The challenge
OpenUK is a not-for-profit organisation that represents the UK’s Open Technology sector.
Amanda Brock set the ambitious task of delivering the UK’s first open technology conference. With diversity, equity and inclusion at the heart of the event, she wanted the conference to be unique and more than just a series of talks about technology. OpenUK aspired for the conference to be like no other, bringing together the open source community and supporting the UK’s technology sector leaders.
At the time, in-person events weren’t quite back to the peak they once were before the pandemic. And with general economic uncertainty and thousands of layoffs, it was a turbulent time for the tech industry.
These circumstances alone proved challenging, but with less than ten weeks from confirming the venue and conference dates (not to mention a Christmas break in between) through to the actual event taking place, the scope and ambition for the show was huge. Alongside the teams managing logistics, onebite embarked on the formidable task of running the press office for the event.
One additional challenge for this strategy was that a lot of the companies involved did not have fully fledged PR teams themselves, so the media strategy and co-ordination for all the companies involved could fall back on onebite. This was a nice problem to have, but still added considerably to the overall workload.
