CloudCon Sydney to tackle AI & Kubernetes in production

CloudCon Sydney 2026 will bring Australia's cloud-native technology community together at ICC Sydney, with a focus on the practical challenges of running AI, Kubernetes, platform engineering and security in production.

The two-day gathering is aimed at engineers, architects, developers, technology leaders and other practitioners working across cloud-native environments. The programme will centre on technical discussion, hands-on workshops and peer-led sessions rather than vendor-led presentations.

CloudCon is being positioned around the shift many organisations are making from AI trials to live deployment of AI and agentic workloads. That transition has increased attention on the infrastructure, governance and operational issues involved in building and securing these systems.

"CloudCon is about bringing the cloud-native community together to share knowledge, experiences and some of the hard-won lessons that you don't necessarily get from a vendor presentation," said Rob Kenefeck, CloudCon Organiser.

"Technology moves fast, and we know it can be difficult for practitioners to keep up with what is actually useful and what's just hype. The conversations at CloudCon are about what people are really building and running, which is what makes the event worth coming to.

"We want people to come along and learn something new. You'll meet others dealing with similar challenges and go home with ideas you can take straight to your team," Kenefeck said.

Programme focus

The event is set to feature more than 16 speakers across more than 13 sessions. Topics include AI and platform engineering, AI agents running on Kubernetes, cloud-native security, observability, eBPF, internal developer platforms, performance and scalability, and GitOps for application management at scale.

Sessions will involve Canva, Honeycomb.io, Vodafone, Peakhour.io, NHS, Core-X, Grafana Labs and Mercari. The single-track format is intended to let attendees follow the full programme without having to choose between overlapping sessions.

Hands-on workshops will also form part of the event, giving attendees direct exposure to the cloud-native tools and operational approaches being discussed across the wider programme.

The event comes amid rapid change in enterprise technology priorities, particularly as AI reshapes cloud infrastructure decisions and cybersecurity governance. Teams are weighing how to support AI workloads securely and reliably while maintaining developer productivity.

Brendon Thwaites, CloudCon Organiser, said the event comes as Australian organisations assess both hosted and local AI models amid a wider policy discussion about sovereignty and safeguards.

"AI is rapidly changing the conversation in most organisations with respect to cloud infrastructure and how applications are built, deployed and secured," said Brendon Thwaites, CloudCon Organiser.

"The people responsible for making these technologies work are investigating options for both hosted and local models, following recent public statements from Australian Government sources around some much-needed sovereignty, governance and guardrails. The goal is usually to reliably and securely support AI workloads without slowing developers down.

"CloudCon gives the community a place to openly have those conversations. It's bringing together people who are experimenting, solving problems and learning from each other," Thwaites said.

Community roots

CloudCon grew out of Australia's cloud-native community and has support from local chapters in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation ecosystem. It is described as a practitioner-focused event designed to reflect the day-to-day realities faced by teams building and operating modern platforms.

The target audience spans experienced Kubernetes specialists as well as developers, DevOps and Site Reliability Engineering professionals, platform engineers, architects, security specialists and technology leaders. That broad mix reflects how cloud-native operations now cut across infrastructure, software delivery, governance and risk management.

As AI workloads move into production, the operational burden on those teams is changing. The issues under discussion at the event - from observability and performance to security controls and application management - point to a market less concerned with experimentation alone and more focused on reliability, scale and oversight.