIs depend on fragile automation. Instead, presenters advocate a 'backend-first' approach with orchestration and policy as core components. Using a multi-tenant, 100+ service environment demo, they detail: (1) minimal Platform API/CRD contracts integrating ArgoCD, Crossplane, and OPA; (2) policy authoring and promotion strategies; and (3) end-to-end golden paths. Results included 'cut infrastructure request lead time from days to minutes' and 'reduced GitOps drift incidents by 70%.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7M/","tags":["argocd","opa","platform-eng","gitops","multi-tenancy","crossplane"],"priority":2},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Building Extensible Platforms","speakers":"Hazel Weakly","orgs":"Nivenly Foundation","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"","description":"The speaker uses a house-building metaphor to explore platform development challenges. She discusses how rapid technological change—with frequent deprecations and innovations—mirrors building on unstable ground. The session examines how traditional planning approaches may feel outdated in volatile environments, then presents her approach to transforming chaos into a foundation supporting 'long term success.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7J/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:20","time_end":"15:55","type":"panel","title":"Panel: Agentic AI Infrastructure for Telecom","speakers":"Yoshihiro Nakajima;Ranny Haiby;Philippe Ensarguet;Hui Deng;Yanjun Chen","orgs":"NTT DOCOMO;The Linux Foundation;Orange;Huawei;China Mobile","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The panel explores how 2025 marks 'the dawn of agentic AI,' requiring telecom operators to rapidly adopt emerging technologies. Infrastructure integration with cloud systems is essential, with sandbox implementations like MicroVM, Dragonball, StratoVirt, Firecracker, and libkrun already deployed. The session addresses secure sandbox runtimes for agentic workloads and NFV extensions. Participants discuss cloud-native synergies through virtualized containers and hybrid orchestration approaches for future telecom networks.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY77/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Keeping Your Agents in Check: Layered Security for Agentic Platforms in Production","speakers":"Evaline Ju;Kelly Abuelsaad","orgs":"IBM Research;IBM","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation examines securing AI agent deployments across all platform layers. The speakers discuss mitigating risks including prompt injection and unauthorized tool access via both algorithmic and learning-based safeguards. They present reference architecture incorporating guardrails at the Envoy gateway layer with OAuth 2.0 delegation through Keycloak to establish cryptographic trust between agents and tools. Attendees will understand agentic application security vulnerabilities and learn scalable safety implementations suitable for production environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7P/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","identity","networking","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Agnostic Workload Identity Across the Argo Ecosystem Using SPIFFE and SPIRE","speakers":"Andrew Block;Blake Pettersson","orgs":"Red Hat;Akuity","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session examines 'implementing platform-agnostic workload identity across the Argo ecosystem from Argo CD, Argo Workflows, Argo Rollouts, and Argo Events using SPIFFE and SPIRE.' Attendees will explore how SPIFFE eliminates static credentials through cryptographically verifiable identities, discover practical patterns for integrating SPIRE across Argo projects, and learn real-world applications in securing GitOps workflows and CI/CD pipelines across multi-cluster environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7h/","tags":["argocd","identity","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"From FTP To Argo CD & Argo Rollouts: An Adoption History Inside a Corp","speakers":"Alfonso Ming;Meritxell Rodríguez","orgs":"SCRM Lidl International Hub;SCRM Lidl International Hub","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation documents a migration journey from Azure App Services/Pipelines to ArgoCD and Argo Rollouts. Key topics include managing zero-downtime transitions for 'critical mission software with more than 90 million active users,' RBAC configuration, secret management, disaster recovery strategies using appsets and cluster generators, and implementing smoke tests during canary rollouts to 'guarantee the reliability of the systems.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7k/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Unlocking the Catalog: Providing a Platform CLI for Backstage","speakers":"Sebastian Poxhofer","orgs":"N26","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"BackstageCon","level":"Advanced","description":"This session explores building an internal command-line interface to enable scriptable platform interactions without requiring deep API expertise. The presenter details implementation of CLI tooling that abstracts Backstage complexities and integrates external identity providers with persistent device authentication. Key outcomes include 'how we integrated an external Identity Provider with a persistent device authentication to create minimal frictions for users' and learning approaches to 'unlock automation potentials.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7e/","tags":["backstage","identity"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Cloud Native Promises, On-Premises: Bump Your Load Balancing To V2 With Cilium","speakers":"Mikael Johansson Länsberg","orgs":"Etraveli Group AB","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Etraveli Group operates millions of daily flight searches in on-premises data centers. Legacy load balancing using proprietary hardware appliances proved inadequate for modern application demands. The company deployed Cilium to upgrade their load balancing architecture with: unified control plane integrating LB-IPAM, BGP, and Gateway API; eBPF-powered performance handling millions of requests; and true cloud-native Kubernetes integration. 'Join us to learn how we designed and deployed the next major version of load balancing, and how you could do it on your own infrastructure with Cilium.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7S/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"A Guide To AI API Gateways and Semantic Routers","speakers":"Max Körbächer","orgs":"Liquid Reply GmbH","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The presentation examines routing solutions for AI-enhanced applications in cloud native environments. It addresses the growing need for intelligent request handling as generative AI adoption accelerates. The session compares prominent solutions including 'Envoy AI Gateway, LightLLM or vLLM semantic routers,' evaluating their use cases and limitations to help attendees select appropriate communication handlers for their infrastructure needs.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7q/","tags":["ai","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"When Models Write Malware: Defending Against On-demand Exploits","speakers":"Shane Lawrence","orgs":"Shopify","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"AI has made it easy for even amateur attackers to generate exploits on the fly, and skilled hackers can iterate on initial access to produce targeted custom scripts in seconds. The session explores detecting rapidly-evolving malware through a live demonstration combining Falco runtime signals with LLM-based script classification for near real-time threat identification. Attendees will gain understanding of AI's impact on attack and defense strategies, container hardening approaches, and receive a reference implementation including prompts and Helm charts for leveraging AI with open source tools.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7n/","tags":["helm","ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Full Observability for Kyverno With Observability-as-Code","speakers":"Imma Valls","orgs":"Grafana Labs","room":"E106-108","track":"KyvernoCon","level":"","description":"The session explores monitoring Kyverno policies to prevent performance degradation. It covers 'how to monitor Kyverno's operational cycle using Prometheus, Tempo, and Grafana,' implementing SLOs, and using 'OpenTelemetry tracing to pinpoint what is causing a delay in the admission process.' The presentation demonstrates setting real-time alerts for policy failures and slow webhooks through declarative observability practices aligned with GitOps methodologies.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7Y/","tags":["observability","otel","gitops","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Let Me Be Your OpenTelemetry Champ","speakers":"Pavol Loffay;Nicolas Wörner","orgs":"Red Hat;OllyGarden","room":"E103-105","track":"Observability Day","level":"","description":"The session addresses operational challenges in production OpenTelemetry deployments. It presents 'an OpenTelemetry MCP Server that acts as your OTel Champ,' enabling AI agents to manage observability stacks intelligently. The presentation demonstrates automated capabilities including cost optimization, dynamic PII filtering, and hands-free collector configuration through real-time telemetry profiling and breaking change detection.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7w/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","otel","mcp","observability","cost"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"OpenTelemetry Gateways: Enforce, Transform, Route","speakers":"Juraci Paixão Kröhling;Natalie Ujuk","orgs":"OllyGarden;IG Group","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"Advanced","description":"The session addresses how centralized control points manage problematic data flows through telemetry pipelines. OpenTelemetry collector gateways enforce validation rules for semantic conventions, execute transformation pipelines to enrich or redact information, and configure routing without requiring developer changes. The presentation includes 'real configurations: blocking PII, enforcing mandatory attributes, and filtering high-cardinality data before it leaves your premises.' Topics encompass performance considerations at scale, security boundaries for multi-tenant setups, and configuration drift management, with attendees receiving deployment-ready blueprints and configurations.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7t/","tags":["identity","observability","otel","multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Simplifying Global Compliance for CNCF Projects With the OpenSSF OSPS Baseline","speakers":"Madalin Neag","orgs":"OpenSSF","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Open source security faces an increasingly complex regulatory environment globally. The Open Source Project Security (OSPS) Baseline, released February 2025 with CNCF and FINOS as partners, establishes '40 practical requirements across three maturity levels, covering areas like access control, build and release, governance, documentation, and vulnerability management.' The baseline maps to major frameworks including U.S. NIST SSDF and EU regulations (NIS2, DORA, CRA). The session examines how the baseline and OpenSSF's Global Cyber Policy Working Group help navigate diverse policy landscapes, connecting developer security practices with international regulations.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7z/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Bridging CNCF and OpenInfra: Kubernetes as the Unified Control Plane for Sovereign Clouds","speakers":"Michael Schmidt","orgs":"SAP SE","room":"F002-005","track":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The session addresses Europe's fragmented cloud infrastructure by presenting 'a technical deep dive into CobaltCore, a Kubernetes enabled OpenStack distribution.' It examines combining Kubernetes' declarative model with Infrastructure as a Service capabilities to support workloads resistant to cloud-native redesign. The presentation explores 'bare metal automation, vendor agnostic networking, large scale Kubernetes operations, security and compliance management, and signed software delivery' through the Apeiro Reference Architecture projects.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2H5UZ/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"OpenTofu Dependabot Ecosystem","speakers":"Diógenes Fernandes","orgs":"Gruntwork","room":"Emerald Room","track":"OpenTofu Day","level":"Beginner","description":"In this talk, the speaker presents the integration between OpenTofu and Dependabot. The session is focused on how the Dependabot architecture works and how it's integrated with OpenTofu. The speaker is a Software and Platform engineer with 15 years of experience, contributing as a core engineer at OpenTofu on projects including Tofu LSP, Registry, and OpenTofu's core.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7V/","tags":["terraform","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"Istio in Production: Expected Value, Results, and Effort at GitHub Scale","speakers":"Mitch Connors;Golnaz Rouhi","orgs":"Microsoft;GitHub","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Beginner","description":"GitHub deployed Istio across multiple clusters managing tens of thousands of pods to implement mutual TLS and centralized authentication/authorization. The presentation covers their implementation strategy, including automation for workload onboarding without application modifications and custom ingress gateway solutions. Key achievements highlighted include canary rollout capabilities with instant failure rollback and latency improvements of approximately 15 milliseconds through load balancing optimizations. The session addresses migration risks, mitigation strategies, and explores emerging features like agentic traffic controls and Ambient Mode.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY85/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","platform-eng","identity","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"15:55","time_end":"16:20","type":"talk","title":"The GitOps Paradox: Why Your Devs Need an API You Don't Want To Build","speakers":"Simon Koudijs","orgs":"ConfigButler","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Platform teams encounter a fundamental challenge: developers require straightforward APIs and interfaces, yet constructing and maintaining them diverts significant resources from strategic platform initiatives. This presentation introduces 'Reverse GitOps,' positioning an API-first methodology that incorporates a lightweight Kubernetes control plane preceding your Git repository. The session demonstrates how platform teams can establish streamlined Custom Resource Definitions functioning as declarative APIs, enabling GUI development (Backstage/Headlamp) or programmatic developer and AI agent interactions. The open-source gitops-reverser operator converts user interactions into Git commits and pull requests, preserving existing review workflows while enabling manifests expansion through KRO or Crossplane, integrating with Flux or ArgoCD-powered GitOps systems.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY82/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","argocd","platform-eng","gitops","backstage","crossplane"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:25","type":"talk","title":"What Do You Mean It's Broken? When AI Meets the Harsh Reality of Telco Observability","speakers":"Piotr Matysiak;Iwona Wojdan","orgs":"Orange Innovation;Orange Innovation Poland","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"","description":"The session addresses root cause analysis challenges in multi-cluster Kubernetes environments. Presenters introduce an AI-powered observability system combining live telemetry with static knowledge sources to provide contextual insights. The presentation covers architecture design, query optimization mechanisms, multi-cluster integration, and application within a Telco AI Assistant for 5G/6G lifecycle management. The core message: 'AI and automation are only as good as the observability feeding them.'","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY88/","tags":["observability","ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Fantastic Vibes and Where To Find Them","speakers":"Erica Hughberg;Mauricio Salatino","orgs":"Tetrate;Diagrid","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session examines practical outcomes when development teams employ AI agents for coding tasks. The speakers analyze 'which pull requests ship versus get reverted, which agent bots developers love versus uninstall' and explore how non-developers can contribute effectively. Key themes include machine-readable project conventions that boost productivity, real-world case studies demonstrating both successes and failures, and actionable patterns such as scoped objectives, validation checkpoints, code review requirements, and adaptable workflows.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY7b/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Declarative...ish? Fixing Hidden Argo CD Pitfalls in Your GitOps Setup","speakers":"Regina Voloshin","orgs":"Octopus Deploy","room":"G102-103","track":"ArgoCon","level":"","description":"Teams implementing Argo CD often 'accumulate structural and architectural mistakes' that undermine GitOps benefits over time. The session examines four anti-patterns: dynamic Application creation, using Applications instead of Application Sets, packaging Applications via Helm, and hardcoding Helm data. Attendees will learn concrete strategies to maintain 'maintainable, scalable and developer-friendly' Argo CD architectures at scale.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY5T/","tags":["helm","argocd","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Leveraging Argo Workflows To Move, Migrate and Manage All of Your Workflows","speakers":"John Keates","orgs":"Wehkamp Retail Group","room":"Auditorium","track":"ArgoCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"Organizations often accumulate legacy systems like Jenkins for CI/CD over decades. This talk explores how Wehkamp Retail Group transitioned to Argo Workflows and ArgoCD to enhance developer experience. By designing composable pipelines, the team achieved significant code reuse across common operations including 'linting, security checks and notifications.' The presentation examines their migration journey and system architecture decisions.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8Q/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"One Policy To Rule Them All? Scaling Tetragon Without Flooding Your Cluster","speakers":"Alessio Biancalana","orgs":"SUSE","room":"Elicium 1","track":"CiliumCon","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores Kubernetes security policy implementation using eBPF, drawing an analogy to Amsterdam's canal system. It covers 'designing and implementing a per-workload security model,' examining performance challenges, and presenting 'techniques to reduce overhead' when enforcing policies across clusters. Attendees will gain insights into balancing robust security enforcement with system performance optimization in containerized environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8B/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"A Deep Dive on How To Leverage the NVIDIA GB200 for Ultra-Fast Training and Inference on Kubernetes","speakers":"Kevin Klues;Jan-Philip Gehrcke","orgs":"NVIDIA;NVIDIA","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Multi-node AI training and inference jobs leverage the NVIDIA GB200 NVL72, which uses NVLink to connect 72 GPUs across 18 nodes in a full mesh network. The session introduces 'ComputeDomain,' an abstraction via NVIDIA's DRA driver for secure multi-node workload execution on NVLink-connected systems. Presenters discuss integration with major cloud providers' managed Kubernetes offerings and include a demonstration.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8W/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Scaling LLMs at Bloomberg Using Envoy AI Gateway: A Hybrid Cloud Approach","speakers":"Aaron Choo;Xiaolin Lin","orgs":"Bloomberg LP;Bloomberg LP","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Cloud Native AI + Kubeflow Day","level":"","description":"This session explores how Bloomberg deployed Envoy AI Gateway—a 'CNCF-hosted open source project'—into production as a core infrastructure component. The presenters discuss scaling generative AI workloads while addressing financial services challenges like data governance and security. Key topics include performance optimization, scalability improvements, 'secure authentication, intelligent model routing, and token-based rate limiting' for real-time AI applications in financial contexts.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8Z/","tags":["ai","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Kyverno Mutating Policies: Shifting Platform Logic Into the Control Plane","speakers":"Rodrigo Fior Kuntzer","orgs":"Miro","room":"E106-108","track":"KyvernoCon","level":"","description":"This session explores how to 'empower developers while maintaining tight operational control and security' through Kyverno's mutating policies for platform engineering. The presentation covers production use cases including intelligent image registry mapping for global deployments, dynamic injection of configuration elements like secrets and sidecars based on resource context, and centralized configuration management for autoscaling. Attendees will learn strategies for operating these policies in highly available, GitOps-managed clusters to prevent configuration drift.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8H/","tags":["gitops","identity","platform-eng","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Observability Without Borders: The OpenTelemetry Collector in a WebAssembly World","speakers":"Evan Bradley;Pablo Baeyens","orgs":"Dynatrace LLC;Datadog","room":"Forum (Ground Floor)","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores compiling the OpenTelemetry Collector to WebAssembly to 'unlock new possibilities for observability in constrained or unconventional environments, such as browser runtimes, language runtimes, and other Wasm platforms.' Presenters discuss technical challenges including dependency management, performance optimization, and environment-specific functionality tailoring, targeting observability professionals and platform engineers working with edge or serverless applications.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8f/","tags":["observability","otel","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"When the Codebase Starts Instrumenting Itself","speakers":"Whitney Lee","orgs":"Datadog","room":"E103-105","track":"Observability Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation explores how GenAI-powered automation reshapes telemetry design. Lee discusses her project 'Commit Story,' an automated engineering journal triggered by Git commits, which became a vehicle for exploring how telemetry informs AI coding assistants during development. The talk covers her journey implementing OpenTelemetry semantic conventions through documentation and shared libraries, culminating in an AI agent that reads OpenTelemetry documentation, discovers conventions, extends standards modules, instruments code, and validates functionality.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8i/","tags":["observability","otel","ai","ai-agents"],"priority":2},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Thinking About Source Code Security in New Ways","speakers":"Justin Cappos;Yongjae Chung","orgs":"New York University;New York University","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Open Source SecurityCon","level":"","description":"The presentation introduces gittuf, a Git security system enabling client-side verification of source code policies. The system allows 'every developer to independently verify source code security policies, giving them another layer of resilience against attacks.' It features a distributed trust model where repositories define policies and delegate authorization to maintainers. The tool integrates with existing forge workflows and is an 'incubating project at the Open Source Security Foundation,' collaborating with projects meeting SLSA source track requirements.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8l/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Beyond the DBaaS Trap: Achieving Data Sovereignty With Kubernetes and CloudnativePG","speakers":"Floor Drees;Gabriele Bartolini","orgs":"EDB;EDB","room":"F002-005","track":"Open Sovereign Cloud Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The session addresses how organizations can achieve operational independence through cloud-neutral database architecture. The presenters explain that 'digital sovereignty requires the ability to run critical workloads on any infrastructure without proprietary cloud API limits.' Key topics covered include strategies for avoiding vendor lock-in with managed database services, leveraging Kubernetes and CloudNativePG for PostgreSQL portability, and implementing business continuity practices across different cloud providers. Attendees will learn practical methods for ensuring data-level portability while maintaining developer experience in compliance with emerging regulations like the EU Data Act.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2H5Uc/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Testing Infrastructure as Code Using OpenTofu and Localstack","speakers":"Pieter Vincken","orgs":"Cegeka","room":"Emerald Room","track":"OpenTofu Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation demonstrates how software development testing practices apply to infrastructure engineering. The session covers writing tests for Infrastructure as Code using OpenTofu, and using Localstack to simulate AWS services locally for faster feedback cycles. Attendees learn practical validation techniques for infrastructure changes before production deployment.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8E/","tags":["terraform"],"priority":1},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"Scaling Platform-as-a-Product Without Losing Your Mind","speakers":"Jakub Pawelczak;Eline Henriksen","orgs":"Google Cloud;Telenor","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Beginner","description":"As organizations scale their developer platforms, a critical inflection point emerges where traditional approaches fail. To accelerate developer productivity and manage this growing complexity, Telenor adopted a Platform-as-a-Product methodology, treating internal platforms as intentional products with dedicated roadmaps and success metrics. The session explores practical implementation strategies including building 'safety nets and paved paths that developers want to use,' fostering collaboration between platform and product teams, gathering user feedback for continuous improvement, and establishing effective communication across distributed organizations.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8o/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:55","type":"talk","title":"When Platform Engineers Lead FinOps: Driving Reliability and $20M in Savings","speakers":"Aditya Sharma;Mohit Kumar","orgs":"Expedia Group;Expedia Group","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering Day","level":"Beginner","description":"The talk addresses how platform engineers can integrate cost-conscious practices into their work. Rather than treating cloud expenses as a separate concern, the speakers propose that platform teams embed financial responsibility directly into their design and operations while maintaining system reliability. At Expedia Group, this approach achieved '$20M in 2025 while improving reliability across 500+ clusters and 10K+ workloads.' The presentation covers three methodologies: revisiting legacy systems, establishing metrics and baselines, and pursuing architectural improvements confidently.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY3O/","tags":["cost","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:30","time_end":"16:40","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: Operationalizing the NGMN Cloud Native Manifesto: CNTi and Sylva in Action","speakers":"Martin Matyáš","orgs":"Tieto","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"","description":"The session examines how the Cloud Native Telecom Initiative bridges NGMN's Cloud Native Manifesto principles with practical implementation. Through open-source testing frameworks, the initiative transforms abstract values—such as portability and scalability—into measurable standards. Working alongside Project Sylva, CNTi creates an integrated framework spanning cloud infrastructure to containerized network functions, enabling operators and vendors to validate compliance and accelerate modernization efforts.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8c/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"16:50","time_end":"17:25","type":"panel","title":"Panel: From Footprint To Value: Commercial Adoption of CAMARA APIs","speakers":"Jill Lovato;Andres Burgoa;Huub Appelboom;Nathan Rader","orgs":"Linux Foundation;Aduna Global;KPN;Deutsche Telekom","room":"G104-105","track":"Cloud Native Telco Day","level":"","description":"CAMARA APIs are moving into mainstream enterprise workflows. The panel examines API coverage availability and customer use cases, discussing multi-operator expectations, conformance standards, and SLAs. It addresses representative patterns including trust & safety, latency-sensitive operations, and business outcomes, concluding with evaluation criteria for prioritizing adoption.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8u/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:25","type":"talk","title":"Is AIOps the Future of Operations? Real Use Cases From the Trenches","speakers":"Danilo Banjac;Iveri Prangishvili","orgs":"Adobe;Adobe","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day","level":"","description":"This session presents real-world AIOps use cases at Adobe, demonstrating how Agentic workflows can automate on-call tasks, streamline issue diagnosis and drive continuous improvement. Attendees will learn practical approaches for constructing autonomous agents within operational contexts, utilizing AIOps strategies for operational scaling and minimizing hands-on intervention requirements.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY8K/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":2},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"17:40","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: Securing AI Agents: Applying Service Mesh Patterns To MCP","speakers":"Shriya Chaitanya Kamat Tarcar","orgs":"Nuvama Wealth Management Limited","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses security gaps in AI agent deployments by demonstrating how service mesh patterns apply to MCP (Model Context Protocol). It covers mutual TLS authentication, zero-trust boundaries, and policy enforcement for agent-to-server communication. Attendees will receive a threat model connecting MCP attack vectors to service mesh locations, authentication patterns for MCP servers, and a framework for deploying security patterns to prevent supply chain incidents in agentic systems.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY96/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","networking","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Monday","date":"2026-03-23","time_start":"17:45","time_end":"17:55","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Lightning Talk: How AI Agents Are Ending Interrupt-Driven Platform Work","speakers":"Sunny Whang","orgs":"Cisco","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Agentics Day","level":"Intermediate","description":"Platform engineers contend with constant interruptions while managing multiple service owners and repetitive operational tickets. Cisco's Outshift team developed an internal multi-agent solution, later open-sourced as 'CAIPE: Community AI Platform Engineering (now part of CNOE)' to address widespread industry pain points. The presentation demonstrates a supervisor agent orchestrating parallel and sequential workflows across sub-agents, utilizing GraphRAG for knowledge management and OpenAPI MCP tooling. Agents manage operations spanning ArgoCD, Backstage, Jira, PagerDuty, and AWS environments.","url":"https://colocatedeventseu2026.sched.com/event/2DY9m/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","platform-eng","mcp","backstage","argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:35","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Keynote: Welcome + Opening Remarks","speakers":"Jonathan Bryce;Chris Aniszczyk","orgs":"The Linux Foundation;CNCF","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"No detailed abstract provided. Opening keynote session for the conference.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CtKk/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"09:37","time_end":"09:40","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Rules of the Road for Shared GPUs: AI Inference Scheduling at Wayve","speakers":"Mukund Muralikrishnan","orgs":"Wayve","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"The session explores GPU resource management in multi-tenant Kubernetes environments. As AI inference workloads expand in scale and variety, 'predictable access to GPUs becomes as important as raw throughput.' Wayve runs diverse inference tasks-from latency-sensitive evaluation to large-scale synthetic data generation-that compete for GPU capacity. The presentation covers why standard Kubernetes scheduling proves insufficient and demonstrates using Kueue, a Kubernetes-native queueing solution, to operate shared GPU clusters reliably. This approach delivers predictable GPU allocations, enhances cluster utilization, and reduces operational complexity. The session concludes by examining how Ray frameworks integrate into this infrastructure as Wayve expands its AI Driver platform.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgE0/","tags":["multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"09:42","time_end":"09:47","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Sponsored Keynote: From Complexity to Clarity: Engineering an Invisible Kubernetes","speakers":"Jesse Butler","orgs":"Amazon Elastic Kubernetes Service (EKS)","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Kubernetes serves as the control plane for demanding distributed workloads including AI training, accelerated compute, and multi-tenant platforms. Despite widespread adoption, developers still manage infrastructure details while platform teams configure clusters and resources. This presentation examines how the Kubernetes model must evolve so infrastructure responds dynamically to workload signals in real time, higher-level abstractions reduce low-level primitive exposure without sacrificing control, and governance becomes programmatic across distributed environments. The keynote explores three community-driven upstream innovations-Karpenter, kro, and Cedar-and discusses engineering decisions shaping Kubernetes's future evolution.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgFN/","tags":["multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"09:49","time_end":"09:54","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: The Future of AI is Community-Driven and OPEN","speakers":"Erin Boyd","orgs":"NVIDIA","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"N/A","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2Ioch/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"09:56","time_end":"10:01","type":"panel","title":"Keynote: From Inference to Agents: Where Open Source AI Is Headed","speakers":"Jonathan Bryce;Brian Stevens;Mark Collier;Lin Sun","orgs":"The Linux Foundation;Red Hat;The Linux Foundation;Solo.io","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"As AI systems move from training to real-world deployment, two forces are rapidly reshaping the landscape: the explosive growth of AI inference and the emergence of agentic AI. The panel explores how inference market expansion drives infrastructure needs, why the AI ecosystem will span multiple open source foundations, and what autonomy, orchestration, and runtime requirements of agentic systems mean for future open source collaboration.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2JHMJ/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"10:03","time_end":"10:18","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: The Future of Cloud Native Is... Agentic","speakers":"Lin Sun","orgs":"Solo.io","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Kubernetes and cloud native technologies offer significant capabilities but present considerable complexity. The session explores how 'vibe coding' is reshaping software development approaches. The presenter argues that 'by composing AI agents and MCP servers, we can move users from manual configuration to intent-driven, natural-language operations.' The keynote will include live demonstrations-ranging from drone operations to audience engagement analysis-to illustrate how these technologies can make cloud native systems 'more intuitive, approachable, and human-centered.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgFb/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"10:20","time_end":"10:23","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Orchestrating Document Data Extraction with Dapr Agents","speakers":"Fabian Steinbach","orgs":"ZEISS","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"The presentation addresses extracting structured information from variable multilingual documents with diverse layouts and handwriting. ZEISS Vision Care implemented a solution using Dapr Agents to create dependable data processing workflows. This vendor-neutral framework enables deterministic operations combining optical character recognition, large language model calls, and conventional programming. The architecture supports reliable execution while permitting flexibility in AI provider selection, achieving production readiness within two months.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgFV/","tags":["ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"10:25","time_end":"10:30","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Sponsored Keynote: Scaling Platform Ops with AI Agents: Troubleshooting to Remediation","speakers":"Natan Yellin;Jorge Palma","orgs":"Robusta;Microsoft","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"This presentation examines practical deployment of AI agents for maintaining Kubernetes clusters. The speakers demonstrate 'HolmesGPT, an open-source CNCF sandbox project that connects LLMs to operational and observability data to diagnose production issues.' The session covers how agents reduce mean-time-to-recovery through rapid correlation of logs, metrics, and cluster state, then addresses the more challenging transition from diagnosis to autonomous remediation within strict security controls. The speakers acknowledge obstacles including LLM unpredictability and trust-building requirements, emphasizing this approach amplifies SRE effectiveness rather than replacing human expertise.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgFq/","tags":["observability","ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"10:32","time_end":"10:42","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Riding the Waves: Around the World in an Electric Glider - Powered by Nature, Data, and Open Science","speakers":"Ricardo Rocha;Klaus Ohlmann","orgs":"CERN;Mountain-Wave-Project","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"The session explores sustainable aviation meeting cloud-native technology through 'an extraordinary journey around the world in an electric glider - an aircraft powered by renewable energy and the invisible forces of nature.' In partnership with CERN, the aircraft functions as a flying laboratory equipped with sensors measuring atmospheric conditions, radiation, and cosmic rays. Data streams live through a Kubernetes-based pipeline, merging physics, climate science, and AI research while demonstrating how open infrastructure and edge computing enable modern exploration.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CtJP/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"10:44","time_end":"10:45","type":"closing_remarks","title":"Keynote: Closing Remarks","speakers":"","orgs":"","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"N/A","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CtKl/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"Least-Privilege for AI: Authorizing Agents and MCP Tools with Agentgateway and Kyverno","speakers":"Nina Polshakova;Luc Chmielowski","orgs":"Solo.io;Nirmata","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"AI + ML","level":"","description":"As AI agents transition from experimental systems to autonomous participants in complex environments, they challenge conventional authorization frameworks. This session introduces agentgateway, a dataplane supporting the Model Context Protocol that integrates with Kyverno policy engines to evaluate MCP traffic, preventing uncontrolled tool access and privilege escalation while ensuring namespace isolation and tying Kubernetes actions to user identities. The maintainers demonstrate how Kubernetes, OIDC, RBAC, and business policies deliver least-privilege control with audit trails and compliance visibility for AI workloads.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxe/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","identity","multi-tenancy","mcp","policy"],"priority":1},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"When an Agent Acts on Your Behalf, Who Holds the Keys?","speakers":"Mariusz Sabath;Maia Iyer","orgs":"IBM Research;IBM Research","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses a critical security challenge: when agents execute actions, determining accountability becomes ambiguous. Traditional static API keys lack sufficient context for proper authorization and auditing. The presenters will showcase an architecture that 'cryptographically binds agent identity with delegated user identity.' The approach leverages SPIRE's workload attestation capabilities to establish verifiable agent identity, uses Keycloak as an OAuth 2.0 server for managing delegated user credentials across complex transactions, and introduces an open-source MCP Gateway that applies policy enforcement and audit controls at a centralized trusted checkpoint. Attendees will understand how to construct systems where 'every action is traceable to both the code that execute it and the user who approved it.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxt/","tags":["identity","keycloak","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"Unifying Inner & Outer Loops To Bridge the Gaps Between Devs & Ops With Microcks + Score","speakers":"Laurent Broudoux;Mathieu Benoit","orgs":"Microcks;Docker","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses 'it works on my machine' challenges by demonstrating how to connect development and operations workflows using Microcks and Score. Participants will learn how Score generates docker-compose files locally while Microcks provides realistic service mocks for contract-driven development. The presenters will show how the same Score specifications scale to Kubernetes manifests, maintaining consistency across environments. The session includes a live demonstration using Finos/TraderX, a real-world use case, highlighting how this approach catches integration issues early and reduces friction in cloud-native application development.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxb/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"What Survived Production: Operating Game Backends at Million-Player Scale","speakers":"Berkay Uckac","orgs":"Futureplay Games","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation explores lessons learned from launching cloud-native game servers in 2023. With three engineers now operating a platform serving millions of players, the speaker shares 'what survived production, what failed fast, what stayed simple and what proved essential in keeping a live game online at scale.' The talk focuses on pragmatic, production-tested strategies for running resilient and cost-efficient systems with small teams while maintaining reliability without unnecessary complexity.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxP/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"From NLB Sprawl To Mesh Efficiency: How Skyscanner Handles 60M Requests Per Minute With Istio","speakers":"John Clark;Steven Thwaites","orgs":"Skyscanner;Solo.io","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Connectivity","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores how Skyscanner transformed its network infrastructure to achieve cost savings while maintaining resilience. 'Running dozens of Kubernetes clusters and >60M req/min, we were stuck with costly, complex east-west NLBs.' The presentation covers replacing east-west NLBs with pod-to-pod multicluster communication, implementing gateways for ingress/egress control, deploying Istio Ambient Mesh for zero-trust architecture, and establishing OpenTelemetry observability. Attendees will gain insights on migration strategies, cost modeling, and operational best practices for large-scale Kubernetes deployments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxS/","tags":["observability","otel","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"Accelerating Thanos at Scale: Faster and Cheaper Queries With Parquet","speakers":"Giedrius Statkevičius","orgs":"Vinted","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - Thanos","level":"","description":"The session explores how Parquet-backed storage can reduce query times by up to 10x in large-scale Thanos deployments while improving compression. The presenter provides context on Thanos architecture and its existing block storage format before introducing Parquet as a columnar format suited for metrics workloads. The talk covers implementation details of Parquet support in collaboration with Prometheus and Cortex communities, operational considerations, and migration strategies. Using real-world data, the speaker compares performance metrics including query latency, CPU usage, and storage efficiency, then discusses the project roadmap and opportunities for community involvement in advancing Parquet adoption within Thanos.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4O/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"Gateway API: Bridging the Gap from Ingress to the Future","speakers":"James Strong;Nick Young;Katarzyna Lach;Rostislav Bobrovsky;Norwin Schnyder","orgs":"Isovalent @ Cisco;Isovalent @ Cisco;Google;Google;Airlock","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track - Network","level":"","description":"Gateway API continues to mature into a core part of the toolkit for Cloud Native networking. The session examines recent enhancements over six months and upcoming capabilities. With ingress-nginx archival approaching, the community is addressing migration friction points through the ingress2gateway tool, improved cert-manager and external-dns integrations, and enhanced TLS handling. The new ListenerSet resource moving to Standard aims to provide Ingress users a familiar experience while maintaining Gateway API's stronger security features.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EsAI/","tags":["networking","cert-manager"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"SIG Contributor Experience: Guiding Contributors Through the Project","speakers":"Nabarun Pal;Priyanka Saggu;Arpit Agrawal;Mario Fahlandt","orgs":"Broadcom;SUSE;Kubernetes;Kubermatic","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track - Contributor Experience","level":"","description":"This panel discusses how SIG Contributor Experience helps guide the Kubernetes contributor community through sub-projects focused on 'communication, workflow, and governance.' Presenters explore automation, mentoring, elections, governance, and communications efforts. The session highlights the distinction between making a first pull request and feeling integrated into the project, emphasizing how ContribEx supports contributors' long-term engagement and comfort participating in the Kubernetes project as it evolves.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6T/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"Vitess: More Data, No Problems","speakers":"Matt Lord;Rohit Nayak","orgs":"PlanetScale;PlanetScale","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track - Vitess","level":"","description":"The session addresses operational challenges at scale, including 'schema changes, upgrades, failovers, performance, backups, data migrations, and more.' Vitess enables major technology companies to manage massive data storage with automation and cloud-native capabilities. The talk covers key Vitess aspects that help organizations meet 'current and future database operation needs as your organization grows and your data expands along with it.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF3i/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"When DNS Blinks: Scaling and Hardening CoreDNS in Critical Cloud Infrastructure","speakers":"Yong Tang;John Belamaric","orgs":"Ivanti;Google","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track - CoreDNS","level":"","description":"The session examines how CoreDNS addresses scalability and reliability demands in large-scale cloud environments. Topics include new plugins for multi-core performance, operational lessons from high-stress scenarios, DNS security vulnerabilities, and hardening approaches. As the abstract notes, 'recent DNS disruptions at major cloud providers highlight how sensitive DNS is as a foundational dependency' for modern platforms, making robust DNS infrastructure essential for preventing cascading application failures.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5D/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"We Deleted Our Observability Stack and Rebuilt It With OTEL: 12 Engineers to 4 at 20K+ Clusters","speakers":"Yash Sharma;Kunju Perath","orgs":"DigitalOcean;DigitalOcean","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Observability","level":"","description":"DigitalOcean faced critical observability failures at 5,000 clusters, including lost audit logs and failing metrics scraping. The team rebuilt their system using OTEL standards, custom lightweight collectors, and Kubernetes patterns. They now manage 20,000+ clusters processing '460+TB with zero log loss and complete metrics coverage,' while reducing engineering staff from 12+ to 4 people. The session covers leveraging the OTEL Operator across clusters, lessons from initial implementation mistakes (including '250M+ log files'), and achieving operational efficiency.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxh/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"1000 Services, 1 Year, 0 Downtime: Airbnb's Zonal Cluster Migration","speakers":"Sunny Beatteay","orgs":"Airbnb","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"","description":"Airbnb's Cloud Infrastructure team completed its largest migration, relocating over 1,000 production services from regional to zonal Kubernetes clusters within one year while maintaining zero user-visible downtime. A five-person team coordinated this effort across thousands of workloads and a 3,000-engineer organization. The presentation covers technical and organizational strategies, including rollout automation, capacity planning, and cross-company coordination. Attendees will learn 'practical patterns for de-risking large infrastructure initiatives' and orchestrating organizational change without disrupting production systems.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EMyb/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"API-Driven Infrastructure as Code: Kubernetes APIs as the Contract Bridge Between Teams","speakers":"Florian Hopfensperger;Yury Tsarev","orgs":"Allianz Technology;Upbound","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation builds on a prior KubeCon session about Allianz Technology's infrastructure-as-code platform utilizing over 1,000 Kubernetes control planes. The speakers explore how development teams consume APIs from infrastructure teams, demonstrating practical implementation of API contracts establishing clear boundaries and expectations. The session showcases how infrastructure teams expose capabilities through structured interfaces, enabling development teams to build services autonomously. The presenters address real-world challenges including service boundaries, team ownership models, and documentation in large-scale Kubernetes environments, sharing solutions through well-defined API contracts. Attendees will gain insights into patterns and tools for establishing, testing, and evolving cross-team dependencies in cloud-native settings.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxV/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"11:45","type":"talk","title":"No Pain No Drain: Lessons From Node Drains at Scale","speakers":"Ryan Hallisey;Natalie Bandel","orgs":"NVIDIA;NVIDIA","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The session addresses challenges of draining nodes at scale in Kubernetes environments. Presenters share NVIDIA's approach to 'automated, safe node drain across Kubernetes clusters,' detailing how their algorithm selects nodes based on workload distribution, GPU utilization, and cluster capacity. The talk covers detection and recovery from stuck drains, plus practical patterns for managing GPU node maintenance reliably at scale.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxq/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"12:30","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Get Started Contributing To bootc","speakers":"Colin Walters;Laura Santamaria;Alice Frosi;Preethi Thomas;Joseph Marrero Corchado","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat;Red Hat;Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest - bootc","level":"","description":"This hands-on workshop invites participants to contribute to bootc, a CNCF Sandbox project. Attendees will 'help you set up a full development environment on your workstation, including the bootc virtualization toolkit' and 'build bootc from source, run tests, validate changes in a VM.' The session aims to support new developers in submitting their 'first pull requests' while learning 'Rust and container technologies.' No prior bootc experience is required; participants should bring a Linux laptop or development environment.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7a/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"12:30","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Improving Submariner in Support of Privacy-preserving Federated Statistics Research on Kubernetes","speakers":"Stephen Kitt;Julien D.","orgs":"Red Hat;Lausanne University Hospital","room":"G106","track":"Contribfest - Submariner","level":"","description":"This session explores the Submariner project and its deployment by the Medical Informatics Platform at Lausanne University Hospital and ATHENA in Greece. Presenters will discuss implementation challenges and three proposed improvements: integrating the Helm chart with Argo, adapting the broker/peer cluster model for remote single-node mini-clusters, and addressing Submariner's dependency on nftables/iptables within Cilium environments. The session concludes with guidance on contributing to Submariner projects and includes a potential demonstration using the testing stack.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7I/","tags":["helm","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:15","time_end":"12:30","type":"tutorial","title":"Tutorial: 5 Stages of Kubernetes","speakers":"Rick Rackow","orgs":"STACKIT","room":"Elicium 1","track":"Tutorials - Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"This tutorial examines 'five different models' of Kubernetes deployment: managed services (SKE, GKE, AKS), self-installed single clusters, multi-cluster setups, federated Kubernetes via Karmada, and hosted control planes. The session analyzes 'advantages and disadvantages' and operational differences for each approach, with live demonstrations. The presentation emphasizes 'day 2 operations' including observability, metrics, logs, traces, upgrades, disaster recovery, and scaling across these deployment models.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxw/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:18","time_end":"11:42","type":"talk","title":"Cloud Native University: Kubernetes and the Answer is... 42!","speakers":"Jan Stomphorst","orgs":"ACC ICT","room":"Hall 1-5 | Tram Zone | Cloud Native Theater","track":"Solutions Showcase - Cloud Native Theater","level":"","description":"The session presents 'the ultimate checklist for deploying your app without regrets.' It offers a field-tested checklist of 42 points to verify before deployment, covering topics such as avoiding common Kubernetes mistakes, understanding production priorities, adopting platform engineer thinking, and preventing incidents. The talk is described as 'interactive, opinionated, and painfully relatable,' positioning itself as practical guidance rather than introductory material.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EG0A/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:30","time_end":"13:30","type":"talk","title":"An Introduction to Capture The Flag","speakers":"Fabian Kammel;John Kjell","orgs":"ControlPlane;ControlPlane","room":"Hall 1-5 | Gouda Zone | Project Pavilion","track":"Project Opportunities - Project Pavilion Stage","level":"","description":"An introductory session on Cloud Native Capture The Flag competitions designed for newcomers of any experience level. The session covers 'tips and tricks for completing these challenges' and includes a practice scenario. Participants can compete solo or in pairs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2Ha4U/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"11:50","type":"talk","title":"Cloud Native University: Kubernetes: The API of Everything","speakers":"Tibo Beijen","orgs":"DPG Media Nederland","room":"Hall 1-5 | Tram Zone | Cloud Native Theater","track":"Solutions Showcase - Cloud Native Theater","level":"","description":"The CNCF Landscape appears intricate, yet follows a predictable pattern. This brief presentation examines how the API serves as a unifying principle across numerous CNCF initiatives. By understanding the ecosystem through this lens, attendees will gain insight into component integration, behavior extension, and automation mechanisms. The objective is to equip participants with a clearer, more integrated perspective on cloud native technologies.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EG0D/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"11:53","time_end":"12:08","type":"talk","title":"Cloud Native University: A Simple and Practical Guide to Observability in Kubernetes","speakers":"Diana Todea","orgs":"VictoriaMetrics","room":"Hall 1-5 | Tram Zone | Cloud Native Theater","track":"Solutions Showcase - Cloud Native Theater","level":"","description":"'Kubernetes is the standard platform for running containerized applications, but understanding what is happening inside a cluster can be difficult for newcomers.' The session addresses how metrics and logs help answer operational questions about application health, performance, and failure causes. It covers where observability signals originate, collection methods, and common beginner challenges like inconsistent labels and duplicated data. The presentation emphasizes establishing 'a simple and practical observability baseline for Kubernetes, emphasizing a minimal set of meaningful metrics, consistent labeling and a clear data flow to storage and visualization systems.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EG0G/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Breaking the Monolith: Decomposing and Governing Giant LLM Jobs Across Clusters","speakers":"Kevin Wang","orgs":"Huawei","room":"Elicium 2","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"Multi-cluster architecture is now a common choice for enterprise AI infrastructure, enabling unified resource management, flexible integration of multi-cloud and data center GPUs, and abstraction of hardware differences for simplified scheduling. The session addresses how splitting large LLM training jobs across multiple clusters improves resource utilization. It introduces solutions using Volcano Global and Karmada, featuring: a universal global scheduling control plane, intelligent job decomposition across clusters, and a centralized global queue with priority mechanisms for fair resource allocation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxn/","tags":["ai","identity","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Locking Down Ray Serve: How to Secure Ur ML Models?","speakers":"Kateryna Hrytsaienko","orgs":"Valtech","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"AI + ML","level":"Advanced","description":"Ray Serve streamlines ML model scaling, yet introduces security complexities across distributed clusters. This presentation explores securing Ray Serve in Kubernetes environments, covering in-cluster access controls, multi-cluster communication, and secret management strategies. Through a real-world case study, speakers share lessons learned, including successful implementations, significant failures, and alternative approaches. Attendees can expect practical configurations alongside candid insights into common pitfalls.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyE/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Your Models Are Vulnerable: How KitOps Turns KServe Into a Zero-Trust Inference Platform","speakers":"Brad Micklea;Gavrish Prabhu","orgs":"Jozu;Nutanix","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Beginner","description":"The session addresses ML security vulnerabilities in KServe deployments. It demonstrates how KitOps employs ModelKits-OCI-native packages with cryptographic signatures-to establish zero-trust inference. The presentation covers attack vectors in ML pipelines and defensive strategies including signature verification via init containers, OPA policy enforcement, and GitOps with cryptographic chain-of-custody. Attendees receive production-ready configurations and deployment guidance used by organizations like DSV and federal laboratories.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyT/","tags":["gitops","opa"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Virtual Power Plants (VPP): How They Work and What They Are","speakers":"LeRenzo Malcom;Mario Flores","orgs":"Enpal;Enpal","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"Beginner","description":"Virtual Power Plants are transforming energy grids by coordinating thousands of distributed IoT devices-including solar systems, batteries, and EV chargers-into unified cloud-native assets. This presentation examines software-based power plant development and distinctions in IoT system creation. Key topics include: VPP operational mechanics from residential solar to market participation; IoT development differences regarding latency and bandwidth; Enpal's real-time energy optimization coordination; design patterns using Kubernetes and KubeEdge; and revenue generation through flexibility markets and arbitrage strategies.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyB/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Cloud Native Non-Functional Requirements: Building Scalable, Resilient and Secure Applications","speakers":"Jakub Krzywda","orgs":"Elastisys","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"The session focuses on non-functional requirements (NFRs) essential for cloud-native applications. Presenters will cover microservice architecture for scalability and fault tolerance, build and deployment automation, state and configuration management for resilience, and observability with high availability. The discussion aims to help developers build applications that are 'not only functional - but built to last.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzd/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Intelligent Routing for Optimized Inference","speakers":"Antonio Berben;Felipe Vicens","orgs":"Solo.io;Telefonica","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Connectivity","level":"Beginner","description":"The presentation addresses GPU underutilization for simple queries. It showcases an intelligent routing system using a three-layer architecture with CNCF projects: 'Istio and AgentGateway as the secure communication layer, LLM-D as the inference framework, and kagent as the agent orchestrator.' This enables real-time request complexity analysis, routing straightforward queries to Small Language Models (under 8 billion parameters) instead of expensive GPU resources.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVy2/","tags":["ai","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Dapr in the AI Era: Orchestrating Complex Multi-agent Workflows With Automatic Recovery","speakers":"Yaron Schneider","orgs":"Diagrid","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - Dapr","level":"","description":"The session explores how Dapr enables agent frameworks including OpenAI agents, AWS Strands, CrewAI, and LangGraph to 'run reliably in the face of network errors, full cluster shutdowns and even complete cloud outages.' Dapr's workflow, pub/sub, and state APIs serve as integrated primitives within agent runtimes, allowing operations teams to prepare AI systems for production deployment and multi-cloud environments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4R/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Helm 4 Is Here. So, Now What?","speakers":"Andrew Block;Scott Rigby;Robert Sirchia","orgs":"Red Hat;Replicated;SUSE","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track - Helm","level":"","description":"After five years, Helm 4 was released last November at KubeCon North America 2025. While there was a large amount of fanfare coinciding with the release, many now wonder: 'what does the future have in store for the Helm project?' The presenters will discuss planned and delivered features for Helm 4, explain how these capabilities form the foundation for current functionality, and outline the project's strategic direction along with community contribution opportunities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF3f/","tags":["helm"],"priority":2},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"In Falco's Nest: The Evolution of Cloud Native Runtime Security","speakers":"Iacopo Rozzo;Aldo Lacuku","orgs":"Sysdig;Kong Inc.","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track - Falco","level":"","description":"This session examines Falco's latest developments and project direction. It emphasizes the new Falco Operator for simplified deployment and Kubernetes cluster management, alongside performance optimizations for high-throughput environments. The discussion covers 'community contributions, ecosystem integrations, and the roadmap for the upcoming release.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6W/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"WIT Happens: Exploring the Latest Evolution of the SPIFFE and WIMSE Workload Identity Standards","speakers":"Noah Stride;Arndt Schwenkschuster","orgs":"Teleport;Defakto Security","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track - SPIFFE","level":"","description":"The session examines how workload identity standards are advancing through the IETF WIMSE Working Group's standardization of the Workload Identity Token (WIT). Presenters explain how SPIFFE and SPIRE will integrate WIT as a native credential option alongside JWT and X.509 formats in 2026. The talk compares credential types, explores WIT's structure and security properties, and demonstrates practical workload-to-workload authentication use cases. The content targets both current SPIFFE users and those exploring the workload identity domain.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5G/","tags":["identity"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"When OTTL Goes Off the Rails: Debugging Transformations with Confidence","speakers":"Edmo Vamerlatti Costa;Tyler Helmuth","orgs":"Elastic;Honeycomb","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses challenges in testing and troubleshooting OpenTelemetry Transformation Language statements. Presenters will demonstrate validation and debugging techniques using the Collector's built-in tools and the OTTL Playground. The session includes 'live demos, debug logs, a few intentional derailments, and practical tips' to help attendees troubleshoot transformation issues effectively.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyH/","tags":["helm","otel","observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"5000 Kubernetes Clusters, 5 Minutes: Walmart's Secret to Rapid Edge Deployments with Argo","speakers":"Yug Gupta","orgs":"Walmart Global Tech","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Beginner","description":"This case study demonstrates deploying applications across 5,000+ Kubernetes edge clusters in under 5 minutes despite bandwidth constraints. Attendees learn how 'we cut fleet-wide deploys to ~5 minutes P95 by pre-seeding OCI images to local caches, time-windowing Helm releases, and enforcing digest-pinned, policy-gated rollouts.' The session covers practical strategies for retail edge clusters, including solutions for slow internet speeds and techniques to avoid business disruptions. Participants receive YAMLs, runbooks for staging environments, and insight into common pitfalls like cold caches and egress bottlenecks.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVy8/","tags":["helm"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"API is the New SSH: Forging a Zero-Trust VM Platform on Kubernetes","speakers":"Evangelista Tragni","orgs":"Devoteam","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores building a multi-tenant virtualization platform on Kubernetes that bridges cloud-native principles with virtual machine requirements. It covers KubeVirt for native VM orchestration, emphasizing security, immutability, and declarative management. Attendees will gain insights into creating a modern, resilient, cloud-native VM platform that maintains security and automation without abandoning virtual machines.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVy5/","tags":["multi-tenancy","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"Flipping the Curve: A Platform Engineer's Guide to Unlocking the Silent 80%","speakers":"Michael Reichenbach","orgs":"1KOMMA5°","room":"F002-005","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"Platform engineering teams often inadvertently establish an 'inverse productivity curve' where solutions excel for expert users but neglect the broader developer base. This occurs because engineers naturally design for their most vocal peers-approximately 20% of users seeking sophisticated tools-rather than the silent majority requiring straightforward options. The session offers 'guerrilla product thinking' strategies and real-world examples to reverse this pattern. Participants will acquire practical, accessible methods including user base visualization to recognize the true majority and focused conversations with quieter developers to identify crucial challenges. The presentation equips platform engineers with necessary perspectives and approaches to restructure the productivity curve, remove specialist bottlenecks, and create platforms that advance entire organizations.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW89/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"12:00","time_end":"12:30","type":"talk","title":"No Shame, Just Pain: How We Migrated Away From Kubernetes 1.16 in 2025","speakers":"Jannis Relakis;Michael Seiwald-McCarty","orgs":"Celonis;Celonis","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The presentation chronicles how Celonis addressed years of technical debt by migrating away from an outdated Kubernetes version. The team managed a 'multi-year, zero-downtime migration' across fifty clusters spanning six configurations and three cloud providers. Key achievements included launching zero-downtime migration for hundreds of workloads, building 'the wormhole' (an Envoy-based cross-cluster bridge), and designing new fleet architecture across EKS, AKS, and GKE. The speakers emphasize this as a candid account of challenges rather than showcasing a polished platform.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyQ/","tags":["networking","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Make GenAI Production-Ready With Kubernetes Patterns","speakers":"Roland Huss;Bilgin Ibryam","orgs":"Red Hat;Diagrid","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"AI + ML","level":"Beginner","description":"The session demonstrates how to apply established Kubernetes patterns when deploying AI workloads. Key topics include leveraging controllers and custom resources for stable model endpoints, optimizing startup procedures for reproducible deployments, and implementing GPU-aware scheduling to prevent resource contention. The presentation covers token-based traffic management, gateway policies for latency control, and building retrieval augmented generation systems with stateless orchestration, stateful vector storage, and asynchronous data ingestion. Attendees will leave with a shared vocabulary and pragmatic defaults they can apply the next day - no GenAI experience required.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyl/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"From Open Source To Enterprise Scale and Back: A Journey With Road-Runner","speakers":"Michael Kuhnt;Gabriel Adrian Samfira","orgs":"Mercedes-Benz Tech Innovation;Cloudbase Solutions","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"","description":"The session explores how to transform a modest open-source initiative into an enterprise-ready system. The presenters share Mercedes-Benz's experience developing Road-Runner, their internal GitHub Actions runner platform. Key topics include scaling beyond original project constraints through cloud-native approaches, custom Kubernetes operators, and user feedback integration. The talk emphasizes that successful transformation depends on both technical implementation and user satisfaction, demonstrating how teams can build maintainable systems by starting with existing open-source foundations and applying core scaling principles.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyi/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"'Will it Kubernetes?' A Tinkerer's Journey From Curiosity To Career","speakers":"Niklas Frick","orgs":"The Platform Engineering Company","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"The speaker shares how he transformed curiosity about containers and Kubernetes into career growth. Starting with 'an old pile of hardware,' he launched a homelab project that became 'a hands-on crash course in Cloud Native concepts, troubleshooting, and automation.' This journey ultimately helped him secure his first Platform Engineering role. The session covers progressing from zero Kubernetes experience to operating a functional homelab cluster, lessons learned along the way, and foundational knowledge applicable to production environments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyW/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Do You Trust Your PodDisruptionBudgets? You Shouldn't!","speakers":"Kārlis Akots Gribulis","orgs":"Saxo Bank","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores whether Kubernetes PodDisruptionBudgets truly protect workloads as expected. Presenters note that 'priority classes, Quality of Service classes, and resource pressure can silently bypass your budgets,' potentially exposing critical applications during upgrades and node failures. The talk covers real-world failure scenarios, reproduction methods, and practical approaches to strengthen disruption policies. Attendees will learn strategies to ensure workloads remain genuinely protected rather than relying on perceived safety nets.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyu/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Not Yet Another Envoy Implementation - Exploring Kgateway To Write Your Own GatewayAPI Backend","speakers":"Ricardo Katz","orgs":"Red Hat","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Connectivity","level":"Intermediate","description":"Gateway API adoption is accelerating across Kubernetes, yet most controllers depend on Envoy as their backend. Creating your own implementation presents challenges due to the specification's complexity. This presentation examines kgateway, a CNCF project offering a pluggable control plane that manages 'much of the heavy lifting, letting you focus on what really matters: programming your backend using a familiar data model.' The session demonstrates integrating kgateway into custom Gateway API implementations and showcases a working non-Envoy implementation example, enabling attendees to develop their own solutions without recreating existing infrastructure.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyZ/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Ask the Experts: Behind the Electric Glider - Open Science, Edge Computing, and Real-Time Data in Flight","speakers":"Ricardo Rocha;Klaus Ohlmann","orgs":"CERN;Mountain-Wave-Project","room":"Hall 11","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"","description":"An interactive Q&A session following a keynote about an electric glider circumnavigation project. Participants can explore 'Kubernetes-powered telemetry pipelines and real-time data visualization' alongside topics including edge computing in challenging environments, open scientific infrastructure, renewable aviation, and cloud native technology's role in exploration and discovery.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2JHVv/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"10 Years of Cilium: Connecting, Securing, and Simplifying the Cloud Native Stack","speakers":"Bill Mulligan;Paul Arah;Marcelo Mello;Neha Aggarwal","orgs":"Isovalent at Cisco;Isovalent at Cisco;Celonis;Microsoft","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"This session celebrates Cilium's decade of development as the standard container networking interface for Kubernetes. It highlights how the 'unified eBPF-powered stack is transforming Kubernetes environments' by consolidating multiple tools into integrated solutions. The presentation covers the latest Cilium release, the Tetragon security sub-project, and real-world implementations from contributors and end users demonstrating how Cilium streamlines operations.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF3l/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":2},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Continuous AI Conformance: The kOps Approach","speakers":"Arnaud Meukam;Janet Kuo;Justin Santa Barbara;Ciprian Hacman","orgs":"Independent;Google;Google;Microsoft","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track - Cluster Lifecycle","level":"","description":"The session covers how kOps, an open-source Kubernetes distribution, achieved AI Conformance certification. Presenters will discuss implementing automated tests 'that run continuously in CI' rather than relying on manual certification. The talk highlights changes made to kOps including 'safer defaults and opinionated profiles for AI workloads,' alongside documentation improvements. Finally, speakers outline how these patterns can be adopted by other Kubernetes distributions and internal platforms to maintain AI Conformance as an ongoing system property.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EoJq/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Multi-cluster Orchestration System: Karmada Updates and Use Cases","speakers":"Hongcai Ren;Tessa Pham;Michas Szacillo;Wei-Cheng Lai;Zongqing Li","orgs":"Huawei;Bloomberg;Bloomberg;Bloomberg;Trip.com","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"Karmada enables deployment of cloud-native applications across multiple Kubernetes clusters and clouds. The presentation covers 'a brief introduction to Karmada' alongside recent innovations including application priority scheduling, federated resource quota enforcement, stateful application failover capabilities, AI job scheduling improvements, performance optimization, dashboard release, and operator enhancements. The session includes real-world implementations and community roadmap discussion.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6Z/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"What's Coming Next in Containerd 2.3?","speakers":"Krisztian Litkey;Michael Brown","orgs":"Intel;IBM","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - Containerd","level":"","description":"The session discusses updates to containerd following its 2.0 release. The project has adopted time-based releases and recently launched version 2.2. The upcoming 2.3 release, expected in early May, will introduce features for 'next generation of container runtime plugins (NRI v1.0), filesystems and container image and artifact formats.' Maintainers will cover project developments, Kubernetes integration, and how new capabilities can enable 'new use cases and increase runtime performance.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4U/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"What's New in gRPC","speakers":"Kevin Nilson;John Feig","orgs":"Google;Google","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session covers 'all the exciting new features we have recently added to gRPC,' including OpenTelemetry, Service Mesh, K8s Gateway APIs, and GAMMA. Attendees will also learn 'tips and tricks for building a Microservices Application with gRPC.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5J/","tags":["otel","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"The Hills Are Alive with the Sound of Kubernetes","speakers":"Stevie Caldwell","orgs":"Fairwinds","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores sonification—'the use of non-speech audio to convey information or perceptualize data'—applied to Kubernetes cluster monitoring. Caldwell demonstrates mapping cluster events to audio through a custom operator and open source synthesis tools. Via live chaos experiments, various failure modes produce 'distinct audio signatures that make infrastructure problems immediately recognizable.' The presentation aims to help attendees develop a fresh perspective on observability and understand distributed system behavior through auditory signals rather than traditional visual monitoring approaches.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyr/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"A Tale of Two KEPs: How the Community is Taming Kubernetes' CrashLoopBackoff","speakers":"Yang Li","orgs":"Google","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"This 30-minute session examines how Kubernetes addressed a long-standing community issue with the 5-minute CrashLoopBackoff mechanism. The presentation explores the decision to split KEP-4603 into two approaches: KEP-5593 (now Beta in v1.35) offering configurable settings for immediate relief, and the ongoing discussion around changing global defaults. The talk combines governance insights with technical guidance, featuring YAML examples and practical lessons from real-world application in alpha testing.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyf/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Bringing Cloud Native PaaS To Space: Onboard Edge Computing for Satellites","speakers":"Adele Karam Hankache;Sergiu Weisz","orgs":"Thales Alenia Space;POLITEHNICA Bucharest","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Earth observation missions face data transmission bottlenecks from complex instrument payloads. Traditional space software is dependable but inflexible, while cloud-native technologies lack space-appropriate constraints handling. This session explores adapting cloud solutions for satellites through 'a lightweight cloud-native PaaS onboard satellites' that manages varied workloads including AI on heterogeneous processors. The approach integrates unikernels with K3s, Argo, and urunc to minimize memory usage, power consumption, and security vulnerabilities, drawing from the European ORCHIDE project's architecture and design decisions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyc/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Enterprise-Scale Migrations Using Agentic Workflows with Human-in-the-loop","speakers":"Alvaro Saurin;Jose M Navarro","orgs":"Adobe;Adobe","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session examines the complexities of transitioning enterprise Gateway configurations from NGINX to Envoy across tens of thousands of services spanning hundreds of clusters and regions. The presentation introduces an 'agentic approach powered by Large Language Models (LLMs) to drive and refine migration tools iteratively, but supervised by a human-in-the-loop.' The method employs structured inner loop (coding) and outer loop (migration execution) architecture, enabling attendees to understand how this technique facilitates 'scalable, predictable, and efficient migrations with iterative human evaluation.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyx/","tags":["ai","networking","platform-eng","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"What LLMs Do, and Don't, Know About Securing Kubernetes","speakers":"Rory McCune","orgs":"Datadog","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores how large language models handle containerization security challenges. LLMs are fast becoming a fact of life in many organizations and one of the things we can use them for is Kubernetes. The presentation examines whether these tools can perform security-related tasks safely and what knowledge gaps exist. The speaker will present 'results of our research into how LLMs handle Kubernetes security tasks, how techniques like improved prompting can change the outcomes, and the places where they fall down.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVyo/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:45","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Bring Agentic AI To Cloud Native, One PR at a Time With Kagent","speakers":"Lin Sun;Peter Jausovec;Eitan Yarmush;Dmitriy Rashko","orgs":"Solo.io;Solo.io;Solo.io;Amdocs","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"This hands-on session invites participants to explore the kagent framework codebase alongside its maintainers. The project is a 'fastest growing CNCF Sandbox project (incubation pending)' featured on the CNCF Technology Radar for agentic AI. The session covers kagent architecture, agent and MCP tool integration, development environment setup, community engagement, and guidance for submitting first contributions to the project.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7d/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:45","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Testing the Waters: Getting Started With Kgateway","speakers":"Nina Polshakova;Steven Thwaites;Mayowa Fajobi;David Jumani","orgs":"Solo.io;Solo.io;Marsh McLennan;Solo.io","room":"G106","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"Getting started with kgateway can feel daunting due to its layers of testing. The session guides newcomers through running and writing tests for kgateway, 'a fully compliant, feature-rich Gateway API implementation.' Using virtualized environments simulating realistic traffic, attendees will learn to run kgateway locally, build tests, measure performance, and validate behaviors. The speakers include past LFX mentors and mentees who can share first-hand experience making their first open source contributions. Participants will develop testing and reproducibility skills applicable across CNCF projects.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7O/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:45","type":"tutorial","title":"Tutorial: AI on Kubernetes Without the Chaos: Building Reproducible ML Environments with Argo and Kubeflow","speakers":"Nourhan Mohamed","orgs":"KodeKloud","room":"Elicium 1","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"A 2023 study demonstrated that reproducibility issues affected nearly 300 machine learning papers, revealing vulnerabilities in ML systems. On Kubernetes platforms, this fragility manifests as 'version drift, broken pipelines, and the it worked on my laptop problem,' creating daily reproducibility obstacles. This session provides an open-source approach using Kubeflow, Argo, and ML Metadata for building reliable ML environments. Attendees will learn designing modular, consistently-rerunnable workflows; tracking experiments and dataset lineage; applying GitOps principles for auditable pipelines; and implementing techniques including image pinning, artifact caching, and environment snapshots. The session also addresses dependency drift and GPU scheduling pitfalls.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVz3/","tags":["ai","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Cloud Native Theater | Istio Day: Zero-Downtime Migration from ingress-nginx to Istio in a Multi-Cluster Kubernetes Platform at Bloomberg","speakers":"Joe Nathan Abellard","orgs":"Bloomberg","room":"Hall 1-5 | Tram Zone | Cloud Native Theater","track":"Solutions Showcase","level":"","description":"Bloomberg operates 'a large-scale managed multi-cluster Kubernetes platform built atop Karmada.' The presentation addresses migrating from the deprecated ingress-nginx to Istio without service interruption. Key topics covered include the platform architecture where ingress-nginx managed traffic to critical services across multiple clusters and regions, the incremental Istio implementation strategy, challenges such as maintaining existing routing behavior, and operational best practices. The session concludes with lessons learned from this infrastructure-level migration in a complex, multi-cluster environment.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EG0q/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Instrumenting Kueue Scheduling for ML Training","speakers":"Amy Chen;Gabriel Saba","orgs":"CoreWeave;Google","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session explores how to improve observability in Kueue, a job scheduler for batch and ML workloads. The speakers discuss 'how we cracked open Kueue's scheduler's black box,' revealing strategies to detect fairsharing bugs and identify preemption bottlenecks. Attendees will learn how to instrument the workload lifecycle and answer the question: 'Why is my workload still pending?'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0P/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"To Swap or Not To Swap: Memory Management Design Patterns for AI Workloads in Kubernetes 1.34+","speakers":"Nic Vermande","orgs":"ScaleOps","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"Kubernetes swap support is now stable, prompting reconsideration of whether swap remains problematic. For AI/ML workloads exceeding 100GB memory requirements, the answer involves nuance. The presentation examines scenarios where swap proves beneficial versus detrimental for GPU inference and training operations, covering three real-world production situations: Overcommitting Memory (operating multiple small models on shared nodes where occasional swap prevents OOM terminations), Burst Traffic Handling (leveraging swap as a buffer during traffic spikes when KV cache expands unexpectedly), and When Swap Causes Problems (training workloads and real-time inference where swap latency severely impacts performance). Attendees will understand precisely when to activate swap and when to keep it disabled, with production-validated configurations provided.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVza/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Rust Vs. Go: Building a Container Network Stack From Scratch","speakers":"Matt Heon;Shivang K Raghuvanshi","orgs":"Red Hat;Podman Container Tools","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation explores why the Podman team selected Rust over Go when developing their network stack components, Netavark and Aardvark. Matt Heon discusses the decision-making process and practical advantages gained, while Shivang K Raghuvanshi shares his experience as an LFX mentee contributing to the project, including fixing 'a critical bug in the network stack' through open source mentorship in systems development.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzI/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Choose Your Own Adventure: AI Meets Internal Developer Platform","speakers":"Viktor Farcic;Whitney Lee","orgs":"Upbound;Datadog","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"","description":"An interactive session where audience members vote to guide an investigation into a malfunctioning application within a Kubernetes cluster. The presentation explores three categories of AI tools—agent frameworks, vector databases, and observability backends—demonstrating 'how an AI agent can interface with and enrich a modern platform.' The session showcases an agent assisting developers without direct cluster access in troubleshooting and deployment tasks, examining both the capabilities and limitations of AI in platform engineering contexts.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVz6/","tags":["observability","ai","platform-eng","ai-agents"],"priority":3},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"panel","title":"Kubernetes Network Driver Unpacked: Modularity, Trade-offs and the Road Ahead","speakers":"Lionel Jouin;Sebastian Scheinkman;Antonio Ojea;Sunyanan Choochotkaew","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat;Google;IBM","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Connectivity","level":"Intermediate","description":"This panel explores how the Device Resource Allocation framework transforms Kubernetes networking through 'modular, composable, and interoperable components.' Panelists discuss early DRA experiences, trade-offs between comprehensive versus specialized network drivers, and balancing imperative versus declarative models. The session addresses interoperability across projects and ecosystem direction for cluster operators, vendors, and contributors.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVz9/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Crossplane - The Cloud Native Framework for Platform Engineering","speakers":"Jared Watts;Adam Wolfe Gordon","orgs":"Upbound;Upbound","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track - Crossplane","level":"","description":"The CNCF Crossplane project maintainers will introduce the project while exploring 'the details of Crossplane's latest features, releases, and roadmap.' Following the v2.2 release completion, the session features live demonstrations of improvements and guidance from maintainers on adopting features into 'your own Crossplane-powered control planes.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF3o/","tags":["crossplane","platform-eng"],"priority":2},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"etcd 3.6 Updates and 3.7 Roadmap","speakers":"Josh Berkus;Arka Saha","orgs":"Red Hat;Broadcom","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"This session explores recent etcd developments and future plans. The speakers will cover 'changes to etcd in the last five months, including 3.4 downgrade support, the v3store migration (and problems), performance enhancements, livez/readyz, and more,' plus demonstrations. The roadmap discussion includes image registry updates, range stream functionality, RAFT async writes, and diagnostic tools, alongside robustness testing and Go workspace support updates.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EoKc/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Kubeflow in Cloud Native AI: Orchestrating the Next Wave of Agentic AI and LLMOps","speakers":"Johnu George;Valentina Rodriguez Sosa;Antonin Stefanutti;Alexander Perlman;Michael Zazula","orgs":"Nutanix;Red Hat;Red Hat;Capital One;Capital One","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session examines how 'Cloud Native AI is shifting' beyond standard pipelines toward 'complex, agentic workflows, advanced fine-tuning algorithms, and efficient resource orchestration at scale.' Kubeflow maintainers will discuss ecosystem evolution, cross-community collaboration driving unified architecture, and roadmap initiatives improving developer experience. Attendees will understand the project's strategic direction for 2026 and platform alignment strategies.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4X/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"OpenCost - Cost and Resource Management Deep Dive","speakers":"Rajith Attapattu","orgs":"Randoli","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The OpenCost initiative, currently incubating within CNCF, has enabled many users to 'track Kubernetes cost' and apply resource management best practices. This session reviews project fundamentals, operations, and architecture. Recent enhancements include 'an MCP server that provides cost metrics' and improved cloud provider integration. The roadmap includes KubeModel, described as 'OpenCost's next-generation data model.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6c/","tags":["cost","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"What Happens in Kubernetes SIG Scalability: Intro + DeepDive","speakers":"Wojciech Tyczyński","orgs":"Google","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track - Scalability","level":"","description":"The session addresses various SIG Scalability initiatives including establishing scalability definitions for Kubernetes, advancing performance improvements, maintaining testing infrastructure, and preventing performance regressions. The presentation emphasizes recent accomplishments and current challenges, with attention to cross-SIG collaboration since many improvements originate from this group but are maintained elsewhere.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5M/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Schema Inference and Automation: A New Era for Telemetry Management","speakers":"Arthur Silva Sens;Nicolas Takashi","orgs":"Grafana Labs;Coralogix","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"","description":"The session addresses challenges with maintaining telemetry systems after metric changes or alert failures. It explores how the OpenTelemetry community's 'Telemetry First' approach, advanced through the Weaver project, treats telemetry schemas as foundational design elements rather than afterthoughts. The presentation covers two key areas: manually defining schemas for new and existing telemetry, and using runtime schema inference to facilitate adoption in complex legacy environments. Attendees will learn how this schema-driven methodology enables automation of dashboards, alerts, and instrumentation; implements data quality validation; supports contract testing; and creates a maintainable telemetry catalog with complete history and lineage tracking.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzR/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"The Future of Kubernetes Scalability: Challenges of the GigaWatt Computing Power of the AI Era","speakers":"Maciek Różacki;Artur Rodrigues","orgs":"Google Cloud;Anthropic","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Advanced","description":"The session explores how artificial intelligence and large language models are challenging traditional Kubernetes infrastructure. It examines whether clusters should continue scaling to 5000, 65000, or 100000 nodes, or if a fundamental rethinking is necessary. Topics include architectural adaptations for modern computing, emerging workload patterns, custom schedulers, hardware acceleration with GPUs/TPUs, and core component evolution to support AI-era demands at scale.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzF/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"panel","title":"Amplifying End User Voices: Platform Architects on the Future of Kubernetes","speakers":"Kevin Klues;Dawn Chen;Amine Hilaly;Rajas Kakodkar;Zach Shepherd","orgs":"NVIDIA;Google;AWS;Broadcom;VMware by Broadcom","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"Platform architects engage with end users facing operational challenges daily. This panel shares practical strategies applicable to production environments, including managing configuration complexity, extending beyond traditional distributions, lessons from incidents, how user feedback shapes features like Dynamic Resource Allocation, and structuring enterprise teams around Kubernetes operations. Discussions address community contributions through CNCF TAG Workload Foundation and leveraging the End User TAB.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzC/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Leveling up with Radius: Custom Resources and Headlamp Integration for Real-World Workloads","speakers":"Nuno Guedes;Will Tsai","orgs":"Millennium bcp;Microsoft","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Teams extending Radius for production environments face significant hurdles in managing sophisticated workload dependencies. This session demonstrates how 'we evolved Radius beyond the basics to model and operate complex dependencies like Datadog monitors, AI models, and internal APIs—treating them as first-class resources inside the Radius app graph.' Attendees will explore custom resource provider architecture, lifecycle automation, and policy enforcement strategies. The presentation includes a demonstration of the Radius Kubernetes Headlamp plugin that unifies app visualization, dependency tracking, and operational management into a single developer interface.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzX/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Operators in Action: Making Kubernetes Work for You","speakers":"Verena Traub","orgs":"b'nerd GmbH","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Beginner","description":"The presenter discusses automating multiple application instances using custom Kubernetes operators. The session covers 'designing Custom Resources, implementing reconciliation logic, and handling state and configuration challenges.' Attendees will learn practical approaches to operator development, including debugging techniques and common pitfalls, with takeaways for those considering building operators themselves.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzU/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Real-World Supply-Chain Security","speakers":"Alex Leong","orgs":"Buoyant","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Security","level":"","description":"Supply chain security implementation requires more complexity than typically expected. The Linkerd project undertook this initiative involving multi-architecture image construction using Rust and Go, requiring fully-automated signing and attestation across multiple artifacts. The team discovered that 'the supply-chain ecosystem was less mature than we'd thought' and that existing build systems needed significant adjustments. The session covers challenges encountered during implementation, solutions developed, and remaining gaps in the ecosystem, providing attendees with 'practical insights about how to manage your own supply chain security.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzO/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"Lessons Learned Orchestrating Multi-Tenant GPUs on OpenShift AI with NVIDIA KAI (G/H200)","speakers":"Luca Berton","orgs":"Dell Technologies","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session shares practical insights on deploying shared, production-grade GPUs for AI and ML workloads safely and effectively. The presentation covers 'tenant isolation patterns (namespaces, quotas, priority classes), scheduling on heterogeneous nodes, MIG vs. full-GPU trade-offs, throughput vs. latency tuning, driver/firmware pitfalls, upgrade/rollback strategies, and day-2 ops (observability, autoscaling, chargeback).' The speaker draws from hands-on experience implementing multi-tenant GPU orchestration using OpenShift AI, NVIDIA KAI on G/H200 hardware, Traefik, and Dell Technologies platforms, offering readily applicable manifests and safeguards for attendees.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzs/","tags":["observability","multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"Slinky Expanded: Slurm, Kubernetes, and DRA","speakers":"Marlow Warnicke;Praveen Krishna","orgs":"Nvidia;Google","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session demonstrates how to maximize cluster efficiency for training and multi-node inference jobs. 'The Kubernetes ecosystem has solved half of the problem by exposing hardware information via Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA), but an advanced scheduler is needed to use that information for efficient scheduling.' The slurm-bridge scheduler now consumes resource data directly from the Kubernetes-native CPU DRA driver, enabling improved efficiency. Attendees will observe a live demonstration of these integrated technologies in action.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW04/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"The Developer's Nightmare: How To Survive Compliance Checklists (and Still Ship Fast)","speakers":"Thomas Vitale;Alexandra Hou Aldershaab","orgs":"Systematic;Eficode","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session addresses the tension between shipping features quickly and meeting compliance requirements. The speakers explore how to 'break the compliance barriers for developers, even in highly-regulated industries' by automating security and compliance checks while improving developer experience. Attendees will learn practical approaches using tools including Backstage, Dependency-Track, Sigstore, and Buildpacks, following a developer's journey through common compliance obstacles like license verification, CVE assessments, and artifact integrity guarantees.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzp/","tags":["backstage","security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"How to Build Your Cloud Native Balance Sheet","speakers":"Danielle Cook;Simon Forster","orgs":"Akamai;Stackegy","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"","description":"The session explores cloud native investment from a financial perspective. Participants will learn to 'identify your cloud native assets and liabilities' and understand CapEx vs. OpEx, cost of delay, and cost of failure. The presentation covers assessing assets and liabilities across technology, security, process, and policy, while examining how organizations position FinOps and platform engineering as business enablers. The session also addresses organizational dynamics and alignment of finance, engineering, and product around measurable outcomes.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxz/","tags":["cost","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"Smart Routing at Scale: How Spotify's XDS Control Plane Cut 75% of Cross-Zone Traffic","speakers":"Yannick Epstein;Anya Hristova","orgs":"Spotify;Spotify","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Connectivity","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation explores how Spotify engineered a custom xDS control plane to optimize network routing across availability zones. The system 'achieved a sustained 75% reduction in cross-zone traffic' by combining real-time load telemetry with Envoy routing principles across infrastructure spanning two million nodes. The approach balances operational cost efficiency with high availability without sacrificing reliability.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzg/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"Towards Building an Open Source AI Reference Stack for EU Sovereign Cloud","speakers":"Sanjay Chatterjee;Madhav Bhargava","orgs":"NVIDIA;SAP Labs","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"","description":"The session explores Europe's digital sovereignty initiative through an open, enterprise-grade cloud infrastructure. Presenters will demonstrate 'an end-to-end open source AI inference stack built on top of the Gardener Kubernetes platform,' featuring NVIDIA driver integration, GPU operator support, and the Grove project for distributed inference workloads. The demonstration showcases disaggregated multi-node inference using NVIDIA's Dynamo platform to support the European Industrial AI ecosystem.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzj/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"panel","title":"From Static Tokens to Attestation: The Evolution of Secure Node Joining","speakers":"Ciprian Hacman;Jack Francis;Michael McCune;Josephine Pfeiffer;Justin Santa Barbara","orgs":"Microsoft;Microsoft;Red Hat;Red Hat;Google","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track - K8s Infra","level":"","description":"This panel discussion addresses secure node joining in modern Kubernetes environments. As discussed, 'if the kubelet connects, it's in' no longer suffices given rapid infrastructure scaling. The session covers root of trust definition, node identity validation through metadata and attestation, CSR approval hardening, declarative join binding, and post-join controls including NodeRestriction and RBAC scoping to prevent privilege escalation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EoKz/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"OpenTelemetry Project Update and 'Ask the Experts'","speakers":"Pablo Baeyens;Juraci Paixão Kröhling;Marylia Gutierrez;Severin Neumann","orgs":"Datadog;OllyGarden;Grafana Labs;Causely","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track - OpenTelemetry","level":"","description":"Join us for the official project update OpenTelemetry session at KubeCon+CloudNativeCon. OpenTelemetry contributors have been working hard to evolve the project to be stable by default and simplify its usage. Governance Committee members will discuss improvements since the Atlanta update and attendees can engage with contributors and maintainers to get questions answered.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6i/","tags":["otel"],"priority":2},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"SIG API Machinery: SIG Updates and Deep Dive in the AI/ML Era","speakers":"Stefan Schimanski","orgs":"NVIDIA","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - API Machinery","level":"","description":"This Special Interest Group session focuses on API Machinery updates and exploration of relevant topics in the artificial intelligence and machine learning space. The speaker is identified as a Principal Engineer at NVIDIA who has contributed significantly to Kubernetes Custom Resource Definition features and serves as a technical lead within the SIG API Machinery group.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4a/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"What's New With Kubectl and Kustomize … and How You Can Help!","speakers":"Marly Salazar;Yugo Kobayashi;Eddie Zaneski;Maciej Szulik;Arda Guclu","orgs":"Integral Ad Science;SB Intuitions;Defense Unicorns;Defense Unicorns;Red Hat","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track - CLI","level":"","description":"Have you ever wondered how kubectl and kustomize enhancements are designed and built? Curious why your favorite feature request wasn't accepted? Join the folks from Kubernetes SIG CLI to find out! The maintainers will discuss their tooling efforts, contribution pathways, past-year accomplishments, and future roadmap while inviting attendees to help shape these tools.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5P/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"OpenTelemetry Logs Driving a Major Shift: Events, Richer Data, and Smarter Semantics","speakers":"Robert Pająk","orgs":"Splunk (Cisco)","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Observability","level":"","description":"OpenTelemetry Logs are evolving beyond their status as the least mature signal, catalyzing significant project-wide transformations. The presentation examines recent advancements including OpenTelemetry Events introduction, expanded semantic conventions, and capability for handling intricate attribute structures such as nested objects and arrays. These developments represent a coordinated modernization strategy for telemetry information, enhancing cross-signal correlation and enabling structured observability. The session addresses technical hurdles, architectural choices, and patterns establishing logs as foundational components within OpenTelemetry.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVxk/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"Smoothed and Anchored Rate Calculation in PromQL","speakers":"Björn Rabenstein","orgs":"Grafana Labs","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"The 'rate' function alongside 'increase' and 'delta' represent among the most frequently utilized (and potentially misused) PromQL operations. Following years of debate regarding improvements, Prometheus maintainers introduced two new experimental modifiers: 'smoothed' and 'anchored'. This session explores their practical applications while providing historical context regarding implementation delays and catalysts for recent developments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzy/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"From Alert Fatigue To Self-Healing: Building AI-Enabled Control Planes in Banking","speakers":"Yury Tsarev;Nuno Guedes","orgs":"Upbound;Millennium bcp","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"When Millennium bcp faced alert fatigue and extended resolution times across their multi-cloud infrastructure, engineers built AI-enhanced Crossplane control planes to enable self-healing and intelligent resource scaling. The session covers using LLM-powered composition functions to automatically triage and remediate Kubernetes alerts, reducing SRE escalations. Presenters will discuss workload-aware scaling algorithms across multiple clouds while maintaining auditability and compliance, plus share lessons from deploying AI-enabled control planes in a regulated banking setting using open-source CNCF tools.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzm/","tags":["ai","crossplane"],"priority":1},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"LLM Inference at Scale: Orchestrating Prefill-Decode Disaggregation","speakers":"Zhonghu Xu","orgs":"Huawei Technologies","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The session explores how separating prefill and decode phases in large language model inference 'eliminates cross-stage interference, significantly improving Time-To-First-Token (TTFT) and Time-Per-Output-Token (TPOT) metrics.' Kthena's approach orchestrates these disaggregated workloads via Kubernetes using a hierarchical role-based API supporting multi-group deployments. Key capabilities include dynamically adjusting instance ratios, compatibility with LeaderWorkerSet or direct Pod management, and network topology-aware scheduling integrated with Volcano or Kueue for enhanced inference performance.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW01/","tags":["ai","platform-eng","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"16:45","type":"talk","title":"Privacy as Infrastructure: Declarative Data Protection for AI on Kubernetes","speakers":"Joaquin Rodriguez;Krishnendu Dasgupta","orgs":"Microsoft;AXONVERTEX AI","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session addresses how 'AI services are multiplying faster than privacy controls can keep up.' The speakers present a Kubernetes-native framework treating data protection as infrastructure rather than application code. Key topics include a Privacy Operator that identifies AI/ML workloads, applies declarative privacy policies, and enforces anonymization during deployment and runtime. The presentation covers architecture, policy models, and enforcement patterns including webhook-based mutation and service-level mediation, examining trade-offs in latency, reliability, and observability. Attendees will see privacy automation demonstrations with dynamic policy updates across active AI workloads.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CVzv/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"17:30","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Dive Into cert-manager and Start Contributing!","speakers":"Richard Wall;Mladen Rusev","orgs":"CyberArk;Palo Alto Networks","room":"G106","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"This hands-on workshop introduces contributors to cert-manager, a CNCF graduated project that automates certificate management for Kubernetes. Attendees will learn the project's architecture, key components, and how to configure their development environment. The session covers the contribution workflow, curated GitHub issues, and personalized guidance for various skill levels, whether focusing on code, documentation, or community engagement.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7L/","tags":["cert-manager"],"priority":1},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"17:30","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Getting Started in the Tinkerbell Playground","speakers":"Jacob Weinstock","orgs":"NVIDIA","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"Get hands on with deploying and using Tinkerbell. In this session we will use the Tinkerbell Playground to deploy and use Tinkerbell and the Tinkerbell Cluster API infrastructure provider. We'll take you from zero to provisioning machines and Kubernetes clusters, all without needing to bring your own physical machines. Attendees should bring a laptop; Linux machines are required for the Cluster API Playground component.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7g/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"16:15","time_end":"17:30","type":"tutorial","title":"Tutorial: Attack Defense: Leverage eBPF To Reveal Attack Flows With Rich Context","speakers":"Constanze Roedig;Markus Gierlinger;Teodor Janez Podobnik","orgs":"fusioncore.ai / SBA-Research;Manifold;Prewave GmbH","room":"Elicium 1","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"This hands-on workshop teaches participants 'how mature, well-maintained FOSS eBPF tools make invisible activity visible' through kernel hooking. The session demonstrates attack detection across multiple vectors including encrypted traffic analysis, file access monitoring, STDOUT/STDIN interception, fileless malware investigation, and cross-service pivoting using real-world MITRE TTPs. Attendees access pre-configured lab machines remotely and require a GitHub account plus registrations at specified training and CNCF Pixie platforms.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW07/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Securing the AI/ML Lifecycle With MLSecOps: Open Source Best Practices","speakers":"Bahaulddin Shammary;Andrey Shorov","orgs":"OpenText;Ericsson","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session addresses security challenges in machine learning systems, which face threats like data poisoning and model theft. The presenters introduce MLSecOps as an approach that 'embeds security across the AI/ML lifecycle starting from data preparation and training to deployment and monitoring.' They discuss OpenSSF initiatives, OWASP threats, and open-source tools including Sigstore, SLSA, CycloneDX, and Syft that practitioners can implement. Attendees will learn operationalization strategies and engagement opportunities with the OpenSSF AI/ML Security Working Group.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0b/","tags":["observability","ai","security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"From Laptop to Cluster: Running AI Workloads Seamlessly from Podman to Kubernetes","speakers":"Urvashi Mohnani;Ashley Cui","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"","description":"The session addresses bridging local development with production Kubernetes environments for AI workloads. Presenters will demonstrate an open-source toolchain featuring Podman, Ramalama, Kubernetes, and bootc. The demonstration covers converting AI models into OCI images, testing containerized models locally via Podman Desktop, and utilizing quadlet for systemd container management. The talk also explores bootc as an approach for consistent deployment across clusters, edge devices, and bare metal infrastructure, concluding with a complete development-to-Kubernetes-to-edge lifecycle showcase.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0M/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Demystifying the Kubernetes Network Stack (From Pod to Pod)","speakers":"Simone Rodigari","orgs":"Microsoft","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"This 30-minute session explores the internal mechanics of Kubernetes pod-to-pod communication. The presentation unpacks 'the Kubernetes network stack step by step: from Pod namespaces and virtual Ethernet pairs to CNI plugins, kube-proxy, and DNS,' utilizing diagrams and command-line demonstrations. Key topics include how container network interfaces like Cilium and Calico enable pod connectivity, kube-proxy service management through iptables or IPVS, and CoreDNS name resolution. The speaker addresses common issues including misconfigured routes, DNS delays, and hairpin traffic, providing debugging techniques using ip, tcpdump, and kubectl commands.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0A/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Building the Next Generation of Multi-Cluster with Gateway API","speakers":"Mike Morris;Alan Grosskurth","orgs":"Microsoft;Google","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Connectivity","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores limitations of the Multi-cluster Service (MCS) API—an early Kubernetes specification for extending service networking across cluster boundaries. As multi-cluster needs have evolved from basic geo-replication to complex organizational topologies and GPU infrastructure sharing for AI workloads, challenges have emerged with 'overly-prescriptive DNS expectations, the difficulty of adopting namespace sameness principles across large organizations, and the lack of flexibility needed for sharing newer resources like InferencePool across clusters.' Presenters discuss practical limitations and propose addressing these challenges through the Gateway API ecosystem to enable enhanced service discovery and routing for contemporary networking requirements.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0D/","tags":["otel","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Why Is It So Hard to Run a 5G Core on Kubernetes—And What Needs to Change for 6G","speakers":"Joel Studler;Ashan Senevirathne","orgs":"Swisscom;Telstra","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"Advanced","description":"The session addresses tensions between telecommunications standards and Kubernetes principles. Many containerized network functions marketed as 'cloud-native' retain traditional hardware-centric designs using Helm, Multus, and NETCONF rather than leveraging Kubernetes strengths. The presentation examines practical examples, including why User Plane Functions lack true cloud-native characteristics, and explores how 6G design might better align with Kubernetes-native patterns. It also discusses API exposure for treating networks as products and how Kubernetes foundations could enable simpler, faster, and more open mobile networks.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0G/","tags":["helm"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"OpenTelemetry Collector SIG: Project Updates","speakers":"Jade Guiton;Dmitrii Anoshin;Alex Boten;Evan Bradley;Antoine Toulme","orgs":"Datadog;Cisco;Honeycomb;Dynatrace;Splunk","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track - OpenTelemetry","level":"","description":"The session focuses on the OpenTelemetry Collector's role in observability. Maintainers will discuss 'community organization, development priorities, and the project's evolution over the past year.' Topics include new components and signals, stabilization efforts toward a 1.0 release, ecosystem growth management, and 'changes to existing functionality based on community feedback.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6f/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"SIG Network: The State of Networking for AI on Kubernetes","speakers":"David Martin;Haiyan Meng;Bowei Du;Nadia Pinaeva;Etai Lev Ran","orgs":"Red Hat;Google;Google;NVIDIA;IBM","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - Network","level":"","description":"The session explores Kubernetes SIG Network's recent efforts in supporting AI workloads. Topics include 'Gateway API, Gateway API Inference Extension, and networking for Agentic AI systems.' The event combines presentations and panel discussion, examining how 'networking for AI is just networking, and the ways in which it isn't.' Attendees can expect exploration of key projects, upcoming initiatives, and audience Q&A about the direction of AI networking on Kubernetes.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4d/","tags":["ai","networking","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"The 10x DevOps Engineer's Toolkit: Argo CD + AI-Driven MCP Automation","speakers":"Alexander Matyushentsev;Leonardo Luz Almeida","orgs":"Akuity;Intuit","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session explores how 'AI is rapidly reshaping engineering workflows' in DevOps contexts. Presenters will introduce an open-source MCP server for Argo CD enabling 'engineers to delegate repetitive tasks to intelligent agents.' The talk demonstrates real-world automation scenarios including application rollbacks, sync troubleshooting, and multi-environment coordination, aiming to help attendees understand MCP server integration and leverage AI for infrastructure task automation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EIbg/","tags":["argocd","mcp"],"priority":3},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Volcano: Orchestrating the Full AI Lifecycle – From Training To Inference and Agents","speakers":"Chen Zicong;Hajnal Máté","orgs":"Huawei Technologies;Aumovio SE","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session addresses infrastructure fragmentation in AI workloads by presenting Volcano as 'a Unified Scheduling Platform for the full AI lifecycle, delivering robust scheduling capabilities with high throughput.' Key components include Volcano-Global for distributed training, Kthena for LLM serving, and AgentCube for agent workloads. Infrastructure features encompass DRA integration, GPU sharing, and heterogeneous resource pooling for efficient accelerator mapping.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5S/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Observing Chaos: Real-Time Monitoring of AI-Driven Kubernetes Destruction","speakers":"Josh Halley;Ricardo Aravena","orgs":"Cisco;CNCF","room":"F002-005","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores adaptive chaos engineering using reinforcement learning agents that 'generate progressively sophisticated chaos in a live Kubernetes cluster.' Presenters integrated ViZDoom and KubeDoom enabling AI agents to disrupt pods and services while improving gameplay performance. The demonstration uses 'OpenTelemetry for distributed tracing and Cilium for network observability' to display real-time effects on a central dashboard. Key takeaways include 'patterns for instrumenting distributed AI workloads, building resilient agent architectures, and using CNCF tools for chaos observability.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1T/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","otel","identity","networking","observability","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Retroactive Sampling with OpenTelemetry: Cut 90% Distributed Tracing Bandwidth Usage","speakers":"Zhu Jiekun;Roman Khavronenko","orgs":"VictoriaMetrics;VictoriaMetrics","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"","description":"The session examines cost implications of tail-sampling in distributed systems spanning multiple clusters or availability zones. It introduces retroactive sampling—where collectors buffer spans locally and send only metadata to centralized backends, which request raw spans only for sampled traces. Key topics include: cost reduction potential (up to 9x), OpenTelemetry collector architecture for retroactive sampling, and practical integration strategies with trade-off analysis.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW83/","tags":["observability","otel","identity"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Declarative Edge Kubernetes: Immutable Clusters with Talos + Zarf","speakers":"Brandt Keller;Merijn Keppel","orgs":"Defense Unicorns;TrueFullstaq","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses challenges of running Kubernetes at the edge by demonstrating deployment in an 'air-gapped' environment using Talos Linux and Zarf. Talos provides a predictable OS built for Kubernetes, while Zarf bundles the OS, Kubernetes, and applications into a single portable package. The presenters conduct a live demonstration spinning up a Talos cluster from bare metal without internet connectivity, then perform an in-place upgrade of both cluster and OS using a Zarf package, offering attendees practical blueprints for managing secure, independent edge clusters.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0J/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Moving Spotify's Infrastructure Management Up the Stack from Kubebuilder to Kro and K-poperator","speakers":"Alexander Buck;Tomas Aschan","orgs":"Spotify;Spotify","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Spotify's resource management platform leverages Kubernetes to enable platform teams across Storage, Workloads, Data, and AI domains to deliver infrastructure products through a unified interface. Rather than relying on kubebuilder, teams now utilize the open-source kro project for resource abstraction and composition, paired with k-poperator for ecosystem integration. This presentation explores how these technologies enhance developer experience and shift operational responsibilities toward the platform itself, featuring real-world case studies of platform teams addressing challenges with these tools.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0Y/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Policy Engines for Kubernetes: Picking One Without Losing Your Mind","speakers":"Nabarun Pal","orgs":"Broadcom","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session examines leading Kubernetes policy enforcement approaches including native validation/mutation policies, Kyverno, OPA/Gatekeeper, and Kubewarden. The speaker covers key tradeoffs: native policies require CEL knowledge but add no overhead; Kyverno uses simple YAML; OPA provides flexibility through Rego with a steeper learning curve; Kubewarden leverages WebAssembly for multi-language support. The presentation emphasizes 'performance at scale because that additional overhead matters when you're deploying 1000s of pods' and shares production insights to help attendees identify which engine suits their specific needs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0S/","tags":["opa","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"When Multitenancy Goes Wrong: A Deep Dive Into Kcp's First CVE","speakers":"Marko Mudrinić;Marvin Beckers","orgs":"Kubermatic GmbH;ClickHouse","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores CVE-2025-29922, a vulnerability in kcp (a CNCF Sandbox project) where 'service providers could create and delete resources they had no permissions for.' Presenters demonstrate how this flaw—discovered through a discrepancy between documentation and code—enabled 'total takeover of tenants and their data' and discuss protective measures implemented for kcp users.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7x/","tags":["multi-tenancy","security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Tuesday","date":"2026-03-24","time_start":"17:00","time_end":"17:30","type":"talk","title":"Sponsored Session: Performance at Enterprise Cloud Scale: Coupa's Kubernetes Optimization Journey","speakers":"Peter Irwin;Carl Baumcratz","orgs":"ScaleOps;Coupa","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Sponsored Sessions","level":"","description":"As Coupa's cloud infrastructure expanded, the organization encountered 'systemic Kubernetes challenges: inconsistent workload performance, inefficient bin-packing, and scaling models that required constant manual resource tuning.' The company implemented automated resource management to enhance scheduling accuracy and reduce infrastructure expenses. This session examines what deteriorates in Kubernetes environments at scale, why conventional autoscaling falls short in production systems, and how 'intelligent resource automation enables teams to fully leverage modern Kubernetes tooling, without sacrificing cost control, reliability, or developer velocity.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2ICgs/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:03","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Cloud Native in Europe: Regulation, Sovereignty, and the Future of Open Collaboration","speakers":"Jan Melen","orgs":"Ericsson Software Technology","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Open source has traditionally emphasized inclusivity, uniting varied use cases through collaborative code development. As cloud native technologies expand throughout Europe, new priorities concerning digital sovereignty, security, and regulatory requirements are reshaping how enterprises participate in open source initiatives. Growing focus on vulnerability assessment means organizations are evaluating dependencies and software maintenance practices more rigorously. This opening keynote examines how Europe's regulatory environment and technology landscape influence cloud native innovation and explores ways the open source community can adapt to meet emerging needs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CY1d/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"09:05","time_end":"09:10","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: The CRA and What it Means for Open Source Communities","speakers":"Greg Kroah-Hartman","orgs":"Linux Foundation","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"The speaker explains that the CRA will take effect for EU manufacturers within months. This brief presentation shares recent insights from the EU CRA Expert Group regarding 'how the law will affect the open source community and the companies who integrate open source into their products.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2Iod8/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"09:12","time_end":"09:17","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Digital Sovereignty by Design: Turning Developer Intent into Portable, Enterprise-Scale Automation","speakers":"Oskar Kristiansen","orgs":"Saxo Bank","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"N/A","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2I17q/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"09:19","time_end":"09:22","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Keeping Sovereignty on Track: Kubernetes Powering a National Railway Platform","speakers":"Thomas Comtet;Yann Rotilio","orgs":"SNCF;SNCF","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"SNCF, France's national railway operator, shares how it balanced data governance with cloud modernization. Currently, 70% of 2,000 applications run across public clouds using containers and managed services, with Kubernetes powering approximately 30% of the portfolio. Operating over 200 Kubernetes clusters across Azure and AWS, the company discovered that 'Kubernetes performs best when it runs on infrastructure that is predictable, programmable, and fully under your control.' To maintain sovereignty for on-premises workloads, SNCF selected OpenStack as its private cloud infrastructure layer, creating a unified platform where Kubernetes serves as a consistent abstraction across all environments while preserving operational control.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CtKn/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"GPUs on Kubernetes: What Actually Happens When You Request Nvidia.com/gpu: 1","speakers":"Daniele Polencic;Gulcan Topcu","orgs":"LearnKube;LearnKube","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"AI + ML","level":"Beginner","description":"This session explores GPU scheduling in Kubernetes, tracing GPU workloads end-to-end. Attendees will learn how device plugins advertise GPUs to the scheduler, how container runtimes mount device files, and why NVIDIA drivers perform the actual work while the Linux kernel remains unaware. The presentation examines GPU resource isolation challenges and compares practical GPU-sharing approaches including time-slicing, MIG hardware partitioning, and software enforcement. No GPU background required.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1Q/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Sandbox Operator: Enabling Session-Aware, Efficient MCP Tool Execution in Kubernetes","speakers":"Mingshan Zhao;Zhen Zhang","orgs":"Alibaba Cloud;Alibaba Group","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses challenges of running Model Context Protocol (MCP) tools in Kubernetes environments. Key issues include 'explosive Pod growth' from concurrent sessions, resource waste from idle Pods, and loss of runtime state. The speakers present their Sandbox Operator implementation, which manages Pods by session lifecycle, uses checkpoint/snapshot mechanisms to preserve tool state, and reconstructs context during recovery to maintain continuity for multi-turn interactive tasks.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1c/","tags":["mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Building Cloud Native Culture in a Bank: With Open Source as a Compass","speakers":"Marcy Paramonova;Stéphane Cusin","orgs":"The Pictet Group;Banque Pictet & Cie SA","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"","description":"How can a financial institution build a truly cloud-native platform while adopting open source? This is a story of how one engineering team built a cloud-native Kubernetes platform capable of migrating seamlessly between data centers and even different virtualization technologies without altering the user experience. The presentation covers progressive adoption of open-source technologies including Apache Tomcat middleware, Kubernetes at the platform level, and open-source virtualization. It demonstrates how 'with a single folder move in Argo CD, workloads can be redeployed, proving the platform's true cloud agnosticism' and explains how these principles support building resilient infrastructure with standardization, flexibility, and transparency.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1B/","tags":["argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"From 'It Works!' to 'It's Secure!': Hardening Your First Kubernetes Cluster","speakers":"Paul Zerdilas Herrera;Leon Schulze","orgs":"Nutanix;Palo Alto Networks","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"This session addresses security concerns for those new to Kubernetes. The presenters demonstrate 'how a few simple security practices make a big difference' in protecting freshly deployed clusters. Using real incident data and industry frameworks, they walk through three prevalent attack patterns exploited in Kubernetes compromises, showing how misconfigurations are weaponized and offering beginner-friendly defensive strategies. The content requires no prior security expertise, using clear analogies and practical examples to establish why robust security practices represent 'a core skill for anyone building in Kubernetes.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW18/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"The Future of Kubernetes Node Lifecycle","speakers":"Lucy Sweet;Dawn Chen","orgs":"Uber;Google","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation addresses challenges in managing Kubernetes fleets at scale. Speakers guide attendees 'through the evolution of Kubernetes Node Lifecycle Management, sharing how large-scale operators have wrestled with its limits across diverse workloads.' The session covers three phases: past approaches focusing on stateless workloads, present obstacles including 'expensive disruption, hard to understand eviction, lack of observability,' and future developments addressing AI workloads and emerging community proposals within Kubernetes to resolve these challenges.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1K/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Code and Brain: Health and Performance in High Cognitive Demand Tech Communities","speakers":"Dri Cardoso;João Brito","orgs":"NEUROPSI.io;Independent","room":"G104-105","track":"Inclusion + Accessibility","level":"","description":"This session examines how high cognitive demand environments affect performance, mental health, and brain functioning in tech communities. From an applied neuroscience lens, it explores impacts of cognitive load, pressure, multitasking, and information overload on attention, decision-making, and well-being. The focus extends beyond analysis to 'sharing practical actions and approaches that individuals and tech communities can adopt to build more sustainable work environments.' Participants exchange experiences and collectively explore strategies for care, belonging, and sustainable performance.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2IoPr/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Lima Project Updates: Expanding the Focus To Hardening AI","speakers":"Akihiro Suda;Ansuman Sahoo","orgs":"NTT;BITS Pilani","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track - Lima","level":"","description":"Lima is a command-line tool for launching local Linux virtual machines, primarily designed for container workloads on laptops. The session covers recent project developments, including 'Promotion to CNCF Incubating (October 2025)' and 'New features in v2.0 (November 2025).' Additional topics include plugin infrastructure, GPU acceleration, MCP server functionality, and planned v2.1 updates. The tool is also valuable for running AI coding agents within VMs, confining potential damage from malicious instructions to the virtual environment or specified mounted files.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF3r/","tags":["mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Linkerd: Reliable Production in an AI/MCP World","speakers":"William Morgan","orgs":"Buoyant","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - Linkerd","level":"","description":"The presentation explores how Linkerd is adapting to modern cloud-native challenges. William Morgan discusses partnerships with organizations handling unprecedented workloads including LLMs and agentic AI systems. The talk examines insights from production incidents—both caused and revealed by Linkerd—that are reshaping the project's direction as a reliability platform. Key topics include lessons learned, delivered features, and an upcoming roadmap specifically designed to help platform engineers. Attendees will gain insight into the forthcoming 2.20 release and how real-world production experiences are being applied to build systems that 'thrive under pressure' across AI and MCP environments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4g/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","platform-eng","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Serverless GPUs in Production: How Cerebrium Built a Globally Efficient Low-Latency AI Platform with Knative","speakers":"Dave Protasowski;Elijah Roussos","orgs":"Dave's Consulting Company;Cerebrium","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track - Knative","level":"","description":"The session explores Knative's implementation at Cerebrium, a serverless platform serving international customers. It addresses 'challenges faced across diverse operational environments, the solutions Cerebrium implemented with Knative, and the key lessons learned.' Topics include modernizing development workflows, scaling microservices, and building event-driven systems. The presentation covers operational strengths, production performance, and practical insights applicable to building AI platforms.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF62/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"SIG Scheduling Update: Transition From Pod To Workload Scheduling","speakers":"Kensei Nakada;Maciej Skoczeń","orgs":"Independent;Google","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track - Scheduling","level":"","description":"The session addresses how Kubernetes SIG Scheduling is 'redefining how Kubernetes approaches scheduling—moving from a Pod-centric model toward a holistic, Workload-aware architecture.' Presenters will discuss recent enhancements, their role in the broader initiative, and updates on related projects like Kueue and the Descheduler, plus future development plans and community contribution opportunities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5V/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"panel","title":"Strengthening CNCF Projects: Impact of Security Self-Assessments","speakers":"Eddie Knight;Bradley Andersen;Justin Cappos;Shuting Zhao;Orlin Vasilev","orgs":"Sonatype;k8gb;New York University;Nirmata;SUSE","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track - Security & Compliance","level":"","description":"This panel discussion features TAG Security and Compliance leaders and project maintainers who have undergone self-assessments. Participants explore 'how this process transformed their security posture' and share insights on navigating assessments, addressing findings, and integrating security practices into projects. Key learning outcomes include understanding the self-assessment process, real-world implementation challenges, actionable security improvements, security documentation approaches, and guidance for maintainers considering assessments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6x/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Generalizing Kubernetes Controller Sharding: Patterns That Work Beyond Simple Operators","speakers":"Motohiro Otsuka;Tomoyuki Nakamura","orgs":"LY Corporation;LY Corporation","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presenters discuss managing a multi-cluster Kubernetes PaaS with over 10,000 nodes, where controller performance became the limiting factor rather than data plane capabilities. They evaluated the 'kubernetes-controller-sharding' open-source tool and adapted it for their use case involving multiple resources and clusters. The session covers implementation strategies including stable partition keys, shard-scoped caches and watchers, queue management, clear reconciliation boundaries, and incremental rollout approaches. The speakers share results showing reduced latency and improved control plane stability, while offering attendees 'a practical checklist they can use quickly' applicable to common controller designs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1H/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"From GitOps to AIOps: Evolving RBI's Kubernetes Platform with Crossplane and Sharded Kargo","speakers":"Gabor Horvath;Ewald Überall","orgs":"Raiffeisen Bank International;Raiffeisen Bank International","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Advanced","description":"The presentation covers how Raiffeisen Bank International's platform team evolved from 'advanced GitOps with Argo CD and Kargo to empowering application teams through abstraction and automation.' Key topics include multi-cluster GitOps promotions using sharded Kargo pipelines, Crossplane 2.0 capabilities for infrastructure provisioning with minimal YAML, and AI-powered tools for pull request analysis and deployment risk assessment. The session concludes with a live demonstration of MCP integration with Argo CD and GitHub, offering practical insights for platform engineers implementing GitOps and AI-enhanced automation within regulated banking environments using open-source and CNCF tools.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1Z/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","argocd","gitops","platform-eng","mcp","crossplane"],"priority":2},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Automate Once, Run Anywhere: The Docker Moment for Security Workflows","speakers":"Nancy Chauhan;Aseem Shrey","orgs":"Independent;ShipSecAI","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores methods for creating portable, reproducible, and Kubernetes-native security automation. Rather than relying on environment-specific configurations that become fragile when team members transition, the presenters demonstrate a model using 'open, declarative workflow definitions' where automations operate as containerized workloads with integrated custom resource specifications, security policies, and observability. The approach enables deployments across multiple clusters and organizations without requiring code modifications or visibility loss, mirroring how containerization transformed application deployment for security workflows.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1E/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Automating and Scaling of Threat Modelling for Cloud Native Architecture","speakers":"Hanna Papirna;Emma Yuan Fang","orgs":"EPAM Systems;EPAM Systems","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation addresses the challenge security teams face when threat modeling Kubernetes applications in multi-tenant settings. The session introduces 'a block-based methodology that divides applications into four clear domains: gateway, service mesh, identity management, and storage.' It demonstrates how to scale threat analysis and embed it into development workflows using declarative models validated in CI/CD pipelines. The talk includes a demonstration using AI tools to identify security vulnerabilities in microservices architectures, examines how CNCF-graduated projects mitigate threats, and provides attendees with 'a repeatable workflow for threat modelling applicable to Kubernetes, serverless, or hybrid cloud-native systems.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1W/","tags":["multi-tenancy","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Hacking GPU Observability: eBPF & Ephemeral Containers in Action on Kubernetes","speakers":"Brandon Kang","orgs":"Akamai Technologies","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"This 30-minute session addresses GPU workload observability and security challenges in Kubernetes environments. The presentation covers combining ephemeral containers with eBPF to 'troubleshoot, monitor, and protect GPU-based applications—without disrupting production.' Key topics include replicating live GPU environments for debugging, implementing kernel-level telemetry, anomaly detection, and zero-trust policy enforcement. Real-world examples demonstrate tracing GPU performance issues, monitoring unauthorized resource access, and securing container provenance. The session targets organizations scaling AI/ML pipelines and HPC workloads seeking modern, production-ready observability and security techniques.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1N/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"12:15","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Headlamp: Build Kubernetes Experiences Your Way!","speakers":"Joaquim Rocha;Santhosh Nagaraj","orgs":"Amutable;Microsoft","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest - Kubernetes","level":"","description":"This hands-on workshop guides participants in extending Headlamp, 'an extensible Kubernetes UI that is officially part of the Kubernetes project (under the SIG UI).' Attendees learn to build plugins with maintainer assistance, gaining knowledge applicable to creating new UIs for projects or CNCF tools. The session welcomes both newcomers and experienced contributors seeking deeper community engagement. Participants should bring laptops.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7j/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"12:15","type":"tutorial","title":"Tutorial: Building Intelligent Apps with RAG on Kubernetes: From Raw Data to Real-Time Insights","speakers":"Cedric Clyburn;Natale Vinto;Christopher Nuland;Legare Kerrison","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat;Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Elicium 1","track":"Tutorials - AI + ML","level":"Beginner","description":"This hands-on workshop addresses enterprise data challenges in cloud-native AI applications. Participants learn to 'transform PDFs, proprietary formats, and unstructured text into query-ready knowledge' using open-source tools like Docling. The session covers deploying scalable Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) applications using Kubernetes-native technologies including Kafka, Knative, and Kubeflow Pipelines. The workshop concludes with building 'a Kubernetes-native AI-powered ticketing system retriever, with complete data sovereignty and scalability.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1f/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Fusing FinOps, Forecasting, and Kubernetes at Scale","speakers":"Ankur Singh;Satyam Bhardwaj","orgs":"Red Hat;Mirantis","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"AI + ML","level":"","description":"The session addresses how multi-cloud Kubernetes deployments outpace FinOps modeling capabilities. Presenters introduce 'FinOps-aware agents that autonomously observe telemetry, forecast resource demand, and report right-sizing decisions.' They showcase an open-source reference architecture combining OpenCost, Prometheus, and forecasting AI within GitOps workflows. The system generates explainable forecasts with uncertainty quantification and translates them into actionable policies including autoscaler configurations and capacity plans. Key learning outcomes include architectural patterns for feature extraction from Kubernetes metrics, adaptive retraining approaches responding to workload changes, and human-in-the-loop approval systems.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW20/","tags":["otel","cost","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Route, Serve, Adapt, Repeat: Adaptive Routing for AI Inference Workloads in Kubernetes","speakers":"Kellen Swain;Nir Rozenbaum","orgs":"Google;Red Hat","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"","description":"The session explores how static inference routing methods like traffic splitting and node affinity fall short in dynamic environments. It introduces 'adaptive routing strategies for inference, driven by real-time signals such as queue length and cache utilization.' The approach balances cache efficiency with load distribution to reduce latency, improve GPU utilization, and lower costs. Attendees will see benchmarks demonstrating performance gains from adaptive routing in K8s Gateway API Inference Extension.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2C/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"From 'No Time for GitOps' to Enterprise Adoption: Selling Flux the Human Way","speakers":"Christian Matthaei;Lucas Hornung","orgs":"Tchibo GmbH;Tchibo GmbH","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"","description":"A case study from Tchibo demonstrating how organizational resistance to GitOps and Flux was overcome through narrative-driven persuasion rather than technical arguments. The presentation details how storytelling frameworks inspired organizational adoption, referencing Simon Sinek's 'Start With Why,' Cole Nussbaumer Knaflic's 'Storytelling With Data,' and Dale Carnegie's influence principles. The speakers highlight how reframing GitOps around developer pain points and business value—including a creative coffee machine campaign—transformed it from an ignored initiative into a management priority.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1l/","tags":["gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Kube-Oddities - The Quirks That Keep Kubernetes Interesting","speakers":"Marcus Noble;Márk Sági-Kazár","orgs":"Monzo;Independent","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"","description":"The speakers deliver 'a brutally honest (and thoroughly entertaining) deep dive' into confusing Kubernetes behaviors. The session explores unusual design decisions and counterintuitive platform behaviors, specifically examining 'the weirdness surrounding sidecars, the baffling behavior of image tags, and the downright confusing default behavior of Pod DNS.' Positioned as an informal discussion rather than a technical lecture, attendees can expect 'laughter, head-scratching, and maybe just a few WTF? moments' while gaining deeper appreciation for Kubernetes complexities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2p/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"The Shell Awakens: Cloud Native Workflows for Particle Physicists","speakers":"Raulian-Ionut Chiorescu;Hannes Hansen","orgs":"CERN;CERN","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"","description":"CERN physicists have traditionally depended on 'interactive, command-line environments powered by SSH, shared software stacks, and large-scale batch systems.' The presentation demonstrates how CERN bridges traditional workflows with modern containerized infrastructure using ContainerSSH to provide shell access within Kubernetes pods. The session covers unified support for interactive and batch job processing—spanning single-node analyses to distributed training and MPI workloads—leveraging shared GPU resources and high-performance networking (InfiniBand and RoCEv2). The platform integrates notebooks, VSCode, Kubeflow for machine learning, and CI/CD tools. Implementation incorporates backfilling, fair-share scheduling, and hybrid extensions through MultiKueue and interLink to deliver 'a seamless, scalable environment combining HPC and cloud-native agility.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1u/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Designing Slides You Can't See (But Can Still Understand)","speakers":"","orgs":"","room":"G104 - 105 | Community Hub","track":"Inclusion + Accessibility","level":"","description":"The session addresses accessibility in slide design for visually impaired attendees. Slides are often designed as visual posters—but blind and visually impaired attendees experience them through screen readers (if slides shared beforehand) and the speaker's voice. The interactive presentation covers practical techniques including 'meaningful titles, verbal description of visuals, accessible charts and code, and why color alone is never enough,' with live exercises and audience participation to demonstrate best practices.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2IUOa/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Fluent Bit V5: Pushing the Limits of Observability at Scale","speakers":"Eduardo Silva","orgs":"Chronosphere | A Palo Alto Networks Company","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track - Fluentd","level":"","description":"The session explores Fluent Bit v5's advancement in 'high-performance telemetry collection for cloud-native and enterprise environments.' Key topics include architectural improvements, optimized routing, and processing across logs, metrics, and traces. The presentation demonstrates Fluent Bit v5's native alignment with OpenTelemetry standards, supporting hybrid pipelines while maintaining operational efficiency. Enterprise capabilities covering scalability, reliability, security, and fleet management for large-scale deployments are addressed, positioning Fluent Bit v5 as 'a foundational data plane for modern observability strategies, from edge to core.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF65/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"OpenFeature Update From the Maintainers","speakers":"Lukas Reining;André Silva;Thomas Poignant;Alexandra Oberaigner","orgs":"codecentric AG;LexisNexis Risk Solutions;Gens de Confiance;Dynatrace","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - OpenFeature","level":"","description":"OpenFeature is an open specification that offers a vendor-agnostic, community-driven API for feature flagging, designed to work seamlessly with your favourite feature flag management tool or in-house solution. The session covers new OpenFeature MCP server updates, introduces the OpenFeature GitHub Action for flag cleanup, and celebrates the stable release of the flag evaluation protocol (OFREP). Presenters will discuss community challenges, solutions, and lessons learned, inviting audience participation and questions about OpenFeature's current state and future direction.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4j/","tags":["mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"SIG-Windows Updates","speakers":"Claudiu Belu;JR Valdes","orgs":"Cloudbase Solutions;Red Hat","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track - Windows","level":"","description":"At this maintainer track talk we will cover what is new in the Windows Special Interest Group. This talk will focus on improvements to our test infrastructure, and highlight some of the features we plan to GA in upcoming Kubernetes releases.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5Y/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Solving Industrial Challenges With KubeEdge: A Post-Graduation Report","speakers":"Yue Bao;Hongbing Zhang;Yin Ding","orgs":"Huawei;DaoCloud;VMware by Broadcom","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track - KubeEdge","level":"","description":"Following KubeEdge's graduation within the CNCF, maintainers explore the platform's evolution and core architecture for managing edge workloads. The session covers 'real-world deployments across diverse sectors, including Smart Cities, Industrial IoT (IIoT), Edge AI, Robotics, and Retail.' Key topics include the newly introduced Certified KubeEdge conformance test, technological advancements, and community governance updates.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF3u/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Sovereign Identities for Your Cloud Native Architecture With Keycloak","speakers":"Alexander Schwartz;Sebastian Łaskawiec","orgs":"IBM;Defense Unicorns","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track - Keycloak","level":"","description":"This session explores identity management within sovereign cloud-native architectures. The speakers discuss Keycloak's capabilities for 'managing human and non-human identities with OpenID Connect and SAML,' including federation with external providers. Key topics include 'strong authentication and leverage trust relationships across organizations,' Kubernetes service account token integration, and 'OpenTelemetry capabilities' for observability and troubleshooting.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6o/","tags":["identity","observability","otel","keycloak"],"priority":2},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"In-place Updates with Cluster API: The Sweet Spot Between Immutable and Mutable Infrastructure","speakers":"Fabrizio Pandini;Stefan Büringer","orgs":"Broadcom;Broadcom","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores choosing between immutable and mutable infrastructure approaches. Rather than requiring an either/or decision, 'Cluster API in-place updates makes it possible to operate your cluster taking benefits from both immutable rollouts and in-place updates.' The presentation covers the user interface simplicity, underlying technical mechanisms, and how extension points enable customization based on specific infrastructure needs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1r/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"From Projects to Products: The Sociotechnical Journey Behind Sony's Internal Cloud Platform","speakers":"Eugenia Bergman;Hagen Tonnies","orgs":"Sony Interactive Entertainment;Sony Interactive Entertainment","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Sony Interactive Entertainment grappled with 'scaling infrastructure that had evolved through years of projects and automation scripts.' After operating Kubernetes across data centers for eight years, the organization shifted toward treating infrastructure as a product rather than isolated projects. The presentation explores how 'applying product thinking to platform architecture helped us balance CRDs, controllers, and Crossplane with the social systems that make them effective.' The speakers emphasize that 'cloud-native success isn't just about controllers and CRDs—it's about cultivating the organisational behaviours that make them thrive,' highlighting discovery practices, feedback mechanisms, and collaborative ownership.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW29/","tags":["crossplane","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Bob and Alice Revisited: Understanding Encryption in Kubernetes","speakers":"Mitch Connors;Jackie Maertens","orgs":"Microsoft;Microsoft","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Security","level":"Beginner","description":"This session demystifies encryption concepts by using fictional characters Bob and Alice to explain 'symmetric, asymmetric, TLS, mTLS, and VPN.' The presentation adapts their narrative to modern Kubernetes, offering practical examples for ingress, API server communication, SPIFFE, and service mesh implementations with Istio. Attendees will examine 'trade-offs between data security and usability' to determine appropriate encryption levels for their Kubernetes deployments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1o/","tags":["identity","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Hack Me If You Can: Learning Kubernetes Security Through a Role-Play Battle","speakers":"Aoi Takahashi;Keita Mochizuki","orgs":"Recruit Co., Ltd.;NTT DATA Japan Corporation","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores Kubernetes and container security through an interactive performance. Presenters conduct a live 'role-play battle' demonstrating attack and defense scenarios. Key topics include how AI accelerates YAML manifest generation (sometimes introducing vulnerabilities) and how attackers leverage AI for automated exploitation. Participants experience simulated attacks and learn defensive strategies, gaining practical insights for protecting production clusters in an AI-driven threat environment.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1x/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Why Security of Kubernetes Comes Down to Linux Security","speakers":"Marina Moore","orgs":"Edera","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Security","level":"Advanced","description":"This session explores why container escape vulnerabilities frequently originate from Linux kernel issues. The presentation traces container evolution from traditional Linux containers to modern cloud-native platforms. The speaker demonstrates Linux features operating within unprivileged containers, examining cgroups and namespaces—what protections they provide and their limitations. The discussion progresses to devices, system calls, and processes, clarifying visibility and modification capabilities within containers and how OCI runtime masks function. Attendees will develop foundational knowledge connecting Kubernetes security to underlying Linux kernel mechanics and methods for accessing these features from within containers.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW26/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"REST in Peace: AI Needs to Be Async - Meet Asya","speakers":"Artem Yushkovsky","orgs":"Delivery Hero","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"Modern artificial intelligence has evolved beyond simple prediction endpoints into complex, long-running interactions between models, tools, and services that contend with errors, timeouts, and rate constraints. Delivery Hero reimagined their AI orchestration approach using message queues, actor-model microservices, and persistent state storage. The framework employs async actors for each specialized function—video generation, routing, agent work—enabling independent scaling and composability. The open-sourced Asya tool provides 'true composability, independent scalability, and no hidden bottlenecks' while supporting agent-to-agent communication and MCP protocols for distributed agent networks.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2j/","tags":["ai","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Durable Execution in DevOps: How Uniphar Built Reliable Systems with Dapr","speakers":"Alice Gibbons;Vaclav (Oisin) Haken","orgs":"Diagrid;Uniphar","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"","description":"This session examines how Uniphar, a pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturer, 'uses Dapr to achieve durable execution across critical business systems.' The presentation covers two applications: Mammon, which 'uses Dapr Workflows to automate Azure cost allocation,' and KeyRotationTool, built with 'Dapr Actors' for automated key rotation. The speakers share 'lessons-learned from production' and demonstrate 'how the Dapr APIs implement durable execution in distributed systems.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2R/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Evolving Baremetal-as-a-Service: Secure Multi-Cluster Networking and Service Identity Automation","speakers":"Yushiro Furukawa;Mitsuhiro Tanino","orgs":"LY Corporation;LY Corporation","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation explores evolution of baremetal infrastructure into cloud-native systems through 'Kubernetes Custom Controllers, OpenStack Nova extensions, and AthenZ-based automation.' Key topics include extending OpenStack Nova for declarative baremetal provisioning, implementing ACL-based access control across multiple Kubernetes clusters with automatic pod application, integrating AthenZ for automatic certificate issuance during instance creation, and sharing lessons from integrating legacy private cloud systems with modern Kubernetes automation and policy-driven design approaches.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2I/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Hello World, Meet the Spanimals: Observability for Beginners","speakers":"Tiffany Jernigan;Matthias Haeussler","orgs":"Grafana Labs;CGI","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"This beginner-friendly session explores cloud-native observability using OpenTelemetry and the Grafana stack. Attendees learn about distributed tracing, how it reveals latency and errors in multi-service systems, and its role alongside logs, metrics, and profiles. The presenters demonstrate a multi-service application generating animal facts and images via AI, tracing requests from API calls through OpenAI processing to database storage. Participants gain practical knowledge instrumenting Python and Java applications while visualizing request journeys using open-source dashboards. The session emphasizes that 'if a goat can survive cloud-native observability, so can you.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2F/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Improving Pod Disruption and Node Lifecycle","speakers":"Filip Křepinský;Lucy Sweet;Ryan Hallisey","orgs":"Red Hat;Uber;NVIDIA","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track - Node Lifecycle","level":"","description":"The session addresses achieving application availability while managing Kubernetes disruptions responsibly. Presenters from the Node Lifecycle Working Group will introduce an 'EvictionRequest Kubernetes API, which offers a better, more cooperative approach to handling pod disruption.' The talk explores integrating this with existing Kubernetes features (PDBs, API-initiated eviction, preemption) and discusses cluster maintenance challenges across organizations, soliciting attendee feedback on potential solutions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6B/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Open Policy Agent (OPA) Intro & Deep Dive","speakers":"Charlie Egan;Anders Eknert","orgs":"Apple;Apple","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track - Open Policy Agent (OPA)","level":"","description":"Attendees will learn about the Open Policy Agent initiative. OPA serves as 'a general-purpose policy engine that solves a number of policy-related use cases' spanning Kubernetes, API Authorization, CI/CD, and infrastructure permissions. The maintainers provide introductory content plus updates on emerging features within OPA and its ecosystem. The session targets those interested in policy-as-code and security within cloud native contexts, with time allocated for Q&A afterward.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4m/","tags":["opa","policy"],"priority":1},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"TAG Operational Resilience: Sustainability Month To Release Guidelines","speakers":"Mario Fahlandt;Alolita Sharma;Carol Valencia;Nabarun Pal;Saiyam Pathak","orgs":"Kubermatic;Apple;KrolCloud;Broadcom;vCluster","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track - Operational Resilience","level":"","description":"The session explores three strategic initiatives from TAG Operational Resilience focused on 'system stability and efficiency.' It covers how the Sustainability Month drove 'joined cooperation across the planet to focus on the impact of GreenOps,' discusses standardized practices for 'software delivery in OSS projects to mitigate deployment risks,' and presents a framework for 'automation, guiding organizations from manual operations toward fully autonomous, self-healing systems.' Attendees learn how to participate in these initiatives.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF3x/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"The KEP Lifecycle: How the Release Team Guides Enhancements To Stability","speakers":"Kat Cosgrove;Sreeram Venkitesh;Rayan Das;Subhasmita Swain","orgs":"Minimus;DigitalOcean;DigitalOcean;Independent","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track - Release","level":"","description":"Kubernetes Enhancement Proposals define how features, deprecations, and design changes enter Kubernetes. 'This session covers the KEP lifecycle from two perspectives: the Release Team, who ensures enhancements are on track and meet requirements and contributors, who author and implement them.' The presentation addresses recent process evolution including a newly enforced Production Readiness Review Freeze that shifted from a soft to hard deadline, requiring earlier completion within the release cycle.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5h/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"The State of Backstage in 2026","speakers":"Ben Lambert;Patrik Oldsberg","orgs":"Spotify;Spotify","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track - Backstage","level":"","description":"This session explores 'how the Software Catalog model and the core framework is increasingly powering new ways of interacting with your platform, whether through the UI, CLI, or AI.' The presenters will demonstrate improvements to the data model, catalog, and supporting systems enabling flexible, multi-surface experiences. Key topics include the stable release of Backstage's new frontend system, the UI design system, release process updates, project updates, community spotlights, live demonstrations, and roadmap insights with Q&A.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6r/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Istio's Ambient Mesh: The Real Cost of Sidecar-less Tracing","speakers":"Mofesola Babalola;Hannah Olukoye","orgs":"Extreme Networks;DKB Code Factory","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"Advanced","description":"The speakers examine the practical implications of adopting Istio's Ambient Mesh, presenting 'comprehensive findings on the economics of sidecar-less tracing.' The presentation covers resource utilization metrics, latency benchmarks for the ztunnel and waypoint proxy architecture, and operational costs including debugging patterns and cognitive load. They also address observability challenges and strategies for correlating mesh telemetry with application context, delivered from both platform engineering and customer perspectives.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2a/","tags":["observability","networking","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"The Missing Half of Performance Profiling: Understanding Memory in Cloud Native Systems","speakers":"Dom Delnano","orgs":"Cosmic","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session examines why memory profiling has lagged behind CPU profiling in cloud-native environments. While tools like OTel's eBPF profiler and Pixie have made continuous CPU profiling standard practice, memory profiling remains fragmented across language-specific debuggers and observability platforms. The presentation explores the technical challenges in memory profiling, compares different profiling approaches from language-specific to system-wide solutions, and discusses pathways for achieving the standardization and efficiency necessary for production-ready observability across containerized systems.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2d/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"How Much Platform Is Enough Platform?","speakers":"John Keates","orgs":"Wehkamp Retail Group","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation explores balancing platform development needs. The speaker shares how their organization evolved from 'simple lists of bookmarks to a complete build-out of Backstage,' discovering that 'the right amount of platform is somewhere in the middle.' The session covers investigating desired versus actual requirements while considering non-technical factors. It addresses common trade-offs: sometimes building in-house isn't feasible due to time constraints, necessitating purchases instead; conversely, planned features may be dropped when time, budget, or user demand don't justify them. The goal is providing attendees with practical tools and frameworks for similar platform decisions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2g/","tags":["backstage","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"panel","title":"Panel: How Platforms Can Save Junior Engineers (and Thus the Tech Industry)","speakers":"Jennifer Riggins;Leena Mooneeram;Molly Clarke;Paula Kennedy","orgs":"The New Stack;Chainalysis;easyJet;Syntasso","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The panel explores how internal developer platforms can support engineers throughout their careers. Key themes include the importance of developing junior talent rather than replacing them with AI, improving onboarding and documentation, facilitating mentorship, and establishing 'golden paths' for faster feedback and issue resolution. The discussion emphasizes that 'investing in junior tech talent accelerates long-term team velocity and stability' and demonstrates how IDPs enable collaboration even in highly regulated industries.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2O/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Platform Mesh: Breaking API Lock-In for True Multi-Cloud Service Portability","speakers":"Mirza Kopic;Mangirdas Judeikis","orgs":"SAP;Independent","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Advanced","description":"'Platform engineering with CRDs is great—until you add a second cluster or cloud provider. Suddenly, you're locked into provider-specific APIs.' The speakers propose a Platform Mesh architecture that provides generic, portable service APIs enabling seamless migration between cloud providers. The session explores how this approach treats providers as interchangeable commodities within Kubernetes and examines alignment with the EU Data Act's data portability requirements.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2X/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"CoC Session: Restorative Justice: What It Is, and Why The Practice is Critical to Community","speakers":"","orgs":"","room":"Hall 1-5 | Gouda Zone | Project Pavilion","track":"Project Opportunities / Project Pavilion Stage","level":"","description":"The CNCF Code of Conduct committee explores restorative justice practices with a 'focus on healing and paths forward.' Committee members provide an overview, share examples, and address community questions regarding the committee's approach and operations.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2ITdo/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"Audit-Ready Kubernetes: How Chase UK Leveraged Policy as Code for Continuous Compliance","speakers":"Jim Bugwadia;Nischay Goyal","orgs":"Nirmata;JP Morgan Chase","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Security","level":"","description":"The session examines how Chase UK's Cloud Platform team deployed CNCF and open-source tools including 'Kyverno, OpenReports, and Grafana to enable backend engineers to build services safely.' The bank selected Kyverno for unified policy and governance, implementing a shift-left security approach. The implementation 'cut compliance audit times dramatically, from weeks to minutes.' The presentation covers the team's implementation journey, key lessons, and expansion strategy, targeting platform teams in regulated industries managing critical Kubernetes workloads.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2L/","tags":["policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"14:45","type":"talk","title":"How To Break Multi-Tenancy Again and Again ...and What We Can Learn From It","speakers":"Lorin Lehawany;Sven Nobis","orgs":"ERNW Enno Rey Netzwerke GmbH;ERNW Enno Rey Netzwerke GmbH","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"Namespace-based multi-tenancy presents implementation challenges and reduced effectiveness compared to control-plane isolation. However, emerging workloads like machine learning and scripting introduce complex isolation requirements. This presentation demonstrates 'real-world exploits in Kubeflow, Istio, and Traefik to bypass threat boundaries' and provides methodology for assessing isolation problems in complex environments with guidance for remediation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2U/","tags":["ai","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"15:30","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: K3s ContribFest Session","speakers":"Orlin Vasilev;Manuel Buil","orgs":"8gears;SUSE","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest - K3s","level":"","description":"Join us to learn how to contribute to K3s, what issues we have and where we need help! The session invites participants to understand contribution pathways for the K3s project and identify areas requiring community assistance.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7m/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"15:30","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Tell Us How You're Using Argo CD: A Community ContribFest Session","speakers":"Alexander Matyushentsev;Nitish Kumar;Leonardo Luz Almeida;Michael Crenshaw;Alexandre Gaudreault;Regina Voloshin","orgs":"Akuity;Akuity;Intuit;Intuit;Intuit;Octopus Deploy","room":"G106","track":"Contribfest - Argo","level":"","description":"An interactive, discussion-driven session focused on 'understanding practical Argo CD usage patterns, repository structures, and operational approaches.' Attendees are encouraged to share their real-world implementations. Topics include 'GitOps repository layouts, multi-cluster setups, promotion strategies, and common challenges' in daily operations. Maintainers will highlight observed patterns and frequently requested features, with insights informing future documentation and contributor initiatives.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7X/","tags":["argocd","gitops"],"priority":2},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"14:15","time_end":"15:30","type":"tutorial","title":"Tutorial: DRA-matically Simple: On-Demand GPUs for MLOps","speakers":"Doug Smith;Miguel Duarte Barroso","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Elicium 1","track":"Tutorials - Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"Head back from the coffee shop and join Doug Smith and Miguel Duarte for a hands-on tour of Kubernetes Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) for MLOps. With DRA now GA in Kubernetes 1.34, it's time to learn how pods can request specialized hardware like GPUs and FPGAs while the scheduler picks devices automatically. The session explores DRA through three perspectives: user operations with simple commands, cluster administration with DeviceClasses and ResourceClaims, and developer-level insights into writing custom DRA drivers. Participants will work with k8shazgpu, a DRA driver for GPU sharing, and vLLM, an open-source LLM inference framework.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2m/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Enterprise Challenges with MCP Adoption","speakers":"Christian Posta","orgs":"Solo.io","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"AI + ML","level":"Beginner","description":"The presentation examines how enterprises must evolve beyond single-tenant MCP implementations to build 'secure, remotely accessible, multi-tenant, governed services that expose sensitive business capabilities to AI agents.' Three primary challenges are addressed: (1) Onboarding & Discovery - safely registering and exposing MCP services while preventing tool poisoning; (2) Authorization & Identity - bridging gaps between MCP specs and enterprise SSO requirements; and (3) Upstream Access & Consent - governing delegation when MCP services access enterprise APIs on behalf of users.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW8C/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","multi-tenancy","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Peeking Into the GPU Black Box: Continuous Profiling on Kubernetes With eBPF","speakers":"Zahari Dichev","orgs":"Buoyant","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses GPU observability challenges in Kubernetes environments. Attendees will learn an end-to-end approach using eBPF to continuously profile workloads and GPU device interactions. Topics covered include 'tracing kernel launches, catching CUDA memory leaks, identifying faulty hardware, and visualizing workload activity across pods and nodes.' The presentation aims to transform GPUs from opaque components into transparent, observable elements within cloud-native infrastructure, enabling better visibility into AI and ML workloads operating on Kubernetes.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3J/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Dynamic Mocking for Event-Driven APIs: A Cloud Native Approach With Kubernetes","speakers":"Harshvardhan Parmar;Anushka Saxena","orgs":"YosemiteCrew;Google","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session examines realistic mocking strategies for asynchronous message systems. The presenters discuss how to generate and deploy mocks from AsyncAPI specifications, run event producers and consumers as Kubernetes components, and 'use Kubernetes-native tools like Microcks to orchestrate and scale mocks dynamically.' Key topics include managing schemas as they evolve and simulating message streams across Kafka, MQTT, and AMQP platforms within Kubernetes environments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW31/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"From Creepers to Clusters: Evolving Minecraft Into a Cloud Native Platform","speakers":"Jaden Walderich;Alex Mizerak","orgs":"Ziax Ltd.;Ziax Ltd.","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores how the CubeCraft server transformed 'from a monolith powered by scripts and legacy jobs, into a scalable platform built on OKD and Quarkus.' Presenters discuss untangling legacy systems and creating developer-friendly platforms capable of orchestrating diverse workloads. The presentation offers insights applicable to anyone modernizing complex systems in Kubernetes environments, extending lessons 'far beyond gaming' to broader platform engineering challenges.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3P/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"panel","title":"From First Contribution to Leadership: Lessons on Becoming a CNCF Leader","speakers":"Nir Rozenbaum;Priyanka Saggu;Faseela K;Antonio Ojea","orgs":"Red Hat;SUSE;Ericsson;Google","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"","description":"This panel discussion explores how open source contributors develop into community leaders. The four speakers share their journeys - from initial contributions like pull requests and documentation fixes through unexpected mentorship and collaboration - to leadership roles within CNCF. Topics include 'the challenges of starting small in a large ecosystem, staying consistent when things feel overwhelming, and how authenticity, curiosity, and community support can open doors' participants might not have anticipated. The session is designed for those wondering how to advance from contributor to leader status.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW1i/","tags":["helm"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"panel","title":"How Will Customized Kubernetes Distributions Work for You? a Discussion on Options and Use Cases","speakers":"Michael McCune;Joel Speed;Bridget Kromhout;Jesse Butler;Bowei Du","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat;Microsoft;Amazon Web Services (AWS);Google","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track - Cloud Provider","level":"","description":"Panel discussion examining Kubernetes customized distributions for specific infrastructures and use cases. The SIG Cloud Provider maintainers explore 'advantages and disadvantages of distribution models, what distributions offer to users, and how distributions will help the Kubernetes testing process.' Participants address how the community might streamline user experiences through targeted releases, particularly in hybrid cloud environments requiring consistent functionality across diverse infrastructures.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF68/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Jaeger V2: The Maintainers' Guide To OpenTelemetry-Native Tracing","speakers":"Pavol Loffay","orgs":"Red Hat","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session explores Jaeger v2 with 'OpenTelemetry...fundamentally integrated into the project's core architecture.' Key topics include UI enhancements like dark theme synchronization and fuzzy search, expanded storage support including experimental ClickHouse compatibility, and enhanced Elasticsearch/OpenSearch versions. Attendees will observe a 'new Kubernetes demo environment in action' and learn about Jaeger v1 deprecation plans and community contribution opportunities through LFX and Google Summer of Code initiatives.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF43/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Operationalizing AI Workloads on Kubernetes With OpenKruise","speakers":"Zhen Zhang;Vec Sun","orgs":"Alibaba Group;Xiaohongshu (RedNote)","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"AI applications running on Kubernetes present distinctive operational hurdles. Container packages with substantial machine learning models need advance caching for rapid initialization. Distributed model training typically operates as coordinated pod groups requiring synchronized scheduling and termination. Native Kubernetes lacks mechanisms for group-level disruption management - 'PodDisruptionBudget treats pods individually, risking partial job failures during node maintenance or hardware issues.' OpenKruise addresses these challenges through: (1) scheduled image pre-warming to pre-stage AI containers on designated nodes; (2) group-aware disruption enforcement at the PodGroup level; and (3) forthcoming ContainerRestartRequest enhancements enabling coordinated in-place restarts across entire PodGroups, selectively rebuilding pods while performing rolling restarts on others.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4p/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"panel","title":"The Next Chapter of Developer Experience: TAG DevEx in Action","speakers":"Julien Semaan;Graziano Casto;Mona Borham;Kevin Dubois;Joshua Bezaleel Abednego","orgs":"Kubex;Akamas;swengin.io;IBM;GoTo Financial","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session explores how TAG Developer Experience advances cloud-native development by reducing friction in workflows and promoting best practices. 'This panel will showcase how TAG DevEx reduces friction in developer workflows, advances best practices, and delivers resources that benefit contributors and end users alike.' Topics include secure coding adoption, agentic AI's emerging role in development, and specifications for declaring application integration dependencies.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5e/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"The Road To Strimzi 1.0","speakers":"Jakub Scholz;Paolo Patierno","orgs":"Cloudera;IBM","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"This presentation celebrates Strimzi's achievement of version 1.0 after eight years of development. The speakers will highlight new features in this milestone release and discuss upgrade considerations. They will also reflect on the extended timeline to 1.0, examining 'mistakes we made along the way.' The talk aims to provide lessons applicable beyond Strimzi users, exploring why major projects sometimes require significantly longer development cycles.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6l/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"How Manual OTel Instrumentation Saves More Than Just Money","speakers":"Juliano Costa;Yuri Oliveira","orgs":"Datadog;OllyGarden","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"Companies with mature observability practices often rely on auto-instrumentation without realizing it 'quietly drains their budgets.' The presentation demonstrates how manual instrumentation delivers more efficient telemetry by comparing automatic versus manual approaches. Key outcomes include reducing data volume by 'up to 60%, reducing resource overhead and storage costs while improving signal-to-noise ratio.' Attendees will learn span and attribute management practices, identify unnecessary metadata, and implement higher observability efficiency through practical steps.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3A/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Banking on Reliability: Cloud Native SRE Practices in Financial Services","speakers":"Clément Nussbaumer","orgs":"PostFinance","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"Real-world experiences from five years managing a Kubernetes infrastructure at a major Swiss financial institution. The presentation covers how Service Level Objectives (SLOs) improved API server load-balancing, nginx readiness probes, and etcd leadership transitions. Two proprietary open-source Golang monitoring tools are showcased: a DNS monitoring solution and a distributed mesh for node-to-node validation that identifies network issues. The speaker discusses how community contributions enhanced scaling from O(n2) to O(n) efficiency. An end-to-end continuous testing suite using Golang is presented with implementable components. The session concludes with an interactive troubleshooting exercise addressing rare 502 errors (6 per million requests) stemming from connection timeout mismatches - a critical concern in banking where request failures result in denied transactions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3D/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Ghost in the Platform: How the Dutch Tax Authority Built a Service To Scale K8s To 99+ Applications","speakers":"Jerry van Hulst;Marcel Kerker","orgs":"Belastingdienst;HCS Company B.V.","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The presentation explores transforming an underutilized Kubernetes platform into a thriving production ecosystem. Key accomplishments include 'fully automated Project as a Service platform guiding teams from idea to production with built-in security and best practices.' Implementation strategies featured developer enablement through communities of practice, automated onboarding with integrated security, Tekton and Backstage integration, centralized management via ArgoCD/RHACM/Kyverno, and self-service capabilities powered by an open-source PaaS Operator. The session includes live demonstration, architectural insights, and lessons learned.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3G/","tags":["platform-eng","identity","policy","backstage","argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"OpenAPI Meets Kubernetes: Auto-Generating CRDs and Operators the Smart Way","speakers":"Sergiusz Urbaniak;Jose Vázquez González","orgs":"MongoDB;MongoDB","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores how Kubernetes serves as an API exposure platform for Internal Developer Platforms. It presents 'crd2go,' an automated pipeline converting OpenAPI-backed services into operators that reconcile Kubernetes CRDs against external APIs. The presentation addresses challenges in operator development when integrating non-Kubernetes services, detailing approaches for transforming OpenAPI specifications into CRDs, code generation, and implementing unified state machine logic for controller behavior.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2y/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Pull Request Wars: The Flux Awakens - Ephemeral Kubernetes Environments Strike Back","speakers":"Stefan Prodan;Matteo Bianchi","orgs":"ControlPlane;GitHub","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session demonstrates how Flux Operator ResourceSets transform GitHub pull requests into 'on-demand, ephemeral Kubernetes environments that platform teams can ship as a service.' Presenters will showcase PR-driven preview designs where platforms maintain templates and policies while development teams self-serve through simple pull requests. The talk covers lifecycle management - creation on PR opening, reconciliation on pushes, and cleanup on closure or merge - plus multi-tenancy considerations and the Flux MCP Server for deployment debugging. The outcome is 'declarative, low-toil configuration' replacing custom pipelines while enhancing governance, accelerating review cycles, and enabling production-grade validation throughout the development workflow.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW37/","tags":["gitops","platform-eng","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"15:00","time_end":"15:30","type":"talk","title":"Invisible Guardrails: Enabling Developer Velocity With a Secure Platform","speakers":"James Elías Sigurðarson;Vignir Hafsteinsson","orgs":"Asana;Asana","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation examines how platforms can integrate security measures that enhance rather than impede development speed. Asana's approach centers on making 'the fastest path for a developer must also be the most secure path.' Using technologies like Crossplane and Cilium, the speakers demonstrate how to embed security directly into platform architecture, enabling developers to manage service security responsibly while maintaining operational velocity within a 'high-trust environment where developers are empowered to move quickly.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW34/","tags":["crossplane","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Optimizing LLM Inference for the Rest of Us","speakers":"Abdel Sghiouar","orgs":"Google Cloud","room":"F002-005","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses how most organizations face significant challenges integrating LLMs due to high costs and GPU/TPU scarcity. It covers 'Container and Model Optimization, Accelerator Management, Data & Storage, Network & Load Balancing, [and] Observability.' Attendees will gain practical techniques for maximizing cost-to-performance ratios for LLM inference on Kubernetes infrastructure.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3q/","tags":["observability","ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"panel","title":"AI-Powered Cloud Native Modernization: From Real Challenges to Concrete Solutions","speakers":"Daniel Oh;Savitha Raghunathan;Kenneth Kilty;Duncan Doyle","orgs":"IBM;Red Hat;Microsoft;Solo.io","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Application Development","level":"","description":"This panel examines modernizing legacy applications for cloud native environments. Rather than only identifying obstacles like technical debt and skill shortages, panelists present actionable remedies. The discussion addresses three key areas: assessing whether AI-powered tools suit workload preparation for Kubernetes versus manual approaches; determining validation and oversight needs when using AI for code refactoring; and designing a cloud native AI architecture supporting modernized applications and AI workloads on Kubernetes. Participants will gain a practical framework for adopting AI modernization solutions that combine progress with responsible governance.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3Y/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"From Classroom To Container: Teaching Distributed Systems With CNCF & Cloud Native Technologies","speakers":"Matthias Haeussler","orgs":"CGI","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores how to connect distributed systems theory with practical cloud-native development. The speaker shares 'lessons learned from continuously modernizing' a university course that covers fundamentals alongside hands-on labs using Containers, Kubernetes, and CNCF tools including Envoy, OpenTelemetry, and Cilium. Topics include translating concepts like CAP theorem and the 12-factor app into real-world applications, plus strategies for teaching complex topics such as orchestration and service discovery without overwhelming beginners.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW2s/","tags":["helm","otel","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Kubernetes-Native ≠ Cloud Native: Avoiding Architecture Theater","speakers":"Prerit Munjal","orgs":"Groupon","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"","description":"The session explores the distinction between Kubernetes deployment and genuine cloud-native architecture. The speaker presents real-world examples of teams that initially misjudged this distinction before achieving success. Key discussion points include instances where Kubernetes adoption proved unnecessary, what authentic cloud-native principles entail regarding observability and resilience, and how one application was redesigned to eliminate superfluous 'K8s theater' and streamline operations. The presentation targets developers, platform managers, and cluster operators seeking to emphasize practical results over orchestration terminology.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3M/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Kubernetes Data Protection WG Intro & Deep Dive","speakers":"Dave Smith-Uchida","orgs":"Veeam","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"This session focuses on the Kubernetes Data Protection Working Group's mission to advance data protection capabilities within Kubernetes. The discussion covers 'the current state of data protection in Kubernetes and where it is heading in the future,' along with how various stakeholders - including storage vendors, cloud providers, application developers, and end users - can participate and contribute to the initiative.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF40/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Rook: Intro and Deep Dive With Ceph Storage","speakers":"Niels de Vos;Deepika Upadhyay;Artem Torubarov","orgs":"IBM;Clyso;Clyso GmbH","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session introduces the Rook project to attendees of all skill levels. 'Rook is an open source cloud-native storage operator for Kubernetes, providing the platform, framework, and support for Ceph to natively integrate with Kubernetes.' Panelists will explore scenarios demonstrating how Rook configures Ceph to deliver stable block storage, shared file systems, and object storage for production workloads. The project achieved graduated status within the Cloud Native Computing Foundation in October 2020.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4s/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"SIG-Multicluster Intro and Deep Dive","speakers":"Stephen Kitt;Jeremy Olmsted-Thompson;Laura Lorenz","orgs":"Red Hat;Google;Google","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"SIG-Multicluster tackles challenges in managing multiple Kubernetes clusters and cross-cluster applications. The session provides an overview of the multi-cluster problem space and SIG status. Topics include 'best practices for multi-cluster deployments and what it means to be part of a ClusterSet,' current projects, use cases, and future directions. The organizers invite participants to contribute or provide feedback and encourage attendees to 'help us expand the multi-cluster Kubernetes landscape.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5b/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"panel","title":"Steering the Ship: Ask the Kubernetes Steering Committee","speakers":"Kat Cosgrove;Maciej Szulik;Benjamin Elder","orgs":"Minimus;Defense Unicorns;Google","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"This interactive session features Kubernetes Steering Committee representatives discussing the governance and future direction of the world's second-largest open source project. Attendees can pose questions about 'project governance, the future of Kubernetes, how you can get involved (or more involved!)' with provisions for anonymous submissions via a provided form.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6u/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"GenAI Observability: Keeping GenAI Honest Without Oversharing","speakers":"Liudmila Molkova","orgs":"Grafana Labs","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses observability for AI applications, covering the challenges of capturing conversation data while protecting sensitive information. Attendees will learn to 'instrument your AI applications with OpenTelemetry following the Generative AI Semantic Conventions.' Through a live demonstration, the presentation shows 'how to record conversation history alongside performance-related telemetry, and how to separate sensitive data for compliance and cost-saving purposes,' plus evaluation options based on telemetry data.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3h/","tags":["observability","otel","ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"The Hyperscale Uncertainty Principle: Debugging Tail Latency in a Trillion-Object System","speakers":"Yashraj Kakkad","orgs":"Google","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Advanced","description":"At Google Photos, the team developed an integrity pipeline for a trillion-object workload with balanced shards. However, at exabyte scale, the system exhibited 'tail latency behaviors that challenged our strictest reliability targets.' The talk explores how they identified the root cause - the non-linear impact of P99 latency - rather than data skew. It examines three solutions: traffic shaping, request hedging, and a novel 'Partition Alignment Principle' architectural pattern, emphasizing that 'average performance is a vanity metric, and why predictability is the ultimate engineering constraint.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3k/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"How to Build a European Cloud Orchestration Platform From Within an Enterprise","speakers":"Johannes Ott;Maximilian Techritz","orgs":"SAP SE;SAP","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The presentation addresses how an enterprise successfully developed an open-source cloud orchestration platform. The speakers emphasize that 'the most relevant key to our success has been our focus on people and culture.' They discuss strategies for driving adoption through internal technical talks and workshops on creating Crossplane providers. The session covers both technical and non-technical challenges in implementing a Kubernetes-like service at scale, with particular focus on 'strategies for engaging engineers and management through relatable user stories' to foster organizational community adoption.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3n/","tags":["crossplane","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"One Controller to Rule Them All - Taming Multiple Orchestrators at Uber Scale","speakers":"Srikar Paruchuru;Egor Grishechko","orgs":"Uber;Uber","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Uber operates 1M+ workloads across 200 Kubernetes clusters in two regions via the 'Up' orchestration platform, serving 3k+ service owners daily. As the ecosystem matured, multiple orchestrators emerged for auto-scaling and regional failovers, creating conflicts over workload target scales. The solution: a 'Service Scale abstraction' with dedicated CRD and controller serving as authoritative scale arbiter across orchestrators. The presentation contrasts this design against alternatives like scale sub-resources, demonstrates savings of approximately 70M$ through optimized regional failovers, and discusses one year of migration challenges including controller race conditions and event overload management.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3V/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Saxo Service Blueprint: Bridging Legacy and Modern World With Kubernetes Operators","speakers":"Jinhong Brejnholt","orgs":"Saxo Bank","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The session addresses how enterprises manage dependencies for traditional applications running on virtual machines outside Kubernetes. Tasks like 'provisioning DNS records, certificates, load balancing, and access controls often require multiple tickets across infrastructure teams.' Saxo Bank developed a Kubernetes operator-powered platform called Saxo Service Blueprint that extends GitOps and automation benefits to both traditional and cloud-native applications. Over two years, the organization built automations that 'saved thousands of developer hours' while strengthening disaster recovery capabilities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4E/","tags":["gitops","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Detect, Decide, Defend: Building Cloud Native Security That Fights Back","speakers":"Rotem Refael;Gal Gibli","orgs":"ARMO;Self","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Security","level":"","description":"The session examines how most Kubernetes security tools generate alerts without enabling teams to respond effectively. It introduces Cloud Application Detection and Response (CADR), which pairs real-time threat identification with automated remediation for comprehensive runtime security. By analyzing manifests, metrics, and network policies alongside posture and configuration data, CADR produces 'high-confidence alerts with actionable context.' RemOps then automates responses through Kubernetes-native APIs. Demonstrations showcase automated configuration rollback, privilege escalation mitigation, and state reconciliation using native Kubernetes components.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3S/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Kubernetes Security at Shopify Scale: Automating Security Across an Infrastructure Monorepo","speakers":"Jie Wu;Pulkit Garg","orgs":"Shopify;Shopify","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation explores how Shopify secures its infrastructure monorepo using automation. According to the abstract, 'Security isn't just a checkbox - it's what enables teams to move fast with confidence.' The speakers demonstrate integrating Semgrep for static code analysis and Open Policy Agent (OPA) for dynamic policy enforcement to detect risky configurations before production deployment. Attendees learn techniques for automating security checks and enforcing organizational policies using open-source tools.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3b/","tags":["opa","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"17:15","type":"contribfest","title":"Kyverno Contribfest: Building the Future Together","speakers":"Jim Bugwadia;Shuting Zhao;Ammar Yasser;Charles-Edouard Brétéché","orgs":"Nirmata;Nirmata;Nirmata;Nirmata","room":"G106","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"This hands-on workshop guides participants through making their first contribution to Kyverno, a CNCF policy engine for Kubernetes. The session provides dedicated tracks for both developers and non-developers, covering project architecture, development environment setup, and pull request submission. Topics include writing Go code, creating sample policies, and enhancing documentation, with direct mentorship from Kyverno maintainers and contributors throughout.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7U/","tags":["policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"17:15","type":"contribfest","title":"Prometheus New Contributor Introduction","speakers":"Ben Kochie;Bryan Boreham;Saswata Mukherjee;Arianna Vespri","orgs":"Reddit;Grafana Labs;Red Hat;OllyGarden","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"Prometheus is an extremely popular Open Source monitoring system, with over a million installations. The project relies entirely on volunteer contributions, with no commercial owner or enterprise version. If you have recently made your first PR to Prometheus, or you would like to know more about the process, come along! We will walk through one contribution, then open the floor for your questions. Suited to people who know how Go or React, or are interested in other project aspects such as documentation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7p/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"17:15","type":"tutorial","title":"Full-Stack Observability on a Budget: A Guide to Strategic Sampling and Data Optimization","speakers":"Pavol Loffay","orgs":"Red Hat","room":"Elicium 1","track":"Observability","level":"","description":"Observability costs can quickly spiral out of control. This tutorial provides a holistic framework for managing these costs without sacrificing insight. Participants will examine head-based, probabilistic, and tail-based sampling approaches with their respective trade-offs. The session covers hidden costs of tail sampling and when to deploy it effectively. Attendees will learn profiling techniques to reduce telemetry waste and smart routing strategies for cost optimization. The goal is equipping participants to design budget-conscious observability strategies in Kubernetes environments using OpenTelemetry, select appropriate sampling methods for specific workloads, and gain transparency into spending patterns.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3t/","tags":["observability","otel","cost"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"16:50","type":"lightning_talk","title":"'Naming Things Is Hard': A Guide to Naming Using Network Science","speakers":"Nick Travaglini","orgs":"Honeycomb.io","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"Software systems involve both technical and human elements, making naming conventions particularly challenging. Organizations frequently struggle to establish standardized naming for custom OpenTelemetry instrumentation. This presentation examines how network science research can guide teams in developing effective telemetry naming conventions and explores what constitutes 'best' practices in naming.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4Q/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"panel","title":"Merge Forward: Branching Inclusion, Merging Belonging","speakers":"Jay Jackson;Jay Tihema;Bhavani Indukuri;Catherine Paganini;Michiel van Pouderoijen","orgs":"CallRevu;Stand Tall;DigitalOcean;Buoyant;Avisi Cloud","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"","description":"In open source, we branch to innovate and merge to unify. The Merge Forward initiative embodies that ethos by uniting diverse underrepresented groups and allies to build an inclusive and equitable cloud native future. This panel explores systemic barriers, active allyship, and how belonging drives innovation. Topics span accessibility, neurodiversity, gender equity, and speech diversity. The discussion examines how lived experiences strengthen teams and foster both technical and community success, transforming inclusion from initiative into sustainable infrastructure through meaningful cultural change rather than compliance-focused approaches.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3z/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Ping SRE? I Am the SRE! Awesome Fun I Had Drawing a Zine for Troubleshooting Kubernetes Deployments","speakers":"René Dudfield","orgs":"Microsoft","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"Beginner","description":"The speaker describes how troubleshooting patterns emerged from Kubernetes Slack channel interactions, leading to the creation of a handmade zine. 'A folded piece of paper slipped out of the notebook. From a zine making workshop I did a few months ago' became the foundation for a personalized troubleshooting guide. The presentation aims to demonstrate how 'drawing little zines for trouble shooting things is fun, educational... and maybe useful too.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3w/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Keeping the Cloud Afloat with Deterministic Simulation Testing","speakers":"Marcus Hodgson;Marek Siarkowicz","orgs":"Antithesis;Google","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Intermediate","description":"Validating distributed systems presents significant technical challenges, and cloud-native infrastructure relies entirely on distributed architectures. etcd encountered consistency errors in v3.5, prompting substantial investment in robustness testing. The presenters explain deterministic simulation testing - a methodology enabling 'deterministic execution and fault injection, perfectly reproducing elusive bugs.' Through CNCF collaboration with Antithesis, etcd now employs this approach to ensure reliability. Attendees will learn how this testing technique applies to etcd, CNCF initiatives, and their own software development efforts.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6k/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"The Symbiosis of Storage and Workloads: Longhorn for Hyperconverged Block Storage","speakers":"Jinhong Kim;Jangseon Ryu","orgs":"NAVER Corp;NAVER","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Intermediate","description":"NAVER operates over one million Pods and 200,000+ block persistent volumes on Kubernetes using Ceph RBD. While Ceph provides excellent scalability, many workloads implement their own replication, creating redundancy and complicating fault isolation. To resolve these challenges, NAVER adopted a hyperconverged approach using Longhorn. However, this introduced new complications: storage and pod schedulers functioned independently, and storage operations like rebuilds could harm workload performance. Working with Longhorn maintainers, the team implemented coordinated scheduling to align storage with workloads and implemented resource controls that manage rebuild bandwidth to safeguard service I/O.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW48/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Explore TAG Workloads Foundation: Advancing Cloud Native Execution From Core Runtime To Applications","speakers":"Stephen Rust;Yuan Tang;Marlow Warnicke;Kante Yin","orgs":"Akamai Cloud;Red Hat;NVIDIA;HivergeAI","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session explores the CNCF Technical Advisory Groups' role in shaping cloud-native futures. Presenters will discuss 'the mission, scope, early initiatives, and subprojects of TAG Workloads Foundation, focused on defining and advancing practices and standards for cloud native workload execution environments and lifecycle management.' Attendees will understand how this TAG supports CNCF's technical vision, why workload execution matters to adopters, and how community members can contribute to addressing real-world challenges across container platforms, schedulers, orchestration systems, and related infrastructure.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7F/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Introduction To Tag Infrastructure","speakers":"Kashif Khan;Dylan Page","orgs":"Ericsson;Lambda.ai","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"This presentation will introduce the recently rebooted CNCF TAG Infrastructure. We'll cover its operational structure and its collaborative efforts with CNCF projects in key areas such as data and storage, networking, DNS, compute, service mesh, infrastructure lifecycle, edge computing, sovereignty, and load balancing. The session will also address ecosystem guidance development and whitepaper initiatives, teaching attendees how to contribute to the CNCF Infrastructure community while gaining practical insights for implementing cloud-native infrastructure solutions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF46/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Kubernetes SIG Storage: Intro & Deep Dive","speakers":"Jan Šafránek;Xing Yang","orgs":"Red Hat;VMware by Broadcom","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"This session explores Kubernetes SIG Storage's responsibilities, including 'ensuring that different types of file and block storage are available wherever a container is scheduled' and managing storage capacity. The presenters will 'deep dive into some projects that SIG Storage is currently working on, provide an update on the current status, and discuss what might be coming in the future.' Topics covered include volume resizing, container storage management, scheduling based on data location, and object storage APIs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF70/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"SIG Apps Updates: Building the Next Generation of Kubernetes Workloads Together","speakers":"Janet Kuo;Maciej Szulik","orgs":"Google;Defense Unicorns","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session explores how Kubernetes SIG Apps contributors address orchestration challenges. Presenters will highlight recent accomplishments and community-driven features. Key topics include design rationale for Workload and Batch API updates, active KEPs requiring user input, and pathways for new contributors to the cloud-native ecosystem's most widely adopted APIs. Organizers have reserved time for 'open discussion and Q&A.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4v/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Unleashing Event Driven Capabilities With KEDA","speakers":"Zbynek Roubalik;Jorge Turrado","orgs":"Kedify;SCRM Lidl International Hub","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session explores advanced Kubernetes autoscaling beyond CPU/Memory metrics using KEDA. Attendees will examine 'the evolution of scaling: from simple resource-based rules to advanced scaling and formulas' and learn about orchestrating complex triggers, security authentication, and production best practices for batch jobs and high-traffic APIs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5k/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Enriching Telemetry Signals Through Lookups in the OTel Collector","speakers":"João Duarte","orgs":"Elastic","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses augmenting telemetry with external metadata or reference data. Topics include enriching signals stored in YAML files or HTTP-based threat feeds, exploring 'performance concerns of lookups and how to address them (spoiler: caching).' The presentation covers implementing a lookup-based enrichment processor, current capabilities, future developments, and community contribution opportunities through extensions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4H/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Confidential Platforms for Regulated Industries","speakers":"William Rizzo","orgs":"Mirantis","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Cloud native adoption in regulated sectors like finance requires balancing 'agility, compliance, and data confidentiality.' The session presents a case study on constructing a Kubernetes-based confidential computing platform for a major financial organization. It uses Cluster API management clusters to provision bare-metal child clusters running Confidential Containers for hardware-based isolation and attestation. A custom mutating admission webhook injects confidential runtime classes transparently, enabling developers to deploy unchanged workloads, while Kyverno enforces policy and compliance at scale.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW45/","tags":["platform-eng","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:00","time_end":"16:30","type":"talk","title":"Inside Saxo Service Blueprint: Implementing Kubernetes Operators for Legacy Enterprise Infrastructure","speakers":"Oskar Kristiansen","orgs":"Saxo Bank","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Beginner","description":"Saxo Bank developed Saxo Service Blueprint as a collection of Kubernetes operators managing critical infrastructure dependencies including DNS, certificates, load balancers, and access controls for both traditional VM-based applications and cloud-native workloads. The session examines technical implementation details: how legacy infrastructure maps to Custom Resource Definitions, how reconciliation logic synchronizes Kubernetes state with external systems, and how operators manage idempotency, ordering, failure recovery, and partial state across multiple infrastructure domains. The presentation covers architectural decisions, controller patterns, and Git's role as a source of truth for infrastructure changes.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW3e/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Rabobank's Path to Secure, Fast Kubernetes Delivery","speakers":"Beatrice Forslund;Koshin Verberne","orgs":"Rabobank;Rabobank","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"The presentation covers Rabobank's experience running Kubernetes across three platforms - OpenShift, AKS, and EKS - and their evolution from 'Namespace-as-a-Service to Cluster-as-a-Service.' The session highlights their 'GitOps-driven infrastructure provisioning model' using ArgoCD and Terraform, with emphasis on financial sector requirements including multi-tenancy and compliance in a banking environment.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4N/","tags":["argocd","platform-eng","terraform","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Exploring NRI for Automated CA Trust Injection","speakers":"Tsuzuki Tsuchiya;Kento Kubo","orgs":"LY Corporation;LY Corporation","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Security","level":"Advanced","description":"'Large organizations use private CAs, but public container images lack their certificates.' The session explores using Node Resource Interface (NRI) to automatically inject private CA certificates into containers at startup, eliminating manual customization and enforcing organization-wide trust policies for 'secure, large-scale Kubernetes deployments without modifying base images.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW42/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:45","time_end":"17:15","type":"talk","title":"Kubernetes Third Party Audit Review","speakers":"Iain Smart;Tabitha Sable;Amir Montazery;Rey Lejano;Pietro Tirenna","orgs":"AmberWolf;Datadog;Open Source Technology Improvement Fund, Inc (OSTIF);Red Hat;Shielder","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"","description":"The session examines Kubernetes's recent third-party audit conducted by Shielder in collaboration with SIG-Security-Audit and OSTIF. Presenters discuss 'the audit process, from planning and logistics to delivery and the experience of an Open Source project working with a vendor,' along with historical context from 2019 and 2022 audits. The 2025 audit expanded scope beyond core components to evaluate ecosystem elements like Cluster API, Konnectivity, and Image Builder, exploring themes including supply chain risks, insecure design patterns, and unsafe defaults.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4B/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:52","time_end":"16:57","type":"lightning_talk","title":"10 Years of Building Platforms in the Public Sector","speakers":"Hans Kristian Flaatten","orgs":"Norwegian Government","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"The talk examines a decade-long initiative where 'two largest agencies in Norway' began building their platform using Kubernetes v1. After meeting at KubeCon EU Berlin 2017, the effort expanded to encompass '84 organizations and close to 3000 individual members' across Norway's public sector. The presentation focuses on findings from their 2026 State of Platform Maturity report, comparing results to their 2024 report and highlighting 'key trends' in public sector platform engineering, including container adoption and CNCF maturity levels.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4T/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"16:59","time_end":"17:04","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Avoiding CPU Throttling: How Go 1.25's Container-Aware Runtime Fixes GOMAXPROCS","speakers":"Adarsh K Kumar","orgs":"Rapido","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"Go applications running in Kubernetes often experience 'unnecessary CPU throttling and poor performance due to misconfigured GOMAXPROCS.' The runtime ignores container CPU limits by default, spawning more threads than available CPUs. The session explores how CPU limits function in Kubernetes, examines GOMAXPROCS and the Go Scheduler's G-M-P model, details Go 1.25's fix, discusses relevant GODEBUGs, and covers Uber's Automaxprocs as an interim solution for earlier versions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4W/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:06","time_end":"17:11","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Building the Cloud Native Ecosystem in Africa: Stories From the Field","speakers":"Ileriayo Adebiyi;Daniel Osarokutamwen","orgs":"Cloudnativeafrica.io;Rarefy Consulting","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"Africa's technology sector is 'experiencing rapid transformation, with engineers implementing cloud native solutions to solve unique challenges.' The presentation features real-world examples from African engineers deploying Kubernetes and CNCF tools to address infrastructure limitations and support scaling 'from fintech platforms processing mobile payments to healthtech systems reaching rural communities.' The session explores the growing African cloud native community and how regional engineers contribute to and benefit from global knowledge exchange.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4Z/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:13","time_end":"17:18","type":"lightning_talk","title":"From Learner To Contributor: A LFX Mentee's Kubernetes Story","speakers":"Lavish Pal","orgs":"Independent","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"Lavish Pal, a computer engineering student from India and LFX mentee, shares his journey 'from getting rejected 8 times in LFX Mentorship program to getting selected.' He discusses contributions to Kubernetes and how the mentorship equipped him with skills for open-source development, offering 'valuable tips, and a roadmap for making meaningful contributions to cloud-native projects' for both beginners and experienced developers.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4c/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:20","time_end":"17:25","type":"lightning_talk","title":"Going Global: Lessons From Internationalizing OpenTelemetry Docs","speakers":"Severin Neumann;Tiffany Hrabusa","orgs":"Causely AI;Grafana Labs","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"The OpenTelemetry Project initiated documentation localization a year ago, starting with four languages and expanding to eight total. The presentation covers their 'rollout plan, guardrails, what went sideways, and what actually stuck,' including community dynamics management. The speakers present a 'practical playbook with realistic expectations' for internationalization efforts, emphasizing how localization 'lowers entry barriers for non-native English speakers' and serves as 'a welcoming path into OSS.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4f/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:27","time_end":"17:32","type":"lightning_talk","title":"How To Responsibly and Effectively Contribute To Open Source Using AI","speakers":"Tyler Helmuth","orgs":"Honeycomb","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"With AI tools proliferating, open source contributions have become more accessible. However, 'it is incredibly easy to create slop contributions.' The speaker, an OpenTelemetry maintainer, addresses how developers can leverage AI responsibly to generate pull requests that maintainers can quickly merge, exploring effective patterns versus counterproductive approaches in AI-assisted contributions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4i/","tags":["helm","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"panel","title":"Sink or Swim? Team Lead and 'Junior' SREs Debate 'Trial by Fire' Onboarding","speakers":"Verena Traub;David Pech;Melody Sofia Eroshevich;Patrick Sieradzon;Petr Rais","orgs":"b'nerd;Wrike;Cloudeteer GmbH;Cloudeteer GmbH;Sluno","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"","description":"A panel discussion where team leads and junior engineers explore enterprise onboarding in cloud-native environments. They examine 'trial by fire' approaches, discussing real challenges like fixing production issues on day one while balancing psychological safety. The session covers hiring junior SREs, necessary Linux knowledge today, granting meaningful responsibility, and accelerating new hire confidence through practical experience and mentorship.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4u/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"The Ultimate Kubernetes Challenge: An Interactive Trivia Game","speakers":"Aurélie Vache","orgs":"OVHcloud","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Cloud Native Novice","level":"","description":"Kubernetes serves as the industry standard for deploying containerized applications, yet participants may lack comprehensive knowledge of the platform. This session combines a quiz format with live demonstrations to teach core Kubernetes concepts including pods, secrets, and services, plus internal components and industry best practices. Attendees compete in this engaging presentation while exploring Kubernetes capabilities, with prizes offered to top performers.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4r/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Agentic Networking: Securing AI Agents on Kubernetes","speakers":"Haiyan Meng;Evaline Ju","orgs":"Google;IBM Research","room":"Elicium 1","track":"Connectivity","level":"","description":"AI agents function as advanced microservices with autonomous behavior and distinct communication patterns, creating security challenges in cloud-native systems. The session addresses risks like 'prompt injections can exfiltrate PII to third-party tools, and poisoned tool responses can manipulate agent decisions.' Kubernetes requires adaptation for A2A, agent-to-tool, and agent-to-LLM traffic patterns. The presenters discuss extending the Kubernetes Gateway API to govern agentic traffic with security guardrails, exploring emerging protocols like MCP and establishing foundational approaches for AI-enabled Kubernetes infrastructure.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5O/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","networking","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Snapshots Gone Wild: Taming Multi-PVC Chaos with VolumeGroupSnapshot","speakers":"Scott Seago;Shubham Dilip Pampattiwar","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Intermediate","description":"This presentation explores how VolumeGroupSnapshot (VGS) addresses the challenge of backing up multi-volume Kubernetes applications. The speakers explain how 'Kubernetes coordinates snapshot creation, ensures group consistency, and manages recovery workflows end-to-end.' Attendees will learn practical approaches for achieving 'fast, reliable, and truly consistent backups' when working with multiple persistent volume claims, including test comparisons and orchestration strategies at scale.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW53/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"bof","title":"Beyond Nginx Ingress: Higress as the K8s Gateway for the AI Era","speakers":"Huxing Zhang","orgs":"Alibaba Cloud","room":"F002-005","track":"BoF","level":"","description":"This session addresses the Nginx Ingress Controller's retirement and introduces Higress, an Envoy-based gateway offering '90% compatibility with Nginx Ingress annotations' for seamless migration. The presentation covers Higress's 'Wasm-first' extensibility model, AI-native capabilities including token-based rate limiting for GPU resources, support for multiple LLM providers with automatic failover, and new Model Context Protocol functionality. A case study demonstrates how Higress 'reduced configuration latency from minutes to seconds for over 20,000 domains.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2GgLh/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","networking","mcp"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Right-sized Access Control & Pull with Proof","speakers":"Stanislav Láznička;Lucas Käldström","orgs":"Microsoft;Upbound","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session explores Kubernetes authorization advancements, covering constrained impersonation and conditional authorization that enable 'right-sized access control policies' beyond all-or-nothing semantics. Topics include 'only allow getting pods when impersonating a node' and 'Alice cannot set the sensitive label on write requests.' The presenters also discuss 'Ensure Secret Pulled Images,' addressing a ten-year-old security gap where Kubelet now verifies credentials for cached images, ensuring IfNotPresent doesn't mean 'IfPresentForAnyone.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EIaE/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"The Latest in GPU, TPU, NIC and Other Device Support - WG Device Management","speakers":"Patrick Ohly;John Belamaric","orgs":"Intel;Google","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The Working Group on Device Management has advanced support for specialized hardware including GPUs, TPUs, and NICs in Kubernetes. With version 1.34, Dynamic Resource Allocation achieved general availability status. The session covers community developments in 1.35 and upcoming features in 1.36, including 'managing device failures, groups of devices working together across nodes, and controlled sharing of devices.'","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EIbN/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"DNS Tracing & Metrics Via eBPF in OpenTelemetry","speakers":"Endre Sara;Nikola Grcevski","orgs":"Causely, Inc;Grafana Labs","room":"Hall 12","track":"Observability","level":"Beginner","description":"Cloud-native applications depend heavily on DNS resolution for service discovery and API calls. However, DNS performance challenges typically remain undetected within observability systems. The presentation explores integrating DNS monitoring into the OpenTelemetry eBPF Instrumentation agent, addressing 'architectural challenges (eBPF context, semantic conventions, scalability)' and detailing proposed metrics and tracing frameworks. Attendees will gain insight into instrumenting low-level system interactions within cloud-native environments and learn methods for extending eBPF agent capabilities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5C/","tags":["observability","otel","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Let Your Network Speak!","speakers":"Joel Takvorian;Nadia Pinaeva","orgs":"Red Hat;Nvidia","room":"G102-103","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session explores network observability in Kubernetes environments. The speakers introduce an approach where observability agents interpret network messages to explain why packets behave as they do. The presentation covers the journey 'from the Linux kernel to the netobserv GUI using OVS, OVN and OVN-Kubernetes' and demonstrates how this clarifies Kubernetes networking concepts for practitioners.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW23/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Pay Less for More: A Practitioner's Playbook for Kubernetes Autoscaling","speakers":"Malgorzata Widelicka;Lukasz Ogrodowczyk","orgs":"Roche;Roche","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses cost-effective Kubernetes cluster management amid variable workloads. It explores 'how to leverage Karpenter to provision diverse node types on-the-fly, drastically reducing provisioning times' while covering observability, job isolation, stability versus efficiency trade-offs, and KEDA for event-driven scaling. The presenters share FinOps and DORA metrics for evaluating autoscaling effectiveness.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5F/","tags":["observability","cost"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Building a Kubernetes Platform That Scales From SaaS To Self-Managed","speakers":"Florian Forster","orgs":"GitLab","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"GitLab addresses a unique platform engineering challenge by constructing an internal platform supporting both gitlab.com (serving millions globally) and thousands of self-managed installations across organizations of varying sizes. This presentation covers the development of 'Runway,' GitLab's internal platform, and architectural choices necessary for a dual deployment approach. The session examines the initial Cloud Run implementation and its limitations, then discusses the migration to Kubernetes as a foundational technology bridging cloud-native SaaS operations and streamlined self-managed deployments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW50/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Disaster Resilient Trino on Kubernetes: Multi-Cluster Setup With Karmada and Trino Gateway","speakers":"Sung Yun;Antoine Marthey","orgs":"Bloomberg;Bloomberg LP","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session examines how Bloomberg built a disaster-resilient Trino deployment across multiple Kubernetes regions. The presentation covers 'Karmada, we duplicate Trino deployments across multiple regions for high availability. On top, Trino Gateway provides namespace-scoped unified query endpoints.' The speakers will share architectural principles, operational trade-offs, and practical guidance for constructing resilient, governed data platforms on Kubernetes that support analytics workloads at scale.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5I/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Scaling Platform Engineering: Lessons From Europe's Largest Enterprises","speakers":"Cat Morris;Stéphane Di Cesare;Anna Kozachenko;Gayathri Thiyagarajan","orgs":"Syntasso;DKB;Amadeus;AWS","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"","description":"'Platform engineering is no longer new. Most large organisations now have a platform team to help product and application teams deliver faster and more reliably.' The session features enterprise platform leaders sharing experiences building and scaling internal platform organizations, covering team structure, internal adoption strategies, hiring challenges, and evolution.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW59/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Signed, Sealed, Delivered: Why Reverse Proxies Outperform VPNs","speakers":"Peter O'Neill;Boris Kurktchiev","orgs":"Teleport;Teleport","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"","description":"The session contrasts traditional VPNs with reverse proxies using an analogy: VPNs resemble 'picking up a package from a shared storage room' where excessive visibility exists post-entry, while reverse proxies operate like 'signature on delivery' with restricted access. Presenters will demonstrate identity validation, per-route authorization enforcement, and comprehensive logging using Envoy, Keycloak, and sample applications, illustrating why reverse proxies better secure modern cloud-native systems.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW56/","tags":["identity","keycloak","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:30","time_end":"18:00","type":"talk","title":"Why Isn't the Fix in My Container? Tracking CVE Propagation Across 10,000 Projects","speakers":"Mor Weinberger;Lior Kaplan","orgs":"Echo Security;Kaplan Open Source","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Security","level":"","description":"The presentation examines vulnerability remediation patterns across 10,000 open source projects, revealing that 'vulnerabilities fixed upstream often take weeks or months to reach downstream containers,' creating significant security exposure in Kubernetes environments. The session maps how CVE fixes progress (or stall) through ecosystem layers - from upstream projects to package managers to base images to final containers - with actual remediation delay metrics. The second half emphasizes practical remediation strategies: automated patch backporting and in-place image patching using tools like Copa.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4x/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:34","time_end":"17:39","type":"lightning_talk","title":"KRafting the Cloud: Building a Free, Open, and Accessible Cloud","speakers":"Alex Bissessur","orgs":"La Sentinelle","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"Beginner","description":"The presentation explores how the speaker created KRaft, 'a serverless, Kubernetes-focused cloud platform which can be deployed anywhere on any hardware.' The talk addresses 'challenges we faced creating such a platform, as well as the social and technical benefits' from developing infrastructure in Mauritius, discussing technical obstacles alongside cloud native technologies and cultural perspectives.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW4l/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Wednesday","date":"2026-03-25","time_start":"17:41","time_end":"17:46","type":"lightning_talk","title":"The $100K GPU Mystery: Why Your AI Training Dies at 99%","speakers":"Michael Ifeanyi","orgs":"Google","room":"Auditorium","track":"Lightning Talks","level":"","description":"This 5-minute presentation addresses distributed AI training failures caused by GPU memory fragmentation. Key topics include why conventional monitoring fails to detect fragmentation, methods to identify it before job termination, and configuration approaches that mitigate these failures. The talk draws from real production incidents at enterprise organizations and provides practical solutions using 'Kubernetes, Prometheus, Grafana' alongside 'NVIDIA Device Plugin, PyTorch Distributed' to prevent costly training interruptions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5L/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:00","time_end":"09:03","type":"opening_remarks","title":"Keynote: Welcome Back + Opening Remarks - Jorge Castro, Developer Relations, Cloud Native Computing Foundation","speakers":"Jorge Castro","orgs":"Cloud Native Computing Foundation","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Jorge O. Castro specializes in Open Source community management. He began as a system administrator at Oakland University, Michigan, then worked at Canonical on Ubuntu for approximately ten years before joining Heptio for Kubernetes work. Following Heptio's acquisition by VMware in December 2018, he transitioned into Enterprise software roles.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CY1g/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:05","time_end":"09:20","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: The Cloud Native Feedback Loop: How End Users and Developers Drive CNCF Projects Forward","speakers":"Karena Angell;Katie Gamanji;Chad Beaudin;Ahmed Bebars","orgs":"Red Hat;Apple;Boeing Software Factory;The New York Times","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"How do today's reference architectures become real, production platforms built on CNCF projects that evolve, mature, and earn long-term trust? This joint keynote from the CNCF End User Technical Advisory Board and Technical Oversight Committee examines how reference architectures map to production needs and project lifecycle decisions. Presenters explore how contributor health metrics, adoption signals, and ecosystem data from tools like LFX and LF Insights guide platform strategy and project governance.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgMa/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:22","time_end":"09:27","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Sponsored Keynote: Universal Mesh: Connect and Secure Everything","speakers":"Baptiste Assmann","orgs":"HAProxy Technologies","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Managing connectivity across diverse business units, clouds, locations, and partners presents significant challenges for large organizations. Traditional solutions like VPNs and firewalls provide network-level connectivity, while Service Mesh offers application-aware traffic management for cloud-native environments. Universal Mesh bridges this gap with a unified interconnectivity model, delivering Service Mesh benefits in a resource-efficient model across entire infrastructure. It combines North-South and East-West communication in a consistent pattern to connect every cloud, app, and service. The session covers how Universal Mesh simplifies connectivity management, unifies security and governance, and provides consistent control over traffic flows regardless of application location or architecture.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgNY/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:29","time_end":"09:32","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: How Ubisoft Orchestrates Global Multiplayer Games with Agones","speakers":"Mark Mandel;Jean-François Hubert","orgs":"Discord;Ubisoft Entertainment","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"For Ubisoft, delivering seamless multiplayer experiences to a global player base presents infrastructure challenges of massive scale, requiring management of thousands of game servers with global reach and resilience. The session demonstrates how Ubisoft leverages Agones, the open-source game server scaling engine on Kubernetes, examining real-world applications and production data. Speakers will trace Agones' evolution from Google origins to its current CNCF home, illustrating how community-driven standards now power major industry players.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgQn/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:34","time_end":"09:44","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: From Cloud-Native Apps to Cloud-Native Platforms - Abby Bangser, Principal Engineer, Syntasso","speakers":"Abby Bangser","orgs":"Syntasso","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Platform engineering frequently encounters quiet failures where teams construct portals, pipelines, and templates yet encounter slower delivery and blurred ownership. This keynote examines architectural foundations essential for durable platforms, specifically three orchestration layers. It explores how collapsing these layers creates brittle systems struggling under organizational growth. The presentation advocates applying cloud-native architectural principles to platforms themselves, arguing that platform teams now need an equivalent level of clarity for platform capabilities as the twelve-factor app provided for applications. The talk targets platform engineers and leaders seeking to understand platform failures under real pressure and how architectural boundaries enable scalable, enduring systems.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgPy/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":3},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:46","time_end":"09:51","type":"sponsored_keynote","title":"Sponsored Keynote: From Cloud Native to Accelerator Native: Kubernetes as the Distributed OS for Accelerated Workloads and Frameworks","speakers":"Jago Macleod","orgs":"Google","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"The session examines how Kubernetes has evolved from a container orchestrator into the foundational Distributed Operating System for accelerated workloads and frameworks. It addresses the shift toward specialized hardware (GPUs, TPUs, CPUs) and explores how Kubernetes serves as the infrastructure intermediary. The presentation covers topology-aware resource management, capacity optimization across locations, and the emerging transition toward autonomous infrastructure where Agentic Operations begin to manage our clusters with stochastic, goal-oriented reasoning.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgNv/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:53","time_end":"09:56","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Agents as First-Class Users in Production - Mathias Biilmann, Co-Founder and CEO, Netlify","speakers":"Mathias Biilmann","orgs":"Netlify","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Software is increasingly built and operated by agents acting on behalf of humans, while most cloud-native platforms were designed for people at a keyboard. Mathias Biilmann will share how Netlify, which runs build and deploy workloads on Kubernetes, designed AX (agent experience) into its deployment workflows so agents can carry work safely toward production with humans staying in control. The takeaway is a set of workflow and safety-rail patterns Kubernetes operators can apply as agents become first-class users of production systems.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgRY/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"09:58","time_end":"10:01","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Building Autonomous Networks for the AI Era - Gergely Csatari, Senior Open Source Specialist, DMTS, Nokia","speakers":"Gergely Csatari","orgs":"Nokia","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"Networks serve as the hidden nerve system of the internet, connecting human and artificial intelligence. Csatari explains how networks evolve toward autonomy using cloud native technology. He discusses CNCF community projects and Nokia's collaboration in bridging cloud native and telecommunications.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2Hh3F/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"10:03","time_end":"10:18","type":"keynote","title":"Keynote: Live Demo Showcase","speakers":"","orgs":"","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"N/A","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2HgW4/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"10:20","time_end":"10:30","type":"closing_remarks","title":"Keynote: Closing Remarks","speakers":"","orgs":"","room":"Hall 12","track":"Keynote Sessions","level":"","description":"N/A","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CtL8/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Achieving Resilient Multi-Cluster AI Inference on Kubernetes With Karmada and KubeRay","speakers":"Wei-Cheng Lai;Han-Ju Chen","orgs":"Bloomberg;Anyscale","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Any","description":"The session addresses challenges in large-scale AI inference including bursty traffic, uneven GPU supply, regional latency, varied SLO requirements, and occasional cluster or availability zone outages. It presents a practical architecture combining Karmada for orchestrating Kubernetes fleets with policy-based placement and automated failover, alongside KubeRay's RayService for distributed inference. Attendees will learn when multi-cluster deployment is necessary, how to configure Karmada policies to meet service level objectives, and operational practices for Ray Serve including safe scaling and upgrades. The session concludes with reference architecture documentation and ready-to-use deployment templates.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EG0Y/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"To Upstream or Not? Why Becoming the Maintainer of Your Dependencies Matters","speakers":"Christos Markou","orgs":"Elastic","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Any","description":"The speaker, an active OpenTelemetry contributor, shares why companies should invest in maintaining open-source dependencies. Using a real case study about an OTel component facing deprecation, he demonstrates how staying engaged with upstream projects yields tangible business benefits. By driving discussion and pushing for consensus, the component survived and later resolved customer issues efficiently. The session provides practical arguments for managers on sustaining open-source health.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5U/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"An Immersive and Visual Journey Into Kubernetes Networking","speakers":"Benoit Entzmann","orgs":"Feesh","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Connectivity","level":"Intermediate","description":"Kubernetes networking is still intimidating for many, but what if you could see it to actually understand it? The session follows packets through networking realms, covering core concepts, eBPF, network policies, service meshes with sidecars, and Ambient Mesh to make these technologies more accessible and understandable.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5p/","tags":["networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Beyond Stateless: Distributed Transactions with Autoscaling and Consistency on Kubernetes - Jumpei Nishitani, Hitachi","speakers":"Jumpei Nishitani","orgs":"Hitachi","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Intermediate","description":"This session presents a practical method for implementing distributed transactions with strong consistency and seamless autoscaling on Kubernetes. By integrating a transaction monitor with the Horizontal Pod Autoscaler, we show how stateless business applications can retain ACID properties while scaling efficiently. Based on real-world examples, the session offers actionable insights into system design and deployment.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5R/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Scaling Valkey the Right Way: Kubernetes at XL Scale","speakers":"Madelyn Olson;Sarthak Aggarwal","orgs":"AWS;AWS","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Any","description":"The session explores deploying Valkey, an open-source Redis fork, at massive scale within Kubernetes environments. Presenters cover building and operating sharded, replicated clusters spanning hundreds of nodes, including cluster bus communication, DNS-based discovery, and resource planning. Topics include operator-based automation, gossip traffic optimization, and strategies to minimize CPU spikes and failover delays.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5d/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"From Chaos to Control: A Prescription for Managing Apps on Private Cellular Networks - Luis Ariza, Beanters","speakers":"Luis Ariza","orgs":"Beanters","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores managing application complexity in private cellular networks where open-source software collides with the unforgiving laws of physics. Rather than simply configuring Kubernetes manifests, participants learn about tuning antenna gains, transmission power, and virtualization layers to reduce latency while complying with regulations. The speaker translates telecommunications engineering challenges into cloud-native solutions applicable to complex Kubernetes deployments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5X/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"A Bug's-Eye View: Kubernetes SIG Security Explains It All","speakers":"Ian Coldwater;Tabitha Sable;Rory McCune;Iain Smart;Mahé Tardy","orgs":"Independent;Datadog;Datadog;AmberWolf;Isovalent at Cisco","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track, Security","level":"","description":"SIG Security helps the Kubernetes project to keep pesky bugs contained, and to spread the word when they escape! The session explores how bugs progress through different lifecycles, from OWASP vulnerabilities to CVEs. Participants learn about bug tracking and vulnerability management processes while discovering how to contribute to Kubernetes security initiatives.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5n/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Addressing Non-Deterministic Scheduling: Introducing the Node Readiness Controller","speakers":"Ajay Sundar Karuppasamy;Sreeram Venkitesh;Karthik K N;Priyanka Saggu","orgs":"Google;DigitalOcean;IBM;SUSE","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"Kubernetes nodes report 'Ready' before critical dependencies like CNI plugins, storage drivers, or device plugins are fully functional. This readiness gap causes non-deterministic scheduling where sensitive workloads immediately fail upon placement. The Node Readiness Controller uses NodeReadinessRules to declaratively manage taints based on custom conditions, ensuring protected node initialization. The session covers architecture patterns leveraging the node-problem-detector ecosystem, roadmap discussion including current status and upcoming features, and cross-SIG alignment regarding interaction with scheduling primitives and autoscalers.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6E/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Advanced Kyverno Patterns: Automating Platform Security and Operations","speakers":"Frank Jogeleit;Johannes Sonner","orgs":"Nirmata;Deutsche Telekom","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track, Kyverno","level":"","description":"The session explores securing an Internal Developer Platform serving millions of customers while maintaining developer velocity. Deutsche Telekom's policy-driven architecture approach goes beyond basic validation. Presenters will examine real-world implementation patterns at enterprise scale, including dynamic RBAC provisioning, to advanced GitOps resource management, used to automate platform security while preserving developer autonomy.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF49/","tags":["gitops","platform-eng","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Advancing Kubernetes AI Conformance: Current State and Roadmap","speakers":"Yuan Tang;Mario Fahlandt;Janet Kuo","orgs":"Red Hat;Kubermatic;Google","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track, AI Conformance","level":"","description":"As AI workloads integrate into Kubernetes, conformance testing ensures interoperability, reliability, and trust across platforms and vendors. The Kubernetes AI Conformance Working Group has established baseline standards for AI/ML workloads with consistent APIs and runtime interoperability. This session will cover achievements to date, community contribution opportunities, and the 2026 roadmap, including automated conformance testing phases and program scope evolution. Attendees will learn how AI Conformance creates measurable value for vendors, integrators, and end-users in cloud-native AI environments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF76/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Cert-manager - Project Update: Beyond 2026 - Tim Ramlot & Maël Valais, Palo Alto Networks","speakers":"Tim Ramlot;Maël Valais","orgs":"Palo Alto Networks;CyberArk","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session invites attendees to join the cert-manager maintainers for an in-depth look at the state of the project in 2026. It covers major accomplishments from the past year including new capabilities, security enhancements, and infrastructure improvements. The presenters will discuss how the project addresses cloud-native security needs and provide insights into upcoming work, community efforts, and future priorities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF73/","tags":["cert-manager"],"priority":2},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Cutting Metrics Traffic, Cutting Costs: The AZ-Aware Observability Blueprint","speakers":"Iris Dyrmishi;Rodrigo Fior Kuntzer","orgs":"Miro;Miro","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Observability","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses reducing cloud observability expenses by minimizing cross-availability zone metrics collection. Presenters demonstrate how to leverage standard relabeling mechanisms in popular tools, like Prometheus, OpenTelemetry, and VictoriaMetrics, to implement an AZ-aware sharding strategy. The approach reduces inter-AZ data transfer costs through agent configuration and includes vendor-agnostic implementation guidance with real-world savings metrics.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5m/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Enforce VIP Access Only Through Node Attestation","speakers":"Alice Frosi;Jakob Naucke","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Any","description":"This session uses a nightclub analogy to explain how attestation functions as a security mechanism in confidential Kubernetes clusters. The presenters demonstrate how attestation is the ultimate VIP pass and how the Confidential Cluster Operator manages access control. They explain Trustee's validation of node boot artifacts and enforcement of per-node attestation policies, including continuous reference value updates and OS image management. Attendees will gain practical insights into operating confidential clusters where no untrusted node can crash the party.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5s/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"Stop Flying Blind: Real-Time, Enforceable Cluster-Wide Quotas with Kyverno and KRO","speakers":"Adam Crowder;Mariam Fahmy","orgs":"AWS;Cloudflare","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Advanced","description":"This session addresses resource quota management challenges in multi-tenant Kubernetes clusters. The speakers demonstrate combining Kyverno and the Kube Resource Operator to create an automated, self-healing quota management system. Rather than manually tracking spending via spreadsheets, teams gain real-time visibility and enforcement of budget limits through a centralized dashboard that rejects requests exceeding allocated resources.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5j/","tags":["identity","multi-tenancy","platform-eng","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"11:30","type":"talk","title":"SPIFFE Meets OAuth: Federated Identity for Cloud Native Workloads - Yoshiyuki Tabata, Hitachi, Ltd.","speakers":"Yoshiyuki Tabata","orgs":"Hitachi, Ltd.","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"Cloud-native systems operating across multiple trust domains face challenges in securely propagating identity. This session introduces federated identity patterns combining SPIFFE and OAuth extensions. SPIFFE JWT SVID and OAuth Identity Chaining (draft-ietf-oauth-identity-chaining), together with Assertion Framework (RFC 7521/7523), enable secure multi-hop authorization and scalable identity propagation. The presentation includes a demo integrating Keycloak, SPIRE, and OAuth flows for multi-cluster Kubernetes environments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5g/","tags":["identity","keycloak"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"12:15","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: kcp: From Zero To Your First Pull Request","speakers":"Karol Szwaj;Nelo-T. Wallus","orgs":"Kubermatic;SAP","room":"G106","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"This hands-on session introduces kcp, a CNCF Sandbox project for serving Kubernetes-style APIs with multitenancy focus. Maintainers guide participants through architecture overview, development environment setup, and collaborative issue resolution, welcoming contributions in code, documentation, and community work.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EMwW/","tags":["multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"12:15","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Podman/Buildah Contribfest - Neil Smith & Matt Heon, Red Hat","speakers":"Matt Heon;Neil Smith","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest","level":"","description":"The Podman and Buildah communities are driving efforts to integrate BuildKit for improved compatibility with industry-standard tooling. Participants will engage in a hands-on coding session featuring code deep dives on BuildKit integration issues, architecture reviews of impacted systems and roadmaps, and guidance on contribution policies, CI/CD pipelines, and PR processes. Prerequisites include familiarity with Go and Git workflows.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7s/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:00","time_end":"12:15","type":"tutorial","title":"Tutorial: KV-Cache Wins You Can Feel: Building AI-Aware LLM Routing on Kubernetes","speakers":"Tyler Michael Smith;Kay Yan;Vita Bortnikov;Michal Malka;Maroon Ayoub","orgs":"Red Hat;DaoCloud;IBM;IBM Research;IBM Research","room":"Elicium 1","track":"AI + ML","level":"Any","description":"Every LLM request carries invisible state: the KV-cache. Hit it, and your response is 10x cheaper and 50x faster. Miss it, and you're recomputing work you just did. Yet Kubernetes' default load balancing is cache-blind, scattering related requests across pods and destroying locality. Attendees will deploy a distributed vLLM cluster, benchmark its performance, and visualize how cache-blind routing wastes GPU cycles. Then, they will replace the default Service with the Kubernetes Gateway API (Inference Extension) and deploy llm-d, a Kubernetes-native framework for distributed LLM inference with an AI-aware scheduler.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5y/","tags":["ai","networking","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"panel","title":"AI Agents & Platform Engineering: Efficiency Boost or New Source of Trouble?","speakers":"Hasith Kalpage;Vincent Caldeira;Sara Qasmi;Idit Levine;Carlos Santana","orgs":"Cisco;Red Hat;NTT Data;Solo.io;AWS","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Any","description":"Panel exploring how AI agents impact platform engineering workflows. Discussion covers whether nondeterministic AI systems help close gaps created by accelerated developer output, or introduce unwanted complexity. Topics include platform foundation requirements for AI success, measuring agent effectiveness, production cost management, building trust in unpredictable systems, and human-agent collaboration models.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6V/","tags":["ai","cost","platform-eng","ai-agents"],"priority":3},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Building a Scalable and Cost-Effective MLOps Platform at PepsiCo Using CNCF Tools","speakers":"Chaitanya G","orgs":"PepsiCo","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"As PepsiCo continues to scale AI-driven innovation, we have built and operationalized a robust, cloud-native MLOps platform leveraging the CNCF ecosystem including Kubernetes, Helm, ArgoCD, Kubeflow, Keda, OPA and KubeRay. The session covers architectural decisions, MLOps pipelines, resource orchestration, and automation of training, deployment, and monitoring workflows. It addresses enterprise AI use cases including demand forecasting and supply chain optimization, with focus on performance and cost optimization through horizontal scaling, GPU-aware scheduling, and distributed training.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW5a/","tags":["helm","opa","observability","argocd","cost"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"From Idle to Savings: Building a Global Scheduler for Cost-Efficient Data Processing on K8s","speakers":"Rainie Li;Ang Zhang","orgs":"Pinterest;Pinterest","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Intermediate","description":"Pinterest developed a batch scheduling service on Kubernetes that reduces CPU/GPU costs by running big data and AI/ML jobs on temporary and fixed capacity. The service optimizes placement across clusters using capacity forecasts and ML algorithms, scoring jobs by runtime, urgency, and cost. It employs Kubernetes primitives like PriorityClass and nodeAffinity while maintaining thin in-cluster schedulers.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW61/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Redis on EC2 to Valkey on Kubernetes: A Zero-Downtime Case Study","speakers":"Joe Heyburn","orgs":"Braze","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Intermediate","description":"Migrating any database to Kubernetes is challenging, let alone an in-memory data store such as Valkey. In a 24/7/365 environment such as Braze, stopping traffic to copy RDB files is not an option. This real-world case study covers how Braze safely migrated 250+ mission-critical Redis instances from EC2 to Kubernetes with zero downtime and a rollback path, enabling migration to Valkey 8.1 in weeks, reducing tail-end latency by up to 90% when compared to Redis 7.2.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6D/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Ctrl-X, Ctrl-V Your Pods: WG Checkpoint Restore in Kubernetes","speakers":"Adrian Reber;Peter Hunt;Radostin Stoyanov;Viktória Spišaková","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat;University of Oxford;Masaryk University","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"Intermediate","description":"Checkpoint/Restore is a relatively old technology in linux that allows taking a snapshot of a process, and later resuming the execution of that checkpoint. The Kubernetes community established a working group to advance adoption of these technologies. The roadmap includes pod-level checkpointing, an in-tree API, and applications for preemption and eviction particularly beneficial for batch workloads such as AI model training.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6P/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Multi-Network Step-by-Step: Enabling SR-IOV Support From Kubernetes Network (DRA) Drivers","speakers":"Masaharu Kanda;Lionel Jouin","orgs":"NTT, Inc.;Red Hat","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"Intermediate","description":"The SIG-Network community is implementing multi-network support in Kubernetes via Dynamic Resource Allocation (DRA) and PodNetwork resources for NIC allocation. This native approach simplifies advanced networking for AI/ML, Telco, and HPC workloads compared to traditional Multus methods. The CNI DRA Driver reference implementation bridges DRA and CNI for Pod network configuration. Users gain transparent NIC visibility and granular control, including bandwidth allocation per Virtual Function of physical NICs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW67/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Beyond Image Pull-Time: Ensuring Runtime Integrity With Image Layer Signing","speakers":"Toddy Mladenov;Flora Taagen;Dallas Delaney","orgs":"Microsoft;Microsoft;Microsoft","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track, Notary","level":"","description":"The session addresses runtime integrity for container images in cloud-native environments. Existing image signing protects only at pull time, leaving workloads vulnerable to runtime tampering. Notary Project closes this gap through per-layer dm-verity signing and verification, enabling Linux kernel-enforced integrity and IPE policies for continuous protection at runtime and offline. The session is designed for both newcomers to container security and experienced professionals.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6H/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Dragonfly V2.4.0 - Intro, Updates, Data Distribution in AI Infrastructure","speakers":"Wenbo Qi;Chenyu Zhang","orgs":"Ant Group;Ant Group","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track, Dragonfly","level":"","description":"Dragonfly enables efficient, stable, and secure file distribution and image acceleration using P2P technology within cloud-native architectures. The session covers latest version features, enhanced security, model distribution improvements, Kubernetes deployment optimization through OCI Artifacts, and P2P-based state snapshot capabilities for AI agent scenarios.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF79/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Evolution or Revolution: Istio as the Network Platform for Cloud Native","speakers":"Daniel Grimm;Mitch Connors","orgs":"Red Hat;Microsoft","room":"Amtrium 1+2","track":"Maintainer Track, Istio","level":"","description":"Since 2018, Istio has been the premier service mesh for Kubernetes, offering security, observability, and traffic controls. Now in its eighth year, Istio is evolving to become the foundational network for cloud-native technologies, integrating with solutions like Cilium, Calico, and agentgateway. The session will cover Istio's history, multicluster connectivity, AI capabilities via Inference Extension, and opportunities for user contributions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4C/","tags":["observability","networking","cilium"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"How To (Not) Fork Headlamp - Joaquim Rocha, Amutable","speakers":"Joaquim Rocha","orgs":"Amutable","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track, UI Headlamp","level":"","description":"Headlamp is a Kubernetes UI tool officially recognized under the project's SIG UI. The presentation addresses architectural considerations when extending functionality beyond the plugin system's capabilities. Key topics include whether maintaining a fork is justified when your needs exceed plugin offerings, best practices for parallel development of plugins and forks, and a brief overview of Headlamp's architecture including its plugin system to guide architectural decisions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5q/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Longhorn: Intro, Deep Dive and Q&A - David Ko & Divya Mohan, SUSE","speakers":"David Ko;Divya Mohan","orgs":"SUSE;SUSE","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track, Longhorn","level":"","description":"Longhorn is a cloud-native, distributed block storage solution built on Kubernetes and designed for both container and VM workloads. The session covers current project status, V2 data engine improvements, technical architecture, design principles, and future roadmap with audience discussion. Longhorn achieved CNCF incubating project status in November 2021.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF51/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Kill the Ticket Queue: A CNCF Blueprint for Self-Service Platforms","speakers":"Bhavani Indukuri;Aparna Prabhu","orgs":"DigitalOcean;DigitalOcean","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Any","description":"The speakers describe how they cut environment provisioning time from weeks to just minutes and reduce manual infrastructure tickets by 90% by replacing a ticket-based system with a self-service, event-driven platform using CNCF projects. They detail integration of Backstage, Argo Events, Argo Workflows, Argo CD, vClusters, Kyverno, Prometheus, and Grafana, positioning the talk as a playbook for automating DevOps workflows and building internal platforms that enhance developer productivity and governance.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6S/","tags":["otel","platform-eng","policy","backstage","argocd"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Taming Complexity: Building Observable Workflows With Dapr and OpenTelemetry","speakers":"Mauricio Salatino;Kasper Borg Nissen","orgs":"Diagrid;Dash0","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Cloud-native applications present complexity challenges requiring resilient, observable systems without developer burden. The session explores event-driven orchestration via Dapr Workflows paired with OpenTelemetry to reveal application-infrastructure interactions. Combining the OpenTelemetry Operator with Dapr observability enables instrumentation delivering traces, metrics, and logs - even across asynchronous boundaries. A live demonstration showcases these concepts, highlights current gaps, and presents alignment efforts between Dapr and OpenTelemetry specifications, resulting in vendor-portable, developer-friendly observability.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6J/","tags":["observability","otel","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"11:45","time_end":"12:15","type":"talk","title":"Tailor Made: Dynamic Fine-Grained Authorization for API Traffic","speakers":"Erica Hughberg;Andres Aguiar","orgs":"Tetrate;Okta","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"Modern API access control requires authorization models adapting to real-time conditions and complex relationships. The session demonstrates implementing fine-grained authorization at the gateway level by integrating OpenFGA with Envoy Gateway in Kubernetes, enabling context-aware access decisions at the edge. Live demonstrations showcase OpenFGA's Relationship-based Access Control (ReBAC) model solving complex authorization challenges with three practical examples covering multi-tenant SaaS, B2B API access, and data-dependent authorization rules.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6G/","tags":["multi-tenancy","networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Cloud Native at the Far(m) Edge: Running Kubernetes and AI on Tractors","speakers":"Mauro Morales;Jordan Karapanagiotis","orgs":"Spectro Cloud;Aurea Imaging","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Any","description":"The session explores deploying cloud-native workloads at the edge for precision agriculture. Aurea Imaging powers precision agriculture by running AI inference directly on devices mounted on tractors. Using the CNCF Sandbox project Kairos, the platform enables devices to boot from container images running K3s, replacing traditional embedded provisioning with declarative configuration and OTA updates.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW75/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Navigating the Gateway API Maze: 40+ Implementations, 55+ Features, and a Path to Portability","speakers":"Beka Modebadze;Christine Kim","orgs":"Google;Isovalent at Cisco","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Intermediate","description":"The presentation addresses challenges in the rapidly expanding Gateway API ecosystem. With over 40 implementations and 55+ features available, attendees often struggle with decision fatigue. The speakers will present tools for discovering and comparing implementations based on desired features, explain what 'support' means for a feature, and demonstrate how conformance tests ensure portability across vendors, enabling informed choices in Kubernetes networking.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6b/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Beyond the Edge: Cloud Native Application Management Under Extreme Network Conditions","speakers":"Tobias Nöthlich;Maximilian Nitsch","orgs":"D3TN GmbH;D3TN GmbH","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"Intermediate","description":"Kubernetes excels at managing distributed applications in well-connected environments. However, when workloads must communicate over high-latency or intermittent links such as satellites, deep-space probes, remote research stations, and air-gapped systems, traditional IP networking becomes insufficient. This presentation examines how cloud-native practices enable containerized applications to be deployed, updated, and managed through Kubernetes while leveraging Delay-/Disruption-Tolerant Networking (DTN) protocols. The session covers integration points, required networking abstractions, and operational considerations for DTN-enabled workloads, demonstrating how Kubernetes can orchestrate applications beyond conventional network assumptions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6e/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"bof","title":"BoF: AI Infrastructure and Platform: LLMs, Agentic AI","speakers":"Joseph Sandoval","orgs":"Adobe","room":"G106","track":"Experiences","level":"","description":"Cloud native represents an excellent choice for running AI workloads. The session covers best practices for MLOps on cloud native platforms using tools like kubeflow, mlflow, and specialized LLM/Agentic AI solutions. Discussion topics include common pain points when operating such workloads on cloud native infrastructure and identifying gaps within the existing ecosystem.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2IGXo/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"AI'm at the Gate! Introducing the AI Gateway Working Group in Kubernetes","speakers":"Morgan Foster;Nir Rozenbaum;Shachar Tal","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat;Palo Alto Networks","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track, AI Gateway","level":"","description":"This session introduces the newly established AI Gateway Working Group, which focuses on defining and advancing practices and standards at the intersection of AI and networking. The presenters will discuss the WG's mission, scope, and initial work exploring standardization of gateway capabilities for AI systems, including callouts to external backends and payload-processing hooks. They will share early designs, prototypes, and roadmap directions while inviting attendee participation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5t/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Discover Cortex: High Scalability Metrics in 2026 - Friedrich Gonzalez & Charlie Le, Apple","speakers":"Friedrich Gonzalez;Charlie Le","orgs":"Apple;Apple","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track, Cortex","level":"","description":"An interactive session introducing Cortex, one of the most powerful open-source metrics platforms. The session covers improvements from the 1.20 release and roadmap details. Attendees will gain practical insights and expert tips whether beginning their Cortex journey or already contributing. A live Q&A with core maintainers follows.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6K/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Evolving KServe: The Unified Model Inference Platform for Both Predictive and Generative AI","speakers":"Filippe Spolti;JooHo Lee","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track, KServe","level":"","description":"This session examines the evolution of model serving from custom deployments to cloud-native, Kubernetes-based platforms. It addresses challenges in productionizing large language models, including inference efficiency, distributed execution, KV-cache management, and cost optimization. The presentation introduces KServe's latest release featuring a new CRD purpose-built for LLM serving via llm-d, support for disaggregated inference architectures, enhanced model and KV caching, and seamless integration with the open source Envoy AI Gateway.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF54/","tags":["ai","networking","cost","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"KubeVirt's Evolution: Governance, Features, and Community Growth - Sreeja Varnam, NVIDIA; Itamar Holder","speakers":"Sreeja Varnam;Itamar Holder","orgs":"NVIDIA;Red Hat","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track, KubeVirt","level":"","description":"The session explores how KubeVirt maintains health as an open-source initiative while balancing corporate interests through its Enhancements (VEP) process and SIG governance, adapted from Kubernetes' KEP framework. Speakers will detail the VEP lifecycle and demonstrate real-world collaboration using VirtualMachinePool as an example. The discussion covers practical strategies for fostering effective open source collaboration and addresses emerging challenges including AI/high-performance workloads and multi-hypervisor support as the project advances toward CNCF graduation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4y/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Prometheus V3 One Year In: OpenMetrics 2.0 and More!","speakers":"Jan Fajerski;Bartłomiej Płotka","orgs":"Red Hat;Google","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Maintainer Track, Prometheus","level":"","description":"This session covers Prometheus development from version 3.0 through 3.8, detailing major advancements in TSDB storage, secret providers, enhanced PromQL features including rate selectors and time-series functions, plus Native Histograms stabilization. Coverage includes OpenMetrics 2.0, OTLP integration improvements, Remote-Write 2.0 updates, and community governance developments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4F/","tags":["otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Visualizing GitOps: A Tour of Flux UIs in the Open Source Ecosystem","speakers":"Stefan Prodan","orgs":"ControlPlane","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Maintainer Track, Flux","level":"","description":"Flux has always shipped Grafana dashboards for metrics and alerting, but interactive troubleshooting has meant reaching for the Flux CLI. The session introduces a new lightweight UI built into Flux Operator, featuring SSO authentication, Kubernetes impersonation, and mobile-friendly design. It examines tools including Capacitor, Headlamp, Backstage, and Freelens plugins, evaluating security models, Flux API compatibility, and user experience to assist platform teams in selecting visualization solutions for their GitOps infrastructure.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4I/","tags":["backstage","gitops"],"priority":1},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Scaling the Kubernetes Ecosystem: Uber's Approach to Cluster Lifecycle Management","speakers":"Silvio Simunic;Vadim Plakhtinskii","orgs":"Uber;Uber","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"Uber operates numerous clusters processing millions of daily trips across zones, regions, on-premise infrastructure, and cloud providers. Teams require diverse configurations for stateless, batch, and stateful workloads. This case study demonstrates unified cluster configuration, automated provisioning and decommissioning, observability integration, simplified operator deployment, and runtime cluster discovery. Results included reduced manual operational burden, faster lifecycle turnaround, enhanced safety, and improved Uber-specific systems.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6h/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Spin-Up, Test, Tear-Down: How Trivago Runs Developer Preview Environments at Scale","speakers":"Armin Aminian;Jan Wozniak","orgs":"Trivago;Kedify","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"When developers write software, they need places to run and test code. Preview environments enable safe validation, but running hundreds simultaneously can strain cloud budgets. At Trivago, 200+ engineers require reliable, cost-efficient platforms. This session describes their Kubernetes-based preview system using KEDA autoscaling based on actual demand. Topics include architecture, challenges, and why Kubernetes fits this use case, plus metrics and safety checks for reliability.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6Y/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"Evolving Policy Management with Agentic AI: Kyverno MCP and Kagent for Multi-Cluster Governance","speakers":"Shuting Zhao;Dahu Kuang","orgs":"Nirmata;Alibaba Cloud","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Any","description":"Traditional policy management approaches lack flexibility for dynamic environments and struggle with centralized multi-cluster management. This session explores how to use Kyverno, MCP servers, and Kagent to enable policy-as-code while meeting governance requirements in highly customized scenarios. The presentation includes Alibaba Cloud's case study implementing Kyverno with MCP servers for centralized management and Kagent for intelligent cluster distribution.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW72/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","platform-eng","identity","mcp","policy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"The Accidental Platform Team: Kubernetes Operators at Swisscom - Fabian Schulz & Jelena Malic, Swisscom","speakers":"Fabian Schulz;Jelena Malic","orgs":"Swisscom;Swisscom","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Beginner","description":"What happens when Operators outgrow their original scope? At Swisscom, Operators for network automation serve both the 5G Core team and platform team for Kubernetes-as-a-Service. The presenters discuss how they convinced teams with limited Kubernetes expertise to adopt their Operators, designed interfaces hiding complexity, and maintained reliability. Staying close to users, understanding their needs, workflows, and limits, was critical to building Operators they actually wanted to use.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6q/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"14:15","type":"talk","title":"The Shared Service Blueprint: A Guide to Multi-Tenancy, Illustrated With KEDA - Aya Igarashi, Preferred Networks, Inc.","speakers":"Aya Igarashi","orgs":"Preferred Networks, Inc.","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Any","description":"What should you consider when providing a service in a multi-tenant Kubernetes environment? How can you maintain strong tenant isolation when the tools weren't originally designed for it? The session explores practical lessons using KEDA as a case study, covering architectural trade-offs, NetworkPolicy patterns, Kubernetes APIService limitations, and authentication/authorization mechanisms for external API servers in multi-tenant contexts.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6n/","tags":["multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"15:00","type":"contribfest","title":"Contribfest: Supercharge Your Open Source Impact: Backstage ContribFest Live!","speakers":"André Wanlin;Emma Indal;Heikki Hellgren;Elaine de Mattos Silva Bezerra","orgs":"Spotify;Spotify;OP Financial Group;DB Systel GmbH","room":"G107","track":"Contribfest - Backstage","level":"Beginner","description":"Hands-on session for contributing to Backstage, the CNCF internal developer portal project. Covers dev environment setup, the contributing guide, and GitHub issue matching for newcomers. Experienced contributors can tackle advanced challenges and create plugins.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7v/","tags":["backstage"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"13:45","time_end":"15:00","type":"tutorial","title":"Tutorial: Your Application, Batteries Included: Packaging for Deterministic, Secure, and Portable Delivery","speakers":"Brandt Keller;Austin Abro;William Crum;Merijn Keppel;Jessica Drost","orgs":"Defense Unicorns;Defense Unicorns;Spectro Cloud;TrueFullstaq;Isala","room":"Elicium 1","track":"Application Development","level":"Intermediate","description":"This hands-on tutorial explores using Zarf, an OpenSSF Sandbox Project enabling deterministic software delivery. Participants will learn how to build a batteries-included application package, sign and verify its contents, and deploy it in both connected and airgapped environments. The session covers packaging applications with containers, manifests, policies, SBOMs, and configurations into a single verifiable artifact, addressing secure delivery paradigms, provenance, and reproducibility in real-world workflows across clouds and disconnected networks.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW78/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Optimizing Error Recovery for Cost-Efficient Distributed AI Model Training with Kubernetes","speakers":"Radostin Stoyanov;Andrey Velichkevich;Viktória Spišáková","orgs":"University of Oxford;Apple;Masaryk University","room":"Elicium 2","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses distributed AI model training scalability and fault tolerance across multiple nodes. It explores how transparent GPU checkpointing can be integrated with Kubernetes to improve both cost efficiency and cluster utilization for distributed AI workloads. The approach enables recovery from preemptions or failures, and examines checkpoint policy integration with Kueue, JobSet, and TrainJob APIs for Kubernetes-native, infrastructure-level checkpointing of GPU workloads.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7Z/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Virtualizing Large Scale GPU Cluster for Sovereign AI: Petasus AI Cloud Journey with Kubernetes","speakers":"Jian Li","orgs":"SK Telecom","room":"Auditorium","track":"AI + ML","level":"Any","description":"The Haein Supercluster, Korea's largest AI cluster with 1000+ Blackwell GPUs, demonstrates sovereign AI infrastructure built on CNCF projects. This presentation covers virtualizing AI infrastructure using Kubernetes and KubeVirt, achieving less than 5% performance overhead compared to bare-metal through NVLink/NVSwitch and GPUDirect RDMA virtualization. The speaker discusses resource partitioning via namespaces for on-demand GPU cluster creation, automation reducing provisioning from weeks to approximately 10 minutes, and observability enhancements using DCGM and Prometheus.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7f/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Metal3.io's Path to CNCF Incubation: Governance, Processes, and Community","speakers":"Kashif Khan;Dmitry Tantsur","orgs":"Ericsson;Red Hat","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Beginner","description":"The session explores how Metal3.io evolved toward CNCF incubation through governance improvements. Topics include establishing clear roles and decision-making processes, contributing and security guidelines, automating release workflows, and enhancing transparency for contributors. Attendees gain actionable lessons for maintainers and contributors on how to prepare open-source governance.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7E/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"How Telemetry Data Moves: Lessons From Building a High-Performance Open Source Agent","speakers":"Eduardo Silva","orgs":"Chronosphere | A Palo Alto Networks Company","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session explores how telemetry data really moves from the kernel to user space, across threads, buffers, and disks beyond standard APIs. Drawing on Fluent Bit development experience, it examines processing billions of events per minute using custom serialization, adaptive buffering, memory-mapped files, and multithreaded I/O. The discussion connects these design choices to Linux primitives including epoll, async I/O, and zero-copy strategies for predictable resource footprints.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7N/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"A Unified Management and Control Plane for Cloud Native Robots With KubeEdge","speakers":"Sitong Mao;Huan Wei;Yin Ding","orgs":"Huawei;Hangzhou HarmonyCloud Technologies Co., Ltd;VMware by Broadcom","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Emerging + Advanced","level":"Any","description":"Cloud-native technologies including containers and microservices enhance robotic capabilities, yet lack unified management frameworks for industrial automation and logistics. The KubeEdge SIG Robotics initiative integrates cloud-native patterns with Kubernetes to boost robot intelligence and developer productivity. This session presents plug-and-play capabilities for perception, planning, and multi-robot coordination through accessible interfaces, enabling developers to leverage cloud services as local libraries while maintaining seamless edge-to-cloud lifecycle management.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7H/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"bof","title":"BoF: Infrastructure Optimization for GPUs / Inference / Training / Networking","speakers":"Ricardo Rocha","orgs":"CERN","room":"G106","track":"Experiences","level":"","description":"Advanced capabilities for AI and ML workloads on cloud native infrastructure require optimization efforts. Key topics include low-level runtime optimizations such as CPU/GPU NUMA affinity and CPU pinning, low-latency networking for Infiniband and RDMA over Converged Ethernet, and support for heterogeneous hardware including multiple GPU vendors, FPGAs, and other specialized accelerators.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2IGYJ/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Buildpacks: Towards 1.0, AI and Other Things - Aidan Delaney, Bloomberg","speakers":"Aidan Delaney","orgs":"Bloomberg","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track, Buildpacks","level":"","description":"Cloud Native Buildpacks transforms source code into container images for cloud-native development. The session explores two main threads: The Road to 1.0, focusing on the critical milestone of achieving the stability and feature set necessary for widespread user adoption; and the rapidly evolving integration of AI and Machine Learning into the Buildpacks ecosystem, showcasing new features and experiments that simplify building and deploying AI-driven applications.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5w/","tags":["ai"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"CRI-O: Faster Pulls, Better Metrics, and a Future Beyond Images","speakers":"Sohan Kunkerkar;Ayato Tokubi","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track","level":"","description":"The session examines CRI-O's evolution for modern Kubernetes environments. Topics include runtime metrics stabilization, enhancements in OCI artifact and image volume support, and experimentation in peer-to-peer image distribution. The presenters address SIG Node updates, security enhancements, and CRI-O's trajectory beyond traditional container images, providing attendees with insights into forthcoming runtime innovations.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6N/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Envoy in the Era of Agentic Workloads - Yan Avlasov, Google & Erica Hughberg, Tetrate","speakers":"Yan Avlasov;Erica Hughberg","orgs":"Google;Tetrate","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track, Envoy","level":"","description":"Agentic workloads have presented new challenges for the underlying network and require both the data and control planes to evolve. This talk presents Envoy and Envoy AI Gateway as building blocks for service-centric networking for Inference, MCP, and A2A requests, providing a reliable and extensible foundation for agentic systems. The presentation covers an overview of configuration APIs, a deep dive into implementation details, and the roadmap ahead, directly from the maintainers.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF7C/","tags":["ai","networking","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Harbor Project - The Maintainers Session - Yan Wang, Broadcom & Vadim Bauer, 8gears","speakers":"Yan Wang;Vadim Bauer","orgs":"Broadcom;8gears","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track, Harbor","level":"","description":"Harbor continues evolving as a cloud-native registry for secure software delivery across Kubernetes. This maintainer update covers key improvements from Harbor 2.14 and 2.15, shaped by operator and community feedback. The session addresses security enhancements, registry operations, day-2 manageability, and architectural changes relevant to platform teams. Discussion includes upgradeability, performance, ecosystem integration, and upcoming roadmap items with community involvement opportunities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF57/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Making Topology-Aware Scheduling Practical for AI Workloads: From Discovery to Simulation at Scale","speakers":"Weizhou Lan","orgs":"Daocloud","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"In large-scale AI inference clusters, multi-tenant workloads require efficient GPU utilization and dynamic RDMA networking. Heterogeneous GPU interconnect technologies create multi-level network topologies. The presentation addresses three key challenges: dynamic topology discovery and health detection across multiple network layers, topology-aware scheduling supporting priority-based placement with optimal GPU communication paths, and cost-effective simulation of large multi-level topologies. The speaker demonstrates how Kueue achieves topology-aware scheduling and how Kwok simulates thousands of virtual nodes with multi-level topologies for large-scale validation without hardware costs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7K/","tags":["multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Redefining SLIs for LLM Inference: Managing Hybrid Cloud with vLLM & LLM-D","speakers":"Christopher Nuland;Hilliary Lipsig","orgs":"Red Hat;Red Hat","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"Large Language Models are reshaping application delivery, introducing new operational challenges for SREs. Traditional metrics like CPU or request latency are no longer sufficient. Latency is now measured in tokens per second, and reliability depends on routing efficiency and cache hit rates. The session addresses SLOs/SLIs for production LLMs, covering Time-to-First-Token, cache hit ratios, routing latency, and GPU utilization. It demonstrates how vLLM provides batching and caching while llm-d enables intelligent scheduling.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7B/","tags":["ai","ai-agents"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Freedom Through Boundaries: Building Configurations That Age Well","speakers":"Bogdan Nicolae Stancu","orgs":"Adobe","room":"Forum","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Any","description":"A Helm Chart starts simply with options and flags, then feature requests accumulate. The speaker explains that flexibility is not about offering every possible switch, it is about choosing the right ones. The session explores configuration bloat, strategies for remediation, and effective communication with users about architectural decisions.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7c/","tags":["helm","platform-eng"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"Three Shades of Isolation: A Multi-tenancy Fortress - Braulio Dumba & Paolo Dettori, IBM","speakers":"Braulio Dumba;Paolo Dettori","orgs":"IBM;IBM","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Multi-tenancy is a popular architectural concept in cloud native environments. For Kubernetes, it is concerned with sharing a single cluster resource among multiple users referred to as tenants, while maintaining isolation, security, and performance between them. This talk presents a new approach for multi-tenancy isolation hardening tenant boundaries by providing three shades of isolation (data-plane, control-plane and network) for each tenant in a cost-effective manner using open-source technologies: K3s, KubeFlex/KubeStellar, KubeVirt and UDN/OVN-k8s.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7T/","tags":["platform-eng"],"priority":2},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"14:30","time_end":"15:00","type":"talk","title":"SBOMs: Making SBOMs Play Together","speakers":"Jacopo Bufalino;Agathe Blaise","orgs":"CNAM;Thales SIX GTS France","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Security","level":"Intermediate","description":"The Cyber Resilience Act is reshaping software security practices. This session examines why SBOM (Software Bill of Materials) tools produce conflicting results, inconsistent package lists, and mismatched vulnerability reports when scanning container images. The speakers dissect technical causes of these discrepancies, discuss CRA compliance for developers, and explore how the ecosystem must evolve to ensure a transparent, trustworthy, and secure software supply chain.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7Q/","tags":["security"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"From Logs to Decisions: Autonomous AI Agents for Real-Time Kubernetes Threat Response - Willem Berroubache, Orange","speakers":"Willem Berroubache","orgs":"Orange","room":"Elicium 1","track":"AI + ML","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session presents an open-source autonomous AI agent framework utilizing Kubernetes and Kubeflow to enable real-time threat detection and response in cloud-native environments. It covers signal collection via OpenTelemetry, Falco, and Prometheus, ML-based behavior correlation through Kubeflow, and threat reasoning for account takeover, lateral movement, and privilege escalation. Integration with OPA, Kyverno, and GitOps enables automated remediation including rollback and isolation. The framework provides transparent decision explanations via contextual LLMs for auditability.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW8F/","tags":["ai","ai-agents","otel","policy","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"From Jenkins to Tekton: Our Journey Toward a Kubernetes-Native CI/CD with ArgoCD","speakers":"Mustafa Barış Ege;Özge Aygül","orgs":"TÜBİTAK-BİLGEM;TÜBİTAK-BİLGEM","room":"Elicium 2","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Beginner","description":"The presenters share their organization's migration from traditional Jenkins-based CI/CD to a Kubernetes-native approach using Tekton and ArgoCD. Key topics include why they selected Tekton, pipeline restructuring strategies, and GitOps implementation with ArgoCD. They discuss benefits such as reduced resource consumption through ephemeral workloads, improved scalability and transparency, faster deployments, and enhanced software supply chain security.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW86/","tags":["argocd","security","gitops"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"How Statistical Offices Move to Cloud Native Technology - Frédéric Comte, Insee & Trygve Tatsuya Falch","speakers":"Frédéric Comte;Trygve Tatsuya Falch","orgs":"Insee;Statistics Norway","room":"Hall 7 | Room B","track":"Cloud Native Experience","level":"Intermediate","description":"The statistical offices of Norway (SSB) and France (Insee) have adopted cloud-native technologies to modernize their data infrastructures. Most developers are data scientists working outside IT departments, creating unique platform challenges. The presentation covers data platform architecture fundamentals, Kubernetes and CNCF ecosystem implementation, and Onyxia, an open-source project under the MIT license designed to empower data scientists while integrating seamlessly with the CNCF ecosystem.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7l/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"How Many Spark Applications Can Your Etcd Really Handle?","speakers":"João Soares;João Azevedo","orgs":"Feedzai;Feedzai","room":"Hall 8 | Room E","track":"Data Processing + Storage","level":"Advanced","description":"The presenters discuss deploying Apache Spark on Kubernetes and address a critical bottleneck discovered during migration from legacy YARN clusters. Spark custom resources often hundreds of kilobytes in size accumulated in the system under high workload volumes and extended retention. They explain how lingering objects can overwhelm etcd and propose solutions using the Kubernetes API Aggregation Layer for large-scale deployments.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7u/","tags":["helm"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"bof","title":"BoF: AI Observability","speakers":"Alolita Sharma","orgs":"Apple","room":"G106","track":"Experiences","level":"","description":"Observability of AI and ML workloads is becoming of particular importance. The session covers support for observability of inference, training and agent workloads in existing tools; production tools both within and outside the cloud native ecosystem; and identified gaps in the current ecosystem.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2IGYS/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Beyond the Cloud: Managing Baremetal the Kubernetes Way Using Metal3.io: Sylva Project as a Use-case","speakers":"Ádám Rozmán;Nicolas Belouin","orgs":"Ericsson Software Technology;SUSE","room":"E106-108","track":"Maintainer Track, Metal3.io","level":"","description":"As Kubernetes extends beyond cloud environments, managing baremetal infrastructure with the same declarative model has become essential. The session covers Metal3.io's technical components including Baremetal Operator, Ironic, and Cluster API provider (CAPM3), along with production-ready features like virtual media boot and firmware management. The presentation highlights the Sylva project, a European telco and edge cloud initiative, demonstrating automated deployments and large-scale cluster management on baremetal infrastructure.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5z/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Emissary-ingress: Version 4 and What Comes Next - Flynn, Buoyant","speakers":"Flynn","orgs":"Buoyant","room":"G102-103","track":"Maintainer Track, Emissary-ingress","level":"","description":"It's been a long time coming but Emissary-ingress 4 is out. This is the first new major version in some years for Emissary, one of the first Kubernetes-native, self-service API gateways and ingress controllers. The session covers ingress controller needs, self-service developer workflows, and Emissary 4's current state and future roadmap.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF4L/","tags":["networking"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"SIG Docs and You: The New Chapter of the Kubernetes API Reference Generator","speakers":"Kat Cosgrove;Lavish Pal;Rey Lejano","orgs":"Minimus;Independent;Red Hat","room":"F002-005","track":"Maintainer Track, Docs","level":"","description":"The session addresses Kubernetes documentation quality and focuses on improvements to the API reference docs generator made during an LFX Fall mentorship. SIG DOCS improved the reference docs generator by documenting the code, adding error handling, removing deprecated functions, fixing bugs that affected every release cycle, and simplifying the steps required to generate API reference docs. The presenters discuss automating the config.yaml file, planned enhancements, and opportunities for community involvement in strengthening Kubernetes documentation.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF6Q/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"WG-Batch Updates: What's New and What Is Next? - Yuki Iwai, CyberAgent, Inc. & Kevin Hannon, Red Hat","speakers":"Yuki Iwai;Kevin Hannon","orgs":"CyberAgent, Inc.;Red Hat","room":"E103-105","track":"Maintainer Track, Batch","level":"","description":"The session explores Kubernetes evolution for AI and HPC demands. Key topics include foundational updates to the Kubernetes Job API, such as the managedBy and Mutable Container Resource features, alongside JobSet advancements featuring the InPlaceRestart strategy. The presentation covers Kueue capabilities including multi-cluster dispatching, fair sharing, and topology-aware scheduling, plus collaboration with SIG Scheduling on workload-aware scheduling integration.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2EF5A/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"18 Bluetooth Controllers Walk into a Bar: Observability & Runtime Configuration with CNCF Tools","speakers":"Simon Schrottner;Manuel Timelthaler","orgs":"Dynatrace;Tractive","room":"Auditorium","track":"Observability","level":"Any","description":"A presentation exploring observability challenges when managing 18 PlayStation Move controllers via Bluetooth in JoustMania, an open-source party game. The speakers address complexities including sampling from multiple wireless devices, correlating hardware events with gameplay, managing high-cardinality telemetry data, and runtime debugging. Solutions discussed include context-aware feature flags, intelligent sampling strategies, trace correlation between hardware and game logic, and leveraging OpenTelemetry. The session includes a live demonstration of real-time controller telemetry and behavior modification through GitHub-synchronized configuration flags.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7W/","tags":["observability","otel"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Collisions in the Dark: Illuminating the 95% of Kubeflow You Can't See","speakers":"Amine Lahouel;Laura Llinares","orgs":"CERN;CERN","room":"Hall 7 | Room A","track":"Observability","level":"Any","description":"The session explores building observability infrastructure for Kubeflow at CERN. It addresses how High Energy Physics researchers have different monitoring needs from training performance to power consumption to GPU requirements. The presenters demonstrate their approach to leveraging battle-tested monitoring tooling and creating custom dashboards serving both individual researchers tracking GPU utilization and platform managers monitoring usage patterns and costs.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6t/","tags":["observability"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Day-2 Reality Check: Taming Wasteful Telemetry","speakers":"Juraci Paixão Kröhling;Elena Kovalenko","orgs":"OllyGarden;Delivery Hero","room":"Forum","track":"Observability","level":"Advanced","description":"This session addresses telemetry cost management. High-cardinality metrics, duplicate attributes, and over-eager auto-instrumentation silently inflate costs. The talk examines waste sources and demonstrates solutions using the OpenTelemetry Collector to reduce cardinality and transform telemetry while maintaining visibility.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW6M/","tags":["observability","otel","cost"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"The Fourth Pillar Arrives: OpenTelemetry Profiling Alpha in Action - Felix Geisendörfer, Datadog & Florian Lehner, Elastic","speakers":"Felix Geisendörfer;Florian Lehner","orgs":"Datadog;Elastic","room":"Hall 8 | Room F","track":"Observability","level":"Beginner","description":"The OpenTelemetry profiling signal has officially reached alpha! Attendees will learn how to use this new signal to troubleshoot bugs through live demonstration, including setup of the OpenTelemetry eBPF profiler. The session explains why profiling serves both performance optimization and incident root-causing purposes, concluding with discussion of remaining steps for stable signal status and audience participation opportunities.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW0V/","tags":["observability","otel","networking","cilium"],"priority":1},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Is the Agent in the Room with Us Right Now? - Nick Rutigliano & Andrew Halaney, Netflix","speakers":"Nick Rutigliano;Andrew Halaney","orgs":"Netflix;Netflix","room":"Hall 7 | Room C","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"Netflix runs hundreds of thousands of daily workloads across engineering disciplines. This presentation examines how isolation strategies evolved as infrastructure transitioned from Mesos to Kubernetes, enabling safe, reliable execution of diverse workloads. Topics include SECCOMP/AppArmor/landlock enforcement, RBAC network configurations, user namespace isolation, storage isolation, and multi-tenancy improvements.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7o/","tags":["multi-tenancy"],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"K8s-sigs NFD x SYLVA: Declarative Image-to-Node Compatibility for Telco Clouds","speakers":"Eduardo Arango Gutierrez;Chaoyi Huang","orgs":"NVIDIA;Huawei Technology Co., Ltd","room":"Hall 8 | Room D","track":"Operations + Performance","level":"Intermediate","description":"The session addresses runtime failures in portable container images when host kernels, drivers, or hardware differ, particularly in telco/edge environments. It presents a field deployment developed collaboratively by Kubernetes SIGs Node Feature Discovery maintainers and the SYLVA telco-cloud community. The approach encodes host requirements as versioned OCI artifacts alongside images, validates target nodes before scheduling using NFD client tools, and integrates validation into admission, scheduling, and CI/CD workflows across heterogeneous platforms.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW7r/","tags":[],"priority":0},{"day":"Thursday","date":"2026-03-26","time_start":"15:15","time_end":"15:45","type":"talk","title":"Platform Engineering 2.0: Just-Enough Kubernetes and AI-Native DevOps","speakers":"Shweta Vohra","orgs":"Booking.com","room":"Hall 8 | Room G","track":"Platform Engineering","level":"Intermediate","description":"Over the past year, platform engineering is shifting from building everything to building just enough. As teams re-architected and revived multiple internal platforms, one truth became clear: scale without intelligence is waste. The session explores how AI-native DevOps and lean Kubernetes architectures are reshaping platform engineering, discussing tools like k3s, k8s Gateway API, ambient mesh, Kubeflow, Argo, and Prometheus with AI Ops, aiming to help platform teams evolve from heavy, static systems to self-optimizing, adaptive ecosystems aligned with business value.","url":"https://kccnceu2026.sched.com/event/2CW80/","tags":["ai","otel","networking","platform-eng"],"priority":0}];