Operations Management

Melbourne’s property market is entering a **critical transition phase**. After years of uncertainty, shifting policy, and uneven performance across suburbs, **2026 is shaping up as a defining year** for property investors, renovators, and developers who understand **where to move — and when.** The question is simple: **Will you be early — or late?** **Melbourne Developer-Renovator Network Meetup** **Tuesday 17 February 2026** **NEW VENUE: Amora Hotel Riverwalk Melbourne** (Park Room) 649 Bridge Road, Richmond For our first Melbourne meetup of 2026, we’re bringing in one of Australia’s most respected **independent property market analysts** to deliver a **clear, data-driven outlook** on what’s really ahead for Melbourne property. **Featured Speaker: Brendan Kelly** **CEO, Property Predictions** **Director, Results Mentoring** Brendan will break down: • What the Melbourne market is actually doing right now (beyond the headlines) • The key economic, policy, and supply-demand forces shaping **2026 outcomes** • Which locations are positioned to **outperform — and which to avoid** • How different strategies (buy-and-hold, renovation, development) are likely to perform in the next cycle **Exclusive Bonus (Attendees Only)** Brendan will also reveal **two Melbourne/Victorian suburbs** he expects to **outperform the broader market in 2026** — areas that: • Are still under the radar • Are backed by real data (not hype) • Most investors haven’t moved on… yet ⚠️ These suburbs will **not be shared publicly**. **New Venue · Better Networking** We’re excited to announce our **new Melbourne home for 2026** at the Amora Hotel Riverwalk. ✔️ Comfortable, professional setting ✔️ Easy access from inner Melbourne ✔️ Arrive early for dinner or stay back for drinks ✔️ Network with active investors, renovators & developers **Secure Your Seat (FREE) – In-person or Zoom** This session will fill quickly – especially with forward-looking market insights involved. If you can’t attend in person, you can still join us on Zoom. **[RSVP now (free)](https://events.resultsmentoring.com/meetup-vic.html?utm_source=meetup&utm_campaign=drn)** Book your spot to stay ahead of Melbourne’s next property phase and avoid costly timing mistakes. **FAQ's** **-> Can I bring someone else along?** Yes, you are welcome to bring anyone who is interested in property investing, renovating, developing - it's all about learning and networking with like-minded investors. Please ask them to RSVP so that we know how many people are coming. **-> What are you selling?** Nothing, these meetups are all about learning and networking with like-minded people. **-> What are my Parking options?** There is plenty of parking in the street. We look forward to seeing you there. Best regards, – Tony P.S. If you’re investing in Victoria in 2026, this session could save you years of trial-and-error by getting your timing and location right upfront. **PPS** You can attend in person or online by **[clicking here](https://events.resultsmentoring.com/meetup-vic.html?utm_source=meetup&utm_campaign=drn)**

Event Organizers Wanted for this group. Let us know what it is you wish to Organize from time to time. RSVP yes for this meetup or contact the groups Organizer.

Happy New Year Legends! With 2026 well under way now, it’s a great time to pause and see if we have everything we need to make 2026 a kick ass year. To do that, we need to know what we want. Susan will be guiding through some reflection time, a chance to consider where you are at and what you most want from the year ahead. Together we will set some intentions and paths forward. If you aren’t sure what you want from the year ahead, or how to get it, or just want to connect & network with some like minded folks this session is for you! **Agenda (time in Melbourne/AEST)** * 5:15pm Networking * 5:45pm Welcome * 5:50pm Main Presentation & Workshop * 6:30pm Come back together & Share * 6:45pm Networking * 7:15pm Close **This will be a HYBRID event.** **Zoom link -** To be posted 1hr before event starts. **In person attendees -** Someone will be in the lobby to let you up to the meet up floor via the lifts near Australia Post. Contact organisers on the community Slack (preferred) or Meetup if you need access to the venue after 5:45pm **Our Speaker** **Susan Brander** Susan is currently the co-founding CTO at Kaleida, a start up that is passionate about building diverse, high performing tech teams that represent the Kaleida-scope of society. She has a strong history of leading teams that balances the need to experiment and learn in an emerging market with reliability expected of customer focused systems. She is also an organiser of Tech Leading Ladies, a community focused on bridging the gender gap in technical leadership.

Let's meet at the Hummingbird Cafe in Elwood. (Cnr Vautier St & Ormond Rd) We'll walk along the lovely Elwood canal, then over to the beach and along the foreshore, back to the cafe for a cuppa and a chat. It's the usual one-hour round trip. See you there https://www.hummingbirdelwood.com.au Contact me for any queries on 0409219524 - Cheers Gillian

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 **THREE amazing talks tonight:** 1. **Chaehan So: “Deep Listening AI: A Psychologist's Blueprint for Building a Virtual Friend”** 2. **Dushan Karovich-Wynne: “aigogo: Packaging AI Agents for Production”** 3. **Adam "Spidey" Purdie & Rohan Nowell: "Meet ABI AI in the real world"** Talk descriptions and speaker bios: **Adam "Spidey" Purdie & Rohan Nowell: "Meet ABI AI in the real world"** **Synopsis:** Andromeda's purpose is to build technology that strengthens connections and preserves purpose in people’s lives. This purpose shapes what we build and how we build it. The soul of the product matters as much as its capabilities, and our values are encoded through everyday decisions. Abi is our friendly humanoid robot who is built for this purpose. Where she most strongly differs from a LLM chatbot is in embodiment, she shares a physical environment with you. This comes with a whole new range of challenges, she doesn’t just need to know what to say to hold a conversation, she now also needs to control her body language through gestures. Spidey and Rohan will go through the purpose of Andromeda, how Abi is driving this and how we incorporate machine learning into her physical communication. **Speaker Bios:** **Adam Purdie Spidey**, Mad Scientist / Engineering Manager. Spidey regular meetup goer is best known for his ambitions to take over the world with an army of robotic spiders - furiously developing the spiders and other cuddly horrors by night, by day Spidey is an Engineering Manager in charge of customer applications and platform automation (SRE/Dev/Sec/Ops) and physical robotics. My team do awesome things and I give them all the direction, certainty and space to do it. **Rohan Nowell** is a Machine Learning Engineer at Andromeda Robotics with over 10 years of experience in robotic and autonomous systems. His broad expertise spans control systems, mechanical engineering, physics modelling, and autonomy, including work on uncrewed defence vehicles and miniature robots from his PhD at Monash University. He is currently focused on the complex challenges of Human-Robot Interaction, specifically optimizing for 'delightfulness' in embodied AI systems. **Dushan Karovich-Wynne: “aigogo: Packaging AI Agents for Production”** **Synopsis:** aigogo ( https://github.com/aupeachmo/aigogo )is an open-source project exploring what it actually takes to package, ship, and run AI agents in real production environments. In this talk, I’ll walk through how to use aigogo to package and distribute a real agent that does useful work. This talk isn’t about a finished framework, but an open exploration of what it takes to package and run AI agents in real production environments. Using aigogo as a concrete example, we’ll look at the practical tradeoffs that show up once AI systems move beyond experimentation and start behaving like deployable services. The session is designed to be collaborative and discussion-driven, drawing on the experiences of engineers and data scientists in the room. The goal is to surface what matters most in practice and to help shape the roadmap for aigogo and similar open-source efforts going forward. **Speaker Bio:** Dushan is the founder of Subrosa AI (www.subrosa.ai), he is building at the intersection of AI, risk mitigation, and governance, with a focus on making AI systems secure, auditable, and trustworthy in production environments. On top of his companies products which address data leakage and governance challenges as well as production-level AI agents, Dushan builds and maintains open-source projects that help people instrument, understand, sandbox and distribute AI agents. Outside of work, he's a lifelong dog lover who has been known to pull over to talk to dogs. **Chaehan So: “Deep Listening AI: A Psychologist's Blueprint for Building a Virtual Friend”** **Abstract:** What if AI could truly listen—not just respond with generic empathy, but recognize when you're avoiding a difficult topic, stuck in a thinking loop, or seeking validation you won't accept? In this talk, psychological-researcher-turned-AI-startup-founder Chaehan So shares what building Virtual Friend revealed about creating AI for deep emotional conversations. You'll discover why common approaches like fine-tuning and RAG fail for psychological applications—and what actually works. Key takeaways: * Why "respond with empathy" prompts don't work (and what to do instead) * How to engineer psychological awareness into AI conversations * The hidden patterns that unfold across a conversation—revealing what someone can't say directly Whether you're building AI products, interested in mental health tech, or curious about the intersection of psychology and AI, you'll leave with practical insights applicable far beyond chatbots. **Speaker Bio:** Dr. Chaehan So bridges psychology and AI to create technology that genuinely understands people. As founder of Virtual Friend, he's building an AI companion specifically designed to support young adults navigating anxiety, loneliness, and life transitions—combining clinical listening techniques with cutting-edge language models. With a Ph.D. in Social Psychology, Dr. So brings psychological research methodology to AI development. His interdisciplinary background spans social psychology (Humboldt University Berlin), engineering (TU Berlin), and management (ESCP France), with previous experience as Assistant Professor of Information & Interaction Design at Yonsei University, South Korea. His mission: making AI that doesn't just talk to you, but truly listens.

**Details** Support groups for individuals with OCD and their families this meeting will be online for the Mental Health Foundation Australia. Join online and gain support from others with OCD in the comfort of your own home at 6:30pm on the third Tuesday of each month. **Facilitator** Facilitating the OCD support groups is Jim, a dedicated community support worker with expertise in mental health. Jim brings his experience and knowledge to guide the group discussions and ensure a safe and inclusive environment for all participants. **Benefits of OCD Support Group** Support groups for individuals with OCD and their families provide an avenue for comfort, safety, and mutual support. These groups offer participants the opportunity to connect with others who understand their experiences and challenges. Additionally, the support groups serve as a valuable platform for learning more about OCD and its impact. Participants can gain insights into the disorder, its symptoms, and effective coping strategies through shared experiences and discussions. This knowledge empowers individuals to better manage their condition and navigate their daily lives. To register your attendance and to join the meeting please see: [https://supportgroup.mhfa.org.au/ocd-support-group ](https://supportgroup.mhfa.org.au/ocd-support-group) For other MHFA support groups please see: [https://supportgroup.mhfa.org.au/](https://supportgroup.mhfa.org.au/) If you need any further information feel free to contact us at supportgroup@mhfa.org.au

Please register for this event [here](https://factorhouse.io/events/melbourne-workshop-building-resilient-event-driven-systems-with-kafka-and-flink). **Go beyond theory and build a production-ready event stream** Join us for a practitioner-led, hands-on workshop where you'll design, build, and operate a complete real-time operational system from the ground up. We're teaming up with NetApp Instaclustr and Ververica to run this intensive half-day workshop. **What You'll Build** A resilient, real-time operational backbone powered by a Quarkus API, Kafka Streams, Apache Kafka®, and Apache Flink®. You'll implement a stateful order processing and inventory management system that processes live events in real time, the kind of critical infrastructure that powers payment processing, fleet coordination, inventory systems, and customer-facing applications across industries. **Two Architectural Patterns, One Mission** You'll implement and contrast two powerful approaches to building event-driven systems: **\- Pattern 1: Direct Event Publishing** Build a pipeline where the API writes events directly to Kafka, with a Flink job managing downstream state. Experience the challenges of application-level dual writes in real time. **\- Pattern 2: Change Data Capture \(CDC\)** Refactor for resilience by capturing database changes with CDC. Your API simplifies to database-only writes while Flink handles event publishing, demonstrating how CDC decouples applications from event pipelines and creates more robust data flows. **Operate With Confidence** Integrate **Kpow** and **Flex** to gain deep visibility into your Kafka and Flink data flows. You'll learn how to make your streaming systems more observable, accessible, and operationally efficient, skills that translate directly to production environments. **Who Should Attend** Software and data engineers, platform/SRE teams, and architects adopting streaming and event-driven architectures. Whether you're building payment systems, logistics platforms, or real-time analytics, this workshop gives you practical experience choosing the right patterns for your workloads. **Please note:** Spots are limited and attendees in engineering roles will be prioritised to ensure an optimal hands-on learning environment.

Hey all, please join us for our February 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: Easygo 😊 💬 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:** 🎤 Anirban Roy Chowdhury, SD2 - Data engineering @ Easygo **Talk Title**: Multi tenant/region data engineering **Talk Summary**: Servicing multiple markets and challenges faced in multi-tenant architecture. **Speaker Bio**: Anirban is a versatile data professional with cross-industry expertise. Beginning his career as a software engineer at BlackRock in Delhi, India, he pursued his passion for data by relocating to Australia to earn a Master's in Data Science from Monash University. With experience spanning retail, consultancy, and real estate technology sectors, he specialise in bridging the gap between data insights and business outcomes. His work focuses on empowering organisations to implement data-driven decision-making processes that deliver measurable results. Through his practical approach to data engineering, he helped his teams to transform raw information into strategic assets that drive business growth. 🎤 Muhammad Ali, Sr. Solutions Architect at ClickHouse **Talk Title**: Engineering for Real-Time User-Facing Analytics **Talk Summary**: Building a dashboard for a dozen internal analysts is a solved problem. Building an analytical feature for a million concurrent users is an engineering nightmare. The fundamental laws of data processing change when we move analytics from the "back office" to the "front end”. In this session we will discuss engineering demands for building web facing low latency realtime analytics, and how to accomplish it without breaking the bank. **Speaker Bio**: Architecting the next generation of real-time AI workloads and observability 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...

Starting the year with exciting topic: * **Topic:** Event Streaming with GCP DataFlow * **Date:** Thursday 19th February 2026 at 6.00 pm - 8.00 pm * **Networking:** 6 pm - 6.30 pm and 7.20 - 8 pm * **Presentation Time**: 6.30 pm - 7.20 pm *(includes welcome, presentation 30 mins & community marketplace)* * **Location:** Fabric Group, Level 9, 446 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 * **Ticket:** Free of cost, however, registrations and RSVP are required! * **Sponsor:** Fabric Group, Thoughtworks **Event Streaming with GCP DataFlow** Learn about real time event streaming using GCP stack! This scalable event consolidation service orchestrates the real-time processing of millions of distributed data points into unified events. Built on GCP Dataflow and Pub/Sub, the architecture ensures high-throughput stream processing and seamless data synthesis for complex, distributed environments. ### **About The Speaker** *Abhishek is a Lead Software Engineer at Fabric Group with over 10 years of industry experience. He has worked extensively on data engineering problems, building ETL solutions and scalable event-driven systems. His interests include infrastructure automation and designing cloud-native solutions on AWS and Google Cloud.*

**Product Talk** exists because in modern SaaS companies, the product isn’t “owned” purely by PMs, it’s shaped by everyone. Engineers, designers, data, growth, product marketing, sales, customer teams, founders, if your work changes what customers experience, you’re in the product business. The goal is to get the whole product mix in one room, learn how other functions are approaching the same problems, and leave with ideas and language you can actually use at work the next day. The format is simple: two talks from operators who've been deep in the work, plus time to meet smart people in the product ecosystem. The goal is signal, what’s changing right now, what trends actually matter, and the tradeoffs teams are making to keep shipping. **This event** AI talk is everywhere right now. This session focuses on real-world applications, workflows, constraints, and outcomes. So yes, Product Talk is doing an AI night too, but with Actual Intelligence, and real operators who’ve built real things. * Two speakers, two different worlds, both with outcomes. **[Jared Korinko](https://www.linkedin.com/in/jared-korinko-76b68851/)** ***(Product @ Google, Google Photos)*** *is shipping for 1B+ users, and will share how he built a revenue-generating side hustle purely with AI, the approach, the tools, and the parts that didn’t work as advertised.* ***[Joel Kenyon](https://www.linkedin.com/in/joel-kenyon/) (FMR Head of Product, Amused Group)*** *has led the design and delivery of a wagering platform powering 10 brands, and has embedded GenAI into product workflows to accelerate validation and roadmap intelligence. He’ll talk about what AI looks like when it’s part of a real product organisation, with constraints, compliance, and customers who do not care about your tooling.* *If you’re building SaaS as a PM, designer, engineer or even founder, and you want practical signal over AI noise, this one will be worth your time.* **When:** Wed 18th **Doors:** 17:30 **First speaker:** 18:15 **Wrap:** \~19:30 **Where:** Ippon Technologies office, 8/607 Bourke St. Cnr Bourke and King St's. This is an accessible venue. Enter the building via the Bourke St Entrance and use the lifts to come to Level 8. Call Simon on 0459 59 22 01 if you require assistance or are lost.

**Join your local guides on the best pub crawl in Melbourne!** Meet at WAX Music Lounge on 250 Flinders St, and explore the best, most well-known venues with people from all over the world. With **4 free 'welcome shots'** upon entry to each bar followed by exclusive drink deals at each, you'll see just why Melbourne is known as the nightlife capital of Australia! Experience a range of Melbourne's most famous bars & pubs throughout the night, with **free entry** for all, and reduced entry/recommendations at the end of the event to keep your night going strong! Play games, **win prizes** and mingle with locals, travelers & everything in between on the most sought-after event in Melbourne! * **4 FREE SHOTS** * **4 BARS ALL WITH FREE SKIP-THE-LINE ENTRY** * **PLENTY OF GAMES AND PRIZES TO BE WON** * **UNLIMITED MEMORIES & CHANCES TO MAKE FRIENDS IN THE CULTURAL CAPITAL OF AUSTRALIA!** Starting at 5:30PM at WAX Music Lounge on 250 Flinders St, you will receive your skip-the-line wristband, free welcome shot and mingle with other attendees before we introduce our games and prizes to be won throughout the evening. We then mix it up weekly, visiting some of Melbourne's most iconic and well-known bars with your pub crawl crew who have lived and breathed the city for most of their lives. **Make sure to lock in your spot ASAP as tickets often sell out!**

Join link: [https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/41790991030013?p=F3QrbogyC5Iyss1AtF](https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/41790991030013?p=F3QrbogyC5Iyss1AtF "Meeting join") **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:** From Bronze to Gold: A Practical Testing Strategy for Microsoft Fabric **THE SPEAKER -** Mikhail Koptelov **THE SESSION** Testing in Microsoft Fabric requires different strategies depending on where your logic lives. In this talk, we explore how to apply unit and contract testing across the Fabric stack: * Pipeline unit tests for reliable orchestration and data movement * Python notebook testing using both notebook-first and package-first approaches * SQL contract testing to ensure downstream dependencies remain stable By the end, you’ll have a practical blueprint for building robust, testable Fabric workloads from Bronze to Gold. **Pre-requisites**: Basic understanding of Fabric and python **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. **Sirius Technology (https://www.siriuspeople.com.au/)** A big thank also to our co-sponsor, Sirius Technology, for their ongoing support of our Meetup and providing us with food for each event. Sirius Technology recruits across all Technology Disciplines from Development (Front and back-end), Testing, Network, and Security, Project Services (PM's, BA's, Project Coordinators) & Data - across all technology stacks. **The Power BI Developer Checklist** You can download Greg's Power BI developer checklist here: [Power BI Report Development Checklist](https://www.dearwatson.net.au/checklist)

**AJ Bajada & Danidu Weerasinghe - What's new in Azure and GitHub** A fast, practical tour of the newest innovations across Azure and GitHub. We’ll break down the latest cloud capabilities, AI‑powered developer tools, security enhancements, and DevOps integrations that are transforming how teams build and ship software. **Dylan McCarthy - Managed DevOps Pools - Simplifying Build Agents for Azure DevOps** Managing build agents for Azure DevOps has always been a bit of a pain, requiring teams to create VMs or VM Scale Sets, maintain their images, manage spinning up and down resources to manage cost and build times. In this talk I want to show you how you can abstract away a lot of that pain by using Managed DevOps Pools. I will walk you through what the service is, it's features and then show you how to connect a pool to an Azure DevOps environment.

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/.

Bring your business cards and network in person with other business professionals! Gold Star Referral Clubs is one of the most established professional networking organizations in the country, with multiple groups in central Ohio. Join us!

Our next much-awaited **COLUMBUS** meetup is **Tuesday February 24 from 7-10 pm at ACE OF CUPS**. Meet patients, cultivators, processors, dispensary managers/staff, physicians, home growers, educators, activists, nonprofits, artists, attorneys, business owners, writers, students, and supporters to network, share our knowledge, collaborate, support each other and make new friends! WE HOPE TO BE COLLECTING SIGNATURES TO OVERTURN SB56. BRING YOUR FRIENDS, COLLEAGUES AND FAMILY MEMBERS TO JOIN US AND SIGN! Hope you will be there too! Save the date and pass the word. **Please RSVP** so we know who is coming and how many to expect. Find us to say hi and we will introduce you to others. We should be easy to spot. (The happy-looking group wearing cool nametags! See photos from our past events.) Sign in, grab a name tag, start your own bar/food tab, meet old friends and make new ones! Everyone is welcome. SEE YOU THERE!

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

**[No Surprise, ... YET]** Let's get together and **WORKSHOP** about Job Searching and Career Management. Here are some of the content areas we can cover - expect this to change. * Using AI effectively (search, resume). * Job Search Tooling (i.e. TopResume, Job-Squid). * Resume / LinkedIn Review * Practice Interview * Practice Elevator Pitch ***Bring your laptop and expect to write some (non-AI-generated) code!*** Food and drinks will be available. **LOCATION:** 6515 Longshore Loop, Suite 300, Dublin, OH 43017 **FREE PARKING:** 6725 Longshore Street, Dublin, OH 43017

You can also join the meeting by Conference Call at (518) 263-8851.