Former head of open source at Sun Microsystems, a co-founder of the Java business at IBM and former president of OSI, Simon serves on various non-profit boards in addition to consulting on open source business models and on OSPO set-up.

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.

Mike Milinkovich has been involved in the software industry for over thirty years, doing everything from software engineering, to product management to IP licensing. He has been the Executive Director of the Eclipse Foundation since 2004. In that role he is responsible for supporting both the Eclipse open-source community and its commercial ecosystem. Prior to joining Eclipse, Mike was a vice president in Oracle’s development group. Other stops along the way include WebGain, The Object People, IBM, Object Technology International (OTI) and Nortel.

Mike sits on the Board of the Open Source Initiative (OSI), on the Executive Committee of the Java Community Process (JCP), and is an observer and past member of the Board of OpenJDK.

Deborah Bryant is Senior Director, Open Source Program Office, Office of the CTO at Red Hat where she leads a global team responsible for the company’s stewardship in open source software communities.

Deborah serves on numerous boards where open source is a critical element of their mission. She serves as a board director at the Open Source Initiative and DemocracyLab; on the advisory boards of Open Source Elections Technology Foundation and the OASIS Open Project, and as an advisor to the Brandeis University Open Technology Management program. She is also Red Hat’s representative on the Eclipse Foundation board of directors.

In 2010 Deborah was honored with the ORM Open Source Award in recognition of her contribution to open source communities and for her pioneering advocacy of open standards and the use of open source software in the public sector. Her published research includes the use of open source in cybersecurity in the energy industry and collaborative models for creating software in the public sector.

Gijs Hillenius is an international specialist on Digital Government and an expert on open source in public services. He advises the European Commission's Directorate General for Informatics (DIGIT) on the European Commission's internal open source strategy, and assists with the implementation of the open source programme office at the European Commission.

As the CIO of the City of Paris since 2012, Nejia is leading the digital transformation of the French capital. An open-source enthusiast, she believes in co-creation and use of data to improve public services. Her career includes experiences in both public and private project management.