A quick look back at ATO 2025

Here it is Thursday already and All Things Open 2025 closed its doors on Tuesday. I spent all three days there and once again had an amazing experience. Although attendance from outside the U.S. was quite low, the Raleigh Convention Center was still crowded.

I reconnected with some old friends, made some new ones, and, sadly, missed some I’d hoped to see again. Due to the size of the event, it’s possible they were there and I just missed them and I know that’s true for more than one I’d been looking forward to meeting up with. The sessions I sat in on were all well-attended and will worth the time. I learned some new things and had fun while doing it.

Diversity and Inclusion

Day 1 of ATO (Sunday) was about diversity and inclusion in technology and computing. It’s not just about including people of all sorts, it’s about how to make them an integral part of your organization and to make them feel welcome there.

All the sessions were amazing, and I especially appreciated the one entitled, “What If the Quietest Person is the Smartest in the Room?” by Jim Scarborough. Scarborough showed us a new way to look at neurodiversity in which the people aren’t broken, the system is. And the fact is, we do tend to think of people on the Autism spectrum and otherwise neurodivergent as broken. He’s talking about our society in general and not just the HR departments. This was an eye-opening talk for me.

One of the best parts of ATO every year is the top-down emphasis on inclusion and diversity. Todd Lewis, the conference organizer, works hard to ensure that typically overlooked groups are not only included at ATO, but also comprise a large portion of speakers and participants. This results in a huge difference between ATO and most other conferences I attend. Everywhere you look, on stage, in the halls, staffing the booths, there is a much larger proportion of women, people of color in many shades, people using assistive technologies — and even service dogs. All are welcome here, and provided for as well.

The Raleigh Convention Center is a good place for this conference, as they provide ramps, escalators, elevators, family restrooms, and a friendly and professional staff to help attendees. It’s a great place to hold a conference entitled “All Things Open.”

AI — the main topic

Monday and Tuesday were days 2 and 3 of ATO and were also amazing.

The main topic this year was AI. Of course those of you who know that I contend there’s no such thing as AI — only a bit of interesting programming, won’t be surprised that my favorite was a session by Shane Glass, “The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of Open Source AI.” Glass’s session was refreshing in that it highlighted the many failings of what we mistakenly call “AI,” while exploring the positive benefits already accruing from it — whatever “it” truly is.

Just to clarify my own views, I’m not against AI; that’s just not what we currently have so I’m against calling it that. And regardless of what it is and what we call it, it needs some moral and ethical boundaries enforced so that it can’t do anything directly or by omission that would harm a human being. That includes the harm done by stealing intellectual property from artists, including writers like myself.

Fortunately, there are groups that are concerned about these problems. OASIS OPEN is one of those and I was privileged to spend some time discussing their work with them. The goal of this global nonprofit consortium is to provide a nexus “where individuals, organizations, and governments come together to solve some of the world’s biggest technical challenges through the development of open code and open standards.” They do have concerns about these things and I intend to explore more of their story and write about it here.

I suggest you read some of Isaac Asimov’s Robot series of books. They have some interesting ideas about intelligent, self-aware robots, with a sense of ethics. I still like Robbie the Robot, with his Asimov-like ethical restrictions on harming humans, as the best example of true AI. I also suggest you watch this Sci-Fi classic as it also explores these issues.

ATO Staff

As always, the ATO staff was brilliant. As a speaker in the past, an author doing a book signing in previous years and this one, and an attendee for 11 of the past 13 years, the ATO staff work hard to make everyone’s experience enjoyable and fruitful.

A BIG THANKS TO ALL THE ATO STAFF AND VOLUNTEERS! YOU ROCK!