The UK organisation for the business of Open Technology

Scotland Has AI Talent – meet them at “State of Open Con” in Edinburgh

AI infrastructure, sovereignty, security and policy debates to take place at RBS HQ in Edinburgh

London UK  –  1st June 2026 – OpenUK, the non-profit organisation convening the UK’s Open Technology sector, confirmed the line-up for its first “State of Open Con On The Road” event in Edinburgh on 5 June. The conference will bring together some of the leading figures in software, open source and AI for debates and discussions around building secure and ethical AI through openness.  Themes at the event will include the future of digital and AI infrastructure in the UK, as well as security of agentic AI and the effect of Mythos, and sovereignty in the digital and AI stack.

Some of Scotland’s leading technologists from industry, business and public sector will join together to discuss the challenges in AI and the role of open source. These leaders demonstrate the talent whose development Scotland has supported and who have gone on to global leadership roles in the open source software, infrastructure and AI. Scottish speakers and those based in Scotland on the event panels will include:

• Amanda Brock, CEO at OpenUK, leads the organisation’s technology and policy alignment work, recommending approaches to the UK and devolved governments as well as representing open source at the AI Impact Summit in India earlier this year
• Adrian Mouat, Developer Relations at Chainguard is one of the world’s foremost experts on IT security and open source, providing insights to developers around how to keep applications secure
• Professor Adrian Jackson, Director of Research at EPCC, the UK’s first National Supercomputing Centre in Edinburgh works on how to make high performance computing available to more researchers using the power of AI
• Mike McQuaid, Chief Technology and Product Officer at Administrate, runs one of the world’s most used open source software projects used across millions of software deployments
• Iain Mitchell KC, Chairman, Scottish Society for Computers & Law is one of the leading figures in computer law, based on more than twenty years of experience in legal advice around open source technology 
• Chris Yiu, Director of Public Policy at Meta, leads Meta’s policy work in Europe from his home in Edinburgh.
• Tom Wilkinson, Chief Data Officer at The Scottish Government leads the nation’s technology and data strategies, improving use of data and AI to inform policy, strategy, and operational decisions.

International Speakers include:

• Anastasia Stasenko, Co-Founder at Pleias, leads work on compute, data, and the institutional forms that open source AI requires, as well as how to create factual AI with quality data and vertical reasoning models
• Jean-Baptiste Kempf, CEO at Kyber and Founder of VideoLAN, the open source organisation responsible for developing multimedia open source projects used globally every day, including VLC, x264 and dav1d
• Keith Bergelt, CEO of Open Invention Network (OIN), which is responsible for defending the integrity of Linux and open source software against threats from patent aggressors.
• Andrew Martin, CEO at Control Plane, is one of the leading experts in cloud, open source and security for software containers
• Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer at Isovalent, is one of the foremost experts in container security and eBPF, covering the security of software containers. She is also a member of the Governing Board for the Cloud Native Computing Foundation.

“This event brings together leading figures in AI and technology from around the world alongside those international leaders based out of Scotland. When it comes to AI, Scotland has talent. That talent will change the world around AI and open source. These individuals collaborate globally and have built international careers at the cutting edge of AI. With contributions from the ground up with folk like Nick Jones, VP of Engineering at NScale  (hailed as the UK’s first Hyperscaler), and Adrian Mouat working on AI security from Edinburgh for US cyber security company Chainguard.”  

“With so much investment in AI taking place, and Scotland’s talent, AI offers a fiscal opportunity. Open source AI allows access to innovation and builds jobs around this. The people speaking at this event are part of an international technology community transcending borders. They will be amongst those delivering the security, sovereignty and infrastructure that will be necessary for us all,” explained Amanda Brock, CEO at OpenUK.

The event will be hosted at The Royal Bank of Scotland Gogarburn Conference Centre, 175 Glasgow Rd, Edinburgh on the 5th of June 2026, starting at 9:30am. Tickets are £149, with complimentary passes available for community members and those that are between employment positions. The link for the event is https://stateofopencon.com/schedule-edinburgh-2026/

About OpenUK and OpenHQ

OpenUK is the organisation for the business of Open Technology, being Open Source Software, Open Source Hardware, Open Data, Open Standards and AI Openness across the UK. Its purpose is UK leadership and global collaboration in Open Technology. OpenUK works on three pillars: Community, Legal and Policy and Learning.  In 2025 OpenUK focused on AI and openness and soft launched its sister organisation OpenHQ to focus on coalescing international communities such as that in India for international policy initiatives. It continues to build on this in 2026.

OpenUK is a not-for-profit company limited by guarantee, company number 11209475.

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