State of Open Con 2025: Full Schedule

11:15am GMT

Open Source in the Financial Industry - a developer's perspective : Elspeth Minty, Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets

Tuesday February 4, 2025 11:15am - 11:30am GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Finance may not be the first industry that comes to mind when thinking about open source, but open source software is core to much of what we do. This session will look at the advantages and challenges of open source in finance, from the point of view of the developers who work with it every day. It will cover:
- How and where we use open source, What are some of the things we need to think about when choosing to use open source in a project.
- Encouraging an open source mentality in developing our own proprietary code. Open source is as much a mindset as it is software and we can bring that mindset to proprietary development.
- Examples of successful collaborations across the financial industry in developing open source solutions to industry problems. In particular the Open RegTech initiative that is bringing together finance companies, regulators, industry bodies and technology companies.
- Importance of organizations, in particular FINOS, the FinTech Open Source foundation, in fostering these collaborations.

Speakers

Elspeth Minty

Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets

Elspeth Minty is a Managing Director at RBC Capital Markets. Elspeth has worked in the financial industry for more than two decades, with a focus on core library development and code re-use. She has been involved in open source for a number of years, through FINOS, the FinTech Open... Read More →

Tuesday February 4, 2025 11:15am - 11:30am GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Keynote

Subject Finance and Openness

11:35am GMT

Building Trust in open source in financial institutions : Elspeth Minty, Richard Sikang Bian and Manik Surtani

Tuesday February 4, 2025 11:35am - 12:15pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

Richard Sikang Bian

Head of Open Source; Technical Strategic Initiatives, Ant Group

Richard led Ant Group Open Source initiative from day 1 and developed the initiative from a single person effort to a cross-functional OSPO team covering governance, strategy, developer experience, product development, growth and internationalization efforts. At this moment, the team... Read More →

Manik Surtani

Head of Open Source, Block

Manik Surtani is the Head of Open Source Programs at Block (formerly known as Square). At Block, Manik has previously led engineering teams at Square and Cash App.Before joining Block, Manik was Senior Principal Software Engineer at JBoss, a division of Red Hat. He is the founder... Read More →

Elspeth Minty

Managing Director, RBC Capital Markets

Tuesday February 4, 2025 11:35am - 12:15pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Panel

12:20pm GMT

From Fintech to Fintech Open Source - My Unique Open Finance Journey : Richard Sikang Bian, Ant Group, Head of Open Source; Technical Strategic Initiatives

Tuesday February 4, 2025 12:20pm - 12:35pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

Richard Sikang Bian

Head of Open Source; Technical Strategic Initiatives, Ant Group

Tuesday February 4, 2025 12:20pm - 12:35pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Talk

1:35pm GMT

GitProxy: Get code out of your org quicker, easier & securely : Katrina Warr, Citi, Open Source Culture Lead and Jamie Slome, Citi, Operations Lead, Open Source Program Office

Tuesday February 4, 2025 1:35pm - 2:15pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Join this session to discover why and how Git Proxy, an open source data leakage prevention tool, hosted by FINOS, has become so popular. We’ll cover real-life examples of how it’s made developer’s lives easier, allowing them to get code out of their organisations quicker and more securely, and what has helped to grow the Git Proxy community of users and contributors.

GitProxy recently won the OpenUK Finance Award 2024. Find out how the award winning project could help your organisation!

Speakers

Jamie Slome

Operations Lead, Open Source Program Office, Citi

Jamie Slome joined Citi in November 2022 as Operations Lead for Citi’s Open Source Program Office (OSPO). He is responsible for implementing developer tooling that enables Citi’s open source contribution initiatives, namely Git Proxy.Prior to this, he co-founded and served as... Read More →

Katrina Warr

Open Source Culture Lead, Citi

Katrina has worked with organisations globally across different industries to strategically use and contribute open source software and methodologies and to establish communities. She is passionate about fostering open source development as a standard working practice and strives... Read More →

Tuesday February 4, 2025 1:35pm - 2:15pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Panel

2:20pm GMT

Compliance Framework - An Open Source OSCAL Compliance Automation Framework : Ian Miell, Container Solutions, Partner

Tuesday February 4, 2025 2:20pm - 2:45pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Open source automation for audits, real-time compliance, and DORA readiness.

Speakers

Ian Miell

Partner, Container Solutions

Ian Miell has over 25 years' experience in software consulting on, writing, running, architecting, and maintaining software and infrastructure for dozens of businesses from large to small. He now focusses on unblocking organisations from making technical changes from the top to the... Read More →

Tuesday February 4, 2025 2:20pm - 2:45pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Talk

2:50pm GMT

The challenges of addressing modern Financial Crime – How Open Source might help : Shelley Anderson, Sarah Sinclair, Joseph Goksu and Rob Reeve

Tuesday February 4, 2025 2:50pm - 3:30pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

An introduction to Tazama, a project in the Linux Foundation that provides real-time transaction monitoring for fraud and money-laundering detection.
We will cover the origins and its roadmap
We will provide an overview on how it is enabling financial inclusion
We will introduce the standards body that will collect and publish standards for reporting, sharing and actioning information on Financial Crime.

Speakers

Sarah Sinclair

CEO + Co-Founder, Change Gap

Hiring and utilising global talent across UK, Portugal, Singapore and Ghana

Joseph Goksu

Site Reliability Engineer, Obrizum

Joseph Goksu is a Site Reliability Engineer at Obrizum, specializing in cloud-native architectures, security, and high-throughput systems. At LexTego, he was among the first engineers on the Tazama project, an open-source transaction monitoring platform funded by the Bill & Melinda... Read More →

Shelley Anderson

Program Director, Alliance for Innovative Regulation

A seasoned innovation leader, Shelley spent 16 years at the U.K.’s Financial Conduct Authority before joining AIR in January 2022. Starting in 2015, she was part of the FCA’s Regtech team, designing and leading TechSprints and developing the regulator’s approach to interacting... Read More →

Rob Reeve

CEO, LexTego

A senior Executive with a track record of delivering innovative Digital Financial Services. Comfortable in a large corporate or small business. A highly motivated professional capable of defining FS strategy and delivering new financial products, combined with a deep understanding... Read More →

Tuesday February 4, 2025 2:50pm - 3:30pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Panel

4:30pm GMT

Enabling Adoption of Open Source Software Without Fear of Patent Litigation: Keith Bergelt, Open Invention Network, CEO

Tuesday February 4, 2025 4:30pm - 4:45pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

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 business... Read More →

Tuesday February 4, 2025 4:30pm - 4:45pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Talk

4:50pm GMT

Cloud Native, Cost Conscious, No Comprimise: Leveraging Open Source Databases in Financial Industry : Lori Lorusso, Ann Schlemmer and Alex Chircop

Tuesday February 4, 2025 4:50pm - 5:30pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

In the fast-paced world of fintech, the pressure to deliver innovative solutions while controlling costs is relentless. Cloud-native architectures offer a path to agility and scalability, but the choice of database technology is critical. This talk explores how open source databases, optimized for cloud-native environments, can be the cornerstone of a cost-conscious and high-performing infrastructure.

Many financial institutions rely on open source databases like PostgreSQL, MySQL, and MongoDB. These databases offer in conjunction with Kubernetes and the broader CNCF ecosystem offer powerful tools to optimize resource utilization, automate database management, and significantly reduce operational costs. The next evolution of controlling costs when managing your data on Kubernetes is Percona Everest. Everest is an open source platform that empowers enterprises to streamline database operations across diverse environments, ensuring a seamless user experience without sacrificing features or falling prey to vendor lock-in - a perfect compliment to financial institutions need for scalable, cost effective and efficient solutions.

Speakers

Ann Schlemmer

Co-Chair, Percona

Alex Chircop

Chief Architect, Akamai

Chief Architect at Akamai. Previously a founder and CTO of Ondat (formerly StorageOS), building software defined solutions for cloud native environments. Alex is also a co-chair of the CNCF Storage TAG. Before embarking on the startup adventure he spent over 25 years engineering infrastructure... Read More →

Lori Lorusso

Head of Community, Percona

Lori has a passion and enthusiasm for working with the developer and open source community. She is a CNCF Ambassador, former CNCF Marketing Committee Chair, former Chair of the CDF Outreach Marketing Committee, program chair of cdCon 2023, and is active in the OpenSSF devrel committee... Read More →

Tuesday February 4, 2025 4:50pm - 5:30pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Panel

5:35pm GMT

The Mojaloop Story : Paula Hunter, Mojaloop Foundation, Executive Director

Tuesday February 4, 2025 5:35pm - 6:00pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

Paula Hunter

Executive Director, Mojaloop Foundation

Paula Hunter is the Executive Director of the Mojaloop Foundation – a charitable nonprofit organization focused on extending the financial inclusion efforts of the Mojaloop open source software project. She leads the organization’s strategic planning and direction; grant, membership... Read More →

Tuesday February 4, 2025 5:35pm - 6:00pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Finance & Openness, Talk

11:15am GMT

Making smartphones more sustainable and private thanks to Open Source : Gaël Duval, Murena, CEO

Wednesday February 5, 2025 11:15am - 11:30am GMT

Doddington Forum 2

/e/OS is a smartphone operating system forked from AOSP/LineageOS, created in 2018. It offers default features that allow its users to escape the constant collection of their personal data: complete deGoogling, removal of application trackers, IP address masking, etc. It also offers complementary cloud services to the OS (drive, email, calendar, office document management, etc.), all of which are entirely based on free software. Compatible with over 200 smartphone models, it gives new life to models sometimes as old as 10 years - all thanks to open source!

Speakers

Gaël Duval

CEO, Murena

Gaël Duval is a software engineer and entrepreneur. In 1998, he created the first Linux distribution aimed at the general public. More recently, he created /e/OS, a fully deGoogled mobile operating system that respects personal data, now available in Murena smartphones and cloud... Read More →

Wednesday February 5, 2025 11:15am - 11:30am GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Keynote

11:35am GMT

Connecting the UK with Open Source: the journey of BT Group and Canonical: Tara Stella, BT, Head of Open Source

Wednesday February 5, 2025 11:35am - 12:15pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

Serdar Vural

Tara Stella

Head of Open Source, BT

IT infrastructure architect with 25+ years of experience in networking, security and Linux/Unix, mainly in the Telco and Finance industries.World-recognized expert in Cloud Architecture and Open Source with several awards and publications. Expert in building private cloud infrastructures... Read More →

Wednesday February 5, 2025 11:35am - 12:15pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Panel

1:15pm GMT

Tackling digital poverty through open connectivity : Elizabeth Anderson, Digital Poverty Alliance, CEO

Wednesday February 5, 2025 1:15pm - 1:40pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

How open technology can tackle digital poverty through providing open connections

Speakers

Elizabeth Anderson

CEO, Digital Poverty Alliance

Elizabeth Anderson is CEO of the Digital Poverty Alliance, which aims to end digital poverty in the UK once and for all.  Leading the DPA programmatic and operational team, she focusses across advocacy, community building and delivery work, talking to schools, industry partners... Read More →

Wednesday February 5, 2025 1:15pm - 1:40pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Talk

1:45pm GMT

EU Data Act: Paul Graham, Field Fisher, Partner

Wednesday February 5, 2025 1:45pm - 2:00pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

Paul Graham

Partner, Field Fisher

Paul is a Partner in the Fieldfisher Technology and Privacy Group and Head of the Communications Sector Group. He is listed as a Leading Individual for TMT work by Legal500 and Chambers. He has a Professional Certificate in DigitalTransformation from MIT.Paul has over 25 years' experience... Read More →

Wednesday February 5, 2025 1:45pm - 2:00pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Talk

2:00pm GMT

The challenges of open source in the mobile sector : Nick Allot, Nquiring Minds, CEO

Wednesday February 5, 2025 2:00pm - 2:15pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

Nick Allot

CEO, Nquiring Minds

Wednesday February 5, 2025 2:00pm - 2:15pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Talk

2:20pm GMT

Breaking Free from Vendor Dependency: How Vodafone’s ‘Network as Platform’ Team Build Telco APIs In-House Using Cloud-Native Technologies: Sachin Kumar

Wednesday February 5, 2025 2:20pm - 2:45pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

This session explores Vodafone’s NaaP (Network as Platform) journey in developing and managing telco APIs entirely in-house, leveraging cloud-native technologies such as Kubernetes, PagerDuty, Github, Splunk/Instana and service meshes. By transitioning away from vendor reliance, NaaP achieved operational independence, reduced costs, and significantly accelerated our time-to-market. This novel approach challenges the telecom industry's traditional dependency on third-party vendors and offers a blueprint for other operators to adopt similar practices.

Speakers

Sachin Kumar

Wednesday February 5, 2025 2:20pm - 2:45pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Talk

3:30pm GMT

Connecting the Dots: The Role of Open Standards in Next-Gen Telecommunications : Tim Armstrong, Startup Founder, Plaintextnerds

Wednesday February 5, 2025 3:30pm - 3:45pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

This talk explores the transformative power of open standards in the fibre optic networking sector. By examining tools like the Open Fibre Data Standard (OFDS) and OpenSOD, it highlights how openness fosters transparency, improves collaboration, and reduces costs, while paving the way for resilient, future-ready telecommunications infrastructure.

Speakers

Tim Armstrong

Startup Founder, Snyk Ambassador, and Consultant Software Engineer, Plaintextnerds

A Lead Engineer turned Startup Founder.Tim uses his 15 years of experience as an engineer to help others discover and embrace new technology and solve problems through clear guides, tutorials, and sessions. He does his best to provide free mentorship to people who show a genuine passion... Read More →

Wednesday February 5, 2025 3:30pm - 3:45pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Talk

Subject Mobile and Communications

3:50pm GMT

Standards, Open Source, RAND and Telco : Keith Bergelt, Sachiko Muto, Tim Armstrong and Daniel Appelquist

Wednesday February 5, 2025 3:50pm - 4:30pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

Speakers

Tim Armstrong

Startup Founder, Snyk Ambassador, and Consultant Software Engineer, Plaintextnerds

Sachiko Muto

Chair, Openforum Europe

Sachiko Muto is the Chair of OpenForum Europe and a senior researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. She originally joined OFE in 2007 and served for several years as Director with responsibility for government relations and then as CEO. Sachiko has degrees in Political Science... Read More →

Keith Bergelt

CEO, Open Invention Network

Daniel Appelquist

Open Source & Open Standards Strategist, Samsung Open Source Group

Dan Appelquist is an Open Source Strategist at Samsung Open Source Group. He is a web & mobile industry veteran and long-time participant and leader in open source and open standards. He is co-chair of the W3C Technical Architecture Group and is a co-founder of Open Web Docs. He is... Read More →

Wednesday February 5, 2025 3:50pm - 4:30pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Panel

4:35pm GMT

Security, Privacy & Authenticity on the Web : Daniel Appelquist, Open Source & Open Standards Strategist, Samsung Open Source Group

Wednesday February 5, 2025 4:35pm - 5:00pm GMT

Doddington Forum 2

In an era of growing concerns over misinformation, surveillance, and data breaches, building a more secure, private, and authentic web has never been more critical.

In this talk, I'll explore the current state of web security, privacy, and authenticity, focusing on key efforts shaping the future of the open web. You'll hear about the latest work in W3C, including advancements in privacy principles, ethical web guidelines, web developer security guidelines, all aimed at creating a more secure, trustworthy, and user-centric web. You'll also learn about how emerging standards like Content Credentials (C2PA) may revolutionize the way we verify the authenticity of digital content, helping to combat misinformation and ensure transparency in the information we consume online.

Speakers

Daniel Appelquist

Open Source & Open Standards Strategist, Samsung Open Source Group

Wednesday February 5, 2025 4:35pm - 5:00pm GMT
Doddington Forum 2

Mobile & Communications, Talk

Subject Mobile and Communications