This is my second time attending the AutoCon event. The first one I went to was last year in Amsterdam (AutoCon1), and it was absolutely amazing. I decided to attend again this year, and AutoCon3 took place from the 26th to the 30th of May. The first two days were dedicated to workshops, and the conference itself ran from the 28th to the 30th. I only attended the conference. I heard there were around 650 attendees at this event, which is great to see.
Network Automation Forum (NAF)
In case you’ve never heard of AutoCon, it’s a community-driven conference focused on network automation, organized by the Network Automation Forum (NAF). NAF brings together people from across the industry to share ideas, tools, and best practices around automation, orchestration, and observability in networking.
They typically hold two conferences each year, one in Europe and one in the USA, or at least that’s how it’s been so far. The European event is usually around the end of May, and the US one takes place around November. Tickets are released in tiers, with early bird pricing being cheaper. I grabbed the early bird ticket for 299 euros as soon as it was announced.
So I Mistakenly Made Two Hotel Reservations
I live in London, so getting to the conference wasn’t a big trip. It took just over 1.5 hours flying from London Heathrow Airport. I decided to stay at the Hilton, where the conference was held. It was a bit more expensive than nearby hotels, but I liked the convenience of staying in the same place.
I took an early flight from LHR around 8.30 AM and arrived in Prague at 11.35 AM. From there, I took an Uber to the hotel, which cost around £20. I tried to check in as soon as I arrived, and that’s when I got a surprise. Hilton told me I had two bookings under my name. How did that happen?
As soon as AutoCon3 was announced, I had booked a room right away, just to be safe. My thinking was that I could always cancel it later, as long as it was more than 7 days before the stay. A few weeks later, my company agreed to sponsor the trip, so I made another booking through them and completely forgot to cancel my original reservation. I tried my best to get Hilton to waive the cancellation fee, but they didn’t budge, which I understand. In the end, I had to pay a £350 cancellation fee for the original booking. Lesson learned.
Opening Keynote
The opening keynote was presented by Claudia de Luna. If you didn’t know, she’s the person behind gratuitous-arp.net, a site I regularly follow. I had met Claudia at AutoCon1 in Amsterdam as well, she’s very knowledgeable and well-respected in the network automation community. I was also happy to hear her encourage me to write more, which I really appreciated.
After that, the next speaker was my good friend Suhaib Saeed, who presented Clash of the Titans: Nornir vs Ansible. He talked about both tools, when to choose one over the other, and went through the pros and cons of each approach.
Catching up with Vendors
During the breaks, we had a chance to catch up with some of the vendors who were sponsoring the event. A big thanks to all of them for supporting the network automation community. I had some good conversations with folks from Infrahub (who also sponsor my blog, huge thanks again), SuzieQ, NetPicker (previous sponsor of my blog), Itential, Glueware and Forward Networks. It was nice to hear what they're working on and how they're helping teams with visibility, automation, and network data.
One of the vendors I was glad to see at the event was Infrahub. They’re building a source of truth platform with a flexible schema focused on being API-first and easy to integrate into automation workflows. I especially like their tagline: 'the most developer-friendly source of truth' - it sums up their approach really well.
I also met the teams from Slurp’it and NetPicker. Slurp’it is working on making network data collection easier and more accessible, while NetPicker focuses on helping teams visualize and understand their network configurations and state. It was great catching up with the guys, always a happy chat and good energy from them.
I also had a good chat with the Glueware team, and from what I understood during our quick catch-up, their platform helps with automating network configuration management. The way it was explained to me, if I wanted to configure something like BGP, they have a JSON-based model where you fill in the details like a form, and it generates the config and pushes it to the devices. They now offer a free plan, so I’m looking forward to trying it out in my lab.
Cool Vendor - Forward Networks
One vendor that really caught my eye was Forward Networks. I liked how they took the time to clearly explain what their product does. Forward Networks builds a platform that creates a digital twin of your network by collecting device configurations, routing tables, forwarding behaviour, and topology data.
It models how the network actually behaves, allowing you to verify intent, trace end-to-end paths, and run pre-change analysis.
You can query the network like a database, e.g. show me all paths from X to Y, or find devices with ACLs blocking port 443. It supports technologies like BGP, OSPF, MPLS, EVPN, VLANs, and more. It’s especially useful for validating security policies, auditing, and troubleshooting complex networks.
Meeting Like-Minded People
One of the best parts of the conference was meeting like-minded people and sharing ideas. It was great to have casual conversations about real-world challenges and solutions. We talked about things like firewall automation, using pytest for network testing, NetConf/YANG, and plenty of other topics. These kinds of discussions are what make events like this worth attending.
I also had some interesting conversations around Python best practices, things like using type hints and annotations (don’t judge me, I don’t write them much). We talked about how they can make the code easier to understand. There was also a good discussion on the importance of writing unit tests, especially for network automation code. I also had a good conversation on NetConf and YANG models and how they’re becoming more relevant in modern network automation workflows.
Closing Up
Overall, it was a great few days at AutoCon3. I enjoyed catching up with friends, meeting new people, and having good conversations about real-world problems and solutions. The talks were interesting, the vendors were friendly and helpful, and the whole event had a relaxed and welcoming vibe. I’m glad I made the trip and am already looking forward to the next one.
