Apereo Foundation’s MicroConferences bring together leaders from across open source education technology to discuss the latest topics and trends impacting higher education.
Each month, leaders and influencers in the open source world will speak about topics ranging from research and community building to policy shifts impacting the world of open source and education.
This free service provided by the Apereo Foundation and our partners requires registration to attend the live event. Contact registrar@apereo.org to join the invitation list. All are welcome!
Joshua Fiske, Vice President for Information Technology and Libraries at Clarkson University, joins Apereo on November 11th to discuss Clarkson University's prioritization of open source as a strategic technology choice for cost savings and data autonomy.
Bridget Almas, Director of Operations for Community Supported Technologies, Lyrasis
As the Director of Operations for Community Supported Technologies, Bridget works on guiding the effectiveness, impact, and long-term sustainability of the programs for which Lyrasis serves as the organizational home. She has worked throughout her career at the intersection of libraries, academic research, data, and technology across the non-profit, academic, and commercial sectors. Bridget served as Director of Data Innovation Strategy for the State University of New York, as a Senior Software Engineer and Technical Lead for the Perseus Digital Library and Perseids Project at Tufts University and has led and contributed to several open-source projects in the field of digital humanities. She has served in leadership roles on various global initiatives, including the Technical Advisory Board of the Research Data Alliance, the International Scientific Advisory Board of the Biblissima+ Project and as Vice-President of the Alpheios Project. Bridget received her Bachelor of Arts from the State University of New York at Albany where she focused on French Studies, Chinese, and Business Administration.
Nick Steinwachs, President, Notch8. Nick leads Notch8, a Samvera Community partner that builds and hosts open-source repository infrastructure for universities, libraries, and cultural heritage organizations. Notch8 is the development partner on the Enact repository build.
Rory McNicholl, Digital Research Team Lead, CoSector, University of London. Rory has spent two decades building services for research data and scholarly communication, and leads the CoSector team serving as Enact's technology partner.
Jenny Evans, Enact Project Lead, University of Westminster. Jenny leads Enact: PR Voices and SPARKLE Phase 2, building on Westminster's pioneering work in practice research repositories and open research infrastructure.
Justin Menard is the Founder and CEO of ListEdTech, a market intelligence company that tracks technology implementations across higher education and K-12 institutions worldwide. Since founding the company in 2014, he has helped institutions, technology providers, consultants, and researchers better understand the evolving education technology landscape through independent market data and analysis. Justin regularly presents at industry conferences on technology adoption trends, procurement, and strategic planning.
Dr. Wilma Hodges, the Apereo Community Coordinator, will be our moderator.
Dr. Jeffrey Young is a principal research scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, working with the Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) as their Associate Director for Computing Innovation. Young is the co-director of the Center for Scientific Software Engineering, and director of Georgia Tech’s Open Source Program Office. He received his PhD in computer engineering in 2013 from Georgia Tech’s ECE department.
Alex Jenkins is a Fourth-Year Computer Engineering student at Georgia Tech, and he is the founder of LibreTech Collective, a student organization he launched in 2025 to promote free, libre, and open-source technology on campus. He is deeply passionate about software freedom and believes that technology should empower users through transparency, collaboration, and control - it is this principle that LibreTech Collective is also based on.
Dr. Wilma Hodges, Apereo Community Coordinator
Bryan Ollendyke - Full-stack developer / Change Agent / HAX Project Lead / HAX Lab Faculty - will be joined by the following co-presenters:
Bill Rose - Instructional Designer / HAX Product Owner
Dr. Jenny Frank - Associate Professor of Educational Psychology / HAX Lab Faculty
Dr. David Fusco - Associate Teaching Professor and Director of Master's Programs / HAX Lab Faculty
Winston JW White - M.S., Cybersecurity Analytics and Operations Software & Cybersecurity Engineer, Open Sourcerer (not too serious), 2x NASA Intern