Kanban

**We are holding an Agile Standup dinner at the Mercato Metropolitano food court in Mayfair.** https://mercatometropolitano.com/locations/mayfair/ The focus of the evening is to enjoy amazing food while networking, learning and discussing using agility to create better software, products, teams and organisations. **The evening will take the form of a round table discussion** \- Bring a great question or describe a problem which you'd like to share\, we will then discuss it at the table\. **Who might come along?** Whether you're a seasoned agilest or completely new to it, you are most welcome. **The Dinner** \- Be prepared to pay for your own food and drinks\, what you choose is up to you\. **On the night:** The event starts at 6:00pm, hopefully we'll not be that hard to find, message the organisers on the meetup chat if you can't find us or if you are running late. When you arrive, join us and order a drink. We'll aim to eat at around 7pm. Afterwards there will be an opportunity to meet, mingle, discuss and maybe even find mentors or future work colleagues. If you have any questions, just drop us a line. We will finish at around 9:00pm, but you can leave earlier, if you need to. *Photographs may be taken throughout the evening, please let the organisers know if you would prefer not to be featured in them.* Looking forwards to seeing you there.

**Should we ban commercial horse racing?** Supporters of a ban argue that commercial horse racing harms animal welfare, as horses are pushed to physical limits for profit and entertainment. They believe that, regardless of regulation, the risks of injury and exploitation remain too high for a modern, ethical society. Opponents argue that the sport supports jobs, tradition, and the economy, and that many horses receive high-quality care. They suggest stricter regulations, rather than a ban, would better protect welfare while preserving the industry. **Where do you stand on this debate?** **YOU decide!** Join us on **14 April 2026** at the Windsor Castle pub for drinks and discussion as we debate the motion: **This House Would Ban Commercial Horse Racing** **First half**: Improvised mini-debates – all are welcome to speak. **Second half**: Prepared speeches, followed by floor contributions – an opportunity to share your views. **[GET YOUR GUEST TICKET HERE](https://104londondebaters.club/)** During the first half of the meeting, there will be an improvised mini-debate session, where anyone may get called to defend or oppose a motion in 2 minutes (voluntarily, of course). During the main debate, 3 debaters will propose the motion, 3 debaters will oppose it, and **YOU** may give your opinion during Floor Contributions. The meeting will be held on the first floor of[ the Windsor Castle pub](https://windsorcastle-victoria.co.uk/) in Victoria, a beautiful Victorian pub with great food, drinks prices. Make sure to give the code word: *Debate Club*!

We're excited to be back and pleased to say this event is being sponsored by [pgMustard](https://pgmustard.com). On the talks front, we have **Anton Borisov and Vlad Bokov** from Fresha who will take us through how they recently upgraded their fleet with zero-downtime. We will then host our first ever debate, on a topic to be determined! WHERE Join us at **Doggett's Coat and Badge on 14 April from 18:30.** PROGRAM 18:30 Welcome 19:00 Swapping the Elephant Without Breaking the Room: Zero-downtime Major PG upgrades in practice (Anton Borisov and Vlad Bokov, Fresha) - abstract below 19:45 Sandwiches and bar snacks (paid for by our sponsor) 20:00 Debate — topic TBD ABSTRACT **Swapping the Elephant Without Breaking the Room: Zero-downtime Major PG upgrades in practice** Upgrading PostgreSQL across hundreds of production databases without downtime sounds impossible, especially when logical replication slots, Debezium CDC pipelines, and outbox event streams are in play. At Fresha, we faced exactly that: mission-critical workloads still on PostgreSQL 12, and no safe way to reach 17 without freezing the business. This talk walks through how we designed and automated a blue-green upgrade framework using logical decoding, controlled WAL overlap, and connector orchestration. We’ll dive into how Debezium connectors, replication origins, and PgBouncer pools were coordinated to guarantee continuity for both CDC and outbox topics, with rollback and dry-run modes built in. Attendees will learn practical techniques for: * Orchestrating zero-downtime Postgres major upgrades on RDS or self-managed clusters * Managing replication slots and Debezium connectors safely across clusters * Handling sequence alignment, WAL overlap, and connector state transitions * Designing reversible, testable database cutovers This is a practical session from real production experience: no magic tools, just PostgreSQL internals, Debezium, careful planning, and a few well-placed bash scripts. SPEAKERS **Anton Borisov** architects real-time data systems centered on PostgreSQL. At Fresha, he designs zero-downtime migrations, Debezium-based CDC pipelines, and overall data strategy integrating Postgres with Kafka and Flink. His work spans query planning analysis, partitioning and indexing, autovacuum and bloat optimization, and performance tuning under high-concurrency workloads. He also builds downstream lakehouse integrations with Iceberg, Paimon, and StarRocks. Anton publishes technical deep-dives on PostgreSQL internals, streaming infrastructure, and production reliability at medium.com/@borzoniusy **Vlad Bokov** is a Staff Engineer at Fresha working on systems behind activity feeds and communication between partners and customers. He deals with what breaks at scale: PostgreSQL under heavy write load, WAL bottlenecks, replication issues, Kafka pipelines, and zero-downtime migrations. Most of his work is about making production systems behave: fixing what is slow, unstable, or too expensive, and making trade-offs that hold up under pressure. He works across Snowflake, StarRocks, PostgreSQL, Elasticsearch, and Redis, and is currently exploring newer streaming approaches, including Apache Fluss, for real-world workloads. *** 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.

🌍 Historia Podróżowania – spotkanie mówców Toastmasters Zapraszamy na wyjątkowe spotkanie mówców klubu Polish Your Polish Toastmasters, podczas którego przeniesiemy się w świat podróży – tych bliskich i dalekich, pełnych emocji i inspiracji. 📅 14 kwietnia 🕖 19:15 📍 Ognisko Polskie, 55 Princes Gate, SW7 To doskonała okazja, aby posłuchać przygotowanych wystąpień, zobaczyć, jak rozwijają się mówcy oraz poczuć atmosferę spotkań Toastmasters. Dołącz do nas i daj się zainspirować historiami z różnych zakątków świata! ✈️ Do zobaczenia! Jeśli jednak wolisz uczestniczyć online, to będzie też możliwość uczestniczenia przez Google Meet https://meet.google.com/sxz-jkqp-ihp Więcej informacji o klubie na naszej stronie: http://www.polishyourpolish.org.uk/ www.facebook.com/pyplondon www.instagram.com/polishyourpolishlondon www.linkedin.com/company/polish-your-polish-toastmasters Strona Ogniska Polskiego: www.ogniskopolskie.org.uk

uSwitch is located on the first floor of the ZPG building at 5 Copper Row, London, SE1 2LH, London (Click on the map for directions) What 3 words location: [https://what3words.com/puts.sudden.else](https://what3words.com/puts.sudden.else) The Clojure dojo is a collaborative way to learn Clojure/ClojureScript through practice. The aim is to learn a little more than before you started. This event is for those new to coding through to more experienced developers. We organise into small groups (2-4) people and write code to solve challenges great and small, chosen by those at the event. We aim to ensure someone in your group has some Clojure experience, so you shouldn't feel lost (well no more than all developers do when Stack Overflow is broken). Example challenges for the coding dojo are listed on this website: http://www.londonclojurians.org/code-dojo/ Various past exercises have been loaded to [https://github.com/ldnclj](https://github.com/ldnclj/lisp1.5/blob/master/src/lisp1/5.clj) # Approximate schedule: 18:40 Doors open and start collecting suggestions 18.45 Pizza should have arrived 19:00 Quick intros and vote on suggestions 19:15 Break out into groups and start practising 20:45 Gather together for a quick show and tell # What should I bring? We organise into small groups, so if you have a laptop with a working Clojure environment please bring it along (there are lots of online Clojure environments, so you can just use your browser too). # How do I get in to the building? At the glass doors press the buzzer to inform the security guard you are here. Say you are here for the event on the first floor. Is there way to talk with the Clojure community? Why yes. The Clojurians Slack channel is full of friendly people who love to try and help. People based in London are often in the #clojure-uk channel. Sign up for a free account to the Clojurians Slack community via http://clojurians.net/ What is Clojure? Clojure is a JVM language that has syntactically similarities to Lisp, full integration with Java and its libraries and focuses on providing a solution to the issue of single machine concurrency. Its small core makes it surprisingly easy for Java developers to pick up and it provides a powerful set of concurrency strategies and data structures designed to make immutable data easy to work with. If you went to Rich Hickey’s LJC talk about creating Clojure you’ll already know this, if not it’s well worth watching the Rich Hickey “Clojure for Java Programmers” video or Stuart Halloway “Radical Simplicity” video .

*We have limited space, but we will do our best to record the event and publish on our [YouTube channel](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC_a-vGdkAIRMKT1zzZ4I2ag) soon afterwards.* \-\-\-\- \-\-\-\- \-\-\-\-\- Flutter London will be back with another exciting event for 2026! We look forward to seeing some familiar and new faces. We are excited to announce the next FlutterLDN on ***Tuesday 14th April*** is being hosted at [Pod Point](https://pod-point.com/), (thanks go to [Few&Far](https://www.fewandfar.io/) for helping to arrange this). We're thrilled to deliver the familiar setup we all cherish and enjoy. Join us for an evening filled with insightful talks, networking opportunities, and a delightful surprise spread of food and drinks, thoughtfully put together by [George](https://georgemedve.co.uk/) and [Tom](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomshannon1/) team - guaranteed to impress and satisfy. **The venue address is:** [Pod Point](https://pod-point.com/) 222 Gray's Inn Road, London, WC1X 8HB maps: [https://maps.app.goo.gl/vzLKj7G47u8ReRjw7](https://maps.app.goo.gl/vzLKj7G47u8ReRjw7) ⏰ **Schedule:** [6:00pm] Arrival & registration [6:15pm] Drinks and snacks and socialising (sponsored by [Pod Point](https://pod-point.com/) and Few&Far) [6:45pm] Introduction from FlutterLDN and [Few&Far](https://www.fewandfar.io/) [7:00pm] **Talk 1:** Raouf Rahiche \| Make Every Minute Count in Your Flutter Pipeline [7:45pm] **Talk 2:** Matt Meades \| Powering the Tewke smart light switch with Flutter [8:30pm] Q&A and networking [9:00pm] Drinks and chat: TBD \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- 🌟**Talks and Speaker Information:** **// 🚀 Talk 1:** Raouf Rahiche \| Make Every Minute Count in Your Flutter Pipeline A practical tour of the optimizations that can speed up your Flutter CI significantly; selective native builds, Dart-only snapshots, modular parallelization, test bundling, and smarter coverage collection. *Tags:* **\-\-\-\-** // Raouf's Links Github: [https://github.com/Rahiche](https://github.com/Rahiche) X/Twitter: [https://twitter.com/raoufrahiche](https://twitter.com/raoufrahiche) LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/raoufrahiche/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/raoufrahiche/) **// 🚀 Talk 2:** Matt Meades \| Powering the Tewke smart light switch with Flutter Tewke’s 5 year journey developing a touch screen light switch using Flutter on an embedded device. *Tags:* Flutter, Embedded Linux, Smart home, IoT, Performance Optimisation, Yocto, DBus, Systemd, Flutter-Rust bridge // links: LinkedIn: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-meades/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/matthew-meades/) BlueSky: X/Twitter: Github: **FlutterLDN:** BlueSky: [https://bsky.app/profile/flutterldn.dev](https://bsky.app/profile/flutterldn.dev) X/Twitter us @FlutterLDN [https://x.com/FlutterLDN](https://x.com/FlutterLDN) Flutter London YouTube channel: [http://bit.ly/2yZLTTb](http://bit.ly/2yZLTTb) See you there! **[George Medve](https://www.linkedin.com/in/georgemedve/)** is Professional Mobile App Consultant and building and scaling teams for success. **[fewandfar](https://www.fewandfar.io/)** is a Tech, Product, Data and Design recruitment company, **[Tom Shannon](https://www.linkedin.com/in/tomshannon1/)** who heads up mobile hiring and will be at the event.

**Join us for a hands-on workshop where you'll build an agentic commerce solution and explore how AI agents can discover products and complete payments using Stripe.** **About** Experience a hands-on workshop designed for developers interested in the future of AI-driven commerce and agentic payments. This workshop is the very first time this content has ever been delivered. It is a pilot workshop for Stripe Sessions, and attendees will get early access to technology and workflows that are still very new inside Stripe. The way customers discover and purchase products is shifting from traditional search to LLM-powered agents. In this workshop, you’ll customize an AI agent to become an intelligent shopping assistant capable of discovering products and completing transactions. **Through practical exercises, you will:** * Customize an AI agent for commerce workflows * Implement Shared Payment Tokens (SPT) using the Agentic Commerce Protocol (ACP) * Enable secure payment credential handoff from an AI agent to Stripe * Process payments and perform risk evaluation through Stripe * Build a complete end-to-end agentic commerce experience Because this is a pilot workshop, the content is evolving and highly experimental. Participants will be among the first developers anywhere to build an agentic commerce integration with Stripe. By the end of the workshop, you’ll have a fully functioning agentic commerce solution complete with code, equipping you with the skills to build next-generation AI-powered buying experiences. **Attendance & Invitations** ⚡ This is a small, invite-only workshop designed for a very limited group of developers. To keep the session highly interactive, attendance is restricted to a small number of participants, and admission is **by invitation only**. To request an invitation: 1. Join the waitlist to express your interest 2. We will review all waitlist requests 3. Selected participants will be moved to the confirmed list 4. You will receive confirmation once your spot is approved. **Please wait for confirmation before making plans — only confirmed attendees will be admitted.** This approach allows us to create a focused, collaborative workshop environment and ensure the best possible experience for participants. **Schedule** **1:00PM – 1:15PM — Arrival & Welcome** Arrive, grab coffee and refreshments, and make sure you're set up and ready to go. **1:15PM – 4:00PM — Hands-on Workshop** Introduction to agentic commerce and AI-driven purchasing. You'll build a working agentic commerce solution including: * AI agent customization * Agentic Commerce Protocol setup * Shared Payment Token creation * Payment flows through Stripe * End-to-end testing **Requirements** This workshop is designed for developers interested in building AI-powered commerce experiences and agentic payment workflows. Developers should be comfortable with: * Basic JavaScript fundamentals * Using a terminal or command line * Working with APIs * Basic web development concepts No prior AI or Stripe experience is required. **What You'll Need** Laptop and charging cables — no Chromebooks or tablets Code editor and ability to download and install necessary tools Required software: * IDE such as VS Code * [Node.js](http://node.js/) * curl

**——————————** **Event Description:** **——————————** Welcome product enthusiasts! We're a meet-up group that hosts regular speaking events for those interested in the world of **digital products** and **doing things differently!** Each meet-up features new guests from some of the most influential product companies around the world, providing unique insights, tangible ideas, and new techniques to help drive change from the inside out. **————————** **Event Format:** **————————** 🚨 **This is an in-person event only.** 🚨 **————** **Venue:** **————** **Our Product Unleashed London Event:** We are hosted in the beautiful event space @ **[Youlend](https://youlend.com/).** 🚨 **Note:** Youlend Entrance opposite the Rosewood hotel 🚨 We're looking forward to seeing you there! **———————** **What to expect:** ⚡ This event will be made up of 2 speakers dropping knowledge bombs in the form of 20 minute talks straight into your minds 🤯 **———————** **SPEAKER 1** **———————** **Alison Howard** Alison Howard is a Principal Product Design Consultant with 14 years of experience working across some of the UK's most complex and fast-moving products. As an independent consultant, she has partnered with organisations including Trainline, Expedia, BP, HSBC and Emirates to untangle messy problems, align teams and deliver design that actually gets built. Outside her consultancy work, Alison manages PD Ladies, a community of 800+ women in Product Design. **————————** **About the Talk:** **————————** **Learn the Language, Win the Room** If you've ever left a meeting feeling like no one understood what you were saying, this talk is for you. Alison explores the gap between how designers communicate and how everyone else does, and what happens when you close it. ***Expect practical tools and honest reflections on learning to speak the language of product, commercial and engineering teams, so your work gets the traction it deserves.*** **———————** **SPEAKER 2** **———————** **Anna Popova** Anna Popova is Head of Product at [Judge.me](https://judge.me/), one of Shopify’s most installed apps, helping over 600,000 e-commerce brands build trust through customer reviews. With more than a decade of experience across product management, data science, and delivery, Anna focuses on how product teams can increase leverage and build better systems for decision-making and execution. Recently, her work has centred on exploring how AI can reshape the product development process — from discovery and research to prototyping, UX design, and creating high-quality requirements for engineering. She is particularly interested in how small product teams can use AI to dramatically increase output while preserving strong product thinking, judgement, and product craftsmanship. **————————** **About the Talk:** **————————** **When Building Becomes Cheap: Rethinking Product Process in the Age of AI)** **Software is becoming dramatically cheaper to build. AI tools are rapidly reducing the cost of prototyping, coding, and experimentation — faster than many product teams realise.** But while the cost of building is collapsing, the cost of process remains high. Many teams still rely on workflows designed for a world where engineering time was scarce: heavy discovery phases, long specification cycles, and complex coordination structures. In the AI era, these processes risk becoming the real bottleneck. In this talk, Anna explores how product teams may need to rethink how they operate when building becomes cheap. At [Judge.me](https://judge.me/), they've started asking a provocative question: what if a product team should never grow beyond 10 people — even when serving millions of users? Drawing from experiments with AI-assisted workflows, Anna will share how AI can augment product work — from rapid prototyping and spec generation to creating a “digital twin” of a product manager. ***Get ready to explore which parts of the product process should be automated, which should remain human, and how product leaders can adapt.*** **—————————————** **Support from:** **—————————————** We are kindly hosted by our friends at Youlend. **——————————** **About your hosts:** **——————————** Product Unleashed is brought to you by your hosts **[John Griffin](https://www.linkedin.com/in/john-griffin-designer/)** and **[Dominic Port](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dominic-port/)**. The duo has worked on the design of products of all shapes and sizes and bring their energy and enthusiasm to this unique meet-up, packed with great guests and knowledge - for anyone interested in levelling up their game in the world of products.

We're now meeting each month at the Bear in Camberwell, where great food and drink options are available, and we can get some time on their decks. Come along with a bunch of vinyl you'd like to play and share with us. This month we’re heading to the Beach. Think sun, sea and sand. Think coasts with the most – from Brighton to Miami, Blackpool to California. Dip your toes or wade in – whether it’s Balearic bliss, surf rock or poolside punk, keep it sun drenched. Pack some vinyl, grab a drink, and join us. (Sunscreen optional). And don't forget to RSVP!

**Ikebana Class (Japanese Flower Arrangement)🌸** **A Japanese florist living in London will be hosting Ikebana class, perfect for beginners.** **【What is Ikebana?】** **Ikebana is a traditional Japanese art of flower arrangement focusing on the natural beauty of flowers.** **Unlike Western floral arrangements, which often emphasize abundance and volume, Ikebana values the beauty of simplicity and “less is more.”** **【About the Class】** **Who Can Join: All ages, beginners welcome** **Date & Time: 16/04/2026, 19:30–21:30** **Location: The Kings Arm / Ealing Broadway** **Fee: £30 (you can take home the flowers)** **Paid on the day please** **What to Bring: Nothing required – all tools and materials are provided** **Experience Japanese culture through flowers in a relaxing and creative way.** **If you have any questions, please feel free to DM us!** **Please ask for Tomo when you arrive** **#ikebana #japaneseculture #japaneseflorist**

Join us for a fun evening socialising with great food at Bang Bang Oriental Foodhall in Colindale. The food court has stalls covering most East and Southeast Asian cuisines, plus a bar for drinks. **How to Find Us:** Look out for a sign that says 'meetup' on our table. I'll also leave a comment here when we arrive. Feel free to order some food or drink, and join us. **Afterwards** Around 9:00 PM, we'll head to a pub nearby, where we can continue chatting. Looking forward to seeing you there! 👋

**IMPORTANT!** Please register on [Luma page](https://luma.com/grfvqoo5?tk=MBRXGP) This is a Saturday gathering in London for middle+ professionals in tech and creative industries — people who are already building products, teams, and ideas👩🏻‍💻 ​We’re meeting at a cafe at 11:00, grabbing coffee and easing into conversations without pressure. ​We’ll start with a light icebreaker (yes, maybe bingo, but done right) to skip the awkward small talk and get to real conversations faster. ​Then the core question: What actually matters to build today, when AI is reshaping everything? ​No polished answers. Just honest perspectives, thoughtful discussions, and people who care about what they’re building. ​ **Who it’s for:** — product managers, designers, marketers, founders, engineers, everyone is welcome — those who value clear thinking over quick wins — anyone navigating AI in their work ​ **Agenda:** 11:00–11:15 — Meet & grab coffee 11:15–11:30 — Themed bingo 11:30–13:00 — Networking & conversations ​Come for the coffee, stay for what actually matters🙂‍↕️

**Details** We're back for another fun, friendly informal evening of product lightning talks and networking. We have 4 great speakers lined up to talk for 10 minutes (max) each on a product management topic that they’re passionate about. **Agenda** * 6:15 - Doors open - networking, drinks and nibbles * 7:00 - Welcome and intro * 7:10 - 4x 10 minute lightning talks + 5 mins Q&A per talk * 8:10 - More networking * 9:00 - Head to the pub **Our Speakers** * [Esra Yetis](https://www.linkedin.com/in/esrayetis/) \- Product Innovation & Transformation Coach & Speaker\. "Building Your Active\-Listening Muscle: Learning with Reflection Cycles" * [Grace Tolley-Smith](https://www.linkedin.com/in/gracetolleysmith/) \- Senior Product Manager @ Rightmove\. "What Changes When Your Startup Gets Acquired" * [Rebecca Phillips](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rebecca-phillips-495739149/) \- Senior Product Manager\, Payments @ Depop\. "Payments is where product gets real\. 5 lessons from building marketplace payments" * [Debbie McMahon](https://www.linkedin.com/in/dmcmahon/) \- VP Product at loveholidays\. "Are your customers using AI as much as you are?" **Our event sponsor: Rightmove** * We're exceedingly grateful to [Rightmove](https://www.rightmove.co.uk/) for hosting us at their Soho office. **Getting there** * 33 Soho Square, London, W1D 3QU * Check in at reception, and you will be directed to the event space. * The talks start at 7pm. * Please arrive promptly, as spaces will be limited. * We have a max capacity of 75 attendees and will unfortunately have to turn people away once we reach capacity or after the talks have started. **Our founding sponsor: Zebra People** * Zebra People is a digital recruitment business specialising in helping tech companies to grow their product, engineering and design teams with top-calibre talent. * Looking to hire Product Managers, Engineers or Designers? Visit [zebrapeople.com](https://zebrapeople.com/) or contact nick@zebrapeople.com

**⚠️⚠️ TICKETED EVENT - BUY TICKETS ON [LUMA EVENT PAGE](https://luma.com/icr5pkqs) ⚠️⚠️** Product Is… is tackling something that keeps a lot of product teams up at night. ​ AI products are shipping faster than users are learning to trust them. In some industries, that gap is getting dangerous. ​ Tom Blower, Chief Product and R&D Officer at Agreena, has spent his career building AI products in sectors where the stakes are real - healthcare, agriculture, climate tech. He knows what it looks like when a product gives the right answer and the user still doesn't act on it. ​This event will be on the seventh floor at Synechron's office, 35 Gresham Street, London, EC2V 7QB. A massive thank you to Synechron for providing the venue. ​Doors open at 6:30 PM, we kick off at 7:00 PM, and wrap up by 8:30 PM. Drinks and snacks will be provided. Come ready for proper discussion, new connections, and ideas worth thinking about. ​--- THE THEME - PRODUCT IS... CREATING A TRUST GAP --- ​AI products are getting better at a rate that is genuinely hard to keep up with. But capability and trust are not the same thing. ​Think about a farmer. They have decades of lived experience in their soil, their land, their seasons. An AI tool tells them to do something different. What happens? Often, nothing. Not because the AI is wrong, but because trust has not been earned. ​This is not a niche problem. It shows up in healthcare, in finance, in anywhere that human expertise has been built over time. Product teams are shipping features that users are quietly ignoring. The question is why, and what to do about it. ​We will be exploring how product teams build trust in AI when the people using it have good reason to be sceptical. How do you design for adoption when lived experience is the competition? And when speed of development is part of the problem, how do you slow down in the right places? ​The central question for the evening: can AI earn trust in industries built on lived experience? ​Come ready to pick a side. ​--- THE SPEAKER - TOM BLOWER --- ​Tom is Chief Product and R&D Officer at Agreena, a FinTech, AgTech and ClimateTech platform that helps farmers and corporations unlock the value of nature. At Agreena, Tom has led the development of Agatha, an AI advisory tool that gives farmers data-driven guidance tailored to their land - built on satellite data, remote sensing, and a deep respect for what farmers already know. ​Before Agreena, Tom was VP of Product at Kry and Livi, where he built digital and physical healthcare products used by millions of patients across Europe. Before that, he led product at Ada Health, the AI-powered symptom assessment app with over 10 million downloads and the number one healthcare app in 120 countries. ​Tom started his career at Dyson, where he spent nearly a decade in R&D and product design, winning a Red Dot Award along the way. ​He has shipped AI products to some of the most trust-resistant user groups on the planet. He has a lot to say about it. ​-------- ABOUT 'PRODUCT IS...' -------- ​PMs, UX & UI designers, user researchers, developers - you like to dream big when it comes to digital products… Now it's time share your perspective! ​'Product is…' grounds itself in informed, knowledgeable context and healthy conversation - vital ingredients to tech success. One keynote speaker sets the tone on a theme of less travelled subject matter before all attendees add their perspective during the second half of round table-style discussion. ​Don't expect standard tech meetup fare like "How to improve your CV/Portfolio for that dream job at Facebook" or "How this new framework/approach will improve your workflow" - this meetup is food for the mind, but also a place to meet like-minded big-thinkers! We welcome everyone who works in tech - EVERYONE has a valuable perspective that we learn from. ​-------- WHY WE CHARGE FOR TICKETS -------- ​We do not aim to make a profit from this meetup, our goal is to create healthy and interesting conversations, meet new people and make new connections. Speakers and the organising team give up their time free of charge to ensure the events are enjoyable for all. A charge is required for attendance - this allows the organisation team to cover overheads, plus food and drink for the evening. To be clear, we're working towards lowering our costs as much as possible to keep ticket prices as low as possible.

A WiA Collective Wisdom Exchange At the start of this year, we gathered to look back, set intentions, and imagine the next chapter. This is the follow-up. Not a check-in. Not a progress report. A small, facilitated circle to reconnect with what you said mattered — and honestly explore what’s actually happening now. Together, we’ll explore: • What you intended at the start of this year - and what that looks like three months in • What’s surprised you, supported you, or shifted • What the next chapter needs now that you know what you know If you were at our January gathering, bring whatever you made or wrote — your word, your artifact, your intention. We’ll look at it with fresh eyes. If this is your first time, you belong here too. You’ll start where we all started: with what’s true right now. Optional art materials will be available for anyone who wants to reflect creatively alongside conversation. If you brought something home from January, you’re warmly invited to bring it back. The intention is the same as always: everyone leaves feeling more clear, more connected, and a little lighter. Space is intentionally limited to keep the experience intimate. What to Expect • A small, welcoming circle (not a large meetup) • Structured conversation so everyone has space to speak • Reflection, listening, and lived experience — not advice-giving • Optional creative reflection alongside conversation • A calm, supportive environment Who This Is For Women and underrepresented folks working in or around agile, product, technology, leadership, or organizational change — especially those looking for honest conversation and community beyond frameworks and buzzwords. Good to Know • No preparation required • If you attended in January, we invite you to bring anything you created or wrote (or something that represents your intention at the start of the year) - it’s optional but invited • Participation is invitational; listening is always welcome • Creative activities are optional

Hike approx 4.0 miles at approx. 18 minute mile pace. Meet in front of the Nature Center.

Join other experienced and aspiring agile coaches and professionals to: * develop and practice your coaching skills in a peer-to-peer environment * share current successes and challenges in your work environment and get support from each other * learn from each other, build better relationships and experiment with new ideas ***NOTE:*** Pre-registration is required for this event. **Please arrive 10 minutes early** to check in at the security desk.

**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** GitHub Copilot is powerful, but what if you could scale from a solo AI assistant to an entire team of specialized agents working in parallel? This session introduces Squad: an open-source framework for multi-agent orchestration that lets you define teams of AI agents with specific roles, responsibilities, and expertise. We'll progress from Copilot basics to the Copilot CLI, explore how Agents add autonomy, and see how Instructions and Skills let you customize agent behavior. Then, the climax: a live demo where a Squad team of 3 agents (Lead, Developer, Tester) stands up and builds a working application in real-time, showcasing true multi-agent collaboration. Whether you're new to AI or exploring how to scale your use of Copilot, this session will show you what's possible when agents work as a team. **YouTube Link** TBD

The global Azure community is coming together again, and Columbus is officially on the map. View the session lineup and speakers at [Global Azure Columbus 2026](https://coazure.github.io/cbus-global-azure-2026/) On **Saturday, April 18, 2026**, the Azure Columbus Meetup, DevOps Meetup, and Code and Coffee Meetup are hosting our local edition of Global Azure 2026. This is a free, community-driven event packed with learning, networking, and all things Microsoft Azure. Whether you’re building modern cloud-native apps, experimenting with AI agents, deploying containers, automating infrastructure, or just beginning your Azure journey, this event is for you! **What to Expect** * Engaging technical sessions * Real-world Azure architecture & cloud-native patterns * AI, agents, automation, and modern DevOps * Food and drinks (because learning burns calories) * Time to connect with fellow engineers, architects, and cloud enthusiasts **Who Should Attend?** * Software engineers (any language, any stack) * Cloud architects * DevOps engineers * Data professionals * AI explorers * Platform builders * Anyone who loves solving hard problems with great tools If you build, deploy, automate, scale, monitor, or optimize in Azure, you’ll feel right at home. **Why Global Azure?** Global Azure is a worldwide community event where Azure user groups host learning sessions on the same day across the globe. It’s grassroots. It’s technical. It’s practical. And it’s powered by people who genuinely love sharing what they’ve learned. And yes, it’s free to attend!