Sebastian Kister
CNCF, Transformation Evangelist & Audi AG's Team Lead for Container Competence Center, Platforms & Operations
Ingolstadt, Germany
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Sebastian Kister is an influential figure in enterprise transformation and a top consultant for C-Level executives. Currently running for the Governance Board at CNCF, he combines hands-on leadership with visionary insights, spearheading a Competence Center at AUDI focused on IT infrastructure.
A dynamic startup professional, Sebastian has played a pivotal role in guiding products from conception to market leadership through innovative, cutting-edge technologies. He is committed to challenging the status quo, fostering a culture of innovation, and driving continuous progress within organizations.
Sebastian emphasizes the distinction between mere reorganization and true transformation. He advocates for a „people-first“ approach, believing that when organizations prioritize their people, they empower them to solve complex problems. Conversely, a „process-first“ mindset often leads to mere compliance rather than genuine problem-solving.
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Topics
Audi’s Kubernetes Platform as a driver of Cultural Change and Container Security
As a central partner for all business divisions within the Audi Group, Audi IT is a major driver of digital transformation throughout the company, and provides support along the entire process chain in the development of intelligent, reliable and more secure IT solutions. The Kubernetes Competence Center is driving the standardization of platform projects in the VW Group, tearing down the walls of a plan-build-run culture to create a professional service organization and driving the digitalization by enabling the innovators with secure, reliable and robust runtimes in the cloud. This session is not technical and will look at procurement, make or buy decisions, cultural change and customer centricity as well as involvement in the CNCF and Linux foundation of a leading automotive enterprise.
Greenfield is an illusion. Real talk on platforms and enterprise transformation.
In the last year my talks focussed on why we need a people-first transformation and the difference between transformation and reorganization. "If you transform people-first, people solve problems: If you transform process-first, people satisfy processes."
We've changed the paradigm of how to transform enterprises from process-first to people-first and shaped the term "people-first transformation". We've created a new culture in many enterprises world wide and some even won awards and international recognition.
Now let's talk about the fundamentals of life, where rationality ends and how the right mix of realism and idealism can change the many worlds we're in.
I'm excited to turn the page with you and check out this new chapter in enterprise transformation.
Agentic Platform Engineering reinforces people-first transformation
Budgets shrink and talent is scarce, scaling operations demands more than headcount: it needs asymmetric innovation. This keynote explores how agentic platforms enable secure, enterprise-ready delegation rather than automation which is bridging the skill gap and driving IT modernization.
Let's deep dive into it through one concrete example. Learn how to move from reactive OPS to resilient, real-time remediation, proving that agent-based engineering isn't just talk - it's the new platform engineering paradigm and it is NOW.
From Automation to Context-Aware Delegation - How to become the 5%
According to Gartner, 95% of enterprise AI initiatives fail - not because of the technology, but because organizations lack the cultural, operational and contextual foundation to make AI work in production. This session shows what it takes to be part of the 5% that succeed - real, deployed, hands-on. No buzz words, no myths, no false promises.
We’ll explore the shift from scripted automation to context-aware, agentic delegation, where systems understand environments, dependencies, and intent. By embedding context into neural networks and context graphs, we move from maintaining scripts to delegating outcomes - enabling deterministic, auditable, and resilient automation across any infrastructure, including air-gapped systems.
Using real examples from platform engineering and enterprise operations, we’ll demonstrate how context-aware automation might reshape open source adaption and the entire cloud-native ecosystem.
Don’t be fooled: success takes more than just tech - it requires a mindset-shift, governance, and a culture ready to rethink everything that they've learned. Forget your current "now" and take something home that helps you with your decision making - especially if you're desperate about bringing your automation-KPI up.
Don't fight the silo!
This talk is for everyone: Sebastian is an award winning global thought leader for enterprise transformation and he gives an inspiriational idea and a blueprint on how to create transformational forces in your company infrastructure-up. It's your life advice on how communication makes life easier and it's the session where you gain insight in howfar infrastructure, the foundation of the digital world, has the power and the responsibility to become the enabler of any organisation. Remember:
When you do transformation people-first, people solve problems. When you do it process-first, people satisfy processes. Read that again.
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Sebastian Kister
CNCF, Transformation Evangelist & Audi AG's Team Lead for Container Competence Center, Platforms & Operations
Ingolstadt, Germany
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