Open Technology Impact in Uncertain Times
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OpenForum Academy Symposium 2025
This global, multidisciplinary research symposium brings academics and practitioners together to advance understanding of the role of Open Source and other Open Technologies in the modern world and produces policy-relevant research that helps decision-makers drive impact.
The CfP of the Symposium is now open until 1 June 2025
Content Partners
Academic Partners
About the Symposium
In an era defined by geopolitical shifts, economic instability, and rapid technological evolution, open technologies play a crucial role in shaping a more transparent, resilient, and equitable digital future. The OFA Symposium 2025, themed ‘Open Technology Impact in Uncertain Times’, will bring together leading academic researchers and practitioners – including policymakers, industry experts, and civil society – to explore the tangible impact of open technology in navigating complex geopolitical uncertainties.
Through expert panels, case studies, and collaborative discussions, the OFA Symposium 2025 will consider the transformative potential of openness in a world where certainty is no longer guaranteed. It will ask (and offer some answers to) questions like: What is the economic impact of open source software and other open technologies? How do open source software, open standards, and open data contribute to digital sovereignty, sustainability, and innovation? What challenges arise in sustaining and securing open technologies? And how can we understand the role of open source AI in upending the geopolitical landscape?
To join the Symposium as a speaker, participants need only submit an abstract for consideration of the Programme Committee. Should a paper be accepted, participants will need to submit a full paper, summary, or abstract summary (depending on the submission type, see Paper Categories and Timeline for more details and dates).
For more on last year’s edition of the Symposium, visit the archived website for the 2024 Symposium.
What is Open Technology Impact Research?
Despite the success of our previous Symposiums, there is not enough research on the broader societal and economic significance and impact of Open Source and Open Technologies. This is research where Open Source and Open Technologies themselves are NOT the primary focus of the study, and where the main subject of the research is their impact on society and stakeholders – users, vendors, governments, markets, etc – on society and the economy as the subject of study. In this sense, society itself is the subject of study. We link this area being under-researched with how Open Source and Open Technologies remain under-appreciated and overlooked, especially when compared to other aspects of digital society.
This is why we need to build a strong and supportive research community that can bring together this impact research on Open Source and Open Technologies and share it for the benefit of all. This year’s edition of the Symposium will place front and centre the consideration of impact, as well as make announcements related to the future of the Open Forum Academy. While the Symposium welcomes research of all types, we hope much of the research presented – and the manner of its positioning or framing – will help us to advance understand of the impact of Open Source and Open Technologies on society and the economy.
Participants are welcome to submit papers or presentations across four key themes. Participants are welcome to submit a paper or presentation that does not fall into one of these broad themes or sub-themes, but it may not be prioritised for inclusion in the final programme.
Participants need only submit an abstract for consideration of the Programme Committee. Should a paper be accepted, participants will need to submit a full paper, summary, or abstract summary (depending on the submission type, see Paper Categories for more details).
Track #1
Economic Impact of Open
Open technologies drive innovation, lower costs, and create new economic opportunities, but how do we measure their true impact? This track will explore the special role of open source software and other open source solutions in fostering competitive markets, digital sovereignty, and economic resilience. Discussions will address investment in open ecosystems, business models for sustainability, and the broader macroeconomic effects of openness.
- Economic Impact of Open Source
- Open Technologies and Innovation
- Open Technology and Entrepreneurship
- Open Source and Supply Chains
- Industrial Adoption of Open Source
Track #2
Open Technologies and Geopolitics
As technology becomes a central factor in global power dynamics, openness is both an asset and a challenge. This track will examine the role of open standards, open source, open data, open hardware, and digital commons in shaping geopolitical strategies, trade policies, and technological sovereignty. Experts will discuss how governments and organizations navigate tensions between openness, competition, and national security.
- Political and Social Impacts
- Open Technology and Digital Sovereignty
- Global Governance of Open Source
- Governments and Open Technology
- Copyright and Trade Disputes
Track #3
Sustainability and Security
Open technology is often seen as a pathway to sustainability and security, but can it effectively address global challenges in these domains? This track will explore how open solutions contribute to environmental sustainability, supply chain resilience, and cybersecurity. Conversations will focus on balancing transparency with security, ensuring long-term viability, and addressing risks in open ecosystems.
- Maintaining Open Source
- Open Source Cybersecurity
- Sustaining Open Technologies as Digital Commons
- Open Technologies as Infrastructure
- Open Hardware and Chips
Track #4
Open Source and AI
Artificial Intelligence is transforming industries, and open source code, weights, and data are at the heart of its development. But as AI scales, questions around ethics, accountability, and governance become more pressing, especially as debates swirl around the definition of open source AI. This track will explore the intersection of open source and AI, examining opportunities for collaboration, regulatory challenges, and the role of openness in ensuring responsible and trustworthy AI innovation.
- Open Data and Open Weights
- Value/Economics of Open Source and AI
- Global Governance of AI
The conference welcomes paper submissions in three categories: Research, Ongoing Research, and Topical Presentation. Each paper category is described in more detail below, including recommended sections and structure. Programme Committee Chairs can downgrade a paper after the review process if it is found that the paper does not fit the category chosen by the author(s) during submission.
The conference welcomes paper submissions in three categories: Research, Ongoing Research, and Topical Presentation. Each paper category is described in more detail below, including recommended sections and structure. Programme Committee Chairs can downgrade a paper after the review process if it is found that the paper does not fit the category chosen by the author(s) during submission.
- Paper Presentation: 20 minutes + 10 mins Q&A (Ideally suited for completed academic reports and papers)
- Presentation of Ongoing Research: 10 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A (Ideally suited for ongoing research and initiatives, presented in a novel or interactive way
- Topical Presentation: 10 minutes + 5 minutes Q&A (Ideally suited for focused presentations on relevant ideas and concepts that are not part of ongoing research efforts)
Participants need only submit an abstract for consideration of the Programme Committee. Should a paper be accepted, participants will need to submit a full paper, summary, or abstract summary (see Timeline for dates).
These are papers that document complete research in one or more aspects of Open Source and Open Technologies. Research papers must, in some way, address topics listed in Tracks 1-4 and 11 and should follow standard formats for academic research papers. There is no page limit for the papers, though they should be submitted with an abstract.
Pages: No length requirements
Main Thematic Tracks: Yes
Side Tracks: No
These are short summary papers that describe ongoing research work that is yet to be completed, in one or more aspects of Open Source and Open Technologies, with proven or potential capability to advance the state of research in the field. Ongoing research papers could take various forms: for example, they can be theoretical (presenting promising frameworks), empirical (with some preliminary results), or present a design of novel and useful concepts and/or artefacts (no testing required). Ongoing research papers must address topics listed in Tracks 1-4 and be 6-10 pages in length.
Pages: 6-10 page summary
Main Thematic Tracks: Yes
Side Tracks: No
These are presentations mostly composed of work in progress, recent developments or presentations of new ideas and initiatives with the potential to contribute to Open Source or Open Technologies research and practice by addressing topics listed in the Tracks 1-4. Short presentations should provide a summary as part of the Call for Proposals and provide a detailed 2-4 page abstract or summary for inclusion in the final programme.
Pages: 2-4 page abstract or summary
Main Thematic Tracks: Yes
Side Tracks: Yes
- 2 April 2025: Release of the Call for Proposals
- 1June 2025: Closing deadline of the Call for Proposals
- June 2025: Review of proposals by the Programme Committee
- By 25 July 2025: Program finalization and speaker notification
- By End of June: Program announcement
- 12 October: Deadline for submission of completed paper, summary, or abstract/summary (pending acceptance)
- 18-19 November 2025: OFA Symposium 2025 in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil
Renata Ávila
CEO at Open Knowledge Foundation
Renata Ávila
CEO at Open Knowledge Foundation
Renata Avila is an international human rights and technology lawyer specializing in data governance, open knowledge, and digital justice. As the CEO of the Open Knowledge Foundation (OKFN), she leads global efforts to unlock the power of open data and knowledge commons, enabling individuals and organizations to drive social change through transparent and equitable access to information, knowledge, data and technical tools. With deep expertise in intellectual property and international trade policies shaping the digital economy, she actively analyzes the intersection of intellectual property, data-driven innovation, and fair technology access, advocating for policies that prevent monopolistic control and foster open technologies. A vocal critic of restrictive digital trade agreements, she works to ensure that data sovereignty and emerging technologies contribute to economic justice rather than deepen inequalities.
A former fellow at the Stanford Institute of Human-Centered Artificial Intelligence, she is affiliated with the Center for Internet and Society at CNRS, France. She serves on the boards of Open Future, the Center for the Advancement of Infrastructural Imagination, and the Steering Committee of Lacuna Fund. She is a member of the Working Group on Data Governance at all levels, established by the United Nations Commission on Science and Technology for Development (CSTD).
Knut Blind
Professor for Innovation Economics at TU Berlin
Knut Blind
Professor for Innovation Economics at TU Berlin
Knut Blind studied economics, political science, and psychology at Freiburg University. In the course of his studies, he spent one year at Brock University (Canada), where he was awarded a BA. Finally, he took his Diploma in Economics and later his doctoral degree at Freiburg University.
Between 1996 and 2010, he joined the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research, Karlsruhe, Germany, as a senior researcher and at last as head of the Competence Center “Regulation and Innovation”. In April 2006, Knut Blind was appointed Professor of Innovation Economics at the Faculty of Economics and Management at the Berlin University of Technology. Between 2008 and 2016, he also held the endowed chair of standardization at the Rotterdam School of Management of the Erasmus University. From April 2010 to September 2019, he was linked to the Fraunhofer Institute of Open Communication Systems in Berlin. Since October 2019, he has been head of the business unit “Innovation and Regulation” at the Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research. In 2012, he initiated both the Berlin Innovation Panel and the German Standardization Panel. Besides numerous articles on patents, he published further contributions on standardization and further innovation aspects in refereed journals.
Yasodara Córdova
Independent Researcher
Yasodara Córdova
Independent Researcher
With over 13 years of experience in research, product, technology, and innovation, Yasodara Córdova specializes in the intersection of technology, policy, and society. As an international speaker and researcher, she regularly shares insights on privacy engineering, digital Identity, AI governance, and AI civic innovation, helping organizations design responsible, privacy-first solutions that anticipate regulatory shifts while driving innovation.
Yasodara has led data governance and privacy engineering initiatives, advising on privacy-by-design strategies and ensuring that products and technologies align with both user needs and compliance demands. Her expertise spans regulatory analysis, technical implementation, and strategic foresight, allowing me to navigate complexity and drive systemic change through both applied research and real-world solutions.
Until February 2025, Yasodara was Principal Privacy, Digital Identity Researcher & Policy Associate at Unico IDtech. She remains an Advisory Board Member at DEEP ESG and an Investment Committee Member at Co-Develop.
Rahul Dé
Professor of Information Systems at IIM Bangalore
Rahul Dé
Professor of Information Systems at IIM Bangalore
Rahul Dé is Professor of Information Systems at IIM Bangalore. He joined IIMB in 2002 and served as the Hewlett-Packard Chair Professor in ICT for Sustainable Economic Development from 2004-18. He teaches courses in Artificial Intelligence and Information Systems. His primary research interests are in AI Ethics, e-Government systems, Open Source, Digital Payments, Tele-medicine, and ICT for Development. Professor Dé has published four books, one textbook in Information Systems, and over 75 peer-reviewed articles in scientific journals, books, and conference proceedings.
Brian Fitzgerald
Principal Investigator at Lero – the Irish Software Research
Brian Fitzgerald
Principal Investigator at Lero – the Irish Software Research
Brian Fitzgerald is currently Principal Investigator in Lero – the Irish Software Research
Centre, having previously held the roles of Director and Chief Scientist. He holds an
endowed professorship, the Krehbiel Chair in Innovation in Business & Technology, at the
University of Limerick, where he also served as Vice President Research. In 2020, he was
elected President of the Association for Information Systems, the global body for
information systems worldwide.
He holds a PhD from the University of London and his
research interests lie primarily in software development, encompassing open source and
inner source, crowdsourcing software development, agile and global software development.
His publications include 17 books, and over 250 peer-reviewed articles in the leading
journals and conferences in both the Information Systems and Software Engineering fields.
His research projects have received over €115m in peer-reviewed funding. Prior to taking up
an academic position, he worked in the software industry for about 12 years, including
positions with Citibank in Frankfurt and Brussels.
Shikoh Gitau
CEO at Qhala and Board Director at The Tech Interactive
Shikoh Gitau
CEO at Qhala and Board Director at The Tech Interactive
Shikoh is the CEO of Qhala, a Digital Innovation company that catalyzes digital transformation capabilities for organizations across Africa. She has over 10 years of experience in the Research, Design, Implementation, and Management of Digital Technologies. She has established expertise in both African and Emerging Markets specialized in solving problems in Agriculture, Education, Health, Payments, Retail and Renewable energies. She is responsible for the set-up of Safaricom Alpha, a first of the kind corporate innovation hub in Africa. Where she worked as the Head of Products – Innovation and acted as the Chief Innovation Officer. Shikoh also led Safaricom’s foray into becoming a digital company, by putting together a strategy, and cross-functional teams to execute the strategy. Shikoh holds a PhD and MSc in Computer Science from the University of Cape Town, South Africa.
Katharina Meyer
Director of Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund
Katharina Meyer
Director of Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund
Katharina is an ecosystem analyst and the founding Director of the Digital Infrastructure Insights Fund, a multi-funder initiative that sustains a platform to better understand how open digital infrastructure is built and deployed. Her independent research investigates open technologies and their production, governance, and application across various domains and localities.
Central to her work is exploring the interplay between immaterial goods (f.i. digital commons) and their supply chains – social groups, external forces (like markets or law), practices, and tools/technologies that shape, break, or reinforce them; as well as further ontologies of technical systems and innovation landscapes under capitalism, where knowledge, infrastructures, and (technical, social and economic) protocols converge.
She has conceived and implemented pioneering programs, including fellowships, funding mechanisms and (legal) procurement tools, while establishing a track record in curating conferences and shaping policies, strategies, and processes at the intersection of science, society, and code.
In previous roles, she served as Head of Research at Germany’s federal Sovereign Tech Fund and Prototype Fund, head curator for the invited program at re:publica conference Berlin, and research associate at the Centre for Digital Cultures at Leuphana University. She co-founded the Polynocular Tech Lab , a project that applies transdisciplinary approaches to hardware and software development, supported by the Center for Advanced Internet Studies, and has surveyed implicit norms in open-source infrastructure communities with support from Ford Foundation.
Katharina advises the NGI Commons project and is a regular reviewer for entities like the Sovereign Tech Fund, Invest in Open Infrastructure, OFE Academy and the German Ministry of Research and Education. She frequently collaborates with visual and conceptual artists, as well as filmmakers, on mediation projects and exhibitions addressing Machine Learning, Surveillance, and other discontents in the digital realm.
Sachiko Muto
Senior Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Sachiko Muto
Senior Researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden
Sachiko Muto is the Chair of OpenForum Europe and a senior researcher at RISE Research Institutes of Sweden. She originally joined OFE in 2007 and served for several years as Director with responsibility for government relations and then as CEO. Sachiko has degrees in Political Science from the University of Toronto and the London School of Economics; she received her doctorate in standardisation policy from TU Delft.
Frank Nagle
Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
Frank Nagle
Assistant Professor of Business Administration at Harvard Business School
Frank Nagle is an assistant professor in the Strategy Unit at Harvard Business School. Professor Nagle studies how competitors can collaborate on the creation of core technologies, while still competing on the products and services built on top of them. His research falls into the broader categories of the future of work, the economics of IT, and digital transformation and considers how technology is weakening firm boundaries. His work frequently explores the domains of crowdsourcing, free digital goods, cybersecurity, and generating strategic predictions from unstructured big data. His work utilizes large datasets derived from online social networks, open source software repositories, financial market information, and surveys of enterprise IT usage.
Professor Nagle’s work has been published or is forthcoming in the academic journals Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, Research Policy, and Strategic Management Review as well as in the practitioner-oriented publications Harvard Business Review, MIT Sloan Management Review, and Brookings Institution TechStream. He has won awards and grants from AOM, NBER, SMS, INFORMS, EURAM, the Sloan Foundation, and the Linux Foundation. He is the co-director of the HBS/Linux Foundation Core Infrastructure Initiative. At HBS, he is a faculty affiliate of the Digital Initiative, the Managing the Future of Work Project, and the Laboratory for Innovation Science at Harvard (LISH).
Liv Marte Nordhaug
CEO at Digital Public Goods Alliance Secretariat
Liv Marte Nordhaug
CEO at Digital Public Goods Alliance Secretariat
Liv Marte Nordhaug is the CEO of the Digital Public Goods Alliance Secretariat. She spearheaded the creation and launch of the Alliance in 2019 and served as its co-lead from 2020-2023. In her role, she leverages 15 years of experience with the Norwegian Agency for Development Cooperation (Norad) where she worked on country capacity building and as an advisor to the Director General, before leading several digital innovation projects built around open-source technologies. Previous to starting in Norad, Liv lived for two years in the country of Timor-Leste, where she did field research and worked as an advisor on good governance and human resource development to the Timorese public petroleum sector administration.
Tarunima Prabhakar
Co-Founder, Research Lead at Tattle Civic Technologies and Associate Research Fellow at the Center of Responsible AI at IIT Madras
Tarunima Prabhakar
Co-Founder, Research Lead at Tattle Civic Technologies and Associate Research Fellow at the Center of Responsible AI at IIT Madras
Tarunima is a researcher working at the intersection of technology, policy and global development. Since 2019, she has focused on growing Tattle, a project she co-founded. Tattle builds citizen-centric tools and datasets to respond to inaccurate and harmful content in India. For the most part, her job is to make sure that things at Tattle are organized enough for others to function and thrive in the space (i.e. she is the Tattle house-elf). Occasionally, she’ll get to work with the data Tattle collects. Even less frequently, she’ll find time to write on misinformation, platforms and moderation. In another life, she studied the deployment of behavioural credit-scoring algorithms towards financial inclusion goals. In yet another life, she worked on ICTD and Data driven development projects with non-profits and tech companies in Asia and the United States.
Dirk Riehle
Professor of Computer Science at University of Erlangen
Dirk Riehle
Professor of Computer Science at University of Erlangen
Dirk Riehle is Professor of Computer Science at University of Erlangen. He is also the CEO of Bayave GmbH, a training and consulting firm. His work helps companies succeed in and through software, with a specialization in open source, inner source, and product strategy. Before joining academia, Prof. Riehle led the open source research group at SAP Labs in Palo Alto, California (Silicon Valley). He also worked for software startups and large corporations in Boston, MA and Zurich, Switzerland, as a software developer, architect, and engineering manager. Riehle holds a Ph.D. in computer science from ETH Zurich and an M.B.A. from Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Paul Sharratt
Policy and Research Manager at the Sovereign Tech Agency
Paul Sharratt
Policy and Research Manager at the Sovereign Tech Agency
Paul Sharratt is Policy and Research Manager at the Sovereign Tech Agency, where he leads research on open-source ecosystems and the role of public investment in digital infrastructure. His work focuses on generating evidence of impact, informing funding strategies, and shaping policy discourse around digital sovereignty and the public value of open-source technologies. At the Sovereign Tech Agency, Paul is responsible for designing and managing impact evaluations, collaborating with academic and technical experts, and coordinating policy initiatives to strengthen open digital infrastructure.Paul holds a Master of Science in Data Science for Public Policy from the Hertie School in Berlin, where his studies focused on the intersection of technology, governance, and the public interest. Prior to joining the Sovereign Tech Agency, he worked as a digitalization consultant and product manager in Berlin’s tech sector.Emmy Tsang
Director of Finance and Operations at Invest in Open Infrastructure
Emmy Tsang
Director of Finance and Operations at Invest in Open Infrastructure
Emmy Tsang is passionate about building scaffolds to enable open and meaningful community designs, strategic communication, and sustainable and equitable innovation. Previously, as Director of Finance and Operations at OLS, she oversaw budgeting and financial planning and established processes and systems to enable equitable participation in OLS’s open science training and mentoring programmes. At the Delft University of Technology, she led the communication and community engagement efforts for the Open Science Programme to widen researchers’, teachers’, staff’ and leadership’s adoption of open science practices at the university. At eLife, she helped build a community of open-source practitioners to advance the development of open-source tools to change the ways research is shared, consumed, discovered, and evaluated.
She holds a PhD in Neuroscience from the European Molecular Biology Laboratory and the University of Heidelberg. Originally from Hong Kong, she now lives in Utrecht, the Netherlands.
Nick Vidal
Community Manager at the Open Source Initiative
Nick Vidal
Community Manager at the Open Source Initiative
Nick Vidal is Community Manager at the Open Source Initiative. Previously, he was the Outreach Chair at the Confidential Computing Consortium from the Linux Foundation, Director of Community and Business Development at the Open Source Initiative, and Director of Americas at the Open Invention Network.
Nicolo Zingales
Professor at FGV Law School
Nicolo Zingales
Professor at FGV Law School
Professor and Director of the E-commerce Center at FGV Rio Law. Research Lead on Platform Governance at the Centre for Technology and society. UNDP consultant and Non-Governmental Advisor for CADE (the Brazilian competition authority). Director of CPDP LatAm and Founder of the BRICS + Digital Competition Forum. PhD in International Law and Economics from Bocconi University and a JD from the University of Bologna. Over the past 15 years, he has widely researched and consulted on law, technology and regulation, particularly with a focus on the digital economy.
Fundação Getulio Vargas (FGV) was created in 1944 and is the most important private academic institution in Brazil. Ranked as the number 1 Think Tank in Latin America and 3rd in the world according to UPenn rankings, FGV is focused on the development of excellence in a number of strategic domains.
FGV Rio Law was founded in 2002 in response to market demand for professionals who are able to think of law in more practical and interdisciplinary terms. Although relatively new, the school is already ranked among the most important law schools in Brazil and #1 in the State of Rio de Janeiro. Its vibrant and diverse student body, consisting of over 500 students, reflects a commitment to fostering a dynamic learning environment. Each year, the school welcomes over 40 exchange students who enrich its community with global perspectives. Exchange students have the opportunity to engage in a variety of extracurricular activities through more than 20 active student associations, ensuring a well-rounded and engaging academic experience.
Finally, FGV Rio Law is located in the captivating city of Rio de Janeiro, renowned for its enchanting blend of landscapes, rich history, and vibrant culture. The city’s warm tropical climate offers year-round sunshine and inviting temperatures, making it an ideal destination for visitors seeking sun-soaked adventures. This unique setting continually captivates and inspires students, researchers, professionals, and travellers from around the globe, adding an extra layer of allure to the academic journey at FGV Rio Law.
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