Home Automation

Every Tuesday at 5pm! RSVP at the following link to receive login details: https://www.enggarcia.com/hbstuesday/ * The Districts Best first time home buyer webinar * Learn about the home buying process * How to qualify & what loans are available * Qualifying for DC Open Doors and other programs * Reduced down payment and closing cost opportunities We're looking forward to seeing you soon!

Welcome to our new home at the historic Tivoli Theater! Please check our details for access to the space on [our website](https://www.hacdc.org/visit/). Join the discord for questions / help getting in (use channel #let-me-in) [https://discord.gg/dNjuNhNmeT](https://discord.gg/dNjuNhNmeT)

We’re excited to continue building AI in Practice with our monthly social! 🎉 Each month, we’ll host an informal happy hour and dinner at Upside on Moore in Rosslyn. Come join fellow AI builders, professionals, and curious minds for a relaxed evening of conversation, connection, and community. Whether you’re working on AI systems, advising on responsible adoption, or just interested in how AI is shaping law, compliance, finance, healthcare, defense, software, mission-driven organizations, or public service — this is a chance to meet like-minded people and help shape what this community becomes. 🍸 Drinks and food are available for purchase at the venue. 🤝 No formal agenda — just introductions, networking, and sharing what excites us about AI in practice. We’re so grateful for the early enthusiasm, and we look forward to seeing you each month as this community grows! **Date, Time & Location** 5:30 PM – 7:30 PM Thursday 23 October 2025 Upside on Moore 1831 Moore Street Arlington, VA 22209

How Blockchain Responsibly Contributes to Secure, Transparent, and Trustworthy Elections GBA Emerging GovTech Livestream Series - Kicking Off 2026 with Critical Conversation on using Blockchain in Voting & Elections Government Blockchain Association Voting Working Group Tue, Jan 13, 2026, 12:00 Noon - 1:00 PM (New York Time) Event link https://youtube.com/@GBAorg/streams Registration https://lnkd.in/e5F2HBrC GBA Emerging GovTech Livestream will discuss... Ensuring every vote is counted and verified Technical and procedural standards needed to prevent fraud, waste, and abuse Responsibly integrate blockchain - not as a replacement, but as a trusted security layer within existing election systems Provide auditability & legal integrity - real-time transparency for observers, without compromising ballot secrecy Provide identity & access management, spanning both physical and digital security Handle hybrid & provisional voting models, including inclusive access (e.g., multilingual closed captions) Provide clear governance: focusing on who is eligible to vote - and eligibility verification Develop standard protocols for blockchain solutions across jurisdictions Panelists Amelia Powers Gardner’s, Government Innovation Leader - Disruptive Technology Advocate - Public Official - Consultant - Speaker - Technology Implementation Expert - Mother - Entrepreneur - Mentor for High Performance Women Eugene Morozov, CPA, MS - CEO, DeVote & author of 2026 Public DLT and Blockchain Governance & Implementation Playbook, WEB3 Evangelist • Domain Expert • Investor • Entrepreneur Passionate about driving innovation in blockchain, digital assets, decentralized applications (dApps), and governance systems (DAO). Linda Hutchinson Director of Quality Assurance & Certification, Voatz Moderated by Felisha Stevenson Business Developer & Investor GBA Voting Working Group.. How Blockchain Responsibly Contributes to Secure, Transparent, and Trustworthy Elections Event link https://youtube.com/@GBAorg/streams Registration https://lnkd.in/e5F2HBrC GBA Emerging GovTech Livestream Series - Sponsored by CESS Network CESS Network supports open scalable and decentralized infrastructure that empowers next-generation public-sector innovation. About GBA The Government Blockchain Association (GBA) is a nonprofit (501c6) organization committed to advancing blockchain technology standards, facilitating industry education, and ensuring a trusted, secure ecosystem for blockchain solutions. For more information, visit https://gbaglobal.org/. For more information contact Bob Miko, bmiko@pacificdialogue.com 203 378 2803. Bob Miko GBA Director of Public Relations Editor in Chief/Producer Pacific Dialogue 203 378 2803 bmiko@pacificdialogue.com

Join VSDC and enjoy a meal at Dulce Crepes in Potomac, MD! They just opened and offer a huge vegan menu featuring handcrafted sweet and savory crepes, fresh ingredients, and bold flavors in every bite. Out of respect for others, while eating with VSDC, please order and consume vegan food only, even if that is not your norm. **Celebrating Veganuary** Veganuary encourages people worldwide to try going vegan for January and beyond to protect the environment, prevent animal suffering, and improve human health. VSDC invites you to [explore the challenge](https://veganuary.com/en-us/try-vegan/) and get a celebrity cookbook, 31 days of recipes, and vegan coaching emails! Please share with friends and family. **VSDC: More Than A Meetup** We are delighted to have you as part of The Veg Society of DC Vegan Meetup group, and we look forward to seeing you at our events. Did you know that [VSDC](https://vsdc.org/%20) is a nonprofit organization with membership benefits? With VSDC membership, you will save money at area restaurants and businesses, attend VSDC member-only events, and, most importantly, support us as a clear and consistent voice for improving the lives of all beings through community building and education centered on the benefits of a vegan diet and lifestyle. The membership fee is minimal, but the impact is significant! [Join today](https://vsdc.org/membership/)! **Ways to Stay In Touch with Us** Thank you for being part of our Meetup presence and bringing like-minded people together. We invite you to: * Become a [VSDC member](https://vsdc.org/membership/) to save money at area restaurants and support us in being a clear and consistent voice for improving the lives of all beings through community building and education centered on the benefits of a vegan diet and lifestyle. * Sign up for our[ monthly e-newsletter](https://vsdc.org/about/newsletter/) to hear more about our activities. * Follow us on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/vegsocietydc/) or [Facebook](https://www.facebook.com/vegsocietydc/) to engage with us. **Interested in Volunteering with VSDC?** VSDC offers many events each month, thanks to the dedication of our event planning team. Would you consider volunteering? To learn more and get started, [please visit our website](https://vsdc.org/volunteer/). **Only Vegan Food, Please** While VSDC welcomes people wherever they are on the path to an all-plant, vegan diet and lifestyle, it is our policy that only vegan food be served and consumed at our events. If you would like to [explore a vegan diet or get support in making lifestyle changes, consider these resources](https://vsdc.org/exploringvegan/). **Liability Waiver and Code of Conduct** When you sign up to attend, you automatically acknowledge [VSDC's Liability Waiver](https://vsdc.org/activity-waiver/) and commit to follow the code of conduct found at [Policies - VSDC - Veg Society of DC](https://vsdc.org/policies/). **VSDC. Creating communities. For your health, the animals, and the planet.**

learn more about the HPAP Down Payment Assistance Program \- Get up to $202\,000 in funds from the House Assistance Purchase Program \- Learn what the funds can go towards and the timeline to get approved \- Understand how to sign up for HPAP orientation \- Learn the benefits and challenges of HPAP in detail \- Discuss the current market conditions for HPAP buyers\.

Learn more about our Home Buyer Program * get up to $202k in down payment assistance through HPAP * get up to $25K in grants from Maryland Mortgage Program * downpayment assistance options through DC Open Doors * how to qualify and what loans are available * loan application and approval process * repeat home buyer options * purchase price limits * market insight and home buying steps in a competitive market SIGN UP AT THE LINK BELOW: [https://www.enggarcia.com/egpwebinars/](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://www.enggarcia.com/egpwebinars/&sa=D&source=calendar&ust=1705256818169980&usg=AOvVaw0qgqMgQjduPHADDDggU6H6)

Want to mess with some electronics? Or perhaps contribute to HacDC's main group project? HacDC's latest event brings hardware projects to the community. We will focus primarily on the main project (Space Blimp!) but please feel free to bring some of your own projects to show off and work on!

Every Saturday at 11am! RSVP at the following link to receive login details: https://www.enggarcia.com/hbscaphill/ The Districts Best first time home buyer webinar Learn about the home buying process How to qualify & what loans are available Qualifying for DC Open Doors and other programs Reduced down payment and closing cost opportunities We're looking forward to seeing you soon!

Join us for an evening of cutting-edge discussion at the intersection of **AI and Python**, featuring lightning talks from leading practitioners who are building the future of intelligent systems and developer tooling. **REGISTER at the Py AI event page on Luma: [https://luma.com/w08cv6px](https://luma.com/w08cv6px)​​** **Schedule** * ​​5PM - 5:30PM: Pizza & Drinks * ​​5:30PM - 6:30PM: Talks from our speakers * ​Jeremiah Lowin - Founder & CEO, Prefect * ​Roni Kobrosly - Director of Data Science, Capital One * ​Adam Azzam - FastMCP * ​Banjo Obayomi - GenAI DC * ​​6:30PM - 8:00PM: Networking & Social Hour ​​Following the talks, stay for open discussion and networking with fellow Python and AI engineers. Whether you’re building AI-driven applications, exploring new frameworks, or working on developer productivity tools, this meetup offers practical insight from the teams defining the modern AI ecosystem. **REGISTER at the Py AI event page on Luma: [https://luma.com/w08cv6px](https://luma.com/w08cv6px)​​**

First officer Ian will be leading us in some fun board games.

Join us for an evening of cutting-edge discussion at the intersection of **AI and Python**, featuring lightning talks from leading practitioners who are building the future of intelligent systems and developer tooling. **REGISTER at the Py AI event page on Luma: https://luma.com/w08cv6px​​** **Schedule** * ​​5PM - 5:30PM: Pizza & Drinks * ​​5:30PM - 6:30PM: Talks from our speakers * ​Jeremiah Lowin - Founder & CEO, Prefect * ​Roni Kobrosly - Director of Data Science, Capital One * ​Adam Azzam - FastMCP * ​Banjo Obayomi - Sr. Solutions Architect GenAI, AWS * ​...and more! * ​​6:30PM - 8:00PM: Networking & Social Hour ​​Following the talks, stay for open discussion and networking with fellow Python and AI engineers. Whether you’re building AI-driven applications, exploring new frameworks, or working on developer productivity tools, this meetup offers practical insight from the teams defining the modern AI ecosystem. **REGISTER at the Py AI event page on Luma: https://luma.com/w08cv6px​​**

DC Code and Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. It's community-led and community-run by devs, for devs. People of all skill levels attend. Whether you’re dev-curious, aspiring, or a professional developer, we’d love to have you! Come chat or learn to code on a Sunday afternoon with coffee and cool-inclusive people. Bring your laptop! We typically meet every month on the weekend. **Join our online community!** For all things Tech in DC and to get latest updates and tech events from the DMV area, join the [DCTech Slack](https://dctech.chat/). All DC Code & Coffee announcements are in the #dccodecoffee channel **How it works** Near the beginning of the event, we do an introduction circle. You say your name, what you can help others with, and what you would like help with. You can also share job opportunities. After the introduction circle, everything is self-organized. **Event Host and Directions** TEMPORARY LOCATION! We'll be meeting at West End Library for January.

Bring your Raspberry Pi, Arduino, microcontroller, or any other electronic project and join fellow electronics makers for a night of creativity and collaboration! This session is open forum to share your current projects—whether complete or in progress, it’s all interesting! Whether you’re deep into embedded systems, exploring new ideas, or just getting started, you’ll find a welcoming space to collaborate, share, and get inspired. I've been hardware hacking a See N Say to make it say whatever I want - while the project is in progress still, it should be working by this meetup! I'll bring it for demo. [See N Say Project](https://github.com/cdeever/esp32-see-n-say) While we continue to pursue a more permanent venue for this Meetup, we’ll be using public library facilities based on availability. This session will be at the Worthington Park Library in the Olentangy Meeting Room.

**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** GitHub Copilot is rapidly changing how developers write, understand, and maintain code. Powered by generative AI and deeply integrated into modern development environments, Copilot acts as an intelligent coding assistant, helping developers move faster while maintaining quality and focus. In this session, we’ll explore what GitHub Copilot is, how it works, and where it fits into a real-world developer workflow. We’ll break down what Copilot can (and cannot) do, where it can be used, and how licensing differs for individuals and organizations. Most importantly, this talk goes beyond theory with a live, hands-on demo showcasing Copilot inside the IDE and on GitHub, demonstrating how it can assist with code generation, refactoring, learning new APIs, and accelerating day-to-day development tasks. Designed for developers, technical leads, and engineering managers, this session provides a practical introduction to AI-assisted development, highlights best practices for getting value from Copilot, and closes with guidance on how to continue learning and evolving alongside this rapidly advancing tool. Attendees will leave with a clear understanding of how GitHub Copilot can enhance productivity, improve developer experience, and fit into modern software teams today, not someday. **YouTube Link** TBA

2026 may be the last year many developers write code by hand. We need coding agents to solve complex problems in production codebases, but vibe coding alone won’t get us there. Vibe coding is all gas, no brakes. It burns up the context window until the agent slips on its own slop. You can go fast at first, but the more you stuff into the context window, the more tangled its outputs get. While the industry is rapidly increasing code generation speed, we still have to understand, review, merge, and maintain what gets shipped. This talk featuring Michael Geiger will outline how coding agents (Claude Code + Gas Town) work and a framework for orchestrating them to solve complicated problems in complex codebases. It’s about steering the model: doing the research to align intent, planning the approach up front, implementing in parallel steps, and breaking early. Human judgment still matters, but it should be spent on high-leverage decisions: what to build, what to forbid, and “what is quality?”, not cleaning up slop. Attendees will leave with a checklist to identify workflow and environment gaps that hold agents back, so you and your team can ship higher-quality software starting tomorrow.

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!

## Learn Infrastructure-as-Code (the FUN Way) — Through Minecraft 🎮☁️ **Joint Meetup: Azure CBUS × Columbus HashiCorp User Group × DevOps Columbus** What if learning Terraform and Infrastructure-as-Code didn’t feel like a whitepaper… but more like a game? Join us for a joint Azure CBUS, Columbus HashiCorp User Group, and DevOps Columbus meetup where **Mark Tinderholt** \(Principal Architect\, Microsoft Azure \| HashiCorp Ambassador \| “The Azure Terraformer”\) shows how **Minecraft** can be used as a surprisingly powerful way to understand real-world Infrastructure-as-Code concepts. In this session, Mark will demonstrate how Terraform and Azure can be used to provision, configure, and manage Minecraft servers—while teaching the same patterns you’d use for production cloud infrastructure. ### What we’ll cover * Infrastructure-as-Code fundamentals using **Terraform** * Provisioning real infrastructure on **Azure** * Applying **IaC best practices** (immutability, repeatability, versioning) * How playful environments like Minecraft make complex concepts *click* * Why learning through experimentation beats click-ops every time ### Who should attend * Developers, platform engineers, and cloud engineers * Terraform users (new or experienced) * Anyone curious about Infrastructure-as-Code but tired of boring examples * Minecraft fans who want to see it used in a totally unexpected way No prior Minecraft experience required—just curiosity and a willingness to learn infrastructure the fun way. Come for the blocks, stay for the Terraform. 🧱➡️📐 Want to be a speaker? submit your talk to our Call for Presenters!!! https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/