{"slug": "roachfest-london-2026-preview-ai-agents-and-an-astronaut-walk-into-a-database", "title": "RoachFest London 2026 Preview: AI Agents and an Astronaut Walk Into a Database Conference", "summary": "Cockroach Labs will host RoachFest London 2026 on June 25 at Convene in London, featuring a keynote from CEO Spencer Kimball on database architecture for the AI era, a resilience case study from Form3, and a panel on AI agent memory. The conference, themed 'Operate without fear. Build with confidence. Adapt to the AI era,' will include workshops, a product roadmap session, and discussions on distributed systems and AI infrastructure.", "body_md": "Cockroach Labs has been hosting our annual database conference since 2022, and I'm honored to be MCing [ RoachFest London](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/roachfest/location/london/) for the third year running. Yes, I’m the Technical Evangelist for\n\n[, but it’s not the contractual obligation that keeps me coming back. It’s because at RoachFest I am released unto the world, like Mariah Carey and Michael Bublé are released at Christmas time.](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/product/overview/)\n\n__CockroachDB__Every year, I get to stand in a room full of people who genuinely care about distributed systems, resilience, and building things that don't break at 3 AM.\n\nWe hear from the people building CockroachDB, the people running it in production, and the people evaluating it for the first time.\n\nThat combination – in person, in real time – makes for an ecosystem of learning and serendipitous encounters; something a webinar simply can't replicate.\n\nThis year's event is on June 25th at Convene in London, and we’re setting the stage with the theme “Operate without fear. Build with confidence. Adapt to the AI era.” These principles have never been more important.\n\n## Who's speaking at RoachFest London 2026?\n\nThe main stage lineup features a CEO keynote on the future of database architecture, real-world resilience stories from a payments infrastructure leader, a panel on durable state for AI agents, and a product roadmap session you won't want to miss. Let me walk you through it.\n\n**Spencer Kimball, our Co-Founder and CEO**, will deliver the keynote: **\"The New Database Estate.\" **Each year at RoachFest, Spencer previews the work ahead, and this year he's asking the question every infrastructure team needs to hear: “What happens when agentic AI doesn't just add traffic, but changes the scale equation entirely?” He'll make the case that distributed databases are about to go from a niche luxury to a fundamental requirement for every enterprise, and show what CockroachDB is building to meet that moment.\n\nNext up, **Kevin Holditch**, **VP of Engineering at **[Form3](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/customers/form3/), will share how their real-time payment platform survives cloud outages – and by survive, I don’t mean “keeps limping on”, I mean\n\n*thrives*during these events. Form3 has evolved into a cloud-agnostic, active/active/active architecture spanning AWS, GCP, and Azure, all powered by CockroachDB. The part that gets me? They validate their disaster recovery by intentionally shutting down an entire cloud provider for 24 hours. In production. For tier-1 banks. That's the kind of resilience story you can bring home to meet the parents.\n\nI’m moderating a panel:** \"What does it take to build long-term state for AI agents?\" **Joining me will be **Adam B. Struck, CEO of **[Memori Labs](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/webinars/architecting-persistent-long-term-memory-for-multi-agent-systems/), and\n\n**Jordan Legg, Chief AI Officer at**\n\n[. Everyone agrees AI agents need memory, but the harder question is what \"memory\" actually means in production. We'll dig into the tradeoffs behind semantic retrieval, SQL-native memory layers, and how to keep agent state consistent, scalable, and useful over time.](https://takara.ai/)\n\n__Takara AI__You'll also hear payments infrastructure leaders [ Primer.io](http://primer.io) share their CockroachDB journey, and\n\n**Igor Stanko, our VP of Product**, taking you inside the CockroachDB roadmap. He’ll cover:\n\nBring Your Own Cloud (BYOC)\n\nAI-powered migration tooling\n\nOur approach to making CockroachDB the most price-performant database at scale\n\nAnd more… 😉\n\n## What's new at RoachFest London this year?\n\nThis year we’ll have two new hands-on workshops, a second stage, and one very candid conversation with our CEO.\n\nOur morning workshops are led by Cockroach Labs engineers. One covers **core concepts and architecture**: distributed SQL fundamentals, the Raft consensus protocol, survivability, multi-region strategies. The other dives into **transactional vector search and RAG on CockroachDB**, including why ACID transactions change the game for AI applications. Both run from 9 AM to noon, and they're a fantastic way to go deep before the main stage kicks off.\n\nWe're also introducing the **Crawl Space**, our informal, up-close-and-personal second stage. You'll catch sessions like \"This or That\" with Jordan from Takara AI, and \"Straight from the Field\" with **Cockroach Labs Staff Sales Engineer Anna Eriksson**, who talks to a ton of engineering teams. She'll be judging architecture decisions in real time, and you'll want a front-row seat.\n\nAnd then there's **\"Spill the Tea with Spencer Kimball.\"** He’ll be fired up to field tough questions, spin off some hot takes, and share very direct opinions. Nothing will be spared, from AI hype cycles to database drama, and the creative comments people share with him about our beloved “Cockroach” moniker.\n\nWe treasure our [ partners](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/partners/), and several of them will be onsite. Experience workshops and expert demos from our friends at\n\n[,](https://www.ory.com/case-studies/openai)\n\n__Ory__[,](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/webinars/architecting-persistent-long-term-memory-for-multi-agent-systems/)\n\n__Memori Labs__[,](https://www.ispirer.com/)\n\n__Ispirer__[,](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/database-permissions-and-policy/)\n\n__Authzed__[, and Takara.](https://www.cockroachlabs.com/blog/teleport-global-tier-0-access-management/)\n\n__Teleport__## Why is an astronaut speaking at a database conference?\n\nWhen you spend your career in pursuit of systems that survive failure, nothing beats meeting someone who’s survived the ultimate high-pressure environment.\n\nMajor Tim Peake CMG is joining us on the RoachFest stage. Major Peake is a former Army Air Corps officer, test pilot, and the European Space Agency's first British astronaut to travel to the International Space Station (ISS). He spent six months aboard the ISS as part of the Principia mission, conducting over 250 scientific experiments and performing a spacewalk.\n\n*Major Tim Peake CMG*\n\nWhen I first demoed CockroachDB to a handful of colleagues back in early 2017, I never imagined this journey would lead to sharing the stage with an astronaut. Life, eh?\n\nMajor Peake’s talk, **\"Operating Without Fear: What Space Missions Teach Us About Resilience,\"** speaks directly to the heart of RoachFest. In space, failure is *not* an option, but it is always a possibility. Success requires rigorous preparation, redundancy, teamwork, and the ability to shine when faced with the unexpected. Sound familiar? Whether you're preparing for a spacewalk or readying your database infrastructure for the next outage, it’s the same mindset: resilience is the foundation of every successful mission.\n\nRoachFest London 2026 is on June 25th at Convene in London. Whether you're a CockroachDB expert user, actively evaluating distributed SQL, or just curious about what the community looks like in person, come along. If not for our amazing customers and team, or for a literal rocket man, then at least for my dulcet tones.\n\n__Visit here for the full details on RoachFest London 2026, and to register__*.*\n\n## Operate, Build, and Adapt\n\nRoachFest London is your front-row seat to the future of databases. Learn from experts, get hands-on in workshops, and connect with the community. Register for June 25!\n\n*Rob Reid is a technical evangelist at Cockroach Labs and the MC of RoachFest London 2026. Visit *__Rob’s author page__* for a full bio.*", "url": "https://wpnews.pro/news/roachfest-london-2026-preview-ai-agents-and-an-astronaut-walk-into-a-database", "canonical_source": "https://cockroachlabs.com/blog/roachfest-london-2026-preview", "published_at": "2026-06-09 00:00:00+00:00", "updated_at": "2026-06-29 13:54:42.990124+00:00", "lang": "en", "topics": ["ai-agents", "ai-infrastructure", "large-language-models", "ai-research", "ai-products"], "entities": ["Cockroach Labs", "CockroachDB", "Spencer Kimball", "Form3", "Kevin Holditch", "Memori Labs", "Takara AI", "Primer.io"], "alternates": {"html": "https://wpnews.pro/news/roachfest-london-2026-preview-ai-agents-and-an-astronaut-walk-into-a-database", "markdown": "https://wpnews.pro/news/roachfest-london-2026-preview-ai-agents-and-an-astronaut-walk-into-a-database.md", "text": "https://wpnews.pro/news/roachfest-london-2026-preview-ai-agents-and-an-astronaut-walk-into-a-database.txt", "jsonld": "https://wpnews.pro/news/roachfest-london-2026-preview-ai-agents-and-an-astronaut-walk-into-a-database.jsonld"}}