Recap: Social Developers Club Conference 2026

This year was my fourth time at the Social Developers Club Conference, and my fourth time contributing to it. At this point it has become one of those “must have” dates in the year that I just really look forward to.

There was a public transport strike that day, which could have been a pretty annoying start. But somehow it did not matter much in the end. People still made their way to SAE, showed up in a good mood, and the day immediately felt warm and easy.

I ran the Kubernetes Advanced workshop together with my colleague Bernd. We had 13 participants, great energy in the room, lots of focus, lots of smart questions. It was one of those workshop groups where you really notice that people came to learn and were fully in it.

Because of the workshop and all the conversations in between, I did not get to watch that many sessions. But I finally managed to see “Symphony of Things - Exploring AWS IoT Through Music” by my wonderful former colleague and friend Anne Stein, and I was very happy about that. I had missed her talk at other conferences before, so it felt extra nice to finally catch it. Great explanations, a fun topic, and a really strong demo.

What keeps me coming back actually year by year is the overall mix of people. There are experienced tech folks, proper nerds, career changers, people just getting started, kids and families because of the kids track, and somehow it all worked together really naturally. I like conferences most when they do not feel too polished or too exclusive, and this one really makes a great job in creating an open and welcoming atmosphere.

That is also why I always enjoy the hallway track so much there. I got to catch up with old friends like Julia Heidinger, An Dang, Sophie Ferrlein, Christine Martens, Anne Stein, and many more, while also meeting new, amazing people throughout the day. Those in-between conversations are a huge part of what makes the conference special for me.

And then there was Speaker Pizza & Beer afterwards, which was just an awesome ending to the day. Nice people, good food, new contacts, lots of talking, lots of laughing. I got home very tired, but in the best mood possible :)

Huge thank you to the SDC team for setting up this amazing conference again! See you next year :)

PS: I am writing this blog post while sitting on the train again, but this time not on my way back home - I am on my way to the next conference already. KubeCon & CloudNativeCon Europe , here I come :) And of course there will be another recap here after my very first KubeCon ever 😇