ACCU London

ACCU London: How Engineering Skills Actually Improve in 2026 - by Meri Williams

Wed, Nov 4 · 6:30 PM GMT

The Marquis Cornwallis, 31 Marchmont St, Greater, London WC1N 1AP, UK, London, GB

For 38+ years, ACCU has been a trusted backbone of the software engineering community. In its early years, the community focused on C++, and it evolved to a language agnostic space where engineers help and support each other.
The London community is back on, with a series of intimate audience driven meetings, here on Meetup and on Luma (https://luma.com/tpxd3p4u)

For our first event in a few years, we are treated to a gorgeous location and we invite you to experience our 2 innovative formats:

## 1/ Speed AMAs

10-minute private quick swap 1:1 chats with senior experts, like musical chairs! Ask any question you want privately. No more pressure to find the right time to ask in a group, and no more concerns that someone will hear something you don't want.
Experts ready to answer:
Meri Williams (do they even need an introduction?). Ex-CTO at Monzo and Pleo, co-chair of LDX. They open the evening with a talk on how engineering skills actually develop in 2026, then a few SpeedAMAs.

Paul Grenyer, published author of “So You Think You Can Lead a Team?”. He has 40+ years writing software and leads an engineering team at Haven. He also co-founded Norfolk Developers and chaired nor(DEV):con for seven years. Ask him about leading a team, building companies and building communities.

Quasar Chunawala, Quantitative Developer at CME Group, ex-Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse. Ask him about C++, Rust and what it really takes to work in quant.

Paul Ardeleanu, Principal Architect at Vonage. He went from Fortran and a PhD in Computational Physics to decades of hands-on programming. Ask him about backend and native development, developer tooling and advocacy, AI transformation for developer ecosystems, and agentic development.

## 2/ You set the topics, we find mentors

Submit the problem you're trying to solve or the question you want answered. We use these submissions to decide what ACCU London covers at future sessions, or, if we can, we find a volunteer mentor who can share advice with you privately.

## Agenda:

18:30 - 19:00: Arrivals & Registrations
19:00 - 19:20: ACCU London - find out more about the new format of the meetings and how you can benefit from the new interactive, audience driven model - hosted by Oana May (ex Meta, product leadership specialist, founder of MOATCRAFT™)
19:25 - 20:00 Keynote by Meri Williams (ex-CTO at Monzo and Pleo, Ada Ventures scout, co-chair of LDX, LeadDev) will share their research on how engineering skills actually improve these days, as well as specific actionable advice on how engineers, seniors and juniors, can support each other.
20:00 - 20:45: Speed AMAs
20:45 - 21:30: Networking, drinks and snacks

## ​Organisers

ACCU is a UK non-profit that stands for professionalism in programming, founded in 1987, publishing C Vu and Overload and running an annual conference.
ACCU London community values:

1. Start by helping someone else
2. Invest regularly in your knowledge
3. No sales pitches

Attendance: please be considerate to others and update your attendance, as spaces are very limited.

Partner: MOATCRAFT™
The platform where technical builders sharpen their strategic thinking, to make the best decisions on what they should build.

Sponsor: Vonage Developer