Shitty Robots & Weird Tools - with Mario & Armin

Hello everyone!

It’s been long in the making, but finally all pieces have fallen into place and we’re beyond excited to announce a very special edition of our meetup on Tuesday, June 9th: Shitty Robots & Weird Tools - with Mario & Armin. These two speakers probably don’t even need an introduction in this community as it’s largely due to them and their buddy Peter that Austria/Vienna has become a well-known spot on the AI Engineering world map. Still, if you don’t know them yet, find the details about them below.

Mario will kick off the meetup with a talk about a recent pet project of his, the “Shitty Robot”. Then Armin will talk about “Weird Tools” for coding agents. And we’ll make sure there will be room for plenty of questions from the audience.

This announcement is very short-notice, as the meetup is in just two days, but we hope that despite that you'll be able to join us and listen in person to Mario and Armin's uniquely interesting takes on AI, before the World Cup and the summer months make such gatherings effectively impossible.
Special thanks to SQUER, who have jumped in and generously offered us their office in the 9th district to host this special event.

Join us for an unforgettable evening with the Austrian AI Engineering avant-garde!

-------------------- Speakers -------------------
For the folks who don't know these two already 😉…

• Mario Zechner (@badlogicgames) is the creator of Pi, a minimalist, self-modifying AI coding agent now stewarded by the startup Earendil, where he's a stakeholder and team member. Before AI, he built the popular cross-platform Java game framework libGDX and spent years on the animation tool Spine. Refreshingly blunt about the industry, Mario calls permission popups "security theater," warns about "token addiction," and tells engineers to slow down and treat agents as surgical tools.
  Blog: https://mariozechner.at/
• Armin Ronacher (@mitsuhiko) co-founded Earendil to build AI developer tooling, after a decade at Sentry where he was a very early engineer and rose to VP of Platform. He's best known as the creator of Flask, the Python microframework that famously began as a 2010 April Fool's joke, and of the Jinja template engine, alongside a long line of Pallets and Rust projects. A prolific blogger and frequent speaker, he's openly skeptical of AI hype while building squarely within it.
  Blog: https://lucumr.pocoo.org/

-------------------- Schedule -------------------
18:00 - Doors open: get together with food and beverages
18:30 - Welcome talk by SQUER
18:45 - "How to build a Shitty Robot - Euromaxxing local models" (Mario Zechner)
19:30 - Break
19:45 - "Weird Tools - What happens if you give your coding agent weird tools?" (Armin Ronacher)
20:30 - More drinks & networking.

-------------------- Location -------------------
SQUER Solutions GmbH
Althanstraße 4/3/63
1090 Vienna

----------------------- Sponsor ---------------------
This event is generously sponsored by SQUER, a Vienna and Munich-based IT consultancy specialized in software transformation and AI-native development. 🙏

SQUER works with engineering teams across the DACH region to modernize architectures, enable AI workflows, and build the technical foundation for sustainable digital change. Sponsoring the Vienna AI Engineering Meetup reflects SQUER's commitment to shaping a strong AI engineering community in and around Vienna.