Agile and Scrum

Holy ESL! is a place for English learners to practice conversation skills while also learning about the Bible and Christianity. **Holy ESL! will continue to follow the life of Jesus.** Each week will focus on a short story from Gospels, with free and open discussion about the story and what it means! **You don't need to be a Christian to join, everyone is welcome!** You can drop in for one week, or for all weeks!

***This is a paid event ($5 general admission, free for students & job seekers) with limited tickets - you must [RSVP on Luma](https://luma.com/zd29ibx6) to secure your spot.*** ​Recent research from Anthropic and Redwood Research has shown that "reward hacking" is more than just a nuisance: it can be a seed for broader misalignment. ​Evgenii Opryshko explores how models that learn to exploit vulnerabilities in coding environments can generalize to concerning capabilities, such as unprompted alignment faking and cooperating with malicious actors. ​**Event Schedule** 6:00 to 6:30 - Food and introductions 6:30 to 7:30 - Presentation and Q&A 7:30 to 9:00 - Open Discussions ​​​​If you can't make it in person, feel free to join the live stream starting at 6:30 pm, via [this link](https://www.youtube.com/@Trajectory-Labs/live).

⚠️ **Important:** RSVPs on Meetup **do not guarantee a spot.** To secure your complimentary experience, you **must call or text us at 416-900-9679** to confirm your qualification and booking. Please don’t attend without confirmation – space is limited and unconfirmed arrivals cannot be accommodated. Experience what it feels like to train at Toronto’s most advanced **fitness and longevity studio** — where science meets community. In this small group session, you’ll build functional strength, endurance, and mobility while learning how to move and recover like an athlete. Each class blends: * **Short bursts of cardio** (yes, even if you hate it) * **Targeted functional strength training** to build lean muscle * **Mobility, mindfulness, and breathwork** to finish strong and centered All levels are welcome — from beginners to seasoned gym-goers. Our coaches lead every step and correct your form in real time to ensure maximum results and safety. 📍 **Location:** Telomere Fitness, 518 Yonge Street (Yonge & College) 🚇 Easy access by subway – minutes from College Station ### 💥 **Special Complimentary Offer (Limited Spots)** We’re currently offering for **qualified downtown Toronto residents** a *free* full fitness experience, including: ✅ **InBody Scan** (body composition & fat/muscle analysis) ✅ **Personal Fitness Assessment** ✅ **Small Group Training Session** ✅ **Nutrition Consult** *(Total value: $200 – complimentary for qualified individuals)* ### 🔹 **How to Qualify** To reserve your complimentary session, you must **live or work in downtown Toronto** and **call or text us first** at **416-900-9679** to confirm eligibility. Spots are limited to maintain our small-group focus. ### 🏋️‍♂️ **How to Prepare** * Wear athletic clothing and indoor footwear. * Bring a water bottle – we have a no-touch filling station. ### 🕓 **Event Schedule** * We offer 5 sessions per day - Morning, After you and then this is where I had an issue I couldn't just make it. It's weird.noon and Evening * Spots fill up fast so call us to see if we have a spot available at your preferred day/time! * RSVP + confirmation required before attending 📍 Google Maps: [https://maps.app.goo.gl/6jMKrTvr4Lk5aUna7](https://maps.app.goo.gl/6jMKrTvr4Lk5aUna7) 📞 Questions? Call or text us anytime: **416-900-9679** ### ⚠️ **Final Reminder** Meetup RSVPs **alone do not** secure a space. Please **call or text 416-900-9679** after RSVPing to confirm your booking. Unconfirmed arrivals **cannot be admitted** due to limited capacity.

Go Medieval! Learn Medieval arts, sciences, dancing and games! Have somefun with like minded history geeks. Tuesdays, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm St. Andrew’s United Church 117 Bloor St EAST (near Church Street) Ring the buzzer for the gate keeper more info? www.eoforwic.ca

Please Note: This event is advertised on multiple platforms. Please RSVP and get a ticket on Mindstone (https://community.mindstone.com/events/mindstone-toronto-january-ai-meetup) to view the agenda and guarantee a spot. Welcome to the most electrifying and ground-breaking AI Meetup in Toronto! Join us once a month as we delve into the world of artificial intelligence, explore its cutting-edge practical applications, and marvel at the astonishing projects that are shaping our future. Why should you attend? • Get up close and personal with the AI projects that are redefining the boundaries of technology and human potential. • Learn from the brightest minds in the field and gain valuable insights into the ever-evolving AI landscape. • Unleash your curiosity, fuel your creativity, and expand your network as you connect with fellow AI aficionados and pioneers. What you can expect? Mindstone events consist of three talks covering different aspects: • What I Learned Building With LLMs: A technical demo breaking down the process for building a product using AI with real-life learnings and insights. • How To Be More Productive Using AI: A practical demo and step-by-step guide on how to use AI to speed up and improve tasks. • What Does The Future Look Like With AI?: A theoretical talk on the impact of AI on work, life and society. After the talks we'll have pizza, drinks, and networking. Don't miss out on this extraordinary opportunity to witness the AI revolution in action. It's time to embark on a thrilling journey into the future and discover the endless possibilities that lie within the realm of artificial intelligence. Reserve your spot today for the ultimate AI experience! 💡✨ (https://community.mindstone.com/events/mindstone-toronto-january-ai-meetup) Please Note: This event is advertised on multiple platforms. Please RSVP and get a ticket on Mindstone (https://community.mindstone.com/events/mindstone-toronto-january-ai-meetup) to view the agenda and guarantee a spot.

**Format**: Hybrid (in-person and online) event **In-person location**: **Security Compass** 325 Front Street West, Unit 103 Toronto, ON M5V 2Y1 **Note:** In-person attendance is limited to **70 people**, in a **first-come, first-serve basis**. Doors will open at **6:00 PM**, with the event will start at **6:30 PM** (ET). For those who cannot attend in person, please join us virtually via the livestream! **Presentation Title:** **Privacy Components That Should Actually Matter to Development Teams** Many teams expect that privacy is taken care of by the company’s security program or addressed by the legal and compliance teams. Fact is, privacy is often lagging behind security when it comes to software development, and there are still obligations that need to make their way into the lifecycle. And, in many cases, devs never even see the obligations that exist on paper to clients! In each business function of Governance, Design, Implementation, Verification, and Operations, there are privacy considerations that need to be made. The earlier you can get these considerations locked in, the more time it saves you later when there’s an incident, a user exercising their rights, or simply scaling up! \-\-\- **This is a hybrid event!** You're welcome to join us online or in person. Thanks again to our wonderful sponsors at **Security Compass** for hosting us!

Every Wednesday Night! Free Magic The Gathering Commander games at Hairy Tarantula, hosted by Toronto Gaymers! Please note: Masks are required in store! For more information and to RSVP please over to harryt.com/events

Let’s do some coding together at a cafe! No more working alone in the weekend. Here, we write code together. And I mean together together. Not occupying-the-same-space-but-separate together. Here’s how it works: Jennifer brings her mobile app project, tells everyone that it is like Pinterest for recipes and she’d like to work on the nav bar. Paul and Chloe think Jennifer's project is fascinating, and they join the group. They gather around Jennifer’s laptop and work on the nav bar for 2 hours. Jennifer is the one typing out the code while Paul and Chloe research, brainstorm, and offer suggestions. If you’re feeling stuck on your own project or need a motivation boost, bring it to mob programming! Want to learn by watching how others code and solve problems? Join someone else’s project at this event! Oh and we love your half-done projects that you are a bit embarrassed to share. Absolutely bring those to the event! **Discord**: We use Discord to share screen & code snippets during the event. Also feel free to share your projects here before the event! https://discord.gg/Da9fZFxPfs **Event policy**: * We have 0 tolerance for harassment. * We don’t allow the projects that are not meant to be shared in public such as school assignments, interview tasks, or trade secrets. * The goal is to write code. We discourage you from pitching business ideas here, doing code reviews, or spending the whole event on planning what to do. * Please buy a drink, and tip the barista well.

Each week there is some recommended readings to be done before we meet. **Please see the attached schedule for this week's readings.** The Bible Timeline® study program takes you on a guided journey through salvation history. Presenter Jeff Cavins will show you how fourteen of the Bible’s narrative books tell the biblical story from beginning to end and will give you the keys to understanding the amazing story woven throughout Scripture. The Bible Timeline will teach you how to read and understand the entire Bible and introduce you to the wonderful narrative of Scripture in a way that will transform your life. The online material can be bought online through the link below (optional). However, each session we can share copies for you to have discussion questions in class and reading guideline for the next session. https://ascensionpress.com/products/the-bible-timeline-the-story-of-salvation-online-video-access

In this presentation, I argue that when probability claims are used in decision contexts involving persons, they often undergo *a systematic shift* in how they are interpreted — from reports of population frequencies to ascriptions of individual or kind-level dispositions. This shift offers a more general explanation than existing accounts provide for why the use of accurate statistical information can nonetheless wrong or demean people in ways amounting to discrimination. Steven Coyne https://philosophy.utoronto.ca/directory/steven-coyne/ Assistant Professor Department of Philosophy University of Toronto **About the Speaker:** Steven Coyne, who is cross-appointed with the Department of Computer Science, teaches courses in moral and political philosophy, as well as the philosophy of law. He also prepares and delivers ethics modules in computer science classes for the Embedded Ethics Education Initiative in collaboration with instructors from the Department of Computer Science. His research is in moral and political philosophy, with a particular eye on issues connecting to reasons and rationality. His main projects concern how people can affect the reasons of other people, particularly through their speech acts, and particularly in political contexts. Can the state give new reasons to its subjects by commanding them? In order to properly obey the law, do people need to exclude some of their existing reasons for action? Do members of liberal democracies have any moral powers over one another? He is also interested in the reason-giving force of civil disobedience, the powers possessed by persistent minorities under majority rule, and the legitimacy of embedded ethics in higher education. He is also working on some projects in the ethics of technology concerning autonomy and bias and discrimination in algorithmic decision-making. **\* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \* \*** This is a talk with audience Q&A presented by the University of Toronto's Centre for Ethics that is free to attend and open to the public. Refreshments will be provided at the event. The talk will also be streamed online with live chat [here](https://youtube.com/live/p3UzLadcpXk?feature=share). About the Centre for Ethics (http://ethics.utoronto.ca): The Centre for Ethics is an interdisciplinary centre aimed at advancing research and teaching in the field of ethics, broadly defined. The Centre seeks to bring together the theoretical and practical knowledge of diverse scholars, students, public servants and social leaders in order to increase understanding of the ethical dimensions of individual, social, and political life. In pursuit of its interdisciplinary mission, the Centre fosters lines of inquiry such as (1) foundations of ethics, which encompasses the history of ethics and core concepts in the philosophical study of ethics; (2) ethics in action, which relates theory to practice in key domains of social life, including bioethics, business ethics, and ethics in the public sphere; and (3) ethics in translation, which draws upon the rich multiculturalism of the City of Toronto and addresses the ethics of multicultural societies, ethical discourse across religious and cultural boundaries, and the ethics of international society. The Ethics of A.I. Lab at the Centre For Ethics recently appeared on a list of 10 organizations leading the way in ethical A.I.: https://ocean.sagepub.com/blog/10-organizations-leading-the-way-in-ethical-ai

The silence is broken. **We are officially relaunching DEF CON Toronto (DC416) on Jan 15.** We’re kicking off this new era at 6:30 PM at 100 Queens Quay St. It’s free for everyone, but capacity is limited. RSVP to lock in your spot. To find upcoming events, updates and stay involved as we grow, visit our revamped site [https://defcontoronto.ca](https://defcontoronto.ca/) **Talk:** Syndicate: Inside the life of a Ransomware Operator **What you’ll learn:** A deep dive into how ransomware affiliates rise through the ranks, build trust, and operate inside the dark web ecosystem. **Speaker:** Tammy Harper (Senior Threat Intelligence Researcher @ Flare) **About the Speaker:** Tammy Harper is a Senior Threat Intelligence Researcher at Flare, specializing in dark web ecosystems, ransomware affiliate operations, and adversary psychology. Her work combines technical analysis with narrative and sociological approaches to understand how modern cybercriminals think, organize, and operate.

Gaming, AdTech, EdTech, Media Streaming, and FinTech are just a few of the workloads where high-availability cloud infrastructure matters. Whether you’re doing battle daily in one of these spaces or are just curious about ways to improve performance, meet us in Reston for an in-person discussion on bare metal cloud architecture. You’ll meet our product lead, James MacKenzie, who will walk through how modern bare metal serves as a control plane for hybrid and private cloud architectures. **What we will cover** * Ways to leverage bare metal, containers, and orchestration for better performance and predictable economics; * Real-world hybrid, disaster recovery, and data-intensive architectures; * Our approach to eliminating ingress and egress fees. **Who should attend** * Cloud architects and platform engineers; * DevOps professionals and infrastructure leads; * FinOps stakeholders managing data-heavy or hybrid workloads. **Why attend** This is a technical, architecture-first conversation. You will leave with a clearer understanding of high-availability cloud infrastructure and how organizations are scaling cost-effectively. Food and drinks will be provided. Space is limited to keep the discussion interactive.

Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy registration at [Birding Gilbert’s Corner - Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy](https://loudounwildlife.org/event/birding-gilberts-corner-january/) Join Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy for a bird walk at the relatively new [Gilbert’s Corner Regional Park](https://www.novaparks.com/parks/gilberts-corner-regional-park) in Aldie (see map below). With a combination of scrub, brush and meadow, this park is a great birding hotspot in southwestern Loudoun. *Limit 14. **Registration required.*** ***Questions:*** *Contact Joe Coleman at [jcoleman@loudounwildlife.org](mailto:jcoleman@loudounwildlife.org)*.

NOVA Code and Coffee is an inclusive, informal, co-working session. People of all skill levels are invited. The concept is simple, bring a laptop and ideas, we'll provide the coffee and donuts! Here's how it works: 1. At 10:15 everyone introduces themselves and briefly describes what brought them to Code & Coffee today (project, homework, networking, etc) 2. For the rest of the day, folks work in the communal space on their projects providing one another help and conversation as needed. Oh and they usually drink coffee and tea too! That's it! Hope to see you there! **Location** Our hosts are the Fairfax City Economic Development Building: [10300 Eaton Pl, Fairfax, VA 22030](https://www.bing.com/ck/a?!&&p=d7298231ca2df594df822003f9a93517c788fceefe1fcbb79c8976696e341bc6JmltdHM9MTc1MzIyODgwMA&ptn=3&ver=2&hsh=4&fclid=180d0745-3b7f-69a1-23a2-11433a7868e5&u=a1L21hcHM_Jm1lcGk9MTA5fn5Ub3BPZlBhZ2V-QWRkcmVzc19MaW5rJnR5PTE4JnE9RmFpcmZheCUyMENpdHklMjBFY29ub21pYyUyMERldmVsb3BtZW50JnNzPXlwaWQuWU44NzN4ODI4MTk2Mjg0NTk5MDM4MTU0MiZwcG9pcz0zOC44NjE0NDYzODA2MTUyMzRfLTc3LjMwMjE3NzQyOTE5OTIyX0ZhaXJmYXglMjBDaXR5JTIwRWNvbm9taWMlMjBEZXZlbG9wbWVudF9ZTjg3M3g4MjgxOTYyODQ1OTkwMzgxNTQyfiZjcD0zOC44NjE0NDZ-LTc3LjMwMjE3NyZ2PTImc1Y9MSZGT1JNPU1QU1JQTA&ntb=1) Conference Room A- Large, Floor 1 This is a new venue for us, so give us some time to get more details about it. Driving is the best option. There is plenty of free on-site parking. Otherwise, we are a 22 minute bus from the Vienna Metro Station. **Sponsored by:** Thank you [Fairfax City Economic Development](https://gofairfaxcity.com/) and [Mason Enterprise Center](https://enterprise.gmu.edu/) for making this event possible! **Thank you so much to our wonderful sponsors!** Organized by [DMV Petri Dish](https://www.dmvpetridish.com/) **[Code of Conduct](https://github.com/NoVACodeCoffee/admin/blob/master/code-of-conduct.md):** We value the participation of each member of the community and want all attendees to have an enjoyable and fulfilling experience. To make clear what is expected, all delegates/attendees, organizers, and volunteers at any Nova Code & Coffee events are required to conform to our [Code of Conduct](https://github.com/NoVACodeCoffee/admin/blob/master/code-of-conduct.md).

Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy registration at [Young Birders Walk at Gilbert’s Corner - Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy](https://loudounwildlife.org/event/young-birders-gilberts-corner-jan/) Join Loudoun Wildlife Conservancy’s Young Birding Program for a bird walk exclusively for young birders at [Gilbert’s Corner Regional Park](https://www.novaparks.com/parks/gilberts-corner-regional-park) in Aldie. With a combination of scrub, brush, and meadow, this park is a great birding hotspot in southwestern Loudoun. Bring binoculars if you have them. *Note: This program is exclusively for young birders ages 10-18; a parent/guardian is welcome. **Registration required*** ***Questions:*** *Contact Young Birding Program Coordinator Patrick Lewis at [plewis@loudounwildlife.org](mailto:plewis@loudounwildlife.org).*

We will be meeting at Starbucks to learn together. Come with an online class you're already going through or an interest and we will try to connect you with a course where you can learn it. Already have a skill you want to contribute to a Kaggle Datascience competition? We will work on these too! Laptop required :)

A weekly networking meeting where we have a lot of fun and of course, meet other busy professionals!

**Agenda :** * 4.30 to 4.45 PM ET: Food and Networking * 4.45 to 5.30 PM ET: "Building Smarter Agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio (Jan 2026 Edition)" Hello Everyone! Please join us for our Jan 13th edition of the AI-ML MeetUp. **Please note this is an in-person meeting and light refreshments/food will be provided.** **Title:** Building Smarter Agents with Microsoft Copilot Studio (Jan 2026 Edition) **Description:** Discover how to design intelligent, task-driven AI agents using **Microsoft Copilot Studio**. Learn how to connect copilots to enterprise data, workflows, and external systems. Explore real-world use cases, best practices, and architecture patterns for scalable agents. Get hands-on insights into what’s new in the Jan 2026 edition and what’s coming next **Location:** The meeting will be hosted in the Applied Information Sciences ( AIS ) office in Reston, at 11440 Commerce Park Dr # 600 · Reston, VA. The location is also right off the Silver Line metro's Wiehle-Reston Metro Station. **Parking:** Parking is paid and can be validated at the AIS office reception. We will meet in Room Lake Anne. We hope to see you all there!!!!