The conversations shaping the future of the web are shifting.

At CloudFest last month in Germany, with its sheer scale, that shift became easier to see. Two topics stood out across almost every conversation: AI and digital sovereignty.

AI is no longer discussed as experimentation. It is shaping expectations, roadmaps, and investment decisions. At the same time, digital sovereignty is moving from policy discussions into practical concerns about dependency, control, and local alternatives.

This is where attention is, and where budget is flowing.

Yet something more fundamental is emerging. The real change is structural. It is about who controls the systems we depend on, how ecosystems are governed, and where value is created. In open source, initiatives like FAIR point to new ways of organising shared responsibility, and new ways to create and capture value within the ecosystem.

CloudFest was new to me this year, and hard to ignore. The conference takes over an entire theme park