UK Open Source Awards Shortlist Announced!

A total of 65 nominations were received for the event which takes place on the 12^th June in Edinburgh.

The 2019 UK Open Source Awards has received 65 nominations, a record in its 10 year history. We are pleased to announce the shortlist of 16 contenders across 4 categories thanks to the judging panel of Open Source luminaries. The UK Open Source Awards is a non-profit event celebrating significant contributions made by participants in the UK to Open Source technology.

This free to attend, not for profit event, organised by SalesAgility and Trustable, will see technology and open source leaders gather to exchange knowledge, discuss open source trends and the impact of open source on the wider technology landscape. The 4 award category winners will be announced at the event hosted at University of Edinburgh Informatics forum on 12^th June 2019.

The successful 16 nominees who have made the short list are:

• Individual – for outstanding contributions to open source:
  • Mandy Chessell
  • Simon McVittie
  • James Morgan
  • Tracy Miranda
• Company – for outstanding contribution to open source either through product development or contributions to projects:
  • Cloudsoft Corp.
  • Open Healthcare
  • AB EHR
  • Outlier Ventures
• Public Sector and Third Sector – for an outstanding open source project in the UK public sector or third sector:
  • Ripple Foundation
  • The Apperta Foundation
  • Inside Outcomes CIC
  • NHS Digital
• Student – a cash stipend of £1,500 will be awarded for an outstanding contribution to open source from a currently matriculated UK student:
  • Antreas Antoniou (University of Edinburgh – School of Informatics)
  • Andrew Brock (University of Edinburgh and Heriot-Watt – Edinburgh Centre For Robotics)
  • Nathan Hughes – (Aberystwyth University)
  • Yiannis Simillides – (Imperial College London)

The independent judging panel of Allison Randal, Jonathan Riddell and Dawn Foster had this to say:

“Many of the student projects contain impressive research and using open source ensures that this work can be easily used by future researchers and students,”

said Dawn Foster who herself has a Phd in contribution to the Linux Kernel.

“We had four impressive lists of nominations to whittle down to the shortlists. It took us a good week of deliberations to pick some truly spectacular projects and we had to by-pass some very worthy candidates but these do represent a beautiful spread of the state of the art. Well done to all 65 nominees,”

Head Judge, Jonathan Riddell, of the KDE community commented

“I was impressed by the number of nominations based around helping the NHS, the entrepreneurial spirit working for the public good using open methods is exactly what we were after,”

said Allison Randal.

This unique event includes some of Open Source’s best international speakers including:

• The influence of Open Source on all Technology – Allison Randal retiring OSI Board member and Open Stack Foundation Board Member

• Open Source Innovation within the Public Sector – Panelists to include Terence

• Eden, Senior Technology Advisor NHS England & Sachiko Muto, CEO Open Forum Europe

• Good Corporate Citizens in Open Source- Dawn Foster, Pivotal and Governing Board Linux Foundation CHAOSS project

• The Journey to Open Source – Stephen Walli Principal Program Manager Microsoft & Keith Bergelt CEO of the Open Invention Network

The evening ceremony will be keynoted by Nextcloud’s founder and CEO, Frank Karlitschek, after which the four awards will be presented to outstanding individuals and organisations contributing to Open Source in the UK.

You can sign up for a free ticket at https://opensourceawards.org and read more about the shortlist at https://opensourceawards.org/the-shortlist/

The Awards are made possible in 2019 by the sponsorship of Microsoft, Collabora, Codethink, Open UK, Open Invention Network, Opus VL, NHSX and Informatics Forum.