Name: Directus London User Group: August 2023
Start: 2023-08-16T18:00:00+01:00
End: 2023-08-16T20:00:00+01:00
Location: Newspeak House

Join us for our very first London meetup, open to anyone who is interested in using or learning more about Directus.

[Directus](https://github.com/directus/directus) is an extensible open-source backend toolkit that transforms any database into robust APIs and a no-code admin studio.

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**TALK 1:** **Extending Directus to build a beautiful online art gallery by David Somers**

Directus has rich image manipulation functionality that made it Pixie Labs's top choice for building an online art gallery for one of our clients. Using Directus extension, we augmented that even more, adding functionality to generate blurhashes for the smooth loading of high-quality full-screen images. We'll talk about how we used Directus in this project, what we like about it, how the extension we built works, and some pointers if you want to build your own extension.

David is Head of Engineering at Pixie Labs, a London-based digital product studio focused on building digital products that drive success for the client’s customers and business. With 12 years of industry experience, David cut his teeth leading development in an innovation lab at News UK before moving into the agency world. Since then, he's led the technical delivery at Pixie Labs on projects for organisations big and small, including Twitter, HomeServe, Butcher's Pet Care and many more. These days David wears multiple hats with equal finesse, architecting compelling solutions for Pixie Labs’ clients while fostering the skills of the growing Pixie engineering team.

**TALK 2: The strengths and challenges in running an Open Source project**

Directus is a well-loved open source project with a highly-active community both on GitHub and Discord. As a small team, this is hugely flattering, but also introduces a whole heap of challenges in meeting the expectations of our users. In this talk, we'll discuss the common challenges in both the code and community side of the project, and how we've attempted to overcome them.

Kevin runs Developer Relations at Directus and is Director of You Got This - a learning hub to help developers improve their core skills. He is an avid boardgamer, tired dad, and shameless Disney adult. He is based in Berlin with his partner and two kids.

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**Venue Host: Newspeak House**

[Newspeak House](https://newspeak.house), The London College of Political Technology, is an independent residential college founded in 2015. Their mission is to study, nurture and inspire emerging communities of practice across civil society and the public sector in the UK.

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Please let us know if you have any dietary requirements beyond vegetarian. You must abide by our code of conduct.

Alex 

Directus Team

Esther Agbaje

Directus London User Group

Technology

Database Professionals

Open Source

Database Backends

CMS (Content Management Systems)

Open Source Content Management

Database Development

JavaScript Applications

Backend

nodeJS

JavaScript

Vue.js

Data Management

Automation

Directus London User Group: August 2023

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Directus London User Group

Directus London User Group: August 2023

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