Read the newsletter                                                            Sign up for the OpenUK newsletter

Dear Readers,

OpenUK’s first outing as a new organisation was to FOSDEM in January 2020. We celebrated our attendance by giving away “tea and biscuits with the Brits”. Although there may have been a few tears shed into our tea as we Brexited the EU that weekend, we enjoyed attending my favourite conference, FOSDEM.

4 years on, as part of the FOSDEM Fringe London is calling and OpenUK is convening the global open source leadership in London to engage a conversation with impact on key topics of our industry today, at what is rapidly becoming one of the most important events in the open source calendar.

The success of our first event SOOCon23 was down to our community and for SOOCon24 the180 plus speakers and 50 partners who are providing the content for this event, along with the 60 volunteers who will staff the event and the OpenUK team who are working so hard, is what will hopefully make this one of the highlights of the open tech year. Thanks to all of you for making this possible. I hope many of you will attend.

With one week to go to State of Open Con 24, is on 6th and 7th February at the Brewery on Chiswell Street in the City of London, the excitement is mounting and you can read Jenn Riggins’ fantastic blogpost on our conference content.

If you haven’t bought your ticket you can get one at the incredibly good value price of £199 for the two days including all catering. Our free places are running short but we have 100 for students, 100 for community and 100 for volunteers – 300 in total.

I want to take this opportunity to thank our amazing sponsors and table holders whose financial and content contributions allow this event to be as special as it will be an at this amazing price.

State of Open Con

SOOCon24 Plenary Content

The plenary sessions will run between 9am and 10.45am each day.

Day 1, on the 6th covers the Future of Digital and Open Source

Day 2, on the 7th, AI and open innovation.

Jennifer Riggins’ blog post “The Future of Open Source is Uncertain”.

Read more

SOOCon24 AI Policy Zone

Details of our AI Policy Zone will be shared shortly.

It will include an AI Cafe, AI Cinema Showcase and AI Consultation Room where Government Departments will join us in listening mode to understand better from you – the open tech community – what open source is and how it works.

This is your opportunity to have your voices heard and will be the first direct consultation of this nature by any Government in the world as it works to understand the ned to regulate AI.

If you produce AI that is open source or open innovation and would like your content included in the cinema showcase that may still be possible, so contact us on admin@openuk.uk with details.

SOOCOn 24 Activities

Our Delegate Experience (DX) Area will include content from 50 partners and we are grateful to all of them and excited to again be offering an interactive experience with Boeing and enjoying free portraits from our resident photographer Tiana Lea.

We will be sharing our Photo Exhibition sponsored by Arm again in the Porter Tun and planning for next year, hope to extend this exhibition to include a giant montage of the the portraits taken at SOOCon23 and SOOOCon24.

We already have almost 250 people, so why not have Tiana take your portrait at State of Open Con and be part of that montage.

SOOCon 24 Job Board

The job market is still tough in tech and we have seen more lay offs in the UK this year. Having led the way as a conference supporting our colleagues between roles last year with a sponsored job board as a focal point at SOOCon23 and free tickets for the unemployed, we area again supporting our colleagues between roles with 100 free tickets and a second Job Board in association with the Open Source Job Hub. This will share roles from our partner organisations during the event and this year the Job Board is also available digitally. There are already roles on there.

View Job Board

Get Your Tickets for SOOCon24

If you haven’t already signed up there is still time.

Tickets are on sale at the heavily subsidised price of £199.

For free ticket for community, students and the unemployed email admin@openuk.uk.

Schedule                                                            Tickets

OpenUK Meet Up

OpenUK Glasgow Meet-Up

The next OpenUK Scotland Meetup will be hosted at the BBC, Pacific Quay on January 31st. The talk will be hosted in the viewing theatre on the ground floor. Thanks to the BBC for their support with this.

Sign up for Glasgow Meet-up

OpenUK London #11: Open Source Community

Join us on Tuesday 20th February for our 11th OpenUK London community meetup!

It will be a community-centric, fun and informative State of Open Con earlier this month, we think it only makes sense to focus on what makes open source unique – it’s community! Thank you once again to Avanade for sponsoring the venue and providing the refreshments.

Sign up for London Meet-up

OpenUK in the Press