All Things Open expects to draw thousands worldwide for all-digital conference

All Things Open, the largest open-source event in the Southeast, is bringing its two-day conference experience online this fall. Held on October 19-20, All Things Open 2020 is expected to draw thousands of designers, developers, entrepreneurs and technologists worldwide.

Now entering its eighth consecutive year, All Things Open is a pillar of the Triangle’s tech ecosystem. The event takes place in Raleigh every fall and, in recent years, it has amassed crowds of over 4,000 people from around the world. Last year’s conference brought in the largest turnout ever, with 4,985 attendees from 41 states and 27 countries. The 2018 program drew 4,079 attendees.

All Things Open Founder Todd Lewis is optimistic that the turnout will likely double for the virtual iteration of the program. He’s expecting more than 10,000 developers, technologists and open-source leaders from around the world to join. “We are removing the ‘travel barrier,’ so we expect a more global audience,” Lewis adds.

Though the online venue will naturally change the end-attendee experience, Lewis believes All Things Open 2020 can come close to replicating the in-person atmosphere. “Being virtual will allow us to do some things not possible when in person and will allow us to feature speakers we never would have otherwise been able to host,” Lewis says.

For the first time ever, tickets to this year’s event are completely free. Previously, All Things Open tickets would start at around $150. Though attendees can be admitted for free in 2020, VIP tickets with extra perks are also available.

Three co-located events will take place on day one (October 19) of All Things Open 2020:

The Inclusion and Diversity in Open Source program was first introduced in 2018 as a three-hour session, then ATO organizers extended it to a half-day time slot last year. In 2020, the event is back for a full day of talks and panel discussions around improving diversity and inclusion in the open-source community. Sessions will cover a variety of topics such as machine learning bias and discrimination, expanding access to underrepresented groups, diversity of thought and age, and more subtopics. Confirmed speakers in the Inclusion and Diversity in Open Source program are: Danese Cooper of NearForm, Jason Brewer and Johnny Preyer of Mailchimp, Saishruthi Swaminathan of IBM, Ellen Spertus of Mills College, Lisa Smith of Zapier and Women Who Code, Guy Martin of OASIS Open and Vasudha Swaminathan of Stack Overflow.
The Community Leadership Summit is typically held on the two days leading up to All Things Open, but it is now included in the main program in 2020. The event will focus on community-building, featuring open-source leaders, organizers and managers. Subtopics include: mentoring new community leaders, creating a sustainable community, event planning, connecting community and developer relations teams, building diverse teams and projects, measuring community health, and building incentives and rewards to encourage audience participation.
DevOpsDays Raleigh will include more than 20 talks and panel discussions will cover both technical and non-technical content for developers, system administrators and other people interested in the field. (More details will be announced soon.)

Lewis says that these three sub-events, in addition to the more traditional keynote, workshop and track session programming, will provide more variety to attendees than ever before.

Day two of All Things Open will include several 15-minute plenary talks and keynotes, along with 45-90 minute sessions in multiple content tracks.

Ahead of October, organizers are busy finalizing the schedule and roster of speakers. All Things Open aims to have more than 200 open-source technologists and subject matter experts in the speaker lineup. Over 100 people have been announced so far, including developers, managers and executives from Facebook, Google, Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, Spotify, RedHat, SAS, GitHub, Fidelity Investments, PayPal and more major tech firms.

Lewis says that the team is structuring sessions and sub-events to maximize the attendee experience and allow for ample education and networking. The online event platform, he adds, is intuitive and easy for attendees to navigate.

“The platform we’re using will really help connect people and enable new relationships and communication,” Lewis said. “These new relationships have long-tail value and can benefit attendees for years into the future.”

https://wraltechwire.com/event/all-things-open-2020/