Immutable Infrastructure

This novel is set over two days in a bleak dystopian Hungarian town. The characters are superbly written and eerily familiar. The New Yorker calls The Melancholy of Resistance "comedy of apocalypse, a book about a God that not only failed but didn't even turn up for the exam." "Demanding" and "pessimistic" the reward comes from "its extraordinary, stretched, self-recoiling sentences, which are marvels of a loosely punctuated stream of consciousness". With page-long sentences and 30 page paragraphs the translator has pulled off herculean task of rendering this in perfect English. Although an effort, it sounds a rewarding read. Since starting this book club a few years ago we have formed a nice core membership. If you haven't come yet, please look out for the books on the table, pull up a chair, order a wine and join us. We like to hear what everyone has to say and enjoy the conversation, we're not cliquey at all! Oh, and to defray the Meetup monthly bill I will accept gold coin contributions or wine if you want to pay for multiple in one hit. I hope to see everyone again at this one with some new faces.

Read reviews from past participants [here](https://www.greenhousecreativesanctuary.com/inclusivegrief) “Grief has never been private, it has always been communal. Subconsciously, we are awaiting the presence of others, before we can feel safe enough to drop to our knees on the holy ground of sorrow. For the most part, grief is not a problem to be solved, not a condition to be medicated, but a deep encounter with an essential experience of being human. Grief becomes problematic when the conditions needed to help us work with grief are absent.” - Francis Weller Our primary association with grief is the loss of a loved one but there are so many kinds of losses that don't have formal ceremonies that are important to honour. Unprocessed grief can accumulate in weight, dulling our senses and capacity for aliveness. This is a safe, supportive space for all shapes, sizes and textures of grief- for the loss of our loved ones, for the childhood we did not get to have, for the parts of ourselves that have been rejected and exiled, for friendships and relationships with ambiguous endings, for homes and communities we are distanced from and miss, for the suffering of the world and our fellow beings. This inclusive grief circle is also an advocacy for compassionate and attentive grief work, for reshaping our understanding of and relationship with grief. It is a holding space, a container, a time and a deep permission to acknowledge our emotions, our connections, the ways we have been touched and transformed, and our humanity. We will make art in response to the Grief Deck, share and witness each other’s stories and journeys, and co-create a group nature mandala together. **Please bring a jar and 8-10 similar natural objects (8 flowers or 8 sticks or 8 stones).** If you are facing financial hardship, please key in CONCESSION as a promo code for a discounted price of $25. If that is still difficult, please email me at greenhouse.arttherapy@gmail.com. No one will be turned away. **Please also note:** * This is an art-therapy informed community-based creative workshop, and is not intended to replace individual or group therapy, and is also not for emergency crisis support or intervention. * If you are comfortable with me taking photos of you and/or your artwork for learning and supervision purposes, and to offer others a sense of what the workshop is like, please let me know at the start of the session. Your participation would be greatly appreciated! * While the estimated time is 2 hours, it might overrun depending on the size of the group and the conversations we are having so please allow some grace for that.

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.

Join the Melbourne TED Talk Community for an engaging session and meet people who like being an ideator, who want to bring their voice to a larger community. In contrast to a typical public speaking training event, where you receive feedback on your amms and aas and the way you present, this goes beyond that. **The objective of this community is to get inspired by some of the best ideas serving humanity, find your own calling and voice, be an ideator, and share your ideas clearly and persuasively.** The talk we will play is one of the amazing talks from the TED Library. In this session, we will delve deeper into the topic and gain perspective, and learn from each other. Be prepared to network, engage in meaningful conversations, and embark on a journey of professional development and leadership growth. **Mark your calendars and don't miss this opportunity to refine your public speaking abilities with the Melbourne TED Talk Community!** **TED Talk link to watch together:** **How to break through fear and become a leader** https://www.ted.com/talks/valerie_montgomery_rice_how_to_break_through_fear_and_become_a_leader **Agenda (as a guide)** 6.00 PM Registration 6.10 PM Introduction by Attendees 6.20 PM 10 min talk on screen (optional) 6.30 PM Breakout session (Group / Individual) based on topic 6.45 PM Individual / Group shares their takeaways 7.00 PM Practice the Art of Public Speaking - 2-3 talks of 2.5 minutes 7.10 PM Feedback to the Presenters and overall session 7.20 PM Event Concludes & floor opens for Networking **Fees: The event has a $5 contribution towards hiring the hall and Audiovisual. This can be paid through PayPal at the time of registration.** Looking forward to seeing you there. The Organizers Raj

The MLAI Meetup is a community for AI researchers and professionals which hosts monthly talks on exciting research. Our format is: * 6:00 - 6:20: Socializing * 6:20 - 6:40: Announcements and AI news * 6:40 - 7:40: Talk(s) and Q&A * 7:40 - 8:00 Networking * 8:00: Head to the nearest pub for dinner **Edit: Javier is sick so his talk is postponed! See below for Mike’s talk** **Javier Candeira: "Work in Progress towards Nonaga Zero"** **Talk Description:** Viktor Bautista i Roca's Nonaga is a delightful board game. Google's Alpha Zero paper describes an architecture marrying Monte-Carlo Tree Search with a neural network model in order to win board games at a level above human mastery. Javier is working on an Alpha Zero-style Nonaga playing bot, and will be presenting us with his work in progress. Nonaga Instructions: [https://hiperactivo.com/nonaga](https://hiperactivo.com/nonaga) Talk overview: 1. The Rules of the Game (a reprise of February's presentation) 1. What is Monte Carlo Tree Search, and what flavour of it are we implementing? 1. From Alpha Go to Mu Zero: a brief literature review of Google's findings and how they apply to Nonaga Zero. 1. Status report and next planned steps on the Nonaga Zero project. 1. Q&A: Bidirectional questions and answers, as this is a talk where the speaker has questions of his own! **Speaker Bio:** Javier Candeira is a software engineer, entrepreneur, public speaker, conference organiser, and a lifelong student of way too many topics, including machine learning. **Mike Bailey: "VoiceMode: Natural Voice Conversations with AI Agents"** **Talk description**: What if you could talk with your AI thinking partner while walking the dog, driving, or wherever inspiration finds you? VoiceMode is a free and open-source tool that enables natural voice conversations with AI coding agents like Claude Code. Voice brings situational accessibility to AI — keyboard and screen become optional. You can discuss ideas, capture them, research them, and have them underway before you sit back down. Mike and his AI assistant Cora will present together in real time, covering: * How VoiceMode works under the hood (local Qwen3-TTS, Whisper STT, Kokoro TTS, MCP integration) * Live demo of natural voice conversations with an AI coding agent * Building an open platform that works with any AI agent — not just one vendor **Speaker bio**: Mike Bailey is a Melbourne-based developer and the creator of VoiceMode, a free and open source project that brings natural voice conversations to AI agents like Claude Code. GitHub: mbailey/voicemode (1.2k ⭐) PyPI: voice-mode (200k downloads)

Doing Great Work Isn’t Enough Grinding away quietly won't get you the leadership impact you deserve, we're going to talk about what to do instead. We'll break down how influence actually works: it's not just about authority or French & Raven power plays. It's mapping your allies and advocates, boosting visibility without the cringe, and taking those "do hard things" steps like leading meetings or connecting with tricky stakeholders. **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 -** head up straight up to level 2 via the lift and a volunteer will greet you at the office entrance **Our Speaker** **Gretchen Scott** Gretchen Scott is CEO of Kaleida, helping organisations grow high-performing, inclusive tech teams. A former Cloudflare Community Manager and Linc.sh COO, she specialises in leadership development, influence, and career growth. Gretchen is a regular speaker and emcee across Australia’s tech community.

**Who are we?** Join us, **East Asian Singles Community of Melbourne (30-45)** for our first dancing meetup event! We’re a community of East Asian Singles. Unlike other groups of our kind, we focus on small group events. The goal is to create a friendly, relaxing, casual and low pressure environment where we can enjoy fun activities and mutual hobbies while building our community. **The Event** Join us for a quick bite and free salsa & bachata classes! Free salsa & bachata is an existing and reoccurring event that happens at the Albion Rooftop Bar every Friday night at 7pm. Let’s meet up at 6pm to have a quick bite and we can all chat a bit before heading there together. Whether this is your first time or you’re a confident beginner/intermediate, this is your chance to try something new/or not so new together as a group! Don’t be shy if you’ve never done this before or have two left feet like me, the classes are extremely beginner friendly and there’s also Level 2 classes as well as Socials for those that are more experienced. **Meetup Time and Point:** Time: 5:45pm-6pm Where: Simply Spanish, 116 Cecil St, South Melbourne VIC 3205 **Event Itinerary:** 6pm - Meet for a bite 7pm - Salsa Class (there’s Level 1 & 2 to choose from) 8pm - Bachata Class (there’s Level 1 & 2 to choose from) 9pm - Social Dancing Hope to see you there!

**Ethan Zeccola - What’s New in Microsoft Foundry? Agents, Models, Tools & What Actually Matters** A fast, practical tour of the latest updates in Azure AI Foundry. I’ll walk through what’s changed across models, agents, developer tooling, evaluation, and governance, then show a demo of how some of the new Foundry capabilities can be used when building AI apps on Azure. **Akanksha Malik - Foundry Toolkit Discoveries** The Foundry toolkit has been evolving rapidly, and with new extensions and features come new possibilities — and new things to discover. This session shares a guided tour through recent toolkit additions, exploring what's changed, what's new, and what's worth paying attention to. **Danidu Weerasinghe - AI-Powered AWS to Azure Migration with GitHub Copilot Agents** Learn how custom GitHub Copilot agents automate complete AWS-to-Azure migrations—from resource discovery to production-ready Bicep IaC and refactored code. See a real serverless app migrated end-to-end with AI orchestration, zero CLI commands, and enterprise security built-in.

Hey all, please join us for our May Edition of the Melbourne Data Eng meetup. Join us for an engaging session filled with exciting discussions and networking opportunities. Don't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. Please reach out if you'd like to host us! 🎉 🏠 Location: Stone & Chalk Melbourne 🍕 Catering: Cloud Shuttle 😊 💬 Join our Slack Group here: [Data Engineers Slack Channel](https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd09iTwpNulQH0b1BdslM1RzgImOGlX4WgOx6_rzvmVANwGmw/viewform) **Schedule:** \- 5\.30pm: Doors Open \- 6\.00pm: Announcements and Welcome \- 6\.10pm: 1st Talk \- 6\.40pm: 2nd Talk \- 7\.10pm: Networking \- 7\.30pm: Doors Close **Speakers:** 🎤 **Erfan Hesami, Senior Data Enigneer/Architect @ Airmaster** **Talk:** Building an AI-Powered Data Catalouge with OpenMetadata **Summary:** Ever ask an AI tool a question about your data and get a confident but wrong answer? You’re not alone. This usually happens because the AI is missing context. LLMs are only as good as the information you give them. Without a strong metadata layer, even the best models don’t really understand your data. In this session, we’ll show how you can fix that. I’ll walk through how OpenMetadata, MCP (Model Context Protocol), and its AI SDK work together to give AI the context it needs to understand your data, not just query it. Through a live demo based on a real project, you’ll see how to connect an AI agent to your metadata so it can search tables, follow data lineage, and answer questions with real understanding. We’ll also show how the AI SDK helps you go beyond chat, building agents and workflows that can take action on your data, not just talk about it. **Bio:** I am a Senior Data Engineer/Architect. I started my career as a Data Analyst, then moved into Analytics Engineering, and now focuses on building data platforms and systems. I have worked with companies such as Allianz, Xero, AFL, and Airmaster, helping teams better use their data. I enjoy sharing what I learn about data engineering and AI through simple, practical content on my Substack, Pipeline to Insights, helping others grow in their careers. 🎤 **Peter Hanssens, Founder & Principal AI Enablement Engineer @ Cloud Shuttle** **Talk:** The AI Gateway: Your Organisation's Most Underrated Data Source **Summary:** Every AI request your organisation makes generates a structured event: timestamp, user ID, model, tokens, cost, latency, cache hit, tool calls. Most teams are discarding all of it. This talk is about building the data engineering layer around your AI Gateway — turning it from a routing proxy into a competitive analytics asset. I'll cover the schema you get for free, the five DE problems you have to solve (schema normalisation, pricing enrichment, prompt/response storage tiers, org attribution, volume at scale), the dimensional model that makes it queryable, and what you can answer once the pipeline runs. Three deep dives: prompt version A/B testing at production scale, cache effectiveness analytics, and agent tool call observability. **Bio:** Peter is the founder of Cloud Shuttle, a Sydney-based data and AI engineering consultancy, and the founder of DataEngBytes - ANZ's largest data engineering community conference. He works at the intersection of data engineering and production AI: LLMOps, AI gateways, evaluation pipelines, and the infrastructure that makes AI measurable. If you'd like to **present** at future meetups, please submit your talk [here](https://dataengbytes.com/forms/meetup-talk)! Remember to bring along some great questions! See you all there...

[Merri-bek Tech](https://www.merri-bek.tech/), a group in the inner northern suburbs of Naarm (Melbourne), invites everyone involved interested in tinkering with grass-roots technologies in support of a **Sustainable**, **Resilient** and **Just** future - to join us for the **Naarm Solarpunk Meetup** in a new location in Carlton. This time we are meeting on the Mezzanine Level at Melbourne Connect, 700 Swanston St. More details below. Following on from our workshop in April we will be doing some hands-on hacking as well as welcoming everyone who wants to talk further about getting involved in the group or finding out more about positive, grassroots tech futures. On the night we will be doing, * Merri-tek LoRes Node install and setup, support and general questions * Raspberry Pi setups * Linux OS installs * Your sustainable, resilient and/or just project :) MBT members will also be ready to talk further about what we do, what we hope to do and how you can join in. **About the Naarm Solarpunk group** Some of us are technologists, and will be showing off software or hardware projects, and others are more interested in community organizing, responding to the climate crisis, or building local resilience. Whatever your area of interest, or your level of skill, you're absolutely welcome to dive in. At the meetups we'll have a show-and-tell time for any projects that you're working on, as well as occasional short presentations. The space will be hosted by volunteers, and we'll actively work towards inclusion through applying a [code of conduct](https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct/). Merri-bek Tech has some projects that you might be interested in updates from, including our attempt to build P2P mesh network based community hosting on Raspberry Pis, and our project to run a local fediverse social network. We aspire to keep this meetup **Solarpunk** as fuck. We support the hackers, tinkerers and makers and misfits. There are plenty of other spaces for big corporate green tech, so bring your hobby project, not your day job, unless that job is firmly rooted in the solidarity economy. We are not value neutral. We'll start with Merri-bek Tech's [values](https://www.merri-bek.tech/about/values/) and [principles](https://www.merri-bek.tech/about/principles/), and build from there together. In particular, in the context of ongoing genocide, we will ask you to leave if you're associated in any way with the weapons industry. This meetup will be hosted on the stolen, unceeded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. **Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.** Image alt text (honestly meetup, get your shit together): The image is a illustration of a future, sustainable city. There is human-scale, green tech, repair shops and urban gardens.

**At Happy Hour Toastmasters - We make public speaking** **FUN!** **Do you want to get better at speaking in front of people?** Maybe for that important presentation at work, or that big wedding speech you've been asked to give? Do you want to have fun and make a bunch of great new friends while doing it? Then **our club is the place for you!** Our club is a diverse and supportive group of people, from beginners to world championship finalist-level speakers, who meet regularly to practice and improve our public speaking skills. **You'll also** **learn:** * **leadership skills** * **networking and 'soft skills'** * **how to provide constructive feedback** * **how to control your 'ums' and 'ahs'** * **how to think quickly and creatively while speaking on your feet** * **and much more!** **Guests are welcome** to come to any of our meetings, and we are also to chat with you about questions you might have, so please get in touch! **Please note - Bookings are essential**, as we need to let you into the building when you arrive!

**Details** Join us for networking, drinks and a good time catching up with fellow Power BI and Microsoft Fabric enthusiasts **Agenda:** 5:30PM - 6:00PM Welcome and Networking 6:00PM - 7:00PM Speaker Session **Topic:** Stream, Transform, Act: Real-Time Intelligence in Microsoft Fabric **THE SPEAKER -** Heidi Hasting - Heidi Hasting is a Business Intelligence professional and former software developer with over seven years experience in Microsoft products. She is an ALM/DLM enthusiast and Azure DevOps fan and co-founder and organiser of the Adelaide Power BI User Group. Heidi is a regular attendee at tech events including Azure Bootcamps, DevOps days, SQLSaturdays, Difinity and PASS Summit. **THE SESSION** An event occurs — a file lands, a sensor fires, a transaction completes — and you want something to happen. Whether it's streaming data, intermittent batch events, or a trigger the moment a file becomes available, that's all Real-Time Intelligence. We'll dig into Microsoft Fabric's RTI stack, covering Eventstreams, transformations, and a medallion architecture built on Kusto tables in Eventhouses. We'll visualise it all with Real-Time Dashboards, then kick it up a notch with Activator triggers and a look at what's possible with Fabric Operations Agents and Fabric IQ. **Sponsors:** **Vivanti** A big thank you goes out to our sponsor, Vivanti, for their support of this Meetup; providing the venue as well as drinks for attendees. **GET AI** A big thanks to GET AI for sponsoring the food. GET AI is a Microsoft speciliased consulting company focussed on building AI solutions in the Microsoft Ecosystem https://www.getai.com.au

Immerse Australia and Metaverse Melbourne in partnership with RMIT University, invites you to the **Melbourne XR Industry Meetup** at RMIT’s **Virtual Experiences Laboratory — VXLab**. This special event marks the beginning of a new chapter for what was run as the Melbourne Metaverse community events. Immerse Australia is now running and hosting the Melbourne-based XR industry events previously run as Melbourne Metaverse Meetups. We thank Amanda Parks for the years she organised and hosted Melbourne Metaverse group meetups. As Immerse Australia, we will be creating more opportunities for people working in **virtual reality, augmented reality, extended reality, spatial computing, immersive media, education, research and emerging technology** to connect, share ideas and build capability. This event will be free to attend thanks to our event Partner, RMIT and will celebrate the convergence of the Melbourne Metaverse community with Immerse Australia’s national XR network. We warmly invite past members of the Melbourne Metaverse group, Immerse Australia members, students, researchers, developers, creators, educators, startups and industry professionals to attend. You’ll hear from leading researchers and practitioners, see demonstrations of emerging XR technologies, learn about upcoming industry activity, and connect with others shaping the future of immersive technology in Melbourne and across Australia. For a list of speakers, activities and location details go to the Immerse Australia booking page below. Places are limited for this event, so early registration is recommended. https://events.humanitix.com/melbourne-xr-industry-meetup-rmit-vxlab-x-immerse-australia

We will show how to build custom agents with Microsoft Agent Framework. Attendees will learn how to build and custom host agents when Microsoft Foundry is not a viable option.

Customer identity resolution becomes increasingly complex as organizations scale across multiple systems, regions, and data formats. Traditional rule-based approaches often fail to keep up with data variability, require constant manual tuning, and struggle with real-time processing needs. This session presents a practical approach to building a scalable identity resolution pipeline using AWS services and modern AI techniques. The architecture combines data ingestion through Amazon S3 and AWS Glue, transformation pipelines using Spark on EMR, and machine learning models deployed via SageMaker for entity matching and standardization. Graph-based relationship modeling is implemented using Amazon Neptune to improve resolution accuracy by incorporating household and shared attribute context. We will walk through how machine learning models can be used for name and address normalization, how intelligent blocking strategies improve matching efficiency, and how feedback loops can be introduced to continuously improve accuracy. The session also highlights how serverless components such as AWS Lambda can be used for orchestration and real-time processing. **SPEAKER BIO** Mosaic Syed is a Senior Data Engineering and Cloud Solutions Architect with over 20 years of experience designing and delivering scalable, secure, and high-performance data solutions across global enterprise environments. https://www.linkedin.com/in/mosaic-basha-syed-92300856 **CALL FOR SPEAKERS** Learn more: [https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/](https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/) **THANK YOU** *VEEAM* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Veeam*, please visit their website: [https://www.veeam.com/](https://www.veeam.com/) **DIRECTIONS** 8800 Lyra Dr #450 · Columbus, OH go to 4th floor. **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

**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** TBD **YouTube Link** TBD

Communication is everything in life You are only as successful as your ability to communicate. \- What if you could confidently talk to anyone? \- What if you had the ability to calmly control every conversation? \- What if you could close that sale\, ask for that date\, make new friends\, repair problematic relationships\, get that raise\, or effortlessly express any idea with confidence? You can! The secret to success relies on your ability or inability to effectively communicate. Attend a free seminar and gain a better ability to communicate. Hosted by the Church of Scientology of Central Ohio 1266 Dublin Road, Columbus, OH 43215 For more information, contact Rhiannon, the Event Host at 614-221-5024

**Building a great product is one thing—building momentum behind it is another.** Join **Senior Product Manager Adam Solaiman** and **User Experience Manager Tyson Smith** for a behind-the-scenes look at what it takes to turn complex ideas into scalable products inside large organizations. In this session, they’ll share how teams move from ambiguity to execution—navigating organizational complexity, aligning stakeholders, and continuously evolving products after launch. You’ll walk away with insights on how to: * Build and sustain momentum across teams * Adapt to changing priorities without losing direction * Scale products thoughtfully in complex environments Whether you're driving a new initiative or growing an existing product, this conversation will give you practical strategies to keep things moving forward. Come connect, learn, and swap stories with fellow product professionals. \-\-\- Food and drinks will be provided by Switchbox, our generous host. Free parking will be available at the front and back sides of the Switchbox Office.

NFT's are here to stay folks! This is a group for like minded people interested in understanding, leveraging, using, creating for, profiting from, trading too i suppose, NFT's.. everything around them, complexity, fear and exploits, best practices and more. **PLUS** This group will talk AI ART tools, techniques, artists, video, audio, prototypes and more in the AI assisted production space- ART specifically, but we can get into any aspect of some of the cooler things happening in AI in general.