Civil Engineering

**[GrafanaCON Local](https://grafana.com/events/grafanacon-local/) Toronto - featuring the latest in AI Observability** Join us for a local edition of GrafanaCON — a recap of the keynote highlights combined with fresh voices from the Toronto community, all with an AI twist. We'll dig into actually useful uses of AI in observability, and how to add observability for AI workloads. Free to attend. Pizza and drinks provided. **Talks** 🎤 **Grafana 13: The road to AI-native observability** — Marylia Gutierrez, Principal Software Engineer @ Grafana Labs This talk will walk through Grafana 13 and the most impactful improvements across the platform. Learn how Grafana is continuing to invest in AI to become the first fully AI-native observability platform, and the default choice for agents. 🎤 **Scaling Grafana Assistant: Context, confidence, and AI observability** — Edward Qian, Staff Software Engineer @ Grafana Labs AI agents are only as powerful as the context they receive. In this session, we'll share lessons from building Grafana Assistant and offer practical tips for bringing the right context to get the most out of AI agents. 🎤 **AI tools to optimize your development workflow** — Cristiano Ventura, Senior Software Engineer @ Grafana Labs The way we write software has changed. AI systems read code, plan, execute shell commands, run tests, open PRs, and ship work end-to-end. This talk will showcase useful AI tools and concepts to improve your development workflow. **Agenda** 5:30 PM — Doors open, food + networking 6:00 PM — Talks begin \~8:00 PM — Networking continues 8:30 PM — Wrap *Note that by registering for this event you consent to related event & product communications from Grafana Labs and agree to our [code of conduct](https://grafana.com/events/events-code-of-conduct/).*

We can now meet on the patio! Join us every Tuesday night at a coffee shop to practice conversation, while enjoying a cup of coffee or tea together. Our topics change each week, but the English practice does not! We are always open for Q & A (question and answer) about Canadian culture, life in the greater Toronto area, or anything else you can think of! a great place to network and meet new friends

Practice and improve your English through conversation at St. Andrew Centre (73 Simcoe St, downtown Toronto), while making new friends! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- How to Get to the Event: By TTC, exit at St. Andrew Station. Walk west on King St. West to Simcoe St. Do not enter through the church building; the large church front doors will be closed. At the corner of Simcoe St. and King St. West, turn south and walk on Simcoe St. Enter through St. Andrew Centre, which will be behind the church building.

Lose 10lbs in 5 WEEKS and Win Prizes ! Topics will include Metabolism, Carbohydrate addiction, digestive health, label reading, dining out, heart health and many more. $ 50 to Join the Challenge includes: - Weekly Weigh In, Accountability and Motivation - 40 Min nutrition class - Voucher for 'Healthy Meal' - Personalized Meal Plan - Lose 1 - 3lbs a week. To register for your spot: www.ShapingUpCanada.com

Apply to get in at https://luma.com/2bntw4vd The Vision We’re bringing the OpenClaw and GOAT Network stack to Toronto students for a one-day vibe coding sprint with the support of the CanCode grant program from the Government of Canada. Your mission: Build an AI agent that doesn’t just talk but owns its identity, manages its own wallet and transact with other agents. Leverage Bitcoin’s 99.9% uptime and BitVM2’s mathematical security (viat GOAT) to build agents that handle high-value transactions with zero human oversight. 🏆 The Stakes We aren't giving out stickers and socks. We are giving away Mac Minis to the top-performing teams to power your future AI development. We also are looking for the bright minds to join our team and our partner projects as an interns to continue developing what they started at the hackathon. We also will be mentoring and helping those who would like to develop their hackathon projects further as their own startups. 🚀 The Challenge Deploy a "vibe-coded" autonomous agent using: OpenClaw: The brain and framework. ERC-8004: On-chain identity (Give your agent a soul). x402: Agent-native payments (Let your agent get paid). GOAT Network: The infrastructure for the agent economy. 📅 Event Details When: May 26 2026 during the Toronto Tech Week Where: Toronto Metropolitan University (exact address will be posted). Who: University students Perks: Fuel provided (Pizza, snacks, and drinks) + On-site technical mentorship. 🏆Prizes Mac Mini + internship opportunities + entrepreneurship opportunities 🍕 Food & drinks are on us — snacks and drinks will be served throughout the event. 11:00 AM — 🚀 Doors close. Hacking begins! 11:00 – 11:15 AM — Welcome & Kickoff 🔧 Workshop Track 11:15 – 11:45 AM | Why we are building this 11:50 AM – 12:10 PM | ClawUp + Messengers (Telegram, Slack) 12:10 – 13:20 PM | Build on GOAT Network mainnet — Deploy an 8004 & x402 Go from zero to a live, AI-powered transaction on GOAT mainnet fully vibe-coded. Getting started: Register on 8004 — link and instructions in the onboarding checklist Confirm your registration on the https://goat-hackathon-2026.vercel.app/ Use the Telegram Bot Onboarder to set up your x402 merchant payment Watch live demos and join the idea brainstorming session 🛟 Support You're never stuck. Here's who to reach out to: GOAT support team is available in person and across both Telegram channels throughout the event 🔨 13:20 – 6:30 PM | Build Time Heads down. Ship something real. Prizes announced mid-session — stay tuned. 🏁 6:30 PM | Submissions Close 🎤 6:40 PM | Demo Time Each team gets 3 minutes to present. Everyone who wants to demo gets a slot — just keep it sharp! After demos, judges have 15 minutes to deliberate, then prizes are announced live. 🏆 Physical prizes handed out on-site. 🎉 Socials We'll wrap up with open hang time — meet the builders, the GOAT team, and the community. Stick around!

Practise your English in a friendly, welcoming class in Toronto. Join our free in-person English class and improve your speaking, fluency, grammar and vocabulary with supportive teachers. This class is a great opportunity to practise English, build confidence and meet new people. **When** Starting today - every weekday Monday - Friday 2.00pm–4.00pm **Where** Teaching House Toronto OHC / Sol Camps 469 Jarvis St Toronto, ON M4Y 2G8 Canada **What you’ll practise** * Speaking and fluency * Grammar and vocabulary * Listening and pronunciation * Everyday English for real-life situations * Confidence using English with other people **Who can join?** Adults aged 18+ who want to improve their English. Refugees, asylum seekers and newcomers are very welcome. **About the classes** The classes are taught by trainee English teachers on a Cambridge-accredited CELTA course and supervised by experienced teacher trainers. **Cost** Free **Before the class** Please arrive a little early so we can welcome you and check your English level. Spaces may be limited, so please RSVP if you would like to attend.Cost: FREE Sign up using this **Level Test: [https://forms.gle/CZXAHL9w4WfsVdxk6](https://forms.gle/CZXAHL9w4WfsVdxk6)** OR If you already know your level, choose the [registration form](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSe65RTiI_hQMJ_58JdE2DhhtYyF2Mz3Ah_PN2hL3yLSkJadpA/viewform?usp=sf_link) instead

Tickets must be purchased in advance! [https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/life-lessons-from-a-cardiac-operating-room-by-dr-bobby-yanagawa-tickets-1989051291958?aff=oddtdtcreator](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/life-lessons-from-a-cardiac-operating-room-by-dr-bobby-yanagawa-tickets-1989051291958?aff=oddtdtcreator) Life Lessons from a Cardiac Operating Room — Dr. Bobby Yanagawa Step inside the high-pressure world of cardiac surgery for an unforgettable evening of stories, insight, and conversation with renowned cardiac surgeon **Dr. Bobby Yanagawa**. Hosted by Stellar Socials Lectures, this unique social lecture experience blends intellectual conversation with a stylish nightlife atmosphere — bringing ambitious and curious people together to learn, connect, and engage. From life-and-death decisions inside the operating room to lessons on pressure, leadership, discipline, and the human experience, Dr. Bobby Yanagawa will share captivating stories and perspectives rarely heard outside hospital walls. Whether you’re in healthcare, business, entrepreneurship, or simply love meaningful conversations, this is an evening designed to inspire thought, spark curiosity, and create real connection. ## 🎤 What To Expect • A captivating live lecture by Dr. Bobby Yanagawa • Real stories from the cardiac operating room • Life lessons on leadership, focus, resilience & decision-making • Networking with ambitious, like-minded professionals • A stylish social atmosphere with drinks & conversation ## 🧠 About Stellar Socials Lectures Stellar Socials Lectures brings together professors, experts, entrepreneurs, and thought leaders for engaging talks hosted inside upscale bars, lounges, and social venues. Our mission is simple: create experiences where learning feels social, inspiring, and genuinely enjoyable. Because education shouldn’t stop after graduation. ## 👥 Who Should Attend? • Young professionals • Entrepreneurs & creatives • Healthcare professionals & students • Curious minds & lifelong learners • Anyone looking to meet inspiring people and experience something different ## ✨ Why Attend? ✔ Expand your perspective ✔ Meet new people in a relaxed social setting ✔ Hear fascinating real-world experiences ✔ Enjoy an elevated alternative to traditional networking events 🎟️ Limited tickets available. Early registration is strongly recommended. ## About Dr. Bobby Yanagawa Dr. Bobby Yanagawa is the Division Head, Division of Cardiac Surgery, St. Michael's Hospital and Program Director, Division of Cardiac Surgery, University of Toronto. He holds the SURE General Contractors Inc. Professorship in Infective Endocarditis. Dr. Yanagawa completed residency training at the University of Toronto and INOVA Fairfax Hospital (Fairfax, VA) and an advanced valvular fellowship at Mount Sinai Hospital (New York, NY). His research training includes a PhD at the University of British Columbia and post-doctoral fellowships at the University of Wales College of Medicine (Cardiff, UK) and National Cardiovascular Center (Osaka, Japan). His clinical and academic focus is surgical revascularization and surgery for infective endocarditis. He is the Director of the Canadian Society of Cardiac Surgeons Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Taskforce. His research interests include clinical outcome studies of ischemic and valvular heart disease. He has published over 100 peer-reviewed articles, 40 reviews and 15 book chapters. He is on the editorial board of the Journal of Thoracic and Cardiovascular Surgery, Canadian Journal of Cardiology, Guest Editor - Current Opinions of Cardiology and Feature Editor, Annals of Thoracic Surgery. ### **Agenda** 6:00 p.m. - Arrival. Doors open as soon as 5 p.m. Come in, grab a drink, some food, and settle in. If you’d like to sit closer with your friends, we advise coming in early. 7:05 p.m.- Introduction, lecture begins, followed by Q&A 8:15 p.m. -One-on-one with the lecturer, socializing. You can order another round of drinks. 8:30 p.m. -Wrap up

Can your agents scale without bankrupting your API quota or your compute budget? Join this session to explore a production-ready architecture that uses the LLM Council pattern, Google’s Agent Development Kit (ADK) for Java and Spring AI, all deployed on Cloud Run. And discover how replacing probabilistic reason-and-act (ReAct) loops with LLM Council enable goal-oriented action planning (GOAP) creates agents that are not only smarter but also significantly lighter and faster – making them the perfect workload for serverless execution. **About the venue** Free Times Cafe has bistro-style seating and a full food and drink menu. Please consider helping to support the venue by planning to have supper during the talk. **Speaker Bio** Dan Dobrin is an App Architect in Google Cloud, helping customer teams adopt modern AI technologies, cloud-native patterns, practices and technologies in GCP. Dan focuses on building GenAI applications, adopting AI coding assistance tooling with Gemini, Native Java Images, Spring AI, event-driven architectures, production-readiness and performance optimization. Prior to joining Google Cloud, he has built highly scalable, low-latency, frameworks for technology, security and financial services organizations.

New Rules: Starting now, we are asking that each person contribute $2 towards maintaining this page. Without our space here on MeetUp, there is no group. So we ask that you bring a tooney when you come to keep us operational. Thank you very much! Thank you to everyone who has ordered something to eat or drink. It's very important that we each make a purchase, even just a tea or coffee, to maintain our welcome. Mil veces, gracias!

#### **This event page is for English speakers only.** **こちらのイベントページは英語話者の方向けです。** **日本人の方は、別のイベントページからお申し込みください！** *** We host a Japanese & English language exchange meeting every Sunday at 9:30 AM. Participants practice in pairs or small groups, with 50 minutes of Japanese practice and 50 minutes of English practice. The study materials used in our sessions are created by professional language teachers. ### **Before Signing Up, Please Read the Following** * **Please make sure to check the comments section of the event page, as all event details and materials will be shared there around Saturday.** * This meeting is intended for people who are genuinely interested in language learning. Participants joining for other purposes may be asked to leave. * We prioritize creating a safe and comfortable environment for all attendees. * Disruptive behavior, solicitation, or sales activities are not allowed. Anyone who does not follow the instructions of the organizer or staff may be removed from the group. * **Participation fee : Refunds and carryovers are not available.** ### **Participation Fee & Donation** Your participation fee will be used by Emiko Tanaka, a Yosakoi Ambassador, to promote Yosakoi Naruko Dance from Kochi, Japan, to the world. For more details, please visit our website: [Yosakoi Ambassador Project](https://yosakoiambassador.com/) We look forward to seeing you at the event!

**DevOps Toronto is officially back, and we’re kicking off 2026 with an in-person meetup!** After a pause, we’re excited to bring the community together again for an evening of learning, connection, and great conversations 🤝 This is a great chance to reconnect and meet fellow DevOps, cloud, and platform engineering professionals in Toronto. **What to expect:** 🎤 **2 technical sessions** 1. Crawl, Walk, Scale: Building Maturity into your internal development platform by Jeferson pereira 2. Bring Your Own AI: Running LLM Models in Your Lab by Alexander Kharkevich 🤝 **Dedicated networking time** with the community 💡 Real-world insights, hands-on learnings, and meaningful discussions **📅 Event Details:** 📅 **Date:** 28th May 2026 ⏰ **Time:** 5:00 to 7:30 PM EST 📍 **Venue: 7th Floor, AWS Office,** **18 York St, Toronto, ON M5J 0B2, Canada** **🎤 Interested in speaking?** We’re actively looking for speakers to take the stage and share their experiences with the community. 👉 **Submit your talk here:** [https://sessionize.com/devops-toronto-2026/](https://sessionize.com/devops-toronto-2026/) ✨ Let’s bring the DevOps Toronto community back stronger than ever. 🔒 **Note:** This is a **community-driven event**. We respect your privacy and **will never share attendee information for any monetary or promotional purposes**.

Hello Everybody! 【College Park food court is closed again, so we change the location to the food court in Brookfield Place（181 Bay St., Toronto, ON）, near the Union Station.】 I am helping organize a mandarin-english language exchange downtown. If you want to improve your Mandarin/English, feel free to come by downtown and meet others to practise your language. There will be native Mandarin and English speakers to help you! Or you can share your language skills with others! Every Saturday 3:00pm-5:00pm Brookfield Place Food Court（181 Bay St., Toronto, ON） [ Please find a table with "meetup" label (like the Featured photo).] [ Usually in front of the Longo's supermarket] —————————————— 大家好： 【College Park的food court又给封了，所以我们把活动地点换到了 Brookfield Place的food court （181 Bay St., Toronto, ON），靠近Union Station。】 我正在组织一场中英文交流活动。如果你想提高你的普通话或者英语，那就快来参加吧！你可以在这里认识很多母语为普通话或者英语的新朋友！他们都非常乐于帮你提高你的中英文表达能力！也欢迎你同我们一起分享你的语言技巧! 谢谢! 每周六 3:00pm-5:00pm Brookfield Place Food Court（181 Bay St., Toronto, ON） 【请找到一张桌子，桌上有张纸，写着“Meetup”。】 【位置通常会在longo's超市前面】 ———————————————— 大家好： 【College Park的food court又給封了，所以我們把活動地點換到了Brookfield Place的food court （181 Bay St., Toronto, ON），靠近Union Station。】 我正在組織一場中英文交流活動。如果你想提高你的國語或者英語，那就快來參加吧！你可以在這裡認識很多母語為國語或者英語的新朋友！他們都非常樂於幫你提高你的中英文表達能力！也歡迎你同我們一起分享你的語言技巧！ 謝謝! 每週六 3:00pm-5:00pm Brookfield Place Food Court（181 Bay St., Toronto, ON） 【請找到一張桌子，桌上有張紙，寫著“Meetup”】 【位置通常會在longo's超市前面】

Welcome to the dbt Meetup, Toronto Tech Week 2026 Edition! dbt Meetups are networking events open to all folks working with data. Talks predominantly focus on community members' experience with dbt, however, you'll catch presentations on broader topics such as analytics engineering, AI, data stacks, data ops, modeling, testing, and team structures. **To attend, please read the Health and Safety Policy and Terms of Participation: [https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy](https://www.getdbt.com/legal/health-and-safety-policy)** Toronto Tech Week is a citywide celebration of the people building what’s next. From May 25–29, 2026, founders, investors, and builders come together for hundreds of community-led events across Toronto, connecting tens of thousands of people around Canadian tech. Torontotechweek.com. **Agenda** * 6:00 > Arrive, Eat, Drink, and be Merry (aka Socialize) * 6:30 > Speaker 1 and 2 presentations **Instructions**: * Meet at entrance and someone will escort you for check-in **Speaker Sessions:** **1st Speakers:** * [Josh Harris](https://www.linkedin.com/in/josh-harris-86188983/), founder of AnswerLayer. * **Topic**: Open Semantic Interchange shipped in January 2026 with dbt Labs as one of the co-leading vendors. OSI v1.0: what it is, why it exists, and what it means for dbt users. **2nd Speaker:** * **TBD** * **Topic:** TBD Reach out if you're interested in volunteering/speaking! ➡️ Join the dbt Slack community: [https://www.getdbt.com/community/](https://www.getdbt.com/community/)🤝For the best Meetup experience, make sure to join the #local-toronto channel in dbt Slack ([https://slack.getdbt.com/](https://slack.getdbt.com/)). dbt is the standard in data transformation, used by over 40,000 organizations worldwide. Through the application of software engineering best practices like modularity, version control, testing, and documentation, dbt’s analytics engineering workflow helps teams work more efficiently to produce data the entire organization can trust. Learn more: [https://www.getdbt.com/](https://www.getdbt.com/)

**Important time note:** Please plan on arriving between 5:30 and 6:00 as the elevators lock after 6 and you'll need to message us and we'll need to come get you. The building address is 4450 Bridge Park The entrance is 6620 Mooney St, Suite 400 You will need to scan your ID at the door to get a visitor badge. **Abstract** Like it or not, AI agents are now capable of turning a quickly written paragraph of requirements into a pull request that is ready to be integrated into real-world production applications and it's now our responsibility to make sure AI doesn't go rogue and take down prod - or corrupt our data by misunderstanding the requirements or our existing schemas. In this session we'll explore strategies to protect our codebases through unit and integration testing, documentation, and code review along with additional ways of providing context and guard rails to our AI agents as they carry out the work we've assigned them to do. By the time we're done, you'll have a firm grasp of the problem and understand some helpful options for protecting your codebase from vibe coding mishaps getting YOLOed into prod. **YouTube Link** https://youtube.com/live/BltmWMH1zG0?feature=share

Most people use AI like a search box: they type one sentence, hope for the best, and get frustrated when the answer is generic, wrong, or useless. But getting better results from tools like ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, and other AI systems is not about memorizing magic prompts. It is about learning how to give the AI better context. In this beginner-friendly session, we’ll break down how to make AI dramatically more useful by improving the way you communicate with it. You’ll learn how to give clearer instructions, provide examples, set constraints, ask for better output formats, and use follow-up questions to turn a mediocre answer into a genuinely useful one. We’ll cover practical techniques you can use immediately for work, learning, writing, coding, planning, research, and everyday problem solving. We’ll also touch on why these same ideas show up in more advanced AI systems, including RAG, agents, evaluations, and AI workflows. No technical background required. Bring your curiosity, your questions, and maybe one real task you wish AI was better at helping you with. **What you’ll learn:** * Why “better prompting” is really about better context * How to structure requests so AI gives more useful answers * How to use examples, constraints, and output formats * How to iterate when the first answer is not good enough * How these skills connect to more advanced AI workflows This meetup is for anyone who wants to move beyond basic ChatGPT usage and start getting more practical value out of AI. 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.

QA or the Highway is a one-day, affordable, regional, professional conference featuring real-world experience and thought leadership in the QA and testing industry. This is a ticketed event please register here: https://www.qaorthehwy.com/ Featured Keynote Speakers: **Matthew-Hope Eland** **(Wizard at Leading EDJE)** \- An AI Specialist and Wizard at Leading EDJE who is known to teach software engineering\, AI\, and data science concepts in the most ridiculous ways possible\. Matt has used machine learning to settle debates over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie\, reinforcement learning to drive the behavior of digital squirrels\, data analytics to suggest improvements to his favorite TV show\, and AI agents to play board games and create an AI agent with the personality of a dog\. Matt is the author of "Data Science in \.NET with Polyglot Notebooks" and "Refactoring with C\#" as well as several LinkedIn Learning courses\. Matt helps organize the Central Ohio \.NET Developer Group\, runs several blogs and a YouTube channel\, has a Master’s of Science in Data Analytics\, and is a current Microsoft MVP in AI and \.NET\. **Tatyana Arbouzova** **(CEO at Innovate QA)** \- Tatyana Arbouzova is an engineering and business leader with a strong background in Quality Engineering across multiple industries\, including Big Tech\, Healthcare\, and Entertainment\. She has held leadership roles at world\-class companies such as Microsoft\, VMware\, Disney\, and The Pokémon Company International\, where she focused on building quality\-driven cultures and scaling teams to deliver high\-impact products\. With decades of experience\, Tatyana has helped organizations transform their quality practices so teams can deliver software efficiently\, confidently\, and with measurable business outcomes\. Today\, Tatyana advises software companies on adopting AI to optimize quality practices and improve how software is delivered at scale\. She is also a passionate community builder and the founder of Innovate QA\, a thriving Seattle\-based community and conference for quality professionals\.

Westerville Pride Festival Sat\. June 6\, 2026 \| 5 PM \- 8 PM If you're thinking of attending, or being a sponsor, vendor, or volunteer, visit our website at https://www.westervillequeercollective.org/pride for more information! Location and other info will be announced soon :)

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

WQC has weekly Thursday night social nights at the Westerville Java Central. Come and grab a coffee and connect with the community: low stakes, chill environment, and tasty drinks. No registration is required; come as you are.

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)