OpenUK's State of Open Con 24 drew 30 journalists, including POLITICO, CityAM and The Telegraph, and beat the previous year's coverage with more than 50 pieces.
OpenUK is a non-profit that champions the UK's open technology sector. We ran the press office for its annual conference, State of Open Con 24, and events like this are some of the hardest and most rewarding work a comms team does.
The conference, held at The Brewery in central London, brought together leading figures from the global open source community. There were 208 speakers, including more than 20 CEOs and founders. It gave OpenUK a forum for ideas and policy debate, where experts from tech, academia and government could learn from each other.
Bringing a hidden sector into view
OpenUK calls the open source community the "submarine under the UK digital economy", and our job was to bring it to the surface. Open source contributes 27% to the UK tech sector's gross value added. We set out to show the size of the UK's community of contributors and maintainers, and to widen the debate on government investment.
Our goals for the conference
We agreed three objectives with OpenUK before the event.
Finding the stories
We gathered the open source community's strongest stories and shaped them for tier-one media. That meant identifying the key speakers and organisations and making sure each of them, whether an established company or a newcomer, had a moment in the spotlight.
Engagement and outreach
In the run-up to the event, we put OpenUK at the front of current debates in open source and technology. Its contribution to the House of Lords consultation on large language models, for example, raised awareness and also won useful press coverage.
Media partnerships
We also worked with media partners that reach the open source and technology community, which built interest in the event and helped to sell tickets. Computing, VMBlog, Linux Magazine and Software Defined Talk all helped to spread the word.
Results
The press office was busy throughout, with a steady stream of interviews and enquiries. We welcomed 30 journalists, including reporters from POLITICO, CityAM and The Telegraph. Coverage passed the previous year's total, with more than 50 pieces of thought leadership on the future of open source.
A platform to build on
More than 800 people attended, including key figures from tech, government and academia. The conference showed how many strong stories open source can offer when they are linked to the biggest challenges of our time. It also gives OpenUK a platform to build on, as open source stays central to debates on technology and policy.