From Vibe Coding to Production AI on AWS

Hello everyone,

Welcome to the September edition of the Auckland AWS Tools & Programming Meetup! This month, we are diving deep into the lifecycle of building and scaling AI-powered products—from a single idea and "vibe coding" all the way to robust engineering practices for production systems on AWS.

🚨 Action Required: To help us streamline building security and sort out the catering (including dietary requirements), please make sure to pre-register before arriving: 👉 Pre-register for Venue Check-In Here

Join us for an exciting double-header exploring the realities of shipping real software:

Speaker 1: Dinesh Sharma
From Zero to Qazo: Building a Product with Kiro, AI & AWS

About the Talk: "I started Qazo with a simple idea and used Kiro and AI to turn it into a real product, eventually deploying it on AWS. This session is about that journey — what worked, what didn't, the lessons I learned from vibe coding, and why I think everyone should try building something of their own to experience the full journey from idea → build → break → learn → deploy."
🔗 Check out Qazo: https://qazo.net

Speaker 2: Dinesh Liyanage

After the Demo: From Vibe Coding to AI Engineering
About the Talk: "I pick up from where Dinesh's session ends. Vibe coding gets you to a working product, and that's genuinely new, but a demo and a product with paying customers are different animals. I'll go through what breaks on the way between them and the engineering practices that fix it:

• Evals so prompt changes stop being guesswork.
• Tracing so you can reproduce the bad output a customer reported.
• Cost and model routing so unit economics survive growth.
• Context engineering so quality doesn't quietly rot as you add data.

All of it from production systems on AWS. I'll close with a short checklist of what to have in place before you let a vibe-coded product touch a paying customer, and a question worth arguing about: at what point does building your own thing make you an entrepreneur rather than an engineer?"

Agenda & Logistics

• 6:00 PM — Arrival, Networking, Pizza & Drinks
• 6:30 PM — Talks begin (Dinesh Sharma & Dinesh Liyanage)
• 7:45 PM — Q&A / Open Discussion
• 8:00 PM — Wrap-up & Networking

We look forward to seeing you there! Feel free to RSVP and bring along any questions.

This event is proudly supported by Pushpay, Mantel Group, and AWS.
We look forward to seeing you there!
– The Auckland AWS Tools and Programming Team

Code of Conduct
Auckland AWS Tools and Programming is committed to providing a friendly and welcoming space for everyone who attends our meetup events, regardless of gender, gender identity and expression, age, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, ethnicity, religion (or lack thereof), or technology choices. Any form of harassment, racism, misogyny, or xenophobia is unacceptable. Participants violating these rules will be invited to leave the meetup.