This was the second time I was sent to KubeCon + CloudNativeCon to showcase our DevRel team’s work, and I wanted to write a little recap of my week in Amsterdam. My goal here is mostly personal: what I saw, felt, and learned. But I’ll also highlight the awesome work our team did at the conference.
I still get impostor feelings engaging with technical audiences (I don’t have a deep technical background), but KubeCon is always welcoming: competitors mingle, maintainers joke on stage, and open source brings people together.
From London 2025 → Amsterdam 2026: smoother, smarter, happier
Last year in London, I handled all the filming and social content solo: ad‑hoc videos, spotty Wi‑Fi, and a lot of unexpected walking between rooms. I think I came home with blisters and three half-finished uploads.
This year was better. Much better. I arrived with scripts and shotlists for each day, and, most important, a team behind me. Instead of relying on the daily schedule, we planned content around themes and made deliberate choices about what to capture. No more feeling uncomfortable filming myself in public. On the contrary, judging by LinkedIn, short-form video content seems to have become the norm for many Dev Advocates.
Having teammates handling editing, editorial, and uploads made everything way smoother and fun.
If you want to watch the shorts I created, here they are:
- I’m Going to KubeCon EU 2026! (Travel Day): https://youtube.com/shorts/RT5YIMz1Hj0
- Observability Day Was PACKED with talks (Day 0): https://youtube.com/shorts/uwcGDphr0aQ
- OpenTelemetry Is Everywhere at KubeCon (Day 1): https://youtube.com/shorts/-LyfOJtCzTg
- Can We Make Kubernetes Greener? (Day 2): https://youtube.com/shorts/pON0VniX1DY
- KubeCon EU 2026 Wrap-Up (OpenFeature, Keynotes & Full Recap): https://youtube.com/shorts/Iwh8A5la078
My highlights
Meeting people in person
If conferences are good for anything, it’s this: real, messy, human connection. After a year of remote work and the occasional office drop‑in, spending time with people IRL felt energizing. I helped Adriana record shorts for a Humans of OpenTelemetry series (coming soon!), chatted with DevRels, SEs, and marketing folks from Dynatrace, and bumped into acquaintances from last year. I even “dragged” a few of them into videos with me — sorry, not sorry.
The booth was busy, too: lots of curious folks stopped by to talk Dynatrace (and our Lego raffles 😉). Those conversations are the reason I love conferences.
Seeing cool ideas
Some sessions really stuck with me:
- Adriana’s OpenTelemetry gameshow on Observability Day was brilliant. Watching maintainers get quizzed on their own project was equal parts hilarious and humbling. It made me wonder how well I’d do if quizzed on a tool I use each day.
- Henrik’s poster session on making Kubernetes greener was thoughtful and leaves you thinking about the environmental footprint of software design.
- Simon’s demo (observing PlayStation Move controllers with OpenTelemetry) brought people on stage to play — dashboard hiccups and all. It was playful and memorable, which is exactly the kind of demo that gets people excited about instrumentation.
Nerdy swag
There’s always swag. This year felt different from London: fewer free tees and more demo‑gated giveaways. Maybe it’s tighter budgets, maybe it’s a greener approach — either way, people still love Lego. Our Lego raffles were a hit; judging by the turnout, that assumption seems safe.
Final thoughts
KubeCon continues to be a place where I belong, even when I don’t feel like a “deep tech” person. The people make it welcoming, the talks make it interesting, and the unexpected demos make it fun. Also, having a team to lean on for content creation made a huge difference. So if you’re planning coverage for a conference, bring a tiny army.
If you want a deeper write‑up of any session (Adriana’s gameshow, Henrik’s greener‑Kubernetes work, or Simon’s PlayStation demo), or you want me to expand one of the shorts into a full recap, tell me which and I’ll dig in. And if you watched any of the videos, I’d love to hear which one you liked most.
