BioInformatics

**Hello There! And welcome to our June Gophers @ Meta event!** It's immensely exciting that we'll be visiting Meta for our June event, but with great big office comes great responsibility, so it is **CRITICAL THAT YOU HEED THESE ENTRY REQUIREMENTS!** * You MUST bring Government Issued Photo ID with you, matching the name with which you sign up to this event * You MUST complete the NDA that will be emailed to you in advance of the event, before arrival * You MUST be over 18 years old * You MUST NOT record when inside the venue * You MUST wear the lanyard provided to you on the night at all times And needless to say, if you satisfy all of those criteria and manage to make it through security without being tackled, you MUST have a lovely time otherwise you know I'll be giving you a hard stare. A massive thank you to Meta for hosting! See you all there! ==== 📓 **Agenda**📓 ===== (Certain timings and orders may be subject to change) **5:30pm onwards:** Sign-In, Food & Refreshments **6:55pm:** Introduction **7:00pm:** 🗣️ **Jon Bodner: Testing Go: From the Basics to synctest** Testing is fundamental to software engineering and as a language focused on software engineering, Go includes a wide variety of tools to ensure your code is working as expected. I’ll walk through the basics of testing in Go, and then cover some of the more advanced tools: benchmarking, fuzzing, and the new synctest package. **7:40pm:** Raffle and Break **8:00pm: 🗣️** **Oleg Obleukhov: Time @ Meta** Discover how Meta uses Go to build PTP and NTP - open-source, highly efficient time synchronization systems that achieve nanoseconds precision. **8:30pm:** Break **8:40pm: 🗣️** **Simon Emms: Failure Happens. Your Code Shouldn't Care** As Gophers, we expect our code to be retried, restarted and run more than once. The challenge is making that safe and maintainable without layers of defensive plumbing. Temporal lets us write reliable workflows in Go that automatically recover from crashes and restarts, while still looking and feeling like normal Go code. In this talk, I’ll explain how it works and prove it with a live demo that treats failure as just another code path. **9:10pm:** Raffle Winners! **9:30pm:** Pub / Socialize ==== 🎉 **Prizes & Discounts!** 🎉 ===== **JetBrains Raffle!** \- We have 3 free JetBrains Product licenses to give away to some of our lucky attendees\! **Ardan Labs Raffle!** \- We're giving away one course license for Ardan Labs' Ultimate Go Bundle\! **Manning Publications Raffle!** \- We're giving away 4 free Go e\-books\! **45% Manning Publications Discount** \- a massive discount provided by the fine people at Manning\! You can also support London Gophers Events by purchasing via our affiliate link [HERE](https://mng.bz/oKqM) \- Use Code "**LGMeetup45**" for 45% off! **GopherConUK Raffle!** \- We're giving away one free ticket\!\!\! **10% GopherConUK Discount** \- The lovely people over at GopherConUK have provided a discount code for [GopherConUK 2026](https://www.gophercon.co.uk/tickets)! At checkout, use code "**GCUK26LGM"** for 10% off! ==== 💡 **Priority Queue** 💡 ===== We reserve 20% of the attendee spots at our events for those who are underrepresented in tech. If they join the waitlist and there is a reserved spot open they will be bumped into going! These spots are reserved until the last Sunday before the event. How do we define underrepresented? We use public surveys done by the tech community such as the ones linked below. https://survey.stackoverflow.co/2022/#section-demographics https://www.jetbrains.com/lp/devecosystem-2022/#gender-and-development ==== [📢](https://emojipedia.org/loudspeaker/) **Become a Speaker!** [📢](https://emojipedia.org/loudspeaker/) ===== Have something to say? We want to listen! We are always looking for new speakers who want to share their adventures with Go and have mentors who can help. You can sign up to be a speaker here: https://gophers.london/apply ==== 🧳**Looking For a New Adventure?** 🧳 ===== On the Gophers Slack (https://gophers.slack.com) there is a **#london-jobs** channel where company and recruiters can post job opportunities. ==== [📞](https://emojipedia.org/telephone-receiver/) **How To Reach Us** [📞](https://emojipedia.org/telephone-receiver/) ===== **Email:** contact@gophers.london **Linkedin:** https://www.linkedin.com/company/london-gophers/ **Twitter / X:** https://x.com/LondonGophers **YouTube:** https://www.youtube.com/c/LondonGophers 📜 **All London Gophers events operate under the Go Community Code of Conduct** \- https://golang\.org/conduct * **Treat everyone with respect and kindness.** * **Be thoughtful in how you communicate.** * **Don’t be destructive or inflammatory.** **Please do not message members without their consent** If you encounter an issue, please mail contact@gophers.london or conduct@golang.org

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!

## Details Welcome to the DevSecOps London Gathering June Event on Wednesday 24 June! We bring you two more great speakers, as well as the usual conversations, pizza and beer! 📍 **Hosted at Autogen AI, 123 Pentonville Road, London, N1 9LG** 📅 **Wednesday, 24 June 2026** 🕕 **6:00–8:00 PM** ## **Talk** **Abstracts:** **Talk 1 - AI Pentesting by Andy Hornegold** A talk about Pentesting **Speaker Bio**: **Name:** Andy Hornegold **Title:** Chief Security Technologist at Intruder **Bio:** Andy has a long career in cyber security including a decade in threat simulation and consulting. He’s worked with some of the largest organisations and brands across most industries and sectors, advising how to defend themselves against advanced threat actors. Career highlights include being the Assurance Regional Lead at one of the UK's leading cyber security consultancies, managing a team of 30 cyber security consultants, and helping critical national infrastructure providers stay secure. **Talk 2 - A Deep Dive into SAML by Glyn Wintle** Glyn will explain how SAML works (yes there will be lots of xkcd cartoons), the flaws found in standard deployments and give example in most implementations, walk through some of the attack/defence techniques that work with any xml based protocol and digital signatures before going deeper into some more technobabble just for you. Security Assertion Markup Language (SAML, pronounced sam-el) is an XML-based, open-standard data format for exchanging authentication and authorization data between parties, in particular, between an identity provider and a service provider. Think enterprise single sign on, used by governments, large companies, web sites, what could possibly go wrong? **Speaker Bio:** Glyn is CTO at Tradecraft. They are security consultancy, specialising in attack. Tradecraft helps organisations to become more secure by breaching their systems in the same way as criminal hackers, and then working with them over the long term to help fix what they find, and to help them get better at finding and fixing things for themselves. Glyn has been in security for over ten years, and before that he used to program. He has appeared before parliament to give evidence on some of the more crazy laws they have introduced connected to the internet, and has worked with the Open Rights Group lobbying on trying to fix some of them.

AI agents are getting better at writing software. That doesn’t mean the software is getting better. As AI systems become more autonomous, engineering teams face a different set of problems: unreliable outputs, untestable workflows, evaluation bottlenecks, and legacy systems that weren’t designed for any of this. At this Future Form session, we’re looking at what happens when agentic systems collide with production engineering reality. **Speakers:** **Ning Lu, VP, Aladdin Financial Engineering, BlackRock** Ning explores the evolving landscape of LLM evaluation. From static benchmarks to LLM-as-judge systems and agent trajectory review, he’ll break down how engineering teams can evaluate systems that don’t behave deterministically. **Katie Roberts, Technical Director & AI Native Specialist, Nearform** Katie will show how AI-native engineering can be applied inside mature brownfield systems. Using patterns like the Strangler Fig approach, she’ll explore how to isolate risk, generate tests for undocumented code, and evolve legacy architectures without full rewrites. If you’re working with AI agents, legacy systems, or production engineering workflows, this session is for you. Pizza, drinks, and practical AI insights included.

\> This group has a new home\. \[Luma → [https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild](https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild)]([https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild](https://luma.com/ldn_software_guild) ) **About the London Software Guild** ​The London Software Guild gathers developers, architects, and teams across London who care deeply about the craft of building great software. No fluff, no vendor pitches — just people who take the work seriously, sharing what they've learned the hard way. *** ## ​**Talk:** Dimming the Lights ​**Abstract:** Lessons from the front lines of transforming our enterprise SDLC into a dark factory. We'll talk about quick wins, surprising sticking points, the unsolved problems of orchestration and validation, and controlled experiments and challenges that you can try with your team. ## ​**🎤 Speaker:** Macey Baker, Community Engineer at @Tessl ​**Bio:** As Tessl's Founding Community Engineer, Macey Baker is busy helping to build the future of AI-native development (and helping you build it too). Now an AI code generation obsessive, she got her start as an early employee at tech unicorn Intercom in San Francisco, before jumping the pond and roaming the London startup scene, working primarily in big data / ML houses. Some of her best friends are LLMs. *** ## ​Talk: Secrets in Plain Sight ​**Abstract**: Your AI assistant needs to understand your code, but your model provider doesn't need to know your credentials. We'll explore a novel guardrail architecture that lets models reason about sensitive data they never actually see — preserving full performance without the leak. We'll cover the design philosophy, the tradeoffs, and why context-aware approaches outperform blanket redaction. ## ​**🎤** Speaker: Daniel Trugman, Co-founder and CTO at Requesty ​Requesty is building a novel AI Gateway that provides a complete control plane for any AI use case. The team at Requesty is building innovative solutions that solve the problems of tomorrow for AI trailblazers.

Welcome everyone, we are here with an exciting event at London Climate Action Week (LCAW). The event consist of two parts. The first part features a role-play called **JoyFuel**, centered on exploring and understanding the root causes of the climate crises. This is followed by a facilitated **discussion and an interactive workshop**, providing space for deeper reflection, dialogue, and collective learning around the same theme. Objective: Participants will engage with climate science in a tangible and accessible way, combining play, activity, and reflection. The performance also encourages participants to reflect on how our individual actions, lifestyles, and consumption patterns contribute to ecological imbalance. Part 1. **JoyFuel** is a play that explores Climate Crisis through reflective and deeper questions to understand its roots. The play stages a story of a graduate student (Arjun), who is ambitious and wants to get all the so-called happiness in his life. He looks up to influential figures, including pop stars and business magnates, as his role models. The story peeps through his own life and the lives of his role models who influence a mass of people to lead a life where happiness is synonymous with more consumption. The collective actions, of the characters, driven by bottomless greed negatively impact the environment. This is depicted through the tragic story of a family of Albatrosses, a seabird. One by one, a family of Albatrosses falls silent, become victims of a meal that was never food but the plastic left behind. Similarly, the adverse conditions of Penguins due to change in the climate, particularly the molt stress is also presented. Through these narratives, the play emphasizes human responsibility in creating and perpetuating this crisis, while encouraging inquiry, awareness and collective action towards protecting ecosystems. The play aims to shift the prevalent notion of happiness through consumption and burning Fossil fuel to fueling the joy within - hence JoyFuel. **Part 2.** **Voice of Earth,** the group discussion and the workshop is an interactive session where the facts about the climate crises will be discussed in detail. In particular, we will scientifically describe the basic terminology associated with climate change like ocean acidification, shifting weather patterns, climate feedback cycles, greenhouse effect etc. For example, through engaging and lively demonstrations, participants will learn about the concept of planetary boundaries, which are the environmental limits within which Earth remains habitable. Crossing these boundaries can lead to serious and potentially irreversible consequences for the Earth To make the experience more engaging, participants will interact with each planetary boundary presented in a human-like form. This approach will help participants better understand the condition of our planet and the importance of these limits. [Register here](https://forms.gle/jBovWuFDYnHQZ2B5A)

**!! Please make sure you get a ticket via Luma as spots are very limited!!** If you want to go from “playing with AI” to shipping real agentic workflows in one evening? Join the London Agentic AI Hack Night on 25 June 2026. Build voice agents, workflow automations & multi-agent systems * Free BimpeAI platform credits + infra * 90 minutes of focused building * Lightning demos judged by pros from Google, Meta, BimpeAI & Byteplus Networking + food in a vibrant Old Street venueOpen to developers, engineers, founders, designers & creative technologists (beginners welcome if you’re ready to build). **[https://luma.com/dnoe595m](https://luma.com/dnoe595m)**

Come along to Sprechstunde in our ventilated offices to practice your German over some tea and coffee. Meet fellow German learners and grow your confidence. Please RSVP, we try to accommodate walk ins but numbers are limited to 10 participants. Light refreshments are available, please advice if you have any dietary requirements.

This June we're at FundApps offices in HYLO, Bunhill Row. Chris Simon's back in town, and will be joining us to talk about streams and queues; plus Tiago Sousa from SteelEye will be talking about the work they're doing around using AI in comms surveillance. Our hosts at FundApps will be providing drinks and snacks, and there will be plenty of time to chat beforehand and in the pub afterwards. **Chris Simon: It's like 10,000 streams when what you need is a queue** *🎶🎵 A new dev team adopted E-D-A* *Got head of line blocking, on their very first day* *Isn't it ironic, don't you think 🎶🎵* The last few years have seen widespread adoption of Event-Driven Architecture, supported by DDD practices such as event storming. But what does that orange sticky note become when we start implementing our design? Common implementation choices include event sourcing, streaming platforms like Kafka and queuing systems like RabbitMQ. Unfortunately not every orange sticky note has the same operational needs, and many teams remain confused about the differences between these options, resulting in the selection of the wrong paradigm for their needs. This can lead to unnecessary complexity & operational challenges such as head of line blocking, dropped messages, challenges dealing with failed messages, difficulty with adaptive scaling and inadvertently increasing coupling between services. In this talk we'll bring that orange sticky note into the runtime of our system. We’ll start with a deep dive into the similarities and differences between event streaming platforms such as Kafka and queueing systems such as RabbitMq, Azure Service Bus & AWS SNS/SQS. We’ll then look at ways to assess your orange sticky notes to work out which messaging and persistence paradigms suit each one, helping you build more resilient, scalable and loosely coupled event-driven architectures. **Tiago Sousa: AI in Comms Surveillance** In this talk, Tiago shares what it's actually like to build AI for communications surveillance at SteelEye. Financial firms are required to monitor and flag communications for compliance, but making AI work reliably in that context is harder than it sounds. He'll walk through real examples from the trenches: what worked, what didn't, and what he'd do differently. **Tiago Sousa** is a Staff Data Engineer and AI Lead at SteelEye - a platform that helps financial firms monitor and flag communications and trades to stay compliant with regulations. He's spent the last five years building the data and AI systems that make that work. Before that, he did research in bioinformatics, which means he came into fintech from an unusual angle and has the scars to prove it. He's based in Braga, Portugal.

This is a **theatre** and **livestream** talk from the **Royal Institution of Great Britain.** Evolutionary biologist **Anjali Goswami** explains why life on Earth has evolved to look like it does, and how new technology is changing our understanding **ADVANCE BOOKING AND PAYMENT IS REQUIRED FOR THIS TALK.** **More details and booking instructions on the RI web site:** **[https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/discourse-speed-life](https://www.rigb.org/whats-on/discourse-speed-life)** **SUMMARY** Evolution is a seemingly inconsistent process, switching from long periods of stability to rapid transitions. But what allows some species to survive and adapt to new environments, while others are confined to fossils? Why do some groups diversify into thousands of species, while others remain at small numbers for millions of years? And why do the same forms evolve over and over again in different groups, at different times, and in different places, while many hypothetical forms never evolve at all? In this Discourse, evolutionary biologist **Anjali Goswami** will explore the evolutionary paths that have led to life on Earth as we know it. Using a wealth of fossil data, she will explain how we can piece together the changing tempos of evolution, and delves into how new technology is allowing scientists to understand evolution like never before. You won’t just need to take Anjali’s word for it – you'll be able to hear the data as well, as the evolutionary record for a variety of species is converted to audio. This is a theatre and livestream event for an adult audience, where the speakers and audience in our Theatre are joined by our audience online. **The livestream will go live around 7.20pm, and the talk will begin at 7.30pm. If you register but miss the livestream, the video will be available to you via the same link for two weeks after the event date.** For more information on livestreams, see the information below, or [visit our FAQs page](https://www.rigb.org/whats/faqs-ri-livestreams). Please use the event link you have been provided with. By booking to attend events at the Royal Institution, you confirm that you have read and accept the Ri's [event terms and conditions](https://www.rigb.org/terms-and-conditions). You also agree to abide by [our code of conduct](https://www.rigb.org/about-us/how-were-run/our-code-conduct-ri-visitors), and help to create a great experience for yourself and your fellow participants.

AI assistants are getting more capable. The question is how we build effective workflows around them. At DevDay London, [Lucy Joyce](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lucy-joyce-597485166/), [Ash Shakrani](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ash-shakrani/) and [Arun Kurian](https://www.linkedin.com/in/arun-mathew-kurian-39b8aa5a/) will explore harness engineering through the lens of a payment integration. From requirements and design through to implementation, they’ll demonstrate why context alone isn’t enough for successful AI-assisted development. Drawing on real-world experience, they’ll show how engineering harnesses, reusable context, standards, and validation workflows help teams move beyond experimentation and build reliable, scalable AI-assisted development practices. **This session will unpack:** 🎯 Why “more context” isn’t the answer on its own 🎯 What engineering harnesses are and how they create reliable feedback loops 🎯 How standards, workflows, and validation reduce AI-generated rework and technical debt 🎯 Practical techniques teams can adopt immediately to improve AI outcomes 🗓️ **Save the Date:** 25th June, 2026 📍 **Location:** Sahaj Software, 1 Quality Court, London, WC2A 1HR 🕕 **Time:** 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM (BST) 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/harness-engineering-in-practice-from-requirements-to-implementation/

**Improving Office in Franklinton** Physical location: Improving Office 330 Rush Alley Suite #150 Columbus, OH 43215 Schedule: 6:00 p.m.: Socialize, eat, and drink. Improving will be providing pizza and beverages. 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Main meeting and presentation(s). Topic: This month Chris Pazsint will be talking about Agentic Coding. How does one use CLI Based Agents, and Agentic IDEs such as Cursor, Kiro, Antigravity? How to include agentic coding plugins for IDEs you already love such as Visual Studio Code. We meet on the last Monday of each Month. Presentations are given by members and friends of this group. If you would like to do a presentation (small or large) on a python topic, please contact Central OH Python at centralohpython@gmail.com

*Sorry for the 2 month break but I had to deal with some family member health issues, but we are now back!!* **LOCATION - THE DAILY GROWLER -** **2812 Fishinger Rd, Upper Arlington, OH 43221** Over the years, we’ve heard two requests constantly: 1. A place that was quieter and possibly private. 2. “I wish they accepted Bitcoin.” We’ve finally found a solution to these requests with The Daily Growler. We’ll have access to their private room, and you’ll be able to pay your tab with Bitcoin. Join us for a fun and relaxed social event! Enjoy delicious food and drinks as we chat about the latest news in the Bitcoin world. Everyone is welcome, whether you're looking for guidance, have questions, or just want to meet like-minded people. These social evenings are a great opportunity to make new friends and enhance your experience at the larger events throughout the year. We look forward to seeing you there! PSA: If the attendee RSVP seems low, keep in mind that most of our attendees come from X and not [meetup.com.](http://meetup.com./) You are welcome to come and become a part of our online community. Recordings of past guest speakers are available on our YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/@columbusbitcoin](https://www.youtube.com/@columbusbitcoin)

**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** *Customize the IDE: Building Extensions for Visual Studio Code* Visual Studio Code is one of the most widely used development environments today, and much of its flexibility comes from its extension ecosystem. Extensions allow developers to customize the editor with new features, integrations, and workflow improvements tailored to their needs. In this session, we’ll cover what extensions are and the different types available, including full extensions written in TypeScript or JavaScript, along with lighter-weight extensions such as color themes, language packs, language support, code snippets, and keymaps. We’ll also look at practical reasons a developer might create an extension, from automating repetitive tasks to adding custom tooling. The session includes a hands-on walkthrough of creating a new extension, testing it locally, and understanding the basic project structure. We’ll close with a brief overview of how extensions are packaged and published to the Visual Studio Marketplace and other distribution options. **YouTube Link** TBD

*Sorry for the 2 month break but I had to deal with some family member health issues, but we are now back!!* **LOCATION - THE DAILY GROWLER -** **2812 Fishinger Rd, Upper Arlington, OH 43221** Over the years, we’ve heard two requests constantly: 1. A place that was quieter and possibly private. 2. “I wish they accepted Bitcoin.” We’ve finally found a solution to these requests with The Daily Growler. We’ll have access to their private room, and you’ll be able to pay your tab with Bitcoin. Join us for a fun and relaxed social event! Enjoy delicious food and drinks as we chat about the latest news in the Bitcoin world. Everyone is welcome, whether you're looking for guidance, have questions, or just want to meet like-minded people. These social evenings are a great opportunity to make new friends and enhance your experience at the larger events throughout the year. We look forward to seeing you there! PSA: If the attendee RSVP seems low, keep in mind that most of our attendees come from X and not [meetup.com.](http://meetup.com./) You are welcome to come and become a part of our online community. Recordings of past guest speakers are available on our YouTube channel [https://www.youtube.com/@columbusbitcoin](https://www.youtube.com/@columbusbitcoin)

Most people still use AI like a search box: type one question, get one answer, repeat. But the next step is AI agents: systems that can take a goal, break it into steps, use tools, remember context, and produce useful work for a human to review. In this beginner-friendly session, we’ll demystify what AI agents actually are — without hype or jargon. We’ll walk through practical examples of how agents can help with research, planning, writing, coding, operations, and personal productivity. We’ll cover: * What makes an AI “agent” instead of just a chatbot * How agents break tasks into steps * Where agents are genuinely useful today * Where they fail, hallucinate, or need human review * How to design simple AI workflows for your own work * A live demo of an AI agent-style workflow from start to finish No coding experience required. This is for anyone who wants to understand where AI tools are going and how to use them more effectively right now. LOGISTICS AND PARKING: The talk starts at 7:00 PM. The first half hour is reserved for everyone to get set up and mingle. Free pizza and drinks! The cheapest parking option is to find street parking, which will only cost you a few bucks. Otherwise, park in the nearby veteran's museum lot for $8. It's highly recommended you avoid the nearby $15 garage parking.

Live online speed dating on Zoom for Columbus singles. Short one-on-one rounds, matched by age, all from home. [Click here to register](https://theliveround.com/product?productId=573&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Columbus&groupurlname=french-cafe-chat-group-for-all-level-learners&face_v=12.0) Please register asap. An RSVP here does not hold your spot, and not enough interest will result in the event being cancelled.

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