AI Engineer January 2026 Meetup

New year, new builds. Ready to kick off 2026 with the real-world knowledge you need to ship? This month, we're exploring two sides of production AI: turning your data into valuable content, and keeping your agent infrastructure secure. How do you extract insights from years of business conversations without drowning in tokens? And as AI agents reach into your systems through MCP servers, how do you maintain the security posture your organization demands?

Join us for an evening of practical insights from engineers working in the trenches. Tony Tushar, Principal Consultant at Soli & Co., built a RAG system that transforms two years of consulting meeting transcripts into a searchable knowledge base using BigQuery vector tables and Voyage API embeddings. He'll show how this approach surfaces patterns across hundreds of client conversations in minutes—cutting out 80% of manual knowledge management work while avoiding token limitations of traditional project knowledge.

Then Isaac M., a DevSecOps Engineer with deep platform engineering experience, will tackle the security challenges of MCP in production. As AI agents gain access to your infrastructure, security becomes a platform engineering challenge. Isaac will share practical approaches covering authentication patterns, secret management, network positioning, least privilege access, and audit logging for MCP integrations—treating MCP servers like any other production service that needs secure access to your infrastructure.

Whether you're sitting on years of business data that could fuel AI-powered workflows or architecting secure connections between agents and your internal tools, this session will arm you with actionable techniques that actually work in the real world.

Agenda
Wednesday, January 14, 2026
🥨 4:00 PM – Doors open + snacks and networking
👋 4:30 PM – Welcome and intro remarks
🎤 4:40 PM – Tony Tushar presents: Generating LinkedIn Content Using Vector Tables in Google BigQuery
🎤 5:00 PM – Isaac M. presents: Securing MCP in Production: A Platform Engineer's Perspective
💬 5:30 PM – Networking and discussion
🚗 6:00 PM – Go home and build

Address
Mississippi River Training Room at Riverplace 43 NE Main St, Minneapolis, MN 55413

Note: The room formerly known as the Garamond Room has been renamed, but the location is the same.

The Mississippi River Training Room is located at the back of the main lobby, through Frgmt cafe near the security desk.

Parking
Multiple parking options available:

• Riverplace SE Garage at 98 2nd St SE (entrance can be hard to spot - look for it between Hennepin and University)
• Street parking on Main St in front of Riverplace
• Surface lots near Nicollet Island Inn

What to Bring
Just yourself! We've got everything covered.

Food + Drink
Food and beverages will be provided at 4:00 PM courtesy of our sponsor, Blank Metal.

Important to Know
Please register in advance - this event is free to attend but we need to plan for capacity.

Accessibility
The Mississippi River Training Room is wheelchair accessible through the attached Riverplace parking ramp.