Digital Media

IMPORTANT: You must also register at this Eventbrite link: [Sony Presents: Forever in Focus Wedding and Portraiture Event Tickets, Thursday, Mar 26 from 1 pm to 6 pm | Eventbrite](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/sony-presents-forever-in-focus-wedding-and-portraiture-event-tickets-1983966356780?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true) Forever In Focus: A Sony Alpha Community Event for Wedding & Portraiture Photography and Videography Professionals *We invite you to join us at Forever in Focus, an immersive experience that blends realistic hands-on experiences with expert teachings. With a focus on both photography and videography, capture content via models in cultural wedding apparel, as they walk down the aisle, enjoy their first dance and cut the cake.* *Discover tips and tricks for capturing once-in-a-lifetime photos and videos with seasoned industry experts who are ready to interact with you.* *Check out Sony's latest and greatest gear, with an emphasis on premium G Master lens technology. Experience how G Master lenses give you the edge to capture moments with confidence, speed, and creative freedom.* *Explore hybrid photo and video workflows, low-light performance, advanced autofocus capabilities, and efficient production techniques.* *Whether you’re refining your workflow, expanding into hybrid storytelling, or considering your next system upgrade, this is your opportunity to test gear in realistic conditions, connect with fellow professionals, and discover tools designed to help you deliver exceptional results for your clients*.

As we emerge from our winter slumber we’re kicking things off this upcoming Thursday with a Talk & Social. **The Talk** To start the night, professor Garrett Hall will deliver *“The Marketing Basics That Still Matter”*—a presentation on problems, solutions and competition. With all of our LinkedIns feed-deep in hot takes about tech and tooling, we wanted to take a step back and ask, “Are we missing the forest from the trees?” Garret brings 10+ years of experience as a Professor of Digital Marketing at Sheridan College and has advised early-stage founders on business model development, strategy, and digital acquisition planning as a mentor-in-residence at Sheridan EDGE. **The Social** Afterwards, you’ll have a chance to to discuss what you’ve heard over drinks, meet new friends and colleagues, and network. It's a casual, chill—and non-salesy—atmosphere to meet other marketing and creative professionals in Toronto. All tickets come with 1 free drink.

Join us for an exciting ServiceNow Toronto Developer Meetup - Spring 2026 Edition! 📅 **Date**: Thursday, March 26th, 2026 🕕 **Time**: 5:30 PM to 7:30 PM EST 📍 **Location**: Scotland Yard, 56 The Esplanade, Toronto, ON **Agenda**: * **Networking -** Get to know your fellow ServiceNow Developers * **Knowledge Sharing** \- Share your insights and learn from others * **Additional details will be announced closer to the event!** Refreshments will be served at the event - Send us a private message to let us know if you have any allergies! **Note**: The event details are subject to change, so please stay tuned for any updates. This event is sponsored by Pentio Inc.

Eventbrite Link: **[https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/448735799857?aff=oddtdtcreator](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/448735799857?aff=oddtdtcreator)** **Indulge in Wednesday wonders! Toronto's comedy sensation unfolds at 8 PM. Unwind with laughter in the heart of the week.** Step into a world of Wednesday wonders at 8 PM! Backroom Comedy Club invites you to a midweek escape filled with uproarious laughter and top-tier stand-up comedy. Join Toronto's finest comedians for an unforgettable evening of entertainment. Reserve your seat now and make your Wednesday delightful with humor, wit, and the best of the city's comedy scene!

Join us on March 26th for an exciting **AWS User Group Toronto meetup** focused on **AI-driven development with Kiro**! The evening kicks off with a presentation and live demoes showcasing how Kiro transforms the development workflow, followed by AWS experts sharing the best practices and approaches to get most out of AI-driven development. We'll wrap up with a hands-on workshop and Q&A session — Kiro credits will be provided for participants who want to explore at their own pace. As a bonus, enjoy pizza on us and take home some exclusive Kiro-themed swag! To make the most of the workshop, please come with Kiro pre-installed on your own computer and/or AWS account ready to go. **Agenda:** 6:00-6:15: Welcome Introductions, and community update 6:15-7:00: AI-driven development with Kiro - Presentation and Demo 7:00-7:30: Lessons from field - Best practices and accelerators 7:30-8:00: Workshop set and Q&A **Details:** Address: **18 York St., 7th Floor, Toronto, ON, M5J 2T8** Date: **March 26, 2026** Time: **6:00 pm to 8:00 pm EST** **Speaker:** * **Simran Singh** \- Sr\. Solutions Architect @ AWS * **Divya Jadav** \- Solutions Architect @ AWS * **Abhijith Ramesh Chandra** \- Solutions Architect @ AWS Please plan to arrive between 05:30 PM and 06:00 PM to ensure time to check-in, before the event begins at 06:00 PM. Visitors will need to present a government-issued photo ID to verify their identity and will have their picture taken to receive a visitor badge. Please wear your badge and remember to return all visitor badges to reception at the end of the visit. Parking is available onsite. There is a parking garage located beneath the building. You can pull an access ticket at the garage entrance off 120 Bremner Boulevard or Lower Simcoe Street. If you are arriving via the Union station, the building is conveniently located next to the Union station. Please enter through the main entrance on Bremner Boulevard or via the PATH Network and proceed to the elevators.

Eventbrite Link: **[https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/769799319487?aff=oddtdtcreator](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/769799319487?aff=oddtdtcreator)** **Midweek Laughs Unleashed! Join us every Wednesday at 10 PM for the hottest stand-up comedy in Toronto. Don't miss the fun!** Unleash midweek euphoria! Dive into the heart of Toronto's vibrant comedy scene every Wednesday at 10 PM. Immerse yourself in an evening of uproarious laughter, spotlighting the city's top comedic talents. Backroom Comedy Club sets the stage for an unforgettable midweek escapade. Secure your spot now and be part of the laughter revolution!

This is a ticketed event. Please register at [this link](https://luma.com/e69uao09). ​In his talk, Samuel Simko from ETH Zurich will present his recent work on adversarial defenses for LLMs, developed with the Jinesis Lab (University of Toronto). The talk will cover a series of approaches, ranging from triplet-based contrastive learning defenses to honeypot-style defenses designed to avoid worst-case behavior. He will also discuss patterns observed in contest-winning manual jailbreaking prompts, ideas for tamper-resistant safeguards, and the current limits of attacks, defenses, and evaluation methodologies. ​**Event Schedule** 6:00 to 6:30 - Food and introductions 6:30 to 7:30 - Presentation and Q&A 7:30 to 9:00 - Open Discussions ​​​If you can't attend in person, join our live stream starting at 6:30 pm via [this link](https://www.youtube.com/@Trajectory-Labs/live).

***Tickets must be purchased in advance!*** 🔗: https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/toronto-hottest-content-creators-influencers-models-ugc-social-night-tickets-1984718070175?aff=ebdsoporgprofile A fun social night for Toronto influencers & content creators—good vibes, great people, and endless content and create collaborations!

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 is a brand new **2026 release** from the folks behind 'Exhibition on Screen' **Ticket link is below.** $10-$15 per ticket It coincides with this ART exhibition at **TATE** London. On NOW. https://www.tate.org.uk/whats-on/tate-britain/turner-and-constable Can't make it to London/UK--let 'Exhibition on Screen' bring it to you! (These DOCS are so very well done--perhaps this is our 5th 'ART' tour) ***Two of Britain’s greatest painters, J.M.W. Turner and John Constable were also the greatest of rivals.*** Born within a year of each other, both used landscape painting to reflect the changing world around them. \*\*Tate Britain is bringing these two greats together for a groundbreaking exhibition in London from November 2025 to April 2026. ***Exhibition on Screen*** once again has exclusive and privileged access to bring their extraordinary art and remarkable stories to the big screen. Discover unexpected sides to both artists with intimate views of sketchbooks and personal items and insights from leading experts. **Turner’s blazing sunsets** and sublime scenes from his travels and **Constable’s idealised depictions of beloved places** from home whipped the public of the time into a frenzy of enthusiasm. Constable represents the very best of the old school of realism and pastoral nostalgia; Turner, an exciting new way of depicting emotion and dreamlike impressions. Critics compared their starkly different styles to a clash of "fire and water." Don't miss this opportunity to see these greats side-by-side, as they so often were in life, on the big screen for the first time. Constable- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/john-constable-108 Turner- https://www.tate.org.uk/art/artists/joseph-mallord-william-turner-558 **HOT Docs ticket link--** https://hotdocs.ca/whats-on/films/eos-turner-and-constable (you can also view the Trailer...) See you there.

Observability is supposed to help us understand our systems but for many teams it has quietly become one of the most expensive and least flexible parts of the stack. Plenty of organizations take polished SaaS platforms like Datadog to get real value quickly early on, only to hit the same wall later: runaway costs, pricing tied to architectural decisions, and vendor lock-in so strong it makes Rogers and Bell both blush. In this talk, I’ll walk through a real-world case study of a JVM-based production system that migrated away from a Datadog-centric observability setup to an open-source, OpenTelemetry-based platform. We’ll dig into the why behind the move, the architectural decisions that mattered, the mistakes along the way, and how the team ended up with pragmatic visibility into latency, errors, and resource usage at a fraction of the cost. The second half of the talk is practical and forward-looking. I’ll show how OpenTelemetry unlocks real choice by acting as a neutral data plane for your telemetry. From there, we’ll look at modern, off-the-shelf observability backends you can plug in within minutes without rewriting applications or installing new agents. Want to dual-write, swap vendors, or route data somewhere new? This is how you do it without a big-bang rewrite or another long-term commitment with a new vendor. This session is for engineers and CEOs who are feeling the observability cost squeeze, want leverage back from vendors, and are looking for realistic ways to modernize monitoring without lighting their entire stack on fire each time they decide to change their tools of choice. **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** Alexei Zenin is a Platform Engineering Consultant based out of Toronto, Canada. Over the course of his career he has worked across the Healthcare, Marketing, Video Games, and Banking industries. He loves to tackle hard problems in the distributed systems space with a focus on scaling platforms both from a technical and process perspective. He is a strong advocate for highly maintainable and well tested code while at the same time pragmatically delivering value to the end user. He has contributed to the broader tech community, namely to Confluent’s blogs on Apache Kafka, spoken at Current 2022 in Austin, Texas, and spoken at XP Game Summit 2025 in Toronto, Canada. During his 5 years at Uken Games he contributed to several games like Who Wants to Be a Millionaire and Jeopardy. One title of note he saw from inception to completion was a game for Tim Hortons built right into the official app, Tim’s Word Challenge. Millions of Canadians have played it along with their morning coffee. He also got to work with Netflix on several unannounced games during his time at the studio. Currently, Alexei is working with various clients, both large and small to modernize and streamline their platforms with the most appropriate tools and practices. Outside of his professional life, he gives back to his community by volunteering at UofT. He also enjoys paddleboarding and attending live rock concerts to reset after long coding sessions.

🍪👑 **ULTIMATE COOKIE CRAWL: TORONTO’S SWEETEST SHOWDOWN** 👑🍪 We’re Finding the Best Cookie in the City. For Research. Obviously. I’ve done the hard work (you’re welcome) and curated some of the top cookie spots and bakeries in Toronto so we can settle the ultimate question: Who makes the best cookie in the city? Is it gooey and underbaked? Crisp and golden? Thick and dramatic? Stuffed, dipped, or classic chocolate chip perfection? Join me for a sugar-fueled city walk as we explore some of Toronto’s most talked-about cookie destinations. And no — you don’t have to love cookies to join. You don’t even have to order one. You can simply come for the walk, the social energy, and the joy of watching the rest of us debate texture like it’s a competitive sport. 👉 **Don’t forget to join our WhatsApp group** – [CLICK HERE!](https://chat.whatsapp.com/H59mSCbsAi018gYANrKAnc?mode=ac_t) *** 🍪 The Cookie Lineup Here’s where we’re heading: • **Bakery Pompette** (Meetup Spot) • **The Night Baker** • **Andrea’s Cookies** • **Dear Grain** • **Midnight Cookie** • **Crumbl Cookies** • **The Well** – including Big Fat Cookies Yes. We’re committed. Lunch will be at the food court at The Well — because after multiple cookie stops, you may decide you need something… not round and sweet. *** 🚶‍♂️ The Walk This will likely be a 2-hour walk (possibly longer depending on lines and cookie enthusiasm levels). We’ll move at a steady pace, but please be comfortable walking and standing in line. You’re always welcome to leave at any time if you need to peel off early. This is part food crawl, part city walk, part social adventure. *** 💰 Important Notes Members are responsible for purchasing their own cookies. Many cookies are large — sharing is encouraged! Split with a new friend. Build community through butter and sugar. Bring cash, as some spots may prefer it. *** 🧢 Meetup Details 📍 Meetup Location: Outside The Night Baker 🫎 I’ll be wearing my Moose Hat ⏰ Meetup Time: 1:00 PM ❗ I will only wait 5 minutes End Point: The Well *** 👟 What to Bring • Water • Good walking shoes • Weather-appropriate clothing • Possibly a snack (if you want something non-sweet along the way) Comfort is key — this is a marathon, not a sprint. *** 🎟️ **Meetup Fee:** $5 cash in person **or** e-transfer to 📧 \*\*[mathewmaclean@hotmail.com**](http://mathewmaclean@hotmail.com%2A%2A/) This fee helps support the group and allows us to keep hosting events like this. Thank you for supporting community! 💖 *** 🌈 Who Is This For? This group is open to anyone who wants to be social and make friends — whether single or not. We also host: 🎬 Movies 🚶 Walks & hikes 🎭 Arts & culture outings 🍽️ Restaurant socials But today? Today is about cookies. *** ⚠️ A Gentle Reminder Sometimes life happens and plans may shift — please keep an eye out for updates. *** 👤 Organizer: Mathew Questions? Post on the event wall or email 📧 torontomoviesandoutings@hotmail.com Come for the cookies. Stay for the debates. Leave with a favourite — and possibly crumbs in your pocket. Toronto has opinions about everything. Let’s see who earns the cookie crown. 🍪✨

( This event is SOLD-OUT ) **Join U of T Professor Morris Lum for a dialogue on the shifting architectural and cultural landscapes of *Canadian Chinatowns.*** --We've been interested in this conversation/topic for many years--and attended previous walks/talks/conversations with Professor Lum. ***You need to get your own FREE Eventbrite ticket***\*--link is below. (Limited tickets--so follow all the instructions)\* https://www.cbc.ca/arts/for-more-than-a-decade-this-artist-has-photographed-north-americas-changing-chinatowns-9.6958912 Drawing from his engagement with the David Lai fonds at U of T Libraries and his new monograph, *Chinatowns: Tong Yan Gaai*, Lum examines the transformation of these vital communities. The program includes an introduction by archivist June Chow. https://www.morrislum.ca/projects Over the past decade, **Morris Lum has embarked on an extensive exploration of the Chinatown communities across Canada and the United States. Focusing on the architecture and evolution of these enclaves,** Lum delves into how “Chinese” identity is shaped and expressed through their structures. Using a large-format camera, he has captured Chinatowns in cities such as Victoria, Vancouver, Calgary, Edmonton, Winnipeg, Toronto, Ottawa, Montreal, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York City, and Boston, chronicling the rapid transformations these communities face and documenting their shifting architectural and economic landscapes. His colourful photographs offer a poignant visual record, spotlighting both historical and modern cultural landmarks—small family-owned businesses, iconic Chinese restaurants and vital community organizations—that define these neighbourhoods. **EVENTBRITE link for a FREE ticket...** https://www.eventbrite.com/e/morris-lum-chinatowns-in-art-and-archives-tickets-1984631579479?aff=oddtdtcreator&keep_tld=true&mc_cid=3e11656b62&mc_eid=ed20ec3e5e

Let’s do some coding together at a cafe! No more working alone in the weekend. Here, we write code together. And I mean together together. Not occupying-the-same-space-but-separate together. Here’s how it works: Jennifer brings her mobile app project, tells everyone that it is like Pinterest for recipes and she’d like to work on the nav bar. Paul and Chloe think Jennifer's project is fascinating, and they join the group. They gather around Jennifer’s laptop and work on the nav bar for 2 hours. Jennifer is the one typing out the code while Paul and Chloe research, brainstorm, and offer suggestions. If you’re feeling stuck on your own project or need a motivation boost, bring it to mob programming! Want to learn by watching how others code and solve problems? Join someone else’s project at this event! Oh and we love your half-done projects that you are a bit embarrassed to share. Absolutely bring those to the event! **Discord**: We use Discord to share screen & code snippets during the event. Also feel free to share your projects here before the event! https://discord.gg/yvAGbh4PpD **Event policy**: * We have 0 tolerance for harassment. * We don’t allow the projects that are not meant to be shared in public such as school assignments, interview tasks, or trade secrets. * The goal is to write code. We discourage you from pitching business ideas here, doing code reviews, or spending the whole event on planning what to do. * Please buy a drink, and tip the barista well.

Central Ohio Radio Enthusiasts—CORE—is an informal community for anyone enthusiastic or curious about radio—whether you're new to radio and want to learn or you've been tinkering for years and want to share. Ham radio operators, GMRS users, Meshtastic fans, software-defined radio nerds, makers, and technical and non-technical folks are all welcome. No experience required or expected. This month we have **WiFi HaLow: Introduction and Practical Use** with **Alex Barbur**. Details are are [core.radio](https://core.radio).

Whether you've never done improv before, or you've done it for so long you knew Del Close on a personal level, or anywhere in between, come join us! Swing by *Gresso's* for the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup** for some fun and games! The idea behind improv is to create entire scenes from scratch based on a suggestion from the audience. This can be done in game form, like *Whose Line Is It Anyway*, *ComedySportz*, or *Wild 'n Out*; it could also be done to tell stories, like *Middleditch and Schwartz*. Our meetup, which is central Ohio's longest running (and free!) weekly comedy event, brings the games (and occasionally different forms) for you to play in a safe, supportive, and compassionate environment. Not only is it a lot of fun, but you get to work on thinking faster on your feet, plus it's an excellent way to meet new people and make friendships that'll last a lifetime! Ask yourself if you want to join the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup**, and say "Yes, And" that you'll have fun!

**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 **Abstract** Web Forms gave .NET developers a powerful abstraction for building reusable UI controls long before design systems were a thing. Web Components finally bring that same idea to the browser natively. This session explores how the Web Forms mindset translates into Custom Elements, Shadow DOM, and HTML templates. We’ll examine how Web Components enable design systems that work across frameworks, how they differ from server‑driven controls, and why they’re becoming a foundational layer for modern UI. Whether you’re maintaining legacy apps or building greenfield projects, you’ll leave with a practical understanding of how to apply familiar patterns in a modern, standards‑based way. **YouTube Link** TBA

Whether you've never done improv before, or you've done it for so long you knew Del Close on a personal level, or anywhere in between, come join us! Swing by *Gresso's* for the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup** for some fun and games! Tonight's a special one; this is "Long form" night! Most nights here at Improv Meetup, we play "short form" games, where the host has established rules that the players must adhere to. These scenes frequently do not tell a connected story and are focused on following those rules; games such as "Alphabet Game" where every next sentence needs to start with the next letter of the alphabet, or "Interrogation" where it's a guessing game. Tonight is focused on "long form", where we will see groups of people come up and do a sort of improvised play. There may be rules to the structure itself to adhere to, or it may be more free form, but doing this allows players to establish a shared world, and to establish characters and callbacks. While your average game may last 2-3 minutes, a long form set will last much longer, and have 4+ people involved. This may be a more complicated night, but we will make sure you feel supported to try this out. Our meetup, which is central Ohio's longest running (and free!) weekly comedy event, brings the games (and occasionally different forms) for you to play in a safe, supportive, and compassionate environment. Not only is it a lot of fun, but you get to work on thinking faster on your feet, plus it's an excellent way to meet new people and make friendships that'll last a lifetime! Ask yourself if you want to join the **Columbus Improv Comedy Meetup**, and say "Yes, And" that you'll have fun!

Builders, creators, architects, admins, consultants - come one, come all. This one's for you. We're bringing a little friendly competition to the Columbus ServiceNow community while highlighting the cool things people have built on the platform. Five presenters will take the stage to showcase something they've built, solved, designed, or imagined on the ServiceNow platform - and a panel of judges (plus YOU, our amazing audience) will score them live. So basically, America's Got Talent but make it ServiceNow's Got Talent. Bring a notepad if you'd like 'cause you'll definitely be learning something new. Each presenter gets 10 minutes max to wow the crowd with: • A demo • A real-world business solution • A bold idea • A UX transformation • Or a creative use of the platform Judging Criteria: 🏆 Business Value 🚀 Innovation ✨ User Experience This event is about celebrating ideas, sharing knowledge, and showing how ServiceNow can drive both business impact and meaningful user value. Come learn. Come support. Come get inspired. Refreshments and bites will be provided. And maybe next time… you’ll be on stage.

Calling all founders, CEOs, lawyers, doctors, and entrepreneurs to join our special *Founder Edition* of Sip & Read meetup event. Let's sip on fine wine and discuss our first book **The 5AM Club- Own Your Morning Elevate Your Life, by Robin Sharma**. We will pair this book with our favorite wine at **Wine on High** and engage in thought-provoking discussions on startup businesses and entrepreneurship, and network with like-minded individuals in a cozy book club setting. Come prepared to discuss this month's book. At the end of each book club meeting, we will take next book and venue suggestions from the participants for the next meeting. Whether you are a book lover, women entrepreneur, or a content creator, this event is perfect for sharing ideas and insights with other funders and founders in the entrepreneurial world. Don't miss out on this unique opportunity to connect, learn, and grow together. Sign up now to reserve your spot! *Fun fact! This meetup was established in 2015 and had over 1,000 members. I had to shut down operations while attending law school, but we're back!!*

Join us as we get together for an Arthouse Movie Friday event to see the A24 dark comedy /romance / psychological-thriller, THE DRAMA! The film stars Zendaya and Robert Pattinson as a happily engaged couple whose relationship is challenged when one discovers unsettling truths about the other. Here are details, a trailer and our plan for this event: DESCRIPTION: The film follows a happily engaged couple whose relationship is put to the test when an unexpected turn sends their wedding week off the rails. The film comes from A24, is written/directed by Kristoffer Borgli stars Zendaya, Robert Pattinson, Mamoudou Athie, Alana Haim, Hailey Gates and Zoë Winters. QUICK WORD OF WARNING: The film hasn’t screened for critics yet and most of the details are being kept tightly under wraps. But, early buzz (possibly promotional) says the film is a brilliant psychological thriller/romance but also provocative, twisty and some contains occasional uncomfortable viewing! I love the cast and trailer, so look forward to seeing for ourselves! ZENDAYA-PATTINSON TRIFECTA CHALLENGE: Robert Pattinson and Zendaya will star in THREE movies together this year, including THE DRAMA, Christopher Nolan’s THE ODYSSEY this Summer and Denis Villeneuve’s DUNE: PART THREE at Christmas! TRAILER: [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zmKcUa4Xxk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zmKcUa4Xxk) PLAN: We’ll plan for 7pm-ish showing and will meet in the lobby area about 30 minutes before showtime! Advance ticket purchase not required for this theater but early arrival is advised. Possibly post-movie get-together at the nearby Rusty Bucket! Complete details will be confirmed/announced as the date gets closer. Take care and look forward to seeing you there, Dan