Call for Speakers
Cloud Native Melbourne
25 Aug 2026
Melbourne, Australia
Cloud Native Melbourne is the CNCF community group for Melbourne's platform, infrastructure and cloud native practitioners.
We meet through the year for practitioner talks on Kubernetes, platform engineering, observability, open source and the wider CNCF landscape. Our audience is platform engineers, SREs, architects and engineering leads — people who run this in production and want to hear how it actually went for someone else.
We are vendor-neutral. Speakers are welcome from any company, but talks are about the problem, not the product.
What we look for
Real implementation stories. What you ran, what it cost you, what broke, and what you would do differently. We prefer live demos and honest retrospectives over polished overviews.
Some topics our community cares about: platform engineering and internal developer platforms; Kubernetes in production, including the unglamorous parts; observability, OpenTelemetry, SLOs and on-call reality; open source across the CNCF landscape; cost, scale and the trade-offs you actually made; AI and agentic workloads on cloud native infrastructure.
Formats
Lightning talk, 5 to 10 minutes. One idea, one lesson, one demo. Ideal if you have not spoken before.
Deep dive, 20 to 40 minutes. A full case study or workflow, with time for questions.
First-time speakers welcome
You do not need to be an expert or an experienced speaker. Some of our best talks come from people doing it for the first time. We will help you shape the topic, review your slides, and rehearse the demo before the night.
Where and when
Melbourne, in person, on our scheduled dates through the year. Venues are hosted by partners across the CBD and Docklands and are confirmed per event.
We also work closely with Cloud Native Sydney, Cloud Native Auckland, Cloud Native Wellington and KSUG.AI, and we help run KCD Melbourne.
Questions: thiago.shimada@gmail.com
We follow the CNCF Code of Conduct.
Call for Speakers
01 Jan 2026
31 Dec 2026
We are always looking for speakers, and the call is open year-round.
You do not need to be an expert or a professional speaker. In fact we love hearing from people speaking for the first time. The best talks are honest, imperfect, and show real work in progress.
What we are looking for
Talks about systems you actually run. We prefer live demos and real stories over product overviews or sales pitches. If it broke in production and you fixed it, that is a talk.
Topic ideas based on what our community cares about:
Platform engineering — internal developer platforms, golden paths, what your developers actually asked for versus what you built.
Kubernetes in production — upgrades, multi-tenancy, the operational reality nobody puts in the conference version.
Observability — OpenTelemetry, SLOs that survived a real on-call roster, killing dashboards nobody reads, and what your monitoring bill looks like.
Open source — a CNCF project you use, contribute to, or replaced, and why.
Cost and scale — the trade-offs you made and what they cost you.
AI and agentic workloads — running them on cloud native infrastructure, safely and affordably.
Session formats
Lightning talk, 5 to 10 minutes. Best for first-time speakers or a single sharp idea. One tool, one lesson, one demo.
Deep dive, 20 to 40 minutes. Best for a full case study or workflow, with time for questions.
We are here to help
If you have an idea but feel nervous about speaking, submit anyway. We can help you refine the topic, review your slides, and practise your demo beforehand.
Please note
This is a vendor-neutral CNCF community group. Speakers from vendors are very welcome, but talks must be about the problem rather than the product. No sales or recruitment pitches.
We follow the CNCF Code of Conduct: https://github.com/cncf/foundation/blob/main/code-of-conduct.md
Questions? Email thiago.shimada@gmail.com
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