RALEIGH — A line ran out of the Raleigh Convention Center Monday morning, continuing around the corner and down the street. There were no complaints as the line moved along quickly, and the beautiful October morning gave folks an opportunity to meet their colleagues as they headed into the 12th annual All Things Open conference.
A Raleigh mainstay since it’s beginnings in 2012, All Things Open has grown into a major event for the open source community. This year’s event includes 5,500 registered attendees, more than 200 speakers and sessions, and three days of activities. Things officially kicked off on Sunday with two community development events: Inclusion and Diversity in Open Source and the Community Leadership Summit.
Annual Favorites
Monday’s content opened with keynotes, and continued with sessions on topics from DevOps to Security to Community throughout the day. Taking up much of the Raleigh Convention Center, the event also boasts more than 80 exhibitor tables. And the conference is continuing to evolve. This year’s event sees an expansion of AI-related content, now available across two tracks, with more insights available in the conference “Case Study/Demo” tracks.
A major element of All Things Open is the annual Demo Night event that occurs on Monday evening. Sponsored by local mainstay RIoT, the event brings together more than 50 IoT (Internet of Things) and technology companies showcasing their innovative projects. There’s also a “Startup Showcase” where attendees have the opportunity to “invest” in their favorite startups, leading to an annual winner. Demo Night kicks off at 5:30pm and tickets are still available.
Tomorrow brings another first: the collaboration of All Things Open with the City of Raleigh’s Triangle Connected+ Summit. This will be the second Summit, with this year's sessions taking over several rooms of the All Things Open event, allowing a merging of attendees across events.
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Todd Lewis, All Things Open's creator and chair is excited about the new partnership.
"We bring a whole new audience and level of awareness," he explained, "from people that have just never heard about what they're doing in smart cities. So it was really a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship, and so far, it's worked beautifully. More than 200 people have registered for it, and that doesn't include anyone that has registered for ATO."
Busy Halls
Like many others, All Things Open took several years to recover after the COVID pandemic. The 2019 event had more than 5,000 attendees, and this year’s numbers appear to show the event back at full strength. Wading through the crowded halls, it certainly feels like a full-capacity crowd.
Lewis is an enthusiastic supporter of the Triangle, and looks forward to remaining the area and utilizing the Raleigh Convention Center for years to come. But he also expressed enthusiasm for the future.
“What has our interest is the expansion plans here,” Lewis said. “Granted, it’s going to take a few years, but once that expansion happens, I think [it will] be even better. But we love the accommodations here.”
While 50-60% of the attendees are coming from North Carolina, the event brings a significant number of users from across the U.S. and beyond. It was not uncommon to hear other languages throughout the busy halls, and according to Lewis, this year’s registrations included a level of international attendees not seen since 2019.
Leading the Community
Over the year’s, All Things Open has matured, extending it’s reach and importance in the broader open source community. That maturity was on display this year as the conference hosted the Open Source Initiative (OSI) board meeting and was the site for the official release of the official Open Source AI Definition.
“It’s something that we’ve worked toward for more than a decade now,” said Lewis. “It’s nice that people feel like they can come here and we provide them a platform to make impactful announcements that are going to really impact the greater open source community.”
If this morning’s line to get in was any indicator, the conversations and community will continue tonight, tomorrow, and throughout the year.
“We’ve had days where maybe not so many people were trying to get in, back in the early, early days,” said Lewis, marveling over the morning crowds. “So this is a nice problem to have. I’m very thankful for it.”
