OpenUK

OpenUK London Meetup #8: Future of Open Source in 2024
2023-10-24 18:30 - 21:00 UTC | Avanade, 30 Fenchurch St, London, City of London, EC3M 3BD, United Kingdom
Join OpenUK on Tuesday 24 October for our next OpenUK community meetup, which has us starting to think about what we want open source to look like in 2024. What roles are needed?
How can we create stronger communities? Any project goals? Anything the OpenUK community can help with?
We wont have a speaker at this event as it’s a fishbowl and this is your opportunity to swim in our bowl and share your thoughts on the future of open source software.
Every attendee – online or in person – can chose to put their name forward into a prize draw to win a free ticket to the Second Annual State of Open Con taking place on 7-8 February, 2024, in central London. So this won’t be a night to be missed!
6:30pm: Arrive, grab a bev, a slice and a chat.
7:30pm: We will kick off with a couple ice breakers and then jump right into the main event.
7:45pm: The main activity format will be a fishbowl:
five seats at the front of the room, with one always empty.
If a fifth sits down, one of the others gets up. A continuous discussion that flows around a topic. Anyone is welcome to jump right into the “bowl” at any time with questions, topics or responses.
(Live stream will also allow remote joiners to participate)
8:45-9pm: Raffle winner announcement, cleanup and goodbyes.
Everybody is also welcome to join online.
We will even have a computer ready to fill that fourth seat if online participants raise their hands to join the discussion. (Log-in details will be sent out to all attendees the night before.)
Please remember to bring your I.D. if you are attending in person, as it is required to access the venue.
Thank you to our sponsors Avanade for providing this great space!
By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy
Please read ahead.
If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter.

State of Open: The UK in 2023 Report Launch
2023-11-21 08:30 - 10:30 | BFI Cinema Stephen Streeet, United Kingdom
State of Open: “Skills or Bust” Documentary and Report Launch
OpenUK had a private event at BFI Cinema in Stephen Street for a discussion on the findings of the State of Open: The UK in 2023 Phase 3: “Skills or Bust” and State of Open: “Skills or Bust” Documentary.

OpenUK London #9: Platform Engineering
2023-11-21 18:00 - 21:00 | Avanade, 30 Fenchurch St, London, City of London, EC3M 3BD, United Kingdom
Join OpenUK on Tuesday 21 November for our ninth OpenUK community meetup! We will talk about the hot topic of 2023: platform engineering! How do we use it to do more with less? To increase developer productivity? To facilitate a conversation between engineering and business? How do we create a product that our internal devs actually want to use? How do you find your minimal viable platform? How do you measure the developer experience?
6:30pm: Arrive, grab a bev, a slice and a chat.
7:15pm: We will kick off with a panel on the state of platform engineering with OpenCredo’s Nicki Watt, DevRel Daniel Bryant, Syntasso’s Cat Morris, all who have been there, done that (will be live-streamed)
8:00pm: Breakout Platform-as-a-Product workshop, facilitated by Tyk’s Richard Johnston (We can do a virtual breakout too!)
8:45-9pm: Raffle winner announcement, cleanup and goodbyes.
Every attendee – online or in person – can choose to put their name forward into a prize draw to win a free ticket to the Second Annual State of Open Con taking place on 7-8 February, 2024, in central London. So this won’t be a night to be missed!
Please remember to bring your I.D. if you are attending in person, as it is required to access the venue.
Thank you to our sponsors Avanade for providing this great space!
By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead.
If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter.

OpenUK meet-up in Edinburgh
2023-11-22 18:00 - 21:00 | Scottish Widows, 69 Morrison St, Edinburgh EH3 1HL
Join OpenUK meet-up in Edinburgh on 22nd November 2023 from 6 to 9PM.

Host:
Craig Wylie, Engineering Lead in Cloud, Lloyds Banking Group @TheWylieKyote

Speakers:
Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK @AmandaBrockUK
Mike McQuaid, CTO and Co-Founder, Workbrew @MikeMcQuaid

Attendance at this event is subject to our Privacy Policy & Code of Conduct

Developing the future UK tech sector through open source contributions
2024-01-17 17:30 - 19:00 | House of Commons Committee Room G, Houses of Commons, Palace of Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA, United Kingdom
As the UK seeks to become the next Silicon Valley it faces the challenge of a skills gap. Talent flight and migration has always attracted UK talent to the US. Whilst this is typical of all countries a common language has made this more apparent in respect of UK talent.
Open source software offers individuals based anywhere in the UK with a device, connectivity, and basic education in tech the opportunity to develop and hone their skills through code and other contributions to open source projects.
As they contribute to projects they build a living CV on GitHub etc. This and their progress can be seen by users of these projects and GitHub across the planet.
With the ability to remote work, open source employees are based globally and work for top international companies from High Tech to start-ups across the world, and particularly the Bay Area where open source is best understood as forming the basis of today’s digital world.
By building this living CV on GitHub UK-based talent may move from being part of the open source community to employed individuals leveraging the skills they have honed in open source with their global employers. Many will go on to build careers as part of the global tech sector despite remaining in the UK.
These individuals crew the open source submarine under the UK’s digital economy and in 2022 27% of UK tech sector Gross Value Add (GVA) came from them and UK based open source companies. This number has the potential to grow to benefit the UK economy whilst at the same time we see talent flight stemmed.
OpenUK has been building awareness of the UK-based open source businesses and individuals contributing both code and other skills to global open source projects, products and companies. The UK is number one in Europe in terms of the number of contributors to open source software and lines of code contributed. You can see more in its reports, particularly its 2023 Skills report, OpenUK Reports
For the agenda, please register on EventBrite

OpenUK Scotland, Glasgow Meetup
2024-01-31 19:00 - 21:00 | BBC Scotland 40 Pacific Quay, Glasgow, 40 Pacific Quay, Glasgow, United Kingdom
The next OpenUK Scotland Meetup will be hosted at BBC, Pacific Quay on Wednesday, January 31st. The talk will be hosted in the viewing theatre on the ground floor.
This meetup has Allie, a Libera.chat staffer giving us a deep dive into the inner workings of the network.
Libera.chat is bustling hub of open-source collaboration. It’s not just an IRC network; it’s the vibrant beating heart of some of the largest open-source communities globally. In this discussion, we explore the intricate infrastructure supporting this network and uncover the complexities involved in running a platform that serves these dynamic communities.
We will be having another speaker as well. To be announced!

State of Open Con 24
2024-02-06 08:00 - 2024-02-07 17:00 | The Brewery, 52 Chiswell St, London EC1Y 4SA, United Kingdom
The UK conference for “Open Technology” – open source software, open hardware, open data, open innovation, open AI and open standards.
SOOCon25 brings together Enterprise, Public Sector, Government, Academia and Open Technology communities and businesses in one event.

OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell March 2024
2024-03-15 16:00 - 17:30
OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell March 2024

Opportunity to see the best of global research and reporting in open source software at OpenUK’s regular Research & Reporting Show and Tell.
OpenUK has been reporting on open source software since 2021 and encouraging a collaborative approach across the global research community, leading this with bi-monthly events.
Each meeting is free to attend and anyone is welcome to join and learn more about what research is being undertaken and the reporting coming down the line.
The first session is on 15th March, and the recurring sessions will be on May 10, July 12, Sep 20, and Dec 06.
Attendance at this event is subject to the following OpenUK policies:-

Code of Respect
Privacy Policy
Competition Policy
Sustainability Policy

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

OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell 17 May 2024
2024-05-17 16:00 - 17:30
OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell 17 May 2024

Opportunity to see the best of global research and reporting in open source software at OpenUK’s regular Research & Reporting Show and Tell.
Fri, 17 May 2024 16:00 – 17:30 BST

Agenda

Host – Dr Jennifer Barth
16:00 – 16:30 “CHAOSS” Project Research and Metrics, Dr Dawn Foster, CHAOSS

16:30 – 17:00 “EPAM” Reporting, Chris Howard, EPAM
17:00 – 17:30 “OpenUK Survey and Economics of Open Source Report”, Dr Jennifer Barth, Symmetry Research

Assets
Chris Howard’s EPAM Reporting

Celebrate Kubernete’s 10th Birthday With OpenUK
2024-06-06 18:30 - 21:30 | Red Hat Innovation Lab, Peninsular House, 30-36 Monument St, London, EC3R 8NB, United Kingdom
Join our OpenUK party celebrating Kubernete’s 10th birthday at Red Hat’s Innovation Lab in Monument, in the City of London.
Celebrate Kubernetes’ 10th Birthday with OpenUK on 6th June.

Important: This is not a conference, it’s not a meetup… it’s a party!

We want to use this occasion to celebrate how far we’ve come as a community and give thanks to all the people in the UK who have contributed to Kubernetes and the Cloud Native ecosystem. This event is for you!
Location: Red Hat Innovation Lab, 6th June from 6.30 pm – 9.30 pm

Suggested Dress Code: Please wear your most iconic vintage swag from Kubernetes, Kubecon or your favourite CNCF project!

Huge thanks to Red Hat for sharing their Innovation Lab and Roof Terrace with us and to our sponsors Civo, ControlPlane, Docker, Dragonfly, Isovalent, Red Hat, Prism Digital and Venafi for helping us mark the occasion!

We are looking for more companies to sponsor this event so if you are interested contact admin@openuk.uk

OpenUK’ State of Open: The UK in 2024 Report Launch Day
2024-07-03 12:00 - 19:00 | Great Hall of Kings, Strand Campus, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, Strand Campus, Strand, London, WC2R 2LS, United Kingdom
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.

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.

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, Chair, Policy Advisory Board

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.

OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell July 2024
2024-07-12 16:00 - 17:30
Opportunity to see the best of global research and reporting in open source software at OpenUK’s regular Research & Reporting Show and Tell.

Date and time

Fri, 12 Jul 2024 16:00 – 17:30 BST

About this event
OpenUK has been reporting on open-source software since 2021 and encouraging a collaborative approach across the global research community, leading this with bi-monthly events.
Each meeting is free to attend and anyone is welcome to join and learn more about what research is being undertaken and the reporting coming down the line.
Show and Tell sessions are set for March 15, May 17, July 12, Sep 20, and Dec 06.
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 by clicking here.
Resources

Columbia Convening Overview: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/ai/introducing-columbia-convening-openness-and-ai/
Towards a Framework for Openness in Foundation Models, one of the documents associated with the Columbia Convening: https://arxiv.org/pdf/2405.15802
Dataset Convening Overview: https://blog.mozilla.org/en/mozilla/dataset-convening/
Open GenAI: LLMs (simplified table) https://opening-up-chatgpt.github.io/figure.html
Show and Tell July 2024 (Including Dr Jennifer Barth’s reporting)

Speakers

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.

Aviya Skowron, Head of Policy and Ethics, Eleuther AI
Aviya is the Head of Policy and Ethics at EleutherAI, where they focus on policy for openly available AI models. They translate EleutherAI’s expertise in machine learning into policy recommendations informed by the latest LLM research and promote best practices among open source and “open-ish” AI developers. In addition to open source advocacy, Aviya works on data documentation and licensing for generative AI.

Andreas Lisenfeld, Associate Professor, Radboud University, Nijmegen
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.

Mark Dingemanse, Associate Professor, Radboud University, Nijmegen
Mark Dingemanse is Associate Professor in Language and Communication at Radboud University Nijmegen. He is a PI of Futures of Language, a transdisciplinary research programme that looks at artisanal and artificial ways of languaging. The research in his group is funded by generous talent grants from the Dutch Research Council NWO and is strongly collaborative in nature. His work on generative AI is aimed at fostering critical AI literacy among researchers and the general public.

OpenUK Summer Picnic
2024-07-14 14:00 - 17:00 | Regent’s Park, London, United Kingdom
Join us for a fun-filled OpenUK Summer Picnic on date! Let’s enjoy the sun, good food, and great company together.
OpenUK will be hosting a summer picnic on Sunday 14 July from 2-5 pm in Regents Park, London. The exact location will be provided before the event.

OpenUK AI Openness Round Table
2024-09-11 10:30 - 12:30 | House of Lords, Parliament Square, London, SW1A 0PW, United Kingdom
OpenUK AI Openness Round Table
11 Sep, Weds, 11:00 – 12:30
Committee Room G, House of Lords Sponsored by Lord Wei

SERA and OpenUK Fringe: The Intelligent Environment: Building Sustainable Data Centres
2024-09-22 11:00 - 12:00
Sunday, 22 Sep 2024 11:00 – 12:00
The Labour Environment Hub, ACC Liverpool

SME4Labour and OpenUK Fringe: Opening AI
2024-09-22 13:00 - 13:50
SME4Labour and OpenUK Fringe: Opening AI
Sunday, 22 Sep 2024 13:00 – 13:50
SME4Labour pod, Arena Room 7, ACC Liverpool

OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell September 2024
2024-09-27 16:00 - 17:30
OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell September 2024
Licence Shifts, Open Washing and Forking in Open Source
Date and time

Fri, 27 Sep 2024 16:00 – 17:30 BST

About this event
OpenUK has been reporting on open-source software since 2021 and encouraging a collaborative approach across the global research community, leading this with bi-monthly events. Each meeting is free to attend and anyone is welcome to join and learn more about what research is being undertaken and the reporting coming down the line.
Attendance at this event is subject to the following OpenUK policies: Code of Respect and Competition Policy
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Resources
Slide Deck – Show and Tell Deck
James Governor – Open Source Business Models & License Changes

RedMonk Focus on licence changes and economics

Dr Dawn Foster – License Changes and Forking Data

https://chaoss.community/practitioner-guide-organizational-participation/
https://github.com/chaoss/wg-data-science/tree/main/dataset/license-changes/fork-case-study/notebooks
https://chaoss.community/
https://github.com/chaoss/wg-data-science
https://github.com/chaoss/wg-data-science/tree/main/dataset/license-changes/fork-case-study
https://chaoss.community/about-chaoss-practitioner-guides/

Recent Articles on Forking:

Amanda Brock

https://thenewstack.io/why-open-source-forking-is-a-hot-button-issue/
https://www.computing.co.uk/opinion/2024/open-source-is-not-a-business-model

Stephen O’Grady

https://redmonk.com/sogrady/2024/07/16/post-valkey-world/

Stephen Walli

https://medium.com/@stephenrwalli/forked-communities-whose-property-is-it-anyway-2ddee71f2ef1

OpenUK Data Centre Round Table
2024-10-09 14:00 - 15:30 | House of Commons Committee Room G, Houses of Commons, Palace of Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA, United Kingdom
OpenUK Data Centre Round Table
9 October, Weds, 14:00 – 15:30
Committee Room G, House of Lords Sponsored by Lord Wei
Please arrive 30 minutes before for an airport-style security check

OpenUK Filling the Gap in the UK Tech Sector Skills with Open Source Round Table
2024-12-03 11:00 - 12:30 | House of Commons Committee Room G, Houses of Commons, Palace of Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA, United Kingdom
OpenUK Filling the Gap in the UK Tech Sector Skills with Open Source Round Table
Tuesday, 3rd December 2024, 11:00 – 12:30
Please arrive by 10:30
Committee Room G, House of Lords Sponsored by Lord Wei
Speakers : Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK;
Dawn Foster, Director of Data Science, CHAOSS Project;
Dr Jennifer Barth, Chief Research Director, OpenUK;
Russ Shaw, Founder, Global Tech Advocates;
Sam Hepburn, Community, Tessl

OpenUK AI Openness Round Table
2024-12-11 15:00 - 16:30 | House of Commons Committee Room G, Houses of Commons, Palace of Westminster, London, SW1A 0AA, United Kingdom
OpenUK AI Openness Round Table
11 December, 15:00 – 16:30
Committee Room G, House of Lords Sponsored by Lord Wei
Speakers : Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK;
Ed Shee, CTO, Ignitus;
Prof Elena Simperl, Professor of Computer Science, Kings;
Dr Jennifer Barth, Chief Research Officer, OpenUK
Dr Laura Gilbert, Director of the Incubator for AI, 10 Downing Street;
Robbie Jerrom, AI Senior Principal Product Marketing Manager, RedHat;
Simon Wardley, Founder, Swardley Maps Ltd;
Tobias Hooton, CEO, Stelia

OpenUK's Christmas Cracker
2024-12-17 13:00 - 20:30 | Civo Tech Junction, 32-37 Cowper Street, London, EC2A 4AW, United Kingdom
An afternoon of discussion of Open Source and AI followed by an evening of Christmas Drinks Space limited – Sign up now!

OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell December 2024
2024-12-20 16:00 - 17:30
OpenUK Research and Reporting Show and Tell December 2024

Date changed

Fri, 20 Dec 2024 16:00 – 17:30 GMT

About this event
OpenUK has been reporting on open source software since 2021 and encouraging a collaborative approach across the global research community, leading this with bi-monthly events.
Each meeting is free to attend and anyone is welcome to join and learn more about what research is being undertaken and the reporting coming down the line.
Attendance at this event is subject to the following OpenUK policies:-

Code of Respect
Privacy Policy
Competition Policy
Sustainability Policy

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

OpenUK Apprentice Meetup #5
2025-01-08 18:00 - 20:30 | Red Badger, 4th Floor 2 Old Street Yard, London, EC1Y 8AF, United Kingdom
Mark your calendars for Wednesday 8th January for our 5th OpenUK Apprentice meetup hosted by Thomas Meadows and Nelson Batsford.
SAVE THE DATE!
6:00 pm: Arrive, grab a bev, a slice and a chat. Scope out our swag table (bring pieces to contribute or trade!)
7:00 pm: Dawn Foster, CHAOSS Project
8:30 pm: Cleanup and see-ya-next-time.
Please remember to bring your I.D. if you are attending in person, as it is required to access the venue. Note the venue does not permit e-scooters or bicycles within the building.
Thank you to our sponsors Red Badger for providing this great space and yummy pizza!
By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead.
If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter. After attending, look out for an email with an invite to our burgeoning Slack community as a way to keep in touch and support each other between activities.

OpenUK Digital #5 Self-hosting: open source tools for every day
2025-01-15 12:00 - 13:00 | Online
SAVE THE DATE Join us on Wednesday 15th January for the Fifth OpenUK Digital Meetup, our online-only event for OpenUK community members.
We will have the speaker info to be announced soon. This will be a lunchtime webinar. The event will not be recorded for publishing but for transcript purposes.
By registering the attendee confirms their acceptance of OpenUK’s Privacy Policy. By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead. If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter.
Join here
Digital Meetup #5 Self-hosting: open source tools for every day
Wednesday, 15 January · 12:00 – 1:00pm
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/npr-nyyv-uta

OpenUK London #20: Open AI
2025-01-15 18:30 - 20:45
Wednesday 15th January we’re back with our 20th OpenUK London community meetup! We’ve had the hype, now let’s get real with how AI is working for us, of course the open source kind! (Open AI in the title is not to be confused with OpenAI because that is not open.)
6:30 pm: Arrive on time, grab a bev, a slice and a chat. Scope out our swag table (bring pieces to contribute or trade!)
Add to our whiteboarding brainstorm
6:45 pm: Welcome, reminder of code of conduct, and discussion of whiteboard
7:00 pm: State of AI Openness 2024 explained with Amanda Brock, OpenUK CEO
7:20pm: Speech to Speech translation with a cascade of open source models, presented by AI developer Nikita Krasnytskyi
7:40 pm: Unum Cloud, advanced AI computing company for scaling intelligence, presented by founder Ash Vardanian
8:00 pm: presentation by Matt Carey
8:45 pm: Clean up and leave. Bring tupperware so we don’t waste pizza!
By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead.
If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter. After attending, look out for an email with an invite to our burgeoning Slack community as a way to keep in touch and support each other between activities.

State of Open Con 25
2025-02-04 08:00 - 2025-02-05 17:00 | Sancroft, Rose St, Paternoster Sq., St Paul’s London EC4M 7DQ, Sancroft, Rose St, Paternoster Sq., London, London, EC4M 7DQ, United Kingdom
The UK’s Open Technology Conference
Open Source Software, Open Hardware, Open Data,
Open Standards, & AI Openness

4 and 5 February, 2025
Sancroft, Rose St, Paternoster Sq.,
St Paul’s London EC4M 7DQ

OpenUK Apprentice meet-up #6
2025-02-12 18:00 - 20:30 | Red Badger, 4th Floor 2 Old Street Yard, London, EC1Y 8AF, United Kingdom
Mark your calendars for Wednesday 12th February for our 6th OpenUK Apprentice meet-up hosted by Thomas Meadows and Nelson Batsford.
SAVE THE DATE!
6:00 pm: Arrive, grab a bev, a slice and a chat. Scope out our swag table (bring pieces to contribute or trade!)
7:00 pm: Tom Wilkie, Grafana Labs
8:30 pm: Cleanup and see-ya-next-time.
Please remember to bring your I.D. if you are attending in person, as it is required to access the venue. Note the venue does not permit e-scooters or bicycles within the building.
Thank you to our sponsors Red Badger for providing this great space and yummy pizza!
By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead.
If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter. After attending, look out for an email with an invite to our burgeoning Slack community as a way to keep in touch and support each other between activities.

OpenUK London #21: Open Databases
2025-02-26 18:30 - 20:30 | Avanade, 30 Fenchurch St, London, City of London, EC3M 3BD, United Kingdom
SIGN UP TO SAVE THE DATE! Wednesday 26th February for our next meet-up. We’ll be sharing what we’ve learned with open databases. Want to be involved? Tell us in our OpenUK Slack community!
6:30 pm: Arrive on time, grab a bev, a slice and a chat. Scope out our swag table (bring pieces to contribute or trade!)
TBD
8:45 pm: Clean up and leave.
Please remember to bring your I.D. if you are attending in person, as it is required to access the venue. Note the venue does not permit e-scooters or bicycles within the building. Thank you to our sponsors Avanade for providing this great space and yummy pizza!
The link for the online version of this event will be added about a week before, so please check back.
By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead.
If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter. After attending, look out for an email with an invite to our burgeoning Slack community as a way to keep in touch and support each other between activities.

OpenUK Digital Meetup #6 A fireside chat with core maintainers
2025-03-12 12:00 - 13:00 | Online
SAVE THE DATE Join us on Wednesday 12th March for the 6th OpenUK Digital Meetup, our online-only event for OpenUK community members.
This will be a lunchtime webinar. The event will not be recorded for publishing but for transcript purposes.
By registering the attendee confirms their acceptance of OpenUK’s Privacy Policy. By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead. If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter.
Join here
Digital Meetup # fireside chat with core maintainers
Wednesday, 12 March · 12:00 – 1:00pm
Time zone: Europe/London
Video call link: https://meet.google.com/okb-vufi-ejh

OpenUK London #22: Save the Date
2025-03-19 18:30 - 20:45 | Avanade, 30 Fenchurch St, London, City of London, EC3M 3BD, United Kingdom
SIGN UP TO SAVE THE DATE! Wednesday 19th March for our next meet-up. Have an open topic you want us to talk about in 2025? Tell us in our OpenUK Slack community!
6:30 pm: Arrive on time, grab a bev, a slice and a chat. Scope out our swag table (bring pieces to contribute or trade!)
TBD
8:45 pm: Clean up and leave.
Please remember to bring your I.D. if you are attending in person, as it is required to access the venue. Note the venue does not permit e-scooters or bicycles within the building. Thank you to our sponsors Avanade for providing this great space and yummy pizza!
The link for the online version of this event will be added about a week before, so please check back.
By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK’s Competition Policy. Please read ahead.
If you would like to hear more about OpenUK’s other events, you can join our Newsletter. After attending, look out for an email with an invite to our burgeoning Slack community as a way to keep in touch and support each other between activities.
