OpenUK’s State of Open: The UK in 2024 Report Launch Day

Date: 03 July 2024 Event Time: 12:00 – 18:00 

Location: Great Hall, King’s College London

Celebrating our 4th year of “State of Open” Reports with the launch of  “The UK in 2024: The Open Manifesto Report,” OpenUK continues the evolving narrative of open source software and open data in the UK, bringing to life the reality of open source through our communities’ stories couple with hard data.  Our launch event convenes the conversation as part of London Data Week and we are grateful to the incredible speakers of a world-leading calibre including:

Keynotes from economist and journalist Will Hutton author of “This Time No Mistakes”,  and Google DeepMind Professor of ML Professor Neil Lawrence, author of “The Atomic Human”, who will also be participating in a book signing and give away. Speakers include Andreas Liesenfeld, Dawn Foster, Professor Elena Simperl, Justin Cormack, Lee Fulmer, Liz Rice, Dr Margaret Hartnett, Matt Barker, Dr Rebecca Taylor, Richard Granville-Hanson and Sonia Cooper.

The pathway to digital success for the UK includes open source and OpenUK has 3 asks of our new government as it convenes the UK’s open source communities. You can add your individual and organisation’s voice by signing The Open Manifesto. 

This new Report shared in the launch event, explores the Manifesto’s 3 asks:

• Skills development – stem migration, fill the skills gap and bring jobs to the rural economy by enhancing the UK’s open source contributing community;
• Enable the public sector to do open source – build the next generation of public sector open source engagement, using the UK’s late mover advantage to leapfrog the Open Source Program Office; and
• AI openness.

View Event Gallery Watch the sessions

3 July Event Agenda

“It’s not just about the future of open source but how open source can be a part of our future” Lord Wei

12.00 – 13.00     Registration and Networking

13.00 – 13.10     Welcome and Introduction to The Open Manifesto – A call to action Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK

13.10 – 13.20     The Open Manifesto Report – an update on the UK’s position in open source Dr Jennifer Barth, Founder Symmetry and Chief Research Officer Open UK

13.20 – 13.35     Keynote “This Time no Mistakes” A new dawn – the economics of open source for a new government Will Hutton, Journalist and economist

13.35 – 13.50     Q&A with Will Hutton Hosted by Lesley Smith, OpenUK Policy Advisory Board Chair

13.50 – 14.00     OpenUK Skills Documentary produced by Dark Matter

14.00 – 14.30     Panel: Open Source supporting the UK digital skills gap

• Dr Rebecca Taylor, Associate Professor in Sociology, University of Southampton
• Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer, Isovalent
• Matt Barker, Founder JetStack, VP Venafi and OpenUK Entrepreneur in Residence
• Dawn Foster, Director of Data Science, CHAOSS Project

14.30 – 15.00      Fireside Chat: Lessons learned in funding of open source Amanda Brock interviewing Richard Granville-Hanson, Heatweb

15.00 – 15.10     Keynote: The OSPO is Dead – Long live the OSPO Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK

15.10 – 15.30     Break

15.30 – 15.45     Keynote “The Atomic Human” Professor Neil Lawrence, Google DeepMind Professor of ML, Cambridge

15.45 – 16.00     Q&A with Prof Neil Lawrence Hosted by Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK

16.00 – 16.15     Keynote: The AI Act and open washing Andreas Liesenfeld, Assistant Professor, Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University

16.15 – 17.00      Panel What is open source in AI?

• Margaret Hartnett, Co-Founder, progressio.ai
• Professor Neil Lawrence, Google DeepMind Professor of ML, Cambridge
• Andreas Liesenfeld, Assistant Professor, Centre for Language Studies, Radboud University
• Justin Cormack, CTO, Docker

17.00 -17.30      Panel The AI data Conundrum

• Sonia Cooper, AGC IP, Microsoft
• Professor Elena Simperl, Professor of Computer Science, Kings 
• Lee Fulmer, Senior Advisory McKinsey and Chair OpenUK Finance Advisory Board

17.30 -18.00      Book Signing 30 copies of each of Will Hutton’s book This Time No Mistake and Professor Neil Lawrence’s text Atomic Human  will be given away – meet the authors and have your book signed.

18..00     Event Closes

OpenUK has been at the bleeding edge of research and reporting of open source since 2020, pushing the envelope in the topics covered, the approach to them and practice methodologies. Our collaborative approach has allowed others to build on our work and we share our work and that of others across the industry, new and established through bi-monthly Research and Reporting Digital Show and Tell at which all are welcome.

You will find State of Open: The UK in 2024, Phase Two: The Open Manifesto, and our past reports, case studies and thought leadership at openuk.uk/reports. 

Attendance at this event is subject to the following OpenUK policies:- Code of Respect     Competition Policy

If you would like to hear more about OpenUK, please sign up for our newsletter here.

 

Keynote

Will Hutton, Economist and Journalist, Author of “This Time No Mistakes”

Will Hutton is a British journalist and author. He currently writes a regular column for the Observer, is the president of the Academy of Social Sciences, hosts its We Society podcast and is co-chair of the Purposeful Company. He was formerly economics editor of the Guardian, editor-in-chief of the Observer and Principal of Hertford College Oxford. Hutton’s books include the bestselling The State We’re In, How Good We Can Be, The World We’re In and The Writing on the Wall.

Keynote

Prof Neil Lawrence, DeepMind Professor, Machine Learning, University of Cambridge

Neil Lawrence is the inaugural DeepMind Professor of Machine Learning at the University of Cambridge where he leads the University’s flagship mission on AI, AI@Cam. He has been working on machine learning models for over 20 years. He recently returned to academia after three years as Director of Machine Learning at Amazon. His main interest is the interaction of machine learning with the physical world. This interest was triggered by deploying machine learning in the African context, where ‘end-to-end’ solutions are normally required. This has inspired new research directions at the interface of machine learning and systems research, this work is funded by a Senior AI Fellowship from the Alan Turing Institute. Neil is also a visiting Professor at the University of Sheffield and the co-host of Talking Machines. He is the author of the forthcoming book The Atomic Human (release date 30th May 2024)

Keynote

Andreas Liesenfeld, Assistant Professor, Radboud University

Andreas Liesenfeld is an Assistant Professor at Radboud University where he researches the societal and regulatory implications of emerging language technologies. His current work focuses on technology assessment, open source generative AI, and comparative AI regulation. At the Centre for Language Studies (CLS), Andreas Liesenfeld is a member of the language technology expertise group and, in collaboration with the Netherlands eScience center, develops open source research software for computational linguistics and natural language processing.

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Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK

Amanda is the UK organisation for the business of Open Technology: open source software, open hardware, open data, open innovation, open standards and open access AI – with the purpose of UK Leadership and Global Collaboration in Open Technology. She is also the Executive Producer of State of Open Con 25 taking place 4 – 5 February 2025 in London and has produced 2023 and 24 events. Appointed member of the Cabinet Office’s Open Standards Board; and both UKRI’s UK Exascale Science and Industry Advisory Board and Digital Research Infrastructure Advisory Board, she is a commercial Advisory Board Member at California Cyber Security company Mimoto and at the Scottish Geo Spatial Data company Space Aye. She is also an Advisory Board Member of KDE and a European Representative of the Open Invention Network.

Amanda is a judge in the IDG Foundry CIO 100 in 2023 and 2024, having been a Judge in the We Are Tech Women Rising Star Awards in 2020-22. Listed as the 37th Most Influential Woman in UK Tech by Computer Weekly in 2023 and in Computing’s IT Leaders 100 2023, and the INvolve HERoes list of 100 global women executives driving change by example in 2022 -23. She was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award in the Women, Influence & Power in Law Awards UK in 2022.

A regular contributor to the tech press, she is the editor of Open Source Law, Policy and Practice (2nd edition) published by Oxford University Press in October 2022, with open access thanks to the Vietsch Foundation https://amandabrock.com/books

Dr Jennifer Barth, Founder and Research Director, Symmetry and Research Director OpenUK

Jenn has more than 15 years of experience leading independent research on the intersections of emerging technologies and socioeconomic change. She provides companies with independent thought leadership and media engagement opportunities on global issues impacting and shaping our current and future technical-social lives.

Her work spans the digital through to social and economic change. She has looked at sustainability, workforce skills and organisational competitiveness strategies through and beyond the pandemic with Microsoft and many other big and small organisations and works as the Chief Research Office researching the role of Open Source Software and its potential to fuel the circular economy with OpenUK. She has experience working on the human impact of artificial intelligence (AI) through fieldwork experiments with IBM Watson, Microsoft and other providers. She is skilled at blending research methods and working with people to bring to life the stories behind numbers. Dr Barth earned her DPhil in Geography from the University of Oxford.

Dawn Foster, Director of Data Science, CHAOSS Project

Dr. Dawn Foster works as the Director of Data Science for the CHAOSS project where she is also a board member and maintainer. She is an OpenUK board member and co-chair of CNCF TAG Contributor Strategy. She has 20+ years of experience at companies like VMware and Intel with expertise in community building, strategy, open source, governance, metrics, and more. She has spoken at over 100 industry events and has a PhD, MBA, and BS in computer science. In her spare time she enjoys reading science fiction, running, and traveling.

Professor Elena Simperl, Professor of Computer, King’s College London

Elena Simperl is a Professor of Computer at King’s College London and the Director of Research for the Open Data Institute (ODI). She is a Fellow of the British Computer Society and the Royal Society of Arts, and a Hans Fischer Senior Fellow. Elena’s work is at the intersection between AI and social computing. She features in the top 100 most influential scholars in knowledge engineering of the last decade and in the Women in AI 2000 ranking. She is the president of the Semantic Web Sciences Association.

Justin Cormack, CTO, Docker

Justin Cormack is CTO of Docker, and serves on the Technical Oversight Board of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation. He has been involved in the open source community for many years, and has worked in publishing and financial services as well as software startups. He has been focusing on supply chain security and container and cloud native software delivery as an engineer and executive. He is based in Cambridge.

Lee Fulmer, Business Technologist

Lee is an experienced business technologist who has been creatively disrupting the technology, media and finance industries throughout his career. His blend of business acumen, creativity and technology experience brings a unique perspective on driving business change. From helping decentralise the Internet on the board of ICANN to building the foundations for BBC Online and OnDigital (the world’s first digital television service) to dreaming up the idea for the UK Faster Payments service then chairing the industry bodies that delivered it, to chairing the Bank of England’s strategic Transforming Data Collection Board he is always at the forefront of data and digital disruption.

Lesley Smith has been a successful VP, senior director and director of global corporate affairs, public policy corporate communications and investor relations for nearly three decades. In that time she’s covered financial services/fintech, retail, ecommerce, technology, telecoms, international market entry, tax policy, restructuring, education and transport, having started in parliament. She most recently worked as global corporate affairs director for Revolut and prior to that ran UK and Ireland public policy for Amazon.

Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer, Isovalent

Liz Rice is Chief Open Source Officer with eBPF specialists Isovalent, creators of the Cilium cloud native networking, security and observability project. She was Chair of the CNCF’s Technical Oversight Committee in 2019-2022, and Co-Chair of KubeCon + CloudNativeCon in 2018. She is also the author of Container Security, published by O’Reilly.

She has a wealth of software development, team, and product management experience from working on network protocols and distributed systems, and in digital technology sectors such as VOD, music, and VoIP. When not writing code, or talking about it, Liz loves riding bikes in places with better weather than her native London, competing in virtual races on Zwift, and making music under the pseudonym Insider Nine.

Dr Margaret Hartnett, Co-founder of Progressio AI Ltd

Holding a PhD in AI & Analytical Chemistry, Dr Margaret Hartnett has been working with AI and algorithms in industry and academia for over 30 years. A senior researcher, European Patent Attorney, Chartered Patent Attorney and company director, Margaret has a track record of growing and exiting a hugely successful AI scale-up. Indeed, Margaret has spent almost 20 years developing into an executive-level research, innovation and Intellectual Property (IP) specialist. Bringing a rare interdisciplinary skill and perspective, Margaret bridges the gap between the commercial and technology functions of fast-growth, high-tech businesses. As co-founder of Progressio AI, she brings this expertise to bear to help AI-driven companies meet their obligations under the forthcoming EU AI Act.

Matt Barker, President and Co-Foudner, Jestack

Matt Barker is President and Co-founder of Jetstack. He’s spent his career in open source software vendors and was an early employee at Canonical, the company behind Ubuntu Linux, and then NoSQL Database company MongoDB, seeing the company grow from a few millions of dollars in revenue to a successful Nasdaq IPO.

As a technical non-technical person he became interested in the business use cases around software containers, and started Jetstack to help companies get value out of Docker and Kubernetes. As CEO he grew the company organically to 30 people and in the process created one of the most-popular cloud native projects in the ecosystem, ‘cert-manager’ which is downloaded millions of times a day.

Jetstack was acquired by the founders of Machine Identity Management, Venafi Inc. in May 2020. Venafi subsequently took strategic investment from Thoma Bravo in Dec 2020, turning it into a cybersecurity Unicorn with a valuation of $1.15bn.

In January 2021 Matt was awarded as a top 100 Open Source Influencer by OpenUK.

Rebecca Taylor, IFHEA

Rebecca Taylor is an Associate Professor, Sociologist of work and organisations at the University of Southampton and co-director of the Work futures Research Centre. Her research interests are in unpaid work, digital labour and public service delivery with a focus on policy and practice. A central strand of this work is on Open Source labour and the organisational context to open source software development.

Sonia Cooper, Assistant General Counsel, Microsoft

Sonia is the Assistant General Counsel, Open Innovation Team at Microsoft and Vice President of the IP Federation. Sonia  has over 25 years of experience advising on IP and innovation in the tech sector, specialising in AI and IP. A Chartered and European Patent Attorney, Sonia worked extensively with Microsoft Research in Cambridge and now leads IP policy in the Open Innovation Team at Microsoft. Sonia is Vice President and Immediate Past President of IP Federation and Chairs the federation’s Data and Copyright Committee. Sonia is the Data Policy lead for Open UK and is a passionate advocate for open data.