A while back, I was reflecting on my 2024 community meetup journey. If 2024 was about recovering from a challenging year with the support of our communities, then 2025 has been fundamentally about connection. This past year has cemented my belief that the most impactful communities are those that break down silos, share resources, and actively collaborate. And this post is a reflection on why I chose to connect the dots between different groups, technologies, and cities, and what I learned along the way.

The core thesis here is simple: we are stronger together. My focus for 2025 is on joint ventures, bringing together the best of Cloud Native Barcelona, Grafana & Friends, Software Crafters, DevOps BCN, Kafka, and other communities, to offer the community something richer and more valuable than we could offer alone.

Before diving into the details, I would like to extend a massive, heartfelt thank you to every single person who made this year’s community work happen. Thank you to my brilliant co-organizers for their countless times jumping in to help; to the sponsoring hosts who opened their doors and provided logistical support; to every dedicated speaker for sharing their expertise; and to every single attendee who showed up and brought the energy. You are the community, and your efforts make it worthwhile.

I also want to commit to an honest assessment here. This journey had incredible highs, but also presented persistent challenges, particularly in terms of diversity and inclusion. Community building is a rewarding yet ongoing process, and I hope to share lessons from both the highs and the challenges.

From Seeds to a Network: The Collaborative Formula for Community Growth

Every journey begins with a starting point, a seed. For me, the initial ground for cultivating community stemmed from two foundational experiences. I first learned the ropes of bringing people together around shared technical interests with the Elastic User Groups in Barcelona and Madrid back in 2018, alongside Janko Strassburg, my long-time partner in crime. What followed was the restarting of Software Crafters Barcelona meetups in 2022, with Manuel Rivero‘s invaluable support and advice. The Crafters community, with its dedication to hands-on learning with regular coding dojos, truly instilled in me the value of consistency and showing up for the community.

These experiences laid the groundwork, and 2024 truly marked the beginning of a new chapter: joint meetups. Driven by a desire to break down the invisible walls between communities, this shift felt very organic.

The first joint venture was between Software Crafters Barcelona and Techfems, when we partnered to bring both communities together under one space in May 2024.

Another pivotal moment came at the end of 2024 with another joint meetup: Cloud Native Barcelona 🤝 Cloud Native Lisboa. I owe a huge thank you to Fábio Sampaio for suggesting that collaboration and making it happen. It showed us the potential of connecting communities even beyond our city.

These successful ventures quickly inspired more local cross-community events. We soon forged another partnership between the Kafka and Grafana communities (Apache Kafka meetup with Grafana in Madrid), which has continued into 2025. My sincere gratitude to Olivia Taylor and Ana Vrsalovic, whose connection was instrumental in getting these collaborations off the ground and will continue beyond 2026 as we expand to include other communities.

These initial joint steps were just the beginning. This year, 2025, has seen these collaborations grow exponentially, transforming those initial seeds into an interconnected network that spans multiple communities, cities, and technologies. Working together has multiplied our impact.

The 2025 Collaborative Calendar: Connecting the Dots in Action

Reviewing this year’s meetups, a pattern emerges: we are seeing an increase in joint meetups.

All those collaborations have been, and I am sure will continue to be, very rewarding.

Beyond the impressive numbers, the real reward of this collaborative approach is the synergy it creates. Simply put, joint ventures lower the organizational burden: finding hosts and speakers. By co-organizing, we share the workload, access diverse networks, and gain exposure to users and technologies we might not see in our core groups alone.

As Luca Berton noted after one of our cross-community events, “These cross-community meetups (Grafana, Kafka, Snowflake) are exactly where innovation happens“. In fact, by joining three different communities, we actually achieved an all-women speaker lineup, a rare and rewarding occurrence.

While our collaborative formula boosts audience size and exposure, it doesn’t automatically solve for deep-seated systemic issues. The reality of community work, as I’ve experienced repeatedly this year, is the persistent struggle to consistently find diverse voices from underrepresented groups for our speaker lineups. We must also seriously examine why we don’t see a proportional representation of diverse attendees.

While creating an inclusive conference with diverse voices is something we are getting better at, and we can influence as attendees, speakers, and sponsors, as meetup organizers, we face a tough, immediate decision: cancel an event until we achieve a diverse lineup, or proceed with a homogeneous one. Meetups are planned in weeks, not months, leaving us a narrow margin to pivot.

It’s not enough to be welcoming and inclusive. We must actively investigate the systemic barriers that prevent certain groups from attending or participating in meetups.

This continuous effort is a central part of my commitment as a community builder in the local community.

My resolution for 2026 is to move beyond good intentions and establish a data-driven approach.

I will begin gathering concrete data on the diversity of speakers and attendees. Once we have this baseline, we can explore and measure additional, targeted initiatives beyond our joint meetups to create truly inclusive spaces.

The journey of joint meetups in 2025 demonstrated that we are stronger together in technical collaboration. However, this combined strength should be intentionally leveraged to drive a more profound change. True allyship for systemic justice is not merely welcoming individuals. It is the commitment to dismantle the systemic barriers that prevent proportional representation in our communities and, by extension, the wider industry.

Our collaborative formula, connecting community groups across cities and technologies, is just one such initiative.

By committing to a data-driven approach in 2026, we are transitioning from recognizing the challenge to actively measuring and targeting the underlying structures of inequality, ensuring our local organizing efforts are a core engine for systemic change in tech.

Software Crafters Barcelona

I started my journey in the Barcelona tech communities in 2017 after attending https://softwarecrafters.barcelona/2017/index.html. The volunteer work to make that event happen, with talks that inspired me to change my career at a late stage, ignited me to join the conference organization in 2018 and stay until 2023.

During that time, Manuel Rivero (one of the community founders in 2013) offered to help restart our coding dojos. We restarted with my favorite event, the Global Day of Code Retreat (GDCR), back in 2022. I attended the GDCR in 2017, which was another reason for me to join the community.

2023 was probably our busiest year, though 2024 was not slow. We are running coding dojos regularly and some talks, workshops, architectural katas, and open spaces!

• 🥋 Coding Dojo @ Voxel 🎉
• Mocks aren’t Stubs. What are test doubles and how do we use them?
• Architectural Kata @Trainline
• Coding Dojo @ Adobe Commerce
• Coding dojo @Codurance
• Taller de Testcontainers con Go 🛠️
• Introducción a la CNV – Comunicación No Violenta
• 🥋 Coding Dojo @ LIFULL Connect 🎉
• Architectural Kata @Trainline
• Crafter’s Beers 🍻 , Fri, Mar 22, 2024, 7:00 PM | Meetup
• Coding dojo @Codurance, Mon, Apr 8, 2024, 6:30 PM | Meetup
• Open Space. Also published on Meetup
• 🛠️ Taller de DDD Refactor a arquitectura hexagonal @ Runroom
• Coding dojo @Runroom
• 🛠️ Taller de DDD El poder de los Value Objects @ Runroom
• Desarrollo evolutivo: la metodología del futuro
• Coding dojo @InnoIt
• Aprende a desactivar los mecanismos de la ansiedad @ Club Caramel
• Dojo Ingram Micro
• 🛠️ Taller de DDD Controlando el flujo con excepciones y alternativas @ Runroom
• Kata de arquitectura 🥋 en Collective Minds Radiology
• Respondiendo preguntas con historias
• 🛠️ Taller de DDD Definiendo el modelo de dominio con el “Domain model @ Runroom
• 🛠️ Taller de Product Minded Development @ Runroom
• Global Day of Code Retreat 2024 @Trainline
• 🛠️ Taller de DDD Descubriendo las responsabilidades del caso de uso @ Runroom

Cloud Native Barcelona

One of my favorite communities in Barcelona stopped operating during COVID-19 in 2020. In 2023, we gathered some of the original and new organizers and decided to restart the activity. This led to regular activity in our meetup in 2024 and the organization of KCD Barcelona 2024.

• Cloud Native Barcelona – meetup de enero 2024 ❄️
• Cloud Native Barcelona @ Adevinta, Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 7:00 PM and Cloud Native Barcelona at Adevinta, Thu, Mar 14, 2024, 7:00 PM
• Cloud Native Barcelona @ Dynatrace
• Décimo Aniversario de Kubernetes con el Mes de la QA 🎂, Tue, Jun 4, 2024, 6:30 PM | Meetup
• Transition to Multi-Arch Cloud &Securing Orgs with the Least Privilege Principle
• 🌱 Cloud Native Sustainability Week 2024 – Barcelona Edition 🌱
• Cloud Native Lisbon 🤝 Cloud Native Barcelona
• Cloud Native Barcelona Meetup: Kubernetes Operators & GitOps @MongoDB

Grafana & Friends

I joined Grafana Labs at the end of 2022 and have since helped organize the meetups that Gonçalo Pina and Raúl Marín started in the Iberia region. Gonçalo and Raúl’s support in 2024 goes beyond community organization; they have been there for me when I needed them. Regarding why building communities can also help a company, one of my favorite reads is from them: The Hidden SalesForce: Unleashing the Power of User Groups and Tech Communities.

• Volvemos a la carga con Grafana Labs y mucho más…
• Hablemos de trazas distribuidas con OpenTelemetry…
• Exploring Karpenter pitfalls 🪚 + Grafana for Alerting & Incident Management 🚨
• The Quest for Engineering Excellence: Observability with Grafana & Friends
• Meetup de verano 🏝️ con Grafana & Friends en Celonis
• Grafana & Friends Amsterdam Summer Meetup ☀️!
• De PostgreSQL en k8s a observabilidad a escala ¡Vuelve Grafana & Friends!
• Performance Day: del front a la observabilidad!
• Observabilidad y Performance, Mon
• Open Telemetry with Ocado Technology & Embrace
• Apache Kafka® Meetup
• Open Source Observability in Action with OpenTelemetry & the Grafana Stack

This is also the year I started organizing outside Iberia, with my first meetup in Amsterdam, and had the privilege to collaborate with communities like Kafka or WebPerf Barcelona.

DevOps BCN

In 2024, I met my now dear friend Julia Lamenza. It turns out that apart from being neighbours (we were introduced by a third person at KubeCon in Paris!), we both crave a more community-oriented DevOps conference in Barcelona. And we had been thinking of DevOpsDays.org. To find like-minded individuals in the community, we joined the DevOps BCN Group organization, and we hope this will help us bring DevOpsDays Barcelona back.

• DevOps BCN Meetup – Octubre 2024

On to 2025!

After 2024, I have an even greater appreciation for all the communities and the people who make them special. Community building not only helps others but also provides personal support and resilience.

I am very excited to continue my community-building journey for 2025, and this will be the year to work on a topic that I feel passionate about: creating inclusive communities and making sure we hear diverse voices. I’ll continue trying to connect different communities with joint events. Stay tuned!

We usually host two talks per meetup, and meetups are scheduled on weekdays (preferably Tuesday to Thursday), around 18:00-19:00, with a 3h duration. Mondays are doable since no other meetups are competing, though folks are not used to attending meetups on Mondays.

There is the option of running a workshop, which should also be 2-3 hours long and would be hosted during the week. Let’s look at a Saturday morning if the workshop runs longer (e.g., 5 hours).

📝 Get ready!

There are two main ways to kick off the meetup organization. 

1. We already have a speaker who has volunteered for a concrete date. Sometimes we get volunteers through our call for speakers form: https://forms.gle/BFtuMPYiAahcLjdr7. Note that meetups are great for first-time speakers, so we are open to folks with no experience, and we will support them through their first talk.
2. We have already secured a host and a concrete date. 

In the first case, we will look for an office to host the talk when our speaker is available. Once we locate a host, we ask them if their teams want to share a talk.

If not, we will search for another community speaker. If we can’t find them (through our contacts), the meetup organizers usually volunteer to share a talk (ask on Slack #kcd-barcelona-org) or can point us to interesting speakers in the area. We keep our talks as a last resort/backup. We want to give the floor to the community members as much as possible.

In the second option, we will ask the host if their teams want to share a talk or two. Once we know how many talks we already have from the host, if any, we launch the search for the talks we need. Similar to what we described in the previous paragraph, tell the speakers what date the meetup is so they can factor that in.

Note that sometimes we can look at events like KCD Spain to ask speakers to repeat their talks at a meetup or at any other conference with local (Barcelona) speakers available to share the same talk.

The talk’s duration is usually between 20-45m, though it is possible to add more talks if they are lightning talks (5-15m). 

If speakers outside Barcelona offer to speak, as long as their company can help them with the travel, we 💜 to host them.

Once we have settled on the meetup host or date:

Find a host willing to host our meetup, including catering for the attendees. How to find hosts? Past sponsors willing to repeat, your own company, contacts you make attending other meetups at different companies, spread the word at meetups that we are open to hosting in various offices, etc. If a speaker offers to give a talk, ask if their company could host us.

Check the space to make sure it’s comfortable for talks. What is the capacity? We usually get 30-50 attendees, we can do events in smaller offices, and we must adjust the meetup capacity if it is smaller.

Are there any requirements to access the host’s office? We need to know if the host needs a list of names/IDs/passports. In those cases, we have to close the RSVP the day before and send the list to the host on the morning of the event.

Ensure the speakers have what they need: a screen for presentations, guest wifi, or anything else they might need (whiteboard to draw or any material in case it’s a workshop and not a talk).

Ask speakers about the talk language to make it explicit in the meetup. We favor having all talks in the same language (Spanish, English, Catalan), but we can also mix it as long as it’s clear in the event we publish.

Ask the host if they want to record the meetup and have the means to. We don’t usually record them ourselves. However, we are open to recording them if the speakers agree. In this case, if the host can record, always ask for speakers’ approval.

Once we have it all ready, always send an e-mail with cc: to hello@cloudnative.barcelona (the alias for the meetup organizers) to coordinate the meetup with hosts and speakers. Other organizers can jump in to help if needed.

Using the e-mail thread above, ask speakers for the talk title and talk description. Confirm the speakers’ roles and company with the social network account/s they want to share (LinkedIn, etc.). Ask the host for the social accounts/URLs they want us to mention (LinkedIn, their web page, etc.).

Create the meetup presentation based on this sample. We will use the first slide as the cover image for our meetup and share it with our social networks. We organize this in our private Google Drive per event, so create the folder for the event and copy & modify the presentation there.

Create the draft under https://www.meetup.com/cloud-native-bcn/events/. It’s easier to duplicate a previous event and make sure you change the location and dates. Adjust the capacity, considering that only 50% will show up (if the host has a capacity of 40, it is open to 70-80 slots). Add the question if we need to gather names and ID/passports. And check with the host if they need to list the day before. In that case, prepare the meetup so that it closes RSVPs the day before. It’s not ideal as sometimes latecomers will not see it until the day, though necessary if the host needs to provide the attendees’ list to the front desk/reception one day in advance. Make sure you enable chat, as users prefer to communicate via meetup chat, not just comments in the event page.

Share the draft in the e-mail thread with the host and speakers to ask for their feedback and adjust accordingly. Always remember to thank the host explicitly for providing food & refreshments, apart from sharing their space.

We aim to publish one month in advance (or more). If we are short in time, always mention the deadline to publish in the e-mail thread and that we need everyone’s approval to proceed. Follow up sooner if we are close to the deadline, and leave time if we are in no rush.

🎉 Publish time!

Publish the meetup once we have the approvals 🎉 Don’t forget to push the button to “Notify” your group. In this way, the group members will get the notification and can RSVP before we start sharing this more broadly.

Sometimes the host also wants to publish on their groups, and that is ok. For example: https://www.meetup.com/adevinta-spain/events/299104275/. We will not encourage this if the host has limited capacity, as it would complicate spreading the RSVPs we allow on each meetup. In this particular case, it works very well as the host has a capacity 150.

Because the CNCF uses Bevy, we have to also publish under https://community.cncf.io/cloud-native-barcelona/. You should have access to clone from a previous event and make similar changes as you did with the meetup one. Be aware that, with Bevy, we cannot ask for name/ID/passport. In those cases, publish an event with no RSVPs, like https://community.cncf.io/events/details/cncf-cloud-native-barcelona-presents-cloud-native-barcelona-adevinta/, and point attendees to RSVP at meetup.com. If the host does not require additional information, we can publish a regular event under Bevy and spread the capacity between meetup.com and Bevy, as we did with https://community.cncf.io/events/details/cncf-cloud-native-barcelona-presents-cloud-native-barcelona-meetup-de-enero-2024/. As we have 1000 users in meetup and less than 100 in Bevy, spread the capacity with that in mind, 80% meetup, 20% Bevy.

Update the e-mail thread with hosts and speakers with the event URLs. And remember to thank them 🫶!

One or two weeks before the event, we need to publish the event to our networks. We don’t do it before, as the closer we are to the event, the more probable folks who RSVP will actually come. Share on our LinkedIn group and X. E.g. https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7171111696596504577 and https://x.com/cloudnativebcn/status/1749510135423074572. Repost from your own accounts and ask the other organizers to give the posts some “love”. Remember to mention, when possible, the speakers and the host’s social accounts.

One or two weeks before the event, share the event on Slack. The best for Barcelona events is BncEngineering, #events-meetups-confs. Another good Slack channel for Barcelona CNCF events is #cncf-barcelona under the CNCF slack.

🙇‍♀️ Almost there!

If the host requires names/IDs/passports, regularly check meetup.com to see if users replied correctly so we can make the final list for the host before the event. Message folks on meetup.com privately if we are missing information.

A few days before the event, check that everyone is ready by updating the e-mail thread with hosts and speakers. We can ask them if they need anything from us and if it’s ok to be there 30 minutes before the event to get everything ready.

If the host needs a list of attendees one day before the event, make sure you close the RSVPs and send the list. You’ll find examples of the list in our private Google Drive. We download the data from meetup.com and send a simplified list with the host’s required data. Remember to merge the lists before sending if we also have folks in Bevy!

Keep an eye on the event chat and comments regularly, as the community might ask questions (are we recording, what the talk languages are, etc.).

🎉 Meetup day!

Make sure to check any messages we have in the meetup, there are some users asking questions last minute (“I can’t locate the venue”, “I did not RSVP in time, and I want to join”, “I can’t come”, etc.). Try to be responsive.

Arrive at the venue 30 minutes before (or ask other organizers to be there if you can’t). We need to help the host set up and help the speakers check their setup.

Introduce the meetup using the presentation created from the sample. Next, give the floor to the host to present their company. And finally, present the 🔝 speakers 🎙️.

Take pictures from each presentation, including ours, the host, and the speakers. Upload them to the meetup. And some from the networking part. E.g. https://www.meetup.com/cloud-native-bcn/photos/34124873/.

It’s nice to share with our networks while the meetup is ongoing. E.g. https://x.com/cloudnativebcn/status/1768356599859445926. Remember to mention the host and speakers if possible.

Stay until the end and help the host tear down.

🙌 Wrap up!

Update the e-mail thread with hosts and speakers to thank them for a successful event, and hoping we can collaborate in future events. If the host recorded the meetup, ask for the recording so we can share it in our meetup.com event (add it to the comments), and use it in our final social post. We can do a final LinkedIn post (or Twitter), share the recording, and thank speakers and hosts again.

Make sure you upload all photos to the meetup.com event for future reference. E.g. https://www.meetup.com/cloud-native-bcn/photos/34124873/

If attendees ask for presentation slides, follow up with the speakers to share them in the meetup comments.

And don’t forget to enjoy meetup organization!

¡Ya tenemos aquí el Global Day of Code Retreat 🎊!

Quieres practicar en buena compañía y aprender:

• Testing
• Test-Driven Development (TDD)
• Conceptos de diseño de software
• Pair-programming

El próximo 5 de Noviembre, únete a miles de desarrolladoras en todo el mundo para el mayor taller comunitario y gratuito enfocado en Prácticas de Extreme Programming.

Los coderetreats son eventos intensivos y gratuitos de un día de duración. En este workshop, practicaremos durante un día entero conceptos como Testing, Test-Driven Development, pair-programming y diseño de software a través de ejercicios en un entorno seguro y lejos de la presión de tener que hacer las cosas con prisas.

¿Qué tengo que llevar?

• Muchas ganas de aprender
• Ordenador portátil y cargador
• Teclado y ratón externos
• Bolígrafo y papel
• Tu editor de código/IDE favoritos
• Git para control de versiones
• Scaffolding para un proyecto vacío en tu lenguaje favorito

Horario

• De 9:00h a 17h. Incluye desayuno y comida.

Ubicación
Oficinas de Trainline en Barcelona: Gran Via de les Corts Catalanes, 583, 08011 Barcelona (Spaces, segunda planta).

Facilitan

• Ana Carmona @nhan_bcn
• Cristina Verdi @cristina_verdi
• Fernando Aparicio @alchemist_devel
• David Gracia @dgraciac
• Imma Valls @eyeveebee

Organizado por

Software Crafters Barcelona
Comunidad para desarrolladores que se preocupan y están orgullosos de lo que hacen, sin importar la experiencia, y que quieran mejorar en su oficio

Encuéntranos en:

• Discord: https://bit.ly/3zsO3KN
• Twitter: @bcnswcraft
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/software-crafters-barcelona

Shuttle by Code Sherpas
Transformamos el sector tech en un espacio más diverso, inclusivo y equitativo poniendo al alcance de todes formación en prácticas de Extreme Programming.

Encuéntranos en:

• Slack: https://bit.ly/3U2yD8x
• Twitter: https://bit.ly/3fcIQQz

Sponsors
Mil gracias a los sponsors por facilitar el espacio 🍲 🍵 🍴🥤🧃

• Trainline: https://www.thetrainline.com/
• Code Sherpas: https://bit.ly/3znyxQw

Tweets