On Wednesday November 19th 2025 we’re hosting HOPE
(HCS Open Platform Experience): a day full of open source, connection and knowledge sharing.
Are you ready to delve into the latest technical developments in the field of Platform Engineering?
Connect with like-minded engineers, explore bold ideas and see how open technologies are shaping the future!
Don’t miss out! We HOPE to see you there. Pictures of last year:
With HOPE, we aim to be more than an event: we want to spark awareness, compassion, and real change. A moment that lifts barriers, connects hearts, by supporting e-NABLE Nederland, a wonderful good cause that empowers children to live without limits. Check below for more info!
✨ Dive into a day of learning, sharing, and building — together.
🎯 Save the date: November 19, 2025
Explore. Connect. Innovate.
Be part of the movement. Be part of HOPE.
Check this 70-second video preview of what to expect this year:
First floor map. The rooms are highlighted when hovering over the text.
Professor of Innovation & Technology | Entrepreneur | Former Professional Speed Skater
Topic: The Future of Technological Breakthroughs
Ben van der Burg combines an impressive career in top-level sports with a passion for digital innovation and technology. With over 20 years of experience in both academia and industry, he inspires audiences with insights on innovation, AI, and the human side of technology. Expect a dynamic keynote full of energy, challenges, and inspiration!
Topic: Hold That Thought: Making Containers Persistent
Containers are fast, agile, and scalable — but ephemeral by nature. Containers revolutionized agility and scale but brought new challenges like persistency. This session traces the journey from the dominance of virtual machines, to the rise of containers, and now to VMs running inside containers. Along the way, we’ll explore the birth of the Container Storage Interface (CSI) and how modern solutions like Portworx Enterprise enables enterprise-grade persistence, availability, and mobility for today’s hybrid workloads.
Workshop: OpenShift Virtualization + Portworx Enterprise - Hands-on Lab
Want to get your hands dirty? Come join Red Hat and Portworx in this workshop where you will be installing OpenShift Virtualization, add Portworx Enterprise and run your own VM+container app, in your own sandbox environment! We will also be showcasing things like Live Migration as part of the lab. You should also bring your own laptop, preferably with the Chrome browser installed.
Topic: Belastingdienst: The Road to DevOps and OpenShift
A five-year journey from siloed teams and shared responsibilities to a DevOps-driven culture empowered by OpenShift. This talk shares the challenges and lessons from a team that took initiative in adopting DevOps practices and applying OpenShift in ways that best fit their needs at the time. Our focus was on discovering how to effectively work with OpenShift as consumers, exploring cloud-native development practices and shaping our own delivery workflows. Throughout this journey, we collaborated closely with the Cloud Platform Enabling Team (CPET) to align with platform capabilities and ensure smooth integration.
Topic: Securing the software supply chain @ Bol.
With an ever increasing reliance on 3rd party packages and supply chain attacks regularly making headlines, supply chain security is yet another security challenge organizations face. In this session Zahra Deghan Pour (Bol.) and Feike Wierda (HCS Company) will take you through the entire journey of securing the software supply chain at Bol.
Topic: Securing the software supply chain @ Bol.
With an ever increasing reliance on 3rd party packages and supply chain attacks regularly making headlines, supply chain security is yet another security challenge organizations face. In this session Zahra Deghan Pour (Bol.) and Feike Wierda (HCS Company) will take you through the entire journey of securing the software supply chain at Bol.
Topic: Modernizing your CI/CD pipelines with Dagger.io
CI/CD pipelines can be a struggle to develop and maintain. What if you can treat your pipeline like another application and use your favorite programming language. Interact with your pipelines interactively for fast feedback. Use advanced caching to speed up repetitive tasks. In this session I will share all these possibilities and more on why Dagger.io can help you modernize your CI/CD pipelines. Demo included.
Topic: "We have a platform. It’s running. Everyone’s enthusiastic. Right? So… now what?"
In this session, we’ll explore the questions every platform owner faces sooner or later. How mature is our IT platform, really? Is it well-organized? Is it future-proof? Are people truly as satisfied as we think? And are we getting the full potential out of it? We’ll introduce a maturity model that not only delivers insights, but also sparks the conversations that matter. About strength, growth potential, and direction. Because measuring is useful – but understanding is what really drives progress.
Topic: Officially open source
Daan will take you along the implementation of an open source office/collaboration stack that was POCced at government client. DAWO stands for Digitally Autonomous Workplace Overheid (Government), or DAWG in English 😉. He will go into • The process of reanimating old hardware to run it. • The amateur-hour stuff that cost a bunch of time if only he knew in advance • What it takes to run the open source version of it (DAWN, mainly based on SUSE and other European software) yourself. He will attempt to speak manager, but engineering questions are more than welcome. Most will probably be answered with skill-issue.
Workshop: OpenShift Virtualization + Portworx Enterprise - Hands-on Lab
Want to get your hands dirty? Come join Red Hat and Portworx in this workshop where you will be installing OpenShift Virtualization, add Portworx Enterprise and run your own VM+container app, in your own sandbox environment! We will also be showcasing things like Live Migration as part of the lab. You should also bring your own laptop, preferably with the Chrome browser installed.
Topic: Navigating AI/ML Adoption with OpenShift AI
As AI transforms industries, organizations need to align their platforms, teams, and processes for responsible and scalable adoption. This session presents a structured approach to building an AI-ready infrastructure using the Red Hat OpenShift AI open-source platform, starting with safe experimentation and moving towards full-scale implementation.
Topic: From Assistant to Agent: Unlocking Developer Potential with GitLab Duo Agent Platform
Discover how AI is evolving beyond simple code completion into autonomous agents that can tackle complex development workflows. This talk explores GitLab Duo Agent Platform, demonstrating how AI agents can understand context, make decisions, and execute multi-step tasks across the entire software development lifecycle. Learn how developers can leverage these intelligent agents to automate repetitive workflows, accelerate problem-solving, and focus on creative, high-value work
Workshop: Gitlab Duo Agent Platform - Hands-On Workshop
Get hands-on experience with GitLab Duo's Agent Platform in this interactive 2-hour workshop. Learn how to leverage AI-powered agents to automate workflows, enhance code quality, and accelerate development—all integrated within GitLab. Through practical exercises in our lab environment, you'll explore how these intelligent agents assist with code generation, testing, security scanning, and more. Prerequisites: A free GitLab.com account (create one beforehand if needed). All lab links and resources will be provided via QR codes during the session.
Topic: How to put the server heat to good use
We're all familiar with the amount of energy used by all our equipment when we’re standing in the hot aisle. Datecenters are spending another 25% on top of that to get rid of the heat in the datacenter. What is needed to turn that into something useful? And what does that mean for your infrastructure.
Topic: Container Security 101
Containers accelerate software delivery, but also introduce unique security risks. This talk covers the fundamentals of container security, from writing secure Dockerfiles to deploying hardened workloads in Kubernetes. In the end you can write the perfect safe Dockerfile and deploy your workloads on Kubernetes securely 😉
Topic: Solving the Open Source Problem, End to End — Together
Open source software has become the foundation of modern development—but it’s also where most security risk now lives. The explosion of CVEs, opaque provenance, and complex dependency chains have made it nearly impossible for teams to keep up. This session explores how Chainguard secures the entire open source software supply chain—from building verified components to enforcing secure configurations and providing continuous assurance in production. You’ll see how Chainguard’s end-to-end approach brings trust, transparency, and speed back to open source—without slowing innovation.
Topic: Tame complex debugging with Observability
Customer Alice is complaining that the list of products on the second page of the T-shirt category is not working." How do you go from there? There is nothing more complex than debugging in modern IT. The complexity exploded along the years. We came from a pizza box handling an entire app to hundreds of pods, on dozens of VMs for the same thing. This is where Observability helps to collect and organize valuable data to troubleshoot faster. And on top of that, there is AI to dig into your Observability gold mines! In this session, I will show you the latest and greatest by following a scenario involving multiple personas. We will go from "Why it doesn't work?" to "I knew Patrick was a terrible coder!
Disclaimer: By purchasing a ticket and attending this event, you agree that your email address may be shared with event sponsors and partners for relevant updates and promotions. You also acknowledge that photographs and videos taken during the event may be used by the organizers for future promotional purposes. If you have any concerns about this, please contact us at: events@hcs-company.com
What would HOPE 2025 be without our awesome sponsors? A special thanks to our sponsors for making HOPE possible. You’ll get a chance to network with our sponsors at the booths or see them shine at the talks and workshops.
Just like the open source community we find it important to help other communities were we can. That’s why, all proceeds from HOPE will go to e-NABLE Nederland, a wonderful foundation that provides mobility aids and adaptive equipment, giving children the freedom to move, play, and fully participate in life. Like us, e-NABLE Nederland believes in the power of inclusion. With the right support, every child can discover independence, joy and opportunity. Every child deserves that chance — and we’re proud to support that mission with HOPE.
You have a chance to not only leave HOPE with a lot of new knowledge, but also with great prizes! Can you solve the e-Nable grabber stack game at HOPE? Great job! You will take an awesome HOPE mug back home. And last but not least, you can win a LEGO Star Wars AT-ST Walker Construction Kit! How? Collect all sponsor stamps by the sponsor booths and participate in the prize drawing.
Meervaart theatre
Public Transport: Tram/Bus stop Osdorpplein Oost, Amsterdam (Navigate)
Parking:
Follow us and stay up-to-date about new speaker and sponsor announcements and many more!
