Behavior-Driven Development

For our May meetup, we're delighted to be back at the fabulous Accurx offices. We have two amazing talks lined up and the agenda will be: * 6:30pm - arrive, drinks, networking * 7:00pm - Welcome & Housekeeping * 7:15pm - **Talk** **1: "A practical guide to inner sourcing your IDP"** Bridging the gap between developers and platform teams is hard. Scattered documentation, fragmented language and hidden knowledge leave developers frustrated, while platform teams struggle to understand what devs really need. Treating platforms as products is a start, but treating them like open source projects unlocks real collaboration, allowing developers to contribute and maintain features. In her roles as Developer Advocate and platform engineer, Lian has years of experience working with highly bureaucratic organisations helping to improve developer experience and adoption. In this talk, she’ll share concrete steps to identify contribution opportunities, set up maintainable processes, and measure engagement. You’ll leave inspired with ideas to boost adoption, reduce friction, and turn your platform into a collaborative, thriving ecosystem. **Speaker:** Lian Li, Cloud Native Human *Lian always wanted to save the world. After leaving law school, she decided to work with computers instead. While in Web Dev, she started attending tech events, and soon fell in love with the community. In her roles as Consultant and DevRel, Lian combined technical knowledge with a focus on the human side.* *Currently, Lian works as freelance Platform Engineer in Amsterdam and is the Chief Karaoke Officer for Kuberoke, the first and only Kubernetes Karaoke Community. She also enjoys performing in musical improvisation theatre and standup comedy shows.* * 7.45pm - food, more drinks & networking * 8.00pm - **Talk** **2: "The Humans Behind the Platform: Structuring Teams for Culture and Capability**" It’s easy to focus on the tech when building a Platform team, and that’s tremendously important, but it’s often the people and how they work together that determine success. Over the past couple of years, Claire has led a Platform Engineering Team through different formations, migrations, and tooling adoptions. Whatever shape the team has taken, whatever they're working on, the constants have been a need for clear purpose and a culture where people can thrive, this takes work, and has sometimes been tricky to get right. In this talk, she’ll share what she's learned from shaping and supporting platform teams: what’s worked (and what hasn’t) when it comes to team composition, balancing seniority, and supporting career growth. Collaboration is central to how to operate, so she’ll talk about how her team works with and supports internal customers, and what’s helped to navigate complex, knotty migration projects. She’ll also cover how they built a culture that gives engineers space to lead. We want engineers at every level to feel confident taking ownership, and that takes deliberate effort. If you’re figuring out how to shape your platform teams to enable others as well as deliver, this talk will offer practical ideas, and maybe a few things to rethink. **Speaker:** Claire Reckless, Engineering Manager *Claire is an Engineering Manager and leads a Platform Engineering Team. With a background spanning Tech Support, Testing, and QA across sectors like Finance and Security, she brings a deep appreciation for resilient systems and collaborative teams. Claire is passionate about learning and development, and she’s especially proud of her past work coordinating an apprentice programme, an initiative that’s helped build a more diverse and sustainable pipeline of engineering talent. She’s energised by helping engineers at all levels grow their confidence, take ownership, and shape the future of their teams.* * 8.30pm onwards - drinks and networking. So, please come and join us, we look forward to seeing you there. The LOPUG team. * Food and drinks provided * Good time will be had by all

We're delighted to announce an exciting LSCC event on Wednesday 13th May, in partnership with our friends at Zopa Bank! Join us at the Zopa Canary Wharf office in London for this session and get the chance to flex your architectural design muscles! "So how are we supposed to get great architects, if they only get the chance to architect fewer than a half-dozen times in their career?" — Ted Neward. This quote highlights the need for practice, which is what our LSCC architecture katas provide: a safe, repeatable way to hone your software architecture design skills by simulating architectural challenges. **What's the format?** You'll be split into groups and have a business problem to solve. You'll be tasked with designing a technical architecture to meet that problem context. As with real-life you'll have to manage various trade-offs in your design and interact with a Product Owner to clarify your questions. At the end of the task each team will showcase their architecture and technology choices back to the wider group as part of a group discussion. Whether you're a seasoned coder, software architect or new to the scene, you're invited to share insights, discuss best practices, and learn from fellow participants. No prior session attendance or architecture knowledge is required – just bring your enthusiasm. No laptop is required for this session, we'll provide each group with paper, pens and sticky notes to support the activity. Thank you to the Codurance team that will run the event at Zopa Bank's office. Find out more at https://www.codurance.com/ Food and drinks will be provided with vegetarian, vegan and non-alcoholic options available - thanks to Zopa Bank for sponsoring refreshments and hosting in their great office. **About Zopa** Founded in 2020 with a full banking licence and backed by some of Silicon Valley’s most iconic investors, digital bank Zopa is building the Home of Money. This is a place where financial products deliver good value and managing money is made effortless; deep and long-lasting relationships mean customers are left confident about their choices. One of the UK’s highest rated and most celebrated financial brands, Zopa has been recognised with over 10 British Bank Awards, holds a Trustpilot rating of 4.6/5, and has one of the highest customer satisfaction scores in the industry. Zopa Bank Limited is authorised by the Prudential Regulation Authority and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority and the Prudential Regulation Authority. https://www.zopa.com/ We look forward to seeing you soon!

Our meetups are friendly, inclusive and conversation-driven, designed to create a space where founders, operators and investors can share practical experience, discuss challenges openly, and learn from others who are building and scaling technology businesses in the real world. This session will include founder and operator talks, Q&A, guided discussion, and time for networking with peers across the startup and venture community. **We run:** • Bi-monthly in-person meetups in London • Occasional online sessions for our wider ecosystem Please keep an eye on our Meetup page for future events. Food and refreshments will be provided for in-person events where a host venue is supporting. We are delighted to host this event in **London** on the **13th of May** in partnership with **TBC** **Speakers & Sessions:** Speaker: TBC Session Title: TBC Description: TBC Speaker: TBC Session Title: TBC Description: TBC **Agenda (GMT / UK):** 18:00 — Arrival, welcome and refreshments 18:30 — Introduction — Ethan Sumner 18:35 — Speaker 1 19:05 — Break 19:20 — Speaker 2 19:50 — Close and networking **We are always keen to hear from:** • Speakers — founder journeys, operator insights and venture perspectives • Hosts — organisations able to support future meetups or roundtables • Sponsors — venue, refreshments, recording or accessibility support If you would like to speak, sponsor or host a future session, please get in touch with **[Ethan Sumner](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethansumner404/)** via LinkedIn. This community forms part of the **[Community Stack ecosystem](https://www.meetup.com/pro/generative-ai-uk-community/)** and follows the **Community Stack Code of Conduct**, ensuring a respectful, inclusive and welcoming environment where people can share openly and learn from one another.

🎉 Come along to the London Scala Talks! 🎉 In this event you'll hear from Caroline Morton and Katrina Petrevice. **Agenda** 6:00pm - 🥤 Doors open. Come along and grab a drink! 6:35pm - 🗣️ Introduction 6:40pm - 🗣️ Katrina Petrevice: Caching in Scala using Ref 7:20pm - 🍕 Intermission: Join us for some free food and drinks! Vegan and vegetarian options are provided. Let us know if you'd like something special - we'd be happy to accommodate. 7:50pm - 🗣️ Caroline Morton: Accidental Functional Programming in Rust (From an Epidemiologist's Perspective) 8:30pm - 🥤 Socialising: Grab a drink and let's discuss the talks. 9:00pm - 🍻 Join us in a pub to discuss the talks! 🌐 **This event may have a live stream** Watch this space for more details. **🗣️ Katrina Petrevice: Caching in Scala using Ref** Caching in memory is often one of the first strategies used to improve system performances. However, implementing caching in a purely functional way introduces unique challenges, specifically around state management and testability. In this talk, we will look at how to utilise functional programming principles with [Ref](https://typelevel.org/cats-effect/docs/std/ref), while maintaining clarity and composability. We will also deep dive into some common pitfalls and look into practical ways to test Ref effectively. ⭐ Katrina Petrevice ⭐ Katrina comes from a non–computer science background and was first introduced to Scala while working at JPMorgan. She credits much of her Scala knowledge to hands-on experience within her team, where she works on building and maintaining data pipelines and managing data systems. Since then, she has developed a strong interest in functional programming and now co-leads the Functional Programming Group at JPMorgan, where she helps share knowledge and foster a community around these ideas. **🗣️ Caroline Morton: Accidental Functional Programming in Rust (From an Epidemiologist's Perspective)** I don't have a background in functional programming - and I never set out to write it. But somewhere between writing trait-based epidemiological pipelines, composing data transformations, and leaning hard on Result, enums, and pattern matching, I started hearing from others: “That's pretty functional.” In this talk, I'll explore what it means to write “functional-ish” Rust as someone solving real-world scientific problems. I'll walk through the patterns I reach for - like chaining iterators, avoiding shared state, and embracing expressive types - and reflect on which functional programming ideas emerge naturally in Rust, even if you're not trying. I'll also share how designing for epidemiologists - most of whom are used to chaining functions in Python (like Pandas) or R - has pushed me toward creating ergonomic Rust APIs with Python and R bindings. These tools aim to feel familiar to scientists while leveraging Rust's power and safety under the hood. This is a talk for functional programmers curious about Rust, and for Rustaceans wondering if they've been functional all along. No formal theory required - just real code, real use cases, and a pragmatic perspective from someone building public health tools in Rust. ⭐ Caroline Morton ⭐ Dr. Caroline Morton is a medical doctor, epidemiologist, software engineer, and PhD candidate specialising in synthetic data, epidemiology, and Rust. With 60 peer-reviewed papers and two books on software, she combines deep technical expertise with a commitment to improving scientific workflows. Caroline co-founded the first [Women in Rust](https://www.meetup.com/women-in-rust/) group, fostering diversity and encouraging more women to explore opportunities in systems programming. She leads an open-source project improving codelist management in epidemiology using Rust, creating efficient, reliable tools for health data research. Her PhD focuses on synthetic data methods for epidemiology, particularly using Rust to generate large, realistic datasets. A strong advocate for open science and reproducibility, she contributes extensively to improving software practices through publications, workshops, and open-source projects. ———————————————————— 🗣️ Would you like to present, but are not sure how to start? Give a talk with us and you'll receive mentorship from a trained toastmaster! Get in touch through [this form](https://forms.gle/zv5i9eeto1BsnSwe8) and we'll get you started 🏡 Interested in hosting or supporting us? Please get in touch through [this form](https://forms.gle/3SX3Bm6zHqVodBaMA) and we can discuss how you can get involved. 📜 All London Scala User Group events operate under the [Scala Community Code of Conduct](https://www.scala-lang.org/conduct/). We encourage each of you to report the breach of the conduct, either anonymously through [this form](https://forms.gle/9PMMorUWgBnbk1mm6) or by contacting one of our team members. We guarantee privacy and confidentiality, as well as that we will take your report seriously and react quickly.

**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/african-connector-london-africa-focused-networking-event-tickets-1988226075714?aff=meetup](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/african-connector-london-africa-focused-networking-event-tickets-1988226075714?aff=meetup)** African Connector® London: curated networking for Africa-focused professionals, founders & investors. Build partnerships and opportunities. ### **What is African Connector®?** African Connector® is a **carefully designed business networking experience** in London for professionals, founders, investors, and advisors connected to African markets. It brings together a **relevant mix of people with aligned interests**, creating an environment where conversations are more meaningful and introductions more valuable. The focus is on quality over quantity—encouraging discussions that can lead to partnerships, investments, and long-term opportunities. There are no panels or presentations—just a **natural, professional setting** where conversations flow and connections develop organically. **Who should attend?** * Founders and entrepreneurs working in or with Africa * Investors (Angel, VC, Family Offices) exploring African opportunities * Corporate professionals, consultants, and advisors * Anyone interested in Africa-focused business, trade, and innovation **Why attend?** In London, the best opportunities come through the right introductions—not chance encounters. African Connector® creates a space where conversations are intentional, relevant, and commercially valuable. ## **Event Details 🕒** 📅 **Date:** 13th May ⏰ **Time:** 17:00 – Event Start 📍 **Location:** 2 Chesham Hotel, Belgravia, London ✔️ Fully hosted ✔️ Free-format networking (no panels or presentations) ✔️ Curated guest list for quality connections ## **What to expect** * High-level networking with like-minded professionals * A relaxed but purposeful atmosphere * Conversations that can lead to partnerships, investments, and new opportunities ## **Bonus Access** Your ticket also includes entry to **London Connector®**, taking place later the same evening—expanding your network across a broader professional audience. ## **📲 WhatsApp Group** On the day of the event, attendees will receive an email invitation to join the exclusive Ukrainian Connector® WhatsApp group to continue conversations before and after the event. ## **👔 Dress Code** Business attire or smart casual. No T-shirts or trainers. ## **ℹ️ Refund Policy** Advance tickets are discounted and non-refundable but may be reassigned to another person if you are unable to attend. ### **Event Disclaimer 📸** Photos and videos may be taken during the event for use across social media and promotional materials. * [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)

**Bites & Bytes #1 - DevOps Talks, Networking & Snacks** Join us for the first **Bites & Bytes**, a casual DevOps-focused community evening in central London. This event brings together engineers, tech leads, and anyone interested in DevOps to share knowledge, exchange ideas, and connect with others in the space. **What to expect** * Practical technical talks * Real-world DevOps experiences and demos * Opportunity to network with other engineers * Food and relaxed atmosphere **Confirmed speakers** 1\. Moustafa Mneimneih \- Shift Down to Speed Up 2\. James Williams \- Syonara Ingress Nginx **Who should attend** * Engineers working with DevOps, cloud or platform engineering * Tech leads and engineering managers * Anyone interested in modern software delivery practices.

Something's shifted. The people who've spent years deep in data - the analysts, the engineers, the consultants - are building with AI agents now. **And it's the most exciting thing in a decade.** New tools. New workflows. Whole new ways of thinking about what data work even means. Everyone's experimenting. Everyone's learning. **Nobody's done this before.** We couldn't find a community in the UK for people doing this work. So we're starting one. In pubs, with laptops, sharing what's actually working. No slides. No pitches. No lanyard energy. Just people who build things, showing each other what they've built. **Bring your terminal. Bring your questions. Bring the thing that's half-working and you can't figure out why.** More at [swarm.org.uk](https://swarm.org.uk/)

🇯🇲🔥💪🏽 DANCEHALL FITNESS!! 🔥💪🏽🇯🇲 Every SATURDAY 10am! 📍Falcon Park 14 Cranleigh Mews, London SW11 2QL 🔥🤸🏽‍♀️ High Energy Group WorkOuts! 💪🏽🔥 Qualified Personal Trainers & DJs! All Ages And Fitness Levels Welcome! DJs playing Strictly Dancehall Music! 🔊🇯🇲 If you would love to join us or get involved follow us and send a DM us on Instagram @dancehallfitness_ Get ready to sweat with Dancehall Fitness! Fitness moves that’ll boost your energy and mood! Tickets: Via Eventbrite: Search Dancehall Fitness #LondonFitness #LondonWorkouts #exercise #OpenAirFitness #StartNow

Join us for an informal evening of experimenting, building, and sharing ideas around Umbraco and AI. Whether you're curious about AI-powered content generation, the Umbraco MCP Server, AI-assisted development workflows, or other AI innovations in Umbraco - this is your chance to experiment, learn, and build alongside fellow community members in a relaxed, supportive environment. Bring your laptop, your curiosity, and anything you’ve been meaning to try. You can come with a specific idea, jump into something with others, or just tinker and learn as you go. There’s no strict agenda, just a relaxed space to collaborate, swap ideas, and make progress together. We’ll kick things off with a quick intro, then open the floor for hacking, discussion, and demos. If you end up building something cool (or even just interesting), you’ll have the chance to share it with the group at the end. **EVENT HOSTS** [Novicell](https://www.novicell.com/uk/services/software-development/umbraco/) (Umbraco Gold Partner) have kindly agreed to provide refreshments and host us for the evening in their offices in Shoreditch. If you think you will be making it, please sign up ASAP. Novicell's offices are 21-33 Great Eastern St, London EC2A 3EJ in a building called Fora, approximately an 8 min walk from Liverpool St and Old St stations. If you arrive between 6:00 and 6:15pm there will be someone to meet you in reception with instructions. If you arrive later you might need to phone us to be let in: we shall email all attendees with the contact numbers on the day. **CODE OF CONDUCT** Please read the [Code of Conduct](https://bit.ly/UmbLondonCodeOfConduct) for all our events.

Shaping our future with AI. Creating opportunity through AI fluency, connection and community. No jargon. No hype. No confusing terminology. NOTE: This event will be focussed on the changing shape of software development. Everyone is welcome to attend but the content will be somewhat technical. **Join us for our next in-person meetup in London on Thursday May 14th.** Our theme for this meetup is **Reimagining Software Development with AI.** We're going to take a step back and think about the role we, the humans, play in the software development process now that coding agents have arrived. This event provides a small glimpse of the future, from the innovators who are challenging everything and rebuilding the process of software development from the ground up, with humans at the centre! **Where and When?** * Thursday, May 14th * Doors open at 18:00 * Talks start at 19:00 * AutogenAI, 123 Pentonville Rd, London N1 9LG **Talk 1: The Validation Gap: We Need A Better Way To Review AI Generated Code** (Robert Werner, Co-Founder & CTO Leapter) AI coding is fast. We're generating more code than ever. But more code means more code to verify, and agentic workflows are scaling that gap faster than review processes can keep up. The bottleneck didn't disappear. It moved from writing code to verifying logic. For most generated code, you can ship, test, and iterate. But what if we need to be sure? What about the code that runs our financial systems or decides if you qualify for a loan? It has to be right. Hope is not a strategy, we need to better ways to review code. In this talk Robert will share his recent innovations, experiments and insights with you. **About Robert:** Robert Werner is the CTO of an AI startup dedicated to shaping the future of AI-native software development. He has over 20 years experience focussed on Software Engineering, Developer Experience and Transformational Platform Engineering, across Fortune 500 companies and FinTechs. **Talk 2: Narrative Engineering: What Cognitive Science Actually Tells Us About Building with LLMs** (Sal Kimmich, Security Architect at Gadfly AI) We keep treating LLMs like search engines that hallucinate. That is the wrong category, and it produces the wrong engineering. LLMs are narrative generators. They do not retrieve facts or execute logic. They complete stories. That distinction is not philosophical. It determines what kind of system you can build with them and what kind you cannot. Neuroscience has been studying probabilistic, distributed, narrative-generating systems for decades. Most of the LLM engineering field is ignoring that work. This talk walks through cyberneutics, an open source methodology and repository built on the premise that we need a new engineering discipline for narrative computing the way software engineering emerged from symbolic computing. The theoretical foundations come from second-order cybernetics, distributed cognition, and Minsky's Society of Mind. The empirical validation comes from 2025 mechanistic interpretability research showing that reasoning models internally simulate multi-agent dialogue to reason better. The practical techniques come from iterative practice: adversarial committees, pipeline algebra with formal quality propagation, observer-aware interaction design. Three real lessons for practitioners building agentic systems: reliability is a property of the pipeline, not the prompt; repetition is latent space exploration, not failure; and if you want auditable AI reasoning, you need to externalise the dialogue structure, because the transcript is the explainability artifact. The discipline does not exist yet. This is what building it looks like. **About Sal:** Sal is a developer advocate for open source and passionate about helping engineers, ethical hackers and digital enthusiasts understand the complexity of modern software development. With over a decade of experience as building cloud-native machine learning pipelines in the healthcare and tech for good sectors, their work is now focused on filling the cracks in the open source software supply chain to build a better digital future for all of us. **Thanks!** We'd like to thank our sponsors [Leapter ](http://leapter.com/)and AutogenAI for making this event possible. **Code of Conduct** This event has a code of conduct that you can [review here.](https://aifortherestofus.live/code-of-conduct) By joining the community and registering for this event you agree to abide by our code of conduct. **Providing Your Name and Email** To register for this event you'll be asked to provide your email address. After the event you will be automatically subscribed to the newsletters from *AI for the rest of us* and Leapter GmbH. You can unsubscribe at any time (But why would you? They are really very good!)

AI has changed how we write code. Now the bigger question is: how does it change engineering itself? At [Sahaj Software](https://www.linkedin.com/company/sahajsoftware/)'s upcoming Devday in London, [Jyoti Singh](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jyotisingh7/) and [Ash Shakrani](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ash-shakrani/) will explore how AI assistants are being used across the software delivery lifecycle, from story refinement and solution design to implementation and code reviews. The session will also unpack: 🎯 Where should engineers rely on AI? 🎯 Where should they slow down? 🎯 And how do teams avoid handing over too much? 🗓️ **Save the Date:** 14th May, 2026 📍 **Location:** Sahaj Software, 1 Quality Court, London, WC2A 1HR 🕕 **Time:** 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (BST) 🔗 [https://lnkd.in/ggWCTuKn](https://lnkd.in/ggWCTuKn) Curious about Intelligent Engineering? The 5 iE principles explained in under 3 minutes: Watch here- [https://lnkd.in/gPfyagri](https://lnkd.in/gPfyagri)) DevDay is a tech community event hosted to foster tech conversations, idea exchanges, and deep-dives in cutting-edge tech. The evening will feature: 🎤 **One engaging talk** with Q&A 🤝 **Plenty of time for networking** over free pizza and non-alcoholic drinks Don’t miss this chance to learn, connect, and share with fellow tech enthusiasts. 👉 Please click the link below to register. https://sahaj.ai/events/ai-coding-agents-more-than-a-code-generator/

We are back! This is going to be a monthly IN PERSON meet up in London. A very big thank you goes to Accurx who is hosting us in their amazing Shoreditch offices. This will include access to facilities including coffee! 😻☕️ **Want to know more? 👇** As with all CoffeeOps, this is an interactive, chatty, build your own adventure type of meet-up. Instead of booking in experts to *learn* *from*, we gather a group of practitioners to ***learn*** ***with***. We have been running for over 4 years now and often get feedback that this is the most useful meetup people join! The event is approximately 90 minutes and always starts by brainstorming topics to discuss. The group then votes on the most relevant/interesting to them and we then cycle through the topics trying to discuss each deeply, but in a time bound slot. To get an idea of topics, you can check out our remote board [here](https://easyretro.io/publicboard/h404NF84Uje4tCcxpJdHr4Ycs9B3/a4a35d2b-181b-409b-832e-a729be1af79c). The general gist is anything is fair game, though we tend to revolve around software delivery and definitely lean towards the more Ops-y or DevOps-y side of things.

MCP is changing how developers build with AI, but we're just scratching the surface. Join us for an evening of talks that go beyond retrieval to explore what's actually possible when you give agents real tools, real constraints and real APIs. **Agenda** ​6:00 PM - Doors open, registration and networking ​6:10 PM - Welcome (Upsun & Cloudflare) ​6:20 PM - MCP: Context is Everything! - Carly Richmond, Elastic ​6:45 PM - Sandboxes: how to limit agents so we can use them more - Patrick Dawkins, Upsun ​7:00 PM - Break (Food & Drinks) ​7:30 PM - Cooking with MCP in VS Code - Liam Hampton, Microsoft ​7:55 PM - Efficient tools with MCP code mode - Confidence Okoghenun, Cloudflare ​8:15 PM - Open networking and drinks ​9:00 PM - Close 🗣️ ​**Talks** ​**MCP: Context is Everything! - Carly Richmond (Developer Advocate Lead, Elastic)** ​MCP is a powerful tool for giving LLMs capabilities to not just retrieve information, but to automate key actions based on relevant data. Let’s see how it can be used for retrieving relevant context and other activities such as observability. ​**Efficient tools with MCP code mode - Confidence Okoghenun (Senior Developer Advocate, Cloudflare)** ​Traditional MCP approaches choke on context windows: Cloudflare's 2,500+ endpoint API would require 1.17 million tokens. Code Mode flips the script by having LLMs write code against typed APIs instead of making direct tool calls, achieving 99.9% token reduction. Come learn how code mode works and how to optimize your MCP tools with it. ​**Sandboxes: how to limit agents so we can use them more - Patrick Dawkins (Principal Engineer, Upsun)** ​We want our agents to run longer and use more tools, but we're hampered by constant prompts for approval. Sandboxes are the practical middle ground: isolate the agent so you can stop watching every command and let it work. This talk covers what "sandbox" means, who provides them today and the Linux primitives that let you build one yourself. ​**Cooking with MCP in VS Code - Liam Hampton (Senior Cloud Advocate, Microsoft)** ​In this session Liam will show you how VS Code is fully supporting the MCP spec, from MCP Apps to sandboxing and elicitations. 📅 **Date and Time:** Thursday, May 14, from 6:00-9:00 PM 📍 **Location:** Cloudflare Address: 6th Floor, County Hall/The, Riverside Building, Belvedere Rd, London SE1 7PB, UK 👉 You can also register here: https://luma.com/eb8j6lhu ⚠️ Please make sure you provided your full name (no nicknames or abbreviations will be allowed) and to bring your ID card as it will be mandatory to show it upon check-in to security. Entry will be first come, first served. We recommend arriving early to make sure you get in. **⚡️ Interested in giving a talk? ⚡️** Have you ever considered presenting on your Elastic use case? We welcome 5-10 minute lightning talks, 45-minute deep dives, and everything in between. If you're interested, please submit via our [CFP](https://sessionize.com/elastic-meetups/) or send us an email at [meetups@elastic.co.](http://meetups@elastic.co./)

🎟️ **Get tickets: [luma.com/lon-may14](https://luma.com/lon-may14)** 🎟️ ☝️This is a free meetup however a Luma ticket is required! About Event ​**Join our AI Builders community meetup for AI engineers & founders** We share the latest insights about: *AI dev tools, Agent frameworks, RAG, vibe coding, OpenClaw, Claude Code and more!* **​​// FOR WHO** ✅ Devs, Product peeps, Data lovers, ML engineers, Founders ✅ Anyone building with AI ⚠️ Some LLM knowledge required!\* ​​ **// AGENDA** 18:00 **🤝** Walk-in 18:20 **🍕** Pizza (be early!) 18:50 **💻 *How To Move from AI Experimentation and Chat Knowledge into Repeatable Team Workflows*** * [Thomas Beckley](https://www.linkedin.com/in/thomas-beckley/?utm_source=luma) from [AscendPlatform](https://ascendplatform.net/?utm_source=luma) & [Accenture.com](https://accenture.com/?utm_source=luma) *19:00 💬 Networking Break* 19:45 **💻** Speed Demo #2 (TBA) 20:40 🍻 Drinks 21:15 End ​ **// FAQ** • What is **AI Builders?** A self-organizing nonprofit community of 5000+ AI nerds🤓. and yes.. we're building a democratic AI CEO and run on [opencollective.com](http://opencollective.com/aibuilders) donations. • **Can I demo, give a talk, or just help out?** Message Arthur [(+31636570260)](https://aib.club/whatsapp-arthurp) in case you want to shine✨ on stage and grow your network! • \***I'm not technical. Can I come?** Yes! To fully enjoy the meetup, we recommend chatting with AI to understand these basic LLM concepts: *Multimodal, Vector Embeddings, RAG, Chaining, Structured JSON Output, Function Calling, API calls, Knowledge Graphs, Reinforcement Learning, Fine-tuning, AI Agents.* • **Why hangout at AI Builders?** * NETWORKING: Connect with 80+ technical attendees and a larger community of 5000+ across Europe * ​LATEST KNOW-HOW: We focus on innovative AI demos + slides with diagrams, code/prompt examples. * ​FUN: a lot of time to chill, 10min demos, informal good vibes! **​Location** We look forward to hang out with you: 207 Old St, London EC1V 9NR, United Kingdom It's close to the Old Street Tube Station **Thanks to our friends at [Beyond](https://www.wearebeyond.work/beyond-the-bower)** ![]()🎟️ Get tickets: [luma.com/lon-may14](https://luma.com/lon-may14) 🎟️ ☝️This is a free meetup however a Luma ticket is required!

**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 You will need to scan your ID at the door to get a visitor badge. **Abstract** TBD **YouTube Link** TBD

PLEASE NOTE!!! This event will be In-Person for our very 1st Improving collab! If you know the [Columbus Unity group](https://www.meetup.com/columbus-unity-user-group/) location, we'll be at the same place. This is our 1st event and are doing a soft launch with limited attendance. 1st come 1st serve. If you want to be there and we fill up, please email me at [info@thecogg.com](mailto:info@thecogg.com) and I'll be in touch. All street parking is free on Sundays but you can also pay to park in any of the local garages. See image of [parking map here](https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Mr9_LFIggbs-0_Zd3AJTGNqEhgMf2TzQ/view?usp=sharing). \-\-\- On the last Sunday of the month, we're having our usual end-of-the-month social gathering with our GameDev Meetup meeting. There will be announcements and presentations followed by some social networking Let's continue the conversations with good vibes and friends. All are welcomed from all ages and backgrounds to this public event. If we can, we'll be streaming or uploading the video later via our COGG YouTube channel here: [https://www.youtube.com/@TheCOGG/streams](https://www.youtube.com/@TheCOGG/streams) (Also please do subscribe if you have not done so!) No game development experience required! If you are interested in doing a 20 minute game development related presentation, please fill out our form online here: [https://goo.gl/forms/lVdTJZiNJewlPJuj1](https://goo.gl/forms/lVdTJZiNJewlPJuj1) Or e-mail us at info@thecogg.com with the following: Your Name, Company/Affiliation, Name of Your Game/Topic, Description, Tech Needs, and Your Contact. Be sure to check out our Discord for real time news updates: [https://discord.gg/NrBhuNQ](https://discord.gg/NrBhuNQ)

Practical AI for Power BI Developers A year ago, “agentic AI” was mostly hype for Power BI teams. Today, it deserves your undivided attention. For Power BI pros, there is now a real opportunity to reduce repetitive development work, accelerate delivery, and help developers do more, but only when strong DataOps practices are in place to make AI workflows effective. This session is a no-nonsense introduction to effective AI patterns for Power BI and Fabric development. Along the way, we will make sense of the growing pile of terminology, including skills, plugins, hooks, and MCP. You will see examples of how modern AI tooling can help with development tasks across Power BI and Fabric, along with the prerequisites, guardrails, and DataOps principles needed to use it responsibly. Whether you're burned out on AI hype or already using Copilot CLI daily, this session will show you the foundations that are finally making AI-assisted development genuinely useful.

**Building a great product is one thing—building momentum behind it is another.** Join **Senior Product Manager Adam Solaiman** and **User Experience Manager Tyson Smith** for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to turn complex ideas into scalable products inside large organizations. In this session, they’ll share how teams move from ambiguity to execution—navigating organizational complexity, aligning stakeholders, and continuously evolving products after launch. You’ll walk away with insights on how to: * Build and sustain momentum across teams * Adapt to changing priorities without losing direction * Scale products thoughtfully in complex environments Whether you're driving a new initiative or growing an existing product, this conversation will give you practical strategies to keep things moving forward. Come connect, learn, and swap stories with fellow product professionals. \-\-\- Food and drinks will be provided by Switchbox, our generous host. Free parking will be available at the front and back sides of the Switchbox Office.

**TBA**

We will show how to build custom agents with Microsoft Agent Framework. Attendees will learn how to build and custom host agents when Microsoft Foundry is not a viable option.

FREE event [https://www.ccad.edu/chroma](https://www.ccad.edu/chroma) Friday, May 15, 3–7 p.m. CCAD campus, 60 Cleveland Ave, Columbus, OH Join Columbus College of Art & Design for *2025* *Chroma: Best of CCAD*, our annual campuswide exhibition showcasing outstanding student work from across the college’s academic programs. This faculty-juried show features select work from CCAD students of all class years, and is a can’t-miss end-of-year campus celebration recognizing their tremendous achievements. It’ll be a night of fun and entertainment, with interactive games, animation and film screenings, art symposiums, poetry and prose readings, and more (along with some of the best local food trucks). *Chroma* is free and open to all. Many exhibitions including... **Game Art & Design:** **DSB, first floor, Welcome Center lobby and Room 115**