On 7 October 2026, from 11:30am to 6pm, LMDDC is hosting the EdTech Track as part of the Open Source Conference 2026. Eleven talks will explore open source in education and research. They cover digital sovereignty, digital commons, interoperability, cybersecurity and AI. Here are the speakers, in order of appearance:

Larry Kilroy / Dataking

Data That Travels: Cross-Domain Insights from Our Open Source Journey in Education - 11:35-12:00

Larry Kilroy is Vice President, Technology at DataKind, with more than 20 years of experience in technology strategy and product management. Too often, education systems run on disconnected edtech tools that lock them into their vendors. His talk presents the alternative DataKind is building: integrated open core software, chosen by more than 100 institutions that together serve over one million students.

Benoît Piédallu / Digital Directorate for Education, French Ministry of Education

Apps: a free software platform for the French Ministry of Education - 12:00-12:25

Benoît Piédallu is a digital project manager at the French Ministry of Education. He is in charge of Apps.education.fr and of the "Webinaire de l'État", a videoconferencing service for the French government. He will present Apps, a set of collaborative tools built entirely on free software and used by 1.2 million staff. He will explain the choices behind it and how the administration contributes back to the open source community.

Boris Baldassari / Eclipse Foundation, OSPO Alliance

Building an Academic OSPO: Practical Governance Lessons for European Universities - 12:25-12:50

Boris Baldassari is a former industry consultant and software engineering researcher. He joined the Eclipse Foundation in 2021 and has been a maintainer of the OSPO Alliance since then. He will share practical lessons on setting up an Open Source Program Office (OSPO) at a European university.

Lunch break

Paolo Dongilli / Italian School Board of the Autonomous Province of Bozen-Bolzano

Towards Digital Autonomy in South Tyrol - The FUSS Project Contribution - 14:00-14:25

Paolo Dongilli is Technical Inspector and Coordinator of the FUSS Project, and co-founder of the Linux User Group Bolzano-Bozen-Bulsan. Since 2005, FUSS has brought free software into the schools of South Tyrol. He will show how the project turned digital autonomy from a policy goal into a practical reality.

Ingo Steuwer / Univention-SCHULE@BW

Building Digital Sovereignty in Public Education with an Open-Source IAM - 14:25-14:50

Ingo Steuwer is Vice President Platform & Technology at Univention, which he joined in 2004. He will present SCHULE@BW, a sovereign digital workplace used by 80,000 teachers in 2,700 schools. He will also cover the 2025 migration and the project's ongoing expansion.

Sarra Hedhli / Digital Directorate for Education, French Ministry of Education

One Million Teachers, One "Forge": How the French Ministry of Education is Building Digital Commons - 14:50-15:15

Sarra Hedhli is Product Owner for Educational Digital Commons at the French Ministry of Education. She will present the Forge for Educational Digital Commons. She will explain how projects started by teachers can grow into sustainable digital commons governed by their communities.

Emilien Sanchez / France Université Numérique (FUN)

From Open Source Software to Public Digital Commons: Building a Sovereign Lifelong Learning Infrastructure - 15:15-15:40

Emilien Sanchez leads professional training at FUN. He will share lessons from Digital FCU, where FUN and 19 public universities offer a shared online professional training programme. His key message: open source software alone does not bring sovereignty. It also takes shared governance of these digital commons.

Matthieu Guérin / Digital Directorate for Education, French Ministry of Education

French interoperability national framework: strategy and implementation - 15:40-16:05

Matthieu Guérin works on the Ministry's reference framework for the interoperability of digital education services. He will present the work under way to make these services connect more easily, using the OneRoster standard.

Coffee break

Cynthia Wagner & Denim Latić / Restena Foundation

Open Source is Not New… At Least in Education and Research - 16:35-17:00

Cynthia Wagner is Chief Information Security Officer and Security Manager at the Restena Foundation. She is also active in working groups at GÉANT and CENTR.

Denim Latić is security analyst in Restena's CSIRT. He is passionate about raising cybersecurity awareness among audiences of all sizes.

Restena is Luxembourg's national research and education network, and it has relied on open source for 26 years. The speakers will discuss how open source affects data sovereignty and infrastructure resilience. They will also share lessons from LuCySe4RE, an open-source security project that made the journey from prototype to production service.

Thibault Milan / Paperjam

Leaving the hyperscalers without leaving the game: building our AI solutions with open source models - 17:00-17:25

Thibault Milan is Head of Digital at Paperjam and was previously Director of Innovation at Groupe Smile. He has a clear preference for open ecosystems over proprietary solutions. He will explain how Paperjam builds its AI solutions on open source models.

Nathan Lenas / Luxembourg Media & Digital Design Centre (LMDDC)

[AI]lice: A Sovereign, Customisable AI Chatbot for Safe and Contextualised Learning - 17:25-17:50

Nathan Lenas is a Software Engineer at LMDDC. He will present [AI]lice, an open-source, self-hosted chatbot that educators build from their own course material. It cites its sources and stores no conversations by default. He will walk through its architecture, what it really costs to run, and where the project goes next.

Practical information
Wednesday 7 October 2026, 11:30am–6pm
Room C01.01.08, Terres Rouges Building (Building C), 14 Porte de France, Belval
Registration required.