DSLAM New IT Storytelling Show Coming to CloudFest – Reinhold Nawroth Interview

I actually started as an electrician. But I never worked in that job—I moved through different roles, including call centers, and that’s where I really got into IT.

Computers had always been a hobby, but suddenly I realized these skills were valuable. I became an administrator and started learning professionally. Very quickly I noticed something important: I wasn’t the strongest technical specialist, but I was very good at talking to people.

Many IT professionals focus purely on systems. I focused on users. I understood what people actually needed from technology—not perfect infrastructure, but tools that help them do their jobs. Someone once called me an “IT socializer,” and that idea stuck. Today it’s even the name of my company.

When I became a consultant, I started attending lots of industry events. And honestly, many of them were boring.

You would see long panels where everyone was polite, nobody challenged anything, and every speaker was basically advertising. Talks lasted 45 minutes or an hour, and people would lose attention after ten minutes and start looking at their phones.

I realized the problem wasn’t the audience—it was the format.

Content today is fast. People are used to short, focused storytelling. So we started asking: what would an IT event look like if it was actually entertaining?

That question became DSLAM.

Think of it like a poetry slam or comedy night—but for IT, digitalization, AI, and cybersecurity.

Speakers come on stage and deliver a short, high-energy talk focused on one idea or story. It’s not a lecture. It’s storytelling. The audience should learn something, but they should also laugh and feel engaged.

We moved away from traditional conference venues and into late-night theater spaces—places where people normally watch comedians or live performances. That changed everything. Suddenly IT became entertainment.

After the show, networking becomes much easier because everyone has shared the same experience. People already have something to talk about.

We have a few core principles.

First: short tech talks. Speakers must focus on one strong message.

Second: no PowerPoint. Slides distract people. The audience should focus on the person and the story, not graphs.

Third: no advertising. Sponsors don’t automatically get stage time. Being on stage has to be earned through storytelling.

And another important rule—no name-dropping. It doesn’t matter where you work. What matters is whether your story is interesting and authentic.

We also wanted more diversity on stage. IT events often look the same, but the industry is much broader than that. DSLAM tries to reflect the real community.

At the beginning it stood for “Digital Security Slam,” so it was purely cybersecurity. But we realized that was too narrow.

Today DSLAM covers the whole digital world—IT operations, AI, Cloud, security, transformation. Everyone working in technology is connected to these topics, so the audience became much bigger.

We created “DSLAM Night Shift,” an evening format combining talks with those elements of live entertainment. That’s when it really took off. We started touring cities like Cologne, Munich, and Hamburg, and the response was fantastic.

The CloudFest team actually discovered DSLAM as part of the audience during one of our shows. They immediately felt it matched the community.

Later, I hosted some sessions at MSP GLOBAL, and that confirmed it. So, bringing DSLAM to CloudFest felt like a natural next step.

What I love is that CloudFest already has incredible energy. But sometimes you don’t want a loud party every evening. Sometimes you want to stay in the IT mindset, learn something new, and still have fun. That’s exactly where DSLAM fits.

Yes—it’s funny. I started as the IT guy who could speak well, and now I’m basically a professional comedy host.

When we shifted DSLAM into a late-night show format, I realized hosting is craftsmanship. I studied comedy structure, attended hundreds of shows, worked on timing, audience warm-ups—everything.

It’s not about being naturally funny. It’s about learning how to create connection and energy in a room. That work helped me become the best possible host for the audience.

CloudFest is famous for its parties, and that’s great. But maybe one evening you want something different.

If you still want to stay inside the IT universe—learn something, laugh, and experience a format you’ve never seen before—then come to DSLAM.

To be honest, when I first researched the idea, I couldn’t find anything like it anywhere. Not in Germany, not in Europe, not in the US. Combining entertainment and IT sounds obvious now, but nobody had really done it this way.

And when something new works, you should experience it live.