Cedric Thomas
Cedric Thomas, is OW2 CEO. An IT industry veteran with twenty-five years of experience in strategic and marketing consulting for IT vendors and systems integrators, Cedric has masterminded the launch of the OW2 Consortium. Previously, as both an investor and a consultant with FronTier Associates, the consulting company he founded in 1997, he actively took part in three IPOs, contributed to the launch of several technology start-ups, helped establish a start-up incubator in Paris and set up technology firms in Boston and San Francisco. Before that, he was VP and Research Director at PAC, an independent provider of consultancy and marketing studies for the IT industry where he established successful research programs in Open Systems, IT spending and Outsourcing. Cédric studied for his PhD in Economics at the Sorbonne and holds a Master’s degree in Computer Science from the University of Paris. He teaches business strategy in several master programs.
Sessions
The conference welcome talk by OW2 Chair Jean Parpaillon and CEO Cedric Thomas. In his introduction to the conference, Cedric highlights the role of OW2 as a provider of concrete resources that facilitates adoption of open source software and contributes to the sustainability of the European open source ecosystem. He also provides useful information and guidance about the conference. The sequence concludes with Jean giving his opening address and sharing a vision for OW2.
As open source becomes mainstream grows a demand for best practices to manage open source. This talks introduces the OW2 OSS Good Governance initiative a methodology to help implement professional corporate management of open source software. It provides a unique comprehensive approach that goes way beyond the basic level of dependency and legal compliance management. It addresses five goals, namely: Usage, Trust, Culture, Engagement and Strategy.
The live interactive round table welcomes open source experts Nejia Lanouar (City of Paris), Gijs Hillenius (European Commission), Deborah Bryant (Red Hat), Mike Milinkovich (The Eclipse Foundation) and Simon Phipps (Meshed Insights) to discuss the state of the art in open source governance. The round table will be moderated by Cédric Thomas, OW2 CEO.
The OW2 Best Project Awards recognize and reward "best of breed" projects and successful implementations of OW2 technologies, in three categories (Technology, Community, Market). A special award will be also given in the framework of the ReachOut test{fest} contest.