Dear Reader
I hope that you have been able to take a break and enjoy the Festive Period despite all the turmoil we are facing as a consequence of Covid 19. Like many, my limited Christmas plans were cancelled, and I was really pleased to see the OpenUK New Years Honours List, and the fun people had with that on the 1st January.
If you haven’t seen the Honours List yet, OpenUK has created its very own New Years’ Honours List, and awarded medals to 100 Influencers in recognition of their service to Open Technology. The list is wide ranging and worth a look . #OpenUKInfluencer
As well as honouring 100 key players as #OpenUKInfluencers in Open Technology, we honoured a true gentleman for his lifetime of service to Open Technology, Basil Cousins, the Brit who founded Open Forum Europe. We are delighted to have a blogpost on Basil’s contributions by Shane Coughlan, ex pat Irishman based in Japan and GM of the Linux Foundations’ Open Chain project.
Future Leaders
We won’t be kicking off OpenUK’s work in 2021 until the 11th, and we will have Future Leaders talks on 15th and 22th January. You can see all previous Future Leaders talks here.
2021 will be a busy year
Community – We will be hosting a 2021 Awards and other events, and will shortly launch our Ambassador program.
Legal and Policy – Look out for our Future Leaders Report on Government Procurement and other reports, our responses to proposed legislation (which, with Brexit, will be many), as well as our policy work on Cloud, Emerging Mobile and the Circular Economy.
Learning – Thanks to Red Hat, we will be holding a second Kids Competition and creating a further course. We are also down to the final Phase of the GNOME Community Challenge, in the final 5 from 149 entries, as a Phase Two winner.
We will also be working with anniv.io as part of their celebrations of 30 years of the web and Open Source.
We are planning our first Board elections towards the end of the year which our Supporters will be able to vote in. We would encourage you all to sign up as Supporters, paying a small monthly fee, at https://openuk.uk/become-a-supporter/
If you are interested in getting involved, you can do this whether you are a Supporter or not, please get in touch, hello@openuk.uk.
Wishing you all the best in the year ahead.
Amanda Brock
CEO, OpenUK
