Firewalls

Visitors and newcomers are very welcome, please see https://hackmelbourne.com/newcomer-faq/ for more details. COVIDSafe restrictions are also in place, please see https://hackmelbourne.com/covid-19-restrictions/ for the latest. Short walk from Glenferrie train station. Car parking at Hawthorn town hall. Bring a laptop and a project you are working on. There is also a number of group projects that you are welcome to join in. We have starter kits for Arduino, a couple of 3D printers, various tools and equipment available for use. Typically our sessions run from 6:45pm till later in the evening (depending on our members' availability to close) but if you're new please come early.

We'll meet at The Parlor in Weatherall Road Beaumaris and walk around Cheltenham golf course and through lovely Cheltenham Park, the usual 1 hour round trip, then back to the cafe for a cuppa and a chat. https://secure.meetupstatic.com/photos/event/2/d/4/8/600_445631592.jpeg Pop my phone number in your contact list - just in case: Cheers Gillian: 0409 219 524

**SQLCON** stands out as a premier conference within FABCON, featuring sessions and workshops that take you on a deep dive into **SQL Server, Azure SQL, SQL in Fabric, SQL Tools, AI Apps with SQL, migration & modernisation, optimisation & performance, database security**, and much more. Attendees will benefit from a keynote delivered by Microsoft leadership and engineering teams, unveiling the latest SQL roadmap and sharing major announcements that shape the future of data platforms. **FABCON** is the largest conference dedicated to **Microsoft Fabric**, bringing together tech enthusiasts, innovators, and industry leaders to explore the future of **data, analytics, business intelligence, and AI integration**. This dynamic event showcases cutting-edge developments within Microsoft Fabric, offering attendees the opportunity to learn from expert-led sessions, gain insights from Microsoft keynotes, and network with like-minded professionals. Both of these conferences sound amazing, but they are a really long way away, in Atlanta, USA. It would be great if more Australians could attend. Kelly, your regular organiser, is a speaker at SQLCon. She returns to Melbourne on Tuesday, 24th March and will walk through the biggest announcements and learnings. **Come and share pizza, great conversation and free learning.** Schedule: 5.30-6.00 Pizza and Networking 6.00-7.30 FABCON and SQLCON Recap - interactive session

Jewellers can hire a desk in our workshop to make or finish off their own pieces. This workshop is self run, you need to attend a health and safety induction before working daily unattended. Basic jewellery making tools are provided and some consumables such as flux, borax, tumbling polish, lathe polish and some drill bits. Aprons and safety glasses are provided, tie up loose hair, wear enclosed shoes. Please email claw.creative.studios@gmail.com for any questions or inquiries. Clara Carija, Director CLAW CREATIVE.

Are you spending too much time on “glue work”? In this session we will look at the ways this can impact your career, and what you can do about it! **Agenda (time in Melbourne/AEST)** * 5:30pm Networking * 6:00pm Welcome * 6:05pm Main Presentation * 6:35pm Q&A * 7:00pm Networking * 7:30pm Close **This will be a HYBRID event:** **Zoom link -** will be posted 1hr before event starts. **In person attendees -** an Atlassian volunteer will greet you and take you to reception on level 20 to sign in - please arrive a few minutes early to allow for this. Contact organisers on the community Slack (preferred) or Meetup if you need access to the venue after 6pm **Our Speaker** **Michele Playfair** Michele is a technology leader dedicated to building great teams and products. Starting from a strong technical grounding in computer science, her diverse experience in software development, consulting, business analysis, quality, and agile delivery practices enables her to bring a wealth of techniques and perspectives to her leadership roles.

**\*\* NEW VENUE \*\*** Room 080.02.002 at RMIT (Building 80) - 445 Swanston St, Melbourne **\*\* NEW VENUE \*\*** **How Bad Terraform Reaches Prod: Building Azure Guardrails That Actually Work** - **@Maple** Terraform makes it easy to ship cloud changes fast, including the risky ones. This talk is a hands-on walkthrough of a small Azure lab where I intentionally introduce common "oops" changes (public exposure, missing tags, unsafe configs) and show how they slip through a typical IaC workflow unless you build real guardrails. **"Do not obey in advance" - Cybersecurity in the Fight Against Techno-Authoritarianism - @Mendas** Cybersecurity protects free speech and human rights. It plays an important role in resisting authoritarian regimes and protecting democratic freedoms. This talk discusses how encryption, anonymity tools, and similar technologies can help activists, journalists, and citizens evade state surveillance and censorship. Discussion highlights how digital resistance strategies can be used to counter oppression. **Streaming** If you can't attend the event in person the talks will be streamed in the "ruxmon-stream" voice channel in the Ruxcon Discord in the day of the event! (join now by clicking here: [https://discord.gg/g2CpEbkXmM](https://discord.gg/g2CpEbkXmM)

**Albert Park Lake** For this Sunday Walk we'll be heading back to the popular Albert Park Lake. We’ll walk the tan track which runs around the entire lake. With the city skyline as the backdrop, it’s the perfect Sunday morning walk – with that all-important coffee along the way. **Start:** Meet outside the **Middle Park Hotel,** corner of **Canterbury Rd** and **Armstrong St**, Middle Park. **Start time:** 9.00 AM **Parking:** Park along Canterbury Road or in the side streets of the Middle Park Shopping Centre. **The Walk**: The walk is the well-formed tan track around the lakeside. It’s a circuit so we’ll walk around the lake and finish back at our cars. **Total distance**: 5.5 km. **Time:** Allow 2.0 hours for the walk, plus half hour for coffee. Total 2.5 hours. **Difficulty:** Easy **Toilets:** Near the start, plus at the café. **Coffee:** The **Boat Shed Café** at the yacht club on the lake.

🎉 **Melbourne AWS User Group – March Meetup** 🎉 --- 📅 Wednesday, 25 March 📍 NAB Events Hub – 395 Bourke Street, Melbourne ⏰ Food at 6:00 pm, talks from 6:30 pm (with live stream) Join us for our March for our March meetup as we explore two important areas of modern cloud architecture: **security and resilience**. This month we’ll look at how organisations can improve least-privilege access using IAM Access Analyzer, and how to design highly resilient architectures using AWS fault isolation and multi-region patterns. This month’s lineup features: • **Hazra Ali**, a brand new **AWS Community Builder for 2026**, is presenting on how business analysis techniques can improve outcomes when using AWS IAM Access Analyzer. • **Anshika Gupta** sharing architectural principles for building resilient systems using static stability, fault isolation, and multiple AWS Regions. A huge thank you to our sponsors: 🥇 **Mantel Group – Gold Sponsor**, 🥈 **Cevo – Silver Sponsor**, 🏛 **NAB – Venue Sponsor** The event will be live-streamed on YouTube as always. *** 🗓️ **Agenda** 6:00 pm – Food & Socialising 6:30 pm – Introductions 6:40 pm – What’s New in AWS 6:55 pm – **Business Analysis in AWS IAM Access Analyzer (Level 100)**; Speaker: Hazra Ali 7:25 pm – **Reinforcing Resilience in the Real World with Static Stability, Fault Isolation and Multiple Regions (Level 200)**; Speaker: Anshika Gupta 7:55 pm – Marketplace (Who’s Hiring) 8:00 pm – Networking + Close *** 🎤 **Talk Details** **Business Analysis in AWS IAM Access Analyzer** Speaker: Hazra Ali Level: 100 Business analysis plays a crucial role in helping organisations implement change to address challenges and leverage solutions that deliver value. AWS IAM Access Analyzer helps organisations grant precise permissions as requirements evolve, guiding users toward least privilege by enabling them to set, verify, and refine permissions. In this presentation, Hazra will explore how business analysis practices can enhance the effectiveness of IAM Access Analyzer when solving real-world problems. The session will also discuss how AI can support business analysis workflows and assist in understanding the core concepts behind IAM Access Analyzer. *** **Reinforcing Resilience in the Real World with Static Stability, Fault Isolation and Multiple Regions** Speaker: Anshika Gupta Level: 200 At AWS, resilience is viewed as a continuous process, built on years of experience working with customers operating critical workloads. In this session, Anshika will explore how to design systems using AWS fault isolation boundaries and the concept of static stability to achieve predictable recovery times and high availability. You’ll learn: • How AWS Regions are designed and operated for resilience • Key architectural patterns AWS services use to maintain operations during disruptions • How static stability helps maintain availability under failure conditions • Practical architecture patterns for building multi-region resilience This session will showcase design principles, best practices, and example architectures that can help you meet your resilience requirements for mission-critical workloads. *** 🙌 **Want to Speak at a Future Meetup?** We’re always looking for new speakers and believe everyone has an interesting talk waiting to be shared. If you’d like to present at a future event, reach out at the meetup or via our website: 👉 [https://melb.awsug.org.au/speak/](https://melb.awsug.org.au/speak/)

Hello Rust Melbourne! Join us this Thursday for another Rust Melbourne Adventure! Matt Andrews will be giving a talk on the wonderful Bevy platform, with the talk titled "Bevy and Entity Component Systems". As for venue, food, and drinks sponsorship, Arkeus (https://arkeus.com/) have been kind to offer all three!

Join Jane outside Brighton Baths for a 1 hour return walk towards Elwood. Then relax with a coffee and chat at the Brighton Yacht Club. Parking is free if you have a Bayside beach parking sticker. Otherwise try your luck for 2hr free parking in Chelsea or Grosvenor streets. In case you need it my mobile is 0401779137

Smashing! Try something new Friday night Interactive workshops - Become the charismatic leader Serious about improving your leadership - **Why mess, come to the best** Why is Smashing different to other speaking clubs? Just one member's thoughts, "The fun/laughs factor is definitely a point of difference. We keep it moving with high standards so it’s a nice balance. Too strict makes it tense and boring, too loose and the commercial feel is lost. SmashSpeak's vibe is in the sweet spot." **Free parking** close: O'Connell and Cobden streets **IMPORTANT: Be on time, as doors close when the show starts** “Proudly Australian" – Free-flowing teamwork, sharing the stage and greater good focus Multicultural Hub, 506 Elizabeth St (Opposite Queen Vic Market) Level 1, Orange room More to come...

Want to be a speaker? submit your talk to our Call for Presenters!!! https://sessionize.com/cbus-hug-2026/

We’re finally getting started. Join us this Sunday, March 29 at 10am at Thompson Park for our first group walk together. Meet at the flagpoles near the Shelter House (near the Children's Playground), and we’ll head out at 10:05. We’ll do two laps of the big loop around the park. All paces and fitness levels welcome — the goal is simply to get outside and walk. See you there.

Discover Kiro, AWS’s innovative development environment that adapts to your workflow. Whether you prefer specification-driven development or a more intuitive, vibe-based approach, Kiro empowers you to build applications your way. In this session, speakers will explore Kiro’s core functionality and its evolution through re:Invent 2025, along with demonstrations of prompts used to create APIs, hooks, and steering documents. In the latter part of the session, watch as we build a complete example from scratch, showcasing Kiro’s agentic AI workflow in action for spec-driven development and vibe coding. What You'll Learn - Core Kiro concepts and development philosophy Feature evolution: pre and post re:Invent 2025 Practical examples: API creation, hooks, and steering docs Live coding demonstration with real-time problem solving Who Should Attend - Developers, solutions architects, and technical leaders interested in modern AWS development tools and AI-assisted coding workflows. **Speakers Bio:** Matthew Jorat: Matthew Jorat is a Customer Solutions Manager at AWS with nearly three decades of expertise in AI, cloud transformation, migration, modernization, IT, technology, and business. His career spans infrastructure engineer, solutions architect, security auditor, customer success director, support and services director, and operations officer. He was an early adopter of AWS services as a customer, and his current role at AWS uniquely blends his technical and business skills as he partners with executive teams to translate strategic priorities into measurable business outcomes through cloud adoption, AI implementation, and operational excellence. Matt leads end-to-end AI initiatives for enterprise customers, identifying high-impact use cases and maintaining relentless focus on measurable ROI. He holds eight AWS certifications and serves as Adjunct Professor at Franklin University teaching cloud computing and AWS architecture. His expertise encompasses GenAI, agentic AI systems, migration, modernization, and optimization strategies that drive transformation at scale. [https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattjorat/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mattjorat/) Girish Bhatia: Girish Bhatia is a seasoned technology delivery leader with deep expertise in cross-domain program management. He holds multiple AWS certifications, including AWS Certified Solutions Architect – Associate, AWS Certified Developer – Associate, and AWS Generative AI Practitioner, and is also an AWS Community Builder. Girish brings over two decades of experience in the information technology industry. Throughout his career, Girish has led major technology-driven business transformation from modernizing on-premises applications to driving large-scale cloud migrations. His work includes API-based integration platforms, data-center and mainframe modernization, and enterprise cloud adoption initiatives. Based in Columbus, Ohio, Girish works at a tech-forward fintech company. He is passionate about AWS serverless architectures, Generative AI and emerging cloud technologies. An avid learner and builder, he continues to explore and apply the latest innovations in AWS to help organizations accelerate their digital transformation. https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishbhatia/[https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishbhatia/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/girishbhatia/) **THANK YOU** *Franklin University* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Franklin University*, please visit their website: https://www.franklin.edu/ **DIRECTIONS** Franklin University Fisher Hall 300 E. Main St, Columbus, OH 43215 Map: https://maps.app.goo.gl/jxjBA2hUmS5qrvhq8 Parking is FREE! Please park in Lot C in front of Fisher Hall. See attached map. NOTE: Map the address only. When mapping with Google Maps it may use the Fisher Hall at OSU, which is NOT correct. **Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab?** Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com

[The Board Walks](http://www.theboardwalks.com/) are for curious people who love deep conversations. If that sounds like you, **bring a thoughtful topic** and join us for a 5-mile walk (10,000+ steps!). **HOW IT WORKS** **Step 1: Bring a topic** Before you arrive, think of **one** topic you want to explore. A question. A thought that's been on your mind. An obsession you want to geek out on. This is your ticket to the event. **Step 2: Circle up & share** We gather in a circle. Your friendly walk host gives a speech to set the tone. Everyone shares: your name, what you're grateful for, and your topic. That's it. 60 seconds. **Step 3: Walk, talk & float** We walk 5 miles. You naturally drift into conversation with 2-3 people at a time, pulled by topics that spark your curiosity. When you're ready to move on, just say: "I'm going to float!" **Step 4: Feel more alive** Two hours flies by. You're back where you started — but you feel different. More alive. More energized. More connected to yourself and others. That's why regulars join 20+ times. *For more details, read our [Orientation Guide.](https://www.theboardwalks.com/orientation)* **HOW TO BRING A GREAT TOPIC** A great topic = something you're genuinely curious about. Recent topics include: * "What are you passionate about right now?" * "What makes a good friend?" * "What's a belief you used to hold that you've completely changed?" * "How do you want to be remembered?" * "What would you do if money wasn't a factor?" Think of your topic like the dish you're bringing to our conversational potluck. If everyone brings an A+ dish (i.e. energizing, uplifting, expansive), we'll all walk away feeling lighter and brighter. **WHAT TO EXPECT** This isn't a fitness event with casual chitchat. It's a walking think tank where we explore life's big questions together, beyond small talk. *If you're looking for light banter or a standard networking event, this probably isn't the right fit.* But if you crave depth, genuine connection, and conversations that make you feel alive? You'll love it here. **FAQ** * Wear casual athletic attire and sneakers. It's a long walk! * We have multiple first-timers at each event. We work hard to create a welcoming, inclusive, clique-free space. * We welcome people of **all** ages, backgrounds, and industries who align with the [intention](https://www.theboardwalks.com/ground-rules) of this space. * Rain or shine, we've been out here nearly every week since July 2022. If the event is cancelled, we'll let you know. * Dogs, babies in strollers, parents, and friends are welcome — please text/email them the event link so they can RSVP and prepare a topic! **LOGISTICS** * If you'll arrive over 10 minutes late, we suggest skipping the event. It's hard to find us once we start walking, and your host can't answer messages during the event. * This walk is designed for everyone to *move together at the same steady pace* (about 20 min/mile). This format works best when the whole group moves in unison. If you have mobility limitations, we kindly encourage you to find an event better suited to your needs. * Read our [Orientation Guide](https://www.theboardwalks.com/orientation) for full details. * If you enjoy the event, send **[this](http://www.theboardwalks.com/)** to a friend or sign up for our **[newsletter](https://theboardwalks.beehiiv.com/)**. We're in multiple cities with more on the way. 🤠👋 **IF YOU WANT TO GO DEEPER...** [The Board](https://stan.store/ellebeecher/p/the-board) is the next step: a high-trust collective for renaissance people devoted to creating, connecting, and building lives that light us up. * This is a global HQ for people who crave big talk, deep connection, and dream collaborations with people across industries. If the walks feel like a spark... The Board is the fire. Apply [here](https://stan.store/ellebeecher/p/the-board).

**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

**First meetup of the Columbus AI Engineering group.** We’ll kick things off with a practical, beginner-friendly discussion on: **How LLMs like ChatGPT actually work — and how to build real applications with them.** We’ll cover: * what’s actually happening under the hood (at a high level) * why LLMs behave the way they do (hallucinations, prompt sensitivity, etc.) * how people are building real systems with them today * where things break in practice This will be a **short, informal talk (\~15–20 min)** followed by open discussion and Q&A. Whether you’re an engineer, builder, or just curious about how modern AI systems work, you’re welcome to join. No slides, no fluff — just real conversation about real systems. We’ll hang out afterward and get to know each other.