Episode 49: What OpenUK Does with Amanda Brock & Andrew Katz

Panelists Eric Berry | Justin Dorfman | Richard Littauer Guest Amanda Brock OpenUK Andrew Katz Orcro Show Notes Hello and welcome to Sustain! Today, we have two special guests from the UK, Amanda Brock and Andrew Katz. Amanda is CEO of the UK body for “open” and OpenUK. Andrew is a lawyer working for a small boutique consulting firm that does open source things. We are discussing contact tracing apps and how they are going. We will find out how Amanda built her team when she was at Canonical. Then we will find out all about OpenUK and OpenUK KidsCamp, and the MINI-MU Glove, which is the coolest things ever! Andrew tells us about open hardware, Open-Silicon, open source licensing, and research he is doing. Download this episode now to learn more! [00:01:06] Alex and Amanda tell us how they know each other and what they are working on. [00:02:30] Since Alex and Amanda are both involved in contact tracing apps, which are coming out right now, they talk a bit about the British effort there and how it’s going. [00:06:38] Justin is curious and wants Amanda to tell us when working at Canonical, the day to day for a lawyer just coming into the organization that was shaking things up in the Linux world and just the open source world, what did she do and how did she build the team. She also talks about the Dell deal when Dell started putting Ubuntu on their laptops for context, which was the first thing she worked on. [00:10:54] Andrew turns the table and asks Amanda how it felt and how did you adapt to dealing with changes in negotiation dynamic changes. Richard asks how has that fueled your work with OpenUK and how do you feel that experience has allowed you to go forth and work there and what are your goals? [00:15:24] Amanda talks about what OpenUK does and she tells us more about OpenUK KidsCamp, which their goal is have it running by 2022. She talks about the “MINI-MU Glove.” What a cool thing! (kit linked below.) [00:22:41] Justin goes back to Canonical and wants to know what went wrong with Ubuntu phone.