Oracle

This a BSL practice group for level 1 students and above. We will be meeting at the national theatre in southbank

Do you want to submit a talk to a Postgres conference? Do you want to try out the challenge of fitting a bunch of interesting information into 5 minutes for a lightning talk? Can you talk for 1 to 2 minutes on a Postgres topic you've just heard? On the 6th of May, we will be back at Star of Kings, running an event which is all about speakers and speaking. With the Call for Papers for PGDay UK closing on the 12th, we are inviting anyone who has a talk idea, is unsure of whether the topic fills the time, or just might enjoy a bit of technical improv to join us. If you would like to present a talk or a lightning talk, please get in touch. We will update this event description a people come forward. In the absence of any volunteers it will be Postgres-themed improv talks and, maybe, an organiser taking a talk for a spin. Don't let it come to that :)

Join us on Wednesday 6th May for our next AI Exchange event, hosted by AWS at their Holborn HQ. Here's what's on the agenda: **[Nova Intelligence](https://www.novaintelligence.com/)** are tackling a problem that doesn't get talked about enough, most AI agents simply weren't built to work with enterprise software like SAP. Their talk discusses how they have solved that, and what it looks like when AI works as well in the enterprise world as it does everywhere else. **[WeBuild-AI](https://www.webuild-ai.com/)** are making the case that bigger isn't always better. Their talk breaks down how small language models, through distillation, fine tuning and low rank adaptation, can deliver the same results as larger models, at a fraction of the cost. **[AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/)** are tackling the question underneath all the others, not how to use AI, but what it's doing to the human mind. Their talk explores how cognition is shifting, which human traits become more valuable as AI takes on complexity, and what genuine human AI partnership actually looks like. As always, doors open at 6:30pm and talks start at 7pm sharp. We have a tight capacity for this event, so please RSVP as soon as you can to secure your space. **Agenda:** **[Marcello Urbani](https://www.linkedin.com/in/marcello-urbani-4730b75/?skipRedirect=true) @ [Nova Intelligence](https://www.novaintelligence.com/)** "**Bringing Agentic AI to the SAP Ecosystem"** Most enterprise software wasn't built with AI agents in mind — and mainstream agents weren't built for enterprise software. SAP is the sharpest example: code lives in the system, not a filesystem, and git-based workflows simply don't apply. Nova closes that gap — an agentic assistant that speaks SAP natively. This talk covers the mismatch problem, how we designed Nova around SAP's environment, and what it looks like when an AI agent finally works as well on SAP as it does on mainstream systems. Bio: Marcello is a software engineer with over two decades in the SAP ecosystem, most of them building DevOps tooling at Basis Technologies. Last year he joined Nova Intelligence to focus on AI applied to SAP systems. An active open source contributor, he is best known for abapfs, a VS Code plugin that enables ABAP development directly in the editor. **[Adel Rahimi](https://www.linkedin.com/in/adelr/) @ [WeBuild-AI](https://www.webuild-ai.com/)** "**Small Language Models: Practical AI for the Real World"** Large language models have dominated the AI conversation, but a quieter revolution is underway. In this talk, we'll explore the rise of small language models and why they matter now more than ever, from reduced infrastructure costs to data sovereignty and the ability to run AI on-premise or at the edge. We'll dive into the techniques that make small models punch above their weight, including distillation, quantisation, fine-tuning and low-rank adaptation. Whether you're navigating regulatory constraints, working with limited compute, or simply looking for a more practical path to production AI, this session will give you the tools to think smaller and smarter. Bio: Adel is a Principal Engineer at Webuild-AI. He has a decade of experience in building and scaling AI and ML solutions at different industries and different company sizes, ranging from series A to unicorns and more recently he was a Sr. AI Engineering Manager at Procter & Gamble. He has also published several research papers in the areas of AI Explainability and NLP and is an advocate of safe and explainable AI. **[Elliott Almeida](https://www.linkedin.com/in/elliott-almeida/) @ [AWS](https://aws.amazon.com/)** **"The Cognitive Partnership: How AI is Reshaping Human Intelligence"** This session explores the profound psychological transformation at the intersection of human cognition and artificial intelligence. Moving beyond tactical implementation, we examine how AI is fundamentally altering our cognitive identity and which human psychological profiles naturally thrive in AI collaboration. Drawing on the "Missing Middle" philosophy and the tension between cognitive offloading and scaffolding, we investigate the paradox of augmentation: as AI handles increasingly complex cognitive tasks, what uniquely human capacities become more valuable? We hope to see you there for another great AI filled evening! **Sponsors...** The AI Exchange is brought to you in partnership with[ LinuxRecruit](https://www.linuxrecruit.co.uk/) and[ AWS.](https://aws.amazon.com/) LinuxRecruit is building the next wave of Tech Unicorns in Europe. Whether you're hiring or exploring your next opportunity, [get in touch](https://www.linuxrecruit.co.uk/jobs). The types of roles we have currently are across Founding Engineers, Engineers across Product, Software, AI/ML, Data and Platform Infrastructure/DevOps.

## Details This course is designed for beginners who have completed an A1.1 course or are familiar with the present tense. **Class information** * **Wednesday 22nd April 2026 - 24th June 2026.** * **18:00 PM - 19:30 PM** * **15 hours over 10 weeks** * For this course we'll use the book **Aula Plus 1 ( Editorial Difusión)** * All our Online Spanish language lessons take place via **Zoom**. This tool allows the teacher and the students to share screens, cover grammar points on the white board, complete listening tasks, share files and practice conversation with classmates in break-out rooms. * **Price: £200** (Payment method is bank transfer. Once you enrol we’ll send you an invoice). * Please email us at \*\*[hola@laescuelaspanish.com**](http://hola@laescuelaspanish.com%2A%2A/) to enrol or if you need more information. **Communication Goals** -Shopping -Talkings about preferences **-**Describing physical appearance and character -Speaking about family -Speaking about likes & dislikes -Asking and telling the time -Speaking about daily routines -Expressing frequency **Grammar Points** - *este/esta/estos/estas,esto* - *el/la/los/las* + adjective + que + noun \- cuál/cuáles - *Tener que* + infinitive \- The verbs *ir* and *preferir* *-* The verb *gustar, encantar and interesar* *-* Expressing agreement and disagreement - *muy, bastante, un poco* \- Possessive adjectives \- The present tense and some irregular verbs \- Reflexive verbs \- Expressing agreement and disagreement - *Primero, después, luego…* **Vocabulary** -Numbers over 100 -Colours -Clothes -Adjectives -The family -Music -Days of the week -Daily activities -Parts of the day

Welcome to our May event. We're delighted to welcome [Elena Lape](http://linkedin.com/in/elenalape), Founder, Holopin and [Rupam Jha](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rupam-jha-151313a7/), Senior DevOps Engineer, as well as [Areg Hovakimyan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/areg-hovakimyan/), Senior DevOps Engineer. **Elena** takes an affectionate but honest look at the wonderfully chaotic reality of working with AWS, a platform that can do almost anything, but rarely in just one obvious way. **Rupam** answers the question every fast-moving team faces: how do you stay secure, compliant, and audit-ready on AWS without creating bottlenecks for builders? **Areg** provides an overview of Amazon EKS, while highlighting what truly makes a difference in production. A big thank you to our sponsors [Cloudscaler](https://rebrand.ly/cloudscaler), [Rayo](https://rebrand.ly/rayo-cloud) & [The Scale Factory](https://rebrand.ly/scalefactory) **Programme:** 18:00: Arrival, registration 18:15: Talks start 20:00: Networking with food and a drink provided by the generosity of our sponsors. **Talk 1:** ***AWS: An Experience with Elena Lape*** Those of us who care a lot about developer experience would certainly agree: AWS is, undeniably, an experience. This session explores the quirks, overlaps, and “wait, why?” moments that make AWS both impressive and deeply relatable. Expect an affectionate look at the strange reality of using a platform that can do everything except explain itself briefly. **Elena** is founder and Head of Engineering at Holopin, where she leads a platform used by 150,000+ software engineers worldwide. Before Holopin, she worked across several Silicon Valley scaleups building Kubernetes integrations, developer tooling, and cloud infrastructure, and has been building on AWS since 2016. Elena is deeply focused on developer experience. She spent part of her early career at GitHub, remains active in hackathon communities, and today serves on the W3C Advisory Board. **Talk 2:** ***Learn how to turn AWS security and compliance policies into automated, scalable, and auditable practices — without slowing down innovation with Rupam Jha*** Many organisations struggle to enforce security and compliance consistently across AWS environments while scaling their workloads. In this session, I’ll walk through practical strategies to secure AWS accounts, implement automated compliance controls, and simplify audits. Using real-world examples and best practices, attendees will leave with actionable techniques to protect data, streamline operations, and maintain regulatory readiness in the cloud. **Rupam** is a Senior DevOps and Platform Engineer who enjoys building AWS platforms that are scalable, secure, and easy for teams to use. Her focus is on creating cloud-native environments with tools like AWS, Kubernetes, EKS, Terraform, and Vault, helping engineering teams ship faster and more confidently through automation, standardisation, and strong platform foundations. A big part of what she does is reducing complexity for developers by building self-service infrastructure, improving delivery pipelines, and making platforms more reliable, observable, and cost-effective. She cares about security by design and operational excellence, and she believes infrastructure should feel like a product - something dependable, well-designed, and built to help teams move quickly without adding unnecessary risk. **Lightning Talk:** ***EKS in Production: What Actually Changed After Adoption*** **Areg** is a Senior DevOps Engineer and will talk about Amazon EKS. Amazon EKS offers many capabilities to simplify Kubernetes operations, but in practice, not all of them deliver the same value. In this 15 minute talk, Areg will provide a quick overview of key EKS capabilities, highlight 2-3 that truly make a difference in production, and explore common areas where teams tend to overcomplicate their platforms. **Do you have a story to share?** If you are interested in speaking at one of our events, please check out our [call for papers here](https://awsuguk.org/call-for-papers/). We are advocates for greater inclusion & diversity in UK Tech and are especially keen to receive talk submissions from people in underrepresented groups. If you are interested in speaking at a future meetup but would like to discuss what to expect or need assistance, please contact our Inclusion & Diversity Lead Natalie Gray - graynataliej@gmail.com or DM her [@natjgray](https://twitter.com/natjgray) Check out our [website](https://awsuguk.org/) for more information about our community. Remember to follow us [@AWSUserGroupUK](https://twitter.com/AWSUserGroupUK) and on [LinkedIn](https://www.linkedin.com/company/aws-ug-uk) for the latest updates, and you can find videos of our past meetups [here.](https://awsuguk.org/our-videos/)

**Ready for a new challenge?** 🌍 Why not learn **the second most spoken language in the world**? Spanish will open the doors to a **fascinating world** full of culture, history, and traditions. Through this language, you’ll discover the **richness of its countries, the deliciousness of its cuisine, the passion of its music, the depth of its literature, the brilliance of its art, and the warmth of its people**. If any of these things excite you, **this course is the perfect opportunity** to immerse yourself in the incredible Hispanic world. **Start today and take your first step toward a world without borders!** This course is designed for complete beginners who have never studied the Spanish language before. **Class Information** Maximum 8 students. Students must be 18+ years old. All our Online Spanish language lessons take place via **Zoom**. **Price - £200**. Payment method - Bank transfer. Once we have the minimum of students, we’ll send you an invoice. For this course we'll use the book **Aula Internacional Plus 1 ( Editorial Difusión)**. **If you are interested in joining this group, please send an email with the course title to irene@aprendeahoraconirene.co.uk** **Class Schedule** * **Wednesday 4th March-27th May 2026** * 17:30 PM -19:00 PM (UK time) * 15 hours over 10 weeks **Communication goals** * Greeting people * Introducing yourself * Asking and giving personal details * Talking about where you want to go and what you want to do * Talking about reasons. * Talking about your language skills. * Describing places * Expressing existence (*hay*) and location * Talking about the weather **Grammar** * Gender * The present tense: the three regular conjugations:-*ar, -er, -ir* * Verbs: *ser, llamarse, querer* * Some uses of *hay* * Other verbs: *Ser* vs *estar* * Personal pronouns * Some uses of *por*, *para*, *porque* * The articles * Superlatives * Quantifiers: *muy, mucho, mucha, muchos, muchas* * Interrogatives: *qué, cuál/cuáles, cuántos/cuántas, dónde, cómo* **Vocabulary** * Leisure activities * Numbers * Professions * Places of work * Nationalities * Languages * Geography * Tourist attractions * Seasons * Cardinal points * Weather [www.laescuelaspanish.com](https://laescuelaspanish.com/)

Hi folks! Welcome to our May Cloud Native London meetup! Join us to hear from our three great speakers and network with your fellow techies over pizza and drinks, or alternatively chat and following along on Youtube or LinkedIn! 6:00 Pizza and drinks 6:30 Welcome 6:45 The End of Handoffs: Build, Run, Own in One Flow (Alberto Pose, Pulumi) 7:15 You Can’t Patch Fast Enough: What AI-Driven Attacks Mean (Idan Elor, Oligo Security) 7:45 Break 8:00 From Zero to HyperPod: Distributed Model Training on AWS (Anton Nazaruk, Cloud Combinator) 8:30 Wrap up See you there! Cheryl (@oicheryl) **The End of Handoffs: Build, Run, Own in One Flow (Alberto Pose, Pulumi)** AI is changing the shape of team structures. A similar shift to the one that brought dev and ops together into DevOps is now happening as product must also meet the accountability bar. At the same time, tooling has not caught up with "throwing it to Claude/Codex". Engineers are confronted with a choice: trust code and actions they do not fully understand, or... move too slowly. Are these problems fundamentally new, or are there lessons we can draw from the past to adapt and think about what comes next? *Alberto Pose is a software engineer with a soft spot for developer tooling and infrastructure. He is currently part of the team managing the CI/CD pipelines for Pulumi's open source projects. Before this, he spent nearly ten years at Prime Video and AWS. A major highlight of his time there was helping bootstrap the living room device automation team, taking it from a small group effort to a 30 person organisation that brought full automation to millions of streaming devices worldwide.* **You Can’t Patch Fast Enough: What AI-Driven Attacks Mean (Idan Elor, Oligo Security)** Anthropic’s Project Glasswing announcement put the industry on notice. AI has fundamentally changed the threat landscape and the risks facing organizations, and it’s happening faster than most security models can adapt. AI-assisted attackers can now discover vulnerabilities, generate exploits, and launch attacks at rates never seen before, collapsing the window between disclosure and exploitation. In this environment, patching alone is no longer enough. For cloud-native applications, where systems are dynamic and constantly evolving, this creates a new challenge: how do you stay protected when you can’t fix vulnerabilities fast enough? This talk explores how the attacker model is shifting in the AI era, why traditional approaches are breaking down, and what it means to move from vulnerability-based security to real-time protection at runtime. We’ll cover how focusing on exploit techniques enables teams to stop attacks as they happen, including zero-days. *Idan Elor is Field CTO at Oligo Security, where he partners with large enterprises to solve complex application and cloud security challenges. He most recently served as Director of Solution Engineering & Tech-Alliances at Apiiro, where he empowered enterprises to secure their software supply chains. With over a decade of experience spanning application security, DevSecOps, and mobile security, Idan has also held leadership positions at companies like Snyk, Symantec, and HP. His unique background combines deep hands-on technical expertise. A passionate advocate for bridging the gap between security and development teams, Idan is known for his ability to translate complex security concepts into actionable strategies that organizations can actually implement.* **From Zero to HyperPod: Distributed Model Training on AWS (Anton Nazaruk, Cloud Combinator)** You've got a model that works. You just need more GPUs. How hard can it be? That's where the pain starts. GPU availability, infrastructure complexity, and cost are the three blockers that trip up even experienced teams when scaling from single-GPU training to serious distributed workloads. This talk is a practical walkthrough of how to set up distributed model training on AWS - covering the capacity options (On-Demand, Spot, Capacity Blocks, SageMaker Training Plans), when to use each, and a repeatable infrastructure blueprint for compute, networking, storage, and observability. I'll demo provisioning a HyperPod cluster and running a distributed training job with automatic failure recovery, and share the cost levers that matter at scale. Whether you're a platform engineer supporting ML teams or an ML engineer tired of fighting infrastructure, you'll leave with a decision framework and a blueprint you can implement. *Anton Nazaruk is CTO at Cloud Combinator, where he helps companies run GPU workloads on AWS - from early-stage startups to larger organisations doing distributed training at scale. He focuses on making ML infrastructure repeatable, resilient, and cost-efficient.* *LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anton-nazaruk* *Check out [https://www.oicheryl.com/cloudnativelondon](https://www.oicheryl.com/cloudnativelondon) if you're interested in speaking or sponsoring.*

**🏛️ WHAT'S PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY ABOUT?** Practical Philosophy is a weekly meet-up that brings critical thinkers together for an opportunity to dive deep on a topic, practice communicating, and building a community. All with no ‘official’ philosophy knowledge required! 😎 Practical Philosophy is based on the idea that philosophy should be accessible to all, and not something reserved only for academics. Each week we choose a topic, and the goal is to use the conversation to develop our critical thinking and communication as we explore that topic. The goal is to help develop our Critical Thinking, Communication, and Community 🙌 📓 **HOW DOES IT WORK?** Each week, we pick one topic and discuss it. The topic for the week is shared, generally in the [Whatsapp group](https://chat.whatsapp.com/B6fqS6HGujq8gb3a0kl5pS), along with jump-off points to get the conversation going. When groups get bigger than 7-8 people, it’s important that we break into smaller groups. This way we are able to maintain a conversational flow as opposed to having our meetups feel like a discourse or lecture. **General Meeting Agenda** Each Practical Philosophy meet-up follows this general timeline: * 13:45-14:00 - People arrive and chat, get to know each other before the ‘official' start. * 14:00-14:05 - Meeting introduction, explanation of Practical Philosophy and the topic for the week, read the guidelines and the overview so attendees know what to expect in terms of timelines. * 14:05-14:45 - Break into small groups - introduce yourselves and general thoughts on the topic, open discussion afterwards. At this point the group can review the ‘jump-off’ questions as needed, but they are just there to help guide the conversation. It’s not obligatory to answer them. * 14:45 - We do a group conclusion of the things we discussed, and then we typically take a photo and go on our way :) If you don't want to be in the group photo, there's no pressure, it's just a way to close out the meeting. We occasionally have an unofficial social so the different groups can mingle afterwards too! **🧧PRICING?** Practical Philosophy Club is FREE to attend, and we operate on donations. If you'd like to donate to support our running costs, that helps keep our group self-sustaining. Donations are 100% voluntary, but your contribution is appreciated! QR codes to donate will be present. Tea’s and coffees and are paid by the individual should they wish to have them. **💛 WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY** 🗣 “I feel like Philosophy Club helps someone build their own belief system through a series of perspectives while not promoting what’s right and wrong” - Ekam 🗣 “I got hooked from day 1 (the topic was authority) and felt it was the right place for me. I feel it is a place where people can go to learn and discuss new perspectives and increase critical thinking and community by interacting with people who might challenge your point of views but at the same time encourage you to have openness and mind flexibility.” - Daniel **🤓 FAQ** * What will we talk about? What's the topic? The topic for the week is shared every week in the Whatsapp group before the session. We try to add the topic to the comment section on this event page as well but if you don’t see it, the topic and the jump-off points will be in our [Whatsapp](https://chat.whatsapp.com/B6fqS6HGujq8gb3a0kl5pS). * Do I need to study or read anything to attend? No preparation is necessary. This isn’t a study of other thinkers. We want to know what YOU think about the topic, not what an old philosopher thought. If you have a perspective from a religion or a school of thought to share, throw it on the table and we’ll discuss it, but it's not required. * Is there a specific philosophy that Practical Philosophy is focused on? The goal of our meet-ups is to not have dogmatic discussions, and flex our critical thinking muscles. Because of this, we want to hear from every realm of thought, and don't study a particular school. * Is it mostly men that attend? Surprisingly, no! Although philosophy is seen as a Candelabra affair in a dark room with a bunch of guys, our Practical Philosophy meetups are generally 50/50 between genders, and we don’t meet in any dark rooms. * Can I come alone? Of course you can, we encourage it :) * Can I be late? Please don't be! We do have a 15 minute grace period where we allow people to funnel in while we hang out, but after that if you arrive too late, it disrupts the flow of the conversation. * Where do you meet? The location is posted in Meetup and our [Whatsapp](https://chat.whatsapp.com/B6fqS6HGujq8gb3a0kl5pS) group for this location. It is HIGHLY RECOMMENDED that you join the Whatsapp group! If you want to know what other cities have a Practical Philosophy Club, you can see our chapters on our [website](https://www.practicalphilosophy.club/practical-philosophy-locations/). 🤝**POLICY** To respect our members privacy, we ask that no one privately message a member without first getting explicit consent. (This looks like speaking in person and being asked to message privately.) Contacting or texting other participants without prior consent is not permitted and may result in removal from the group. Practical Philosophy reserves the right to enforce this policy at its discretion to maintain a safe and respectful environment. **PRACTICAL PHILOSOPHY - Making Philosophy Available To All.** ✨ Practical Philosophy hosts weekly, in-person meetups in 25+ countries, including Canada, Spain, Japan, Mexico and many more! 🗺️ \*\*\* Join our [Whatsapp group](https://chat.whatsapp.com/B6fqS6HGujq8gb3a0kl5pS) 👈 Follow us on [Instagram](https://www.instagram.com/practicalphilosophyclub/?hl=en) 👈 Our [website](https://www.practicalphilosophy.club) 👈

Join us on May 7th from **6:00pm** for a Data Streaming meetup hosted by **[Fresha](https://www.fresha.com/)**! 📍**Venue:** **Fresha** The Tower, 207 Old Street London, EC1V 9NR 7th Floor **PLEASE bring your PHOTO ID and REGISTER with your First and Last Name, Email. Thanks!** **DOORS CLOSE AT 7PM FOR SECURITY.** 🗓 **Agenda:** * 6:00pm – 6:30pm: Food/Drinks and Networking * 6:30pm - 7:00pm: Anton Borisov, Principal Data Engineer, Fresha & Nicoleta Lazar, Sr. Data Engineer, Fresha * 7:00pm - 7:30pm: Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent * 7:30pm - 8:00pm: Tom Scott, Founder & CEO, Streambased * 8:00pm - 9:00pm: Q&A Networking 💡**Speaker One:** Anton Borisov, Principal Data Engineer, Fresha & Nicoleta Lazar, Sr. Data Engineer, Fresha **Title of Talk:** Apache Fluss: Streaming Storage for Real-Time Analytics **Abstract:** Apache Flink has largely solved streaming computation, but state management remains a bottleneck. Operator state—often backed by RocksDB—is scoped to individual jobs, making it hard to share state across pipelines without re-emitting it through systems like Apache Kafka. This leads to expensive joins and added operational complexity. Apache Fluss (incubating) addresses this by externalizing state into a streaming storage layer backed by S3. Its PrimaryKey tables act as upsertable key-value stores with replicated changelogs, enabling shared state tables accessible from Flink, Spark, or native clients. With Flink 2.1’s Delta Join, both sides of a join can perform lookups against Fluss-managed indexes—eliminating the need for large join state altogether. In this talk, we’ll introduce Fluss, show key use cases like CDC enrichment and bilateral joins, and share lessons from running it in production on EKS —including the trade-offs and rough edges we encountered. 💡**Speaker Two:** Olena Kutsenko, Staff Developer Advocate, Confluent **Title of Talk:** The journey of a record from Kafka topic to analytics table **Abstract:** Modern data platforms increasingly rely on streaming systems like Apache Kafka as the source of truth—but turning event streams into reliable, queryable analytics tables is far from trivial. This talk explores what really has to happen when moving data from a Kafka topic into an Apache Iceberg table. Beyond simple ingestion, we will walk through the essential steps: schema evolution, data normalization, partitioning, exactly-once guarantees, late-arriving events, and table maintenance. Using Confluent Tableflow as one concrete example, we will examine how these challenges can be addressed in practice. Along the way, we will compare alternative approaches—such as Kafka Connect sinks, stream processing pipelines, and custom ingestion frameworks—to highlight trade-offs in correctness, latency, and operational complexity. The goal is not to promote a single solution, but to provide a mental model for designing robust streaming-to-lakehouse pipelines, helping you understand what matters regardless of the tooling you choose. **Bio:** Olena is a Staff Developer Advocate at Confluent and a recognized expert in data streaming and analytics. With two decades of experience in software engineering, she has built mission-critical applications, led high-performing teams, and driven large-scale technology adoption at industry leaders like Nokia, HERE Technologies, AWS, and Aiven. A passionate advocate for real-time data processing and AI-driven applications, Olena empowers developers and organizations to use the power of streaming data. She is an AWS Community Builder, a dedicated mentor, and a volunteer instructor at a nonprofit tech school, helping to shape the next generation of engineers. As an international speaker and thought leader, Olena regularly presents at top global conferences, sharing deep technical insights and hands-on expertise. Whether through her talks, workshops, or content, she is committed to making complex technologies accessible and inspiring innovation in the developer community. 💡**Speaker Three:** Tom Scott, Founder & CEO, Streambased **Title of Talk:** *Infinite Kafka? Rethinking Retention with Iceberg* **Abstract:** Apache Kafka is designed for high-throughput, low-latency event streaming, not cost-efficient long-term storage. Yet we constantly see cases like event sourcing, audit/compliance, and large-scale reprocessing forcing that pattern onto it. As retention increases, costs grow linearly to support edge cases, one-time runs, and “checkbox” use cases. Can Iceberg help here? In this talk, Tom explores a hybrid architecture that separates hot and cold data while preserving Kafka’s log semantics. Using a combination of Kafka and Apache Iceberg, he demonstrates how to extend Kafka into low-cost object storage, enabling effectively unlimited retention without sacrificing performance or access patterns. The result is a unified log that supports both real-time processing and long-term replay, removing the traditional trade-off between cost and capability in Kafka-based systems. **Bio:** Long-time enthusiast of Kafka and all things data integration, Tom has more than 15 years of experience in innovative and efficient ways to store, query, and move data. Tom is currently CEO at Streambased, a company focused on unifying operational and analytical data estates into a single, consistent, and efficient data layer. \*\*\* If you are interested in hosting/speaking at a meetup, please email community@confluent.io

We're excited to invite you to ***our next Meetup***! Join fellow graph enthusiasts, Neo4j developers, and members of the AI community as we explore how graphs, knowledge graphs, and context engineering can unlock smarter applications and better answers. We look forward to connecting with the community to exchange ideas on graphs, tech, and AI - join the discussion! Session 1: **From Weak Assistants to Super Agents** Sefik Serengil, Senior Software Developer - Neo4j Session 2: **The Latest on Working with Agents** Baptiste Fernandez, DevRel - Tessl A synthesis of data, experiments, and developer feedback on how to build with agents and steer them in practice.

full for bass, piano, lead instruments, vocals, 1 of 2 spots taken for guitar **Please use this link to sign up and pay** https://tickts.co.uk/events/novice-9-11am-may-9-vortex-upstairs (Note you must already be accepted as a member of this group, otherwise your ticket will be cancelled) full list of scheduled sessions: https://www.meetup.com/Practice-Jazz-Jam-Sessions/events/ **What is it** The novice rehearsal sessions provide an opportunity for people who are relatively new to jazz, to play in a friendly, low-pressure environment. With a short set list that attendees can prepare in advance, it becomes a little less daunting to play and get the most out of practising in a group. See below for this week's setlist. Please sign up before attending. Already full for your instrument? Please check back every other Wednesday, when new sessions go live. If you keep not being able to get a spot, please message the organiser (Xie). Location: Vortex upstairs **Who's it for** Anyone who has practised following the forms (chord progressions) of jazz tunes - maybe on their own at home - and would like to build up playing experience, expand repertoire and practice performing with other musicians. There are various introductions on how jazz jams work - see e.g. https://jazznightschool.org/pages/jam-session-basics You don't need to get all these details right for these novice practice sessions. The set list format should offer opportunities for those at different levels of developing their playing. While at the beginning one might struggle to follow/comp the chords or play through the melody, it gets easier over time and one can start to develop approaches to improvisation, harmonise lead lines, add intros/endings, work on communication between band members, and even listen to recordings together and pick up specific arrangements. Bass players are expected to be able to play a walking bass line on swing tunes, and simple bossa lines for bossa novas. Playing the melody, or "head" - the responsibility is shared between horns players (e.g. sax, trumpet, violin), guitar and piano. Feel free to discuss among the group before each song - different parts of the head or the starting / ending heads can be played by different players. Some melodies will better suit several voices at the same time, whereas others are sensitive to variations in how they are played and may prefer a single instrument at a time. **What it's like** A relaxed and welcoming atmosphere - please put aside any worries of making mistakes if you’re thinking of joining us for the first time. To ensure the group is accessible for those at different levels, I ask that each novice session should work on only the below four songs of the set list, unless each and every attendee feels they prefer to move on. Each novice session is limited to up to: 1 drummer, 2 bass, 2 keys, 2 guitar, 3/4 lead instruments. The tickts.co.uk page will have tickets available only for the instruments/vocals with spots remaining. **Tunes this week (Sat May 9)** * Blue bossa in Cm (warm up) (Joe Henderson) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EUxv3AAaK_Y * Sidewinder in Eb (Joshua Redman) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86lBeSUeh1U * There will never be another you in Eb (Modern Jazz Quartet) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DZ00miCbQrs * Don't Get Around Much Anymore in C (Sonny Stitt) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tHa1bXtsP6M Everyone is encouraged to listen to a variety of recordings for each song, but please ensure you are familiar with the recording provided as a primary reference. (Note the recordings provide stylistic reference, but may not be in the key listed, with the latter based on common real books) **Tune preview - next novice session (Sat May 16)** * Bolivar Blues (aka Ba-Lue Bolivar Ba-Lues-Are) in Bb (warm up) (Thelonious Monk) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UU-UjXwFi2Y * How insensitive in Dm (Wes Montgomery) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GAoXA4IoSyE * Caravan in Fm (note: the form is AABA, first chord C7) (Cohen, Zenon) https://youtu.be/6kxD24KE__k?si=tNFOe16zHexe3VTZ&t=104 * Beatrice in F (Sam Rivers) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J2lnek_Z_Zs **Preparing for the session** The chordal form of each song follow the iReal Pro app as a common reference, or you can use sheet music from Real Books. Resource for sheet music: https://www.seventhstring.com/fbindex.html http://therealbook.info/ Try to immerse yourself in the songs by listening to recordings by different artists on youtube, spotify etc. Learn the head (main melody) of the song if you can. Don't hesitate to let the band know you can play it so you can start things off **Playing well together** The rehearsal groups are often quite large for a jazz ensemble setting. Please follow the below arrangements, which are designed to help the group be mindful of each other's volumes, and to build good habits for playing as a group * Every tune should be played at least twice. Swap the bass, piano and guitar players between the two renditions (if there are two attending) * Only one guitarist should comp - i.e. play chords - for each rendition (both guitarists can solo, and comp without amplification) * After each rendition of the warm up tune, the whole group should take a moment together and help each other to check on volumes, including: \*\* Can everyone hear themselves? \*\* Are the drums too loud? \*\* Can everyone hear the bass? \*\* Is the guitar comping too loud? \*\* Is the piano loud enough? (staff at the office can turn this up) \*\* Feel free to revisit volumes after subsequent songs * For any song, if at least two people in the group feel it would be better, the guitar and piano should share the choruses for comping (instead of comping together) - e.g. guitar comps the first time through the head, then piano, then guitar, etc. **Equipment** there is a piano, drum kit (no cymbals or high hat clutch), bass and guitar amps, stands, and microphones. Drummers: please bring cymbals (none available for rental) and hi hat clutch **Percussion** Percussionists are welcome to join with their instruments, alongside the drummer. Feel free to sign up to any session, even one that says "full for all instruments" at the top, unless it explicitly mentions "full for percussion". **Vocalists** Singers are welcome, however please note that the songs have fixed keys, and some of the repertoire are likely not in the right key for your range. If you are an experienced singer, it may be possible to arrange sessions with repertoire catered to you - to explore this, please first come to the "Afternoon Open Jams" so I can get a sense of your singing. **Observing** Would you like to attend a session without playing/singing, to get an idea of the format or to get a sense of what to practise first at home? You can sign up as usual to any novice session, and send me a message that you'd like only to watch the session. When you feel ready, the fee paid can be carried over toward any future session where you join to play or sing at the rehearsal. **Cancellation policy** Please try to make it to any session you sign up to, as the jams are organised around a particular mix of instruments. However, if things do come up and you can no longer make a session, please send a message to the organiser, Xie, as soon as possible. Places are non-refundable if your plans change, but if you provide over 1 week notice it may be possible to carry over the fee for a future session. \-\-\-\-\- any questions do get in touch!

Hello and welcome to our next **GenAI UK x Cloud Native & Open-Source AI** meetup. This event brings together engineers, practitioners, builders, and leaders working across cloud-native platforms, open-source ecosystems, Gen AI, Data and Agentic AI. Our meetups are friendly, welcoming, and community-driven; everyone is welcome, whether you’re experienced or just curious. This session will include practitioner talks, demos, Q&A, and time for networking with like-minded peers. We run bi-monthly in-person meetups in London, bi-monthly online global events, and regional chapters across the UK, North America, and APAC. Food and refreshments will be provided for in-person events where a host venue is supporting. We are delighted to host this event in **London** on the **7th of May** with Netmind AI NetMind XYZ ([https://xyz.netmind.ai/](https://xyz.netmind.ai/)) is NetMind.AI's new agent platform where you can create your agents with just natural language. Agents on NetMind XYZ can now join moltbook. **Speakers and Sessions:** Speaker: Xiangpeng Wan, Product Lead at Netmind.AI Session Title: Enterprise Agentic Application Layer - Leveraging Claude Code Paradigms Description: The March 2026 Claude Code leak exposed the blueprints of enterprise-grade AI agents, revealing advanced paradigms like Multi-Agent Swarms, Context Engineering, and IDE Bridges. While the codebase remains legally untouchable, its architectural concepts are rapidly accelerating open-source infrastructure. This presentation dissects these core mechanics to highlight a critical strategic pivot: stop reinventing frameworks and start building applications. As underlying agent infrastructures become commoditized, the true competitive advantage now lies in integrating domain knowledge and optimizing UX. Join us to learn how to leverage these battle-tested philosophies to dominate the application layer, turning "radioactive code" into actionable product strategies. Speaker: Richárd Kovács, CTO at Harikube Session Title: From Orchestration to Platform: The Missing Puzzles to Unify Polyglot Services on Kubernetes. Description: Imagine a world where Kubernetes itself becomes the unified platform—not just for container orchestration, but for serverless functions, microservices, and the entire API ecosystem. This presentation explores the missing architectural pieces required to make that world a reality. We focus on the architectural puzzles required to unify these layers: serverless functions, specialized Kubernetes Operators, and the powerful Aggregation API layer. By solving these integration puzzles, you can empower development teams to build real Cloud-Native nanoservices, microservices, and REST APIs on the same PaaS, in any language they choose, turning Kubernetes from a simple orchestrator into a powerful, opinionated application platform. **Agenda (GMT /UK ):** * 18:00: Welcome and refreshments * 18:30: Introduction - Ethan Sumner * 18:35: Richárd Kovács * 19:10: Break * 19:20: Frank Contrepois * 19:55: Close and Networking **Get Involved:** We are always keen to hear from: • Speakers — case studies, engineering deep dives, lessons learned, open-source talks • Hosts — organisations able to provide space for future meetups • Sponsors — support with refreshments, marketing, or accessibility If you would like to speak, sponsor, or host a future event, please get in touch with **[Ethan Sumner](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethansumner404/)**[ ](https://www.linkedin.com/in/ethansumner404/)via LinkedIn. You can find our YouTube Channel **[here](https://www.youtube.com/@CommunityStackHQ)[.](https://www.youtube.com/@CommunityStackHQ)** This community forms part of the **[Community Stack ecosystem](https://www.meetup.com/pro/generative-ai-uk-community/)**[ ](https://www.meetup.com/pro/generative-ai-uk-community/)and follows the Community Stack Code of Conduct to ensure a respectful, inclusive, and welcoming environment for all attendees.

2nd Sunday of every month, join us for a relaxed and fun language exchange, where meaningful conversations flow as freely as delicious coffee and tea! This isn't just practice; it's **accelerated progress** in a supportive setting, designed to quickly boost your **Mandarin, Cantonese and English** skills. **How We Make It Effective & Enjoyable:** * **Perfect Groupings:** We carefully match you with native speakers and learners at a similar level, ensuring comfortable and productive conversation practice. * **Forget awkward silences!** We provide fun, engaging discussion topics to spark lively chats and keep the conversation flowing. * **Maximise Your Practice:** Rotate between groups if you wish to connect with more people and strengthen your conversation skills! * **Expert Support:** Our experienced tutor is always on hand to help. 👌 **All levels welcome!** Native speakers and learners alike. 💛 Please support the cafe by buying a drink or snack while you are here - they've kindly let us use the space. We can't wait to welcome you! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **Take your Mandarin beyond the exchange.** 🤝 If you’re looking for a bit more structure to go along with your conversation practice, let’s chat! We're offering **complimentary 1-on-1 advice sessions** to help you find the perfect learning path. Get a professional assessment of your level so you can study with confidence. **No commitment** required. [Book your Free Session](https://eu.bigin.online/org20070515371/bookings/course-advice) \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **China Unbound** is the best place to learn practical Chinese for adults. While most schools prioritise grammar and writing, China Unbound empowers you to confidently communicate in Chinese in real-world situations. Join us and discover a fun, fast, and personalised way to master Chinese! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- **🤘 FAQs:** **I'm learning Chinese, are the sessions suitable for beginners?** Yes! Come and speak as much or as little as you like, or just come and listen! There is no pressure! **Are there any discounts for Chinese lessons for members?** Yes, you can use code MEETUP10 for your exclusive £10 discount on our [Chinese courses](https://china-unbound.co.uk/personal/) site-wide! \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- 每个月的第二个星期天，来加入我们，享受一场轻松又有趣的语言交流体验！在茶香与咖啡的陪伴下，开启一场自然流畅、充满收获的双语对话。 这不仅仅是练习，而是一种更快提升你英语水平的高效方式。我们为你打造一个轻松友好、真正有用的语言环境，让你的口语交流能力飞速进步！ **我们如何让语言交换高效又好玩：** * **精准匹配，聊天不尴尬**：我们用心将你和母语者或相近水平的学习者配对，确保每一次对话都轻松自在又高效实用。 * **话题有趣，轻松破冰**：拒绝冷场！我们提前准备了有趣又实用的聊天话题，让你一开口就停不下来，交流自然顺畅。 * **灵活轮换，提升更全面**：想多练一点？欢迎自由选择是否换组，认识更多人、接触不同语言风格，快速提升真实沟通能力。 * **专业老师现场支持**：我们的资深语言导师会在现场提供实时帮助，确保你在交流中不断进步、有信心开口！ **活动详情：** 🗓️ **时间**：每月第二个星期日 ⏰ **时段**：下午 2:30 - 4:30 💰 **费用**：免费参加 不只是练语言，这里还有文化的碰撞、朋友的陪伴和成长的喜悦。现在就来加入我们，开启你的高效交流之旅吧！ **🤘 常见问题解答：** **我最后会不会一直说中文而一无所获？** -不会，因为我们的“快速聊天”模式鼓励大家用中/英文交换来交流。 **会员有折扣吗？** 有，欢迎你跟你学中文的朋友分享代码**Meetup10**，他们会获得10镑的独家折扣！

Get ready for an another awesome night at the London Tech Social! It’s the perfect spot to chill with designers and engineers and make new friends. Whether you’re a tech wizard or just curious, you’ll fit right in. This is your chance to meet cool people and maybe even kick off some exciting projects together🚀 Mark your calendar for a night filled with fun and new connections📅 We look forward to seeing you there!

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

💌 **Online Speed Dating for Cleveland Singles — Real Connections, Long-Term Thinking** This is for singles who are done with apps that go nowhere. Done with casual. Ready for a genuine conversation with someone who might actually matter. Live on Zoom. Personality matched. Built for people who want something that lasts. **Choose your age group to register:** - Ages 18-32: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Cleveland&groupurlname=find-your-future-partner-through-nature&ar=18-32&face_v=1.0) - Ages 30-46: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Cleveland&groupurlname=find-your-future-partner-through-nature&ar=30-46&face_v=1.0) - Ages 40-58: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Cleveland&groupurlname=find-your-future-partner-through-nature&ar=40-58&face_v=1.0) - Ages 55+: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Cleveland&groupurlname=find-your-future-partner-through-nature&ar=55+&face_v=1.0) 🌿 RSVP here alone does not hold your place. Complete your registration through the link above and finish the short personality quiz. --- **How it works:** 1. Register via your age group link and complete the personality quiz. 2. Join Zoom at the event time — works on any device, no downloads needed. 3. Meet Cleveland singles in short one-on-one rounds matched by age and personality. 4. Mutual matches are shared after — take it forward at your own pace. 🤍 Spots are kept small to keep things personal. If you are serious about finding the right person, this is where it starts.

Practical AI for Power BI Developers A year ago, “agentic AI” was mostly hype for Power BI teams. Today, it deserves your undivided attention. For Power BI pros, there is now a real opportunity to reduce repetitive development work, accelerate delivery, and help developers do more, but only when strong DataOps practices are in place to make AI workflows effective. This session is a no-nonsense introduction to effective AI patterns for Power BI and Fabric development. Along the way, we will make sense of the growing pile of terminology, including skills, plugins, hooks, and MCP. You will see examples of how modern AI tooling can help with development tasks across Power BI and Fabric, along with the prerequisites, guardrails, and DataOps principles needed to use it responsibly. Whether you're burned out on AI hype or already using Copilot CLI daily, this session will show you the foundations that are finally making AI-assisted development genuinely useful.

💌 **Online Speed Dating for Detroit Singles — Real Connections, Long-Term Thinking** This is for singles who are done with apps that go nowhere. Done with casual. Ready for a genuine conversation with someone who might actually matter. Live on Zoom. Personality matched. Built for people who want something that lasts. **Choose your age group to register:** - Ages 18-32: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Detroit&groupurlname=foster-meaningful-relationships-through-outdoor-exploration&ar=18-32&face_v=2.0) - Ages 30-46: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Detroit&groupurlname=foster-meaningful-relationships-through-outdoor-exploration&ar=30-46&face_v=2.0) - Ages 40-58: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Detroit&groupurlname=foster-meaningful-relationships-through-outdoor-exploration&ar=40-58&face_v=2.0) - Ages 55+: [Register Here](https://tempodating.com/product?productId=476.0&productType=onlineSpeedDating&city=Detroit&groupurlname=foster-meaningful-relationships-through-outdoor-exploration&ar=55+&face_v=2.0) 🌿 RSVP here alone does not hold your place. Complete your registration through the link above and finish the short personality quiz. --- **How it works:** 1. Register via your age group link and complete the personality quiz. 2. Join Zoom at the event time — works on any device, no downloads needed. 3. Meet Detroit singles in short one-on-one rounds matched by age and personality. 4. Mutual matches are shared after — take it forward at your own pace. 🤍 Spots are kept small to keep things personal. If you are serious about finding the right person, this is where it starts.

**Improving Office in Franklinton** Physical location: Improving Office 330 Rush Alley Suite #150 Columbus, OH 43215 Schedule: 6:00 p.m.: Socialize, eat, and drink. Improving will be providing pizza and beverages. 6:30 to 8:00 pm. Main meeting and presentation(s). Topic: This month John Lairson will share a notebook describing the Alpaca (Paper) Trading API and discuss different algorithms for evaluating stock trades. We meet on the last Monday of each Month. Presentations are given by members and friends of this group. If you would like to do a presentation (small or large) on a python topic, please contact Central OH Python at centralohpython@gmail.com

**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