ASP.NET

Hi UmbLondoners, In honour of [NDC London](https://ndclondon.com/) we are hosting a little get together near the Queen Elizabeth II Centre in Westminster, where the event is. The Umbraco folks at NDC will be joining us so it's your chance to talk to some of the maintainers of the project! If you've never been to one of these types of meetups before, our 'social' events are relaxed, informal evenings. We meet in a designated pub and talk Umbraco, .NET, community activities and more. People are responsible for paying for their own drinks and food (if wanted). We just promise to provide a friendly welcome! We've chosen The Old Star 66 Broadway City-Of-Westminster Greater London England SW1H 0DB Its nearby and hopefully it has no special events on! Please sign up if you think you'll be joining the fun so that we can ensure that we have booked a space big enough for us! Hope to see you all there! While you are here, we need your input to help make Umbraco London better. Please take a moment of your time to answer a few questions. [Umbraco London Meetup Questionnaire](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfISk1q_ZEoN82_vhiBeWwuVG3fUUB4uqkK-PqWtArajUErJw/viewform) Thanks

**Kindly note that this is a paid event and the average number of attendees for our events is 60-70 people. You can register on [https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/startup-networking-event-london-featuring-live-elevator-pitches-tickets-1978820575610?aff=meetup](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/startup-networking-event-london-featuring-live-elevator-pitches-tickets-1978820575610?aff=meetup)** Network with startups, founders & investors at Founders Connector® 15th Edition – grow, pitch & connect in London Join the **19th edition of Founders Connector®**, London’s leading **startup and entrepreneur networking event** designed for **founders, business owners, directors, and investors**. This exclusive event helps you **build connections, find funding, pitch ideas, and grow your business** in today’s competitive landscape. **This is your chance to:** * **Fuel your entrepreneurial spirit:** Be inspired by success stories and cutting-edge ideas. * **Gain a competitive edge:** Develop your business acumen and refine your strategies. * **Expand your network:** Connect with key players in the business ecosystem. * **Find funding:** Meet with potential investors and learn how to secure capital. This event isn't just about inspiration (although there'll be plenty of that!). It's about equipping you with the tools and connections to **turn your business dreams into reality**. **Entrepreneurs & Aspiring Business Owners:** * **Validate your idea:** Get valuable feedback from experienced founders and investors. * **Develop a winning business plan:** Learn how to craft a compelling roadmap for success. * **Find your tribe:** Network with like-minded individuals who share your passion and vision. The format of the evening is pure networking. 24 hours before the event, we will create a whatsapp group so that you can start interacting with other attendees of the event. We strongly recommend early booking for this event, which we expect to be sold out in advance. ### **Event Host** ### The event is hosted by [Jim McLaughlin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-mclaughlin-b227975/ "https://www.linkedin.com/in/jim-mclaughlin-b227975/"), a successful entrepreneur with 35+ years of experience building and exiting multiple businesses, is hosting this event as an FSB Membership Advisor to share insights and showcase the essential support services available to help fellow business owners and entrepreneurs thrive. The [Federation of Small Businesses](https://www.fsb.org.uk/ "https://www.fsb.org.uk/") (FSB) is the UK's leading business organisation providing essential membership benefits including networking, legal protection, business insurance, financial expertise, and advocacy support, helping over 165,000 small businesses and self-employed individuals across the UK grow and succeed. ### **Event Details** * **7:00 PM**: The event starts with free format networking, the event is fully hosted. * **8:00 PM:** Elevator pitches and then more free format networking * **WhatsApp Group**: Enhance your connections before and after the event by joining our exclusive attendee WhatsApp group. To join, send a WhatsApp message to 07789740193 with your full name after purchasing your ticket. **Event Disclaimer** Please note that photos and videos may be taken during this event. These may be used on our social media channels and promotional materials to showcase our events. If you prefer not to appear in any photos or videos, please inform the event host upon arrival, and we will ensure your preference is respected. Thank you for your understanding and cooperation. * [United Kingdom Events](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom/events/) * [Greater London Events](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--greater-london/events/) * [Things to do in London](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/ttd/united-kingdom--london/) * [London Networking](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/networking/) * [London Business Networking](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/business--networking/) * [#investor](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23investor/) * [#startup](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23startup/) * [#entrepreneur](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23entrepreneur/) * [#networkingevent](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23networkingevent/) * [#founders](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23founders/) * [#businessnetworking](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23businessnetworking/) * [#business_growth](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23business_growth/) * [#startup_business](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23startup_business/) * [#startup_event](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23startup_event/) * [#startup_networking](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/d/united-kingdom--london/%23startup_networking/)

We're back for 2️⃣ 0️⃣ 2️⃣ 6️⃣ !! This month we are focusing on **Code Components** and **Bootstrapping Design**. The **London Webflow Meetup** is an informal monthly format to give anyone interested in Webflow the opportunity to meet and mingle in-person with real life 'Webflow'ers'! Whether you're a beginner or an experienced professional, this event is a fantastic opportunity learn more about Webflow in the real world and to network with like-minded individuals. 🕰️ **SCHEDULE** **6.15pm:** drinks + mingle **6.30pm**: welcome and announcements. **6.45pm:** presentations **1️⃣ [Liam McCabe](https://www.linkedin.com/in/liampmccabe/)**, Co-founder, Code & Wander **\- Create Code Components with Claude** In this interactive session, we’ll explore how to use Claude as a practical partner when creating reusable code components. We’ll move beyond prompts and theory, focusing on real workflows you can apply straight away. We’ll cover how to: •⁠ ⁠Brief Claude effectively to generate clean, maintainable code •⁠ ⁠Iterate on components collaboratively, refining structure and behaviour •⁠ ⁠Deploy to Webflow Cloud and use the component in the designer •⁠ ⁠Spot limitations, edge cases, and when human judgement still matters The session is hands-on and discussion-led, with room to test ideas, ask questions, and adapt examples to your own projects. You’ll leave with a clearer approach to using AI to support component-based development. **2️⃣ [Rachel Ilan Simpson](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rachelilan/)**, Freelance Product Designer - **From 0 to Scale: Bootstrapping Design at Startups & Scale-ups** How do you set up design for success in a fast-moving startup? And how do you scale it when the company grows? I’ve tackled both challenges - bootstrapping design as the first hire at an early-stage startup and leading design transformation at a scale-up. In both cases, my playbooks were informed by my time at Google. I’ll cover: •⁠ ⁠Bootstrapping with component libraries to speed up design and engineering •⁠ ⁠Tools to build a culture of cross-functional collaboration •⁠ ⁠Adapting design systems and processes as the company scales •⁠ ⁠Defining and executing a design vision to turn the ship •⁠ ⁠Hiring: from making the first design hire to scaling a team **8.00pm**: social at The Old Fountain 🌍 **LOCATION** Beyond, Level 2, **The Bower Building**, 207 Old St, London EC1V 9NR Main building entrance closes at 7pm! 1 minute walk from Old Street tube station. Take the MAIN tube station exit. Entrance to The Bower building is down a side street next to the Wagamama restaurant. **📺 Live steam!** Can't make it in person? Then tune into our new live stream. **[https://www.youtube.com/live/r6Qlzz-h44o](https://www.youtube.com/live/r6Qlzz-h44o)** and make sure you hit the **Notify Me** bell! 🎥 **MEDIA RELEASE** ​By attending, you understand and accept that portions of the event may have audio/photo/video-recorded and/or live-streamed and may be used by the organisers. You agree that the organisers have the right and permission to use and publish such media for any purpose in any format, including online and offline, now and ever after, without further compensation, permission, or notification. You understand that all official recordings from the event are the exclusive property of the organisers, available under the Creative Commons Attribution­ShareAlike license for general use, and you do not ask for nor expect compensation or notification of the use of official recordings or photographs in which you appear or speak. Please inform an organisational team member at the event's start if you do not wish to appear in photos or videos. ✊ **CODE OF CONDUCT** Finally, in attending this event you are agreeing to the [Webflow Community Code of Conduct](https://webflow.com/community/code-of-conduct).

Register via: [https://clpnjan2026.eventbrite.co.uk](https://clpnjan2026.eventbrite.co.uk) Paid Event

We are back to it after a much needed break & we're kicking things off with a London.js fan favourite... Join us, **London.js,** on **Wednesday 28th January** from **6pm-8.30pm** hosted at **Accurx**, sponsored by **Flagsmith** 📣 Register now to avoid disappointment as London.js access is limited and spaces fill fast! Doors open at 6:00pm, talks will start at 6:30pm, ends 8.30pm ish. Address - 7 Curtain Rd, London EC2A 3LT Map - [https://maps.app.goo.gl/wqccD89qckbsuWz67](https://maps.app.goo.gl/wqccD89qckbsuWz67) 🎤 **Our** **January Talks** 🎤 **Vahid Mohammadi** - *Lead Frontend Engineer at Accurx* \- 'Visualising and Enabling Code Migrations at Scale' Migrating large codebases is challenging. This talk explores how we built tooling to make migrations visible and actionable: custom linting tools to detect deprecated patterns, migration dashboards to track them, and GitHub annotation integration to catch issues in PRs without failing CI during the migration. **Kyle Johnson** - *Co-Founder at Flagsmith* \- 'Feature Flags: A Safety Net in the AI Era' AI's promise - speed and efficiency - is only half true. It's fast, but it's not efficient. Teams still need to comb through, test, and fix AI-assisted code in order to minimise risk. Without feature flags, the bottleneck simply moves. Learn how developers can implement release strategies that remove that bottleneck. **Elena Calvo Carazo** - *Software Engineer at TryHackMe* \- 'Models Gone Rogue: Securing AI Integrations' Your AI features work great... until someone tries to hack them. Unlike traditional REST calls, natural language inputs and unpredictable model outputs expand the attack surface in ways developers don't expect. This talk explores four real-world vulnerability categories (prompt injection, malicious output, denial of wallet, and data spillage) and practical defence-in-depth techniques you can start implementing today to prevent them. **Our Hosts** **Accurx** is on a mission to make healthcare communication simple. The platform is used by thousands of healthcare teams across the NHS to connect with patients and colleagues quickly and securely. With a strong engineering culture and a modern tech stack, Accurx is solving complex problems that have a real impact on people's lives. **Our sponsor** **Flagsmith** is an open source feature flag tool. Use Flagsmith to ship faster and control releases with feature flag management. Roll out, segment, and optimise—with granular control. Use our hosted API, deploy to your own private cloud, or run on-premise. **[Find Flagsmith on GitHub](https://github.com/flagsmith/flagsmith)** or **[learn more](https://www.flagsmith.com/)**. Come to **London.JS** & learn more about the changing face of JavaScript across all industry landscapes. We're a very inclusive meet-up representing a diverse community of awesome engineers 🤖🌈🦄 About the **London.JS** organisers... **James McLeod**, Open Source Program Lead, NatWest Group [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmcleod/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jamesmcleod/) **Jordan Potts**, Head of Contract, Albany Growth [https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-potts-albany/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jordan-potts-sr2/) **Will Laing**, Co-Founder, Plan:it [https://www.linkedin.com/in/willhlaing/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/willhlaing/) [https://weareplanit.com/](www.weareplanit.com) *🍕🥤 **Refreshments*** * A variety of food & drink will be served. We will endeavour to cater for allergies & dietary requirements. This won't just be pizza & beer either... ***Things to note*** * A desire to explore JavaScript from different points of view is absolutely recommended * Feel free to bring your JS projects along * All engineering levels are welcome * Please RSVP to secure a place * Please ask plus 1's to sign up to the group & RSVP * Spaces are limited so techies will get priority \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- • Code of conduct: [http://confcodeofconduct.com](https://confcodeofconduct.com/) \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-

**Join fellow Airflow enthusiasts and leaders at Salisbury House for an evening of engaging talks, great food and drinks, and exclusive swag!** **We'll start you off with a deep dive into the Airflow 2026 survey results, and finish off with a community member presentation on the Apache TinkerPop provider.** **PRESENTATIONS** ***Talk #1: The State of Apache Airflow® 2026*** * **Speaker**: [Ash Berlin-Taylor](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ashberlin-taylor/), Director of Airflow Engineering at [Astronomer](https://www.astronomer.io/) & Apache Airflow PMC Member Apache Airflow® continues to thrive as the world’s leading open-source data orchestration platform, with 30M downloads per month and over 3k contributors. 2025 marked a major milestone with the release of Airflow 3, which introduced DAG versioning, enhanced security and task isolation, assets, and more. These changes have reshaped how data teams build, operate, and govern their pipelines. In this session, our speaker will share insights from the State of Airflow 2026 report, including: * Latest trends in how teams are using Airflow today * What’s next for the project and ecosystem * A discussion of emerging best practices and evolving use cases Join us to hear directly from a leader in the community and discover how to get the most out of Airflow in the year ahead. ***Talk #2: Building the Apache TinkerPop Provider for Airflow*** * **Speaker**: [Ahmad Farhan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/atfarhan/), Data Engineer Graph databases are powering everything from recommendation engines to fraud detection, but integrating graph operations into modern data pipelines has often required custom code and workarounds. Earlier this year, Ahmad built a new Apache TinkerPop provider for Airflow, making it easier than ever to orchestrate Gremlin queries, manage graph workloads, and connect Airflow to TinkerPop-enabled systems. In this session, you’ll learn: * What the TinkerPop provider does and why it matters for graph-based workloads * How to run Gremlin queries and manage graph jobs directly within Airflow * Real examples from the development process, including design decisions and lessons learned * How this provider opens the door for new use cases in graph analytics and data engineering Join us to explore how Airflow and TinkerPop can work together to streamline graph workflows and unlock new patterns in modern data pipelines. **AGENDA** * **5:30-6 PM:** Arrivals, networking, food & drinks * **6-7:05PM:** Presentations * **7:05-8PM:** Networking

PEL Network helps you connect with the right people at luxurious locations. So you can boost your business ten fold. We welcome neuroscientists, psychologists, neurotech professionals, entrepreneurs, investors, business leaders and professionals from various fields. We always choose the luxurious hotel lounges all around London so you can network in peace and focus. We make sure you feel comfortable and fulfill all of your needs. Our locations are at the heart of central london so it's easy for you to travel to and from. Food and drinks are also available at our venues. For our event, we have reserved an area of the venue so that we can mix and mingle and meet old and new friends, new contacts, and new clients too! We encourage everyone to talk to as many people in the event as possible. That said, once you feel a certain chemistry or opportunity with someone, we encourage to talk with them on a deeper level. We forget about 90% of people after a goodnight sleep. However when we establish an emotional resonance with someone, they will remember us the next day. Program: The evening's format is designed for networking in a relaxed setting, providing an opportunity to meet fellow business leaders, entrepreneurs, and investors. We emphasize building genuine relationships on a personal level. I will be there to help with introductions and get over the barrier of anxiety when approaching someone you don't know. How many people are attending? The venue has a capacity limit of 80 guests, and due to the popularity of our events and the unique ambiance of the location, we anticipate this event will reach full capacity quickly. We strongly advise securing your reservation early to ensure attendance. If you haven't gotten a ticket, you can pay when you arrive but it will be 50% more expensive than buying it in advance. Our events achieve success through a straightforward yet impactful strategy. A few days prior to the event, we establish a WhatsApp group for attendees interested in pre-event networking, enabling participants to arrange meetings both for the event day and beforehand. On the day of the event, you will experience a relaxing atmosphere with a hospitable and encouraging community. Dress code: business casual (no trainers, no jeans) Refund policy: Advance purchase tickets are offered at a discounted rate compared to those bought on the event day. Please note, these tickets are non-refundable but can be transferred to another individual of your choosing. PEL Network Membership: If you buy the yearly membership for our PEL Network you will receive the following benefits. 1. All the events are free for the whole year. 2. Join the members only community chats and events. 3. One free Motivational Profile Test 4. One free Sensory Personality Test 5. One free book a month (from our collections) 6. Free Consultation for your business growth, marketing, employee engagement and sales.

New year, new events, and the same great community! We’re kicking off our 2026 socials next week and we are happy to say that the organisers from **Swift Craft** will be joining us for our meet-up on **Thursday, 29th January**. Whether you’re planning your conference calendar, want to chat with some of the people shaping our community, or want to catch up after the winter break, this is the perfect way to start the year. We hope to see you there!

PLEASE NOTE NEW TIME OF 2 Hrs +. 19.:30 - 22:00PM PLEASE MAKE PAYMENT AT TIME OF BOOKING. PAYMENT BY BANK TRANSFER, DETAILS BELOW. NO CASH PAYMENTS_. Your space is not guaranteed until payment is received. Welcome back....Please note our sessions have now returned to Park View. Thankyou to all those members old and new who continued to come and support and play fantastic games of badminton. We welcome you all back. **Please note moving forward the sessions will be pay before play, regardless of whether you pay online or cash in person** Join us for friendly, competition badminton with like-minded enthusiasts. We have sole use of four courts. Players do not have to attend for the entire duration however the price is the same. Please note we limit the amount of attendees to 24 so that everybody gets a fair number of games. Play is from 19:30pm to 22:00pm The cost is £15 per session, which includes feather shuttles. Please pay via bank transfer to the following account: L Samuels Sort code: 040004 Account number: 99854842 Please include your name and date as reference. If you do not show without notice we reserve the right to charge a full non-attendance fee and persistent offenders may be blocked from our club. So please be thoughtful and let us know in good time if you cannot attend. **Rules of attendance/Disclaimer**. Park View Badminton Club exists purely to offer an opportunity for like-minded players to exercise, play and socialise together and nothing more. All attendees should consider the club as an informal gathering of people who will train together in a loosely structured format. The club is operated and managed by a number of volunteers in their free time and these volunteers cannot accept any responsibility for any events that occur at the club. If you have any medical conditions that could affect you, it’s your responsibility to make the club aware of these. Neither the club nor Park View School will take responsibility for any injury, loss or damage that might arise as a result of participation in club activities. Effective warmup and stretches should be undertaken before play to avoid injury and appropriate clothing and footwear is to be worn whilst playing at all times. Every person attending the club must take full and complete responsibility for their own actions. Know your limits! The club does not discriminate against any attendees of ethnicity, nationality, sexual orientation, religion or beliefs, sex or disability except as a necessary consequence of the requirements of safely training and participating in the required sport. All attendees are expected to behave with mutual respect and in a way that does not endanger others or bring the club into disrepute. Not complying with this may result in suspension or termination of attendance. Any matters of concern should be directed to the administrators via email (parkviewbclub@gmail.com).

**BOOK HERE**: https://sportas.co.uk/games/44631 **Game Description:** This is a new series to align with our belief, that to be a good volleyball player you must be a good all around Volleyball Player. The focus of these sessions are: \- Ball control \- all phases of the game \- Decision Making \- Team work \- Problem Solving Structure 1-hr Technical Training 1-hr Game Like Drills Coach - Kai Dugquem Kai brings a wealth of knowledge having coached NCAA Division 1 at Long Island University in New York. He currently assists at Malory Eagles in the Super League and plays with Westminster College. He will be a tremendous asset to Roots and in your Development. **Rules** These sessions are not for beginners, meaning you should understand 5-1 rotations and have a grasp on the fundamentals of the game. Check our guide here for more information: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ap4Ok9A7PbJznoaPa56q9MvyliYGuRlXZuuEX2G3mJg/edit?usp=drivesdk

Join us for some fun, competitive, but friendly games at our 4-court sports hall. We use Yonex Mavis 600 Nylon shuttles during the 2-hour session. **PAYMENT** * **Session Fee: £9** * We are cashless, kindly pay the session fee **by 5pm** on the session day. You are welcomed to pay early! You can even pay when you book! * If no payment is received by 5pm on the session day, you may be removed from the list to allow for someone on the waitlist to take the spot * Please use **“your meetup name + date of event”** as payment reference * **Account name:** Thomas Lam * **Sort code:** 04-00-03 * **Account number:** 7478 8608 **LATE CANCELLATION OR NO-SHOW** * **All** **no-shows or late cancellations** (24 hrs or less) will be charged if your spot is not taken by someone else - you will have a title next to your name with the amount and date owed. * Members with 2 no shows/late cancellations will be removed from the group unless outstanding payment is received * **The late cancellation policy** is set up to discourage last-minute cancellations and therefore applies with or without the presence of a waitlist * **Note:** If you are on the Waitlist and a spot becomes available, you will automatically be bumped onto the On list provided the event has not yet started. It is your responsibility to **remove yourself from the waitlist** if you can no longer make it to avoid being charged a no-show if someone cancels late. **PLAYING** * Please wait to be marked off before entering the hall. * Sessions are to finish promptly on the hour by school requests. * If you finish a match with 5 minutes to go, please start packing up instead of starting a new game. **RACKET HIRE** * Please note that we won't be hiring out rackets, so kindly bring your own racket. **PARKING** * There is parking available, but it is now paid parking. Parking is opposite the entrance. Please check the signs for parking payment instructions. **TRACK & TRACE** * We will collect your phone number on-site. Your phone number will also be used in case of fire to contact you if you have not made it to the fire evacuation areas. You can see maps at the venue. We are excited to see you guys on the court! Team LSBC

Join us for some fun, competitive, but friendly games at our 4-court sports hall. We use Hybrid Kawasaki Kong 500's during the 3-hour session. **PAYMENT** * **Session Fee: £12** * We are cashless, kindly pay the session fee **by 5pm** on the session day. You are welcomed to pay early! You can even pay when you book! * If no payment is received by 5pm on the session day, you may be removed from the list to allow for someone on the waitlist to take the spot * Please use **“your meetup name + date of event”** as payment reference * **Account name:** Thomas Lam * **Sort code:** 04-00-03 * **Account number:** 7478 8608 **LATE CANCELLATION OR NO-SHOW** * **All** **no-shows or late cancellations** (24 hrs or less) will be charged if your spot is not taken by someone else - you will have a title next to your name with the amount and date owed. * Members with 2 no shows/late cancellations will be removed from the group unless outstanding payment is received * **The late cancellation policy** is set up to discourage last-minute cancellations and therefore applies with or without the presence of a waitlist * **Note:** If you are on the Waitlist and a spot becomes available, you will automatically be bumped onto the On list provided the event has not yet started. It is your responsibility to **remove yourself from the waitlist** if you can no longer make it to avoid being charged a no-show if someone cancels late. **PLAYING** * Please wait to be marked off before entering the hall. * Sessions are to finish promptly on the hour by school requests. * If you finish a match with 5 minutes to go, please start packing up instead of starting a new game. **RACKET HIRE** * Please note that we won't be hiring out rackets, so kindly bring your own racket. **PARKING** * There is parking available, but it is now paid parking. Parking is opposite the entrance. Please check the signs for parking payment instructions. **TRACK & TRACE** * We will collect your phone number on-site. Your phone number will also be used in case of fire to contact you if you have not made it to the fire evacuation areas. You can see maps at the venue. We are excited to see you guys on the court! Team LSBC

Our monthly PHP meetup. A virtual shindig courtesy of Zoom. Check back here for the details around 6:15 pm

**Chaos Monkeys, Open Telemetry, and .NET Aspire: Taming Complexity in Modern Apps** .NET Aspire is far more than just a sleek dashboard for wowing your boss and co-workers. It's also a gateway to increased observability with open telemetry, better fault tolerance to fend off chaos monkeys, and a drastically improved onboarding experience for new developers. This session will explore Microsoft's latest guidance for building distributed, cloud-first applications, with practical strategies for enhancing simpler existing apps. You'll discover the inner workings of Aspire, from installation to customization, and learn how it streamlines integration with performance boosters like Redis. Most importantly, you'll see why scalable microservices architectures can be challenging—and how Aspire helps simplify the journey. **Presenter:** Lee Richardson, Microsoft MVP **Pizza starts at 6. Presentation starts around 6:30.**

### Tools in your AI's Toolbox : An introduction to MCP Servers The generative AI revolution has unlocked unprecedented capabilities, but the next frontier is agency: empowering models to interact with, query, and act upon the world. The current challenge is the “N x M integration problem,” where every AI model requires a custom, brittle integration for each external tool or data source. This approach simply doesn’t scale. How can we give an AI access to our sales leads, code repositories, or IoT devices in a standardized, secure, and reusable way? This session introduces Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open-source framework designed to solve this challenge and become the universal connector—the USB-C port—for AI. MCP standardizes how AI models discover and use external tools, moving beyond simple function-calling to a robust, client-server architecture. We will dive into how this open protocol is creating a new ecosystem for building powerful, context-aware AI agents. Join this session for a developer-focused introduction where you will learn how to: Understand the core concepts of the open-source Model Context Protocol and its architecture. Utilize pre-built, open-source MCP servers to instantly connect AI to tools like Git, Slack, and databases. Build a custom MCP server to securely expose your own proprietary data and APIs as tools for any compliant AI. Move beyond bespoke integrations and contribute to a standardized, collaborative, and open ecosystem. Stop building one-off connectors and start building intelligent agents. This session will give you the practical knowledge to leverage MCP and create the next generation of AI that doesn’t just talk, but does. Want to be a speaker? submit your talk to our Call for Presenters!!! [https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/](https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/)

I love my job and one of the main things I do is help customers get going with any of the data technologies at Microsoft. Right now there are a lot of my customers asking about Microsoft Fabric. It's hard to weave across all the shiny new options across the Fabric landscape, let alone figure out where it fits into your organization. In this session we'll focus on answering one question - how can I get data into Fabric? We'll talk through the "it depends" options and see some of the options in live demos.

Connected Westerville Night of Networking flips the script on networking, with surprises and connections that'll make you say, "Who knew networking could be this much fun?!"

## Learn Infrastructure-as-Code (the FUN Way) — Through Minecraft 🎮☁️ **Joint Meetup: Azure CBUS × Columbus HashiCorp User Group × DevOps Columbus** What if learning Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code didn’t feel like a whitepaper… but more like a game? Join us for a joint Azure CBUS, Columbus HashiCorp User Group, and DevOps Columbus meetup where **Mark Tinderholt** \(Principal Architect\, Microsoft Azure \| HashiCorp Ambassador \| “The Azure Terraformer”\) shows how **Minecraft** can be used as a surprisingly powerful way to understand real-world Infrastructure-as-Code concepts. In this session, Mark will demonstrate how Terraform and Azure can be used to provision, configure, and manage Minecraft servers—while teaching the same patterns you’d use for production cloud infrastructure. ### What we’ll cover * Infrastructure-as-Code fundamentals using **Terraform** * Provisioning real infrastructure on **Azure** * Applying **IaC best practices** (immutability, repeatability, versioning) * How playful environments like Minecraft make complex concepts *click* * Why learning through experimentation beats click-ops every time ### Who should attend * Developers, platform engineers, and cloud engineers * Terraform users (new or experienced) * Anyone curious about Infrastructure-as-Code but tired of boring examples * Minecraft fans who want to see it used in a totally unexpected way No prior Minecraft experience required—just curiosity and a willingness to learn infrastructure the fun way. Come for the blocks, stay for the Terraform. 🧱➡️📐 Want to be a speaker? submit your talk to our Call for Presenters!!! https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/