 Hi, this is Yoho Sapim Bhartya and welcome to our newsroom. And today we have with us for the first time, Dan Brown, Head of Communications at LF Energy. Dan, it's great to have you on the show. That's great to be here. Thank you for having me, Swap. We cover LF Energy here on a very regular basis. Let's quickly tell us what is the mission of LF Energy. Sure. So LF Energy is, of course, a part of the Linux Foundation. We were started in 2018 to essentially build open source software solutions and hardware solutions and standards and specifications to transform the energy sector. The energy sector is, of course, facing tremendous challenges right now with the transition to renewables and facing decarbonization. So what we're trying to do is bring the community together everywhere from utilities to technology companies, to traditional vendors, researchers, and other stakeholders to collaboratively develop the solutions that we need to transform the entire power industry, grids, metering, data analysis, you name it. And we're trying to change it and evolve it so that we can achieve decarbonization and prevent the worst impacts of climate change. Now it's time to talk a bit about this summit. Talk a bit about for how long you folks have been doing this summit, and then let's talk about what's going to be the focus for this year. Sure. So the very first LF Energy summit took place in Edinburgh, Scotland, alongside open source summit Europe in 2018. That was a very small event. I think there were maybe 50 people there. But of course, we had already launched LF Energy several months prior to that. So it was really just getting off the ground. The following year in 2019, we had a summit in Paris, which is where we're returning this year, actually. That was much better attended. Lots of great discussions and interaction there. It really helped evolve the community and introduce us to a lot of organizations that were not already familiar with the work that we were doing. Of course, 2020, 2021, things were done virtually for obvious reasons. So we're really excited this year to be coming back in person to convene a LF Energy summit once again. What is going to be the focus of the summit this year? Yes, so it's a two-day event taking place, as I mentioned, in Paris, June 1st and 2nd. The focus is, there are a few different focuses, really. The overarching goal of the summit is one to bring together the LF Energy community. It's been a long time since our developers, our members, our contributors have had a chance to get together in person. So obviously, we're really excited to get the gang back together because we find that these in-person events just really accelerate collaboration and innovation. But beyond that, we're really looking forward to introducing our community to the broader energy sector. So we're looking at utilities. We're looking at regulators in North America and Europe at other locations and inviting them to attend so that they can understand why open source is essential to achieving decarbonization and the goals that countries, the UN, companies, private entities are all studying for reducing their impact on the climate. Is this going to be only in person or there will be a hybrid mode of the summit? No, it is completely hybrid. So those who cannot attend or perhaps are concerned about their current footprint and so they would rather not travel long distance can absolutely join us online. All of these sessions and content will be live streamed for those who want to watch live. And then, of course, later a month or two after the event, we will be releasing all of those session recordings publicly on our YouTube channel. Of course, this is kind of your baby, so it's hard for you to pick and choose. But what are the sessions that you are more excited for? Yeah, so I am personally, for one, I'm really excited about the key notes that we've already announced. We haven't announced all of them yet because we are still working to confirm a couple. But we have Tony Shannon from the government of Ireland who's very involved in Ireland's overall digitalization efforts. He will be presenting. I'm really looking forward to that. Obviously, energy is very dependent on and relevant to regulators and governments. So getting that perspective, I think will be really interesting for our audience. And another one is actually a presentation from Renwick Foundation Research. Anna Hermannson will be presenting two brand new research studies that we are wrapping up right now. One that's really focused on how ready utilities are around the world for this kind of transformation. We have surveyed hundreds of utility stakeholders and employees in North America, in Europe, in Asia Pacific to present this report that is analyzing where they are right now, what challenges are they facing, what don't they know, what resources don't they have, what's it going to take to really complete this digital transformation of the energy sector. So we're looking forward to seeing those results presented at the event. And additionally, a second report that Anna will be touching on and she will be joined by Chris Shee from FutureWay, who sponsored this report, is how to accelerate microgrids. Microgrids have traditionally been used mostly in developing countries and at very rural environments. But with the onboarding of distributed energy resources around the world, they're becoming much more common. And that presents a lot of challenges when they need to be connected to one another or to the larger grid. And so this report is analyzing what needs to happen to make progress on microgrid front. So I'm really looking forward to those keynotes. I will also note, though, that we're covering a range of topics, as I've alluded to, but something that came through when the program committee was looking at all of the session proposals that we received. We received a huge number. Sadly, we could not accept all of them due to time limitations. But there seems to be a lot of movement and a lot of interest on the data front. All of this change that's happening in energy, it's going to be largely driven by data. You need to be able to forecast accurately. And that's going to require huge amounts of data to be collected from down the line, millions if not billions of sensors on power grids and user facilities on their meters and whatnot. And then we have to store that data. We have to analyze that data. We have to find ways to actually use it for meaningful ways. And so there are actually going to be, I think, seven different sessions that touch on different pieces of that data puzzle, which are just required for all of the other pieces for electrification of transportation, for interoperability, et cetera. All of that is really reliant on good data that you have ways to utilize in useful ways. Of course, it's very easy to go to the register and attend in person. But can you just talk about who should attend and how they can register or sign up for the event? Yeah, absolutely. So aside from our existing community, which is great and we're looking forward to seeing, as I mentioned, we really want this event to be a catalyst that can drive awareness of these challenges and solutions and broader markets. So the types of folks that this is relevant to, number one, utilities. The European utilities are a little bit ahead of the game. They're more involved than anyone at this point. But not all of them. And so we're hoping more European utilities come, but also North American, Asia Pacific, et cetera, that are really having a lot of pain points that they're facing going through this transition. And we can help. And we're not here to sell them something. We're here to teach them how they can help themselves and help the broader community at the same time. So that would be the number one audience. However, I would also encourage regulators and policymakers to look at this. There's a lot of climate legislation happening. Obviously the Inflation Reduction Act in the US. There are also a number of European initiatives and in other countries. And implementation of those is going to be incredibly complex. And open source has to play a key role if we want this to happen in a timely fashion. If we're relying on the traditional vendors and traditional methodologies in the power sector, it would take decades more than we have to complete this transition. And so it's really important that these policymakers and regulators understand the technological challenges and opportunities available to them. So we really would like to get them involved here. And then the final one is just any developers. We need more developers working on these tools to get them in a place where they can be commercially viable. And so if you're a cloud developer, if you are an embedded developer, if you are a Linux developer, really anything, there are so many different and they all require large amounts of code. So we need more developer involvement across the board. Dan, thank you so much for joining me today. And of course, talk about the upcoming 11 Energy Summit and hopefully I will see you there in person. Thank you. Yes, thank you so much, Swapna, I hope to see you there.