Agile and Scrum

**Ever been put on the spot and wished for just a few more seconds to think?** *At this Toastmasters meeting, our Skill Shot presenter and MC will share practical techniques to help you structure your thoughts quickly, respond with clarity, and speak with confidence—no matter the topic.* Impromptu speaking can feel intimidating. Sometimes your mind floods with ideas. Other times it goes completely blank. And occasionally, you’re asked to speak on something you know very little about. The pressure can be real. But here’s the truth: great impromptu speaking isn’t about knowing everything—it’s about knowing how to think. You’ll learn simple, reliable frameworks that help you organise your thoughts instantly, craft coherent responses, and sound composed and credible—even when you’re completely unprepared. By the end of the evening, you’ll be equipped to handle surprise questions, meetings, interviews, and everyday conversations with calm confidence and mental agility. **THIS IS A CURATED GUEST EVENT** Join us tonight at Port Melbourne Toastmasters and discover how to think fast, speak clearly, and turn any unexpected moment into an opportunity to shine. *Guests, Meetup Group members, and visiting Toastmasters attend for free.* 🌐 [www.portmelbournetoastmasters.org](http://www.portmelbournetoastmasters.org) 📍 Where: Find directions [here](https://www.portmelbournetoastmasters.org/directions.html) ***Port Melbourne Toastmasters is a club for people who are serious about developing their speaking, leadership, and personal presence.*** We offer limited, curated guest sessions throughout the year for prospective members. These sessions allow you to experience our high-engagement, growth-focused environment firsthand — without open access to every meeting.

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. We’ll be updating throughout the month with more speakers and our speakers so far this month include: * **Andrew Goifeld, Co-founder, Resilera** **“Truly Well-Architected Reliability, the agentic way”** What is the boundary between effort and cost of reliability? Andrew will discuss how in the future, using chatbot with LLM inference will be too expensive. We will demonstrate current and future approaches to reliability on AWS. * **Saurabh jain, TOTHENEW** **Driving Cloud Cost Efficiency with a Phased FinOps Approach** This session explores how organizations can systematically reduce cloud waste and improve cost efficiency. It highlights common cost pitfalls, actionable optimization strategies, and real-world case studies demonstrating how architectural improvements and governance can deliver significant cloud savings. * **Mystery Speaker** **From hype to disappointment to light at the end of the tunnel; An Agentic AI Journey** In this case study talk, we'll go through all the highs and lows of architecting and building AI Agents using all your favourite tools and what we discovered along the way. 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 :-)

6pm start. $2 gold coin entry per person. Please order dinner at the bar when you arrive and let the staff know you are with the card group in the Dining Room. Meals are served around 7:15pm. Happy Hour drinks are available until 7pm. After a dinner break we shuffle the teams around so you get to meet, and play with new people. Games are played as 4 handed wherever possible, but an occasional 3,5 or 6 handed game is required based on the number of attendees. If you are a beginner or have minimal experience playing 500, please let your host know before starting a game, and feel free to ask them any question. Ahead of the event you might like to download one of the 500 card game apps on your phone to get familiar with the game. There are also some Youtube videos.

Hello everyone! Join us for an Apache Kafka® x Apache Flink® x Apache Iceberg® meetup on **Mar 18th from 5:30PM**, hosted by intelia in Melbourne! The address, agenda, and speaker information can be found below. See you there! **Venue**: intelia L3, 31 Queen St, Melbourne 3000 IMPORTANT: Please note that for security purposes, all attendees are required to sign in at the lobby to get into the building. \*\*\* **Agenda:** * 5:30pm: Doors open * 5:30pm - 6:00pm: Pizza, Drinks, and Networking * 6:00pm - 6:30pm: Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent * 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Paras Sitoula, Technical Lead, Tabcorp * 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Additional Networking \*\*\* **Speaker:** Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent **Talk:** Keeping data private in real-time pipelines **Abstract:** We all love real-time data — clicks, payments, rides, messages — but most of it comes with a catch: it contains personal information we're not supposed to leak, such as names, emails, locations, or even small clues that can identify someone. The challenge: how do we keep streaming data useful and safe at the same time? In this talk, we'll explore practical ways to protect privacy in streaming systems using Apache Kafka, Apache Flink, and Apache Iceberg. We'll cover: - simple tricks like masking and tokenizing PII; - why "anonymous" data often isn't anonymous (the re-identification problem); - techniques like bucketing, k-anonymity, and adding noise; - how to balance privacy with data utility (too much hiding makes data useless). Along the way, we'll look at real-world stories: from public data leaks to surprising deanonymization attacks, and show live demos of pipelines that anonymize data before it's written to storage. If you've ever wondered how to build privacy-aware pipelines, this talk will give you practical patterns you can use right away. **Bio:** Olena is a Staff Developer Advocate at Confluent and a recognized expert in data streaming and analytics. With two decades of experience in software engineering, she has built mission-critical applications, led high-performing teams, and driven large-scale technology adoption at industry leaders like Nokia, HERE Technologies, AWS, and Aiven. A passionate advocate for real-time data processing and AI-driven applications, Olena empowers developers and organizations to use the power of streaming data. She is an AWS Community Builder, a dedicated mentor, and a volunteer instructor at a nonprofit tech school, helping to shape the next generation of engineers. As an international speaker and thought leader, Olena regularly presents at top global conferences, sharing deep technical insights and hands-on expertise. Whether through her talks, workshops, or content, she is committed to making complex technologies accessible and inspiring innovation in the developer community. \-\-\-\-\- **Speaker:** Paras Sitoula, Technical Lead, Tabcorp **Talk:** Building an AI Agent on Kafka — Architectural Realities Beyond the Demo **Abstract:** Large Language Models make it deceptively easy to build an “AI agent”: consume an event, call a model, produce a decision. But when this pattern is introduced into a high-throughput streaming system built on Apache Kafka, the architectural assumptions begin to shift. Kafka is optimized for predictable scaling, low latency, and deterministic event processing. LLM-based agents, by contrast, introduce seconds-level latency, per-call cost, rate limits, and non-deterministic outputs. What appears straightforward in a demo can quickly create consumer lag, cost escalation, replay inconsistencies, and new operational failure modes in production. In this session, we will: * Build a simple event-driven AI agent on Kafka * Examine the architectural tension between streaming systems and LLM workloads * Explore the impact of latency, cost-per-event, backpressure, and rate limiting * Discuss how non-determinism affects replay and auditability * Present practical design patterns to isolate and control AI workloads in streaming environments Rather than focusing on prompt engineering, this talk takes a systems-design perspective. It is aimed at engineers and architects who are experimenting with AI in real-time platforms and want to understand the production trade-offs before deploying at scale. **Bio** Paras is a seasoned software/date engineer with significant experience in developing and optimizing realtime scalable systems. At Tabcorp, Paras leads a high-performing team, developing and optimizing real-time transaction monitoring systems utilizing technologies like Apache Kafka and Neo4j. With a robust background in both real-time and batch data processing, Paras has extensive experience across various platforms and tools, including AWS, Databricks, and Spark, which he leverages to deliver high-performance data solutions. \*\*\* If you would like to speak or host our next event please let us know! community@[confluent.io](http://confluent.io/)

**Pride Film Party: The Princess Bride (1987)** [TICKET LINK HERE](https://www.trybooking.com/events/landing/1521759) The biggest monthly queer movie experience in Melbourne. Check prideofourfootscray on Instagram for the monthly movies details, we're showing iconic queer films all through 2026! There will also be moments of audience participation for the adventourous types, i.e. deliver your favourite line or act out a scene with a mate. Even a song if it's a musical. It's a fun way to enjoy great queer/queer-relevant films with like-minded people.

Integral to the modern data scientists toolkit is understanding how to turn data into decisions. A core part of this is thinking about the end stage of your analysis pipeline, and how the communication and visualisation of your results will factor into decision making. But it's not just enough to deliver a solution. Part of successfully supporting end-user decisions comes from co-design. That means thinking about end user needs and how your end-users will engage with your solution. This talk explores both of these issues using fantasy basketball statistics. So come along if you have a love of data and data-driven decision making. Also come along if you are fan of sports analytics or forecasting.

Hack night is now known as Coding Night!! Let's get together and share what we are working on! This is a combined GDG Melbourne/Flutter Melbourne/CocoaHeads coding night. Members of all three groups will be attending. So only select to ATTEND on one of these groups event pages (not all of them) ! Coding Night is all about everyone learning, collaborating, sharing tips, tricks and very few (if any) presentations. Bring your laptop and a project you are working on or need help with, you can even bring your resume to get advice! Everyone is welcome to our all-ages alcohol-free event. Hosted in a professional environment to allow you to work on your project. Get help from industry experts who are on hand to help you out. Make sure you have your IDE (e.g. Android Studio) of choice already downloaded and installed and something you want to learn or work on. Doors open at 5:45 PM at our host the Mantel Group, Level 2/452 Flinders St Melbourne. Message via Meetup or Slack if you are arriving after 6:00 as the lifts won't let you up. The event will wrap up at 8:30. This is an in-person only event. If you have any accessibility requirements please reach out via the Meetup or Slack to the organiser group to discuss and we will do our best to help you out. Agenda --- Hosted By Katie Barnett, GDE Android / GDG Organiser Katie is passionate about all things Android. She has taken on a wide variety of challenging projects including in the live event, media and travel space. Her favourite thing is to see someone having a delightful experience using something she has worked on. Katie is very active in the development community, she is a Google Developer Expert for Android, one of the organisers of GDG Melbourne and is a Women Techmakers Ambassador. She frequently runs events, speaks on technical and non-technical topics and enjoys writing blog posts to share her experience with others. Katie is based in Melbourne, Australia but loves to travel the world and outside of tech she enjoys boardgaming and attempting to finish many craft projects. Suesi Tran, Senior Flutter Developer Google Developer Expert in Dart, Flutter & Firebase, Women Techmaker Melbourne ambassador, GDG Melbourne & Flutter Melbourne co-organiser. In short: Flutter is love, and mobile is life. Poornima Sivakumar, GDG Organiser Lovee Jain, GDG Organiser Lovee is a Software Engineer at Prezzee, a GDG Melbourne Organiser and also a Women Techmakers Ambassador. A tech inquisitive philomath, she loves problem solving and solution design. She has worked at a city council where she developed a lot of useful system integrations and while at Prezzee she develops and works on multiple gift card solutions to cater the B2B2C market. Zach Jensz, GDG Organiser Passionate about the web, seamless UX and accessibility. I love attending meetups, find me and come say hi! Ujjawal Raj, GDG Organiser Bramley Turner-Jones, GDG Organiser Yuba Raj (UV) Panta, GDG Cloud Organiser Kartik Arora, Android Engineer Google Developer Expert in Android Android Engineer @ Bilue Carolyn Ai Chi Wong, Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-melbourne-presents-gdg-melbourne-march-coding-night-1/.

What the #%\*@ is impact? In a world where corporations are judged on their social impact nations unite over goals for environmental sustainability and happiness is considered as a rival metric for a country’s GDP– organisations need to measure the impact their organisation has on the real-world, not just their own bottom line. But what even IS impact? Is it important for companies that don’t have social or environmental goals? How do you measure it? This workshop will first introduce the concept of Impact, followed by a dive into how it’s defined and measured around the world in a dozen different domains and ultimately how we might apply it to produce products that pack a punch. **Our facilitator** [JJ Monester](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jjmonester/) works as an Associate Product Manager for the non-profit news media company, The Conversation International, a company which democratises knowledge by bridging the gap between academic research and the general public. Having worked on products where providing evidence of Impact to customers is fundamental, he has gone deep into the complex and nuanced world of understanding what frameworks attempt to achieve. Grokking organisational impact is an area of learning JJ could get lost in, and possibly already has :-). As an area that he is spending time on in his day to day, yet still feeling like he’s a beginner, he’s very much looking forward to sharing what’s he learning and getting deeper into the concepts alongside you all. Let’s have fun together. Our wonderful sponsors; [Revity](https://www.linkedin.com/company/revity-group/): Revity helps startups, scaleups and established organisations deliver product-led quality software outcomes. We partner with businesses to build high-performing teams, uplift engineering capability, and deliver product outcomes that last beyond the project.From applied AI and mobile apps to global expansion and customer lifecycle platforms, we focus on practical, scalable solutions that drive business value.At Revity, we don’t just deliver projects, we empower teams to learn by doing, so organisations grow stronger with every engagement. [Amplitude](https://www.linkedin.com/company/amplitude-analytics/): We help companies build better products\. \| We help companies unlock the power of their products\. • Join the team: [http://amplitude.com/careers](http://amplitude.com/careers) • Join the community: [http://community.amplitude.com](http://community.amplitude.com/) • Join our user groups: [https://community.amplitude.com/p/groups](https://community.amplitude.com/p/groups)

Let's go, lesbians! We're celebrating the down under arrival of our sapphic pop star queen Chappell Roan with a night full of themed drag shows and a girly pop dancefloor! [TICKET LINK HERE](https://www.trybooking.com/DJDWH) Come prepared for our Best Dressed competition live on stage and your chance to win a free cocktail! Drag shows by Bettie Rosé, Kat Zowthabag, and Zero. DJ sets by Rosie Rai and Nic Holland. This event is for both sapphics and our allies, all friendly people are welcome! Please note: Pride of our Footscray is located on the first floor of a venue with no elevator and is therefore not accessible by wheelchair. We sincerely apologise for our reduced accessibility.

Join me for a relaxed nature walk along the Maribyrnong River Trail, exploring the section from the Footscray Community Arts Centre to Edgewater and Burndap Park. We’ll allow time to pause along the way and observe birdlife and enjoy the natural environment, and if you enjoy photography, you’re welcome to bring your camera or phone to capture the flora and fauna we encounter along the river trail. Our route takes us past the Heavenly Queen Taoist Temple, and through Newell's Paddock Wetlands Reserve and past Footscray Park. Newell’s Paddock is a conservation area that has been regenerated over the past 30 years from a polluted industrial site into thriving wetlands, where more than 80 bird species have now been recorded. We may also see the local swan family out exploring with their cygnets. [https://www.newellspaddock.org.au/2016/06/07/birds-of-newells-paddock/](https://www.newellspaddock.org.au/2016/06/07/birds-of-newells-paddock/) When we reach Edgewater Marina, we’ll stop to have something to eat or drink. There are two cafés and an Italian deli nearby. From here we will walk through Burndap Park, a revegetated space that provides an important habitat for waterbirds and other native wildlife. The Superb Fairy-wren, the endangered Growling Grass Frog and Spotted Marsh Frog have found a home here. For anyone interested in identifying birdlife and frogs there are many free apps, including [Frog Census ID](https://www.melbournewater.com.au/learn-about/making-difference/citizen-science-waterwatch/frog-census) app and [Merlin Bird ID](https://merlin.allaboutbirds.org/). The Maribyrnong River Trail is flat and well maintained, and this walk is rated easy to moderate. Distance: approximately 7 km Walking time: around 1 hour 45 minutes, with breaks along the way. **Agenda** 2:00 pm – Meet at the Footscray Community Arts Centre (see event photos for a map and meeting point) 2:10 pm – Begin our walk 3:30 pm – Arrive at Edgewater Marina for a break 4:15 pm – Walk through Burndap park 5:15 pm – Arrive back at the Footscray Community Arts Centre **Getting There** If you’re coming by public transport, the Arts Centre is about a 7-minute walk from Footscray Station—head down Bunbury Street and turn left onto Moreland Street. For those driving, there is on-street metered parking as well as a car park at the Arts Centre. **RSVP & Event Notes** Please RSVP by clicking Attend on the event page, and I’ll be in touch with any additional details via direct message. This is a rain or shine event and I add any updates about weather conditions in the Event Comments on the day if needed. *Please note once we meet at 2:00 pm, I will be connecting with guests and unable to respond to direct messages. For anyone running late, I will post a location tracker in the Event Comments so you can find us along the trail.*

Smashing! Try something new Thursday Interactive workshop - Become the charismatic leader Serious about improving your leadership - **Why mess, come to the best** Why is Smashing different to other speaking clubs? Passion!!! 1\. Fast\-paced\, energized and exciting meets 2\. We practice **bold, confident** and **dynamic** leadership! 3. **Everyone talks** multiple times during super-interactive workshops every meet - Plus the chance to speak on the big stage for those that are keen 4. **FAST LEARNING** **Free parking** close-by: O'Connell and Cobden streets **IMPORTANT: Be on time, as doors close when the show starts** “Proudly Australian" – Free-flowing leadership & teamwork Multicultural Hub, 506 Elizabeth St (Opposite Queen Vic Market) Level 1, Purple Room (End of corridor) More to come...

**Details - Coding Night!** Bring your laptop and your iOS, visionOS, macOS, tvOS or watchOS project to the combined CocoaHeads & Android GDG coding night. Everyone is welcome to our all-ages alcohol-free event. Hosted in a professional environment to allow you to work on your project. Get help from industry experts who are on hand to help you out. • What we'll do: We'll help you setup up Xcode and start your first project. We'll help answer your questions re how to get to the next phase of your project. • What to bring: Your laptop, a copy of Xcode, a project you'd like to hack on. Before arrival, make sure you're grabbing a fresh copy of Xcode from the Mac App Store (Apple Menu then App Store then search for Xcode, Install. Link: https://itunes.apple.com/au/app/xcode/id497799835?mt=12) Doors open at 5:45 PM at our host the Mantel Group, Level 2/452 Flinders St Melbourne. Message via Meetup or Slack if you are arriving after 6:00 as the lifts won't let you up. The hack night will wrap up at 8:30.

To join this trip, visit http://roc.org.au/trips/trip-info/?trip_id=5907 and click 'Join trip' at the bottom of that page. Do you love cheese grating down granite slabs and plunging into icy cold alpine lakes? Then this is the trip for you! I'm running a Mount Buffalo Trad weekend trip from Friday the 20th to Sunday the 22nd of March 2026. To attend this trip, you need to be a trad leader with the club- also keep in mind the easy trad is a bit tougher than the easy trad at Arapiles. I've booked three campsites at the beautiful Lake Catani campground from Friday to Sunday- I'll likely drive up after work on Friday but people are welcome to drive up earlier in the day! See you all there! ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ How to join this trip, run by the ROC (RMIT Outdoors Club): Step 1: If you're not already a member of the RMIT Outdoors Club (roc.org.au), goto the link and sign up (https://roc.org.au/how-we-work/how-to-join/). Membership is $35 for students, $70 for non-students (half-year memberships are also available) Step 2: Sign up to the trip via their site (http://roc.org.au/trips/trip-info/?trip_id=5907) to secure your place, and so we've got your details for the trip Step 3: During the week prior to the trip, the trip organiser will get in touch (usually via email) to organise car-pooling, and finalise the trip details ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Equipment / What you need to bring; If you need camping/cooking/sleeping equipment for overnight trips, the gear-room at the RMIT Outdoor Club has everything you might need as well (https://roc.org.au/how-we-work/how-to-hire-gear/). As a bonus, membership also includes access to discounts at climbing gyms, gear and other bonus goodies! (roc.org.au has more details!) Please read the description above for specifics on equipment required - as a minimum, the climbing gear needed for outdoor trips includes a harness, climbing helmet and climbing shoes ------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------ About ROC: Find out more about us, and what we're about here: https://roc.org.au/how-we-work/ Check us out on Facebook here; https://www.facebook.com/groups/RMITOutdoorsClub/ ... or https://www.facebook.com/groups/638757456179118/ for our climbing specific group Feel free to jump onto the facebook group and let us know if anyone has any questions -- the trip leader (see the link at the top of the page) is always happy to help

Would you like to enhance your creativity, confidence and increase your awareness? We’d love you to join us to Thoughtstorm® the topic International Day of Happiness in the warm, friendly environment of the Yarraville Community Centre. How Thoughtstorm came about Thoughtstorm is a technique developed from a seed of speculation: are there more effective (rational, cooperative, compassionate) ways of thinking? Methods whose long-term consequences will not lead to oblivion. This is the genesis of Thoughtstorm. What is it? For anyone with an interest in leadership, deeper conversations or creative problem solving, something much more than a group discussion occurs. What is experienced in Thoughtstorm is a forgotten sensory ability - mind-linking. An evolution in human thinking and learning. The direction moves from a narrow range of possibility into discovering corecepts, when individual minds merge into a much more powerful collective awareness and experience a deeper, more compassionate comprehension of reality. Corecepts trigger intuitive recognition and agreement by the group, a ‘Why, of course!’ reaction. New insights guaranteed! Because this process taps into abilities already present in the human mind and into aggregates of consciousness straining to express themselves, very little practice is required. Would you like to see and understand things in a way that is new for all of us? Would you like to develop your consciousness and your creative intelligence? Would you like to be inspired to create positive change? Then come and join us to Thoughtstorm together. If it’s your first time to Thoughtstorm, please RSVP early to give plenty of time to arrange a brief prep call on Zoom to go over the Thoughtstorm procedures so we can all get started on time together. **Agenda:** 6.30pm - Arrive, meet and greet, read over Thoughtstorm instructions 6.45pm - Begin the Thoughtstorm 7.45pm - Finish When you RSVP we will be in touch with the details. We look forward to seeing you there! Thoughtstorm® is a registered trademark of Star's Edge, Inc. All rights reserved.

Come chat about Atlassian tools and best practices at the Nationwide Sunny Street Cafe and Breakfast is on Atlassian! Let's get the day started off with breakfast with your ACE Leaders! We're always excited to talk about Atlassian Products, share our knowledge and hand out swag! Come chat with us about new product news and anything you are working on within the Atlassian product stack. This is a great opportunity to come see what we are all about, hear new business news and share with other Atlassian users your questions and experiences. We'd love to see new and old friends come out to chat and learn about Atlassian! Agenda --- Moderators Kimberly Deal - Columbus Atlassian User Group Leader Kevin Stanley - Columbus Atlassian User Group Leader Hosted By Kimberly Deal, Atlassian User Group Leader Kevin Stanley, Chief Everything Greg Sprowls, Agility Lead --- Global Partner Atlassian (http://atlassian.com) Millions of users globally rely on Atlassian products every day for improving software development, project management, collaboration, and code quality. Partner Atlassian --- For over a decade, Atlassian customers have come together to network, share ideas, solve problems, and find new ways to use Atlassian products. Today, more than 15,000 people take part in Atlassian community events in more than 30 countries. --- Complete your event RSVP here: https://ace.atlassian.com/events/details/atlassian-columbus-presents-rise-and-shine-with-atlassian-downtownnationwide-22/.

Join other experienced and aspiring agile coaches and professionals to: * develop and practice your coaching skills in a peer-to-peer environment * share current successes and challenges in your work environment and get support from each other * learn from each other, build better relationships and experiment with new ideas

Discover Kiro, AWS’s innovative development environment that adapts to your workflow. Whether you prefer specification-driven development or a more intuitive, vibe-based approach, Kiro empowers you to build applications your way. In this session, speakers will explore Kiro’s core functionality and its evolution through re:Invent 2025, along with demonstrations of prompts used to create APIs, hooks, and steering documents. In the latter part of the session, watch as we build a complete example from scratch, showcasing Kiro’s agentic AI workflow in action for spec-driven development and vibe coding. What You'll Learn - Core Kiro concepts and development philosophy Feature evolution: pre and post re:Invent 2025 Practical examples: API creation, hooks, and steering docs Live coding demonstration with real-time problem solving Who Should Attend - Developers, solutions architects, and technical leaders interested in modern AWS development tools and AI-assisted coding workflows. **Speakers Bio:** Matthew Jorat: Matthew Jorat is a Customer Solutions Manager at AWS with nearly three decades of expertise in AI, cloud transformation, migration, modernization, IT, technology, and business. His career spans infrastructure engineer, solutions architect, security auditor, customer success director, support and services director, and operations officer. He was an early adopter of AWS services as a customer, and his current role at AWS uniquely blends his technical and business skills as he partners with executive teams to translate strategic priorities into measurable business outcomes through cloud adoption, AI implementation, and operational excellence. Matt leads end-to-end AI initiatives for enterprise customers, identifying high-impact use cases and maintaining relentless focus on measurable ROI. He holds eight AWS certifications and serves as Adjunct Professor at Franklin University teaching cloud computing and AWS architecture. His expertise encompasses GenAI, agentic AI systems, migration, modernization, and optimization strategies that drive transformation at scale. [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattjorat/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattjorat/) Girish Bhatia: Girish Bhatia is a seasoned technology delivery leader with deep expertise in cross-domain program management. He holds multiple AWS certifications, including AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, AWS Certified Developer – Associate, and AWS Generative AI Practitioner, and is also an AWS Community Builder. Girish brings over two decades of experience in the information technology industry. Throughout his career, Girish has led major technology-driven business transformation from modernizing on-premises applications to driving large-scale cloud migrations. His work includes API-based integration platforms, data-center and mainframe modernization, and enterprise cloud adoption initiatives. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Girish works at a tech-forward fintech company. He is passionate about AWS serverless architectures, Generative AI and emerging cloud technologies. An avid learner and builder, he continues to explore and apply the latest innovations in AWS to help organizations accelerate their digital transformation. https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishbhatia/[https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishbhatia/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishbhatia/) **THANK YOU** *Franklin University* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Franklin University*, please visit their website: https://www.franklin.edu/ **DIRECTIONS** Franklin University Fisher Hall 300 E. Main St, Columbus, OH 43215 Map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jxjBA2hUmS5qrvhq8 Parking is FREE! Please park in Lot C in front of Fisher Hall. See attached map. NOTE: Map the address only. When mapping with Google Maps it may use the Fisher Hall at OSU, which is NOT correct. **Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab?** Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com

**Important time note:** Please plan on arriving between 5:30 and 6:00 as the elevators lock after 6 and you'll need to message us and we'll need to come get you. The building address is 4450 Bridge Park The entrance is 6620 Mooney St, Suite 400 **Abstract** Web Forms gave .NET developers a powerful abstraction for building reusable UI controls long before design systems were a thing. Web Components finally bring that same idea to the browser natively. This session explores how the Web Forms mindset translates into Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, and HTML templates. We’ll examine how Web Components enable design systems that work across frameworks, how they differ from server‑driven controls, and why they’re becoming a foundational layer for modern UI. Whether you’re maintaining legacy apps or building greenfield projects, you’ll leave with a practical understanding of how to apply familiar patterns in a modern, standards‑based way. **YouTube Link** TBA

Want to be a speaker? submit your talk to our Call for Presenters!!! https://sessionize.com/cbus-hug-2026/

Builders, creators, architects, admins, consultants - come one, come all. This one's for you. We're bringing a little friendly competition to the Columbus ServiceNow community while highlighting the cool things people have built on the platform. Five presenters will take the stage to showcase something they've built, solved, designed, or imagined on the ServiceNow platform - and a panel of judges (plus YOU, our amazing audience) will score them live. So basically, America's Got Talent but make it ServiceNow's Got Talent. Bring a notepad if you'd like 'cause you'll definitely be learning something new. Each presenter gets 10 minutes max to wow the crowd with: • A demo • A real-world business solution • A bold idea • A UX transformation • Or a creative use of the platform Judging Criteria: 🏆 Business Value 🚀 Innovation ✨ User Experience This event is about celebrating ideas, sharing knowledge, and showing how ServiceNow can drive both business impact and meaningful user value. Come learn. Come support. Come get inspired. Refreshments and bites will be provided. And maybe next time… you’ll be on stage.