Hardware

On 23 June we will be gathering at the Star of Kings for some Postgres and a pint. This time we'll have a talk by **Andreas Karlsson** from Percona on **Stopping Collations Going Wrong**, followed by a brief recap from **Alastair Turner** (Percona) and **Valeria Kaplan** (Data Egret) on **this year's PGConf.DEV**, where the PostgreSQL community celebrated its 30th birthday. This event is generously sponsored by [Nexteam](https://nexteam.co.uk/), a London-based consultancy specialising in PostgreSQL-based solutions, database support, and bespoke software development. We are a very informal bunch, so hoping to see you and your colleagues there! We do need to know the numbers, so please register if you are planning on coming. WHERE The Star of Kings **on 23, June from 18:30.** PROGRAMME 18:30 Welcome 19:00 **Stopping Collations Going Wrong** (Andreas Karlsson, Percona) - More below! 19:45 Food and bar snacks 20:00 **Celebrating 30 Years of Postgres at PGConf.DEV** (Alastair Turner, Percona & Valeria Kaplan, Data Egret) 20:30 It's a pub, so we'll stay and hang out a bit longer — but feel free to leave whenever you prefer! About The Talk **Stopping Collations Going Wrong** Outside of causing trouble for you when upgrading libc what are collations good for? PostgreSQL's collations have gotten a lot of bad press from the upgrade issues but they are also a powerful and important tool, especially for working with text in other languages than English. This talk will give an introduction to collations in PostgreSQL, including how to use them, what they are useful for, how they work plus some common pitfalls and misunderstandings. You will learn, among other things, about the three collation providers (libc, icu, builtin), BCP 47, case insensitive collations, CTYPEs, what new features have been introduced in recent PostgreSQL versions and get a brief look into the future of collations in PostgreSQL. About The Speaker **Andreas Karlsson** is application developer and long time minor contributor to PostgreSQL who recently has started working with PostgreSQL full time. Right now working for Percona with PostgreSQL itself and extensions, including pg_tde. \*\*\* THE OFFICIAL BITS The meet-up abides by [PostgreSQL Code of Conduct](https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/coc/). Postgres, PostgreSQL and the Slonik Logo are trademarks or [registered trademarks of the PostgreSQL Community Association of Canada](https://www.postgresql.org/about/policies/trademarks/), and used with their permission.

***\*Brand New Brixton Board Game Cafe\**** **Tuesday Social Mixer Games** There will be a £5 entry charge for the whole night. Come with friends or alone, and join in with one of the games we'll be fully teaching and running through. Turn up and we'll help you find a group and game from our extensive library of 500+ games. Beginners very welcome! New? Ask at front for Seamus or Kyle and we’ll help you find a game. A stone's throw from both Brixton mainline and underground stations, Otter Chaos has over **500 games** for you to play. See photos to preview our games. Bring your family, a couple of friends, or the whole gang for a wonderful time playing anything from the silliest of party games, to the most involved heavy strategy games. Whilst you're playing you can enjoy our wide range of soft and alcoholic drinks—including a wide range of cocktails. And feast on our delicious handmade sourdough pizzas—with vegan options and gluten-free bases available on request.

# Beyond the Classroom: Education in an Intelligent Age Join us for the next session of Deeptech Futures, a monthly series from UCL Engineering, supported by AlbionVC and Cooley LLP, and hosted at IDEALondon. ​This time, we’re exploring **Beyond the Classroom: Education in an Intelligent Age**. As emerging technologies such as AI and VR move further into classrooms, universities, training environments, and online learning platforms, the question is no longer just what these tools can do, but how they should be designed, adopted, and evaluated. ​From AI-supported teaching to immersive learning environments, education is becoming a major testbed for how new technologies shape human development. What does it take for these tools to improve learning outcomes, widen access, and support teachers, rather than simply adding another layer of complexity? ​**What you'll get out of it** * ​Hear from researchers and founders working at the intersection of education, emerging technology, and real-world implementation * ​Understand how AI and VR are being applied across learning environments, from universities to digital platforms * ​Explore what makes new education technologies genuinely useful, usable, and evidence-based * ​Gain insight into the design, access, and adoption challenges shaping the next era of education ​**Speakers** * ​**John Mitchell** – Head of Department and Professor of Communication Systems Engineering, Co-Director, Centre for Engineering Education, UCL Engineering * ​**Benoit Wirz** – Founding Partner, Brighteye VC * ​**Stephen Hilton** – Professor of Chemistry and Enabling Technologies, UCL School of Pharmacy * ​**Rajeshwari Iyer** – Founder, sAInaptic * ​Moderator: Dr Rob Thompson, Vice-Dean (Enterprise), UCL Engineering ​**About the series** ​Deeptech Futures: Conversations at the edge of what's possible, supported by AlbionVC and Cooley LLP, opens the door between research excellence at UCL Engineering and London’s innovation ecosystem at IDEALondon. Each month we explore new themes, from robotics and XR to climate tech and health, designed to spark debate, share insights, and connect people who might just build the next big thing together. ​**About UCL Engineering** ​With ten departments spanning activity from cybersecurity to biofuels, synthetic tissues to international trade, UCL Engineering is one of the most diverse Engineering faculties in Europe. As part of UCL, London’s Global University, it crosses boundaries to work with other disciplines, universities, and cultures. ​**About IDEALondon** ​IDEALondon is UCL Engineering’s home for ambitious founders in the heart of Shoreditch, run by WilbeLAB. We bring together startups in AI, biotech, fintech, climate, and more, giving founders workspace, community, and direct access to London’s deep-tech and investor network. ​**Privacy Notice** ​We occasionally take photos/videos at the event for marketing and socials. As part of attending, your contact details may be shared with our event partners (UCL Engineering, AlbionVC, and Cooley LLP). ​If you’d prefer not to have your details shared or photos/videos taken, email **[idealondon@wilbelab.com](mailto:idealondon@wilbelab.com)**.

**Join us on June 23rd for the Stripe London developer meetup. This is an in-person event for anyone building with Stripe. An evening focused on Stripe user experiences, product insights, best practices, and community.** 🍕🍺 **Perks** Food, drink provided! **🎫 Tickets** There is a hard limit for RSVP :) Wait list will be operating on Meetup. **📍Location** The event is hosted at Stripe's London offices near Liverpool St station. **🕚 Rough timings** * 6:00 pm - 6:30 pm: Doors open with refreshments * 6:30 pm - 7:45 pm: Talks and Q&A * 7:45 pm - 8:00 pm: Drinks, food, and networking **📣 Talks** 1. **Enabling Crypto in Stripe - from pay-ins to pay-outs,** Ana Andres del Valle 2. **What developers need to know about payments** \- Allison Farris\, Developer Advocate at Stripe Don't miss this opportunity to connect with the Stripe community. **You must bring a government issued photo ID.** [Stripe developer code of conduct.](https://stripe.com/legal/developer-code-of-conduct)g

Join our weekly Walthamstow Meetups and play some games with us! **💜Everybody Welcome:** We meet up every week to play a bunch of modern board games, card games and party games in pubs. If you would like to get involved, RSVP to the event. You can bring games with you if you like, although not a requirement. 🌱**Something For Everyone:** Whether you're a seasoned board game veteran or just starting out, you're welcome. No previous experience necessary, we go through the rules before playing. We play a range of games, from lighter card and party games to epic strategies. **📌Where:** We meet at the **The Village Club** in Walthamstow, which is a 10 minute walk from Walthamstow Central underground station.. When you arrive please press the buzzer to gain entry. Just say you are joining the board game group. Come say hello and the event hosts will get you settled in. The Village Club is a member's club but you can attend our board game evening without becoming a member. As the space will stay open for the use of our group the expectation is that you will buy a drink or two to cover the cost of the bar staff. If you so wish you have the option of joining the club in future for £10 a year. ⌚**When**: * **18:30** \- Arrival & Game Sign Up * **19:00** \- Games Begin * **23:00** \- Venue Closes If you arrive after games begin, you may have to wait until the next game starts. If you are running late on the night, please do let us know. **👥Community** **Hosted:** We'll always get folks involved, but you can join the community and sign up for games in advance! Many games played on the night get organised ahead of time. Come join the fun at **https://discord.gg/mHZSKq2** 📸**Photos:** Help us satiate the algorithm-beast, upload photos of your favorite games and consenting participants! When taking photos please do make sure that people in the photos are comfortable to appear in them. **💫Food** 🍴 Drinks are available and crisps. You can order food to be delivered if you wish.

**Please note this is an offline event with limited space. RSVP only if you will be able to attend in person. If you want to watch the live streaming, please RSVP to our [Online Event](https://www.meetup.com/producttank-london/events/315231290/?utm_medium=referral&utm_campaign=share-btn_savedevents_share_modal&utm_source=link&utm_version=v2&member_id=347816072)**. **Also, this event will not include catered food.** **\-\-\-\-\-\-\-** The "Product Manager" has never fit one mould, and AI is pulling the seams apart faster than ever. The consulting PM with the polished decks, the big tech PM optimising a metric three layers deep, the engineer-turned-PM still half in the codebase—these archetypes shape how we hire, coach, and judge PMs, but they were always more caricature than craft. This month we put them on the table and ask what's still true. Our speakers share their own journeys and talk candidly about how the role is shifting as AI moves from a roadmap item to a collaborator in the work itself. Expect honest stories over tidy frameworks, and a real look at how the role mutates depending on where you sit. **Our speakers:** [Kiran Virdee](https://www.linkedin.com/in/kvirdee/) \- Head of Product @ Accenture UK [Stephen Down](https://www.linkedin.com/in/stephen-down-3b824146/) \- Senior Product Manager @ Channel 4 [Valeria Stromtsova](https://www.linkedin.com/in/lerastromtsova/) \- Product Owner @ myenergi As always we will close our meet-up with a candid discussion and Q&A. This event is sponsored by Accenture UK. **Location:** Accenture, 30 Fenchurch St, London EC3M 3BD, UK Wembley Meeting Hall, 5/F **Timings:** 6:30 - Doors open 7:00 - Talk starts / streaming starts 8:00 - Q&A 8:30 - Q&A Finish 9:00 - Close Please note that the event will also be live-streamed on our YouTube channel and images will be taken throughout the evening. To keep up-to-date with our upcoming talks, follow our [LinkedIn page](https://www.linkedin.com/company/producttanklondon) and our [YouTube channel.](https://www.youtube.com/c/MindtheProductTV) \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- By attending this event, you agree to give permission for any photos taken during the event to be used for promotional purposes, give permission for your name and surname to be used for registration purposes, and agree to be contacted by email by ProductTank.

This meeting is for anyone who wishes to explore non-duality and awakening. At the meeting, Richard will give an introductory talk followed by plenty of time for questions, answers and discussion. If you would like to know more about Richard's approach, you can watch videos on his YouTube channel, go to www.richardsylvester.com or read his books (see below). Seeing non-duality is the recognition that our most basic assumption about our life, that we are separate, is simply an appearance. We may seem to be the subject of our life, moving through a world of other people and objects. But actually there is no separation, there is no subject and object, there is only seamless oneness. When this is seen, there is often a radically changed view of reality. Seeking ends and at last relaxation can take place. Richard is the author of four books about non-duality, including the much-loved 'I Hope You Die Soon' and 'Non-Duality Questions, Non-Duality Answers'. His fifth book is 'Confessions Of A Seeker - Adventures in Spirituality, Therapy and Belief'. Richard has held regular meetings about non-duality in London since 2005. He has also held meetings in Germany, France, Italy, Ireland, The Czech Republic and Japan. PLEASE NOTE:- This meeting will be held in the ground floor seminar room and not in the library where it is usually held. The meeting may be videoed and uploaded to YouTube. Your participation will be taken as consent to this. Please pay on the door - cash if possible. Don’t be put off if there are only a small number of RSVP’s for this event. The meeting is also publicised in other ways and people often don't indicate on meetup that they are coming. There will be a friendly group of people ready to share discussion.

**We are excited to invite you to our summer edition of DSL!** 💫 DSL #16 will happen on 25 June, organised by YLD and sponsored by NewDay. Our Eventbrite tickets are now sold out, but you can join our waitlist [here](https://dsl16.eventbrite.co.uk/). More information coming soon. Thank you to [YLD](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/design-systems-london-16-tickets-1989211510175?aff=oddtdtcreator) for organising and [NewDay](https://www.newday.co.uk/ "https://www.newday.co.uk/") for sponsoring this event. **Who are NewDay** At NewDay, their business is focused on a single, clear and defining purpose: to help people move forward with credit. NewDay provides nearly 5 million customers with responsible access to credit, underpinned by best-in-class customer service and exceptional user experience. Their in-house, highly scalable digital platform alongside their proprietary credit decisioning capability unlocks the competitive advantage. Their broad credit product offering enables instalment finance, BNPL, 0% finance and carded and digital revolving credit. NewDay operates multiple direct-to-consumer products and a range of credit solutions with some of the UK’s most loved brands. Their underwriting capability and experience allow them to responsibly say yes to more UK customers making them a merchant partner of choice. NewDay partners to harness the power of data to drive commerce across the UK, creating value at scale. **Who are YLD?** YLD turns digital investments into results by building what matters, delivering with impact, and making sure it lasts. Their product design, tech, and change experts work as one, applying AI where it shortens the path to value. With design at the heart, YLD brings clarity, puts users first, and shapes solutions that succeed from the start. YLD is hiring - check out the [job page](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/design-systems-london-16-tickets-1989211510175?aff=oddtdtcreator) Join the conversation on [LinkedIn](https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/design-systems-london-16-tickets-1989211510175?aff=oddtdtcreator)

Every Sunday from 3pm Board Games in Vauxhall Come join us for a new board game event in Vauxhall! We're heading to the Riverside pub from 3pm to play board games (all board/card games welcome). Easily accessible from the Northern Line, Victoria Line, Vauxhall overground and Vauxhall Bus Station. Bring some games, or just bring yourself, and join a friendly community of gamers for some relaxed Sunday fun!

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

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

Hi Architects, Welcome to our Fifth AWS London Well-Architected User Group Meetup!!! 🥳🥳🥳 Dragon Hall Trust, 17 Stukeley Street, London WC2B 5LT The AWS London Well-Architected Meetup is the latest chapter in the most popular AWS Meetup group globally. At each meetup we cover off various pillars of AWS best-practice in detail including insights from industry leaders that specialise in the Well-Architected Framework. We’ll be updating throughout the month with more speakers and our speakers so far this month include: * **Terraforming the Well-Architected Way: IaC Reviews That Actually Catch Risks** \| Alam Ahmed \[Managed Services Support Analyst\] from Boxxe * **Work Smarter: Tooling Strategies for a More Effective Well-Architected Review** \| James Harding \[Technical Customer Success Manager\] from AWS Partner Green Custard So come join us at 6.30pm for a 7.00pm start, including drinks, snacks and friendly networking after our talks :-) Tired of Linkedin’s "thought leadership”, spam and advertising? Join https://well-architected.me/ , the AWS community built for architects, developers and cloud professionals. * Connect with experienced AWS practitioners * Preview upcoming AWS Meetups and relive past content * Create and review beautiful AWS case studies in minutes * Prepare for AWS certifications with curated quizzes * Show your manager and reports you’re well-architected (Please note that by registering to attend you agree to your details being shared as and where required with Amazon Web Services and AWS Well-Architected User Group partners)

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

**Important time note:** Please plan on arriving between 5:30 and 6:00 as the elevators lock after 6 and you'll need to message us and we'll need to come get you. The building address is 4450 Bridge Park The entrance is 6620 Mooney St, Suite 400 You will need to scan your ID at the door to get a visitor badge. **Abstract** *Customize the IDE: Building Extensions for Visual Studio Code* Visual Studio Code is one of the most widely used development environments today, and much of its flexibility comes from its extension ecosystem. Extensions allow developers to customize the editor with new features, integrations, and workflow improvements tailored to their needs. In this session, we’ll cover what extensions are and the different types available, including full extensions written in TypeScript or JavaScript, along with lighter-weight extensions such as color themes, language packs, language support, code snippets, and keymaps. We’ll also look at practical reasons a developer might create an extension, from automating repetitive tasks to adding custom tooling. The session includes a hands-on walkthrough of creating a new extension, testing it locally, and understanding the basic project structure. We’ll close with a brief overview of how extensions are packaged and published to the Visual Studio Marketplace and other distribution options. **YouTube Link** TBD

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

The Forge does have a full bar and kitchen. There is no cover charge but they do request all attendees to purchase a minimum of ~20 per person. Soft drink refills are 1 each. Please support our hosts so we can continue to provide great events for the group! The Forge has a large library of games available for us to enjoy. Hosts and regulars will also provide numerous popular games but please bring any games you would like to teach and/or play. Doors open at 6, and we expect gaming to be rolling by around 630. Please promptly end your games and clear out the space at 10pm when the bar closes. We encourage socializing but do not permit disruptive behavior of any kind. Thank you for your continued commitment to providing a fun and welcoming space to veteran, newbie, and rookie gamers in the Columbus area. Parking can sometimes fill esrly. There is additional parking lot behind the neighboring Mexican restaurant that is free and easy to walk from but it's a bit hidden.

We've moved to guild.host Look for us there. https://guild.host/events/buckeye-cocoaheads-nscoders-tcbrk5