OpenBao Travels Back Home

OpenBao returns from FOSDEM '25 and OpenUK's State of Open Con this week, reflecting on the travels and activities of the events.

Many thanks to Fatima for running the community calls in our absence!

photo credit: nicolas; pictured: alex

FOSDEM '25 was Alex's first time speaking at a conference and we are happy to report it was a success! The details of the talk were saved and will be published in a follow-up blog along with the recording when it is made available from the conference. It was great to meet so many people interested in identity and access management and OpenBao's role in solving secrets management problems, at GitLab and beyond.

After arriving in London, BaoBao was happy to find the conference venue was very well organized and everything was ready. And look, our logo is situated nicely on the list of table holders! BaoBao thanks OpenUK for generously sponsoring OpenBao's attendance this year and hopes to participate in the future.

During setup, BaoBao took a place on the table to get ready for the next two days of meeting people. When OpenTofu couldn't make it, Alex volunteered to represent them as well, which served as a great conversation starter. BaoBao knows that they'd do the same, after all, we're both OpenHashiForks!

After meeting the kind folks from Percona at FOSDEM, we encountered them again at State of Open, where they played hijinks with BaoBao! When Alex wandered off, they bestowed upon BaoBao a Valkey hat -- a good reminder to revive and rename our secrets engine! BaoBao appreciated the effort to avoid feeling chilly in the big conference center.

Later, OSA Con joined in the fun, placing a warning sticker that this booth talked too much about open source... BaoBao thought this disclaimer was much needed!

photo credit: nigel; pictured: alex and dotan

Finally, BaoBao and Alex got to meet Dotan Horovits, the CNCF Ambassador who made the necessary connections to get OpenBao invited to State of Open Con!

Both Alex and BaoBao had lots of fun networking and making friends with fans of OpenBao. Thank you to everyone who organized these events and helped them run so smoothly! A special thanks to all who offered to support OpenBao or consider it for use in their company!