OWASP

Highlights and Hidden Gems in SQL Server 2025 With so much emphasis on cloud data platforms and AI these days, SQL people can feel left behind by all the marketing hype. SQL Server 2025 was officially released in November of 2025, though, and contains a ton of improvements that will make our SQL Server deployments a bit faster, better, and more secure. There are even more improvements tucked into the release that never made a marketing blog or press release that you'll likely be learning about for the first time in this session! Join this session to learn about what makes your high availability a little more available, your performance a bit more performant, and your database more developer and app-friendly. Come spend an hour with SQL people talking SQL Server 2025 – the good, the "not quite ready for prime time", and the hidden awesomeness.

Bring your Raspberry Pi, Arduino, microcontroller, or any other electronic project and join fellow electronics makers for a night of creativity and collaboration! This session is open forum to share your current projects—whether complete or in progress, it’s all interesting! Whether you’re deep into embedded systems, exploring new ideas, or just getting started, you’ll find a welcoming space to collaborate, share, and get inspired. **New to electronics or curious about tinkering?** You’re absolutely welcome. If you’re a beginner and want to experiment, I’ll have a couple of starter kits available so you can try things out—whether that’s blinking your first LED, putting something on a display, or experimenting with simple sensors. No pressure and no experience required—just an interest in learning and building. While we continue to pursue a more permanent venue for this Meetup, we’ll be using public library facilities based on availability.

Our monthly PHP meetup. A virtual shindig courtesy of Zoom. Check back here for the details around 6:15 pm

**AI in Application Security Panel Discussion** (note - this will replace the June meeting) Join the OWASP St. Louis Chapter on July 7th for an open panel discussion on how AI is reshaping application security. From AI-assisted code review and automated vulnerability discovery to the new attack surfaces introduced by LLMs and AI agents, this is a conversation that touches everyone in the industry—whether you're a developer, security practitioner, or just trying to keep up with the pace of change. Our panelists will explore the practical and the provocative: Where does AI genuinely help defenders? Where does it create new risk? How are real teams adopting these tools, and what's hype versus reality? This session is built around *your* participation. Come with your questions, your war stories, and your ideas. The best part of these discussions is what the room brings, so don't be shy—bring your curiosity and let's dig in together. **What to Expect** * Introductions and Updates on chapter events and engagement ideas * Panel Discussion (\* OWASP does not endorse or recommend commercial products or services, allowing our community to remain vendor neutral with the collective wisdom of the best minds in software security) **Event Details** 📍 **Location:** RubinBrown, 7676 Forsyth Blvd., Suite 2100, Saint Louis, MO 63105 🗓 **Date/Time:** July 7th, 2026 / 6:00pm CST **Who Should Attend** * Software engineers and developers * Application & security professionals * IT leaders and managers * Anyone with an interest in application security topics **About OWASP** The Open Worldwide Application Security Project (OWASP) is a nonprofit foundation dedicated to improving the security of software. Local chapters provide opportunities to learn, network, and collaborate with others in the field. Come to learn more and participate in OWASP Saint Louis - your voice will continue to help shape what OWASP Saint Louis becomes next.

We have moved to guild.host. Look us up there. https://guild.host/events/buckeye-cocoaheads-rcavwd

Challenges coming soon!

Most people use LLMs by feel: ask a question, read the answer, decide whether it “seems good,” and move on. That works for casual use. It does not work when you are building software, automating workflows, writing important documents, or relying on AI for anything that needs to be repeatable. In this talk, we’ll look at how to improve and evaluate the inputs and outputs of LLMs using practical measurement techniques. We’ll cover how prompt changes affect results, how to compare outputs, how to build simple evaluation sets, and how math-based methods like similarity scoring can help you move beyond guesswork. This will be beginner-friendly, so even if you don't know anything about AI, you should get something out of it. However, this will be a little more technical than our intro talks. You do not need to be an AI researcher, but programmers and technically curious attendees will get a lot out of it. We’ll cover: * Why “it looks good” is not enough * How to improve prompts by changing the input, context, and constraints * How to compare LLM outputs more systematically * Basic evaluation techniques for accuracy, consistency, and usefulness * How embeddings, cosine similarity, and scoring can help evaluate results * Where automated evaluation works — and where humans still need to stay in the loop By the end, you’ll have a practical mental model for treating LLMs less like magic and more like systems you can test, measure, and improve. LOGISTICS AND PARKING: The talk starts at 7:00 PM. The first half hour is reserved for everyone to get set up and mingle. Free pizza and drinks! The cheapest parking option is to find street parking, which will only cost you a few bucks. Otherwise, park in the nearby veteran's museum lot for $8. It's highly recommended you avoid the nearby $15 garage parking.