GDG Sydney Meetup September 2025

GDG Cloud Sydney is back for a meetup this September! Join us for an evening of interesting technical talks.

Come Hire!
The meetup allocates 10 minutes to people seeking technical jobs or with open roles at their company.

This meetup is in the in-person format; there are no plans to stream the event.

Partners
This meetup is organised in partnership with Mantel Group. They harness technologies that transform business operations in the real world. With capabilities spanning Cloud, Data, Digital and Security, they merge emerging technologies with innovative design and industry expertise to enhance your business. With deep technical specialisation and as leading Amazon, Google and Microsoft cloud partners, the depth and breadth our solutions offer is unparalleled. Mantel Group is your partner for end-to-end digital transformation.

Ranked in Australia's top 10 Best Workplaces by Great Place To Work Australia for four years in a row, we are people-focused and uphold strong values. Our culture champions trust, empowerment, and diversity with a lean structure emphasizing collaboration, direct communication, and equity.

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"Dented Code teaches coding skills that you need to become a full stack developer and help you advance your career, pursue your dream job, or enjoy the freedom of life as a freelancer." - Learn more on their website.

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We will also give out two 1-year subscriptions from JetBrains to any of JetBrains' IDEs in a raffle. You can use the 100% discount code on CLion, DataGrip, DataSpell, GoLand, IntelliJ IDEA Ultimate, PhpStorm, PyCharm, ReSharper, ReSharper C++, Rider, RubyMine, WebStorm, or dotUltimate.

Talks
Talk 1: Multiplatform to the City

Thinking about Kotlin Multiplatform but unsure how it performs in real world apps? In this talk, we’ll explore how I built KRAIL, a public transport app for Sydney, using JetBrains Compose Multiplatform. With a shared Kotlin codebase powering both iOS and Android, the app delivers real-time transport data, theming, analytics, and crash monitoring without compromising on the native performance.
We’ll walk through how Compose UI, Ktor, SQLDelight, and Koin come together to form a robust foundation. Along the way, we’ll dive into platform specific integrations, custom design systems beyond Material 3. Whether you're building solo or as a team, this session will show how to adopt Kotlin Multiplatform confidently for real users and where the challenges (and joys) lie.

About the speaker - Karan Sharma

Karan Sharma is a Software Engineer specializing in Kotlin Multiplatform development. He has worked in the past at Cash App, Afterpay building scalable mobile apps. Karan is also the creator of KRAIL, it's an open-source public transport app for NSW with over 800 monthly active users across ios and android.

Talk 2: One Prompt is All You Need: Build and Deploy Your Palm-Reading App using Google AI Studio

What if you could go from idea to a working AI app with just one well-crafted prompt—no machine learning code, no complex setup?

In this live session, I’ll show how to build and deploy an AI-powered Palm Reading Web App using Google AI Studio and Cloud Run—with a single multimodal prompt. Users simply upload a photo of their palm, and the app generates a fun, personalized fortune based on personality, career, and love using Gemini’s multimodal capabilities.

About the speaker - Sajan Shrestha

Sajan Shrestha is a passionate Software Developer. With a strong foundation in JavaScript frameworks like Next.js and React, he enjoys building applications that solve real-world problems. As a GDG co-organizer and tech community advocate, Sajan loves sharing knowledge and exploring the creative edges of AI. From delivery logistics to job platforms and now AI-powered fortune apps, he’s always looking for ways to turn code into impact.

Event Schedule
5:30pm - Event doors open

5:45pm - Introduction and hiring connect for those hiring/wanting to be hired (5 mins for each group, and every individual gets 1 min max)

6:00pm - Multiplatform to the City - Karan Sharma

6:45pm - One Prompt is All You Need: Build and Deploy Your Palm-Reading App using Google AI Studio - Sajan Shrestha

7:30pm - Raffle for the 2 JetBrains IDE licenses

8:00pm - Event end

Agenda

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Speakers

Karan Sharma

Sajan Shrestha

Hosts

Luke Moody - Cleer Consulting

Rohit Maharjan

Sajan Shrestha

Reeya Maharajan - The Butcher's Block Group (Junior Developer)

Adhish Panta - Endava (Senior SME - Google Cloud)

Adhish is a senior cloud engineer passionate about developing solutions for real-world business problems. He has strong cloud experience developing Google Cloud Platform (GCP) solutions within high-profile, fast-paced organisations. For him, it's about automating everything and building scalable, reliable, maintainable solutions.

Shasanka Acharya

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Partners

Dented Code (https://dentedcode.com)
At Dented Code, we have developed an innovative coding Bootcamp approach to empower candidates with cutting-edge technology and skills to thrive in the Australian multi-billion-dollar digital economy. In 2021, Dented Code began transferring its programming skills to students through BootCamp courses, in-school workshops, community upskilling initiatives, and online tutorials. Through Dented Code’s BootCamp, students get equipped with in-demand coding and web development skills.

Google Cloud (https://cloud.withgoogle.com/next/sf/)

JetBrains (https://www.jetbrains.com)
At JetBrains, code is our passion. Ever since we started, back in 2000, we have strived to make the strongest, most effective developer tools on earth. By automating routine checks and corrections, our tools speed up production, freeing developers to grow, discover and create.

Our Mission
We make professional software development a more productive and enjoyable experience.

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Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-cloud-sydney-presents-gdg-sydney-meetup-september-2025/.