State of Open Con 2026 on the Road: Full Schedule

SOOCon26 on the Road Schedule - Edinburgh, 5 June

09:00 BST

Delegate arrival and coffees and Delegate Experience (DX)

Friday June 5, 2026 09:00 - 10:00 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

Friday June 5, 2026 09:00 - 10:00 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

10:00 BST

Introduction

Friday June 5, 2026 10:00 - 10:10 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

Speakers

Amanda Brock

CEO, OpenUK and OpenHQ

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... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 10:00 - 10:10 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

10:10 BST

Our National AI Infrastructure - Super computer, Chips and Data Centres

Friday June 5, 2026 10:10 - 10:45 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

10.10 - 10.20 Keynote: Professor Adrian Jackson, Director of Research, EPCC

10.20 - 10.30 Keynote: Nick Jones, VP of Cloud Native Platform Engineering, Nscale

10.30 - 10.45 TBC

Speakers

Professor Adrian Jackson

Director of Research, EPCC, The University of Edinburgh

Adrian Jackson is a researcher into high-performance computing (HPC)technologies and approaches at EPCC, the University of Edinburgh. He is actively engaged in developing new approaches to combine computational simulation and AI to bring new research tools to a wider range of end... Read More →

Nick Jones

VP of Cloud Native Platform Engineering, Nscale

Nick has worn many hats over the course of his career, with over two decades working across a wide variety of industries and sectors, largely spent building cloud platforms of various shapes and sizes. While passionate about new technologies and methodologies, especially those in... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 10:10 - 10:45 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

10:45 BST

What’s a Sovereign AI Stack, do we need one and how open should it be?

Friday June 5, 2026 10:45 - 11:45 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

10.45 - 11.05 Fireside Chat: Amanda Brock with Mark Boost, CEO & Co-Founder, Civo and Locai and Jean-Baptiste Kempf, Founder & CEO, Kyber; President, VideoLAN11.05 - 11.45 Panel: Sovereignty and Open SourceCamilla de Coverly Veale, Global Lead, Policy & Communications, MozillaJean-Baptiste Kempf, Founder & CEO, Kyber; President, VideoLANMark Boost, CEO & Co-Founder, Civo and Locai LabsSachiko...
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Speakers

Amanda Brock

CEO, OpenUK and OpenHQ

Camilla de Coverly Veale

Global Lead, Policy & Communications, Mozilla

Camilla is Global Lead, Policy & Communications at Mozilla, where they work across Mozilla’s portfolio including its products, Mozilla.ai, Mozilla Ventures and its public-interest initiatives to advance open source AI.Their work focuses on strengthening Mozilla’s global policy presence and shaping debates on the future of technology... Read More →

Jean-Baptiste Kempf

President, VideoLAN

Jean-Baptiste Kempf is the creator of the VideoLAN non-profit and a key figure behind VLC media player. Heavily involved in the past 20 years in the open source ecosystems, he is the maintainer of dozens of open source projects, has founded multiple startups in the multimedia and... Read More →

Mark Boost

CEO & Co-Founder, Civo and Locai

Mark Boost is a British tech entrepreneur, CEO and co‑founder of Civo, a Sovereign Cloud and AI platform built to challenge the traditional cloud model and put control back in the hands of users. Passionate about open source, he champions fairness, transparency, and openness in... Read More →

Sachiko Muto

Chair, OpenForum Europe

Sachiko Muto is the Chair of OpenForum Europe, a senior researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden, and a Board member of the Drupal Association. She originally joined OFE in 2007 and served for several years as Director with responsibility for government relations and then... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 10:45 - 11:45 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

11:45 BST

Demo: Next Generation Robotics: AI Agents for mediating interactions with Humans and Smart Robotic Environments

Friday June 5, 2026 11:45 - 12:00 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

Demo: Next Generation Robotics: AI Agents for mediating interactions with Humans and Smart Robotic Environments: Godfrey Inyama, PhD Student, The National Robotarium Human-Robot Interaction Group, Heriot-Watt University

Friday June 5, 2026 11:45 - 12:00 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

12:00 BST

Lunch - Booths open and DX

Friday June 5, 2026 12:00 - 13:00 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

Friday June 5, 2026 12:00 - 13:00 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

13:00 BST

The impact of AI on open source software development

Friday June 5, 2026 13:00 - 13:40 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

Speakers

Chris Plank

Enterprise Architect, NatWest

Chris Plank is an Enterprise Architect working for NatWest Bank in Edinburgh, Scotland. He has been leading a Platform as a Product initiative within the Bank over the last year looking to radically change the Banks approach to provisioning and maintaining services. Outside of work... Read More →

Justin Cormack

Former CTO, Docker

Justin Cormack has over 20 years of experience in technology and open source, working across finance, publishing, and software. He spent a decade at Docker, serving both as a software engineer and later as Chief Technology Officer, helping grow a globally influential open source business... Read More →

Keith Bergelt

CEO, Open Invention Network

Keith Bergelt is the CEO of Open Invention Network (OIN) & is responsible for enabling, influencing, & defending the integrity of Linux and adjacent open source software as it relates to threats from patent aggressors.

He was CEO of 2 Hedge Funds; a senior advisor to TPG; head of... Read More →

Mike McQuaid

Administrate, CTPO

Mike McQuaid is an Edinburgh-based engineering and product leader with over 18 years of experience scaling open-source software and developer tools used by tens of millions. He is Project Leader of the widely used “Homebrew” macOS package manager and previously served as Principal... Read More →

Paula Kennedy

Co-Founder and COO, Syntasso

Working in the IT industry for over 25 years, Paula is passionate about community, diversity, equity and inclusion. In her day job, she is co-founder and Chief Operating Office of Syntasso, developing cloud-native and open-source technologies. Paula is part of the organising committee... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 13:00 - 13:40 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

13:40 BST

Opening the Stack

Friday June 5, 2026 13:40 - 14:20 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

13.40 - 14.20 Panel
Anastasia Stasenko, CEO & Co-Founder, Pleias
Chris Yiu, Director of Public Policy, Meta
Fintan Ryan, Director for Market Insights, GitHub

Speakers

Anastasia Stasenko

CEO & Co-Founder, 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... Read More →

Chris Yiu

Director of Public Policy, Meta

Chris Yiu is Director of Public Policy at Meta, where he oversees the company’s policy operations in Northern Europe.
He also serves on the boards of the Tony Blair Institute (TBI) and the Edinburgh International Festival.
He previously led the global Technology and Public Policy... Read More →

Fintan Ryan

Director for Market Insights, GitHub

Fintan Ryan is the Director for Market Insights at GitHub. He researches the technology landscape with a focus on macro trends, including open source, developer adoption, AI, DevOps, software supply chain security, and cloud.
Fintan has deep expertise in open source strategy, havi... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 13:40 - 14:20 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

14:20 BST

Keeping Up with AI: The Challenge for Security and Identity Teams

Friday June 5, 2026 14:20 - 15:00 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

14.20 - 14.30 Keynote Agentic Technology and Identity, Matt Barker, CEO & Co-Founder, BoltMCP

14.30 - 15.10 Panel
Matt Barker, CEO & Co-Founder, BoltMCP, Moderator
Chaamini Mangaleswaran, Solutions Engineer, WSO2
Matt Jarvis, Director of Applied AI, Snyk
Sal Kimmich, CEO, GadflyAI

Speakers

Chaamini Mangaleswaran

Solutions Engineer, WSO2

Chaamini is a Lead Sales Engineer at WSO2 with over a decade of experience in engineering and solution architecture. She works closely with enterprise customers across multiple industry verticals, helping them architect modern cloud-native applications, navigate complex architectural... Read More →

Matt Barker

CEO & Co-Founder, BoltMCP

Matt Barker is co-founder and CEO of BoltMCP, focused on helping enterprises securely connect AI to their data and control how it’s used.

Previously, he was CEO and co-founder of Jetstack, where he helped build one of the most widely adopted projects in the cloud native ecosyste... Read More →

Matt Jarvis

Director of Applied AI, Snyk

Matt Jarvis is a Director of Applied AI at Snyk. Matt has spent more than 20 years building products and services around open source software, on everything from embedded devices to large scale distributed systems. Most recently Matt has been focused on the Artificial Intelligence... Read More →

Sal Kimmich

CEO, GadflyAI

Sal’s work is centered on advancing secure computing practices and pioneering privacy-enhancing technologies to safeguard sensitive data. At the Confidential Computing Consortium (CCC) within the Linux Foundation, they play a pivotal role in the development and implementation of... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 14:20 - 15:00 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

15:10 BST

Afternoon Tea - booths open (close down at 16.00)

Friday June 5, 2026 15:10 - 16:00 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

Friday June 5, 2026 15:10 - 16:00 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

16:00 BST

The Mythos Effect

Friday June 5, 2026 16:00 - 17:00 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

16.00 - 16.10 Keynote Adrian Mouat, DevRel Engineer, Chainguard

16.10 - 16.20 Keynote Andrew Martin, CEO, ControlPlane

16.20 - 17.00 Fireside Chat with Adrian Mouat, DevRel Engineer, Chainguard and Andrew Martin, CEO, ControlPlane led by Liz Rice, Chief Open Source Officer, Isovalent

Speakers

Adrian Mouat

DevRel Engineer, Chainguard

Adrian Mouat is a DevRel Engineer at Chainguard and the author of the O’Reilly book Using Docker. As a former Chief Scientist at Container Solutions and recognized Docker Captain, he brings deep expertise in containers, Kubernetes, registries, and supply chain security. Adrian... Read More →

Andrew Martin

CEO, ControlPlane

Andrew has an incisive security engineering ethos gained from building and destroying high-traffic web applications. Proficient in systems development, testing, and operations, he is comfortable profiling and securing every tier of a bare metal or cloud native system, and has battle-hardened... Read More →

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. S... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 16:00 - 17:00 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack

17:00 BST

Accessing Data in an AI World

Friday June 5, 2026 17:00 - 17:45 BST

Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

Dave Buckley, Policy, Open Mined Foundation
Iain Mitchell KC, Chairman, Scottish Society for Computers & Law
Lee Fulmer, Senior Adviser, McKinsey
Mallory Durran, Group Director, Applied Research & Innovation, Nesta
Tom Wilkinson, Chief Data Officer, The Scottish Government

Speakers

Dave Buckley

Policy, Open Minded Foundation

Dave is a technology policy consultant who has worked across engineering and policy roles in the public, private, and non-profit sectors. He works in policy and partnerships at the OpenMined Foundation, a global non-profit that builds open-source privacy-preserving technology to transform... Read More →

Iain Mitchell KC

Chairman, Scottish Society for Computers & Law

Iain graduated from Edinburgh University in 1973 and was called to the Scottish Bar in 1976, taking silk in 1992. He was called to the English Bar in 2012. He is recommended in the Legal 500 and Chambers Directory for IT Law, IP Law, and commercial dispute resolution.As well as being... Read More →

Lee Fulmer

Senior Advisor, McKinsey

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... Read More →

Mallory Durran

Director of Applied Research, Methods & Technology, Nesta

Mallory Durran is Director of Applied Research, Methods & Technology at Nesta, the UK's innovation foundation, where she leads a multidisciplinary function spanning data science, design, engineering, AI, and applied research methods across Nesta's missions in health, sustainability... Read More →

Tom Wilkinson

Chief Data Officer, The Scottish Government

Working for and with government organisations, at various levels and around the world, I have spent a decade developing and improving use of data and AI to inform policy, strategy, and operational decisions. I have extensive hands-on experience working across Data Science, Data Analysis... Read More →

Friday June 5, 2026 17:00 - 17:45 BST
Royal Bank of Scotland Conference Centre

SOOCon26 On The Road Edinburgh: Opening the AI Stack