Community Stack Ecosystem

Speak across the Community Stack ecosystem.

A practical guide for speakers, panellists, workshop leads, and practitioners sharing real-world experience across our communities, conferences, and leadership networks.

Community Stack operates a globally connected portfolio of technical communities, leadership networks, and flagship conferences across AI, cloud, DevOps, platform engineering, open source, data, and startup ecosystems. We are looking for practitioners, leaders, founders, engineers, operators, and technical specialists with lessons worth sharing. You do not need to be a professional speaker. You need a useful story, a practical lesson, or a real experience that can help the community learn.

18
Communities
8
Conferences
25,000+
Members
100+
Events / Year
Global
Reach

Real talks. Practical lessons. Senior technical audiences. No vendor roadmaps.

Opportunities

Why speak with Community Stack?

Community Stack is built around high-signal, practitioner-led communities. Our events are designed for people building, operating, leading, funding, and scaling real technology systems.

Practitioner-led audiences

Speak to engineers, architects, founders, operators, and technology leaders who care about real-world implementation, not generic thought leadership.

Ecosystem-wide opportunities

A strong talk can lead to future opportunities across meetups, conferences, panels, workshops, podcasts, video content, and leadership roundtables.

Credible community infrastructure

Our portfolio brings together communities, conferences, partners, sponsors, speakers, and attendees through a shared operating model.

Support before and after the event

We help speakers shape the topic, promote the session, deliver the event, and share the recording afterwards where appropriate.

Criteria

What makes a strong talk?

We want practitioners on stage, not just presenters. If you have shipped something, learned something hard, made a decision that mattered, or seen a pattern others can learn from, that is a talk worth giving.

Formats

Speaking formats

Different events need different formats. Some speakers are best suited to a keynote, some to a practical talk, some to a panel, and some to a hands-on workshop.

Keynote

45 min + 5 min Q&A

Best for senior leaders, major technical themes, strategic shifts, industry lessons, and high-impact opening or closing sessions.

Example topics

  • The future of platform engineering in the age of AI
  • What enterprises are really learning from GenAI adoption
  • Building technical organisations that can move faster without breaking trust

Main Talk

25 min + 5 min Q&A

Best for practical lessons, implementation stories, technical walkthroughs, leadership lessons, and focused case studies.

Example topics

  • How we built an internal developer platform
  • Lessons from deploying AI agents in production
  • What we learned moving from DevOps to platform engineering

Lightning Talk

10 min

Best for short, sharp lessons, early ideas, project updates, lessons learned, or focused technical insights.

Example topics

  • Three mistakes we made with Kubernetes cost optimisation
  • What I wish I knew before becoming a staff engineer
  • A quick pattern for safer AI workflow design

Ignite Talk

5 min

Best for fast-paced ideas, provocations, mini-lessons, and community updates.

Example topics

  • Stop calling everything a platform
  • Why your AI demo is not a product
  • The one DevOps metric I would actually keep

Panel

4 panellists + moderator

Best for discussion, debate, market trends, leadership perspectives, founder/operator insight, and comparing experiences across organisations.

Example topics

  • The future of cloud native and open source AI
  • The talent war for AI, cloud, and platform engineers
  • Scaling a consultancy in 2026

Workshop

90 min

Best for hands-on learning, guided technical exercises, implementation sessions, and collaborative problem solving.

Example topics

  • Building your first AI agent workflow
  • Designing a platform product canvas
  • Collaborative Kubernetes development for AI workloads

Depth

Talk difficulty levels

When you submit a talk, choose the level that best reflects the depth of the content. This helps us match the session to the right audience and event format.

Communities

Where you can speak

Community Stack operates across several connected ecosystems. Speakers can apply to one specific group or stay flexible and let us match the talk to the best audience.

Data & AI

  • GenAI UK
  • Data and AI Leaders

Cloud

  • Yorkshire Azure User Group
  • Azure AI UG
  • AWS AI UG
  • GCP London UG

DevOps & Platform Engineering

  • Yorkshire DevOps
  • Cloud Platform Engineering London
  • Platform Engineering Leaders
  • Cloud Platform Engineering India

Cloud Native & Open Source

  • Cloud Native & Open Source AI

Startups, Ventures & Operators

  • Tech Startup, Venture & Operators

Flexible

Not sure where your talk fits? Select Flexible on the form and we will help place it in the right community, conference, meetup, panel, or workshop.

How it works

The process

We keep the process simple, clear, and speaker-friendly.

01

You find this page

Well done. You are already in the right place. This guide explains the formats, expectations, process, and information we need.

02

Submit your talk idea

Complete the speaker form with your topic, abstract, bio, preferred format, and the communities you would like to speak at.

03

We review the fit

The Community Stack team reviews the topic against our communities, event calendar, audience needs, and upcoming themes.

04

We confirm the opportunity

If the talk is a fit, we will confirm the event, format, date, audience, recording preference, and any support you need.

05

The event goes live

Once confirmed, the meetup, conference session, or panel goes live across the relevant Community Stack channels.

06

Marketing begins

We promote the session through the website, community channels, LinkedIn, email, partner networks, and speaker announcements.

07

You deliver the session

You speak at the event, panel, workshop, meetup, or conference. Our team supports logistics, check-in, timing, and audience questions.

08

The video goes live

Where recording is approved, the session may be shared on YouTube, LinkedIn, the Community Stack website, and future ecosystem content.

The form

What we need from you

The speaker form gives us the information needed to review your submission, promote the session, support logistics, and create a strong speaker experience.

Support

Recording, approvals, and support

Recording options

You can choose whether your session can be recorded and shared publicly on YouTube, LinkedIn, and the Community Stack website. You can also request to review the video before publication.

Employer approval

Some speakers need internal approval before speaking publicly. If needed, we can provide a simple template approval letter explaining the event, topic, audience, and format.

Speaker support

You do not need to be a polished professional speaker. If you would like feedback, help shaping the talk, or support preparing for your session, let us know in the form.

Promotion

Help us share the event

Once your session is confirmed and live, we ask speakers to help share the event with their network. This helps the right audience find the session and makes the event stronger for everyone involved.

We will provide speaker assets where possible, including event links, social copy, graphics, and key details. You do not need to over-promote, but a simple LinkedIn post can make a big difference.

Example speaker post

I am speaking at [event name] with Community Stack on [topic]. The session will cover [short summary]. Join us if you are interested in [audience/topic]. Register here: [link]

Please tag Community Stack where possible so we can reshare and support the post.

Inspiration

Examples of strong talk ideas

AI and Data

  • Lessons from deploying AI agents in production
  • How we built a practical GenAI workflow inside the enterprise
  • What data leaders need to know about AI governance
  • The real cost of moving from AI demos to AI products

Cloud and Platform

  • Building an internal developer platform that teams actually use
  • Cloud modernisation lessons from a complex enterprise environment
  • How we improved reliability without slowing delivery
  • What platform teams should measure and what they should ignore

DevOps and Engineering Leadership

  • From DevOps to platform engineering
  • How we changed engineering culture across multiple teams
  • The hidden work behind developer experience
  • Incident learning without blame theatre

Open Source and Cloud Native

  • Operating Kubernetes for production AI workloads
  • Open source AI infrastructure in the enterprise
  • Choosing the right model deployment pattern
  • What we learned contributing to open source at scale

Startups and Operators

  • Scaling a technical consultancy in 2026
  • Building an open source company without losing focus
  • Lessons from selling to enterprise buyers
  • Founder lessons from building in public

Standards

Speaker standards

We keep our stages useful, respectful, and high-signal.

  • Be practical and useful
  • Respect the audience's time
  • Avoid generic sales pitches
  • Be honest about trade-offs
  • Keep slides readable and accessible
  • Arrive prepared and on time
  • Tell us early if anything changes
  • Follow the Community Stack code of conduct

Inclusion

We care about creating welcoming, inclusive, accessible environments across all Community Stack events. Our code of conduct applies to all speakers, attendees, sponsors, and community members.

Learn by Example

Example Talks from Our Community

Watch talks from Community Stack events to get inspired. See how our speakers present complex ideas in engaging ways.

Northern DevOps & Platform Conference

Team Topologies as the Infrastructure for Agency with AI

Matthew Skelton - CEO/CTO, Conflux

Northern DevOps & Platform Conference

Stop Building. Start Deciding.

Holly Jukes - Head of Engineering, Lloyds Banking Group

Data & AI Leaders Conference

Lloyds Banking Group | Agentic AI in Practice

Astitva Karunesh & Lara Vomfell - AI CoE, Lloyds Banking Group

Data & AI Leaders Conference

ElevenLabs, Moonpig, Databricks & Overmind | Agentic AI In The Enterprise

Joseph Reeve, Joanna Crown, Dylan Ratcliffe, Sultan AI Awar

More Inspiring Talks

Engineering in the AI Era

Jeff Barr, Chief Evangelist at AWS

AI Agents in 2025

Stephen Toriola, Compare the Market

Architect Secure, AI-Ready Frontends on AWS

Viola Lykova, Invest & Fund

My First Year as an AI Engineer at incident.io

Rory Malcolm, incident.io

Have a talk worth sharing?

Whether you are an experienced speaker or this would be your first time, we would like to hear from you. If your work can help practitioners, leaders, founders, or technical teams learn something useful, submit your idea and we will help find the right place for it.

Not sure if your talk is a fit? Email hello@communitystack.io