DevConf US 2026

## About DevConf.US DevConf.US is a premier, Red Hat–sponsored technology conference dedicated to community project maintainers, open-source contributors, and professional developers working across Free and Open Source software. Hosted at Boston University in the historic city of Boston, Massachusetts, the event serves as a central gathering point for the global open-source ecosystem. * **Free Registration:** While there is no ticket fee or admission charge, attendees are required to complete a free registration online prior to attending. * **Language & Accessibility:** All talks, presentations, workshops, and official communications are conducted in English. * **Welcoming Environment:** DevConf.US actively invites students, new graduates, and industry veterans alike. To ensure a safe, supportive, and inclusive atmosphere, the conference enforces a strict Code of Conduct and media policy. * **Attendee Coaching Program:** To make technical conferences approachable for newcomers, DevConf offers a dedicated coaching initiative. During registration, participants can sign up as either an **Apprentice** (to receive guidance from an experienced attendee) or a **Coach** (to help mentor first-time participants). --- ## Conference Themes & Tracks ### Cloud, Hybrid Cloud, and Hyperscale Infrastructure This track addresses the foundational technologies powering modern compute environments, ranging from edge nodes and localized private clouds to hyperscale data centers. Presentations explore best practices in virtualization, resource efficiency, and large-scale operations. * **Core Topics:** Virtualization, container orchestration, high availability, cloud-native design patterns, and infrastructure operations at scale. * **Key Ecosystem Focus Areas:** Technologies and frameworks such as Kubernetes, Red Hat OpenShift, OpenStack, KVM, Cloud Native tooling, and the Mass Open Cloud (MOC) ecosystem. ### Artificial Intelligence and Data Science Dedicated to the intersection of artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data engineering in open source. Submissions cover both practical implementations and foundational theory, provided that AI or machine learning remains central to the talk. * **Core Topics:** Real-world AI applications, novel model architectures, benchmarking, performance evaluation, red teaming, security assessments, and resilient data processing pipelines. * **Key Ecosystem Focus Areas:** Projects and runtimes including InstructLab, PyTorch, llama.cpp, vLLM, Open Data Hub, KServe, Kubeflow, and enterprise Large Language Model (LLM) deployments. ### Application and Services Development Focusing on the software lifecycle from concept to deployment, this track explores modern approaches to building, maintaining, and scaling cloud-native applications and service architectures. * **Core Topics:** Modern application frameworks, microservices, cloud-native development practices, application modernization, telemetry, monitoring, and single-sourcing technical documentation. * **Key Ecosystem Focus Areas:** AI-accelerated developer tooling, programming language innovations, application testing frameworks, and advanced observability platforms. ### DevOps and Automation This track focuses on streamlining the software delivery lifecycle—automating the path from developer sandboxes to production environments while maintaining high availability and reliability. * **Core Topics:** Release pipeline definition, Site Reliability Engineering (SRE) practices, continuous deployment, developer environment automation, AppOps, and agile workflows. * **Key Ecosystem Focus Areas:** Intelligent automation using AI/AIOps for test generation, test selection, and failure analysis, utilizing tools such as Ansible, ArgoCD, Tekton, Konflux, and modern CI/CD stacks. ### Security and Compliance A comprehensive deep dive into protecting systems, shifting compliance checks left in the development pipeline, and adapting to modern regulatory standards. * **Core Topics:** Zero Trust security architectures, Post-Quantum Cryptography (PQC), machine learning applications in risk management, identity control, and software supply chain security. * **Key Ecosystem Focus Areas:** Remote attestation, Policy as Code, Confidential Computing, Software Bill of Materials (SBOM), SSML, FIPS compliance, vulnerability management, and regulatory mandates like DORA and NIS2. ### Open Track A flexible venue for topics that extend beyond specific thematic tracks, highlighting broader community initiatives, emerging technologies, and foundational open-source efforts. * **Community & Education:** Features student projects, diploma and bachelor thesis presentations, academic collaborations, public sector open-source initiatives, and lessons learned in growing a project from scratch to widespread adoption. * **Systems & Emerging Tech:** Covers low-level operating system architectures, Linux kernel development, edge computing, automotive systems, Web3, sustainable computing, quantum computing, and package management tools such as `dnf5`, `RPM`, and `bootc`. * **Culture & Leadership:** Explores agile transformation, organizational culture, UI/UX design, mentorship, collaborative decision-making, strategic thinking, talent development, accessibility, and diversity/representation in open source.