Everyone's first instinct for scaling an in-memory database is a bigger machine. One process, one enormous node, one impressive throughput number. That works right up until it doesn't: a bigger node is a bigger thing to lose, a longer wait when you have to rebuild it, and a bill for capacity your workload never uses. So the advice is to scale out instead, except splitting data across nodes has its own history of pain. Moving data between nodes was slow, adding or removing one left the cluster worse off before it got better, and all of it lands exactly when you least want to touch production. Neither axis is optional.

In this talk, learn what the Valkey community did to make both of them boring. Going up, why command execution is still single threaded and will stay that way, and what we moved off that thread instead: network I/O, parsing, and TLS became someone else's problem, and per-key memory overhead came down, so a large node earns its size. Going out, how slot migration became something you can run at peak traffic, and what had to change for adding and removing nodes to stop being an event. And how we measure any of it, because "faster" is not a number, and the metrics you choose decide which tradeoffs you accept.
Sobre Madelyn Olson: I work primarily on the open source Valkey project and evangelize the importance of open source software development. Show less

What does it mean to build software for humanity? Hear pioneers discuss their journeys creating open projects that became indispensable to billions: lightweight databases, anonymous communication, video standards, and beyond. This conversation goes beyond technology to explore the principles that unite them, and the unique challenges of leading when thousands of voices shape your vision. Hear from the architects of the open web on freedom, responsibility, and the future they're building together.
Sobre D. Richard Hipp: D. Richard Hipp is an American software developer best known as the creator and lead architect of SQLite, the most widely deployed database engine in the world.
Sobre Jean-Baptiste Kempf: Jean-Baptiste Kempf is the creator of the VideoLAN non-profit and a key figure behind VLC media player. Heavily involved in the past 20 years in the open source ecosystems, he is the maintainer of dozens of open source projects, has founded multiple startups in the multimedia and gaming space, advised VCs and numerous startups and has led large engineering teams at scale.

Since close to 20 years, he has been a key contributor to numerous open source projects, such as FFmpeg, x264, dav1d, VLC and a few others, which are powering most of the video streaming services. Active proponent of the open source ecosystem, he has also been the president of the VideoLAN foundation, since its foundation in 2008.

He is also the creator and leader of Kyber, a new open technology start-up made to control machines, drones and robots in real time.

JB is also member of the European Open Source Academy.
Sobre Madelyn Olson: I work primarily on the open source Valkey project and evangelize the importance of open source software development.
Sobre Monty Widenius: Michael “Monty” Widenius is the creator of MySQL and MariaDB and one of the world’s best-known open source database developers. He is Founder and CTO of MariaDB Foundation and CTO of MariaDB plc, and has spent more than three decades building and advocating for open source database technology.
Sobre Robin Bender Ginn: I lead global open technology ecosystems at the intersection of AI, developer platforms, and the critical infrastructure that powers them – shaping how technologies used by billions are built and run.

As Executive Director of the OpenJS Foundation and a former Microsoft executive, I've spent my career operating across industry, government, and open source developers to align stakeholders and drive system-level change. At Microsoft, I helped lead the company's transformation to open source and later drove AI strategy, commercialization, and industry-wide interoperability standards.

Today, I steward Node.js and the broader JavaScript ecosystem, the runtime and language powering 99% of the web, while focusing on the platforms, ecosystems, and economic models required to support AI and modern software at global scale.
Sobre Roger Dingledine: Roger Dingledine is co-founder and original developer of the Tor Project, a nonprofit that develops free and open source software to protect people from tracking, censorship, and surveillance online. Roger works with journalists and activists on many continents to help them understand and defend against the threats they face, and he is a prominent researcher in the online anonymity field.
Sobre Leandro Colombo Viña: I’m a python user since 2013. I’m a Python Argentina NGO founder and acting president. I’ve been PyConAR co-organizer since 2016. I’m currently working at Mercado Libre as a Sr. Manager, leading the IT People, IT Legal and IT Internal Audit Teams helping internal teams make the job done. I’m an IT professional and teacher with more than 20 years of experience. Show less