Nick is a CNCF and OpenUK Ambassador, currently employed as Head of Cloud Native and Platform Engineering at EscherCloudAI, where he's helping to build a next-generation managed Kubernetes service tailored for AI workloads backed by a sustainable approach to running infrastructure. He is also a serial meetup organizer, including Cloud Native and Kubernetes Edinburgh, CNK Manchester, as well as larger events such as Kubernetes Community Days UK. Nick is passionate about new technology, but simultaneously romantic about the old with a penchant for decrepit Silicon Graphics and Sun Microsystems hardware.

• KCD UK 2023: https://kcduk.io

Gwen Shapira is the Co-Founding CPO at Nile. Previously a system architect at Confluent (employee no. 12!) helping customers achieve success with their Apache Kafka implementation. She has 15 years of experience working with code and customers to build scalable data architectures, integrating relational and big data technologies. She specializes in building real-time reliable data processing pipelines using Apache Kafka. Gwen is an Oracle Ace Director, an author of "Hadoop Application Architectures", and a frequent presenter at data-driven conferences. Gwen is also a committer on the Apache Kafka and Apache Sqoop projects.

Andrew P. McMahon is a data scientist and machine learning engineer with several years of experience leading teams that deliver value using cutting-edge technology. He specializes in helping organizations take their initial machine learning and data proof-of-concept solutions through to production. He led machine learning development in companies working across logistics optimization, distributed energy systems, and now in financial services.

He also has a PhD in theoretical condensed matter physics from Imperial College London and has been a part-time science consultant for the Discovery Channel. 

His second book on "Machine Learning Engineering with Python" is out now! Get your copy on Amazon: 

• US: https://a.co/d/1dwqSWK 

Sebastian is an award-winning global thought leader for enterprise transformation and a CTO Summit member at CNCF. He is a startup professional who helped to shape products from genesis to market leader with bleeding-edge technology. Always striving to innovate and question the status quo, he helps to break dogmas, implement a new culture, and never settles while pursuing constant progress. Currently, he is leading a competence center in IT infrastructure and aligning all brands in the VW Group with the mission to once again boldly go where no one has gone before.

Wouter is particularly passionate about CICD and everything that involves automation in the tech industry. In the past years, he worked in different countries on projects that involve automating Kubernetes workloads while at the same time speeding up and standardizing the landscape in ING. In his free time, you can occasionally find him on a split-board touring the Romanian mountains

Christoph Held, Cloud Architect at Allianz, is a big enthusiast of Open Source and Kubernetes in particular. His journey with Kubernetes began in 2014 when he became a full-time contributor and took on the leadership of the Dashboard project. Today, in his role at Allianz, Christoph plays a vital part in guiding the company on their cloud journey, leveraging his expertise to build large-scale clusters and DevOps solutions.