Featured Speakers

Dirk is the Head of Ericsson Software Technology, leading a team of engineers working on upstream open source contributions. He brings nearly four decades of software and open source leadership, most recently as head of Verizon’s Open Source Office, focused on open source governance and security. Before that, he spent six years as VMware’s Chief Open Source Officer, establishing the company’s OSPO and driving its involvement in the open source community, and nearly fifteen years at Intel as Chief Linux and Open Source Technologist, shaping the company’s open source strategy. He began his executive career as the first CTO of SUSE Linux.

Dirk has been a software developer and part of many free software and open source communities since the late 1980s, helping build and grow projects like Linux, KDE, Yocto, and most recently Subsurface and . He has served on the boards and advisory boards of a number of open source foundations, including the Linux Foundation, KDE, GNOME, and the Free Standards Group. He holds a degree in Mathematics and Computer Science from the University of Würzburg and lives in Portland, Oregon.

Erin McKean helps Googlers create, share, and contribute to open source projects in Google’s Open Source Programs Office. She is also the founder of the not-for-profit Wordnik.com, the world’s biggest online dictionary. Before founding Wordnik, she was the editor-in-chief of American Dictionaries for Oxford University Press. In addition to writing code, blog posts, and documentation, she’s also the author of the Weird and Wonderful Words books, the best-selling novel The Secret Lives of Dresses, and The Hundred Dresses, a field guide to dresses, and is an honorary fellow of the Society for Technical Communication. She blogs at . When you meet her, please tell her your favorite word or your favorite open source project.

Gabriele is an open source technologist at heart. He spent over 15 years building developer ecosystems to deliver value through open source across Europe and the US. He thrives on driving innovation both contributing to open source communities and joining commercial open source ventures, whether it’s for an early stage tech startup, a Fortune 500 firm or a non profit foundation. He has recently won the Tech Leadership Award at FinTech Futures USA Banking Tech Awards.

As Executive Director Gabriele grew the Fintech Open Source Foundation (FINOS) from the ground up, with the vision of creating a trusted arena for the global financial services industry to innovate faster, leveraging open source as a model of collaboration. He then led FINOS to join the Linux Foundation umbrella to accelerate growth, ensure long term sustainability of efforts and reduce fragmentation in the Foundation’s ecosystem.

Gabriele holds a Master in Computer Engineering, is a Committer for the Apache Software Foundation and advises open source startups. He’s a passionate soccer fan, reggae music connoisseur and special needs dad and advocate wannabe.

Jamie Thomas is IBM’s Chief Client Innovation Officer and the IBM Enterprise

Security Executive. She oversees the delivery of advanced service solutions, offering

clients worldwide predictive and preventive technical IT support for both IBM and

multi-vendor infrastructures. She leads a team that forges strategic partnerships with

top-tier technology providers to guarantee best-in-class compute, storage, and

networking solutions for 14,000 IBM clients in more than 140 countries. Under

Jamie’s leadership, beginning in the middle of 2023, the organization embarked on

strong digital transformation, revamping its go to market strategy with an integrated

datacenter approach and AI based solutions.

Jamie also oversees IBM’s CISO organization responsible for delivering security in

IBM’s products, client offerings and internal operations. As a steward of the enterprise

cybersecurity mission, Jamie collaborates with IBM’s governance organizations, senior

leaders and Board of Directors to fortify IBM’s cybersecurity strategy and response

globally.

Pioneer of Innovation and Digital Transformation

Throughout her career Jamie has built and led multi-billion-dollar businesses, scaled

organizations, and driven business transformation across industries. She has held

multiple executive positions within IBM Software, encompassing cutting-edge

technologies such as software development lifecycle, network management,

transactional systems, and systems management. In addition, she managed the

acquisition and integration of more than 20 acquired firms in these domains. During

her tenure in IBM Software, Jamie managed over US$ 10 billion in associated

revenues focused on both organic and inorganic development.

In IBM Hardware, Jamie led the IBM Storage organization, focusing on the

acceleration of software for new workloads, like AI. She also led the design,

development and delivery of complex server hardware including chip design, chip

packaging and transactional hardware. Her ability to set innovation agendas that

deliver business security and resilience was especially valuable during the COVID-19

pandemic, when she applied digital transformation to navigate the complexities of

global supply chain interruption. During her tenure in hardware development, she

partnered with Quantum Research to pioneer client facing electronic designs and the

creation of a quantum network. Jamie continues to be an executive advocate for

quantum computing and the growth of the IBM Quantum Network.

Over her 30-year career, Jamie has developed an in-depth understanding of market

trends, client needs, and application of cutting-edge technologies for fostering

transformative change. From her initial positions in IBM Software and Hardware, to

extensive organizational experience with R&D, to her current leadership in Client

Transformation, she has played a crucial part in shaping IBM’s technological frontier

and reshaping industries. Jamie’s dedication to client excellence is evident through her

unwavering commitment to delivering superior service. Her continued focus and

innovative thought leadership on enterprise security trends underscores her focus to

digital security and fostering trust in this fast-evolving arena.

Personal Commitment to Technology Community

A distinguished alumna of the University of Tennessee at Knoxville’s computer science

program, Jamie remains steadfast in her commitment to her alma mater, serving as a

member of the Vice- Chancellor of Research External Advisory Council. Jamie also sits

in the governing board of the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF), focused on

securing open source software for the greater public good.

Dedicated to fostering career advancement for all individuals, Jamie serves on the

Board of Trustees at Wake Technical Community College in North Carolina.

Johan Linåker is a Senior Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden and an Adjunct Assistant Professor at Lund University, working at the intersection of empirical software engineering, open technologies, and digital sovereignty. His work focuses on how public and private sector organizations can use, develop, and govern open source software, open and shared data, and open standards to strengthen interoperability, reduce lock-in, and enable sustainable digital transformation.

He currently leads and supports European and national initiatives on open source adoption in the public sector, including coordination of the UN Open Source Enablement Compass, the EU-funded OSAwards.eu project and facilitation of networks around open technologies in Swedish industry and government, including NOSAD and the Swedish OSPO network. He regularly conducts reports and studies commissioned by various entities, including the European Commission, the Danish Agency for Digital Government, and the Eclipse Foundation, and collaborates across projects with several large international industry and government organizations on urgent matters related to open technologies. He also advises on governance models, procurement, and cybersecurity for public digital infrastructure and open technologies across different levels of government, with open strategic autonomy and governments’ capacity to shape their own digital future as a unifying theme.

Previously, he has worked as an action researcher at the Swedish Public Employment Service, served as Open Source Strategist at Axis Communications, and founded OpenHack – Coding for Humanity, a social initiative promoting open source solutions for the UN Sustainable Development Goals, now part of Engineers Without Borders Sweden. He enjoys collaborating with policymakers, practitioners, and researchers to turn research insights into practical strategies, guidelines, and communities around open and sustainable digital ecosystems.

Juliette van der Laarse is an engineering leader, systems thinker, and O’Reilly author specializing in capability architecture and engineering enablement. She is a Senior Engineering Manager at the largest online retail and e-commerce platform in the Netherlands and Belgium. Previously, she led a cluster of Engineering Platforms and Enablement teams at a major international financial services company.

She is the creator of the AI Flower, a public capability architecture for AI-native engineering, introduced on O’Reilly Radar and presented at DevWorld 2026. The framework codifies IT activities, their definitions of excellence, and their dependencies into an open, tool-agnostic foundation for human and AI-executed work, built deliberately modular and concrete, so that every activity, quality bar, and dependency is a specific, contestable claim the community can challenge, refine, and improve. Juliette is establishing a foundation to bring the framework under open governance, and is actively inviting contributors worldwide to help validate and extend it.

She founded and chaired a company-wide Women in IT network of 250+ members, and was recognized by the European Parliament as a role model for girls in tech.

 Dr. Laura Dornheim is head of IT departement and Chief Digital Officer (CDO) of the City of Munich. She holds a degree in Business Informatics and a PhD in Gender Studies. With more than 20 years of experience in the digital sector, she joined the public sector in 2022 and has since been leading the digital transformation of Munich’s city administration. She is committed to making digital transformation sustainable and inclusive, enabling everyone to participate in and benefit from technological progress.

Laura Tacho is a subject matter expert in measuring the efficiency of engineering organizations. Currently, she is a Senior Principal Technologist at AWS focusing on developer experience and AI-native development. Laura was previously the CTO of DX, where she led the company’s executive advisory and research programs. She is the co-author of the Core 4 Framework of Developer Productivity, used by companies like LEGO, Netflix, Airbnb, Pinterest, and Snowflake to measure and improve developer experience. In 2025, she was awarded Austrian Innovator of the Year. Laura’s been working on developer tools for 15 years, including building out some of the first developer tools for the Docker ecosystem.

Linus was born on December 28, 1969, in Helsinki, Finland. He enrolled at the University of Helsinki in 1988, graduating with a master’s degree in computer science. His M.Sc. thesis was titled “Linux: A Portable Operating System” and was the genesis for what would become the most important collaborative software project in history. In August 1991, Linus announced that he was developing the Linux kernel, proclaiming, “it won’t be big and professional.” Never in the history of technology has someone been so wrong. In spite of his humble proclamation, Linux has become the world’s most pervasive operating system. Today the Linux kernel forms the basis of the Linux operating system and powers billions of Android devices, powers ChromeOS, and has permeated almost every industry and form factor. Smartphones, TVs, appliances, cars, nuclear submarines, air traffic control, stock exchanges, and scientific research all run Linux. Linux also provides the underpinnings of the internet and the cloud computing industry. In 2005, citing a lack of free and open-source version control tools that met his needs for performance and scale, Linus famously created Git in only 10 days. Today Git is widely used in software development and for other version-control tasks such as configuration management and has become popular as an integral part of the DevOps culture. In 2000, Linus was listed by Time Magazine as Number 17 in the Time 100: Most Important People of the Century. Again, in 2004, Time Magazine named him one of the Most Influential People in the world. He was honored in 2008 with the Millennium Technology Prize by the Technology Academy Finland, “in recognition of his creation of a new open-source operating system for computers leading to the widely used Linux kernel.” He is also the recipient of the 2014 IEEE Computer Society Computer Pioneer Award. A true tech titan, he was admitted to the Computer History Museum Hall of Fellows, joining the ranks of the tech elite including Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, Tim Berners-Lee, Gordon Moore, Ken Thompson, Dennis Ritchie, Steve Wozniak, and others. Torvalds remains the ultimate authority on what new code is incorporated into the standard Linux kernel.

Madelyn Olson is a co-creator and maintainer of Valkey, a high-performance key-value datastore, and Principal Engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS). She focuses on building secure and highly reliable features, with a passion in working with open-source communities.

Mark Weatherford is the AI Cybersecurity Strategist at NVIDIA. He has held a variety of
executive level cybersecurity roles including VP of AI Policy and Standards at Gretel,
Chief Strategy Officer at the National Cybersecurity Center, VP & Global Information
Security Strategist at Booking Holdings, Principal at The Chertoff Group, VP & Chief
Security Officer at the North American Electric Reliability Corporation, and Chief
Information Security Officer for the state of Colorado.

Mark was also appointed by Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger in 2008 to serve as
California’s first Chief Information Security Officer and in 2011 he was appointed in the
Obama Administration as the nation’s first Deputy Under Secretary for Cybersecurity at
the U.S. Department of Homeland Security. He is a former U.S. Naval Officer where he
served as the Director of Navy Computer Network Defense Operations, Director of the
Navy Computer Incident Response Team, and established the U.S. Navy’s first
cybersecurity red team.

Mark is a Board Director and on the Advisory Board of several technology companies
where he has a successful track record in helping startups from founding to acquisition.
He currently serves as an advisor to the Center for International Security and
Cooperation (CISAC) at Stanford University and is a member of the Strategic Advisory
Council at the U.S. Department of Energy Idaho National Laboratory.
Among his many professional awards, he is an inductee into the 2023 Global Cyber
Security Hall of Fame, the 2021 International CSO Hall of Fame, the 2018 Information
Systems Security Association (ISSA) Hall of Fame, and was SC Magazine’s CSO of the
Year in 2010.

Mirko Boehm is a Free and Open Source Software contributor, community manager, licensing expert and researcher, with contributions to major Open Source projects like the KDE Desktop (since 1997, including several years on the KDE e.V. board), the Open Invention Network, the Open Source Initiative and others. He is a visiting lecturer and researcher on Free and Open Source Software at the Technical University of Berlin. Mirko Boehm has a wide range of experience as an entrepreneur, corporate manager, software developer and German Air Force officer.

He joined the Linux Foundation in June 2023 as Senior Director for Community Development for LF Europe, where he focuses on driving engagement and collaboration between all European Open Source stakeholders.

Mirko speaks English and German and lives in the Berlin area.

N. Harrison Ripps is a Director of Engineering at Red Hat, working with the Project Hummingbird / Hardened Images team. Harrison is a veteran engineering leader who specializes in running small teams that make an outsized impact. Since joining Red Hat, Harrison has led product teams, devops teams, and experimental engineering teams in Red Hat’s Office of the CTO. When he’s not bringing people together in amazing teams, Harrison moonlights as a DJ where he mixes music together to form highly danceable club sets. For professional contact, head to https://www.linkedin.com/in/harrisonripps/

Nithya has been in open source leader for over 25 years. She is a bridge builder working with companies large and small to create productive and strategic paths to working with open source. She led the Amazon OSPO & prior to Amazon, she started and grew Comcast and SanDisk’s OSPOs.

Nithya has been director-at-large on the Linux Foundation Board for the last 5 years and in 2019 was elected to be Chair organization. Nithya is an advisor to the UCSC OSPO and to rising leaders in open source.

I am passionate about making technology work for our societies through real-life research, impactful and inclusive policy and innovative projects. 

Throughout the years, I covered digital policy topics such as Open Source Software and Hardware, standardisation, cloud computing and AI.

Ryan Waite leads open-source strategy for Microsoft as well as the Azure Open-Source Incubations team. He’s run engineering teams focused on high-performance computing, big data analytics, fraud detection, and mobile computing at Microsoft, Amazon Web Services, and Cray, the Supercomputing Company. A proponent of open-source software, Ryan is focused on how open-source collaboration enables all of us to do more together than we can alone.

Tarek Becker is CTO of Business AI Platform (BAIP) Fabric at SAP, where he drives platform architecture and execution alignment for SAP’s AI-native application platform. He is an experienced software architect with a strong focus on large-scale cloud platforms, distributed systems, and developer productivity. In his role, he helps SAP teams, partners, and customers build and run AI-native applications on a reliable, scalable, SAP-managed platform. Tarek is passionate about using open-source technologies pragmatically to create secure, resilient, and high-performing enterprise software. He believes platform engineering should reduce complexity, provide clear golden paths, and help teams move faster without compromising operational excellence. His work connects architecture, product strategy, and engineering execution to make BAIP a strong foundation for SAP customers and developers.

Thierry Carrez is the General Manager of the Open Infrastructure Foundation. A systems engineer by trade, he was involved in the inception of the OpenStack project, and still contributes to its governance and release management.

With a personal interest in the intersection of sociology and technology, Thierry spoke about open innovation and open source at various conferences around the world, including OSCON, LinuxCon, and FOSDEM. He currently serves as Secretary and Director for the Open Source Initiative. He was recognized as a Python Software Foundation fellow in 2012, and previously worked as the Technical lead for Ubuntu Server at Canonical, an operational manager for the Gentoo Linux Security Team, and an IT manager in various companies.

Xinwei Hu is a seasoned technologist and software architect with extensive expertise in operating systems, open-source technologies, and system performance optimization. With strong hands-on experience in OS development and cross-core performance interference mitigation, he has driven key innovations in building resilient, high-performance, and trustworthy computing systems. A active practitioner in the open-source community, he has contributed to leading projects focused on OS intelligence, dynamic workload tuning, and cloud computing infrastructure.