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About Community Stack
Community Stack builds, operates and stewards the infrastructure communities rely on. We support technical, civic and third-sector communities through our own communities and conferences, platforms, discovery tools, campaigns and research.
Why we exist
Communities move knowledge, create opportunity, build careers, support participation, shape markets and reach people that institutions often miss.
The reality
Too many run on fragmented tools, volunteer goodwill, short funding cycles and knowledge that walks out of the door when people move on.
Our response
We treat communities as long-term infrastructure.
That means building the platforms, operating standards, commercial models, discovery layers and stewardship structures that help essential networks last beyond individual organisers, funding cycles and market shifts.
Mission
To build and steward the next generation of social infrastructure.
Helping technical, civic and third-sector communities become more discoverable, resilient, accessible, sustainable and better understood.
Vision
A world where communities are treated as critical infrastructure.
Technical communities, charities, grassroots organisations, civic groups and local networks shouldn't have to survive on accidental discovery, fragile tooling or short-term funding.
Our purpose: making communities
01
Easier to find
Helping people discover the organisations, events, services, and networks that can support them.
02
Easier to run
Providing shared tools, platforms, governance, commercial support, and operating infrastructure.
03
Easier to sustain
Building long-term models for funding, stewardship, accessibility, partnerships, and resilience.
04
Easier to understand
Creating responsible insight that helps communities, partners, funders, and institutions make better decisions.
05
Harder to lose
Ensuring vital communities can outlast individual organisers, fragile tooling, short-term funding, and market shifts.
How we're organised
We operate communities directly. We build the platform underneath them. We give the wider community-led market a way to use it. Five pillars, one operating model.
Ecosystem is the portfolio layer of Community Stack. It is where we own, operate, and steward practitioner communities, leadership networks, conferences, and ecosystem brands. These communities are operated as long-term infrastructure, with shared standards, operational support, sponsor relationships, speaker networks, governance, and local identity protected.
Purpose
To operate communities and conferences as trusted, long-term infrastructure, not one-off activity.
What it gives us
Direct relationships with practitioners, organisers, sponsors, speakers, vendors, enterprises, public institutions, and local ecosystems.
Our story
Community Stack was built by organisers, one community at a time. Every tool we make and every conference we run comes from doing the work first.
Yorkshire DevOps meetupSwipe to follow the story →
Where we came from
Community Stack wasn't founded from a slide deck or a market theory. It was built by people who were already doing the work: years of organising grassroots meetups, supporting speakers, finding sponsors, running events, building networks, and absorbing the pressure when the systems around communities failed.
We saw a pattern. Communities with strong networks, funding and visibility could grow. Communities doing equally valuable work without those advantages struggled with discoverability, capacity, governance and sustainability.
Community Stack was created to address that imbalance. Not as one product or one event series, but as a long-term operating model for community infrastructure.
What we've built so far
2021
Ethan Sumner founds Young DevOps and runs more than 20 events.
2022
Yorkshire Azure User Group launched with Ethan Jones. Eight people came to the first event.
2022
Sheffield DevOps and Leeds DevOps launch, then come together as Yorkshire DevOps.
2024
GenAI UK launched; it's now AI Operators Global.
May 2025
Community Stack launches in Barnsley as an umbrella for more communities, founded by Ethan Sumner.
August 2025
Community Switchboard announced.
December 2025
Acquired Cloud Platform Engineering London (~2,000 members) from Appvia.
January 2026
Overmind announced as Global Ecosystem Platinum Sponsor.
February 2026
Expanded into APAC with three Bangalore community acquisitions; surpassed 24,000 members.
March 2026
2026 conference programme announced; three national campaigns launched; Community Engine announced.
April 2026
Acquired GCP London User Group; launched Cloud & Platform Security Global Conference; surpassed 25,000 members.
April 2026
Community Switchboard national launch; Barnsley HQ and Advanced Accessibility R&D Lab announced.
June 2026
Next phase of the ecosystem announced: 3 ecosystems, 18 communities, 12 conferences, and a 100,000+ member ambition.
July 2026
Portfolio refocused on two core pillars: operating the largest independent portfolio of technical communities in the UK, and building the software community operations run on.
October 2026
Engine Community Edition and Junction launch on 16 October 2026.
Built in Barnsley
Most organisations with our ambition would set up in London. We didn't, and we won't.
This region understands community infrastructure. Mining communities, working men's clubs, mutual aid societies, the cooperative movement, local organising and civic resilience have shaped South Yorkshire for generations. That history matters.
Close to the communities that matter most.
Being in Barnsley keeps us close to the communities too often left out when infrastructure is designed elsewhere. Our hubs, partnerships, campaigns and reinvestment model reflect that.
National and global, with local identity protected.
We're building national and global infrastructure from South Yorkshire, with local identity protected rather than flattened.
This isn't a brand position. It's an operating decision.
The team
We don't just build tools for communities. We run them every week, from booking the venue to hosting the night and following up afterwards.
Community organiser and technologist from Barnsley. Ethan has spent years running grassroots meetups across Yorkshire and has worked at Microsoft, Mastercard and global consultancies. He leads strategy, partnerships, platform direction and the operating model.
And behind every event: the speakers, hosts and volunteers who make it happen.
Organise, speak, host or volunteer. There's a place for you in the team behind the room.
What we're working towards
01
Operate at a scale that proves the work.
The largest independent portfolio of technical communities in the UK, every one of them running on our own tools. If it does not work for us, it is not ready for anybody else.
02
Turn what we have learned into infrastructure.
The tools, the blueprints, the commercial models and the methods, written down and handed over. Knowledge that stays inside one organisation is not infrastructure. It is just an advantage.
03
Make it free where it matters most.
Engine open source at the core and free forever. A credible, accessible digital presence for every charity and grassroots organisation in the country at no cost.
04
Prove that community infrastructure travels.
The third sector first, then somewhere new, showing that the same foundation serves markets that look nothing alike.
05
Fund it properly.
The commercial side pays for the civic side. Never donation appeals, never annual funding rounds we have to win in order to survive, never unpaid evenings. Civic infrastructure should be fundable rather than charitable.
06
Build it to outlast us.
Open code, open directories, shared standards and stewardship structures that survive any one organiser, any one funder, and any one company. Including this one.
Operating principles
Ten principles that hold across every product, partnership, pricing decision and governance choice we make.
01
Infrastructure first.
We build for durability, not hype.
02
Stewardship before scale.
Growth matters. Trust matters more.
03
Communities first, always.
We do not sell individual member data, run pay to play speaking slots, or accept sponsorship that buys editorial control. It costs us money. It is why the rooms are worth being in.
04
Free where it matters, paid where it can be.
There will never be a paywall between a small organisation and a basic digital presence.
05
Accessibility by default.
Accessibility is part of the infrastructure, not an enhancement, and never something we withhold at any price.
06
Open where possible.
Engine's core is open source and stays that way. We do not use licensing to trap organisations that cannot afford to leave.
07
Local agency, shared standards.
Each community keeps its identity while benefiting from shared infrastructure.
08
Reinvestment over extraction.
Revenue improves quality, governance, technology, accessibility and resilience before it does anything else.
09
Impact over activity.
We measure outcomes, not activity for its own sake.
10
Trust by design.
We are clear about who runs communities, how decisions are made, and where the value goes.
Strategic aims
The outcomes Community Stack is organised to achieve as a community infrastructure group.
Who we work with
Sponsors fund the ecosystem, partners open their doors, and practitioners from hundreds of organisations fill the rooms.
The companies that fund the ecosystem and keep our events free to attend.
Platinum
Gold
AI Native Sponsor
Past sponsors
If you're building for the long term, so are we.
Organiser, sponsor, partner, funder, institution, investor or operator: Community Stack exists to help communities become easier to find, run, sustain and understand, and harder to lose.
