This year’s KubeCon in Atlanta brought together some of the most vibrant and forward-looking voices in the cloud-native ecosystem. Following an insightful and energetic Cloud Native Rejekts conference where the community pushed boundaries and shared unfiltered technical expertise, it was time for KubeCon, the global stage where these ideas scale, mature, and inspire real-world change.

KubeCon + CloudNativeCon North America 2025 also marked a milestone in my personal journey. It was my first time attending as a CNCF Ambassador, and I had the privilege of contributing as a speaker not once, but twice. It was a meaningful and transformative experience, and I’m excited to share what made this edition truly exceptional. With thousands of attendees from across the globe, dozens of tracks spanning everything from platform engineering and security to storage and edge compute, and the usual surge of side-conversations and hallway meetups, the energy was palpable.

I also had the opportunity to join the Platform Engineering Coffee Meetup for the first time a valuable learning experience and a surprisingly engaging discussion to kick off the day at 7 AM (outch!).

As a contributor to Kubernetes security eco-system and an active member of the cloud-native community, I arrived with two hats: attendee and speaker (twice). This event felt like a clear reflection of how fast our ecosystem is evolving, and how cloud-native security is reshaping itself alongside platform engineering, AI, and runtime detection.

Preparing and delivering these talks was an incredible learning experience. The KubeCon audience is uniquely engaged filled with practitioners who ask thoughtful questions and share their own experiences. The conversations that continued in the hallway track after my sessions were just as valuable as the presentations themselves.

Several themes dominated the conversations at KubeCon Atlanta 2025:

• AI and Kubernetes Integration: The intersection of artificial intelligence workloads and Kubernetes orchestration was everywhere. Sessions on AI inference, GPU scheduling, and ML model deployment reflected the community’s rapid adaptation to AI demands.

• Platform Engineering: The maturation of platform engineering practices was evident, with numerous talks on building internal developer platforms, improving developer experience, and implementing Team Topologies principles.

• Security and Zero Trust: With SPIFFE/SPIRE graduating and continued emphasis on workload identity, security remained a top priority. The community is clearly moving toward more sophisticated zero-trust architectures.

• eBPF Revolution: The continued evolution of eBPF technology and its applications in networking, observability, and security dominated many technical sessions.

Must-Watch Sessions

• Building the Next Gen GitOps-based Platform With ConfigHub – Erick Bourgeois & Alexis Richardson
• AI-Assisted GitOps With Flux MCP Server – Stefan Prodan, ControlPlane
• Git Push, Sit Back: Level up AKS Deployments With Flux V2 – Dipti Pai, Microsoft
• Stairway To GitOps (feat. Production at Morgan Stanley) – Tiffany Wang & Simon Bourassa
• Flux – The GitLess GitOps Edition – Stefan Prodan, ControlPlane & Dipti Pai, Microsoft

• Managing a Million Infra Resources at Spotify: Designing the Platform to manage change at scale Oliver Soell & Fredrik Sommar
• On the Origin of Platforms: Evolution of a Capital One Enterprise Platform Bradley Whitfield & Jacob Walden
• Real-World Strategies for Cutting Kubernetes Costs: Why One Size Doesn’t Fit All – Dolis Sharma

• Supercharging Backstage Scaffolder for Workflows – Jonathan Chan & Francis Hackenberger
• The Journey of Deploying Backstage in a Large Organization – Mathieu Girard & Teddy Poingt, Beneva

• The Good, the Bad, and the Ugly: Hacking 3 Cloud Native AI Service with 1 vulnerability Hillai Ben-Sasson & Nir Ohfeld
• Shift Left in Action: Automating CIS Compliance With Kyverno and CNCF Power Tools Yugandhar Suthari
• Building PCI Compliant Kubernetes Platforms – Demystified, fun and possible Julien Semaan & Tarun Chinmai Sekar
• OSCAL in Action: Real World Examples of Automating Policy & Compliance Jennifer Power & Hannah Braswell

• Your Kubernetes Playbook at Your Fingertips: Advanced Troubleshooting with mcp, rag, and k8sgpt David vonThenen & Yash Sharma
• SAFE-MCP: A Security Framework for AI+MCP (Model Context Protocol) – Frederick Kautz, TestifySec

Looking forward to seeing everyone at future KubeCon events. The next stops are Amsterdam (Europe 2026), Mumbai (India 2026), and Yokohama (Japan 2026)!

Maxime.