Months of preparation. 27 organizing meetings. One global team. Three roles — organizer, moderator, and speaker. And finally, UbuCon Asia 2026 in Taipei.
Introduction
UbuCon Asia 2026 was a very different experience for me.
In 2025, I was part of the local organizing team for UbuCon Asia in Kathmandu. This year, I took on a different role as part of the global organizing team, working remotely from Nepal during the preparation and then traveling to Taipei to help with the event on-site.
Our preparation officially started on 25 January 2026, and over the following months, we held 27 organizing meetings. During this time, we worked on documentation, announcements, website updates and translations, sponsorship updates, content, and many other tasks that happen behind the scenes.
This year, UbuCon Asia was co-located with COSCUP at the National Taiwan University of Science and Technology (NTUST) in Taipei, Taiwan. COSCUP handled a significant part of the venue, registration, and event logistics, which allowed us to focus more on UbuCon Asia-specific activities. At the same time, working within a much larger conference environment meant that we had less control over some aspects of the event and had to adapt to a different way of working.
For me, this was also an opportunity to experience UbuCon Asia from several different perspectives. I was part of the organizing team, I moderated sessions, and I also participated as a speaker. During the event, I gave my talk, “Running gRPC in Production on Ubuntu: Scaling Microservices with Kubernetes, Observability, and Resilience.”
After months of remote meetings, planning, discussions, and preparation, everything finally came together in Taipei.
This is my experience of organizing, speaking, meeting the community, facing challenges, and learning from UbuCon Asia 2026.
Pre-event
Day 0: August 07 – Day before UbuCon Asia
The day before the main event, Aaditya (@younggunner14) and I went to NTUST for the UbuCon Asia booth setup and preparation.
For months, most of our work had happened remotely through meetings, chat messages, shared documents, and other online collaboration. Now, for the first time, we were physically standing at the venue and preparing everything.
I had also carried a bundle of UbuCon Asia merchandise from Nepal, including notebooks and stickers.
When we reached the booth area on the third floor of the TR building, we found the UbuCon Asia standee already printed and ready. It was a small moment, but for me it felt significant. After months of seeing UbuCon Asia through screens, the event was finally becoming real.
We arranged the booth, merchandise, tablecloth, and other materials. At the same time, other communities were preparing their own booths, so there was already a lot of activity around the venue.
While preparing, I met several people, including Yeonguk Choo (@choo121600), who was involved with the Ubu4Cut Photo Booth, RJ Hsiao (@rjhsiao) from Taiwan, Youngbin Han (@sukso96100), and people from Mozilla and the Open Culture Foundation. I also met people from Canonical, including Mauro Gaspari (@ilvipero) and Grégory Schiano (@gschiano), while they were preparing their booth and demonstrations, as well as members of the Ubuntu community.
It was interesting to see how many different communities were preparing for the same event, each bringing its own people, projects, and ideas.
Pre-event Welcome Party
After the booth setup, we joined the pre-event welcome party. There were already many attendees, organizers, speakers, and community members gathering together. The COSCUP team had also been very supportive throughout the preparation, including with local arrangements and coordination.
After months of communicating online, meeting people in person changed the atmosphere completely. People who had previously been names and faces on a screen were suddenly standing in front of us, and conversations that normally happened through chat were now happening face to face.
The conference had not officially started yet, but the community had already begun.
During the Event
Day 1: August 08 – The Event Begins
The first day finally arrived.
The venue was large, with multiple buildings, rooms, sessions, booths, and activities happening at the same time. Registration was smooth, and attendees received lanyards with blank cards where they could write their names.
For the first few hours, everyone was busy getting the event ready. Once our booth was set up, we started welcoming attendees and talking with people who stopped by.
There was constant movement around the venue. People were moving between buildings, attending sessions, visiting booths, meeting friends, and trying to find their next session.
This was very different from UbuCon Asia 2025 in Kathmandu. In Kathmandu, we were organizing a standalone event and had a much clearer view of the entire conference. In Taipei, we were one part of a much larger event.
That brought both opportunities and challenges.
The UbuCon Asia Booth
The booth became one of the most important places for us because it gave us a chance to interact directly with attendees.
Khairul Aizat Bin Kamarudzzaman(@fenris) and I distributed UbuCon Asia merchandise and talked with attendees about the community and the event. I also visited other community booths and asked people what they knew about UbuCon Asia.
This became one of the most interesting parts of the event for me.
Some technical communities already knew about UbuCon Asia. Some people had heard the name but did not really know what UbuCon Asia was, while others had never heard about it at all.
This gave us an important lesson about visibility and marketing.
In Kathmandu, we were the local organizing team, so we had much more control over local outreach and promotion. In Taipei, co-location with COSCUP gave us access to a much larger audience, but that did not automatically mean everyone knew about UbuCon Asia.
It reminded me that being part of a large event does not automatically create visibility.
Co-location gives us access to a larger community, but we still need to clearly communicate who we are, what UbuCon Asia is, and why people should participate.
Moderating Sessions and Network Challenges
Before my own session, I was also involved in moderation. During the first half of the day, I moderated 2 sessions—Workshop: Deploy a 12-factor application of your choice end-to-end! and Talk: Invisible Debugging for Docker Workloads on Ubuntu GCP: eBPF in Action—in the AU-101 hall.
Moderating gave me a completely different perspective on the conference. As an attendee, you can simply sit down and listen to a speaker. As a moderator, you need to pay attention to the room, the speaker, timing, technical requirements, questions, and everything else happening around the session.
At the same time, we faced some network connectivity issues during presentations. Despite having speaker credentials arranged in advance, the connection caused problems, but fortunately, Youngbin had brought a travel router, which helped us quickly resolve the situation. It was a simple solution, but a good reminder that even with careful preparation, backup plans and the ability to adapt quickly are essential during an event.
Meanwhile, I was also checking on the UbuCon Asia booth and helping with other event activities. It meant constantly switching between responsibilities, but that was also one of the most rewarding parts of the conference. I was not experiencing UbuCon Asia from just one perspective—I was helping organize it, moderating sessions, and preparing for my own talk.
My gRPC Talk
Later in the day, it was time for my own session. I gave my talk, “Running gRPC in Production on Ubuntu: Scaling Microservices with Kubernetes, Observability, and Resilience.”
The talk was not a gRPC tutorial or a Kubernetes guide. It focused on real production lessons: gRPC speed alone does not fix slow databases or bad architecture, Kubernetes amplifies both good and bad decisions, observability is essential for debugging distributed systems, and resilience means designing for failure instead of assuming everything will always work. I also shared what I would do differently next time, especially introducing observability earlier and keeping the architecture as simple as possible.
My session had 28 attendees who came to listen to the talk. The audience was technically engaged, and there were several questions after the presentation. Attendees were particularly interested in the parts about observability, failure handling, and scaling beyond just adding more pods.
After months of preparing both the talk and the event, finally being on stage felt rewarding. There is a different kind of pressure and pride when you speak at an event you helped organize. You know the work that went into bringing people into the room, the long discussions, and the problems solved behind the scenes. That context made the session especially meaningful for me.
Meeting the Communities
One of the best parts of UbuCon Asia was meeting people. Because the event was co-located with COSCUP, I had the opportunity to meet speakers, organizers, and community members from different countries and open-source communities, including Canonical, WordPress, Wikimedia, and the Open Culture Foundation. The UbuCon Asia booth made many of these interactions possible, as people stopped by, asked about UbuCon Asia, picked up stickers, and started conversations about technology, communities, and open source. These conversations and connections were just as valuable to me as attending the formal sessions.
The Daily Retrospective: Our Secret Weapon
At 4:30 PM on Day 1, we held an on-site sync and retrospective to review what went well and what needed improvement. We realized that organizers were moving too frequently between rooms and buildings, creating unnecessary confusion.
For Day 2, we assigned clearer responsibilities and specific areas to each person, which made coordination much smoother. The biggest lesson for me was:
Good coordination is not about everyone doing everything—it is about everyone knowing what they are responsible for.
Most importantly, we identified the issue during the event and improved our approach immediately.
Day 2: August 09 – Weather and a Different Pace
The second day started very differently. Rain caused by the nearby typhoon affected attendance, and when we reached the venue, there were noticeably fewer people compared with the first day.
Still, the event continued as planned. We attended sessions, returned to the UbuCon Asia booth, supported activities, and continued meeting people throughout the day.
One noticeable difference was the audience size. Because of the weather and the scale of the co-located event, attendees were spread across different rooms and buildings, and some sessions had only a few participants. This was different from what we had expected during the planning stage and reminded us that:
A large overall conference does not necessarily mean every individual session will have a large audience.
For future co-located events, audience distribution and session visibility are definitely things we need to consider more carefully.
Despite the smaller crowds, networking continued. In some ways, the quieter atmosphere gave us more time for meaningful conversations during breaks and around the community booths.
Aryan Kaushik(@aryan) and I also redeemed our souvenir points for COSCUP merchandise. We distributed the UbuCon Asia staff T-shirts, with different designs prepared for each day. Seeing the team together around the venue was a particularly nice moment. After months of working remotely, it was good to finally be together—working at the same event and representing UbuCon Asia as one team.
Closing Session and Official Dinner
The second day concluded with the UbuCon Asia closing session, where RJ delivered the closing remarks and we announced and introduced the UbuCon Asia committee members. We also took photographs with the COSCUP team.
After the event, we had the official dinner in the TR Building, with both vegetarian and non-vegetarian options. After two busy days of organizing, speaking, moderating, troubleshooting, and networking, it was a great opportunity to finally relax, enjoy ourselves, and reflect on UbuCon Asia 2026 together.
Day 3: August 10 – Post-event Trip
On 10 August, a post-event trip was organized for participants. Unfortunately, I could not join, but I later heard that participants visited a tea garden and explored markets and other cultural places around Taipei.
Although I missed the trip, I was glad that participants had an opportunity to spend more time together and explore the city after the conference.
Post-Event Thoughts
UbuCon Asia 2026 gave me a different perspective on organizing an international event. This time, I was part of the global organizing team, working remotely from Nepal during the preparation and then taking on several responsibilities on-site.
Co-location with COSCUP reduced much of the logistical work and allowed us to focus on UbuCon Asia-specific content, speakers, community engagement, and the booth. At the same time, working within a much larger event meant less control over some parts of the attendee experience.
Key Learnings
- Co-located events need a different planning approach.
- Audience distribution and session visibility matter, especially when many activities happen at the same time.
- We need better ways to track UbuCon Asia-specific participation and impact when using shared registration.
- Dedicated marketing and outreach remain important, even when we are part of a larger conference.
- Clear responsibilities improve on-site coordination. Our Day 1 retrospective helped us identify unnecessary movement and assign clearer responsibilities for Day 2.
- Adaptability matters. Network issues, changing attendance, and other unexpected situations required us to respond while the event was happening.
For me personally, moving between organizing, moderating, speaking, booth activities, and coordination was an important learning experience. It strengthened my understanding of delegation, communication, documentation, and teamwork.
The event had its challenges, but it also gave us a clearer idea of what we can improve for future UbuCon Asia events.
Most importantly, I will remember the people, conversations, and connections that made the event possible.
Community Impact
Being co-located with COSCUP gave UbuCon Asia an opportunity to reach a broader open-source community and connect with people from different projects, countries, and communities.
The UbuCon Asia booth, sessions, and informal conversations helped us introduce the community to people who may not have encountered UbuCon Asia before. The experience also showed that co-location creates opportunities for greater reach, but visibility still requires dedicated outreach and clear communication.
According to our event notes, more than 3,400 people and 100+ international speakers from 18+ countries participated across the larger event. Since UbuCon Asia shared registration with COSCUP, we cannot separate that number into UbuCon Asia-specific participation.
For me, the most valuable impact was the new connections, conversations, and cross-community relationships created around Ubuntu and open source.
Organizing Committee & Team Recognition
Global Organizers
Local Organizers
!
To the Speakers
Thank you to all the speakers who prepared and delivered their sessions, shared their knowledge, and contributed to the program. The event would not have been the same without people willing to share their experience with the community. I was also happy to be one of the speakers this year and to share my technical experience with the audience.
Final Reflection
UbuCon Asia 2026 was a valuable experience filled with both challenges and lessons. Working as part of a larger co-located event meant adapting to scattered audiences, network issues, and changing situations, but we also had a strong team and community supporting each other throughout the event.
What I will remember most is the people. Organizers, speakers, volunteers, and community members from different backgrounds and communities came together around Ubuntu and open source, sharing ideas, experiences, and conversations throughout the event.
I would like to acknowledge the COSCUP team for hosting and supporting UbuCon Asia, as well as the UbuCon Asia organizing team, local organizing team, volunteers, speakers, sponsors, and community members who contributed to making the event possible. A special mention goes to Muhd Syazwan(@jipangmenjerit), who contributed and supported the event remotely throughout the journey. I also appreciate everyone who visited our booth, attended sessions, asked questions, shared feedback, and connected with us during the event.
I came to Taipei as an organizer, moderator, and speaker. I left with new connections, valuable lessons, and a better understanding of what it takes to organize an international event as part of a larger conference.
The preparation took months. The event lasted two days. But the lessons and connections will continue far beyond the conference.
Sailesh Singh
Global Organizer & Speaker — UbuCon Asia 2026
Ubuntu Nepal | GNOME Nepal
Official event: UbuCon Asia 2026
Event schedule: UbuCon Asia 2026 @ COSCUP — Canonical Events