Design Groups Melbourne

Reading the Tea Leaves: Developing Product Sense

A lot of the time, product management can feel like the art of predicting the future. With incomplete data, lots of competing priorities, and stakeholders that always want to have a say, it can be challenging to make a call on what to do next. Building your product sense is a way to make sense of the madness. We'll explore what product sense is, how you actually apply it at work, and ways to develop yours. We'll run through some real examples of using product sense to make hard decisions, pass hiring tasks, and ultimately ship better products faster. **Our Speaker** Maxy Lotherington is the Head of Product & Design at InvestorHub, where she leads a team of product managers and designers. She's spent 10+ years designing impactful digital experiences, scaling product teams, and learning lots every day. Linkedin: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxythedesigner](https://www.linkedin.com/in/maxythedesigner)

Where do you thrive? Your product fit across startup, scale-up & corporate

**Where Do You Thrive?** *Finding your product fit across startup, scale-up and corporate* Managing a product at a 10-person startup looks markedly different to managing one at a scale up or established corporate. While the title is identical, the day-to-day job requirements, the influence, the pace, and the path forward have key differences. So how do you know where you thrive most? Join Product Women Melbourne for a panel conversation with product leaders who've built careers across startups, scale-ups and corporates. We'll explore: · What actually changes about the role at each stage — and what stays the same · The trade-offs nobody tells you about (autonomy vs. resources, speed vs. structure, ambiguity vs. process) · How to know if you're in the right environment for where you are in your career · What it's really like to move between stages — and what surprised our panellists most **Panellists:** [Anna Kelk,](https://www.linkedin.com/in/anna-kelk-743587a7/) Chief Product Officer, Splose [Kelly Nguyen](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kellynnguyen/), Senior Product Manager APAC, Heidi [Teresa Huang](https://www.linkedin.com/in/teresajhuang/), Head of Product Bupa Whether you're considering your next career move, curious about a different kind of company, or just want to know if the grass really is greener in a different setting, this session is for you. Expect honest conversation and insights and time to connect with the Product Women Melbourne community afterwards. **Venue**: Preacta, 260 Collins Street, Melbourne (Melbourne CBD) **Date:** 06 August 2026 **Time:** 5:30-7:30pm Kindly sponsored by Preacta: Talent Acquisition Solutions and Recruitment

AI-Native Teams: Beyond Product & Engineering Roles

AI isn't just changing the products we build. It's changing the teams that build them. Hosted by **LTP Events** and generously supported by **Easygo** at their Melbourne CBD headquarters, this special evening brings together the below speakers for a candid panel discussion exploring one of the biggest questions facing our industry: * **[Mark Oliver](https://www.linkedin.com/in/markdavidoliver/)**, GM of Professional Services @ Brainmates * **[Adel Smee](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelsmee/)**, Head of Engineering @ Up * **[Bryn Stone](https://www.linkedin.com/in/brynstone/),** Senior Product Operations Manager @ Easygo As AI becomes embedded in product discovery, software delivery, customer research, planning, and decision-making, leaders face a challenge far greater than adopting new technology: rethinking how Product and Engineering teams are structured, how decisions get made, and where accountability sits. From both a Product and Engineering perspective, this raises some uncomfortable questions. Are our current operating models fit for purpose? Which roles become more valuable, and which begin to disappear? Should organisations continue optimising for specialist roles, or move towards more autonomous, AI-enabled builders? Yet while leaders are designing for a future state, they must also lead today's teams. How do we build AI-native organisations without leaving current teams behind? How do we create space for experimentation while maintaining delivery commitments? And what capabilities should Product Managers, Engineers and leaders be investing in right now? Join **Mark, Adel**, and **Bryn** as they explore the tension between designing the teams of tomorrow and helping today's teams evolve quickly enough to thrive in an AI-native future. Following the panel discussion, we'll open things up for audience Q&A before continuing the conversation over drinks and networking with Melbourne's Product and Engineering community. **Evening timeline** **5.30 – 6.15pm:** Arrive, grab a drink, and connect **6.15 – 7.15pm:** Panel discussion and audience Q&A **7.15 – 8.00pm:** Networking, conversation, and connection We'll have light food and drinks covered—all we ask is that you bring your curiosity, your questions, and your perspective. **Reserve your spot today - RSVPs will close 48 hours before the event.**

No 88 - Bas Land - Dashboards are Dead! Talk to your data!

**Details** Join us for networking, drinks and a good time catching up with fellow Power BI and Microsoft Fabric enthusiasts **Agenda:** 5:30PM - 6:00PM Welcome and Networking 6:00PM - 7:00PM Speaker Session **Topic:** Dashboards are dead - talk to your data! **THE SPEAKER -** Bas Land - Data Solution Architect, Data Platform MVP & Microsoft Certified Trainer. Bas founded Kimura and is an experienced Data Solution Architect with over 12 years as a consultant in various technologies, currently focusing on Microsoft Fabric. He speaks, creates YouTube videos, and blogs about these experiences to share his knowledge with the community. He holds a Microsoft Data Platform MVP award and is a Microsoft Certified Trainer. In his spare time he likes to practice sports (Brazilian jiu-jitsu, running, weight lifting) and also to travel with his wife, son, and their dachshund Chester. **THE SESSION** **Dashboards are dead! talk to your data!** I have spent the better part of my career designing, refining, and maintaining dashboards in Power BI to help my clients answer business questions. Until now. In this session, we will break free from predefined visuals and fixed dashboards. It is time to talk to your data! Over the past years, everybody has been exposed to AI LLMs such as ChatGPT, Claude, and Gemini. What if I told you that you could chat with your data, just like you can chat with your AI? With Fabric Data Agents, you can! You get a chat interface that understands the context of your data. You can ask questions in natural language (no need to learn SQL or DAX!) and get answers, fast. In this session we will start by explaining some of the basics behind the Fabric Data Agents. Then we'll jump into the prerequisites in order to start using the Data Agents. After all the boring stuff is done I will take you into a live demo of setting up the Agent, tuning it to get accurate responses, and will show how we can chat with our own data to generate insights and drive decision making. You'll walk away from this session understanding the following: \- Why this shift from dashboards to chatting matters for you and your organisation \- How Fabric Data Agents actually work "under the hood" \- How to build\, configure\, and use your first Fabric Data Agent If you are involved in building modern data platforms, please consider Data Agents as an amazing tool to help users find insights faster! **Sponsors:** **Vivanti** A big thank you goes out to our sponsor, Vivanti, for their support of this Meetup; providing the venue as well as drinks for attendees. **GET AI** A big thanks to GET AI for sponsoring the food. If you are interested in an assessment to see if your data is AI ready then check out GET AI's data assessment and POV offer at https://assessment.getai.com.au

🤖 Group Therapy: An Honest Session on How We Actually Feel About AI

We are finally doing it. A talk themed around AI. But we know it's session nobody wants to admit they need. We've all heard the AI buzzwords - "excited," "leaning in," "embracing the tools", "It's about Taste" But what's the version we tell our partner at 11pm? This session is a confession booth disguised as a meetup: no corporate talking points, no performative optimism, just a room full of professionals finally saying the quiet part out loud. What you'll hear: ✨ The mood ring check-in: Has your relationship with AI actually evolved - curiosity, to fatigue, to something like grudging acceptance? Or are you stuck on repeat? ✨ Empowered or expendable: The gap between the tools making us faster and the fear that "faster" was never really the point ✨ The honesty audit: Are we saying what we actually feel, or reciting the script we think we're supposed to perform? ✨ Slop or stealth: Is AI-generated mediocrity actually improving - or has it just gotten better at hiding in plain sight? ✨ The invoice after the honeymoon: Businesses got the discounted intro rate. Is anyone budgeting for what this actually costs once the novelty pricing ends? ✨ Who's actually watching the risk: How leaders are (or aren't) identifying, assessing, and managing AI risk before it becomes a headline 👉 The debate on the table: "Most people are more anxious than they admit" vs "People are largely fine and adapting" Pick a side. Defend it. Or admit you're not sure, which might be the most honest answer in the room. 📌 The details: * Date: Thursday 13th August * Host: Melbourne Design Thinking Meetup x Scyne Advisory * Refreshments included: Pizza and fizz! Our Speakers: **Liz Collins León** *Experience Architect \| Design Operations Strategist* Liz is an Experience Architect with over 15 years designing systems, campaigns, and communication solutions across retail, telecommunications, and front-to-back office operations. With tenure at Telstra, Google, and more recently Genesys, she is a design leader and mentor whose passion for creating inclusive experiences expands beyond delivering data-driven, digital products. Whether fostering a community effort to found a greenbelt reserve, designing learning spaces, or promoting psychological safety in the workplace, she endeavors to strengthen communities through online and offline connections. **Gemma Mooney** *Product Design Lead \| RACV* With over 20 years of experience spanning UX, digital product design and design leadership. She specialises in helping organisations understand customer needs and translate insights into improved products, services and experiences. At RACV, Gemma leads strategic discovery, research and experience design initiatives across a range of member experiences, including onboarding, emergency roadside assistance, payments, chat and AI-enabled digital services. She also led the design of the RACV app from concept through to launch, helping shape the vision, user experience and member proposition for one of RACV's most important digital products. More recently, she has been helping embed AI into the design practice, developing practical approaches for using tools such as Copilot to support research, synthesis, journey mapping and opportunity identification. Prior to RACV, Gemma was UX Manager at Intrepid Travel, where she established the company's UX practice and championed user-centred design across the organisation. She also led Intrepid's first innovation hackathon, bringing together cross-functional teams to solve customer and business challenges through design-led thinking. Throughout her career, Gemma has been passionate about creating evidence-based, customer-centred experiences and helping teams use research and emerging technologies to drive better outcomes for customers and organisations alike. Her work has been recognised with Intrepid Travel's Outstanding Achievement Award and Travel Weekly's Women in Travel Award. **David Cullen** *Managing Director, Scyne Advisory (GAICD)* David has spent two decades on the front line of Australia's cyber resilience — the kind of career where "incident response" isn't a slide in a deck, it's a 3am phone call. As Victoria's former Chief Information Security Officer, he built the state's Cyber Incident Response Service from scratch and led the response to Victoria's largest-ever public sector cyber-attack, all while establishing the frameworks that now coordinate cyber emergencies statewide. At the national level, David represented Victoria on the National Cyber Security Committee and built the National Operations Subcommittee to get states talking to each other before a crisis, not during one. He's now a Managing Director at Scyne Advisory, leading national incident response capability and helping organisations across the public and private sector get serious about cyber preparedness before they need to. David holds a Master of Public Policy and Management, is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is a recipient of the Resilient Australia Award. He brings a rare thing to a stage: someone who's actually been the person picking up the phone when it all goes wrong — and has the scars, systems, and stories to prove it.

Gallery & Coffee Friend Outing

Join a small group for a relaxed gallery visit followed by coffee and conversation. This event is a great way to meet people without the pressure of constant talking. We’ll explore a gallery or exhibition together, take our time looking around, and then head to a nearby cafe afterwards to chat about what we saw. Art, design, and creative spaces naturally give people something to talk about, making this a great event if you want connection to feel more organic. You don’t need to know anything about art to join — curiosity is more than enough. Come solo, meet the group, and enjoy a thoughtful weekend activity with people who are also looking to make genuine friendships. The coffee afterwards is where conversations can continue and people can get to know each other more personally. **Perfect for:** creative people, gallery lovers, coffee lovers, quiet conversationalists, and anyone wanting a calm social experience. To help you get the most out of the event, we ask that you download our app before you arrive (or upon arrival). The app will be used throughout the event for prompts, activities, and other interactive content so having it ready will ensure you can fully participate. https://apps.apple.com/au/app/besocial/id6759604739 https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.appetiser.besocial&hl=en **Event photography and videography may take place at this event. Images and footage captured may be used in future BeSocial promotional materials.** **If you do not wish to appear in promotional materials, please notify Nexaro Group Pty Ltd before the event by emailing support@besocialapp.co, or let the event hosts know on the day.**

Wednesday @Tao Dumpling - Happy Hour 6 pm (BYO) & Dumpling Time 6:30 pm

Welcome to the next 2026 AWS Melbourne Well-Architected User Group Meetup!

Hi Architects, Welcome to our next AWS Melbourne Well-Architected User Group Meetup for 2026, including more exceptional speakers and topics! :-D At each meetup we covered off various pillars in detail, best-practices and insights from industry leaders that specialise in the Well-Architected Framework. And giving away drones, of course. Lots of drones. **Please also note that AWS Security now requests a company name and company email where it is available. If you are a student, please list your institution and your student email address at that institution 👍** We'll be announcing more speakers on [https://well-architected.me](https://well-architected.me/) and previewing presentations during the coming weeks - our speakers and details this month include: * **Nitin Yadav\, Founder & Principal\, Nuvrix\.ai \| AWS Ambassador** **Productionising an AI Workload, the Well-Architected Way** Most AI workloads make it to demo. Far fewer make it to production, and the ones that struggle usually have nothing wrong with the model. The architecture around it just wasn't built for the real world. In this session, Nitin walks through what it actually takes to take an AI workload from POC to production on AWS, using the Well-Architected Framework as the lens. Covering cost controls, security guardrails, observability, and reliability for non-deterministic systems, with practical patterns you can apply immediately. * **SkillzLab Build Gen AI Well-Architected Reviews** **Well-Architecting App Build-off Review!** In this session, we will have review the apps from the previous session and perform AWS Gen AI Well-Architected Framework Reviews, with the drone going to the most **Gen AI Well-Architected** app on the night. This month's menu will include: * Pizzas * Beer: Nastro Azzurro * Wine: Big and red 🤤 NB: Please check in up the stairs from the ground floor to the Mezzanine Level. So come join us at 5:30 for a 6pm **SHARP** start, followed by beer, wine, pizza and friendly networking after our talks :-) Tired of Linkedin’s "thought leadership”, spam and advertising? Join https://well-architected.me/ , the AWS community built for architects, developers and cloud professionals. * Connect with experienced AWS practitioners * Preview upcoming AWS Meetups and relive past content * Create and review beautiful AWS case studies in minutes * Prepare for AWS certifications with curated quizzes * Show your manager and reports you’re well-architected (Please note that by registering to attend you agree to your details being shared as and where required with Amazon Web Services and AWS Well-Architected User Group partners)

Building Physical AI - Show and Tell

Join us at Melbourne Connect Co-working for an evening of live demos and real product stories from practitioners putting AI to work on problems that matter. ​This Show & Tell brings together three builders working at the intersection of technology and community impact. Each speaker will walk through how their product works, what problem it addresses, and how it applies in real-world settings, no theory, just working technology and honest conversation. ## 🎤 **Speakers:** ​**Jeremy Peng — Circular Vision AI** ​An AI-powered recycling assistant that gamifies and rewards waste sorting, improves everyday behaviour, and uses data to power smarter circular systems. ​**Jaspal Sarai — Jenesys** ​Edge AI Infrastructure for devices like low orbit satellites and drones where on-device AI processes data in real time rather than in the cloud, supporting an alternative solution for accurate earth and weather observations. ​**Aish Singh — Deep Vitals** ​An AI-powered metabolic health platform turning live glucose and wearable signals into personalised daily actions that support behaviour change and simplify healthier decisions. ## 🗓 **Agenda:** ​Arrival and networking ​Featured talks and demos ## 🏢 **Venue:** ​Melbourne Connect Co-working is located within Australia's leading innovation precinct, home to a community of leaders across science, engineering and technology. To find out more, get in touch with our team. [melbconnectcoworking.com.au](https://melbconnectcoworking.com.au/?utm_source=meetup)

Denim and Lingerie Workshop

Jewellers Bench Hire in Fitzroy

Jewellers can hire a desk in our workshop to make or finish off their own pieces. This workshop is self run, you need to attend a health and safety induction before working daily unattended. Basic jewellery making tools are provided and some consumables such as flux, borax, tumbling polish, lathe polish and some drill bits. Aprons and safety glasses are provided, tie up loose hair, wear enclosed shoes. Please email claw.creative.studios@gmail.com for any questions or inquiries. Clara Carija, Director CLAW CREATIVE.

Importance of IDPs in the Era of AI

As AI tools dramatically accelerate code generation, the bottleneck in software delivery is shifting from writing code to securing, managing, and deploying it. This talk explores why Internal Developer Platforms (IDPs) are more critical now than ever. We will discuss how an effective IDP acts as the essential safety net against "AI sprawl," providing the automated guardrails, standardized templates, and compliance checks needed to handle the massive influx of AI-generated code. Drawing on real-world patterns from OpenChoreo, an open-source IDP built for the AI era, attendees will learn how to build structured, scalable platforms that reduce cognitive load and transform chaotic, rapid-fire AI development into paved paths for reliable enterprise productivity. Walk away with a clear framework for evaluating and evolving your IDP strategy as AI adoption accelerates. **About our Speaker:** Kanchana Wickremasinghe is a Vice President & Field CTO for WSO2, based at the WSO2 office in Melbourne, Australia. Before he joined WSO2, Kanchana worked as the CEO of Platformer Cloud Pty Ltd. He was responsible for starting Platformer, architecting Platformer products, and guiding an awesomely talented team of engineers to bring these products to its customers.