Amazon Web Services

This is our regular club meeting with prepared speeches, speech evaluations and "Table Topics" - a chance to practice impromptu speaking. Please arrive from 6:35pm for a prompt 6:45pm start. **Guests are always welcome and it's completely free**, but we do request that you buy drinks at the bar on arrival and during the break to support the venue. ABOUT BLOOMSBURY SPEAKERS Hello! Bloomsbury Speakers is a fun and friendly Toastmasters club near Farringdon in central London. We meet twice a month to improve our communication and public speaking skills by practising in a safe and supportive environment. New guests are always welcome and it's completely free. No need to book in advance (other than to receive a helpful reminder) - just show up on the evening! TYPICAL MEETING AGENDA A typical meeting agenda is as follows: 6:35 Doors open - meet and greet 6:45 Welcome from Club President 6:50 Introductions from Toastmaster and other meeting roles 7:00 Prepared Speeches (from club members) 7:40 Guest Introductions (a quick hello from the guests) Short break for refreshments 8:00 Speech Evaluations (of earlier speeches) 8:15 Table Topics (impromptu speeches of 1-2 minutes each) 8:35 Table Topics Evaluations 8:40 Reports and General Evaluation (of the meeting) 8:55 Awards (best speech, best evaluator, etc.) and announcements 9:00 Meeting close - retire to the bar! COME ALONG TO FIND OUT MORE! Visit our website for more information: https://www.bloomsburyspeakers.org.uk Toastmasters has helped thousands of people overcome nerves and improve their speaking confidence. Come along and find out how! Find your voice at #BloombsurySpeakers!

Join me for a fun Drama class every Monday evening from 6:30 pm- 8:30pm at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham Common. The class helps with confidence, developing awareness of yourself and others, connecting and to simply having fun. No experience is needed. We'll do relaxation exercises, games, improvisations, storytelling, and a bit later on we'll start working on character and text. There will be a little showcase at the end of the year. £10 pounds for the trial class to be paid before or after class. Different payment options if you decide to join. In order to reserve a place, please contact me at catherine@thebrightdaycompany.net. For more info: https://www.thebrightdaycompany.net/about I look forward to seeing you!

Come join CoWork for free weekly co working session in London for anyone who works better alongside others. This Monday we're at The Hoxton Hotel in Shoreditch, a seriously cool space with great WiFi, plugs and even better coffee. Bring your laptop and spend a few hours working alongside other people. No agenda, no networking pressure, totally free. Coming up this April: 📅 13th April — The Hoxton, Shoreditch 📅 20th April — TBC 📅 27th April — TBC All welcome. Just bring something to work on

Bi the Way is a regular social group for bi and pan people (or other bi+ identities) who are over 50. Once run by Opening Doors London, a 50+ LGBT charity, Bi the Way is now continues independently thanks to 2 lovely hosts. It is now on the SECOND Monday of each month at the London LGBTQ Community Centre. There is often a visiting speaker to talk on a relevant topic or a themed discussion planned for the first part. ⚫Accessibility: * Closest station: Blackfriars (southeast exit of mainline station) which is step-free - centre is next to the Tate-side exit * Bus Routes: Blackfriars Road Stop SM - 381, N343, N381; Black Friars station South Entrance Stop D - 40, 63, N63, N89. * Accessible Toilets: No - suggest using Tate Modern (until 6.00 pm) or the Founders arms pub opposite (if after 6.00 pm Mon-Thu) which has a ramp and disabled toilet * Disabled Car Parking: Yes, Blue badge parking space near venue; [click here](https://www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/services/parking/disabled-badge-holders#:~:text=The%20Blue%20Badge%20scheme%20does,with%20disabilities%20who%20are%20permanent) for more details * Car Parking: Street parking on Hopton Street; max stay 2 hours £6.50 per hour * Induction Loop: No * BSL service: No * Step Free access: Yes * Wheel Chair Access: Yes ⚫ Tickets/Registration? There are [Eventbrite events](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/bi-the-way-over-50s-tickets-964380527117) posted for it but signing up for these is not required. ⚫ More Info: To keep up to date with what's happening with the group, please email: [sophiebtwgroup@gmail.com](mailto:sophiebtwgroup@gmail.com) Sadly ODL had to close due a lack of funding ([reference the announcement](https://www.openingdoors.lgbt/News/important-closure-announcement-for-opening-doors) / [archived versions](https://web.archive.org/web/*/https://www.openingdoors.lgbt/News/important-closure-announcement-for-opening-doors*)). The old Bi the Way event details at Opening Doors London website (while the website is still up): [https://www.openingdoorslondon.org.uk/bi-the-way-meetup](https://www.openingdoorslondon.org.uk/bi-the-way-meetup) Venue website: [londonlgbtqcentre.org](https://londonlgbtqcentre.org/)

Ready to ditch the "umms" and conquer your fear of public speaking? 🎤 Then step right up to London Public Speakers (LPS) Toastmasters Club! 🎉 We're a community of awesome people, just like you, who are on a mission to conquer stage fright and unleash their inner speaking superstar! ✨ Think of us as your secret weapon against boring presentations and awkward silences. 🤫 We meet weekly, in person, armed with supportive smiles and helpful feedback, to help you find your voice and own any stage! 💪 We're known for being one of the friendliest and most accomplished clubs in the UK, but don't just take our word for it! Come see for yourself and be amazed 🤩 PLEASE!!! arrive 5-10min before 7:00pm⏰ and stay longer for networking 🍾🍻🥂🍞

This seminar is for improving your communication skills, so you can achieve greater success in life. We will especially focus on a life tool that you can easily learn and use to improve your: - \- Interviews \- Public speaking \- Communication with strangers \- Connection with co\-workers \- Comfort with various social situations\. \- Handling upsets \- Getting along with others better\. \- Meeting new people\. This seminar invites your feedback and input. You could learn some new skills and we would love for you to be able to practice this also. You will learn an amazing life tool that you can put into practice right away! We also offer free one-to-one appointments to be made after the seminar if you require a bit of extra coaching or tips. From the Scientology Life Improvement Centre

Welcome to our April event. We're delighted to welcome [Alex Le Peltier](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-le-peltier/), Chief Technology Officer, Signapse and [Daniel Jones](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljoneseb/), Head of Product, re:cinq. **Alex** answers - “what if AI could sign for the entire world - in real time?” From Heathrow flight announcements to Netflix live streams, find out how Signapse is making accessibility possible at scale on AWS. **Daniel** answers - “how do you turn 100 developers AI-native in just a few weeks?” Daniel reveals the psychology, strategy, and surprising human side behind one of the most ambitious agentic coding rollouts in enterprise tech. A big thank you to our sponsors [The Scale Factory](https://rebrand.ly/scalefactory) and [Cloudscaler](https://rebrand.ly/cloudscaler)! **Programme:** 18:00: Arrival, registration 18:15: Talks start 20:00: Networking with food and a drink provided by the generosity of our sponsors. **Talk 1:** ***Real-Time Sign Language in the Cloud: Building Accessibility Infrastructure on AWS with Alex Le Peltier*** Accessibility is too often an afterthought - bolted on at the end, limited by budget, or simply impossible without a human interpreter in the room. Signapse is changing that. In this talk, Alex Le Peltier, CTO of Signapse, will show how a proprietary GenAI model hosted entirely on AWS is delivering real-time AI sign language at mass-market scale - from live flight announcements at Heathrow to Netflix live streams. By combining AWS infrastructure with custom and public LLMs, Signapse has built a platform that fills the critical gap where interpreters can't be present, freeing up scarce interpreter resources for where they matter most. **Alex** is a serial startup-er and tech leader with over 13 years of experience in both the public and private sectors. He’s passionate about understanding what challenges are faced by the deaf community and building innovative solutions that make a difference in people's lives. **Talk 2:** ***Agentic Coding For 100 Developers with Daniel Jones.*** How has a $3b Stockholm SaaS company transitioned 100 developers to AI-native development over a few weeks? Daniel shares how he helped Odevo with exactly this, but the answer might be more than you expect - it involves just as much discovery and psychology as it does training. Learn about the social and business prerequisites for such a transformation, the syllabus that enables developers to use multi-agent workflows, and how 'one-and-done' training is insufficient for this type of behavioural change. **Daniel** is Head of Product at re:cinq, an AI-native transformation consultancy, and a CTO Craft 100 member. He founded cloud consultancy EngineerBetter, spent six years helping banks, government and defence organisations deliver software faster, then scaled and sold the business. Now he focuses on agentic coding, AI-native engineering, and software factories - with a practical, engineer-first perspective: fix your path to production before you let agents anywhere near it. **Do you have a story to share?** If you are interested in speaking at one of our events, please check out our [call for papers here](https://awsuguk.org/call-for-papers/). We are advocates for greater inclusion & diversity in UK Tech and are especially keen to receive talk submissions from people in underrepresented groups. If you are interested in speaking at a future meetup but would like to discuss what to expect or need assistance, please contact our Inclusion & Diversity Lead Natalie Gray - graynataliej@gmail.com or DM her [@natjgray](https://twitter.com/natjgray) Check out our [website](https://awsuguk.org/) for more information about our community. Remember to follow us [@AWSUserGroupUK](https://twitter.com/AWSUserGroupUK) and on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/aws-ug-uk) for the latest updates, and you can find videos of our past meetups [here.](https://awsuguk.org/our-videos/)

The web is at the heart of our every day lives and we understand now it has enormous sustainability impacts. So what do we do as practitioners, teams and businesses building individual websites or apps? How do we have full confidence that our tech meets our sustainability claims? Adam Newman, Co-founder of Root & Branch is going to address these questions, demystify vendor claims and add some clarity to what it means to build, host and manage a sustainable web estate. Adam is the co-chair of the Green Software Foundation's "SCI for web" project, writing the spec for how to apply the latest ISO standard (ISO 21031:2024) to the web as well as the co-author of a paper on the energy and emissions measurement of websites and cloud applications. He is also a contributer to the W3C Web Sustainability Guidelines and a proud co-organiser of Green Software Brighton. Check out the Green Software Brighton [website](https://greensoftwarebrighton.co.uk/) for links to previous talks. Arrive from 18:00 for pizza and drinks. Event will start at 18:30. We always head for a drink and a chat locally afterwards too. --- ***Thank you to Runway East for use of their space to host our events and to Silicon Brighton and the Green Software Foundation for supporting us.***

**Join us for a hands-on workshop where you'll build an agentic commerce solution and explore how AI agents can discover products and complete payments using Stripe.** **About** Experience a hands-on workshop designed for developers interested in the future of AI-driven commerce and agentic payments. This workshop is the very first time this content has ever been delivered. It is a pilot workshop for Stripe Sessions, and attendees will get early access to technology and workflows that are still very new inside Stripe. The way customers discover and purchase products is shifting from traditional search to LLM-powered agents. In this workshop, you’ll customize an AI agent to become an intelligent shopping assistant capable of discovering products and completing transactions. **Through practical exercises, you will:** * Customize an AI agent for commerce workflows * Implement Shared Payment Tokens (SPT) using the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) * Enable secure payment credential handoff from an AI agent to Stripe * Process payments and perform risk evaluation through Stripe * Build a complete end-to-end agentic commerce experience Because this is a pilot workshop, the content is evolving and highly experimental. Participants will be among the first developers anywhere to build an agentic commerce integration with Stripe. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a fully functioning agentic commerce solution complete with code, equipping you with the skills to build next-generation AI-powered buying experiences. **Attendance & Invitations** ⚡ This is a small, invite-only workshop designed for a very limited group of developers. To keep the session highly interactive, attendance is restricted to a small number of participants, and admission is **by invitation only**. To request an invitation: 1. Join the waitlist to express your interest 2. We will review all waitlist requests 3. Selected participants will be moved to the confirmed list 4. You will receive confirmation once your spot is approved. **Please wait for confirmation before making plans — only confirmed attendees will be admitted.** This approach allows us to create a focused, collaborative workshop environment and ensure the best possible experience for participants. **Schedule** **1:00PM – 1:15PM — Arrival & Welcome** Arrive, grab coffee and refreshments, and make sure you're set up and ready to go. **1:15PM – 4:00PM — Hands-on Workshop** Introduction to agentic commerce and AI-driven purchasing. You'll build a working agentic commerce solution including: * AI agent customization * Agentic Commerce Protocol setup * Shared Payment Token creation * Payment flows through Stripe * End-to-end testing **Requirements** This workshop is designed for developers interested in building AI-powered commerce experiences and agentic payment workflows. Developers should be comfortable with: * Basic JavaScript fundamentals * Using a terminal or command line * Working with APIs * Basic web development concepts No prior AI or Stripe experience is required. **What You'll Need** Laptop and charging cables — no Chromebooks or tablets Code editor and ability to download and install necessary tools Required software: * IDE such as VS Code * [Node.js](http://node.js/) * curl

Join me for a fun Drama class every Wednesday evening from 6:30 pm- 8:30pm at the Omnibus Theatre in Clapham Common. Acting helps with confidence and awareness. In a fun and relaxed atmosphere, you will meet new people and learn all about Acting. No experience is needed. We'll do relaxation exercises, games, improvisations, storytelling, and a bit later on we'll start working on character and text. The year ends with an exciting Showcase where friends and family come and see how all your hard work has paid off :) £10 pounds for the trial class to be paid before or after class. Different payment options if you decide to join. In order to reserve a place, please contact me at catherine@thebrightdaycompany.net. For more info: https://www.thebrightdaycompany.net/about I look forward to seeing you!

We're excited to be back and pleased to say this event is being sponsored by [pgMustard](https://pgmustard.com). On the talks front, we have **Anton Borisov and Vlad Bokov** from Fresha who will take us through how they recently upgraded their fleet with zero-downtime. We will then host our first ever debate, on a topic to be determined! WHERE Join us at **Doggett's Coat and Badge on 14 April from 18:30.** PROGRAM 18:30 Welcome 19:00 Swapping the Elephant Without Breaking the Room: Zero-downtime Major PG upgrades in practice (Anton Borisov and Vlad Bokov, Fresha) - abstract below 19:45 Sandwiches and bar snacks (paid for by our sponsor) 20:00 Debate — topic TBD ABSTRACT **Swapping the Elephant Without Breaking the Room: Zero-downtime Major PG upgrades in practice** Upgrading PostgreSQL across hundreds of production databases without downtime sounds impossible, especially when logical replication slots, Debezium CDC pipelines, and outbox event streams are in play. At Fresha, we faced exactly that: mission-critical workloads still on PostgreSQL 12, and no safe way to reach 17 without freezing the business. This talk walks through how we designed and automated a blue-green upgrade framework using logical decoding, controlled WAL overlap, and connector orchestration. We’ll dive into how Debezium connectors, replication origins, and PgBouncer pools were coordinated to guarantee continuity for both CDC and outbox topics, with rollback and dry-run modes built in. Attendees will learn practical techniques for: * Orchestrating zero-downtime Postgres major upgrades on RDS or self-managed clusters * Managing replication slots and Debezium connectors safely across clusters * Handling sequence alignment, WAL overlap, and connector state transitions * Designing reversible, testable database cutovers This is a practical session from real production experience: no magic tools, just PostgreSQL internals, Debezium, careful planning, and a few well-placed bash scripts. SPEAKERS **Anton Borisov** architects real-time data systems centered on PostgreSQL. At Fresha, he designs zero-downtime migrations, Debezium-based CDC pipelines, and overall data strategy integrating Postgres with Kafka and Flink. His work spans query planning analysis, partitioning and indexing, autovacuum and bloat optimization, and performance tuning under high-concurrency workloads. He also builds downstream lakehouse integrations with Iceberg, Paimon, and StarRocks. Anton publishes technical deep-dives on PostgreSQL internals, streaming infrastructure, and production reliability at medium.com/@borzoniusy **Vlad Bokov** is a Staff Engineer at Fresha working on systems behind activity feeds and communication between partners and customers. He deals with what breaks at scale: PostgreSQL under heavy write load, WAL bottlenecks, replication issues, Kafka pipelines, and zero-downtime migrations. Most of his work is about making production systems behave: fixing what is slow, unstable, or too expensive, and making trade-offs that hold up under pressure. He works across Snowflake, StarRocks, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and Redis, and is currently exploring newer streaming approaches, including Apache Fluss, for real-world workloads. *** THE OFFICIAL BITS The meet-up abides by [PostgreSQL Code of Conduct](https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/coc/). Postgres, PostgreSQL and the Slonik Logo are trademarks or [registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada](https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/trademarks/), and used with their permission.

Script Reading, Improvisation, Voice Projection, Games, Public Speaking and audition techniques will be some of the points covered over the coming terms. Drama is ideal for building confidence, helping with articulation and developing presentation skills. It is also a lot of fun! The classes have built up over the last five years and are run by Mario Renzullo, who was an original member of the famed Anna Scher Theatre and made his professional debut in 1970, and went on to have many lead TV, film and theatre roles. Mario founded the theatrical agency Smart Management, which has been running for over twenty years. The classes are open to a wide age range and welcome those new to acting as well as those with professional acting experience. Typically, between 12 and 20 people join us each week, creating a lively and engaging group dynamic. Venue: The Angel Church, Chadwell Street EC1R 1XA Five minutes’ walk from the Angel tube station. Thursday evenings at 7.00 pm – 8.30 pm. Fee: £10.00 cash per session. For more information, please email your contact details to: [smartmanagement@btconnect.com](mailto:smartmanagement@btconnect.com)

🎉 **Event #23 – The Analytics Engineering Meet-up** 🎉 The London Analytics Engineering Meet-up - Hosted by Monzo! **Speakers:** [Pablo Fernandez](https://www.linkedin.com/in/pablofergui/) \- Head of Data & Analytics Engineering @ Lawhive [Federico Arduini](https://www.linkedin.com/in/federicoarduini/) \- Lead Analytics Engineer @ Checkout\.com 📅 **RSVP opens 27th March** (3.5 weeks before the event). This event will be **over-subscribed**, so set a reminder — you won’t want to miss it! 📍 **Agenda** 6pm – Doors open, networking, food & drinks 7pm – Talks kick off 8:30pm – More drinks & networking @ local pub This is a fantastic opportunity to connect with some of the UK’s top data professionals, share challenges, and exchange learnings. We are always looking to improve the event and get new ideas for talks, if you could please fill out a [feedback form](https://cognifysearch.com/the-london-analytics-engineering-meet-up-feedback-form/), this will help us continue to improve! The **Analytics Engineering Meet-up** is a community for data professionals working with the modern data stack, machine learning or AI. We host regular meet-ups featuring talks from data leaders building and scaling analytics, data platforms, and AI in forward-thinking teams. The community is ideal for Data Engineers, Analytics Engineers, Analysts, and those working in Data Science, Machine Learning, or AI. The **Analytics Engineering Meet-up** is organised by [Cognify](cognifysearch.com) — a specialist recruitment partner for teams working across the modern data stack, machine learning & AI. If you’re looking to hire top data talent or exploring your next move in data, feel free to reach out to the Cognify team — we’re always happy to help and chat through the market. Our sponsor is [Omni](Omni.co), an AI-powered BI platform that helps people use data to do their best work. Whether users prefer AI, Excel, point-and-click exploration, or SQL, Omni enables fast, trusted answers from a governed semantic model. If you’re eager to dive deeper into industry insights, check out ***The Stacked Data Podcast*** for conversations with industry leaders: Listen on: [Spotify](https://open.spotify.com/show/24fIpekn8WfRDZsVHNcf7Q) [Youtube](https://www.youtube.com/@CognifySearch) or [Apple Podcast](https://podcasts.apple.com/us/podcast/the-stacked-data-podcast/id1700301417) Your feedback is so valuable to us, we'd love to hear from you to help us continue to improve, [Feedback Form here](https://cognifysearch.com/the-london-analytics-engineering-meet-up-feedback-form/) **No-Show Policy**: * If you miss **2 consecutive events** or **2 out of 3 events**, you wont be able to attend the next event. We hope you understand this is to keep things fair for venues and other attendees.

We will cover metadata-driven approach to building and operating data pipelines at scale on AWS. Discuss architecture, design trade-offs, and lessons learned from running a unified pipeline across multiple customers using configuration-driven workflows. **Presenter: Dilshad Nasirov** Seasoned Software Architect and cloud practitioner with 20+ years of experience building scalable systems and data platforms. Specializes in AWS, with deep expertise in data lakes, serverless architectures, and real-time data processing. Has led the design and delivery of enterprise-grade solutions across industries, helping organizations improve performance, reduce costs, and unlock data-driven insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilshad-nasirov-4538431/ **CALL FOR SPEAKERS** Learn more: https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/ **THANK YOU** *Leading EDJE* for hosting our meetup! Leading EDJE specializes in helping organizations innovate and solve complex problems. EDJE does this with their "A" player team of professionals using agile methodologies and SCRUM management techniques to give organizations a competitive advantage that sets them apart. Learn more at https://www.leadingedje.com/ **THANK YOU** *Amazon Web Services* for sponsoring pizza! Learn more at https://aws.amazon.com/. **DIRECTIONS** 6515 Longshore Loop, Suite 300 Dublin, OH 43017 (3rd floor) **FREE PARKING** at the Endres Garage across the street, 6540 Riverside Dr, Dublin, OH **Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab for a future meetup?** Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com

Topic to be announced. **CALL FOR SPEAKERS** Learn more: https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/ **THANK YOU** *VEEAM* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Veeam*, please visit their website: https://www.veeam.com/ **DIRECTIONS** 8800 Lyra Dr #450 · Columbus, OH go to 4th floor. **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

Join us for **Ben Frain**'s talk ... Ben's book "Responsive Web Design With HTML5 and CSS" caught my attention (and should interest you as well). Find it here: [https://rwd.education/](https://rwd.education/) ***Bring your laptop and expect to write some (non-AI generated) code!*** Food and drinks will be available. **LOCATION:** 6515 Longshore Loop, Suite 300, Dublin, OH 43017 **FREE PARKING:** 6725 Longshore Street, Dublin, OH 43017

Join the CONNECTED Westerville Mastermind Group for a dynamic afternoon of B2B networking! This event is perfect for professionals looking to expand their business connections, share insights, and foster collaboration within the community. Whether you are a seasoned entrepreneur or just starting out, this event offers a valuable opportunity to exchange ideas, build relationships, and grow your network in a supportive environment. Connect with like-minded individuals, explore potential partnerships, and discover new opportunities for professional growth. Don't miss out on this chance to enhance your business network and take your career to the next level with CONNECTED Westerville Mastermind Group! We meet the 4th Monday of every month from 11am-1pm. Welcome and general networking from 11am - 11:30am with core meeting 11;30 - 12:30 and a final round of networking from 12:30 - 1pm.

We will cover metadata-driven approach to building and operating data pipelines at scale on AWS. Discuss architecture, design trade-offs, and lessons learned from running a unified pipeline across multiple customers using configuration-driven workflows. This is a cross posting, please register on the AWS Columbus Meetup: https://www.meetup.com/columbus-aws-amazon-web-services-meetup/events/313426350/[https://www.meetup.com/columbus-aws-amazon-web-services-meetup/events/313426350/](https://www.meetup.com/columbus-aws-amazon-web-services-meetup/events/313426350/) **Presenter: Dilshad Nasirov** Seasoned Software Architect and cloud practitioner with 20+ years of experience building scalable systems and data platforms. Specializes in AWS, with deep expertise in data lakes, serverless architectures, and real-time data processing. Has led the design and delivery of enterprise-grade solutions across industries, helping organizations improve performance, reduce costs, and unlock data-driven insights. https://www.linkedin.com/in/dilshad-nasirov-4538431/ **CALL FOR SPEAKERS** Learn more: https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/ **THANK YOU** *Leading EDJE* for hosting our meetup! Leading EDJE specializes in helping organizations innovate and solve complex problems. EDJE does this with their "A" player team of professionals using agile methodologies and SCRUM management techniques to give organizations a competitive advantage that sets them apart. Learn more at https://www.leadingedje.com/ **THANK YOU** *Amazon Web Services* for sponsoring pizza! Learn more at https://aws.amazon.com/. **DIRECTIONS** 6515 Longshore Loop, Suite 300 Dublin, OH 43017 (3rd floor) **FREE PARKING** at the Endres Garage across the street, 6540 Riverside Dr, Dublin, OH **Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab for a future meetup?** Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com

The global Azure community is coming together again, and Columbus is officially on the map. View the session lineup and speakers at [Global Azure Columbus 2026](https://coazure.github.io/cbus-global-azure-2026/) On **Saturday, April 18, 2026**, the Azure Columbus Meetup, DevOps Meetup, and Code and Coffee Meetup are hosting our local edition of Global Azure 2026. This is a free, community-driven event packed with learning, networking, and all things Microsoft Azure. Whether you’re building modern cloud-native apps, experimenting with AI agents, deploying containers, automating infrastructure, or just beginning your Azure journey, this event is for you! **What to Expect** * Engaging technical sessions * Real-world Azure architecture & cloud-native patterns * AI, agents, automation, and modern DevOps * Food and drinks (because learning burns calories) * Time to connect with fellow engineers, architects, and cloud enthusiasts **Who Should Attend?** * Software engineers (any language, any stack) * Cloud architects * DevOps engineers * Data professionals * AI explorers * Platform builders * Anyone who loves solving hard problems with great tools If you build, deploy, automate, scale, monitor, or optimize in Azure, you’ll feel right at home. **Why Global Azure?** Global Azure is a worldwide community event where Azure user groups host learning sessions on the same day across the globe. It’s grassroots. It’s technical. It’s practical. And it’s powered by people who genuinely love sharing what they’ve learned. And yes, it’s free to attend!

**PLEASE READ THE FOLLOWING IMPORTANT NOTES:** 1. The dates listed for this series are about 95% reliable. We are completing our 2026 schedule as we speak, so minor adjustments are still occurring. 2. Each class in this series has an attendance fee, though this first offering is free on a first-come, first-served basis. 3. Each class, from BOTH a sign-up and fee perspective, is a separate entity. **Introduction:** HTML5 is the foundational technology for modern web development, serving as the standard markup language for structuring and presenting content on the World Wide Web. Developed through a collaboration between the World Wide Web Consortium (W3C) and the Web Hypertext Application Technology Working Group (WHATWG), HTML5 provides a robust system of elements (tags) that tell a browser how to display text, images, and multimedia in a clear and meaningful way. It works in concert with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) for presentation and JavaScript for interactivity, forming the core technology stack for virtually all websites and many web applications today. One of the significant advancements of HTML5 is the introduction of powerful new features and elements designed to improve functionality and simplify development. Key additions include native multimedia support via the \ and \ tags, allowing developers to embed media without third-party plugins. It also offers new form controls for better user input, such as date and email types, and introduces web storage capabilities to store data offline for enhanced performance. These features streamline the process of building rich, interactive web experiences. A significant focus of HTML5 is enhanced semantics and better structural organization of content. New semantic elements like , , , , and \ provide meaningful structure to documents, which aids in search engine optimization (SEO) and improves accessibility for assistive technologies. These elements define different parts of a webpage (e.g., a header for the top, a nav for navigation links, a footer for the bottom), making the code more readable and understandable for both developers and machines. This emphasis on clear structure helps in creating more logical and maintainable websites. Developing websites in today's competitive environment requires taking advantage of every technique you can to get the maximum exposure possible. Our HTML5 class will not only show you what's new in the HTML specification, but also the best way to develop optimized web pages that get the attention your client and/or company requires. **The breakdown of the four-class series is as follows:** **Class 1: Introduction to Web Structure and Basic HTML5** This class introduces the core concepts of web development, the history of HTML, and the fundamental structure of an HTML5 document. * **Topics**: * **Web Architecture Overview**: How browsers, servers, and web pages interact. * **HTML Fundamentals**: Understanding elements, tags, and attributes. * **Basic Document Structure**: Using !DOCTYPE html, html, head, and body. * **Text Formatting**: Headings (h1 to h6), paragraphs (p), and text-level semantics (e.g., strong, em, br). * **Lists and Links**: Creating ordered (ol) and unordered (ul) lists, and linking between pages using anchor tags (a). * **Activity**: Students create a basic personal webpage containing text, a list of hobbies, and a link to an external website. **Class 2: Semantic HTML5 and Multimedia Integration** Class 2 focuses on modern HTML5 elements that provide meaning (semantics) to content, improving accessibility and search engine optimization. It also covers adding images and multimedia. * **Topics**: * **Semantic Elements**: Understanding and implementing elements like header, footer, nav, section, and article. * **Images**: Adding images using the img tag and attributes like src, alt, width, and height. * **Multimedia**: Embedding audio and video content using the audio and video tags. * **File and Folder Structure**: Best practices for organizing project files and managing file paths. * **Activity**: Students refactor their Class 1 project to use a proper semantic layout and add an image and a link to a video file. **Class 3: Forms and User Input** This session is dedicated to building interactive HTML5 forms, which are essential for capturing user data and input. * **Topics**: * **Form Basics**: Using the form element, action and method attributes. * **Input Types**: Exploring various input types (e.g., text, password, checkbox, radio, date, submit). * **Form Elements**: Utilizing label, textarea, select, option, and button. * **Client-side Validation**: Implementing HTML5 validation attributes like required, minlength, and pattern. * **Activity**: Students build a complete contact form with different input fields, radio buttons, and basic HTML5 validation. **Class 4: Introduction to CSS3 and Basic Styling** The final class introduces Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to style the HTML content and make the web pages visually appealing and accessible. * **Topics**: * **CSS Fundamentals**: The role of CSS, selectors, properties, and values. * **Integrating CSS**: Using inline, internal, and external style sheets. * **The Box Model**: Understanding margin, padding, border, and content for basic layout. * **Basic Styling**: Changing colors, fonts, and text alignment. * **Accessibility Basics**: Identifying principles of web design usability and accessibility, including ARIA labels. * **Activity**: Students apply an external CSS file to their Class 3 form project to style the layout, colors, and fonts, culminating in a well-structured and styled webpage.