Mobilise at ServerlessDays Cardiff 2025: A celebration of innovation, community, and the future of serverless
As both a sponsor and part of the organising team, ServerlessDays Cardiff 2025 was an incredible experience, a celebration of innovation, openness, and community. Our goal was to bring together practitioners, engineers, and leaders who are pushing the boundaries of what’s possible with serverless and cloud technologies, and the response this year exceeded every expectation.
Building a community-first event
At its heart, ServerlessDays has always been about community over competition. From the very first attendees arriving at DEPOT Cardiff, a vibrant, industrial venue that perfectly matched the creative energy of the day, the sense of inclusion and collaboration was clear. We saw first-timers, students, senior engineers, and CTOs all learning together in the same space.
Our one-track format ensured that every delegate, speaker, and sponsor shared a single collective experience, no parallel sessions, no missed opportunities to connect, and a shared sense of momentum.
A phenomenal speaker lineup
We were fortunate to welcome an outstanding and diverse group of speakers who delivered sessions that blended deep technical content with practical insight and real-world lessons.
Morning Keynote — DSIT (Department for Science, Innovation and Technology):
Dimitris Perdikou opened the day with an inspiring talk on how government engineering teams are embracing serverless and cloud-native approaches to scale national digital services securely and cost-effectively. His message — that serverless isn’t an experiment anymore, it’s infrastructure at scale — set the tone for the day.
Yan Cui (Lumigo) brought his signature clarity to a talk on building an AI-powered code reviewer using AWS Bedrock and serverless, showing how event-driven design can amplify developer productivity without sacrificing control.
Matt Johnson (Rayo) followed with “Adventures in Cost Control” — an honest, data-driven look at managing cloud spend and learning from mistakes.
Sarah Neenan (IBM) lit up the stage — and the entire venue — by bringing along Spot, the Boston Dynamics robot dog, for her session “Serverless, Spot, and Smashing Barriers”. Her talk merged sustainability, accessibility, and IT for good; Spot definitely stole the show.
Grace Briody (Microsoft) reminded us that “serverless” extends far beyond functions in “Hold the functions — containers can be serverless too!” — a brilliant, pragmatic session about the evolution of compute abstraction.
Julian Wood (AWS) provided an expert’s update on the latest Lambda and serverless platform innovations, highlighting new patterns for observability and performance.
Shaun Hare & Anna Dobson (DVSA) delivered a candid, experience-rich session that resonated with builders tackling real-world delivery at pace and scale.
Alex Le Peltier (Signapse) — Showcasing the use of AI for cost-effective virtual sign language to increase accessibility for the deaf community.
Dr Fahad Anwar (ONS), Tom Collins (DVLA), and Paul Funnell (Powys County Council) closed the day with a powerful panel on Empowering the Government’s Developers Through AI. Their discussion showed just how deeply AI and serverless now intersect in public-sector transformation.
Throughout the day, lightning talks and community stories added even more variety — from practical case studies to thought-provoking experiments in automation and developer experience.
Sponsorship & Community Impact
Being a sponsor means more than brand visibility — it’s an investment in the ecosystem. Our collective sponsorship helped keep tickets affordable, support underrepresented voices, and create a space where everyone, regardless of background or experience, could contribute.
Seeing so many people connect during the coffee breaks, share notes after talks, and continue conversations at the evening social reminded us exactly why events like this matter. We’re proud that our involvement helped make that happen.
Highlights from the day
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- Over 300 attendees from across the UK and Europe
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- One track, one community — everyone heard every talk
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- A full day of sessions, plus an energetic evening social that ran late into the night
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- A live robot demo, inspiring keynotes, and hundreds of ideas shared
The atmosphere was electric — open, inclusive, and buzzing with curiosity.
Looking ahead to 2026
We’re already working on ServerlessDays Cardiff 2026, and we’re taking everything we learned this year with us. Expect more hands-on sessions, deeper dives into AI and FinOps, expanded public-sector participation, and new opportunities for first-time speakers.
ServerlessDays Cardiff 2025 reminded us that serverless isn’t just a technology stack—it’s a mindset. One that values simplicity, community, and constant learning.
A final thank you to our sponsors without whom we couldn’t run the event:
If you’d like to be part of next year’s event — as a speaker, sponsor, or volunteer — keep an eye on cardiff.serverlessdays.io for updates. We can’t wait to welcome you.
Here’s to the builders, the dreamers, and the doers who made 2025 unforgettable. See you next year in Cardiff.
