SF Bay ACM Chapter

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About us

This Meetup group supports the SF Bay ACM Chapter. You can join the actual SF Bay Chapter by coming to a meeting - most meetings are free, and our membership is only $20/year !
The chapter has both educational and scientific purposes:
- the science, design, development, construction, languages, management and applications of modern computing.
- communication between persons interested in computing.
- cooperation with other professional groups
Our official bylaws will be available soon at the About Us page on our web site. See below for out Code of Conduct.
Videos of past meetings can be found at http://www.youtube.com/user/sfbayacm
Official web site of SF Bay ACM:
http://www.sfbayacm.org/
Click here to Join or Renew

Article IX: Code of Conduct - from the ACM Professional Chapter Code of Conduct
Harassment or hostile behavior is unwelcome, including speech that intimidates,creates discomfort, or interferes with a person’s participation or opportunity for participation, in a Chapter meeting or Chapter event.Harassment in any form, including but not limited to harassment based on alienage or citizenship, age, color, creed, disability, marital status, military status, national origin, pregnancy, childbirth- and pregnancy-related medical conditions, race, religion, sex, gender,veteran status, sexual orientation or any other status protected by laws in which the Chapter meeting or Chapter event is being held, will not be tolerated. Harassment includes the use of abusive or degrading language, intimidation, stalking, harassing photography or recording,inappropriate physical contact, sexual imagery and unwelcome sexualattention. A response that the participant was “just joking,” or “teasing,”or being “playful,” will not be accepted.2. Anyone witnessing or subject to unacceptable behavior should notify a chapter officer or ACM Headquarters.3. Individuals violating these standards may be sanctioned or excluded from further participation at the discretion of the Chapter officers or responsible committee members.

Upcoming events

See all

Search 360°: From Query Understanding to LLM-Enhanced Retrieval
Mon, Jun 22 · 7:00 PM PDT
·
Online
Online
Hybrid event on Zoom and YouTube

If you want to join discussion remotely, you can submit questions via Zoom Q&A. The zoom link:
https://acm-org.zoom.us/j/94932457090?pwd=SzCaJbWEJpzEpJl7wYa1aSrHa8G15r.1
Join via YouTube:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=t15Ca-KblbE

AGENDA
6:30 pre-sign in to test and chat
7:00 SFBayACM upcoming events, introduce the speaker
7:15 speaker presentation starts
8:15 - 8:30 finish, depending on Q&A

Join SF Bay ACM Chapter for an insightful discussion in person at VRP

Description:
Search systems are evolving rapidly, powered by advances in deep learning, embeddings, and now large language models. This talk offers a 360° view of modern search architectures: from query understanding and candidate generation to pre-ranking, ranking, and re-ranking. We’ll explore how hybrid retrieval (sparse + dense), multi-task learning, and LLM-assisted query understanding are redefining search quality and personalization. Attendees will gain a systems-level understanding of how each layer contributes to relevance, diversity, and user satisfaction, and where to focus next for scalable innovation.

Audience:
AI practitioners interested in understanding how modern search systems work end-to-end. Also suitable for product engineers and researchers. Beginner to intermediate level: designed for attendees familiar with basic ML and data concepts, but not requiring deep expertise in search or ranking systems.

Speaker Bio:
Gauri Sarode is a Senior Machine Learning Engineer at Doordash, where she builds large-scale personalization and search systems that shape the customer discovery experience. With an M.S. in Computer Science from New York University, Gauri combines academic depth with real-world production experience. She holds multiple certifications in Generative AI and Retrieval-Augmented Generation.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/gaurisarode/
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Valley Research Park is a coworking research campus of 104,000 square feet hosting 60+ life science and technology companies. VRP has over 100 dry labs, wet labs, and high power labs sized from 125-15,000 square feet. VRP manages all of the traditional office elements: break rooms, conference rooms, outdoor dining spaces, and recreational spaces.

As a plug-and-play lab space, once companies have secured their next milestone and are ready to expand, VRP has 100+ labs ready to expand into.
https://www.valleyresearchpark.com/
61 attendees
Multi-Agent Systems at Scale as a Shared Platform for the enterprises
Wed, Jul 15 · 7:00 PM PDT
Valley Research Park, 319 North Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA, US
AI Agent Infrastructure as a Shared Platform: Patterns for Multi-Agent Systems at Scale for the enterprise.

LOCATION ADDRESS (Hybrid, in person or by zoom, you choose)
Valley Research Park
319 North Bernardo Avenue
Mountain View, CA 94043
Don't use the front door. When facing the front door, turn right along the front of the building. Turn left around the building corner. The 2nd door should be open and have a banner and event registration.

If you want to join remotely, you can submit questions via Zoom Q&A. The zoom link:
Zoom (updated 6:55 pm)
Join via YouTube:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pO72Hb30fKw

AGENDA
6:30 Door opens, food and networking (we invite honor system contributions)
7:00 SFBayACM upcoming events, introduce the speaker
7:15 Speaker presents.
8:30 - 8:45 finish, depending on Q&A

Join SF Bay ACM Chapter for an insightful discussion on:

### Abstract & Overview

An agent is simple: Prompt + Tools + Model + Boilerplate. The first three are where product teams create value. The last one—state management, history compression, streaming, cancellation, tracing, memory, persistence—is 80% of the code but 0% of the differentiation.
At ThoughtSpot, we built an Agent Platform that draws a hard line between agent logic and agent infrastructure, letting product teams ship customer-facing agents faster by owning only what matters: their prompts and their tools.
This talk covers the infrastructure patterns behind that separation:
State management across tool calls. Stateless tools (state on the agent, passed as arguments) give you testability and let the LLM reason about state. Stateful tools (state in the tool service) avoid serialization overhead. I'll walk through flow diagrams, show how we propagate state via tool response metadata, and discuss when each pattern fits.
Configuration-driven agent definitions. Agents defined entirely through config—templated prompts, tool endpoints, sub-agent rules, compression strategies. Teams ship agents without writing orchestration code.
Inter-agent communication. Two patterns: agents-as-tools (sub-agent called like any tool, returns structured output) and agent handoff (full conversation transfer). The platform handles routing and context—teams just declare delegation rules.
Shared memory across agents. Memory in the platform, not individual agents, means knowledge accumulates across agent boundaries. Tiered scoping (tenant, org, user) with retrieval that surfaces relevant context regardless of which agent captured it.
Tool protocol design. MCP as the base, with patterns layered on top: cancellation semantics, progress streaming, context variable propagation, and adapters for existing services.
Building for customer-facing scale adds constraints—high concurrency, encryption, tenant isolation, auditability—that shaped our API design throughout.
Takeaways:
- Mental model for separating agent value from infrastructure
- State patterns: agent-side vs. tool-side tradeoffs
- Inter-agent communication: tools vs. handoff
- Shared memory architecture across agent boundaries
- MCP extensions for production systems.
Speaker Bio
Ashish Shubham is Fellow/Vice President of Engineering at ThoughtSpot, where he leads the architecture of enterprise-scale AI and embedded analytics platforms used by Fortune 500 organizations. He is the author of Architecting AI Data Systems and an inventor on multiple U.S. patents in natural-language-to-SQL, generative AI interfaces, and intelligent analytics. Ashish is an IEEE Senior Member and an active reviewer and committee contributor for leading IEEE and ACM conferences and workshops. His work bridges academic research and real-world deployment, with a focus on building scalable, trustworthy, and developer-centric AI systems for production environments.
https://linkedin.com/in/ashubham

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Valley Research Park is a coworking research campus of 104,000 square feet hosting 60+ life science and technology companies. VRP has over 100 dry labs, wet labs, and high power labs sized from 125-15,000 square feet. VRP manages all of the traditional office elements: break rooms, conference rooms, outdoor dining spaces, and recreational spaces.

As a plug-and-play lab space, once companies have secured their next milestone and are ready to expand, VRP has 100+ labs ready to expand into.
https://www.valleyresearchpark.com/
19 attendees
What Breaks First at Scale: Lessons from Real-World Distributed Systems
Mon, Jul 27 · 7:00 PM PDT
Valley Research Park, 319 North Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA, US
Hybrid event on Zoom and YouTube

If you want to join discussion remotely, you can submit questions via Zoom Q&A. The zoom link:
https://acm-org.zoom.us/j/94932457090?pwd=SzCaJbWEJpzEpJl7wYa1aSrHa8G15r.1
Join via YouTube:
https://youtube.com/watch?v=t15Ca-KblbE

AGENDA
6:30 pre-sign in to test and chat
7:00 SFBayACM upcoming events, introduce the speaker
7:15 speaker presentation starts
8:15 - 8:30 finish, depending on Q&A

Join SF Bay ACM Chapter for an insightful discussion in person at VRP

Abstract:
As modern AI-powered and real-time applications grow, they increasingly rely on complex event-driven infrastructure. This session explores practical lessons learned from operating large-scale messaging and distributed systems in production. We will dive into the critical trade-offs regarding reliability, scalability, and observability in asynchronous environments, and discuss how architectural decisions compound when systems reach global scale.

Speaker Bio:
Ajinkya Kher is an Engineering Manager at Meta and former Principal Engineering Manager at Microsoft with over 15 years of experience building and leading large-scale distributed systems. Throughout his career, he has worked on highly scaled platforms, including real-time messaging platform powering Microsoft Teams & AI-powered experiences supporting hundreds of millions of users worldwide. At Meta, he leads engineering teams building youth-focused experiences across Facebook and Messenger, with a focus on trust and safety.

Ajinkya is currently authoring a book with Manning Publications on designing and operating event-driven systems in production. He previously authored a book on high-performance TypeScript programming and enjoys sharing practical lessons from building software at scale. Beyond his day-to-day work, he enjoys mentoring engineers and supporting technology and innovation programs that help develop future engineering leaders.
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/ajinkyakher
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Valley Research Park is a coworking research campus of 104,000 square feet hosting 60+ life science and technology companies. VRP has over 100 dry labs, wet labs, and high power labs sized from 125-15,000 square feet. VRP manages all of the traditional office elements: break rooms, conference rooms, outdoor dining spaces, and recreational spaces.

As a plug-and-play lab space, once companies have secured their next milestone and are ready to expand, VRP has 100+ labs ready to expand into.
https://www.valleyresearchpark.com/
38 attendees
Modern Test Automation & Quality Engineering in Agile Systems
Wed, Aug 19 · 7:00 PM PDT
Valley Research Park, 319 North Bernardo Avenue, Mountain View, CA, US
LOCATION ADDRESS (Hybrid, in person or by zoom, you choose)
Valley Research Park
319 North Bernardo Avenue
Mountain View, CA 94043
Don't use the front door. When facing the front door, turn right along the front of the building. Turn left around the building corner. The 2nd door should be open and have a banner and event registration.

If you want to join remotely, you can submit questions via Zoom Q&A. The zoom link:
https://acm-org.zoom.us/j/95226212956?pwd=HnAedzSDGcYAYsCzTuavIvMYMFtILa.1
Join via YouTube:
https://youtube.com/live/cu5TDl8N2Mk

AGENDA
6:30 Door opens, food and networking (we invite honor system contributions)
7:00 SFBayACM upcoming events, introduce the speaker
7:15 speaker presentation starts
8:15 - 8:30 finish, depending on Q&A

Join SF Bay ACM Chapter for an insightful discussion on:

Talk Description:

As software delivery accelerates, traditional testing approaches struggle to keep pace with Agile and DevOps environments. Modern systems demand more than automated test cases—they require a shift toward quality engineering practices that embed reliability, scalability, and continuous feedback into every stage of development.

This talk explores how test automation has evolved from a validation activity into a core engineering discipline. We will examine how to design resilient automation frameworks, integrate testing seamlessly into CI/CD pipelines, and build quality signals that provide real-time insight into system health.
Through practical examples, the session will highlight strategies for moving beyond UI-driven automation toward API, integration, and workflow-level validation. It will also cover key aspects such as test data management, environment stability, performance considerations, and accessibility as part of continuous quality.

Attendees will gain a clear understanding of how to align automation with Agile delivery, reduce flaky tests, and create scalable, maintainable solutions that support rapid releases without compromising quality.
This session is designed for engineers and quality professionals who want to modernize their automation approach and build systems that are reliable by design, not just tested after the fact.

Speaker Bio:
Shri Lakshmi Rajagopal, a Senior Quality Engineering Leader and Test Automation Architect. She has over 14 years of experience in software quality engineering, automation architecture, and engineering leadership. Her work focuses on designing maintainable automation frameworks, enabling Agile quality practices, and mentoring teams to adopt modern testing strategies. She is passionate about sharing practical insights that help teams build reliable and scalable software systems.

LinkedIn:https://www.linkedin.com/in/shri-lakshmi-rajagopal-a5012428

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Valley Research Park is a coworking research campus of 104,000 square feet hosting 60+ life science and technology companies. VRP has over 100 dry labs, wet labs, and high power labs sized from 125-15,000 square feet. VRP manages all of the traditional office elements: break rooms, conference rooms, outdoor dining spaces, and recreational spaces.

As a plug-and-play lab space, once companies have secured their next milestone and are ready to expand, VRP has 100+ labs ready to expand into.
https://www.valleyresearchpark.com/
5 attendees