Posted on September 15, 2026 by Ronald Requena | CNCF Ambassador

Figure 1: KCD Lima organizers with Ronald

On July 18, 2026, we held the third edition of Kubernetes Community Days Lima at UTEC in Barranco. By now, we have already sent the Transparency Report to the CNCF, thanked our sponsors, and processed the surveys. With the administrative wrap-up behind us, I want to share a few reflections on what it meant to organize it.

Before I continue, a quick introduction of me. I’m Ronald Requena, CTO at Rumbo, professor at Universidad Ricardo Palma, co-organizer of KCD Lima and DevOpsDays Lima, and, as of August 2026, CNCF Ambassador for Peru. Feel free to connect with me or reach out on LinkedIn.

This is the third KCD I have had the opportunity to co-organize. I assumed that by the third edition many things would run on autopilot. They did not. Every edition brings new problems, and the old ones do not go away; they just change in scale.

An image I will not forget

I arrived at UTEC at 7:00 a.m., an hour and a half before the scheduled 8:30 opening. There was already a line of around 100 attendees outside the building. A Saturday morning, coffee in hand, waiting to get into the long-awaited Kubernetes Community Days Lima. We had to move registration forward to 8:00 because the line kept growing.

No survey can measure the kind of welcome we had that Saturday, from early risers eager to be the first ones through the door.

Figure 2: KCD Lima 2026 registration

The numbers

I find it hard to write without data, so let me start there:

That last number is the one that matters most. The others speak to size; this one speaks to whether it was truly worth it for the people who came. Every number here is public: each KCD organizing team submits a transparency report to the CNCF, and ours is no exception

Three editions, three stages

Looking back, each edition had a different goal, even if we never framed it that way at the time.

2024 was about proving that a KCD could happen in Peru. We had no track record to show sponsors and no idea how many people would show up. We closed with more than 500 attendees, 49 speakers, and 11 sponsors. That first edition was organized with a lot of will and very little certainty.

2025 was about proving it had not been a fluke. The second year is the hardest: you are no longer a novelty, but you are not yet a tradition. We reached 1,377 registrations and 520 attendees, with 59 speakers across 7 rooms. That year we learned to document: the sponsor guide, the contracts, the run-of-show, the cash flow. What we improvised in 2024 had to be written down in 2025 so it would not depend on anyone’s memory.

2026 was about proving the event now has a life of its own. We nearly doubled attendance, sponsors came back and new ones joined, and international speakers said yes because they already knew KCD Lima. This year I understood that the community no longer needs to be convinced to attend. What it needs is for us to live up to the expectations it created for itself.

With each edition, what the event represents to you changes. The first time, it was a personal challenge. The second, a commitment. The third starts to become a responsibility toward people you do not know: the student who came alone, the professional who carved out a Saturday to be there, the speaker who flew ten hours for a thirty-minute talk.

One thing does not change: the community cannot be delegated. You can delegate logistics, design, or the website. But deciding what kind of event we want to be, who is welcome, and what conversation we want to happen in Lima, that has to be done every year, deliberately.

Figure 3: KCD Lima 2026 audience from stage

What goes unseen

When you think about organizing an event, you picture the agenda, the speakers, and the venue. All of that exists. But a good part of the time goes into things that never make it into a photo.

This year we completed a variety of forms for US-based sponsors and went through several vendor onboarding processes, each with its own questionnaires and validations. We reviewed sponsorship agreement clauses with companies: liability, sector exclusivity, refund conditions.

We built a budget with cash flow in both soles and dollars, because revenue arrives in one currency and expenses go out in another. We drew and designed the event layout: five rooms, ten booths, four coffee stations, stairs, and elevators.

I am not saying this as a complaint. I am saying it because there is a notion that community “just happens” and it does not. Someone has to do the part that no one sees. Many KCD organizers around the world will recognize this immediately. If you have never organized one, you probably will not — and that is okay too. It is not meant to be seen.

What connects with my work

Three data points from the attendee profile made me think about what I do outside the event.

45% came from end-user companies, and within that group, banking and finance was the largest sector, accounting for a third of all attendees: BCP, Interbank, Scotiabank, Compartamos, Pacífico, and others. I spent several years in banking leading engineering and architecture teams, and seeing that industry fill a cloud native auditorium in Lima confirms that digital transformation in Peruvian banking is no longer a slide deck. These are real platform teams, with DevOps engineers and SREs who need a community to learn from.

15% were architects, the most common role, ahead of developers and DevOps. That tells me cloud native adoption in Peru is at a stage where design decisions carry as much weight as implementation. It is the conversation I have almost daily in consulting.

8% of attendees came from Universities. I teach at a university, and I know how hard it is for a student to feel that an event like this is meant for them. That is why KCD Lima is free and we reserve space for students: the barrier cannot be the price of a ticket. That people registered as students and showed up on a Saturday is one of the things I value most about this edition.

What should be done differently

The survey was positive, but it was also clear. Four things remain open:

  1. The coffee break was not enough. We sized four stations for 600 people and 900+ showed up. Next time, we plan with a margin above expected capacity.
  2. Punctuality between sessions. With five parallel rooms, a five-minute delay in one throws the other four off. We need room moderators with more control over the clock.
  3. Session pre-registration. There were packed rooms and half-empty rooms for talks of equal quality. If we know demand in advance, we can allocate space better.
  4. More women on stage. Out of 60 speakers, only 5 were women. Among attendees, female participation was 17%, so the gap on stage is wider than in the audience. It is a number we would rather publish than omit, because it is the starting point for doing something about it in a future CFP.

Thank you

To Josua Castro, who led the organization of this edition, and to the team I shared these months with: Andreé Cordero, Almendra Paz, Bianca Torres, Enzo Venturi, Jean Paul López, Pavel Puclla, and Michelle Luna. Nine people, all with full-time jobs, holding up an event with more than 900 attendees. What people saw on July 18 was the result of that team.And to our volunteers, who ran registration, guided attendees across five rooms, kept sessions on time, and solved a hundred small problems no one else noticed. An event of this size does not work without them.

Figure 4: KCD Lima 2026 organizers and volunteers

To Eric Biagioli and Cindy Archenti, for helping us with the unexpected and everything that was not in the plan. And to all of UTEC for opening the entire campus to us. To the CNCF for backing the KCD program. To the 60 speakers who prepared, traveled, and gave up their Saturday. To the sponsors who bet on Lima before seeing the numbers, and who make it possible for an event of this size to be free for the community.

And to the more than 900 people who showed up on a Saturday, from 7:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m.

Three editions later, in August, I was accepted into the CNCF Ambassadors program. It is an honor to join that global community, and I take it as motivation to keep working so that Lima keeps growing as a cloud native hub in the region.

What comes next, I do not know yet. But that 7 a.m. line is something I will not forget.

Figure 5: KCD Lima 2026 attendee line out of the door