Information Retrieval

​Hey Toronto ClickHouse community 👋 ​We’re back with another meetup — bringing together database enthusiasts for an evening of talks, networking, food, and drinks! ​**Agenda** * ​**5:30 PM** – Arrivals, food & drinks * ​**6:00 – 6:10 PM** – Intros! * ​**6:10** – **6:30PM** \- Khaled Zaky Sr\. Director @ RBC \( Royal Bank of Canada\) * ​**6:30 – 6:50 PM** – Maxim Mirkin Director @ Questrade * ​**6:50 - 7:10PM -** Alexei Zenin Software Consultant * ​**7:10 - 7:30PM** \- Semyon Khlavich founder & Evgenii Baldin Developer @ Socialpruf * ​**7:30 – 8:00 PM** – Q&A + Networking ​✨ Expect insightful talks, interactive discussions, and plenty of time to connect with fellow ClickHouse users and experts.

Go Medieval! Learn Medieval arts, sciences, dancing and games! Have somefun with like minded history geeks. Tuesdays, 6:30 pm to 8:30 pm St. Andrew’s United Church 117 Bloor St EAST (near Church Street) Ring the buzzer for the gate keeper more info? www.eoforwic.ca

We are following our favourite trivia host, Simon from Are You Smarter than a Scottish Guy, to one of his other weekly locations: One-Eyed Jack's at 287 Richmond Road (between Spadina and Peter Streets). The beer selection is starting to improve, with several KLB selections; their food menu is very good - [https://www.oneeyedjackpub.com/torontomenu](https://www.oneeyedjackpub.com/torontomenu). They have a set of Trivia Night specials, including wings with lots of flavours. The trivia starts at 7:00pm with first question at 7:15 pm. We have a set of pair of tables reserved under Steve. Serious RSVPs only as no-shows prevent us from fielding a complete team. Top prizes is a gift certificate for the next visit. Other prizes are a free round for the table and nachos. There is also a small prize for best team name, so put on your creative hat; the host seems to like puns and prefers short team names. Let's have some fun, eat some wings, and hopefully win!

Join us for a special pre-summit **“Meet the Community” evening** with **AWS User Group Toronto**! This casual networking session is a great way to connect with fellow builders, cloud enthusiasts, and AWS community members ahead of the main summit. Whether you’re a student, developer, architect, or just curious about cloud, this is a perfect space to meet like-minded people, exchange ideas, and grow your network. Expect light conversations, meaningful connections, and a relaxed atmosphere as we bring the community together before the big event. 📅 **Date:** June 2, 2026 🕠 **Time:** 5:30 PM – 7:00 PM 📍 **Venue:** Amazon Toronto Office (YYZ16), Floor 47, Rooms 101 & 102 📍 **Address:** 40 King St W, 47th Floor, Toronto, ON M5H 3Y2 , (Take Elevators from lowest floor to Floor 47) Looking forward to seeing everyone there and kicking off the summit with great energy and conversations!

Most of life is routine. We each have a set of actions we perform in roughly the same sequence every single day: brushing our teeth, putting on the kettle, and taking the TTC (for instance). In contrast, we sometimes have experiences we deem extraordinary or profound. Vacationing somewhere new. Viewing a work of art that moves us. Going to see our favourite band live. Noticing the intricate details of a flower (for instance). These experiences seem *significant*. Yet we don’t seem to ascribe the same significance to the “mundane” parts of life, despite them making up a majority of our everyday experience. In this Curiosity Café, we will explore why there appears to be a distinction between the mundane and the profound. Are these useful categories? Is there something uniquely meaningful about experiences that happen infrequently or are considered ‘once-in-a-lifetime’ events? Can the mundane parts of life be made profound through a change of perspective or attitude? Join co-moderators Jaber Abedin and Sofia Panasiuk as we explore these questions and more at our next Curiosity Café: * What makes a day mundane? What makes a day extraordinary? * Which ordinary rituals and routines feel meaningful to you? * Can a meaningful life exist without extraordinary experiences? * Why do we seem to have a liking for extraordinary experiences as opposed to mundane ones? * Should we strive to appreciate the mundane more? **Space is limited!** **Please obtain a “Pay-What-You-Can” ticket from Curiosity Café at [this link (click here)](https://www.eventbrite.ca/e/curiosity-cafe-meaning-in-the-mundane-tickets-1990421364883) to attend this event. You need a ticket to be admitted.** See the above link for more info about tickets and other options including a limited number of free tickets. Come and hang out with us, grab food, and read through our handout from 6-6:30pm. Our structured discussion will run from 6:30-8:30pm with a 10 minute break in the middle. Hope to see you there! ***__________________________________________________________________*** This event is brought to you by [Being and Becoming](https://beingnbecoming.org/), a Toronto based non-profit. We aim to create community around exploring everyday concepts and experiences so that we may live more intentional, thoughtful, and meaningful lives. We use philosophy as a tool with which we can come to a richer understanding of the world around us. By offering activities, spaces, and other opportunities for conversation and co-exploration, we hope to enable the meeting and fusion of individuals and their ideas. Everyone is welcome, regardless of background: indeed, we believe the journey is best undertaken alongside explorers from a variety of disciplines, cultures, backgrounds, and experiences. Find out more about Being and Becoming [here](https://beingnbecoming.org/). About the Curiosity Café Series: For those of you who haven’t had the opportunity to join us at our Curiosity Cafés and are wondering what they’re all about: every two weeks, we invite members of our community to come out to the Madison Avenue Pub to engage in a collaborative exploration of our chosen topic. Through these events, we aim to build our community of people who like to think deeply about life’s big questions, and provide each other with some philosophical tools to dig deeper into whatever it is we are most curious about.

Practice and improve your English through conversation at St. Andrew Centre (73 Simcoe St, downtown Toronto), while making new friends! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- How to Get to the Event: By TTC, exit at St. Andrew Station. Walk west on King St. West to Simcoe St. Do not enter through the church building; the large church front doors will be closed. At the corner of Simcoe St. and King St. West, turn south and walk on Simcoe St. Enter through St. Andrew Centre, which will be behind the church building.

This is a ticketed event. You can register [here](https://luma.com/trajec-2gru). ​ Could an AI company’s internal coding agents create a “rogue deployment”, a set of agents running without human knowledge or permission? In February and March 2026, [METR](https://metr.org/?utm_source=luma), the organization behind the [time horizons graph](https://metr.org/time-horizons/), conducted a pilot of a process to assess just that. Anthropic, Google DeepMind, Meta, and OpenAI gave us access to their most capable internal LLMs and a wide range of non-public information. We concluded that, while internal agents plausibly had the means, motive, and opportunity to start small rogue deployments, they didn’t have the means to avoid human detection indefinitely. METR researcher Thomas Broadley explains the process, the six key facts that informed our conclusion, and how we expect risk to evolve over the next few months. ​You can watch a livestream of the talk [here](https://www.youtube.com/@Trajectory-Labs/live?utm_source=luma).

Don't be disappointed if you don't see a bunch of people attending. I advertise this on multiple platforms and the class usually sells out. \*\*If you don't use Paypal, email me at ralph@socap.ca and we'll figure it out. You can pay be etransfer or with a credit card/cash at the venue.\*\* Improv comedy uses several techniques to create laughter. These include, creating an atmosphere free of judgement, saying 'yes', active listening, being positive, putting your focus on others, and the importance of play and laughter. Not coincidentally, these are the same things that happen to us naturally when we are bonding with another person. In this class, we'll explore these techniques not with the goal of being funny, but with the goal of being people that other people want to be around. The teacher, Ralph MacLeod, is a co-founder of two independent improv clubs in Toronto - Bad Dog Theatre and Social Capital Theatre. He's been teaching improv for over 30 years. He also teaches these same techniques to several organizations including UofT, Google, Kraft, Shopify and many, many more. Please feel free to ask any questions you may have! FAQs and Good To Know.... After every event, a group from this class sit down and have a drink together so be prepared to stay if you want! Of course, you don't HAVE to. You also don't have to be single or bring a friend. The vibe of this class is much more 'making new friends' than a 'singles' mixer'. We usually run to 8:15 so pay for extra parking!

PyData London 2026 brings together data scientists, engineers, and researchers from around the world for three days of insightful talks, tutorials, and community connection. Hosted in one of Europe’s leading tech hubs, the event highlights the latest developments in Python, machine learning, and data science. Attendees can expect a mix of cutting-edge research, real-world applications, and opportunities to network with industry leaders. Whether you're a beginner or an expert, PyData London offers something for every level of the data science community. **THIS IS NOT A TICKET- TICKETS MUST BE PURCHASED ON CONFERENCE WEBSITE.** https://pydata.org/london2026

**NEW LOCATION - Madison Avenue Pub** **Dates will vary over the next few weeks due to FIFA schedule.** Join your community of fellow Intuitives and MBTI nerds for a casual evening of engaging conversation. We get together every second Sunday – with a mix of regulars and new friends. There is no fee to attend, though we ask that you support the venue by ordering something to eat or drink. **Feel free to contact event host B. via Facebook/Meetup messenger, or text/call 416-712-8635 for directions**. About the venue: Madison Avenue Pub, 14 Madison Ave Nearest Subway: Spadina Map / Directions: https://maps.app.goo.gl/scdLEYqb9LNJWkgWA We make an effort to find pubs that are quiet and introvert friendly, with a section to ourselves. We make no effort to muffle our extroverts, but should they get out of hand, our resident INTJ will use their death stare, to pull them back in line.

AI is becoming part of automation, observability, and quality workflows. As adoption grows, teams are also managing new challenges around complexity, engineering data, and trust. Join us at the Test Automation Summit – Toronto 2026 \| Toronto\, Canada \| 5 June 2026 & explore practical insights on AI\-assisted quality engineering\, agentic AI\, observability\, and scalable QA workflows\. Who Should Attend • QA & Quality Engineering Leaders • Automation Engineers & SDETs • Engineering & Delivery Managers • DevOps & Platform Teams • Teams exploring AI-assisted engineering workflows • Professionals focused on scalability, observability, and quality strategy Join QA leaders and practitioners sharing real-world experiences from modern engineering environments. These are some of the conversations shaping modern QA today — and they’re exactly what this summit is designed to explore. Keynote Session Neil Price-Jones, President of TASSQ What Are We Going to Do with All the Information? A perspective on how engineering teams can make better use of growing amounts of testing, quality, and operational data. Featured Sessions \- Jeremy Berriault\, Founder of Berriault & Associates Consulting Group AI Won’t Save Your Quality: Build a Decision-Making Operating System That Scales. Exploring why sustainable quality engineering requires stronger operational decision-making — not just more AI tools. \- Don Jackson\, Technical Evangelist from Perforce Software Sick of Framework Frustrations? Agentic AI Can Remove Them All. A practical discussion on how agentic AI may help reduce complexity within automation frameworks and engineering workflows. \- Natalia Moyseyenko\, Head of Test Management Practice from EPAM Canada AI-Powered Quality Engineering: Strategy, Automation, and Insights at Scale. Insights into how AI-assisted quality engineering practices are evolving across enterprise-scale environments. Panel Discussion Navigating the Next Wave: How AI, Sustainability, and Human-Centered Design Are Redefining Quality Assurance Featuring: \- Rob Virdee\, Senior Consultant from NVP Software Solutions \- Ian Howlett\, Vice President from Innosphere \- Syed Faeez Sultan\, Associate Director from Iris Software Fireside Speakers Rob Virdee\, Senior Consultant \| NVP Software Solutions Ari Rowland\, Co\-founder \| Canadian Quality and Testing Association\. Topic: Beyond the Hype: Personal Journeys in Shaping the Future of QA through Artificial Intelligence and Ethical Innovation Why This Event Matters Many organisations are currently experimenting with AI across engineering and QA workflows. At the same time, teams are also navigating the following: • Increasing delivery complexity • Larger volumes of engineering data • Faster release expectations • Evolving automation architectures This summit focuses on those practical realities through implementation experiences, engineering discussions, and lessons learned from teams actively exploring the shift. Seats are starting to fill — if this is already on your radar, it’s worth planning early. [Register here](https://www.testingmind.com/event/test-automation-summit-toronto/?utm_source=meetup&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Toronto) If you're involved in modern QA, engineering quality, automation, or secure delivery practices – this is a conversation worth being part of.

Come out to our monthly meetups if you are: •New to lockpicking and want to learn. •Experienced with locks and lockpicking and excited to teach and exchange knowledge. We have lots of loaner locks and picks for people to try without needing any supplies of their own. Join the Toool Toronto discord https://discord.gg/fuamRhuAdD We are now going back to primarily an in-person meeting. If you would like to join online, its best to bring this up in the #meeting-night-discussion channel beforehand and then find us in our Meeting Room voice channel on Wednesday night. This event is hosted at a volunteer run makerspace: Site 3 coLaboratory 718R Ossington Ave Toronto, ON M6G 3T7

**The Behavior Gap: Where Products Win or Lose** Teams today have more data than ever, and yet many still struggle to understand why customers adopt, engage with, or abandon their products. Teams sprint, ship faster, and chase more signals… all while metrics stall and confidence drops. The missing piece isn’t more data. It’s often the behavioral insight between the metrics, explaining why the numbers move in the first place. Dashboards can tell you what customers did, but understanding why they did it (and how to influence what they do next) requires a deeper blend of insights. This session is about closing that gap. Drawing from real-world experience designing and scaling products as [ZoCo Design](https://zocodesign.com/)’s CEO, [Lacey](https://www.linkedin.com/in/laceypicazo/) will share how to cut through the noise and identify the insights that actually change behavior—moving people, and moving metrics. You’ll learn: * Why understanding customer behavior is a quant and qual challenge * How to spot the signals that actually predict behavior change * Where AI accelerates insight, and where it creates distraction * How to get meaningfully closer to customers, without adding more tools This talk reframes how to evaluate performance and identify what levers actually improve it, helping your team to make smarter bets with greater confidence. Every meaningful outcome is driven by behavior change. And when you know how to design for behavior, you stop guessing, and start building things that work. **About Our Speaker** [Lacey Picazo](https://www.linkedin.com/in/laceypicazo/) is the Founder and CEO of ZoCo, a healthcare product studio that turns complex, high-stakes ideas into products that drive real-world adoption. She partners with healthcare organizations to uncover critical care delivery insights, focus product strategy through behavior design, and build solutions that patients and providers actually use. Thanks to our 2026 sponsors: [Clarivoy](https://www.clarivoy.com), [What Box Consulting Group](https://www.whatboxconsultinggroup.com), [Conductrics](https://www.conductrics.com), and [Piwik PRO](https://piwik.pro) More info at [cbusdaw.com](https://cbusdaw.com)

Topic to be announced. **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

Join the local UX community for our casual monthly breakfast event. We're exploring the West Side this month with a member suggestion –those are always welcome. Thanks to the team at Nationwide for supporting the group!

Couldn't make Knowledge? Or want to debrief the dancing robots or Autonomous Workforce? Join us for a Knowledge '26 recap, insights sharing, a couple rounds of golf, and fun at Topgolf. As always, drinks and food will be provided. More details to come — mark your calendar, RSVP, and save your spot today!

## 🤝 Host Information A co-hosted event by ProductTank Columbus & Women in Product Columbus 💡 About the Workshop AI adoption is stalling across organizations — not because of a lack of motivation or tools, but because it's fundamentally a behavior design challenge. This hands-on workshop applies proven Behavior Design models and methods to help you move from a vague organizational wish to boost AI adoption to 3-5 concrete, testable interventions you can act on starting tomorrow. Whether you're a product manager, on a product team, or just someone trying to get AI to actually stick at work, you'll leave with a clear picture of what's worth focusing on, what to ignore, and how to drive real, sustained adoption — no guesswork required. 🛠️ What to Bring Laptop: Fully charged and ready to go. AI Assistant: Have your favorite AI assistant pulled up. (Dom will be using Claude, but feel free to use whichever assistant you prefer!) 🍕 Logistics & Perks Food & Drink: Pizza and drinks provided! Parking: Plenty of free spaces available on-site. ###

**Latest Dojo Location!** **Knotty Pine Brewing** 1765 W 3rd Ave, Columbus, OH 43212 We're going to try a new dojo location for a few weeks and see how it works Dojos are informal Python group study sessions where everyone interested in Python gathers to learn about Python, help others with Python, or just hang out. Everyone is welcome from Python beginners to experts. Bringing a laptop is encouraged (we'll have extension cords and power strips). If there's something you want to learn leave a comment on this invite so we can plan ahead. We're looking for speakers for our Monthly Meetups! Fill out the form if you are interested in presenting to the Python Community. https://forms.gle/ehSfUAC2WgR34Crq9

QA or the Highway is a one-day, affordable, regional, professional conference featuring real-world experience and thought leadership in the QA and testing industry. This is a ticketed event please register here: https://www.qaorthehwy.com/ Featured Keynote Speakers: **Matthew-Hope Eland** **(Wizard at Leading EDJE)** \- An AI Specialist and Wizard at Leading EDJE who is known to teach software engineering\, AI\, and data science concepts in the most ridiculous ways possible\. Matt has used machine learning to settle debates over whether Die Hard is a Christmas movie\, reinforcement learning to drive the behavior of digital squirrels\, data analytics to suggest improvements to his favorite TV show\, and AI agents to play board games and create an AI agent with the personality of a dog\. Matt is the author of "Data Science in \.NET with Polyglot Notebooks" and "Refactoring with C\#" as well as several LinkedIn Learning courses\. Matt helps organize the Central Ohio \.NET Developer Group\, runs several blogs and a YouTube channel\, has a Master’s of Science in Data Analytics\, and is a current Microsoft MVP in AI and \.NET\. **Tatyana Arbouzova** **(CEO at Innovate QA)** \- Tatyana Arbouzova is an engineering and business leader with a strong background in Quality Engineering across multiple industries\, including Big Tech\, Healthcare\, and Entertainment\. She has held leadership roles at world\-class companies such as Microsoft\, VMware\, Disney\, and The Pokémon Company International\, where she focused on building quality\-driven cultures and scaling teams to deliver high\-impact products\. With decades of experience\, Tatyana has helped organizations transform their quality practices so teams can deliver software efficiently\, confidently\, and with measurable business outcomes\. Today\, Tatyana advises software companies on adopting AI to optimize quality practices and improve how software is delivered at scale\. She is also a passionate community builder and the founder of Innovate QA\, a thriving Seattle\-based community and conference for quality professionals\.