The speaker discussed the concept of a sovereign cloud and how open source can help make it a reality. They talked about the importance of applying open source principles to operations, and the challenges of doing so in the age of cloud computing. The speaker introduced the concept of an "operate first" community cloud, and described a physical, hands-on hybrid cloud setup that can be used by the community for practicing operations. They discussed the services and tools used, as well as the GitHub repository where the community can contribute to and learn from the project. The speaker also mentioned the idea of minimizing vendor lock-in and the importance of being able to move to other cloud providers.