Open Community Experience (OCX) brings together developers, industry leaders, researchers, and open source communities to explore how open technologies are shaping the future of software and digital infrastructure. Taking place 21–23 April 2026 in Brussels, OCX provides a space for collaboration, knowledge sharing, and discussion across domains such as AI, developer tooling, automotive software, regulatory compliance, and open source governance.
This year, we’re delighted to welcome a keynote speaker whose experience comes from one of the most demanding and data-driven environments in the world: Formula 1.
Welcoming Ruth Buscombe to OCX
Ruth Buscombe is an expert in Formula 1 race strategy who has spent her career turning data into winning results in environments where performance is measured in milliseconds.
Ruth began her career with Ferrari, shaping race-winning strategies for drivers including Kimi Räikkönen, Fernando Alonso, and Sebastian Vettel. She later brought her expertise to the Haas F1 Team and spent eight seasons at Sauber as Head of Race Strategy, working with Charles Leclerc.
In 2024, Ruth also consulted on the Formula 1 movie starring Brad Pitt, co-produced by Lewis Hamilton, helping ensure that the strategy and racing dynamics reflected the reality of the sport.
Today, Ruth shares her knowledge as a Formula 1 analyst, strategist, and broadcaster, while also championing diversity initiatives for women in STEM and engineering.
The winning formula: Lessons from Formula 1
In her keynote session, “The Winning Formula: What F1 teaches us about marginal gains, teamwork and data-driven decision making,” Ruth will take the OCX audience behind the scenes of Formula 1 strategy.
While spectators often focus on the drivers, Formula 1 is fundamentally a sport of data, collaboration, and rapid decision-making. Teams must interpret vast amounts of information in real time and coordinate dozens of specialists under extreme pressure, where even the smallest improvement can determine the outcome of a race.
Drawing on her experience working with elite teams and drivers, Ruth will explore how these high-performance environments approach:
- Marginal gains and continuous improvement
- Collaboration across highly specialised teams
- Data-driven decision-making under pressure
- Communication when there is no margin for error
These lessons resonate far beyond the racetrack, particularly for open source and distributed engineering teams, where collaboration, trust, and effective decision-making are critical to building complex systems.
Join her at OCX 2026
OCX 2026 will bring together hundreds of developers, maintainers, researchers, and technology leaders to exchange ideas, share experiences, and explore the future of open technologies.
Ruth Buscombe’s keynote promises to offer a fascinating perspective on how high-performance teams operate and what open communities can learn from environments where every decision matters. Register for OCX.
Watch Ruth’s keynote introduction
Before joining us in Brussels, watch this video to learn what Formula 1 strategy can teach open source teams about collaboration and performance.
