Industry Keynote: Amandine Le Pape

Bio

 Amandine Le Pape, Head of Section – Business & Impact at the  Open Source Academy, is the COO and co-founder of  Element, a secure and interoperable open source communication platform built on  Matrix — the open standard she also co-founded. Element enables sovereign communications for complex organisations that cannot depend on commercial cloud solutions or unencrypted platforms, serving millions of users including NATO, the UN, the German Armed Forces, the US Navy, and companies like Mozilla.

Since 2014, Amandine has worked to balance the growth of a thriving open ecosystem through the non-profit  matrix.org Foundation with building a sustainable open source company through Element, with a strong focus on gov tech. She received the Business & Impact Award for her role as a disruptor in open source innovation, with the Matrix project addressing fragmentation in communication technologies like Chat, VoIP, VR, and IoT.

Keynote: “Achieving Digital Sovereignty in Europe: Key Considerations for Success”

European Digital Sovereignty is on everyone’s lips. European governments are making their intentions clear, with EU Member States signing the  Declaration for European Digital Sovereignty, setting out landmark commitments to reduce Europe’s dependence on a small number of global platforms and to invest in trusted European infrastructures. Industry events have been popping up everywhere and governments are working hard to share knowledge and try to crack the problem. Open Source and Digital Commons are cornerstones of the solution, and the launch of the  Digital Commons EDIC in December 2025 is a good example of the work being done.

But what is Digital Sovereignty, why is it important and why are Open Source and Digital Commons so central to it? And more importantly: What are the traps to avoid and best practices if we want to implement Digital Sovereignty successfully? Let’s pause and have a think.

•  Program: Thursday, 09:05 – 10:00