What I learned after speaking, then stepping behind the curtains of a community conference
A year ago, I walked onto the stage at Cloud Native Days Romania as a speaker. I thought that was the main contribution: show up, deliver, leave.
It wasn’t.
The same month, I joined the organizing team of Cloud Native Days Romania, and my perspective shifted completely.
What I saw behind the scenes changed how I think about conferences, communities, and what “ecosystem growth” actually means in Eastern Europe.
From speaker to organizer: a change in mentality
Speaking at a conference is a moment. Organizing one is a system.
Once you move behind the curtain, you stop seeing talks and start seeing dependencies. The biggest shift for me was realizing this:
A conference is not an event. It’s a coordination problem across people, time zones, confidence levels, and access to opportunity.
And in Eastern Europe, that coordination carries extra weight because visibility is unevenly distributed.
CFP reviews: where signal meets bias (and why it matters)
One of the main responsibilities I took during this year was helping with the CFP reviews. On paper, it looks simple: evaluate proposals, pick the best ones. In reality, it’s much more nuanced.
You are constantly balancing: experienced speakers vs. first-time speakers, highly polished abstracts vs. high-potential ideas with weak packaging, trending topics vs. foundational knowledge the community still needs, international reach vs. local relevance.
And there’s a hidden challenge: many strong engineers underestimate themselves on paper. Some of the best talks I’ve seen would never survive a “strictly formal” CFP scoring system. That’s why review culture matters.
We didn’t just ask: Is this good?
We asked: Does this deserve a stage, and what would it take to make it ready? That second question is where communities are built.
Encouraging international speakers: visibility is not evenly distributed
Another part of my role was reaching out to international speakers and encouraging them to apply. This sounds simple, but it’s actually strategic.
Eastern European conferences often face a visibility gap: great content exists locally, but speaker pipelines are often local-heavy by default.
International speakers may not even know the event exists. So part of the job becomes outreach, storytelling, and trust-building. We need to make an effort in having more women as speakers and more professionals from underrepresented groups.
You’re not just asking someone to submit a talk — you’re saying:
“This community is worth your time.”
And that matters more than people think.
Because conferences don’t grow only through attendees. They grow through perceived relevance in the global ecosystem.
Hosting a virtual event: lowering the barrier to entry
One of the most meaningful initiatives I helped with was hosting a virtual live session aimed at:
-First-time speakers who want to apply but don’t know how
-Experienced speakers willing to share how they craft talks
-Community members curious about CFP processes
The goal was simple: reduce friction. What surprised me most was not the questions — it was the hesitation.
Many people don’t lack ideas. They lack permission structures.
They don’t know if they are “allowed” to submit.
Once you remove that invisible barrier, submissions diversify quickly. And diversity of submissions is what keeps a conference alive.
Behind the scenes: the invisible work no one sees
From the outside, a conference looks like a polished sequence of talks.
Behind the scenes, it is: multiple CFP discussions, balancing topic coverage across tracks, speaker coordination across countries and time zones, reviewing abstracts that arrive at the last minute, finding sponsors, looking the right venue, creating unique experiences for both speakers and attendees.
The rush before the event is real and this is where well organizing teams thrive. I’m happy I found the community that is both very well organized and energetic and their motivation is really inspiring for the open source and cloud native ecosystem.
The volunteers also helped me see the importance of community and understand that behind the scenes, the love for knowledge sharing is truly an valuable asset.
Merge-Forward: our community partner
Raising visibility for underrepresented groups in tech is a wonderful initiative and Merge-Forward does it brilliantly. Created last year in July and rapidly expanding, Merge-Forward hosts under its umbrella 7 working groups, which constantly thrive in community activities, mentorship and collaboration.
We hope more allies can join our mission, participate in our online monthly calls and help build a global community.
Why these events matter in Eastern Europe
Community conferences like Cloud Native Days Romania play a role that goes beyond technical talks. In Eastern Europe specifically, they function as:
- Talent visibility engines: They surface engineers who may not have global platforms yet.
- Knowledge distribution hubs: They bring cloud-native practices into companies that are still modernizing.
- Career accelerators: Many first-time speakers later become advocates, maintainers, or engineering leaders.
- Cross-border bridges: They connect engineers across countries that rarely share professional spaces otherwise. This last point is especially important.
Cloud-native systems are global, but communities are still often local. Conferences help close that gap.
What I learned after one year inside the organization
If I had to summarize the biggest lessons, they would be these:
1. Community is not passive — it is engineered.
You don’t “have” a community. You design conditions for it to form.
2. The CFP is a mentorship tool, not a filter.
The way you review submissions shapes who becomes visible.
3. First-time speakers are a high-impact investment.
They carry future ecosystems.
4. Most barriers are psychological, not technical.
People need encouragement more than instruction.
5. Conferences are infrastructure, not events.
They are part of the cloud-native stack — just social instead of technical.
How you can make a difference
I used to think speaking at conferences was the contribution.
Now I see it differently. Speaking is a contribution.
Organizing is a different one.
But enabling others to speak — especially those who never thought they could — is where the long-term impact actually sits.
And that is what makes community work in Eastern Europe feel meaningful right now: it’s not about scaling events.
It’s about scaling participation.
You can check all the Cloud Native Computing Foundation events and learn about its communities. Even if you cannot participate in person, there are online resources to help you catch up with the latest.
I’m really happy I could be part of the organizing team this year and I’m looking for your ideas on how to improve such events.
For any questions, you can find me on LinkedIn or GitHub.
Until next time, mulțumesc!
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