The Future of Open Source and AI in Africa
2026-01-25 15:00 - 17:00 UTC
Discover how Open Source and Artificial Intelligence are shaping Africa’s digital transformation in this exclusive webinar featuring Amanda Brock, CEO of OpenUK. This session explores the evolving role of open technologies, community-driven innovation, and the opportunities AI brings to governments, startups, and developers across the continent. Join us to learn about future trends, ethical considerations, policy impacts, and how African innovators can lead the next technological revolution. 🎙️

Software Heritage 2026 Symposium and Summit
2026-01-28
Software Heritage 2026 Symposium and Summit
Date: 28th January || Mode: Hybrid || Location: Paris, France.

Roundtable in Parliament, Filling the Skills Gap with Open Source
2026-01-28 10:30 - 12:00 UTC | Portcullis House, 1 Victoria Embankment, London, SW1A 2JR, United Kingdom

FOSDEM 26
2026-01-31 - 2026-02-01
FOSDEM 26
Date: 31st January – 1st February || Mode: In-person || Location: Brussels, Belgium.
FOSDEM is a free event for software developers to meet, share ideas and collaborate. Every year, thousands of developers of free and open source software from all over the world gather at the event in Brussels. You don’t need to register. Just turn up and join in!

Container Days London
2026-02-11
11 February 2026, Container Days London, Keynote, “Open Source powering the Digital Economy”, London

OpenUK and OpenHQ Present: MCP, Open Standards and Data Workshop
2026-02-17 10:30 - 11:25 (Asia/Kolkata)
Hosts:
1 Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK
2 Karan MV, Developer Relations, GitHub
Workshop Leaders:
1 Simon Hansford, COO, Civo
2 Saiyam Pathak, Founder, Kubesimplify
3 Rohit Ghumare, Ambassador, OpenUK
4 James Lovegrove, Head of Policy, RedHat
5 Naresh Vyas, Founder and CTO, TwoCents.ai
6 Anil Madhavapeddy, Cambridge University
7 Shivay Lamba, Program committee, JSNation
17 Feb 2026, 10:30 – 11:25
Room number 16, Bharat Mandapam

About
1 Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK

OpenUK CEO and Executive Producer State of Open Con, Amanda’s 25 years’ legal experience includes being instrumental in shaping open source’s legal frameworks and internet law in 2000’s. Sought-after international keynote speaker, tech press contributor and editor “Open Source: Law, Policy and Practice” (2022).
Recognition: Raconteur 50 CEOs (2025); Computer Weekly 50 Most Influential Women (2023-2025); Computing IT Leaders 100 (2023 – 2025); Lifetime Achievement WIPL (2022); Women Who Will (2023); INvolve Heroes (2022, 2023); Novi Awards (2024).
Advisory: Public Boards UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure; KDE. Commercial Boards: Mimoto; Scarf; FerretDB and Space Aye. Fellow, Open Forum Academy; Distinguished Fellow, Rust Foundation; European Representative, OIN; Ambassador, Open Charge Alliance; Board Member Mojaloop Foundation; and Expert Network, Digital Innovation Board of ITU.

2 Karan MV, Developer Relations Leader, GitHub

Karan is the Director, International Developer Relations at GitHub, where he works closely with developers across enterprises, startups, nonprofits, academia, and the open source community. He operates at the intersection of AI and open source, helping organizations and individuals accelerate software development with GitHub at the center of their workflows. Karan represents GitHub’s developer and ecosystem strategy in India, playing a leading role in shaping how the company engages with one of the world’s fastest-growing developer communities. He has featured in major developer keynotes alongside Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, where he showcased GitHub’s products and shared the story of how AI and open source are transforming software development. A hands-on developer himself, Karan writes code daily and brings a unique blend of technical depth, ecosystem experience, and business insight. He is deeply passionate about the convergence of AI and open source, and how this intersection is shaping the next generation of developers and software.

Workshop Leaders:
1 Simon Hansford, COO, Civo

Simon Hansford is a veteran technology entrepreneur and the Chief Commercial Officer at Civo, a global challenger hyperscaler and pioneer in cloud-native infrastructure. A specialist in scaling high-growth technology businesses, Simon previously co-founded and led UKCloud as CEO, establishing it as the premier cloud provider for the UK Public Sector.
Civo is at the forefront of the “neocloud” movement, spearheading the development of relaxAI—a sovereign, privacy-first AI assistant designed to challenge traditional black-box models. At the AI Impact Summit, Simon shares insights on how open standards and Model Context Protocol (MCP) are essential for building secure, transparent, and truly agentic AI ecosystems.

2 Saiyam Pathak, Founder, Kubesimplify

Saiyam Pathak is the Founder of Kubesimplify and Head of Developer Relations at Loft Labs, where he works at the intersection of Kubernetes, AI infrastructure, and platform engineering. He is the author of AI for Enterprises, Co-Chair of KubeCon India, and Chair of the CNCF TAG Operational Resilience. With over a decade of experience, Saiyam has worked across multiple facets of Kubernetes in production, including platform design, multi-tenancy, security, observability, and large-scale AI workloads. He is passionate about helping organizations adopt cloud-native and AI technologies through practical education, hands-on workshops, and community-driven initiatives.

3 Rohit Ghumare, Ambassador, OpenUK

Rohit Ghumare is a recognized Open Source champion, serving as a CNCF Ambassador (Marketing Chair 2025), Google Developer Expert Cloud/AI and Docker Captain. He is a passionate AI & DevOps Advocate and true Community Evangelist, leading multiple communities and fostering AI, DevOps, and Developer Relations awareness. Rohit’s contributions to the open-source ecosystem include projects serving millions, delivering presentations, crafting documentation and blogs, and contributing code. Currently leading Developer Relations at Motia.dev and Founder of DevRelAsService, his focus includes innovating within the AI Agentic Infrastructure technology stacks, drawing on his expertise in LLMs, Kubernetes, and cloud-native solutions. Creator of CreateMVPs.app, and AgenstSkills.com

4 James Lovegrove, Head of Policy, RedHat

James Lovegrove is Public Policy Director for EMEA and APAC at Red Hat, the world’s leader of open source solutions. James works at the public policy intersection of open source, AI, cybersecurity and digital sovereignty. With over 25 years of experience spanning technology, law, and government, James advises policymakers and industry leaders on how regulation impacts open source and the broader open innovation ecosystem. James co-leads Red Hat’s legal/policy activity on global sovereignty work and co-chairs the EMEA pubsec sales team.

5 Naresh Vyas, Founder and CTO, TwoCents.ai

Technology leader in Financial Services delivering AI‑driven, digital banking platforms across major institutions, including Citigroup, Goldman Sachs, NatWest, Royal Bank of Scotland, and Standard Chartered Bank. Currently based in Silicon Valley, he is the Co-founder and CTO of Twocents.ai, making advanced financial strategies of the top 1% available to everyone. Naresh serves on advisory boards focused on AI ethics and robust controls for Gen AI in highly regulated environments. He has led open collaboration with big tech, startups, and universities, helping form joint ventures to address climate change, legal accessibility, and universal health care.

6 Professor Anil Madhavapeddy, Cambridge University

Anil Madhavapeddy is the Professor of Planetary Computing at the Department of Computer Science and Technology in the University of Cambridge, a Fellow of Pembroke College, Cambridge, and a J M Keynes Fellow.

7 Shivay Lamba, Program committee, JSNation

Shivay Lamba is a Machine Learning Engineer and open source maintainer passionate about AI and edge computing. With experience across startups and enterprise tech, he focuses on simplifying complex technologies for developers. Shivay actively speaks at global conferences, organizes community events, and contributes to projects in cloud-native ecosystems, WebAssembly, and machine learning. He has also built and mentored educational programs like Google Summer of Code to bridge gaps in emerging tech adoption. When not coding, he enjoys writing, traveling, and mentoring young technologists.

The Open Source Leaders Roundtable: An AI Impact Summit Fringe Event
2026-02-17 18:00 - 20:00 (Asia/Kolkata)
17th February, 18.00 – 20.00 India International Centre (IIC), Annex
By invite only
If you are a leader in open source and would like to join our Leaders Roundtable and the Mozilla party, please contact mailto:admin@openuk.uk as space is limited.

AI Impact Summit Fringe Event Hackathon - Hackathon for Geospatial AI for good
2026-02-18 09:00 - 13:00 UTC
AI Impact Summit Fringe Event
Hackathon for Geospatial AI for good
— two brief talks on open tech: TESSERA and CoRE
— hack session for a few hours to get everyone going in those technologies
Led by Aaditeshwar Seth and Anil Madhavapeddy
Date and Time: 18th February 2026 09:00 – 13:00 IST
Venue : India International Centre, Annexe, Lecture Room 2

Organisers: OpenUK and OpenHQ
​Attendance at this Hackathon is subject to having Python skills. For the purpose of this Hackathon, the data collected here will be due to our Privacy Policy and Competition Policy, and also shared with our community companies, but will not be used for marketing.
50 places only. Tea will be provided.

OpenUK and OpenHQ Present: Building Resilience and breaking dependency in enterprise and public sector AI – how can open source support this?
2026-02-18 10:30 - 11:25 (Asia/Kolkata)
Panelists
Moderator: Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK
Speakers:
1. Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia
2. Laura Gilbert, Senior Director of AI, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change
3. Anastasia Stasenko, Co-founder and CEO, Pleias
4. Mishi Choudhary, Founder, SFLC.in
18 Feb 2026, 10:30 – 11:25
Room number 15, Bharat Mandapam

About
Amanda Brock, CEO, OpenUK

OpenUK CEO and Executive Producer State of Open Con, Amanda’s 25 years’ legal experience includes being instrumental in shaping open source’s legal frameworks and internet law in 2000’s. Sought-after international keynote speaker, tech press contributor and editor “Open Source: Law, Policy and Practice” (2022).
Recognition: Raconteur 50 CEOs (2025); Computer Weekly 50 Most Influential Women (2023-2025); Computing IT Leaders 100 (2023 – 2025); Lifetime Achievement WIPL (2022); Women Who Will (2023); INvolve Heroes (2022, 2023); Novi Awards (2024).
Advisory: Public Boards UKRI Digital Research Infrastructure; KDE. Commercial Boards: Mimoto; Scarf; FerretDB and Space Aye. Fellow, Open Forum Academy; Distinguished Fellow, Rust Foundation; European Representative, OIN; Ambassador, Open Charge Alliance; Board Member Mojaloop Foundation; and Expert Network, Digital Innovation Board of ITU.

Jimmy Wales, Founder, Wikipedia

Jimmy Wales is a globally recognized futurist and visionary tech entrepreneur, celebrated for founding Wikipedia—the world’s fourth‑most‑popular website and a cornerstone of the free-access knowledge movement. Since launching in 2001, Wikipedia has become a global utility, used billions of times monthly, and a leading bulwark in the fight against misinformation.
Driven by a passion for innovation and trust‑based community building, Wales is also the author of the forthcoming book The Seven Rules of Trust (co‑written with Dan Gardner), which distills the principles that made Wikipedia possible into a practical guide for building lasting institutions and relationships in an era of declining credibility.
Among the world’s most sought‑after keynote speakers, Wales offers audiences deep insight into topics ranging from AI and misinformation to digital governance and societal resilience.
Audiences praise his optimistic vision, eloquent delivery, and ability to translate complex ideas into memorable, inspiring narratives, exemplified by praise such as: “We were all inspired… by his presence here.” (McCann/Thiess)
A recipient of honors such as TIME’s 100 Most Influential People and recognition by the World Economic Forum as one of the top 250 leaders shaping our global future, Wales is also active in global tech discourse. In recent interviews he’s cautioned about AI
overreach—calling current systems like ChatGPT “terrible at writing Wikipedia” due to hallucinations, while calling for tools to flag errors and preserve human editorial standards.
He advocates for media literacy, transparency, and policies that support open collaboration over heavy-handed regulation.
Wales lives in London and continues to engage with global audiences and institutions, drawing on his unique blend of entrepreneurial insight, community-driven values, and unwavering belief in trust as the foundation for enduring progress.
Photo credit: Perry Seymour-Marsh

Laura Gilbert, Senior Director of AI, Tony Blair Institute for Global Change

Dr Laura Gilbert is Senior Director of AI at the Tony Blair Institute for Global Change, where she leads the AI Innovation Lab, working with governments worldwide to harness AI for more effective public services and better outcomes for citizens. She is also a Visiting Professor in Practice at the London School of Economics School of Public Policy.
From September 2020 to January 2025, Laura worked in 10 Downing Street as the founding director of 10DS, the government’s data science team, and the Incubator for Artificial Intelligence (i.AI). Her teams delivered rapid, high-impact modelling and analysis to support policy decisions, while pioneering AI solutions for public services. She was awarded a CBE for Services to Technology and Analysis in the New Year’s Honours 2024.
Laura holds a doctorate in Particle Physics from the University of Oxford and undergraduate degrees from the University of Cambridge. She is a Fellow of both the Institute of Physics and the Institute of Analytics, and is fluent in seven programming languages.
Before government, Laura spent a decade as CTO of Rescon, a medical technologies company she helped build from startup to acquisition. Her work spanned wearable technology, systems architecture, and data security—she is named on four patents, including as lead inventor on two. Earlier in her career, she worked in quantitative finance and defence intelligence. Outside work, Laura has represented Great Britain seven times in Savate kickboxing.

Anastasia Stasenko, Co-founder and CEO, Pleias

Anastasia Stasenko is the co-founder and CEO of Pleias, a Franco-German startup developing full open-source small reasoning models trained exclusively on permissively licensed data. A senior associate lecturer in data analysis and digital strategy at Sorbonne-Nouvelle University, she coordinated the creation of Common Corpus, the largest fully open dataset for training LLMs, with over two trillion tokens. Under her leadership, Pleias built Albert, France’s first sovereign AI co-pilot for civil servants, and developed fully offline LLM assistants for frontline health workers and teachers in West Africa. She is an advocate for ethical, transparent and decentralised AI development.

Mishi Choudhary, Founder, SFLC.in

Ms. Mishi Choudhary, Founder of SFLC.in. She is a technology lawyer and an online civil liberties activist who practices law in New York and New Delhi. Currently, she leads the legal department and IP monetization business at Washington DC based cybersecurity company, Virtru. Mishi Choudhary found SFLC.in in 2010. Under her leadership, SFLC.in became the premier non-profit organization representing the rights of Internet users and free software developers in India. In 2025, SFLC.in won the EFF pioneer award. She works at the forefront of digital rights on internet freedom, privacy, innovation, and free and open source software.

India–AI Impact Summit 2026
2026-02-19 08:00 - 2026-02-20 17:00 (Asia/Kolkata)

KCD Delhi 2026
2026-02-21
21 Feb 2026 || Amanda Brock, Keynote Panel “AI on Kubernetes: A Community Roundtable on What’s Working, What’s Not” || In Person || New Delhi, India

SCALE 23x
2026-03-03 - 2026-03-08
SCaLE 23x
Date: 5th – 8th March || Mode: In-person || Location: Pasadena, California, USA

AI Leaders Roundtable: Open Telco AI
2026-03-04
AI Leaders Roundtable: Open Telco AI, Roundtable
Date: 4 March 2026 || Mode: In-Person || Location: Barcelona, Spain

FOSSASIA Summit
2026-03-08 - 2026-03-10
FOSSASIA Summit
Date: 8th – 10th March || Mode: In-person || Location: Bankok, Thailand
FOSSASIA Summit brings together people who build and maintain real systems. The 2026 edition features 200+ international speakers covering AI, security, cloud infrastructure, DevOps, Web3 and distributed systems, data engineering, web and mobile development, and open hardware.
Secure your ticket
Confirmed speakers and contributors include:

Engineers from ExpressVPN, Google, AWS, TikTok, Huawei, Fujitsu, Microsoft, and Netflix
Roger Dingledine, Co-founder of the Tor Project
Mitch Altman, hacker and inventor
JB Kempf, President of VideoLAN (VLC)
Peter Membrey, creator of Lightway
Rebecca Rumbul, Executive Director and CEO of the Rust Foundation
Xiong Wei, Executive Director of openEuler
Joe Conway, PostgreSQL contributor and AWS PostgreSQL team lead
Maintainers and contributors from Kubernetes, Grafana, and the Apache Software Foundation
Active contributors from the Wikimedia ecosystem
Researchers connected to arXiv and leading universities
Members of the Raspberry Pi community

The Summit is made possible by our Platinum Sponsors ExpressVPN, openKylin, TikTok and openEuler, with the support of ARM, Google, Grafana, EarnIn, and Solanica.

FOSSASIA Hackathon powered by ExpressVPN
2026-03-10
FOSSASIA Hackathon powered by ExpressVPN
Date: 10th March || Mode: In-person || Location: Bankok, Thailand
Secure by Design – Digital Safety for Young Users
10 March 2026 | Bangkok
Build practical solutions around privacy, safety, and trust-by-design. Collaborate with mentors and industry experts to prototype real-world approaches to digital protection for young users.
Prizes

Grand Prize: THB 29,999 (~1,000 USD)
Best Privacy by Design: THB 15,555 (~500 USD)
Best Open Source Hack: THB 8,888 (~290 USD)

Sign up for the Hackathon
Seats are limited.

PGDay Bangkok (FOSSASIA PostgreSQL Day)
2026-03-10
10 March 2026
A dedicated day for the PostgreSQL community.
Meet maintainers and experienced practitioners for in-depth sessions on:

Performance tuning
High availability and disaster recovery
Operations and scaling
PostgreSQL internals

Supported by AWS, Fujitsu, Microsoft, and Navicat.
View the full schedule

OpenUK & OpenHQ Rwanda Meetup
2026-03-11 18:00 - 20:00 (Europe/Helsinki)
​Event format: Fireside Chat
​Speaker: Amanda Brock
Interviewer: Didas Mbarushimana
​Date: 11 March 2026
​Time: 6:00 PM
​Location: Digital Transformation Center Rwanda
​The session will be a fireside chat, followed by an open Q&A with the audience.
​Capacity: 50 attendees

QCon London 2026
2026-03-16 - 2026-03-19
QCon London 2026
Date: 16th – 19th March || Mode: In-person || Location: The QEII Centre, London, UK

FOSS Backstage 2026
2026-03-16 - 2026-03-17
FOSS Backstage
Date: 16th – 17th March || Mode: In-person || Location: Berlin, Germany

Monki Gras 2026
2026-03-19 - 2026-03-20
Monkigras
Date: 19th – 20th March || Mode: In-person || Location: London, UK

Cloud Native Telco Day
2026-03-23
Cloud Native Telco Day
Date: 23rd March || Mode: In-person || Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

CiliumCon Europe
2026-03-23
CiliumCon Europe
Date: 23rd March || Mode: In-person || Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Open Source Security Con Europe
2026-03-23
Open Source SecurityCon Europe
Date: 23rd March || Mode: In-person || Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Platform Engineering Day Europe
2026-03-23
Platform Engineering Day Europe
Date: 23rd March || Mode: In-person || Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands.

KubeAuto Day Europe 2026
2026-03-23
KubeAuto Day Europe 2026
Date: March 23, 2026 || Mode: In-Person || Location: Amstel Boathouse, Amsterdam

fluxCon Europe
2026-03-23
fluxCon Europe
Date: 23rd March || Mode: In-person || Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

Kubecon Europe 2026
2026-03-23 - 2026-03-26
KubeCon/CloudNativeCon EU
Date: 23rd – 26th March || Mode: In-person || Location: Amsterdam, The Netherlands

CHERI Blossoms Conference 2026
2026-03-25 - 2026-03-27
Pre-Conference Tutorial: 25 March 2026
Main Conference Date: 26 – 27 March 2026
Mode: In-Person
Location: Department of Computer Science and Technology – William Gates Building, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK

PyTorch Conference Europe 2026
2026-04-07 - 2026-04-08
PyTorch Conference Europe 2026
Date: 7-8 April 2026 || Mode: In-person || Location: Paris, France

Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop 2026
2026-04-15 - 2026-04-17
Free Software Legal and Licensing Workshop 2026
Date: 15th – 17th April || Mode: In-person || Location: Berlin, Germany
