Speakers - Mountain Camp 2027¶
See also: Call for Proposals
Featured Speakers¶
To be announced September 2026.
Dries Buytaert¶
Role: Founder & Project Lead, Drupal Format: Fireside chat / interview (not a keynote) Status: ✅ Confirmed Topic direction: AI's role in open source, Drupal's path forward, what it means to be a builder in the AI era, data sovereignty Notes: Prepare interview questions in advance. Consider crowdsourcing questions from community via social media. Potential co-format with Hannes Gassert.
John O'Nolan¶
Role: Founder & CEO, Ghost - open source publishing platform Format: Talk or interview (25-40 min) Status: ✅ Confirmed (referenced in speaker outreach Sep 2026) Topic direction: Editorial workflows in alternative systems; modern, AI-assisted content publishing on open source infrastructure Why he fits DMC 2027:
- Ghost Foundation is a non-profit; Ghost is truly open source - deeply values-aligned with "makers not takers"
- Ghost has been shipping AI-assisted content features while maintaining full data sovereignty
- Adjacent builder from outside the Drupal world - feedback consistently shows this profile generates the strongest reactions
- Platform independence and creator ownership aligns directly with the data sovereignty programme day
- Natural complement to Dries: two open source founders, different ecosystems, shared values
Suggested session framing: "Building the open web with AI - Ghost's approach to giving publishers real ownership"
Hannes Gassert¶
Role: Co-founder, Liip / Swiss open data and digital sovereignty advocate Format: Panel or joint interview Status: To be contacted Topic direction: Data sovereignty, government and open source, AI compliance in Switzerland Notes: Potential co-format with Dries for a government + open source conversation.
Lena Fuhrimann¶
Role: Developer / AI practitioner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lena-fuhrimann/ Format: Keynote Status: ✅ Confirmed Talk title: A Practical Guide to Fast and Private LLMs Abstract: Want to run your own AI, at home or at work? This talk shows you how. You'll learn how to pick the right model, make it run faster and more efficient, choose the hardware, and set up the software. A quick tour of running your own LLMs for fun and for real work. Topic: Private/local LLMs, AI for developers
Robert T. Douglass¶
Role: Agentic Engineering practitioner LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/roberttdouglass/ Format: Talk Status: ✅ Confirmed Talk title: Work Open. Hold One Accountable. Give the Agents a Seat. Abstract: What if you told your entire development team to stop working, and to hand over their laptops to a dark software factory? What if it built, reviewed, tested, merged and deployed your product (100s of PRs a day) without human intervention, and it worked? I did that in September 2026. It was scary, beautiful (and expensive), and it left one question that no AI policy has answered: when the agents do the work, who is accountable, and how are decisions made? Topic: Agentic Engineering, AI accountability in software development
Pay Chen¶
Role: Organisational design / AI transformation LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/paych/ Format: Talk Status: ✅ Confirmed Talk title: AI Isn't Your Bottleneck. Your Org Chart Is Abstract: AI is accelerating software development. But if development gets faster while the rest of the organization stays the same, where does the bottleneck move? In this talk, we'll explore where bottlenecks emerge as AI accelerates work, what organizations and managers need to redesign to keep up, and how to tell whether an AI transformation has actually happened. Topic: AI-driven organisational change, management, team structure
Cynthia Jurytko¶
Role: AI market & product leader LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/cynthiajurytko/ Format: Keynote and/or panel Status: 📨 In outreach (invited Sep 18, 2026 by Josef) Topic direction: How AI innovations are reshaping the market; new product types and solution approaches emerging; how technical product teams are adapting to the changes Panel angle: In the global race for the best AI solutions, how does Switzerland position itself? What impulses can Swiss approaches contribute, and how can Swiss technology keep pace with, and integrate into, international trends? (linked to Hack Apertus cooperation) Notes: Based in Munich. Invited via LinkedIn message with full program overview. Compensation CHF 800 offered.
Featured & Keynote Speaker Outreach¶
| Speaker | Role | Why them | Status | Session | Contact by | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dries Buytaert | Drupal founder & CTO, Acquia | Creator of Drupal. Enough said. | ✅ Confirmed | Fireside chat | Interview format, not traditional keynote | |
| John O'Nolan | Founder, Ghost | Open source publishing + AI. Shows Drupal isn't alone in rethinking the CMS. | 💬 Interested | Talk/Interview | Expressed interest May 2026; topic: editorial workflows | |
| Hannes Gassert | Co-founder Liip, Swiss digital sovereignty advocate | Swiss tech leader championing open source and data sovereignty. Local credibility. | 📨 In outreach | Panel | ||
| Adriana Groh | Head, Sovereign Tech Agency | Leads Europe's first publicly funded org for critical open source infrastructure. Hottest voice in EU open source policy. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Baddy Sonja Breidert | CEO/Co-founder, 1xINTERNET; Board Chair, Drupal Association | Chair of the DA Board. Her presence signals Mountain Camp matters. Very active social presence. Based in Germany. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Cynthia Jurytko | AI market & product leader | Market shifts from AI, Swiss positioning, technical team adaptation. Keynote + panel fit. | 📨 In outreach | Keynote / Panel | Sep 18, 2026 | Invited via LinkedIn by Josef; Munich-based |
| Clem Delangue | Co-founder & CEO, Hugging Face | Leading the open source AI movement. Perfect fit for "Humans with AI in the loop" theme. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Emma Horrell | UX Manager, Drupal Core & CMS; University of Edinburgh | Co-leads UX for Drupal Core and CMS. Human-centred AI design fits "Humans with AI in the loop" theme. | 📨 Contacted | Talk | Oct 2026 | CFP invite by email (Sinduri) |
| Fabien Potencier | Creator of Symfony | Drupal is built on Symfony. Rarely speaks at Drupal events. Would be historic. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Frank Karlitschek | Founder & CEO, Nextcloud | Built open source cloud used by German federal government. Digital sovereignty in practice. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Johan Linåker | Senior Researcher, RISE Research Institutes of Sweden; Adjunct Professor, Lund University | Leading EU researcher on open source sustainability and digital sovereignty. Coordinates OSAwards.eu. Co-authored EU Open Source Policy Summit papers. Spoke at FOSDEM 2025 and Linux Foundation summits. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Marcus Dapp | Digital sovereignty researcher, ETH Zurich | Academic perspective on open source and digital commons. Swiss based, research-driven. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Matthias Stürmer | Head of Institute for Public Sector Transformation, BFH | Swiss open source in government. Founded Swiss Competence Center for Open Source Software. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Nick Veenhof | Director of Contributor Success, GitLab; DA board member | Cross-ecosystem appeal: GitLab + Drupal. Very active social presence. Keynoted at Mountain Camp 2019. Bridge between Drupal and wider open source. | 📨 Contacted | Talk | Oct 2026 | CFP invite by email (Sinduri) |
| Stefano Maffulli | Executive Director, Open Source Initiative | Leading the global definition of "open source AI." Shapes how every project approaches AI. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk | ||
| Sven Thomsen | CIO of Schleswig-Holstein | Leading Europe's most ambitious government migration from Microsoft to open source. | 📨 Contacted | Talk | Oct 30, 2026 | CFP invite by email (Sinduri) |
| Tobias Koppers | Creator of webpack / Turbopack, Vercel | Built the most-used JS bundler in the world. Every Drupal frontend dev uses his work. | 🔲 To be contacted | Talk |
Featured Speaker Criteria¶
- Curated selection (not open call)
- High-profile community members
- Aligned with 2027 theme: "Humans with AI in the loop"
- External voices welcomed (non-Drupal)
Speaker Wishlist & Outreach Targets¶
Based on planning sync and planning weekend checkout.
People not yet in the main table, still exploring fit or waiting on timing.
| Name | Direction | Notes |
|---|---|---|
| afoster | Drupal AI initiative | https://www.drupal.org/about/starshot/initiatives/ai/blog/the-future-of-ai-powered-web-creation-is-people-first-not-prompt-first |
| Jamie Abrahams | Symfony AI / AI initiative keynote | |
| Marcus Johansson | Symfony AI / AI initiative (technical) | 📨 CFP invite by email, Oct 2026 (Sinduri) |
| Chris Hertel | Symfony AI Core Lead | Potential keynote on Drupal AI's evolution to Symfony AI |
| Rachel Lawson | Community, mentoring (First Pitch) | Drupal Association. Fills the newcomer track gap. 📨 CFP invite by email, Oct 30, 2026 (Sinduri) |
| Mike Gifford | Accessibility | Long-time Drupal accessibility lead. Canada based, travel is a hurdle. 📨 CFP invite by email, Oct 30, 2026 (Sinduri) |
| Sarah Winters (Richards) | Content design (Editorial Summit) | Content Design London. Outside voice. Not contacted: only a shared inbox found |
| Gerry McGovern | Digital sustainability (Editorial Summit / Open Col) | Author of "World Wide Waste". Outside voice. Not contacted: only a shared inbox found |
| Gábor Hojtsy | Drupal core releases, upgrades, community | 2022 speaker, "special highlight" in feedback. 📨 CFP invite by email, Oct 30, 2026 (Sinduri) |
| Kristiaan Van den Eynde | Group module, access control (Backend Ascent) | 📨 CFP invite by email, Oct 30, 2026 (Sinduri) |
| Wim Leers | Experience Builder (Frontend Ferrata / Editorial Summit) | 📨 CFP invite by email, Oct 30, 2026 (Sinduri) |
| Mateu Aguiló Bosch | Decoupled Drupal, frontend architecture (Frontend Ferrata) | 📨 CFP invite by email, Oct 30, 2026 (Sinduri) |
| Andrew Macpherson | Accessibility | Not contacted: no email. Try Drupal Slack or drupal.org |
| Alex Pott | Core, configuration, recipes (Backend Ascent) | Not contacted: no email. Try Drupal Slack or drupal.org |
Submitted Sessions (as of Nov 1, 2026)¶
53 sessions in Pretalx. Links go to the review page and need an organizer login. Sessions added on Nov 1 have no link yet.
Talk selection team: Rouven Volk, Jens Vranckx, Josef Kruckenberg, Sinduri Guntupalli.
AI Balance by Track¶
Judged from session titles, not abstracts.
| Track | AI | Not AI | Total |
|---|---|---|---|
| Sovereign AI Base Camp | 14 | 0 | 14 |
| Backend Ascent | 7 | 10 | 17 |
| Frontend Ferrata | 4 | 4 | 8 |
| Editorial Summit | 3 | 3 | 6 |
| Open Col | 2 | 3 | 5 |
| Keynote | 1 | 0 | 1 |
| First Pitch | 0 | 2 | 2 |
| Total | 31 | 22 | 53 |
All Submissions¶
| Session | Speaker | Track | Status |
|---|---|---|---|
| A Practical Guide to Fast and Private LLMs | Lena Fuhrimann | Keynote | ✅ Confirmed |
| AI Isn't Your Bottleneck. Your Org Chart Is. | Pay Chen (paych) | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| Work Open. Hold One Accountable. Give the Agents a Seat. | Robert Douglass | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| Eulogy for the Software Engineer | Dave Kiss | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| Symfony AI: Keeping Humans, and Your Data, in the Loop | Johannes Wachter | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| How To Autoscale Inference of Open-Source LLMs on Kubernetes | Federico Fregosi | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| Sovereign AI Agents: Building Agentic AI That Respects Your Data Boundaries | Vishal Alhat | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| What's a Software Engineer? | Yannick Chenot | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| Your Next Drupal User Is an AI Agent: CMS in the AI-Native Company | Lukas Fischer | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| From Prompt Chaos to Shared AI Workflows for Drupal Teams | David Pacassi Torrico | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| Beyond Hosting a Model: Architecting Your Own Sovereign AI Platform | Björn Schotte (Mayflower) | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| The secret life of LLM | Swan | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| From answering to acting: making Drupal sites agent-ready, on sovereign AI | Josef Kruckenberg | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| A Practical Deep-Dive into Drupal's Configuration Schema | Joris Vercammen | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| The Judgment Day: How to Defend Against CVEs, Worms, and AI | Mohammad-Ali A'râbi | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Beyond the Cluster: Building Production-Ready AI Platforms with Kubernetes | Deep Kotecha | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Shielding Your Software: Best Practices for Securing the Supply Chain in Modern Development | Federico Fregosi | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Escaping the Code Maze | Yannick Chenot | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Solr's Side Gig: A Reporting Database Hiding in Plain Sight | Stefanos Petrakis | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Green Dashboards. Broken Agents. | Manik Khandelwal | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Trust, but lint: AI code review for Drupal and humans | damien | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Prepare Your Code for PHP 9: Overview of PHP 8 Deprecations | damien | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Video Styles for Drupal: Responsive Delivery, AV1 and Reliable Fallbacks | David Pacassi Torrico | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| We Fired Figma: AI, Code and a Client in the Loop | Michi Mauch | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| Hosting Someone Else's App: Iframe Choreography | Fabio | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| One Terminal, The Entire Agentic SDLC | Talia Kohan | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| Design tokens, the new frontier of Drupal theming | pdureau | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| Interaction Design Patterns for Coding Agents | Stefan Pauwels | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| AI-Powered Drupal Frontends: Beyond the Chatbot | Sibu Stephen | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| We Moved 2,400 URLs to a New CMS. Here Is What Google Did Next. | Aarushi Bhatt | Editorial Summit | Submitted |
| AI works the night shift. People decide in the morning. | Tomi Mikola | Editorial Summit | Submitted |
| Headless, Not Editorless: Visual Editing with Drupal and Puck | Yannick Bättig | Editorial Summit | Submitted |
| From content gaps to trusted answers: An AI case for the European Commission | wouters_f | Open Col | Submitted |
| AI Needed to Happen to Make Me Fall in Love with Drupal: And why the next thing it will change is how we buy software | Ulla Koho | Open Col | Submitted |
| Destroying the Drupal Community in Ten Years: A Short Workshop | Mikko Hämäläinen | Open Col | Submitted |
| War, Drupal & Mountains: A Hardcore Drupal Training Story | Oleksandr Davyskyba | First Pitch | Submitted |
| Fireside chat: When the AI says "I don't know", who listens? | Ulla Koho | Editorial Summit | Submitted |
| Building Robust AI Applications with RAG Systems | Omar Mohamad - El Hassan Lopesino | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
| From findable to recommended: A field guide to positioning and entity clarity for AI search | Jeffrey A. "jam" McGuire | Editorial Summit | Submitted |
| Rebuilding zebis.ch: Headless Drupal for Thousands of Swiss Teachers | Tobias Tschopp | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| Editing Paragraphs where they live: a frontend editor for Drupal 11 | pdu | Editorial Summit | Submitted |
| In-depth observibility of your Drupal websites using the Monitoring project, OpenTelemetry and more | Sascha Grossenbacher (Berdir) | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| A scope owns what it spawns: Fibers in Drupal | Geek Merlin | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| NW, NR, RTBC WTF?! | Lorenz Schori | First Pitch | Submitted |
| Drift: element-aware visual regression testing on a laptop, in CI or on your own server | Ivica Puljic | Frontend Ferrata | Submitted |
| 27 Countries, One Digital Ambition: Europe's Sovereignty Paradox | Jyri-Petteri Paloposki | Open Col | Submitted |
| NEDA: Group discussion | Joris Vercammen | Open Col | Submitted |
| Mago - format, lint and analyze your PHP code | klausi | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Mind the gap: done isn't delivered | Alexander Varwijk | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Hands-On AppSec for Drupal: Pentest and Harden Your Site with an AI Security Agent (workshop) | Andre Baumeier | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Proactive AppSec for Drupal: Running AWS Security Agent Across Your SDLC | Andre Baumeier | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Securing Drupal at Machine Speed: AI-Powered AppSec for Your Site and Modules | Andre Baumeier | Backend Ascent | Submitted |
| Sovereign AI in Practice: Running Open Models like Apertus on AWS, In-Region | Andre Baumeier | Sovereign AI Base Camp | Submitted |
CFP Final Reminder (Oct 2026)¶
The CFP deadline moved to Nov 1, 2026. Sinduri sent a BCC invitation to submit a session, with the option to ask for more time.
Contacted (📨 sent Oct 2026):
- Past speakers: Alejandro Moreno (alexmoreno), Andre Baumeier (submitted after the reminder), Andrew James Deon Melck, AmyJune Hineline, Christophe Jossart, Cristina Chumillas, David Buchmann, Dominique De Cooman, Fabian Franz, Florian Loretan, Imre Gmelig Meijling, Italo Mairo, Ivica Puljic (submitted after the reminder), Jan Hug, Janez Urevc, Jasper Lammens, Jeffrey "jam" McGuire (submitted after the reminder), Jon Minder, Jordana Fung, Jürgen Haas, Lauri Timmanee, Lorenz Schori (submitted after the reminder), Luca Lusso (lussoluca), Manfred Ruf, Marine Gandy, Mathilde Deutschmann, Michelle Sanver, Nicolas Loye, Oleksii Molozhanov, Olga Baranova, Omar Mohamad - El Hassan Lopesino (submitted after the reminder), Primoz Hmeljak, Rainer Friederich, Richard Papp, Rob Allen, Sascha Eggenberger, Sascha Grossenbacher (submitted after the reminder as Berdir), Sibu Stephen (submitted after the reminder), Stefan Berner, Tearyne Almendariz, Thijs Feryn, Tobias Tschopp (submitted after the reminder), Vincenzo Gambino
- New invitees: Emma Horrell, Marcus Johansson, Nick Veenhof
Bounced, needs a new address:
- Niklas Franke (factorial)
- Sandro Kneubühl (joinbox)
- Branislav (platform.sh, now Upsun)
- Jonathan Noack (Liip)
Not included, follow up separately:
- Jutta Horstmann: offered to keynote, check with Josef first
- Iain Potter: Pretalx email belongs to someone else
- Hannes Gassert, Matthias Stürmer, Cynthia Jurytko, John O'Nolan: already in conversation
Second round (Oct 30, 2026)¶
New invitees chosen to fill gaps beyond AI: newcomers, accessibility, editorial, core, and Swiss case studies. Same email plus a line on Dries's fireside chat and a link to the draft program.
Contacted (📨 sent Oct 30, 2026):
- Gábor Hojtsy, Kristiaan Van den Eynde, Mateu Aguiló Bosch, Mike Gifford, Rachel Lawson, Wim Leers
- Thom Nagy, Micha Jäggi (bs.ch)
- Sven Thomsen (Schleswig-Holstein)
Not contacted:
- Shared inbox only: Unic (graubünden.ch), Idéative (ge.ch), Sarah Winters (Content Design London), Gerry McGovern, Frank Karlitschek (Nextcloud). Find a named contact first
- No email: Andrew Macpherson, Alex Pott, Marcus Dapp
Case Study / Showcase Speakers¶
Organisations with compelling Drupal stories - large-scale, high-profile, or Swiss-relevant implementations.
bs.ch - Canton of Basel-Stadt (Switzerland)¶
Built by: Liip What makes it compelling: Decoupled Drupal 10 + Vue/Nuxt + GraphQL serving 300+ content editors. Open-sourced blökkli editor. Deployed Alva, an AI chatbot - the first Swiss canton to do so. Session angle: "Scaling editorial at government scale" Potential speakers: Thom Nagy, Micha Jäggi Status: 📨 Both invited to CFP by email, Oct 30, 2026 (Sinduri) | Day fit: Data sovereignty / government day
graubünden.ch - Graubünden Ferien (Switzerland)¶
Built by: Unic What makes it compelling: Drupal multisite platform hosting 20+ partner/destination websites. Won Drupal Splash Awards: National Businesses, Public Affairs, and Project of the Year. Session angle: "One platform, twenty destinations" Status: To be contacted | Day fit: Builders / contributors day
ge.ch - État de Genève (Switzerland)¶
Built by: Idéative What makes it compelling: Canton of Geneva's official platform, serving 500,000 inhabitants. Strong Romandie connection. Session angle: "Open source in the Romandie" Status: To be contacted | Day fit: Data sovereignty / government day
United Nations (International)¶
What makes it compelling: UN upgraded from Drupal 7 to Drupal 10. UNDP manages 200+ websites via Drupal multisite. Session angle: "Open source at global scale" Status: Needs further research
Community Partnership Contacts¶
- Apertus community - Two people expressed interest in supporting the event; reach out for involvement and as potential bridge audience
- CH Open - Swiss open source org; explore collaboration for government/sovereignty summit day
- Republic newspaper - Tech journalist; invite if significant announcements planned (Symfony AI, government partnerships)
Press / Media Outreach¶
Potential press invites if major announcements confirmed (e.g. Symfony AI keynote, government partnership, Apertus):
- Republic newspaper (Swiss tech journalism)
Speaker Benefits & Logistics¶
Benefits¶
- Free ticket to Mountain Camp 2027
- Gift: Victorinox knife with engraving - webers-world.com
- Speaker page on mountaincamp.ch
- Session recording published on YouTube
Key Dates¶
| Milestone | Date |
|---|---|
| Call for Papers Opens | Jul 1, 2026 |
| Featured Speakers Published | Sep 1, 2026 (announced on Pretalx) |
| Call for Papers Closes | Nov 1, 2026 (extended from Oct 11) |
| Full Schedule Published | Mid-November 2026 |
Preparation¶
- Speaker guide to be sent January 2027
- Slide templates, AV specs, schedule, travel info via Pretalx
- Speaker acceptance via Pretalx workflow
Logistics Notes¶
- No separate paid speaker dinner (decision from previous years)
- Informal speaker gatherings encouraged but not budget-covered
Past Highlights (Reference)¶
| Speaker | Session | Year | Feedback |
|---|---|---|---|
| Vera Herzmann | Keynote | 2025 | "Very good!", praised multiple times |
| Frederick Wouters | AI Workshop | 2024 | "Amazing - felt illegal how easy it was" |
| Jutta Horstmann | Open Source Funding | 2024 | "Led to several discussions" |
| Vera + Olga | External keynote | 2025 | "Great insight from outside community" |
Pattern: Beginner-accessible workshops + external voices rate highest
Notes¶
- No separate paid speaker dinner (decision from previous years)
- Informal speaker gatherings encouraged but not budget-covered
- Speaker acceptance via Pretalx workflow