In February I was fortunate to attend and speak at the State of Open Conference run by OpenUK. This is a UK conference for all things open technology: open source, open data, open standards, open hardware, and AI openness.
One thing that became obvious throughout the event was how relevant open technology is, not only for those of us engaged in that community. The topics of discussion have the interest of the public and are being discussed in both the House of Lords and Commons, with ongoing legislative developments in the UK, EU, and globally.
To illustrate this, the conference featured Chi Onwurrah, the Shadow Minister for Science, Innovation and Research, who delivered a keynote on Open Innovation for the Nation. Baroness Stowell, Chair of the House of Lords’ Communications & Digital Select Committee, gave a talk on Large language models and generative AI. The