Microsoft Office

We’re keeping the momentum going into February with a trip to the **Singer Tavern** near Old Street this month. This place has quite the history - built in 1929 as the headquarters for the Singer Sewing Machine Company. They’ve kept the original Art Deco feel and the green-and-white tiling, but these days it’s a great Shoreditch pub with a solid rotation of craft beers. See you there **​What is Product Pints, anyway?** ​It's simple: Forget the stuffy presentations, Product Pints is all about meaningful connections and stimulating conversations for product people. Our diverse crowd includes everyone from aspiring PMs to seasoned CPOs, entrepreneurs, developers, designers, and tech enthusiasts. ​Need advice on a tricky problem? Curious what other PMs are building? Or just want to share a beer with your peers? This is the perfect opportunity to grow your network and launch some genuinely great chats! **​P.S. If your company is interested in sponsoring future events in 2026, please reach out to us at hello@productpints.com - thanks!**

PLEASE NOTE YOU MUST book and pay for your ticket in advance at https://www.privateequitynetwork.co.uk/ The London Family Office & Private Equity Business Networking Committee would like to extend you an invitation to our February 2026 Mayfair Networking Reception to be held in the private lounge of the the famous Davys at St.James - and hope you can join us for after-work drinks, canapés and productive networking to make new contacts and ideas for 2026. We now have over 8000 diverse and relevant London members so it’s the perfect opportunity for making new third sector connections. PLEASE NOTE YOU MUST book and pay for your ticket in advance at https://www.privateequitynetwork.co.uk/ ALSO PLEASE NOTE we take most of our event bookings through our website and EventBrite so the numbers booked is much larger than displayed on this Meetup page (normally about 40-60 guests).

We're welcoming back the legend that is Dave Whitney after a covid time lapse of years. Your chance to catch one of the best tech speakers in the UK software community! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- It's a tough time to be a technology professional. We're simultaneously being told that AI will change everything we know about the world, while simultaneously being told that the bubble is going to burst. Everyone is going to be redundant! AI will fail! AI will ruin the internet! AI can't do anything! It's disorienting and stressful trying to work out what a reasonable strategy should be to move forwards with this technology that appears to shift it's goalposts almost daily. In this session, we'll talk about understanding what AI really is, how to form a reasonable, governance friendly strategy around it, and what the sensible bets for the future are in the space. We'll do a deep dive into ethics, the human cost of content moderation, and having to be confronted by the reality of technical change in real-time. A survival guide to getting the most from the most controversial technology in a decade. An AI moderates warts and all deep dive into surviving as technology changes, without giving in to the hype during times of technology innovation and change. BIO: David is the Director of Architecture for NewDay, and the founder of Electric Head Software. Focusing on iterative software delivery, developer mentoring and cultural change - mostly working with London-based organisations. He speaks about software design, culture, and ethics in technology - rounded out by an assortment of talks about software that probably doesn't need to exist but makes the world a little more fun. David has previously served as the chief coding technical architect for JustGiving and helped market-leading organisations including JUST-EAT, Trainline and Vodafone improve their technical capabilities. David is a Microsoft MVP, has been part of the OpenUK Honours list for open-source advocacy, and is a twice bestselling author of children's books about programming. You can find his open-source projects on NuGet, npm and GitHub, follow him on Twitter @david_whitney, or check out his technical blog at [http://www.davidwhitney.co.uk/Blog](http://www.davidwhitney.co.uk/Blog). [http://www.electricheadsoftware.com](http://www.electricheadsoftware.com/) [http://www.davidwhitney.co.uk](http://www.davidwhitney.co.uk/)

**Little Bay** is a popular restaurant in South Croydon that is celebrating 35 years of business with all dishes at half price. \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- Travel: If you are arriving by public transport, please use the TFL journey planner (https://tfl.gov.uk/plan-a-journey/) to review your travel time and plan your journey to the restaurant. If you are arriving by car, please use the awesome power of Google Maps (https://maps.google.co.uk/) to plot the best route - unless you have your own GPS. Important notes: * If you will be arriving after 12:45pm, please send Ben or Katherine a heads-up message. Sometimes restaurants request that unoccupied places are put up for grabs for walk-in customers so your place can't be guaranteed if you're unexpectedly late. * The organiser fee of £2 per person (including guests) will be collected on the day, so please bring the right change. We also ask that you stay until the bill is paid in full to be fair to everyone. * If you cannot come, please change your RSVP in advance. This ensures members aren't disappointed in missing out. Regular "No-Shows" - those who RSVP yes but don't turn up - will be removed from the group to enhance the experience for others. * This is a social networking event and is not the place to pitch your business, dish out fliers or sign people up to services. Please contact the organisers if you would like to collaborate on something you feel is relevant to the group.

Join us at our next Emacs London meetup held at University College London (UCL) on Tuesday 24 February. A projector will be available, if anyone wants to give a presentation and/or if helpful to share Emacs tips, for some collaborative debugging, etc. We might head to a pub for a drink and/or a nibble afterward. Emacs users of all levels welcome! Interested in Emacs but not really a user? You're more than welcome too! **Call for presentations** Fancy talking about your favourite Emacs package? Proud of your latest Emacs Lisp hack and you want to tell everybody? Anything parenthesis-related that's bugging you? There'll be a monitor waiting for you for a short presentation!

**IMPORTANT: ONLY USE THE LINK BELOW TO BOOK & PAY (NOT MEETUP)** \*This **Tuesday Pop-in Adult Coaching session** is suitable for * Level 1.5 -Improver players * Level 2.0 - Low-Intermediate players **HOW TO BOOK & PAY** * **Multi-Session bulk discount available (from 5-15%)** * **Only book using this link - [Played Booking Link](https://crossfire-badminton.played.co/venues/harris-girls-academy-east-dulwich/sessions/50eec843-abfa-4591-a03d-0f5438822f7b)** **SESSION DETAILS** * 5 players Max, 1 Courts used * Feather Shuttles Provided. Bring your own racket * **Time** \- 8pm till 10pm * **Cost** \- £31\.00 per session \(5% to 15% discount available when bookings several sessions at the same time\) * Cancellation, No Show & Refund Policy! (see T&C's Below) **What is involved** Footwork drills, shot practice, technically & tactically development of your game, isolated and group drills. The activities involved will challenge you to be consistent, have better understanding & control of your game , push you physically, as we do our best to adapt the session to suit your needs individually and as part of a group. **Attending a coaching/training environment often is advisable, in order to maximise the growth of your game!** We finish the session with match play for the last 30min **VENUE DETAILS** * Harris Girls Academy, Homestall Road, London, SE22 0NR * Pedestrian - Enter to the far right corner of the main/blue building (right of the main reception) via the gate. * **Parking** is available outside in the street. * **Bicycles** can use the bicycle rack near the sports hall entry **TERMS & CONDITIONS** **[Click Here](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1D8mOY-BWtmgiaP14YXs9aPoYDiyhRgl7yGSrlgYWNjM/edit?usp=sharing)** to view details for Full Details By Booking for this event you confirm you have read and agree to our T&C's **Dress Code, Well Being, Conduct & Equal Opportunity:** * Wear suitable clothing and footwear for indoor sporting activity. * Ensure than your jewellery is also kept to a minimal, and avoid wearing large ear rings, chains or bracelets/bangles. * If the above is not suitable, you might not be able to participate within the session. No refund, exchange or credit will be given! * If needed please seek advice from your doctor before playing any sports. * You are responsible for warming up/cooling down stretches to reduce the risk of strains/ injuries. * Play at your own risk as Crossfire Badminton Club will not be held responsible for any injuries incurred. * We welcome players of all backgrounds, and treat everyone equally with respect. This is also expected from our participants. If you fail to do this, you may be asked to leave the session, or even banned from future sessions **Further Details** Email - [wayne.crossfire@gmail.com](http://wayne.crossfire@gmail.com/) Phone - 07956 285246 Spaces are limited, so don't delay! ``` ```

Happy 2026! Our first meetup of the year will be back at Zühlke's offices near Old Street, with Guillaume Faas talking about better ways to handle exceptions, Jenny Martin talking about taming complexity with OOPSI, plus the usual drinks, snacks, and plenty of time to chat. Doors 18:30, the first talk starts at 19:00 and we'll be done and heading to the pub at 21:00 to continue the conversation. **Guillaume Faas: Throw exceptions... out of your codebase** Throwing exceptions is often used to handle errors, validations, and other specific use cases. It is considered by many to be the standard way of indicating a failure and providing feedback to the caller. However, this approach can cause significant issues like being hard to detect, obfuscating the flow or leaving the system invalid. In this talk, I want to show you a faster alternative that offers more transparency and predictability. We will see how to integrate ideas from the Functional paradigm, such as "Monads", into an Object-Oriented codebase using a real-life project: Vonage's open-source .NET SDK. This talk will be the perfect opportunity to show you what they are and how easy they are to use. **Guillaume Faas** is a Senior .Net Developer Advocate at Vonage, based in Thionville, France. In recent years, Guillaume has focused on sharing my experience through mentoring, public speaking, and open-source contributions; all aimed at helping teams grow and build sustainable software. With nearly 15 years of experience in .NET development, he's worked across industries as an engineer, coach, and now developer advocate. His current focus is on developer experience: building SDKs, writing approachable technical content, and speaking at conferences around the world. **Jenny Martin: OOPSI: Making Sense of Complexity** OOPSI stands for outcomes, outputs, process, scenarios, inputs. It’s a flexible, easy-to-use collaboration framework that helps agile and product development teams cut through complexity and focus on value. OOPSI is timely because it maximises the intrinsically human aspects of effective delivery, helping teams understand how and when to collaborate, while producing lean, example-driven artefacts that clarify scope and intent so both people and automation can work more effectively. In this talk, you’ll learn how to apply OOPSI to strengthen shared understanding, clarify assumptions, and support testable delivery, using a detailed, end-to-end example. **Jenny Martin** is a practitioner, facilitator, and product discovery specialist with over 25 years’ experience working at the intersection of technology, delivery, and human behaviour. She has spent more than 15 years working with Agile and modern product development teams, helping them make sense of complexity and build shared understanding. Known as The Collaboration Coach, Jenny focuses on practical collaboration that supports effective delivery. She is currently writing a book on OOPSI.

Join us **the night before Elastic{ON} London** for an exclusive meetup, a perfect warm-up to the big day ahead! This is your chance to connect with the Elastic community, mingle with fellow attendees, and get energized for a full day of presentations at Elastic{ON} London. Don’t miss out! Register for the meetup and make sure you’ve also signed up for [Elastic{ON} London](https://www.elastic.co/events/elasticon/london) as well to experience a full day of learning and networking! **Date and Time:** Wednesday, February 25, from 6:00-8:30 PM **Location:** Davidson Building Address: 1st floor, 5 Southampton St, London WC2E 7HA Note: please use Exeter St entrance as the main entrance is closed after 6pm **Agenda:** * 6:00 pm: Doors open; say hi and eat some food * 6:30 pm: #Talk 1 - Re-thinking significant term discovery Mark Harwood - Ex-Elastic Core Developer and Lucene committer * 7:00 pm: Q&A * 7:10 pm: #Talk 2 - From Specs to Play: How I Built a Generative AI Game with Elastic + Microsoft AI Mike Richter - Principal Partner Solution Architect at Microsoft * 7:30 pm: Q&A * 7:40 pm: Networking and event wrap-up * 8:30 pm: Event close If you’re a long-time Elastic user or just starting your journey, this is the perfect opportunity to share ideas, meet new people, and get inspired. Invite your friends and RSVP on this page! **⚡️ Interested in giving a talk? ⚡️** Have you ever considered presenting on your Elastic use case? We welcome 5-10 minute lightning talks, 45-minute deep dives, and everything in between. If you're interested, please submit via our [CFP](https://sessionize.com/elastic-meetups/) or send us an email at [meetups@elastic.co.](http://meetups@elastic.co./)

**Be part of the next Londroid event on Thursday, 26th February 2026, hosted by Vonage.** Spend the evening enjoying Android talks, conversation and community. Expect engaging sessions, the chance to meet others working in Android, and an opportunity to speak with the Vonage team. After the event, we’ll head to **The Fox** for post-event drinks and further conversation. **Tickets:** We have 100 tickets available. Don’t miss out. Follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn for updates. **Schedule:** 18:00 – Doors open & registration 18:30 – Welcome from Londroid and Vonage 18:45 – Zachary Powell - *Beyond the Smartphone: Android’s Identity Crisis in 2026* 19:30 – Nicola Corti – *What I Learned from Publishing Libraries to Maven Central for 10 Years* 20:15 – Q&A and socialising 20:30 – Drinks at The Fox **Our Hosts and Sponsors** **Vonage** Vonage is a cloud communications platform that enables developers to integrate voice, video, and messaging into their applications using communication and network APIs. Whether you’re building video calls, creating a chatbot, or working with programmable phone numbers, Vonage provides the tools to make it happen **Novoda** Novoda is a digital product agency dedicated to building high-quality software. Their team of engineers helps companies scale, modernise and improve their development practices to deliver exceptional digital experiences. Join us for an evening of learning, collaboration and community. We look forward to seeing you there.

Join us for our monthly series where **Offline Women Explore the Royal Parks**, visiting one of the eight different royal parks each month. The first walk in this series will be through **Regent's Park and Primrose Hill.** This is a dedicated, phone-free, quiet space where you can disconnect from digital distractions and reconnect with nature and each other. Join our warm community of women for an afternoon walk through the gardens and up the hill. We will spend our time wandering the paths at a slow pace, taking in the fresh air and the views of the city. It is a simple way to enjoy the park and engage in real conversation. We will have plenty of time to talk, share stories, and get to know one another without any digital interruptions. Leave the event feeling energized and refreshed, with a heart full of good conversation and the peaceful feeling of a walk spent in great company. Spots are limited to ensure the group remains small, intimate, and everyone has a great time connecting face-to-face.

You want to do your best! You want to realise your potential! You want to make the right decisions at the right time! Obviously- you want to be a success! Do you have all the skills in place? Do you have areas in your life or personality that are weaker and you feel can stop you or hold you back? Would you like a free personal consultation to help locate your strengths and weaker areas? We can help you to maximise on your potential. If you would like a free 1 hour consult then register now! We have various times available for your own personal consultation This is hosted at the Scientology Life Improvement Centre in London. We use the Oxford Capacity Analysis test. https://www.scientology-london.org.uk/personality-test/

**BOOK HERE**: https://sportas.co.uk/games/43147 **Game Description:** This is a casual but competitive mixed ability and ages game with a good group of guys Playing on pitch 4 **Rules** \* No slide tackles. \* Shoot from outside the penalty area - attackers not allowed in the box. \* Keeper cannot come out of the penalty area or it’s a pen. \* Defenders not allowed in the area or it’s a pen. \* Rules are sometime flexed if number low or we have odd numbers.

London TypeScript is back! We’re kicking things off with a smaller, more relaxed social before announcing our first major event of 2026. Four Quarters is a great chain of retro arcade bars, with plenty of classic games and a laid-back atmosphere. Come along to play a few games, meet some fellow TypeScript fans, and most importantly, share your ideas and suggestions for the future of London TypeScript.

We will show a variety of methods for building agents that run in Microsoft Foundry. This covers the different types of agents: Prompt, Multi, and Hosted, as well as the development lifecycle using evals and traces.

Please join the Columbus Atlassian Events Team for an evening program where we show you how we are using the Atlassian tools to track, manage and collaborate with others on our hobbies, From Jira & Confluence and Lego, to Tabletop gaming and Trello to miniature painting and Jira. Join the Columbus Atlassian leaders as they walk you through how the Atlassian tools enhance their passion projects.   We'll go over space structures, lessons learned as we built and tracked our project and how it helped us organize group adventures.   Looking forward to sharing our fun with you!Please take note of the New Location and Time of the event. Pay Parking can be found on street, and in locations marked. Agenda --- Speakers Kimberly Deal - Columbus Atlassian User Group Leader Greg Sprowls - Columbus Atlassian Community Leader Kevin Stanley - Columbus Atlassian User Group Leader Moderators Kimberly Deal - Columbus Atlassian User Group Leader Greg Sprowls - Columbus Atlassian Community Leader Kevin Stanley - Columbus Atlassian User Group Leader Hosted By Kimberly Deal, Atlassian User Group Leader Kevin Stanley, Chief Everything Greg Sprowls, Agility Lead --- Global Partner Atlassian (http://atlassian.com) Millions of users globally rely on Atlassian products every day for improving software development, project management, collaboration, and code quality. For over a decade, Atlassian customers have come together to network, share ideas, solve problems, and find new ways to use Atlassian products. Today, more than 15,000 people take part in Atlassian community events in more than 30 countries. --- Complete your event RSVP here: https://ace.atlassian.com/events/details/atlassian-columbus-presents-for-the-love-of-atlassian-using-atlassian-to-manage-your-passion-projects/.

The **Chicago Microsoft Power Platform User Group** invites you to our session on Vibe Coding! **Vibe Coding in the Real World (of M365 and Copilot)** Ralph and Craig show the latest Patterns and practices for Vibe coding app creation around the freshest tools like App Builder and what has been improved in Power Platform. Effective Prompting and understanding when to use which will be covered in this demo filled event where you can BYO Copilot in a workshop format live or remotely. **Agenda - Wednesday, February 25th** 5:30 pm Central - Welcome and Intros 5:45 pm Key news and announcements 6:00 pm - **Vibe Coding in the Real World (of M365 and Copilot )** 6:45 pm- Ask us anything - We will try to answer :) Hope you join us! Craig & Ralph

**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** *Spec-Driven Development with GitHub Spec-Kit: From Intent to Implementation* Spec-driven development flips the traditional workflow on its head: instead of code being the source of truth, the specification becomes the backbone of design, collaboration, and delivery. In this session, we’ll explore how GitHub Spec-Kit enables teams to treat specifications as first-class artifacts—living documents that drive architecture, implementation, and verification. You’ll learn how Spec-Kit helps teams clearly express intent using structured, version-controlled specs that live alongside code. We’ll walk through a practical workflow that starts with defining system behavior and constraints, then progressively refines those specs into testable, automatable outcomes. Along the way, we’ll show how specs can reduce ambiguity, improve cross-functional collaboration, and make design decisions explicit before a single line of production code is written. This talk will cover: --What spec-driven development is (and what it isn’t) --How GitHub Spec-Kit fits into modern developer workflows --Using specs to align product, engineering, and AI-assisted development --Real-world examples of turning specs into implementations with confidence Whether you’re building greenfield systems, integrating AI into your stack, or trying to reduce costly rework, spec-driven development offers a scalable way to move faster without sacrificing clarity. Attendees will leave with concrete patterns and a clear mental model for adopting GitHub Spec-Kit in their own projects. **YouTube Link** TBA

TOPIC (Getting Ready for Spring Macro Photography): Insects are hatching, and flowers are blooming soon. Join us for a presentation on Spring Macro photography and get primed for the photographic season ahead. Meeting Schedule: 1. 6:00 - Introduction, Meet New Members 2. 6:10 - Old Business 3. 6:20 - New Business 4. 6:30 - Pre-Shoot Briefing/Education 5. 7:15 - Break 6. 7:30 - Image Critique 7. 8:00 - Adjourn Pre-Shoot Brief/Education: NIK Collection 8 Image Critique: Previous Photoshoot Images (iPhone images and Christmas Cards). If anyone has images they would like critiqued, please provide them at the beginning of the meeting. Providing Images for Critique: For now, I will collect images at the beginning of the meeting on a USB memory stick. My computer has USB-C ports, so a USB-C memory stick or one with dual (USB-C / USB-A) ports will be needed. Images should follow these format rules: JPG - 80% quality or higher 132 dpi resolution 2048 pixels across the long edge Embedded colorspace - sRGB

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

Meeting @ Improving's office in Downtown Columbus, near Cosi. Parking is paid, food & drink are free! This time we're hanging out after the long winter break. We are going to look at a group-member's project used to help learn the fundamentals of Go, and if time allows, we can take a look at how we like to build Go projects using AI.