I am extremely pleased to announce that Microsoft let me know this morning that it will be the top level sponsor of Monki Gras. That is – its the Bishop level sponsor. We’ll be making sure that our delegates appreciate the contribution. While not a condition of sponsorship, I am also happy to announce that Steve Lamb aka @actionlamb is going to talk about the new nexus of open source, social media and commercial software, and how its changing development and developers. Lamb is a noted troublemaker- a Mac guy that leads Microsoft open source efforts in the UK.

In other news Shoreditchworks has been incredibly helpful as a sponsor. Thanks for the design help and merchandising introductions J&J.

We already knew Joyent was sponsoring, and they have chosen to be an Abbot. Well cloud SmartOs Illumos node mongo hosting chaps.

IBM also confirmed a couple of days its going to be an Abbot, which is fantastic. This decision was driven by the excellent folks at IBM Hursley. So things are going well.