OSS + ELC EU 2026

In this session, we’ll explore Kubernetes controllers, CRDs, and admission webhooks using K8s Dungeon Crawl: a modified roguelike game where in-game monsters are represented by live Kubernetes resources running in the cluster.

As gameplay unfolds, the Kubernetes control plane becomes part of the game itself. Monsters are represented as Kubernetes Deployments, dungeon entities are modeled as CRDs, and admission webhooks dynamically mutate and validate cluster behavior as gameplay progresses.

Using KubeBuilder, we’ll walk through how controllers and webhooks interact with the Kubernetes API while demonstrating reconciliation loops, admission control, CRDs, declarative state management, runtime policy enforcement, and event-driven Kubernetes behavior.

The session demonstrates controllers reconciling game and cluster state, mutating and validating admission webhooks, GitOps deployment using Helm and Argo CD, and observability with Prometheus and Grafana.

Rather than treating Kubernetes concepts as abstract control-plane mechanics, this session turns them into visible gameplay interactions that make Kubernetes behavior easier to understand and reason about.

2026 has been a big year for supply chain attacks. Shai-Hulud, TeamPCP and others are determined to weaponise open source to hack our communities.

In this talk I'll show you tools and techniques you can use to defend your projects against them, and common pitfalls

Most MySQL incidents don't start with downtime, they start with small changes that go unnoticed for weeks or months.

This session focuses on operational trend analysis rather than real-time monitoring. We'll explore how growing full table scans, rising temporary table usage, lock contention, redo log pressure, buffer pool inefficiencies, and index bloat can reveal future performance and stability issues long before users are affected.

Through practical examples, attendees will learn how to identify meaningful signals, separate noise from actionable insights, and build lightweight monitoring approaches that provide long-term visibility into database health.

Whether you're a DBA, SRE, platform engineer, or developer responsible for production systems, you'll leave with a practical framework for understanding MySQL health over time.

Most first contributions fail before the code does. They try to solve too much, touch too many files, and stall in review while the maintainer waits for a smaller entry point that never comes.

Adding HTTPS support to proxy-chain, a Node.js proxy library used across the web-scraping ecosystem, taught me this the hard way. My first attempt was comprehensive: tunnel support, byte accounting, certificate handling, the works. It went nowhere. What merged was a version that did one thing and stopped.

We'll use that contribution as a case study in scoping. The technical context matters, because it's a great example of hidden complexity: TLS changes proxy semantics in ways that aren't obvious until you're counting bytes and realising the handshake traffic your code never sees is inflating every number. But the talk is really about the decisions behind the code - how to identify what "done" looks like before you start, how to read a maintainer's priorities from their issue tracker, and how to negotiate a PR boundary that gets merged rather than praised and ignored.

You'll leave with a framework for scoping contributions that ship, and a clearer sense of when doing less is the right call.

Open source communities are like a busy marketplace from some fantasy book. They are crowded, full of magic, and have all kinds of information. You will meet there many different characters: the wizards who saw everything twice and have every answer; the newbies who just landed and are completely lost; or the jumpy folks looking desperately for some quick fix for their production issue. It can be an intimidating place and it can be hard to find the right answers. This talk will try to help you navigate it. What are the differences between commercial support and community help? How do you find the right channel for your questions? What are the things you should always include when asking for help with some problem? How to deal with confidential data in your logs or configurations? This talk will try to answer all these questions and more. It will help you to ask for help like a pro and get the best answers quickly to get your systems up and running as soon as possible.

In 2018, I applied to an open source program with no expectations.

I wasn't from a well-known college. I didn't have a strong professional network. Like many students, I was simply looking for a way to learn, gain experience, and figure out where my career was headed.

That single application led to opportunities I could never have predicted.

Over the next few years, open source introduced me to mentors, global communities, speaking opportunities, internships, scholarships, leadership roles, and eventually a full-time career in technology. More importantly, it changed how I viewed learning, collaboration, and my own potential.

This session is a personal story about how one open source opportunity created a ripple effect that shaped an entire career.

Along the way, I'll share the practical lessons I learned about contributing to projects, building relationships within communities, overcoming self-doubt, and creating opportunities that don't exist in traditional classrooms.

Whether you're a student, an aspiring contributor, this talk offers a realistic look at how community-driven programs can create life-changing opportunities.