It looks as if the green light is on for another ‘All Things Open AI’ conference in 2026. It’s likely that a firm date will be announced at the big tent All Things Open event in October.
The first All Things Open AI is now one for the record books.
This event was a wee bit different from other ATO events, since the opening day was focused on training, meaning everybody on Monday was there to do some serious learning. Day two, which I attended, was a traditional conference day, complete with keynotes, tracks, presentations, and the like. I got there late, and by the time I arrived — a half-hour before the keynotes ended — the historic Carolina Theatre’s Fletcher Hall was standing room only.
It was also different in that it was a collaborative effort. The veteran event-hosting organization All Things Open teamed up with Mark Hinkle, “founding publisher” of The Artificially Intelligent Enterprise, to produce this event.
Indeed, when the keynotes let out and people started scrambling to attend presentations in Cinema One and Cinema Two — the two other meeting rooms that had once been part of Fletcher Hall back when the venue had been a giant movie palace — the hallways were bursting at the seams.
For years, All Things Open has held other, smaller events at the venue, but nothing on such a large scale as this. Todd Lewis, who head’s ATO, said that his best guess estimate was that Monday’s training day had 750 or so onsite over the course of the day, and on Tuesday, the main conference day, that number was 1,000 or so.
“The conference exceeded expectations honestly,” he told me in a Thursday morning email. “You never know what will happen with year-one events, but this one exceeded what we hoped to achieve on all levels. We are beyond grateful to our community, sponsors, and speakers for their incredible support.”
Since it’s likely that there’s going to be another ATO AI next year, I asked him if that meant that round two would be in a larger venue since the event already seems to have outgrown the Carolina Theater.
“Any future events will require more space, certainly,” he said. “We wanted a unique and memorable venue for the first year, and the Carolina Theatre certainly satisfied that criteria. However, the crowds far exceed capacity in breakout rooms. We’re grateful, but larger rooms will be needed in the future. We’re looking at that now.”
I also wondered if the new venue would be in Durham or 29 miles away in downtown Raleigh where the much larger, but similarly named, ATO event takes place.
“We love Durham. It’s a nice compliment to Raleigh, tech heavy, and having Duke University around the corner is icing on the cake,” he said. “We’ll make every effort to stay in Durham and expand, but all options are on the table at this point.”
A new venue will likely make it possible for more AI vendors to have booth spaces, which is important since exhibiting vendors can generate a sizable amount of extra income for a conference. The confines of the Carolina Theatre only allowed room for nine vendor spaces.
The good news there is that all nine seemed to be super busy. They represented an eclectic mix that included Duke University as well tech companies Red Hat, Okta (Auth0), Couchbase, Elastic, and GitLab. A couple of pretty much pure-play AI companies also had booths: Sheng Liang’s Acorn Labs startup and the robotics company Torc. Also on hand was the security startup StackLok, pushing their CodeGate platform that helps developers stay secure when using AI platforms such as Copilot.
So far I haven’t heard any negatives about Tuesday’s outing, which featured presentations from folks representing some companies that are household names, such as Google Cloud, IBM, Fidelity, Netflix, Walmart, U.S. Bank, Couchbase, Docker, DigitalOcean, GitLab, Truist, and Red Hat. There were also speakers from some less well known companies, many of which specialize in AI, such as research platform Inquisite AI, React Native-focused Infinite Red, security focused Pomerium, and Six Feet Up (who’s motto is “Python and AI for good”).
Mostly what I heard echoed what Sriram Raghavan, IBM’s VP of IBM Research AI, who gave the last of the day’s morning keynotes, told me when I mentioned that of the many AI conferences that have been announced in the last couple of months, this was the only one focused entirely on openness:
“I think it’s great that they are hosting a dedicated AI conference,” he said. “As I said in my talk, we truly have been committed to an open approach to AI, both at the platform level and increasing when it comes to models, agents, and all of the new things that are happening with AI. So certainly, having a conference in which we can talk about what we are doing — and be able to share what we want to work with the community on — as being fabulous.”
During his keynote, Raghavan revealed that IBM is donating three AI tools to the Linux Foundation.
Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001, she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and started covering Linux and FOSS in 2002 after making the switch to GNU/Linux. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux
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