State of Open Con, also known as SOOCon, is the UK’s yearly Open Technology Conference. This event is hosted in London, and as the organizers describe it, it covers “Open Source Software, Open Hardware, Open Data, Open Standards, & AI Openness”.
While Ubuntu participated in the event in previous years, this year OpenUK and Ubuntu got even closer together. State Of Open Con opening speaker and sponsors reception was held at the Canonical London office on Monday 3rd February 2025.
The next morning, Tuesday 4th February, @leiaru and I headed to the event venue early in the morning to get the booth setup and ready for the guests. As we approached the venue, we were met with clear signs that we were approaching the right place!
Amazing talks
The event started with Amanda Brock’s welcome talk, which opened up an outstanding round of plenary talks and panels about Open Data, the future challenges of Open Source, and Open Government. SOOCon25 plenaries can be found on this YouTube playlist.
After the opening plenaries, SOOCon opened up all the tracks and the exhibition area for two days of brain tingling interactions. It was my first time at SOOCon, and I highly recommend this event to everyone interested in Open Source! If you are considering next year’s event, check the session schedule and YouTube Playlist
Hallway track
As a Brilliant Sponsor, Ubuntu had a booth at SOOCon 2025. @leiaru, @lucyllewy and I spent most of our time talking to fellow booth staffers, attendees and speakers about the Ubuntu community initiatives, working at Canonical,
The Ubuntu booth was loaded with flyers on how to get involved with the community, digital slides with fancy qr-codes to check out awesome Ubuntu related open source projects. And of course, we had a lot of colorful merchandise, such as stickers, pins and… Jammy Jellyfish hats? 
The hallway track was an exciting experience this time around. We met old friends and we made new ones. Special thanks to @popey who helped us with some snap-related issues on the Rhino Linux PineTab2. A big hug to Jonathan Riddell who spent some time with us at the booth. It was a surprise to see the good folks of OpenSearch and @krisfreedain at the event. We also made new friends and connected with the good folks of Arm, Valkey, GitHub, Software Freedom Conservancy, Rust Project, CHAOSS, Deep Green, and many more. You can check the list of sponsors on this page of the SOOCon25 event.
Meet the Ubuntu folks at SOOCon 26
SOOCon 25 is a wrap, but the people of Ubuntu will definitely be back next year at SOOCon 26. This is a wonderful conference, put together by an organization made of dedicated and professional people. Check out OpenUK’s website for upcoming initiatives.