Delphi

PCE - "Philosophic Conversation in English" is a discussion event in English language which focuses on psychology, philosophy, self-consciousness and self-realization. The conversation is based on inclusive discussion rules. We will meet at at a restaurant where we will have a private room exclusively reserved for our event. At the beginning we will choose the topic to discuss. Everybody can suggest a topic. Then we will vote what to discuss. The person who suggested the winning topic will then explain his idea of the topic. Afterwards everybody gets his/her chance to make a statement. But you can also decide to remain silent and only listen, if you prefer that. We have a time limit for statements, so that everybody has enough time to speak. It is not allowed to interrupt somebody who is speaking. After a statement everybody can ask a question and the speaker will answer. After the first part there will be a 10 minutes break before we start the second part. Everybody is welcome to our event: We are interested in your thoughts and opinions! It is no problem if you arrive late and you can also leave whenever you want. Please check out last event's topics via this link: [http://pce-topic.project-website.org](http://pce-topic.project-website.org/)

Hi Deep Learners, Our first Deep Learning Meetup in 2026 is taking place on **January 26** at Sky lounge of Raiffeisenbank International in Wien Mitte. Our topics this time are: Agentic RAG and Surprise Estimation in Music. \*\*\* **Agenda:** * 18:30 **Introduction** by the meetup organizers * **Welcome** by the host: Raiffeisenbank International * 18:45 **Talk 1:** **Agentic RAG: Advances in Autonomous Information Retrieval, Quantized Indexing, and Scalable System Design** by Liad Magen *(Raiffeisen Bank International)* * 19:30 **Announcements** * **Networking Break** * 20:00 **Talk 2:** **Surprise Estimation in Music** by Mathias Bjare *(Johannes Kepler University)* * 20:45 **Networking** * \~22:00 **Wrap up & End** \*\*\* **Talk Details:** **Talk 1: Agentic RAG: Advances in Autonomous Information Retrieval, Quantized Indexing, and Scalable System Design** Agentic RAG systems enable AI to plan how to find and utilize information autonomously, moving beyond simple lookup-and-answer patterns. Traditional RAG follows a fixed approach: retrieve documents, then generate an answer. Agentic RAG, on the other hand, utilizes autonomous agents that can reason through problems in multiple steps, reformulate queries intelligently, and adapt their retrieval strategy based on what they discover. This talk examines the architecture and capabilities of agentic RAG, focusing on how retrieval strategies have evolved to support multi-hop reasoning (following chains of related information), tool integration, and agent-driven workflows. Special attention will be paid to recent advances in quantized indexing and vector search, including Matryoshka embeddings. This technique stores information at multiple levels of detail, enabling scalable retrieval with tunable trade-offs between accuracy and storage. **About the Speaker:** Liad Magen is a senior data scientist at Raiffeisen Bank International (RBI) and serves as the product owner of the Data Science Academy, an internal school within the RBI to upskill employees in machine learning and data science. In addition, he is teaching selected courses on NLP, computer vision and Information Retrieval as part of Master's degrees in Hochschule Campus Wien (HCW) and the university of applied sciences - IMC Krems. **Talk 2: Surprise Estimation in Music** The presentation will focus on Bjare's work on latent autoregressive diffusion models for computationally estimating experienced "expectedness" and "surprise" (surprisal) in music listening, presented at [Neurips 2025 - AI for Music Workshop](https://openreview.net/forum?id=rXUKO0ysUy&referrer=%5BAuthor%20Console%5D(%2Fgroup%3Fid%3DNeurIPS.cc%2F2025%2FWorkshop%2FAI4Music%2FAuthors%23your-submissions)). We revisit an established connection between music appreciation during listening and the extent to which humans or autoregressive models can predict musical continuations. We visit [Music2Latent](https://arxiv.org/abs/2408.06500), an open-source, computationally efficient audio codec used as the audio representation on which surprisal is modeled. We review GPT-style autoregressive diffusion models and show how they are suitable for surprisal estimation. We discuss the prediction of EEG responses to music listening based on our surprise estimates. **About the Speaker:** Mathias Rose Bjare is a fourth year PhD student at the Institute of Computational Perception, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria. He builds computational models for the estimation of musical expectancy and surprisal in audio and general symbolic music using modern artificial neural networks. His surprisal estimates enable research into how features of general recorded music correlate with neural responses to music listening We'd like to thank Raiffeisen International for providing the venue, drinks & snacks. ** Please note that the venue has a capacity limit of 120 people and people will be admitted on a first come, first served basis. ** We are very much looking forward to seeing you at our first meetup in 2026! Your VDLM organizers

**Discover the Power of Public Speaking & Leadership — Join the Blue Danube Leaders!** Are you looking for a new hobby that's not only fun but also helps you grow? Join us at **Blue Danube Leaders**, a Toastmasters club where you can improve your **public speaking**, **leadership**, and **communication** skills - all in a friendly, encouraging environment. Whether you’re just starting out or are already a seasoned speaker, you're welcome as our guest. **THIS PARTICULAR MEETING IS A CONTEST EVENT** Every year Toastmasters International holds the World Championship of Public Speaking, starting at club level for general speeches, evaluation speeches and table topics.This meeting on Jan 26 is our club contest.You are very welcome to join, just be aware that the meeting format on this evening is entirely different to our normal meetings described below. This is the usual meeting format: **What happens at a Meeting?** Our meetings follow a structured, interactive format: * **Welcome and Introduction** The meetings begin with a warm welcome from the Club President and the host (called *Toastmaster of the Evening)*. Then, we do a short introduction round where everyone - guests too - say a few words on the evening's topic. * **Word of the Day** A challenge that builds your language skills and sharpens your attention to word choice. A special word is introduced and everyone is invited to use this word whenever they speak. * **Table Topics** This is an exciting segment! Volunteers - guests too! - are invited to speak for 1-2 minutes on a surprise question or topic. It's a great way to practice thinking on your feet. * ***Short Break of 10 minutes*** * **Prepared Speeches** * Members deliver speeches prepared ahead of time, usually 5-7 minutes in length. Each speech is a step in the Toastmasters learning pathway. * **Evaluations** Every speech will be thoughtfully evaluated by a designated Evaluator. These evaluations focus on strengths, improvement tips, and encouragement. It's a crucial part of the Toastmasters experience. * **Role Reports** Throughout the meeting, members take on supportive roles that ensure the flow of the evening and give everyone a chance to grow. **Be our guest!** This meetup is open to guests. Toastmasters have a separate platform for the member registration. There are always 10+ people in the meeting. Join us at **18:45 CET** for a casual **Meet & Greet**; The program starts **sharp at 19:00 CET.** After the meeting, we often head to a nearby spot for food or drinks - a great way to relax and connect! Learn more: https://bluedanubeleaders.at/ Email: info@bluedanubeleaders.at

Welcome to our friendly badminton event! Let's get moving, improve our game, and make some new friends. **Very important: this event is for you if your level is upper intermediate or advance.** 🏸🙂 **If you're joining us for the first time, the organizer will contact you directly to confirm that you have the required level for this event.** Feather shuttles (Babolat 1 / Viktor Master ACE / Forza s 6000) will be provided for this event and are included in the event fee The location: Sport & Fun Halle Favoriten / Windtenstraße 2, 1100 Wien The Price: We try our best to provide you with the best price in Vienna. You will be paying 9 euros for 2 hours. How to pay: We accept cash and bank transfer Number of players: 6 players for 1 court and about 10 -11 players for 2 courts. Remember to bring your own racket, please. **Cancellation policy:** 1- 24 hours before the event = free cancellation. 2- Any time after the 24-hour limit, I will ask you kindly to pay the event fee, if we can't find a suitable replacement. (No exceptions) See you on the court :)

Hello Viennovans! Pickwick's is getting quizzical every monday night! You have a chance to win a round of shots, a 40€ bar tab and/or eternal bragging rights 😉 Teams of up to 6 people, reserve your spot today! Start time is 7! FREE SHOT FOR EVERYONE COMING FROM VIENNOVA!

Die **offene Singrunde** ist für alle, die sich (mehr) trauen wollen, mit anderen gemeinsam zu singen, Hobby- und Profi-SängerInnen, die ein **energievolles, einfaches MITEINANDER SINGEN erleben** wollen. Die wohltuende Wirkung des Singens und die Freude am gemeinsamen Klang stehen im Vordergrund. ☺️🙂🤩 Nach ein paar Körper und Stimme entspannenden und aktivierenden Übungen singen wir leicht zu lernende Lieder mit Texten, die Seele und Herz berühren, auf Deutsch und Englisch. **Alle Stimmen sind herzlich willkommen, egal ob routiniert oder ungeübt.** **Vorkenntnisse sind nicht erforderlich.** Aus meiner umfangreichen Liedersammlung stehen z.B. 🎶 Segel setzen 🎶 Tanze, also ob niemand dich sieht 🎶 I am here 🎶 L-ICH-T 🎶 Vertrau dem Fluss 🎶 Wir sind verbunden 🎶 Let it go 🎶 For each child that's born 🎶 Rhythm and Syncopation 🎶 May the Circle be open 🎶 Ich stehe wie ein Baum / Standing like a Tree 🎶 Be still and know … 🎶 zur Auswahl. Das Programm wird beim Singabend intuitiv entstehen. Ich bringe die Liedertexte und meine Gitarre und begleite unseren Gesang. Mit dabei sind auch Cabasa, Klangfrösche, Chickenegg, Shaker, Schellenring, Triangel, Caxixi ("Kaschischi"), Claves, Trommeln ... die zum intuitiven Improvisieren, mit Mut und Freude am einfach Ausprobieren genutzt werden können. 💎 **Ablauf:** Check-In-Runde, Warm-Up, Singen, Check-Out (anschl. Plaudern & Vernetzen wer mag) 💎 **Ankommenszeit ab 15:45 Uhr.** Bitte rechtzeitig da sein. Wir beginnen pünktlich um 16:00 Uhr. Danke 🙏 💎 **Grätzelraum** (gleich rechts nach dem Eingang) **im GB\* Stadtteilbüro** am Max-Winter-Platz 23, 1020 Wien Das Gebäude ist freistehend vor / hinter / neben dem Spielplatz. 💝 Ein freiwilliger Wertschätzungsbeitrag wird dankend angenommen. **✅ Mit deiner VERBINDLICHEN ANMELDUNG bis spätestens 9 Uhr am Singtag sicherst du dir deinen Platz. Einfach hier zusagen oder eine Nachricht direkt an mich schicken.** Die Teilnahme ist auf 16 Personen beschränkt. Die Ankündigung und Anmeldung läuft auch auf anderen Kanälen. Nach aktuellem Stand (25.1. 20 Uhr) sind wir schon zu zehnt. Bei Fragen stehe ich euch gern bis zum Anmeldeschluss zur Verfügung. ***Ich freue mich auf euch, Karin***

**What is Innate Dance?** Innate Dance is a joyful approach to movement, which invites deeper embodiment and self-connection through butoh inspired movement, Noguchi Taiso exercises, the Seki Method, somatic attention and imagination. We shake it out, breaking up stuck energy held in the body, and explore new movement possibilities from a place of alignment and sensitivity. Thanks to our open awareness we can be surprised by lesser-known parts of ourselves and come to appreciate our innate wisdom in movement. Through exercises, explorations and improvisations we build trust in the body that knows how it would like to move and express itself, and when we follow our innate dance, it just feels good! There is also time and space to dance freely, to enjoy the music in your body and to let go! Ultimately, it's about feeling more 'in' our body and grounding joy. **When? Where? How much?** **Mondays 19:30-21:00** in Studio 2, Tanz\*Hotel, Zirkusgasse 35, 1020 Wien Try out € 14\,\- \| One class € 17\,\- \| Student € 10\,\- \| 5 x class pass €80\,\- \| 10 x class pass € 150\,\- **Who teaches the course?** Jess is a dancer and psychotherapist (humanistic and integrative), who loves shaping classes that offer the space to explore the many facets of being human. Sometimes this learning involves physically embodying non-humans like trees, fish and wind, so we can get out of our limited-human-thinking-mind and into the bigger wisdom available through imagination and our body. At other times it's about dancing textures, sensations or taking on the energy of parts of ourselves so we can know them better. Jess has danced all her life and has been exploring butoh dance for the past eleven years alongside her psychotherapeutic practice. She co-authored *The Seki Method* (soon to be published!), is a Seki Method Facilitator, and was a 2024 student at the Im_Flieger Schule researching dance and healing.

Bouldering Session at the Edelweiss Center. Each participant is responsible for paying their entry fee upon arrival. Keep in mind that you need an Alpenverein Membership after your first trial visit. Meeting at the entrance area and entering together at 14’

Let’s kick off the year with some talks in collaboration with the **[Java and Friends](https://www.meetup.com/java-and-friends/)**[ meetup group](https://www.meetup.com/java-and-friends/). Fresh topics, shared knowledge and a strong community vibe. **===Topic===** **1st talk: WebAssembly** If you have been living under a rock like me and have heard about WebAssembly but don't really know what it does, then this talk is right for you! WebAssembly is one of the biggest standardization efforts in modern computing and we will have a look at how it works, why you should care, and why big players like Microsoft, Intel, and the CNCF alike have a vested interest to push it further. Did you know that Kotlin is implementing a wasm backend, so we can run Kotlin code without the JVM? What once started out as a browser hack to make javascript faster is slowly but steadily growing into a new computing substrate, and finally, a common architecture and compilation target for our programs. It's write once, run everywhere, but hopefully for real this time. Oh and it will also replace docker. And Kubernetes. Okay, I am overdramatizing. I swear my takes are not as biased as this introduction but you will have to listen to my talk to find out. **Speaker:** Florian Schindler **2nd talk: Spring Boot 4 with Kotlin: Modern Spring Development, Refined** Spring Boot 4 raises the bar for modern development in the JVM ecosystem, and Kotlin fits it perfectly. This talk highlights what’s new in Spring Boot 4 and how Kotlin helps you build cleaner, safer, and more concise applications with less boilerplate and better defaults. **Speaker:** Marián Varga **===Schedule===** 18:00 - Doors open 18:30 - Welcome by Erste Bank, Kotlin Vienna & and SQUER 18:40 - First talk 19:25 - Break 19:35 - Second talk 20:20 - Pizza, Drinks & Networking **===How to find us===** Canetti Tower - Erste Group, Canettistraße 5, 1100 Wien

Early bouldering Session at the Edelweiss Center. Each participant is responsible for paying their entry fee upon arrival. Keep in mind that you need an Alpenverein Membership after your first trial visit. Meeting at the entrance area and entering together at 8’

Hello everybody, Let’s start the new year with two great talks on how we can avoid falling into the legacy debt trap … **Agenda** 🕡 17:30 - Doors open 🕕 18:00 – Intro & First Talk 🗣️- Tracking Health over Debt: Strategies to keep a Microservice Architecture Healthy 🕢 18:50 – Break 🕖 19:00 – Second Talk 🗣️ - Architectural Fitness in Practice: Defining & Measuring your architecture goals with fitness functions 🕗 19:50 – 🎉 Open-end with 🍕&🍻 \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **🗣️ First Talk - Tracking Health over Debt: Strategies to keep a Microservice Architecture Healthy** For a long time kununu focused on fixing what’s broken - a Big Ball of Mud Monolith - and how to move away from it. As we enter the last phase of what has been a multi-year migration, we are shifting from focusing on what's broken into maintaining what’s healthy (Known as [tracking health over debt](https://www.thoughtworks.com/radar/techniques/tracking-health-over-debt)). Expect an inside view into kununu’s practices that maintain a healthy system. Learn how we define what healthy means through testable System Quality Requirements, how we ensure that we learn from incidents long term, and how regular domain health checks help teams prioritise what’s important. Whether you're stuck in tech debt discussions or looking for a more proactive approach to system quality, join us for practical lessons from our journey. ***Angela Rumpl*** *is a Solution Architect at kununu, the leading employer review platform in the DACH region. With 20 years of experience in software engineering, a strong background in backend development, and extensive leadership experience, she now leads the Architecture Council supporting approximately 80 engineers across 9 cross-functional teams. She drives cross-organisational strategic initiatives such as kununu's migration from monolith to microservices. Her approach emphasises architecture facilitation over gatekeeping – empowering teams through collaborative processes such as modeling workshops, Advice Forums & ADRs for decision making. Angela is a co-organiser of the DDD & MRDS meetup in Vienna and contributes to organising [ComoCamp](https://comocamp.org/).* \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **🗣️ Second Talk - Architectural Fitness in Practice: Defining & Measuring your architecture goals with fitness functions** Modern software architecture needs measurable guardrails instead of PowerPoint wishful thinking. In this talk, I’ll show how to use fitness functions as a systematic approach to derive the right metrics for you to turn architecture goals into something concrete and verifiable. I'll show you my pragmatic catalog of building blocks you can use and combine to design your own fitness functions and why these are the most important dimensions to consider in practice. On this basis, I’ll introduce a fitness function testing pyramid, walk through concrete examples of useful checks and metrics, and demonstrate how to deliberately use generative AI as an architecture assistant – from generating ideas for fitness functions and target metrics to helping you shape your ideas into concrete metrics to verify. ***Rene Weiss*** *is an independent software and enterprise architect, consultant, and coach based in Vienna. He lives the “Architecture Elevator”: from the boardroom down to the code, he works with top management on transformation programs as well as with development teams on concrete architectures, fitness functions, and effective ways of working.* *For more than 20 years, Rene has supported agile software development projects and has been a regular conference speaker on evolutionary architectures, measurable architecture goals, and pragmatic software engineering practices.* \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **🏢 Location sponsor** The location, food, and drinks are sponsored by kununu ([https://www.kununu.com/](https://www.kununu.com/)). kununu is the leading employer review and workplace insights platform in the DACH region, empowering employees to share authentic workplace experiences and helping job seekers make informed career decisions. With millions of reviews and salary insights, kununu creates transparency in the job market while helping companies build stronger employer brands. Sounds interesting? Check out [their open positions](https://www.kununu.com/at/kununu/jobs).

Join us for **Indoor** Padel at Padelzone Floridsdorf. **How we play**? Beginners, Intermediate and Advanced Players are welcome. Number of courts depends on the number of players. * 4-5 players: one court * 8-10 players: two courts * 12-14 players: three courts **Price** * between 16-20 € for 2h depending of number of players * I use the money to cover the costs for the court, balls and rackets. * You can pay via Revolut, PayPal, instant Bank Transfer or Cash. I prefer transfer over cash. **Equipment** * I provide balls (usually Bullpadel Next) * If you need a racket, you can rent it from me for 2 € (limited number available). There is also a machine at the venue, where you can rent a racket for 4 € (you need *SportToGo* App to rent from them) **Cancellation** * Please cancel at least 26h before the event, if nobody is on wait list. Otherwise you have to pay a 10 € late cancellation fee. * If people are on wait list, please cancel 10h before the event. Otherwise you have to pay a 10 € late cancellation fee. * Late Cancellation fees will be donated to Médecins Sans Frontières (Ärzte ohne Grenzen). * I understand that sometimes unexpected things can come up. However, not showing up and failing to let me know is considered disrespectful and goes against the Meetup community spirit. You still have to pay the full event fee in such cases. **Important** * Playing competitive is allowed (Smashing balls, hitting balls close to opponent player etc.) * We still value fair play and sportsmanship. * Having fun together is way more important as winning. **Other information** * We are respectful and warm with each other. Our cultural and professional background is diverse * The host or regular players can ask misbehaving players to step out from the court * The host and regular players are entitled to send players to different courts to have balanced teams * The venue has changing rooms and showers free of charge * If you come by car, make sure that you park at Padelzone and NOT at Marco Polo Sportscenter * If you have questions, you can send me a message any time. I speak german too.

Bring your JS interest and a good vibe! Everybody is welcome & feel free to share this invitation! https://viennajs.org/en/meetup/vienna-js-january-2026 **Timetable:** * 18:00: Gathering, food & drinks * \~18:45 - 19:00: Start of the first talk **Talks:** 🗣️ Housein Abo Shaar ▶️ AI Just Made Us Better at Typing AI can write code now, and it's only getting better at it. Which changes something I genuinely love: the act of *programming*. Just opening up an editor and typing away, observing problems and patterns, finding reusable solutions, caring about how my code *looks* while probably making a few too many premature abstractions. However, I say "programming" for a reason, because it's entirely distinct from software engineering, the thing I actually do for a living. In this talk, I'll go through my experience with AI: the ups and downs, the mistakes I made, and why I think I'll be using it a lot more in the future. \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- 🗣️ Marcel Maßmann ▶️ It's about time - a new Date() with Temporal Working with dates and times in JavaScript has always been… complicated. new Date() looks simple, but quickly turns into a source of bugs, confusion, and timezone-related headaches. Adding days, comparing times, or reasoning about “what date is it really?” often requires defensive coding or third-party libraries. Temporal is a new JavaScript API designed to fix this. In this talk, we’ll explore what Temporal is, why it exists, and which long-standing problems it solves compared to Date. We’ll look at how Temporal makes time arithmetic predictable, how it models concepts like instants, calendar dates, durations, and time zones explicitly, and how it can replace much of the functionality we currently rely on external libraries for. We’ll also cover how Temporal interoperates with legacy Date objects, and— most importantly — what mental model you need to use it correctly. You’ll leave with a clear understanding of when to use Temporal.Instant, Temporal.PlainDate, or Temporal.ZonedDateTime, and when Temporal is not the right tool. If you’ve ever been bitten by time zones, off-by-one-day bugs, or confusing date math, it’s about time we talked about Temporal. **🗣️ Give a Talk:** [https://viennajs.org/en/participate/give-a-talk](https://viennajs.org/en/participate/give-a-talk) **Location:** Sentry 📍 **NEW ADDRESS** Jakov-Lind-Straße 5, 4. OG (Entrance next to Max & Benito) 1020 Wien **Sponsors:** 🙏 Sentry Sentry is the market leader in the error monitoring space and like many startups with engineer founders, Sentry was born out of frustration with technology. David started Sentry as an open-source side project in 2008. We started in a small community — the Django web framework — and over time expanded our technology to support dozens of other platforms, including browser JavaScript and mobile applications. Fast forward to today, we're a $90M Series E company with a $3B valuation and 200+ employees on a mission to help developers write better software faster, so we can get back to enjoying technology. As one can see, the adventure continues to be exciting as we bring our developer-first Application Monitoring to more customers and industries worldwide. Consider us for the ride - We're hiring a JavaScript developer! 🙏 Ketryx Ketryx is an American based AI-powered platform specifically designed for the life sciences industry supporting companies that build regulated software. Its core function is to bridge the gap between agile software development practices and stringent regulatory compliance. The platform operates as an overlay that integrates seamlessly with existing, best-of-breed developer tools like Jira and GitHub. By doing this, Ketryx automates compliance-related tasks, such as generating audit-ready documentation, maintaining a real-time, end-to-end traceability matrix across all connected systems. This automation significantly reduces the manual burden of paperwork allowing development teams to accelerate their release cycles and bring safer, compliant products to market much faster. We're building up our engineering hub in Vienna. Our Co-Founder and CTO, [Jan Pöschko](https://www.linkedin.com/in/poeschko/), is based here, and we’re on the hunt for best-in-class engineering talent to join our team. Link to Open Roles: [https://www.ketryx.com/about/open-positions](https://www.ketryx.com/about/open-positions) **🙏 Want to sponsor?** We are looking for more sponsors! If you are interested please contact us via [viennajsmeetup@gmail.com](http://viennajsmeetup@gmail.com/) or at [viennajs.org.](http://viennajs.org./) \*\*\* **Don't forget to RSVP!**

**New Dojo Location!** **Draft Day Columbus** 1130 Dublin Road Columbus, OH 43215 We're going to try a new dojo location for a few weeks and see how it works Dojos are informal Python group study sessions where everyone interested in Python gathers to learn about Python, help others with Python, or just hang out. Everyone is welcome from Python beginners to experts. Bringing a laptop is encouraged (we'll have extension cords and power strips). If there's something you want to learn leave a comment on this invite so we can plan ahead. We're looking for topic suggestions and people interested in presenting at our monthly meetings. To this end we've set up a survey form at [https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15eBKF1nQQ2XS5gzD4rvhVRHMBEj7lJtHuA9wXupS3Uc](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/15eBKF1nQQ2XS5gzD4rvhVRHMBEj7lJtHuA9wXupS3Uc)

**Photography 101: Discover The Photographer Within** **Are you ready to unlock the full potential of your camera? Then this beginning photography course is perfect for you!** This beginner-friendly photography class is your gateway to unlocking the power of your camera and developing a confident artistic vision. This course offers an engaging and practical approach to essential techniques and creative principles for impactful photography. We will explore the use of camera settings, composition, and light to tell a story that evokes emotion in the viewer. **Through hands-on exercises and insightful lessons, you will learn to:** * **Master Your Camera:** Learn fundamental camera functions, including aperture, shutter speed, and ISO, so you can confidently control exposure and creative effects in any lighting situation. * **Compose Captivating Images:** Explore and apply classic composition principles like the rule of thirds, leading lines, and framing to create visually appealing and impactful photographs. * **Harness the Power of Light:** Understand how different light sources (natural and artificial) affect your images and learn to manipulate them to create mood, texture, and enhance the overall quality of your photos. * **Control Focus and Depth of Field:** Discover how to effectively utilize depth of field to isolate your subject and achieve captivating background blur (bokeh) or ensure sharpness throughout your landscape shots. * **Work with Lenses and Filters:** Explore the impact of various lens types and focal lengths on photographs and learn how filters can add creative control and protection. **This class provides the foundation needed to confidently create high-quality images and begin a photographic journey, regardless of the camera used.** **Prerequisites:** * A camera (film, DSLR, or mirrorless) that has manual controls is required. Hands-on exercises make having the camera in class highly beneficial. You will need at least one lens to evaluate the results of control exercises. * You may attend this class in one of two ways: 1. With a class voucher provided by your retail camera store 2. Purchasing a seat in the class

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

**Photography 102: A Deeper Dive Into Photography** **Are you ready to dig deeper into photography? Then this intermediate photography course is perfect for expanding your knowledge of photography!** This intermediate photography class builds upon the foundational knowledge acquired in the Photography 101 class. It focuses on empowering students to move beyond automatic camera modes and take greater creative control over their images. This course uses an engaging and practical hands-on approach to reinforcing these newer and more advanced photographic concepts. **Through hands-on exercises and insightful lessons, you will learn:** * **Master More Advanced Camera Settings** * **Aperture and F-stops:** Understanding how aperture controls depth of field and using it to create blurry backgrounds (shallow depth of field) for portraits or sharp focus throughout a landscape (deep depth of field). * **Shutter Speed:** Learning to utilize shutter speed to freeze fast action or intentionally blur motion for artistic effects. * **ISO:** Exploring ISO settings for optimal image quality in different lighting conditions, understanding the trade-off between sensitivity and potential image noise/grain. * **Exposure Modes:** Beyond "Auto", understanding and utilizing manual (M), aperture-priority (A or Av), shutter-priority (S or Tv), and program (P) modes for specific shooting scenarios. * **White Balance:** Learn how to effectively set white balance controls to represent colors in varying lighting conditions properly. * **Metering and Exposure Compensation:** Understanding how the camera measures light and how to use exposure compensation to fine-tune exposure for desired results. * **On-Camera Flash Basics:** Gaining a basic understanding of when and how to use the built-in flash or external flash units effectively. * **Advanced Concepts and Techniques** * **Composition Beyond the Basics:** Looking at some more advanced composition concepts and taking a deeper look at the Elements of Design, learning to use space more effectively, controlling the elements of the scene that are drawing attention, and mastering visual weight. * **Lighting Beyond Natural Light:** Introduction to artificial lighting, such as off-camera flash, reflectors, and softboxes, to control and shape light for different effects. * **Basic Image Editing:** An introduction to photo editing software like Adobe Lightroom and Photoshop, covering essential tools for adjusting brightness, contrast, color, and sharpness. * **Developing a Personal Style:** Exploring ways to refine a unique artistic voice and create a consistent photographic style. **This class provides the next step in the path to becoming a more proficient and artistic photographer, allowing for more advanced usage of the camera system.** **Prerequisites:** * A camera (film, DSLR, or mirrorless) that has manual controls is required. Hands-on exercises make having the camera in class highly beneficial. You will need at least one lens to evaluate the results of control exercises. * You may attend this class in one of two ways: 1. With a class voucher provided by your retail camera store 2. Purchasing a seat in the class

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

Join us as we get together for something dark, humorous, twisted, violent and thrilling: SEND HELP! Rachael McAdams and Dylan O’Brien star in this film that follows a worker and her boss stranded on an island following a plane crash and their attempts to survive. Here are details, trailer and a plan for this event: DESCRIPTION: Two office colleagues find themselves stranded on a deserted island after they are the only survivors of a plane crash. They must overcome past grievances and work together to survive, but ultimately, it is an unsettling and darkly humorous battle of wills and wits to make it out alive. The film is directed by Sam Raimi (the Evil Dead franchise, the Toby Maguire Spider-Man trilogy) and stars Rachel McAdams and Dylan O'Brien. TRAILER: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4wiXj9NmEE PLAN: Details for this event have already been confirmed! Please purchase your ticket for the 7:15pm showing and meet in the lobby area between 6:45 and 7:00pm! Possible pre-show bite – we’ll confirm that part as the date gets closer! Tickets just $5.50 and advance purchase is advised! Once you have yours, please list your seat number in the Comments below! Look forward to seeing you there, Dan

Come out to Improving for our monthly iOS and Mac meetings. This Month's Presentation: Nothing yet. (You should volunteer). What is Cocoaheads (http://cocoaheads.org/)? CocoaHeads is a group devoted to discussion of Apple Computer's Cocoa Framework for programming on MacOS X and iOS (including the iPhone, iPad and Apple Watch). During monthly meetings, members present on their projects and offer tutorials on various programming topics. What is BuckeyeCocoa (http://buckeyecocoa.org/)? BuckeyeCocoa is a group of Objective-C/Swift developers/enthusiasts. We host monthly Cocoaheads and near-weekly NSCoder meetings in Columbus, Ohio. The meetings are free to attend. Presentations! Presenters welcome! We are always in need of people willing to present material. Any Swift and/or Objective-C related topic is welcome. Times can be 5 minutes (i.e. lightning talks) to a maximum of 2 hours. Interested? Contact info is on the BuckeyeCocoa website. To volunteer for a presentation contact us at @BuckeyeCocoa on Twitter. Follow us on Twitter! @BuckeyeCocoa (https://twitter.com/#!/Buckeyecocoa/) For more information: http://buckeyecocoa.org/