TL;DR

2026 was the best Monki Gras so far with a theme of ‘prepping craft’. A room full of techies, and a great gathering of friends, but not really a tech conference. It’s transcended tech, and become the place where the talks are about more important stuff.

Monki What?

Monki Gras is a London based tech conference organised by RedMonk founder James Governor. It’s essentially the UK version of Monktoberfest, which is also an event about the craft of software and the craft of beer.

Monki Gras has been going since 2012, took a break from 2020-2023, and has been back since 2024. It used to be at the end of the week before FOSDEM (to catch international travellers on their way through London), and more recently has been aligned to Kubecon Europe. I’m among a handful of people who’ve been to them all.

Resilience

Given the line up of speakers one might expect talks about fault tolerant architectures, and observability, and chaos engineering. If you want those talks then catch the same speakers anywhere else that they ply their trade.

What we got instead were stories of personal resilience, building a resilient career, and how to survive in the hostile political and economic climate we find ourselves in.

The most impactful talks were on the topic of trans rights, or rather how to survive when those rights are under constant attack by bigots waging their ‘culture wars’. Trans rights are human rights, and we must all stand firm against their erosion.

Hazel Weakly’s talk hit especially hard. At the end I turned to Paul sat beside me and commented, “and that’s why I don’t speak at Monki Gras, because who wants to follow that!”[1,2].

Gathering of the clan

Every break was a chance to chat with friends (and meet new folk), and Monki Gras has become ‘the room where things happen’, or at least the room where things get started. Some of the most impactful things I’ve been involved in started as Monki Gras conversations (e.g. DXC Online DevOps Dojo). So I have high hopes for where some of this year’s chats will lead…

Code Your Future

I’d barely set foot into the venue when James introduced me to Elena Barker from Code Your Future to enlist me as a mentor for the folk coming along under the auspices of the diversity & inclusion programme. It was a real pleasure to meet some of the participants and talk about how we’re all on a learning journey. Working with early career folk has been one of the highlights of Atsign over the past five years, so this was a chance to chat with some similarly talented and enthusiastic people. Elena has a post on LinkedIn about it.

Beer

Rob surpassed himself with this year’s selection serving up a couple of DIPAs that I gave 5* and 4.75* on Untappd[3].

It was also good to see some low/no alcohol choices, with ‘small’ beer on offer along with (one of my faves) Bristol Beer Factory “Clear Head”.

Wine

Wine featured much more prominently than previous years, with a wide selection of boxed wines from Bobo. I like the concept, but I didn’t spend any of my units on trying any. Maybe I should have tried some sips.

Food

Monki Gras has always had great food, and this year was no exception. What did seem to be different was less queuing. The street food vendors were well prepped, and able to deal with the onslaughts.

There was the now obligatory ‘cheese mountain’ :)

I’ve skipped over a LOT

I didn’t take photos (of anything except beer for Untappd), I didn’t take detailed notes. Others did.

#monkigras on Bluesky seemed to be where the live action took place.

And there have been some blog posts, from Dave Letorey and Alex Chan.

Notes

[1] Almost every conference I go to is as a speaker, exhibitor, organiser or whatever. Very rarely just a regular attendee. I decided some time ago that I would not speak at Monki Gras, as I don’t want to ‘sing for my supper’, I’d rather just enjoy the event (even if I have to buy a ticket from my own pocket and take time off work).
[2] James did an excellent job of providing padding between Hazel’s talk and Daniel’s that followed.
[3] Untappd featured in the very first Monki Gras, and I signed up straight away, but it was a (now regrettable) few years before I became a regular user in order to track what I like.
[4] I’m sure when Rob showed me his list this was down as PuTTY, like the terminal emulator, though the can clearly has another T.