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ATO 2014 – Year Two Brings More Speakers and More Attendees to ‘All Things Open’

Between now and the opening of All Things Open 2023 on October 15 to begin the conference’s second decade, FOSS Force is each day taking a look at an individual year in ATO’s history. In today’s article we’re looking at All Things Open 2014, which was the conference’s second outing.

The 2014 All Things Open T-Shirt

All Things Open 2014 T-shirt design.
All Things Open 2014 T-shirt design.

During the closing ceremony at All Things Open’s inaugural event in 2013, chairperson and ringleader Todd Lewis said he intended to make ATO the premiere open source conference on the East Coast, and when the doors were opened for round two in 2014, it appeared that he was well on his way to doing just that. Not only did the scheduled speakers continue to be “world class” (an expression that Lewis likes to use), there were more of them, with the number of tracks having been increased from six to ten. In her recap of ATO 2014, Christine Hall wrote that the event “was more than good enough — and then a lot more.”

Year Two by the Numbers

We don’t have any hard numbers to report about the second year, although we do know that attendance was noticeably greater than the year before. ATO also noticeably increased its footprint within the Raleigh Convention Center in 2014, which was a given with the increased number of tracks.

Welcome and Keynotes on the first day of All Things Open 2014.
Welcome and Keynotes on the first day of All Things Open 2014.

People at ATO 2014

Again, lots of great speakers at ATO for this sophomore event. Hall mentioned in her coverage seeing keynotes or presentations from James Pearce, who was then Facebook’s head of Open Source; DeLisa Alexander, who was then executive VP and “chief people officer” at Red Hat; Erica Stanley with the Atlanta chapter of Women Who Code; Daniel Abadie, CTO for the Buenos Aires City Government; and others.

Red Hat's DeLisa Alexander
DeLisa Alexander delivering a keynote address at All Things Open 2014. At the time, Alexander was EVP and chief people officer at Red Hat. She retired from Red Hat in 2021.
Peter Zaitsev, founder and former CEO at Percona.
Percona founder and former CEO Peter Zaitsev speaking at All Things Open 2014. Zaitsev continues to be a regular speaker at ATO sponsored events.
Phil Shiparo
Phil Shapiro, who was a frequent contributor to the community website OpenSource.com until IBM owned Red Hat shuttered it early this year. Shapiro also has a YouTube channel where he posts videos on a number of subjects, including open-source.
Elizabeth K. Joseph
Elizabeth K. Joseph at All Things Open 2014. A co-author of The Official Ubuntu Book, Joseph was at the time an automation and tools engineer at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. Since 2019 she has been at IBM, where she is currently the global head of open-source program office for IBM Z & LinuxONE.
Tech writer Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols at All Things Open 2014
Well known tech journalist Steven J. Vaughan-Nichols who covers open-source for a variety of publications, at All Things Open 2014.
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