Cloud Native London, January 2026

Hi folks!

Welcome to our January Cloud Native London meetup, our first of 2026! Join us to hear from our three great speakers and network with your fellow techies over pizza and drinks, or alternatively chat and following along on Youtube!

6:00 Pizza and drinks
6:30 Welcome
6:45 Feature Flags: A Safety Net in the AI Era (Kyle Johnson, Flagsmith)
7:15 Context driven AI Agents (Shubhangi Goyal)
7:45 Break
8:00 Why Cloud Cost Assessment Must Come Before Cloud-Native Build (Mawuko Jeffrey Wilson, BrassicaPay)
8:30 Wrap up

See you there!

Cheryl (@oicheryl)

Feature Flags: A Safety Net in the AI Era (Kyle Johnson, Flagsmith)
Identifying new safety mechanisms for developers has become vital as AI innovation progresses at speeds previously only hypothesised and engineering teams continue to incorporate AI into their workflows. Feature flags, by separating deployments from releases, reduce the risk of releasing AI-assisted code, while also automating release strategies. The promise of AI—speed and efficiency—is, in actuality, only half true. It's fast, but it's not efficient. Teams still need to comb through, test, and fix the code. Without feature flags, the bottleneck simply moves.

Co-Founder at Flagsmith: https://www.linkedin.com/in/kyle-johnson-56247365/

Context driven AI Agents (Shubhangi Goyal)
In this session, I will explore how agents are built and use dynamic context to execute complex tasks and deliver real value. This also includes using context engineering to move beyond single prompt based interactions.

Find me at https://www.linkedin.com/in/shubhangi-goyal-0ab69795/

Why Cloud Cost Assessment Must Come Before Cloud-Native Build (Mawuko Jeffrey Wilson, BrassicaPay)
Many organisations adopt the cloud-nativve architectures with scalability and speed in mind; yet only realise after launching that cloud costs have spiralled beyond expectations and many issues. This talk will explore why cost surprises are so common in cloud-native journeys and argues that cost assessment must happen before migration, before architecture decisions, and before code is written.
Drawing from real-world consulting experience and industry research, the session examines how early design choices-such as service selection, consumption models, environments, and governance-directly influence long-term cloud spend across AWS, Azure, and GCP (others). We will also look at why cost alerts, budgets, and subscriptions-while valuable-are reactive controls, not substitutes for upfront cost modelling.
Attendees will leave with a practical framework for embedding cost assessment into cloud-native planning, enabling teams to build scalable systems without cost becoming an after-the-fact shock. And having to explain figures and cloud spend when costs goes high. This will also help team members to be accountable is RACI models or framework are adopted in addition to cost control strategies.

Mawuko Jeffrey Wilson is a Cloud Security Lead (Engineer) and Architect with hands-on experience designing, securing, and optimising cloud-native platforms across fintech, cost-control, public sector, and product-led technology environments. He specialises in cloud governance, cost-aware architecture (FinOps), and security-first design, helping organisations align cloud adoption with financial sustainability. Mawuko has worked across AWS, Azure, and GCP ecosystems, supporting migration planning, cloud security controls, and operational optimisation. Alongside industry work, he loves networking, learning new things, and sharing, and bringing a data-driven lens to cloud decision-making-particularly around cost forecasting, security, risk, governance, and operational efficiency.

Check out https://www.oicheryl.com/cloudnativelondon if you're interested in speaking or sponsoring.