Name: GrafanaCON Local Meetup: Chicago
Start: 2026-06-04T22:30:00.000Z
Location: TAG - The Aspen Group

🗒️ **Details**
Grafana 13 just dropped at GrafanaCON 2026 and we're not wasting any time.

Join us at [Clare & Don's Beach Shack](https://clareanddons.com/) in Falls Church, VA for a free hands-on meetup where we dig into what's actually new, what it means for your stack, and where observability is heading.

If you work in DevOps, SRE, or platform engineering in the DMV, this is your people. Whether you've been running Grafana for years or you're just getting started, you'll leave with something useful.

***

📋 **Agenda**
🎉 **5:30 — Food & Introductions** Come hungry. We're at Clare & Don's, so you already know the vibes are good. Grab a bite, meet the people around you, and get settled in before the talks kick off.

🎙️ **6:00 – 6:30 — Tech Talk: Grafana 13 & AI in Observability** Grafana Assistant is now built into the platform and it changes a lot. We're breaking down what's new in Grafana 13, how AI is reshaping the way teams monitor and troubleshoot, and what this looks like in practice. Expect real talk from Grafana Labs engineers, not a sales pitch.
**Speakers:** Rob Santos, Senior Solutions Engineer @ Grafana Labs Vishal Nakra, Senior Manager, Solutions Engineering @ Grafana Labs

💬 **6:30 — Networking & Open Q&A** Bring your questions, your war stories, and your opinions. This is the part where the good conversations happen.

🎁 **Don't forget** — we're doing a Grafana swag raffle on the way out.

🔚 **7:30 — Wrap Up**

***

**Spots are free but limited — grab yours before they're gone.**
We look forward to seeing you there!

Speaker info and talk abstracts:
Rob Santos, Senior Solutions Engineer @ Grafana Labs

Grafana & Friends DC

Grafana Community

chris.knight

Oleg Zhylin

Christopher Field

Rajat Puranik

ZEN AI Co.

Jessica Cadima

Roderick Arnold Sr

Owen

Faiyaz Ansari

rmarshall

Danny McMinn

alexjsmith.datascientist

sameer.bagai

Vinay

Michael W

Grafana & Friends DC: AI & Observability

Clare and Don's Beach Shack

A taste of [GrafanaCON](https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon/) is coming to **you**!

Join your local observability community for an evening of open source inspiration, real-world stories, and meaningful connections - all in a laid-back, meetup-style setting.

This event will feature a recap of the GrafanaCON keynote, combined with fresh voices from your own community with an AI twist.

There is so much noise these days about AI. Actually, isn’t everything about AI these days? We'll be focusing on actually useful uses of AI in the observability space, and how to add observability in your organization for all things people do with AI. You’ll walk out with best practices that you can apply wherever you work, or for your own use cases, especially since running AI workloads costs so much on many levels.

Whether you’re building dashboards, scaling Kubernetes, contributing to open source, or just getting started - this meetup is for you!
🎟 Free to attend
🍕 Pizza + soft drinks provided
🤝 Built for connection
💡 Real talks from real practitioners

**Agenda:**
TBD

*Note that by registering for this event you consent to related event & product communications from Grafana Labs and agree to our [code of conduct](https://grafana.com/events/events-code-of-conduct/).*

Grafana & Friends Toronto

Nikola Grcevski

james.doherty

Sara Iravani

Tushar Koul

Jacky Wang

cubakid

Augusto Zambrano

Francis

Mingjie Zhu

Carlos Rosario

Arad Delaram

Serge Dymenko

GrafanaCON Local meetup: Toronto - Actually Useful AI

Centre for Social Innovation - Spadina

A taste of [GrafanaCON](https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon/) is coming to **you**!

Join your local observability community for an evening of open source inspiration, real-world stories, and meaningful connections - all in a laid-back, meetup-style setting.

This event will feature a recap of the GrafanaCON keynote, combined with fresh voices from your own community.

Grafana team members will walk through Grafana 13 and the most impactful improvements across the platform. Learn about how Grafana is becoming easier and safer to operate as production infrastructure, with updates that improve configuration management, recovery, and long-term maintainability. The session showcases significant advances in core user workflows, including more flexible and powerful dashboards, with improved performance.

Whether you’re building dashboards, scaling Kubernetes, contributing to open source, or just getting started - this meetup is for you!

🎟 Free to attend
🍕 Pizza + soft drinks provided
🤝 Built for connection
💡 Real talks from real practitioners

**Agenda:**
6:00 - 6:15: Arrivals and pizza
6:15 - 7:00: GrafanaCON recap presentation
7:00 - 7:15: Q&A
7:15 - 7:30: Community lightning talks [pending]
7:30 - 8:00: Discussion and more pizza!

*Note that by registering for this event you consent to related event & product communications from Grafana Labs and agree to our [code of conduct](https://grafana.com/events/events-code-of-conduct/).*

Grafana & Friends Denver

megan.roloff

Andy Ennamorato

Rhandi Martin

GrafanaCON Local Meetup: Denver

Venture X Denver - LoDo

A taste of [GrafanaCON](https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon/) is coming to **you**!

Join your local observability community for an evening of open source inspiration, real-world stories, and meaningful connections - all in a laid-back, meetup-style setting.

This event will feature a recap of the GrafanaCON keynote, combined with fresh voices from your own community.

Grafana team members will walk through Grafana 13 and the most impactful improvements across the platform. Learn about how Grafana is becoming easier and safer to operate as production infrastructure, with updates that improve configuration management, recovery, and long-term maintainability. The session showcases significant advances in core user workflows, including more flexible and powerful dashboards, with improved performance.

Whether you’re building dashboards, scaling Kubernetes, contributing to open source, or just getting started - this meetup is for you!

🎟 Free to attend
🍕 Pizza + soft drinks provided
🤝 Built for connection
💡 Real talks from real practitioners

**Agenda:**
5:30 - 5:45: Arrivals and pizza
5:45 - 6:30: GrafanaCON recap presentation
6:30 - 6:45: Q&A
6:45 - 7:00: Community lightning talks [pending]
7:00 - 7:30: Discussion and more pizza!

*Note that by registering for this event you consent to related event & product communications from Grafana Labs and agree to our [code of conduct](https://grafana.com/events/events-code-of-conduct/).*

Grafana & Friends Triangle

Samir Faci

Keith Miller

GrafanaCON Local Meetup: Raleigh

Raleigh Founded

Grafana & Friends Chicago

Ploy Wongtaladkwon

Vinay Badgujar

Luke Mu

D. Dan. 

Van Garbutt

Jason Griggs

Rahul Mansharamani

Bren Barker

Dave Sidwell

Omair

Ajay Dagli

Yasvanth Udayakumar

GrafanaCON Local Meetup: Chicago

TAG - The Aspen Group

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