Product Launch

Join us for a conversation with Shailendra Kumar, Product Lead at WhatsApp, as he explores how product leaders navigate decision-making in an AI-native era. Shailendra will share how teams evaluate when AI adds real value, and how thoughtful product judgment shapes scalable, trustworthy products. As AI becomes embedded in everyday products, product leaders face new challenges around reliability, complexity, and user trust. Drawing on his experience building global-scale products, Shailendra Kumar will share practical frameworks for deciding when to use AI, designing systems that scale responsibly, and shipping features that users can rely on. **Event Overview** AI introduces new opportunities and new risks for product teams. In this session, Shailendra Kumar explores how leaders decide when AI is the right solution, design systems that scale responsibly, and ship features without eroding user trust. **01 - Deciding When AI Helps and When It Hurts** Learn how experienced product leaders evaluate whether AI meaningfully improves a product experience, and how to avoid unnecessary complexity that can damage usability or trust. **02 - Designing AI Systems That Scale Responsibly** Discover frameworks for building AI-powered products that handle uncertainty, fail gracefully, and remain reliable as usage and expectations grow. **03 - Shipping AI Without Breaking Trust** Explore how transparency, governance, and accountability can be embedded into product development so teams can innovate quickly while protecting users. **Speakers** **Shailendra Kumar - Product Lead, WhatsApp** Shailendra Kumar is a Product Lead at WhatsApp, where he drives product strategy and execution for features that connect people around the world. With experience in building user-centric products at scale, he focuses on simplifying communication through thoughtful design and data-informed decision-making.

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

**Welcome to DSF Sandbox Sessions!** Top tech talks and masterclasses from the best in the industry. Every month, and completely free. The catch? There isn’t one. Just a monthly dose of epic content to power up your data passion! **Event details** 📆 **Date:** Tuesday 14th April 2026 ⏰ **Time:** 6:00 – 9:30 PM BST 💡 **Topic:** **Signals, Systems, and Scams: Deconstructing the Future of Financial Intelligence** 🗣️ **Speakers:** Kristjan Erik Liive, Volodymyr Panov, Baran Koseoglu, Zoltan Szopory, Vera Shishkina, Aaron Wilson, Mohammed Topiwalla [Sign up for this event by clicking here!](https://datasciencefestival.com/session/wise-sandbox-session/) As global financial platforms evolve, the “Trust Gap” becomes an engineering challenge. Scaling a product to millions of users requires more than just better models—it requires a fundamental shift from manual heuristics to automated, high-fidelity intelligence. Join Wise for an exclusive Sandbox Session designed for senior data scientists and engineers. We’re moving beyond the basics of model training to explore the “Last Mile” of production ML: the infrastructure of compliance, the democratisation of optimization, and the transition to foundational representation learning. Through three practitioner-led deep dives and a collaborative product-data science panel, we will deconstruct how Wise builds resilient financial infrastructure where performance and safety are never a zero-sum game. What we’ll explore: • The GenAI Reality Check: Moving LLM automations from “cool demo” to “compliant production” in highly regulated spaces. • Decoupling Optimization: How we built “Threshold UI” to empower non-experts to tune model performance across hundreds of cohorts without a single code change. • Beyond Velocity: Replacing hand-crafted features with User Event Transformers to capture the deep behavioral context that traditional tabular data misses. • The Co-Design Philosophy: Why the future of fraud prevention isn’t just a better algorithm, but a tighter feedback loop between Product and Data Science. Food, drinks, and networking with fellow practitioners will follow throughout the evening. Check out the full session details below! **Please note: Due to high demand and limited capacity, tickets for this event will be allocated via a random ballot. Submitting an application does not guarantee entry. Successful applicants will be notified throughout March and early April. If you have not received confirmation by April 9th, this means your ballot application was not selected on this occasion.** **Talk 1: Evolution of GenAI: Building Compliant LLM Automations at Wise** **Speakers:** Kristjan Erik Liive, Senior Data Scientist & Volodymyr Panov, Senior Data Scientist. **Abstract:** Evolution of GenAI applications in servicing tasks at Wise. We will share examples, discuss architectures and challenges of building LLM-based automations in compliance-heavy space. We will also present our vision and key opportunity areas in further augmentation and automation. **Key takeaways:** Practical examples of scoping and implementing LLM-based solutions. **Talk 2: On the Threshold of Greatness: Democratizing Model Optimization at Wise** **Speakers:** Baran Köseoğlu, Lead Data Scientist & Zoltán Szopory, Staff Software Engineer. **Abstract:** This session will talk about machine learning model threshold optimization across hundreds of customer cohorts. Traditionally, optimizing these thresholds has been a complex, time-consuming task, often relegated to highly technical experts. At Wise, we faced the challenge of managing diverse customer segments, each with unique risk profiles and compliance mandates and as a solution we developed Threshold UI we will talk about more in the session. **Key takeaways:** Boost your machine learning model performance without changing any configuration in your training pipeline. **Talk 3: More Than Meets the Eye: Transforming User Events into Deep Context** **Speaker:** Vera Shishkina, Staff Data Scientist. **Abstract:** Moving from purely manual feature engineering to representation learning. This session covers the technical POC of a User Events Transformer – a foundational model designed to produce customer embeddings that augment traditional tabular features. We will discuss the proposed architecture, the challenges of building temporal data pipelines, and our vision for using these embeddings to boost performance in domains like scam prediction. **Key takeaways:** How learned embeddings provide deep context that traditional “velocity” features often miss. **Talk 4: Panel Discussion – Mind & Machine: How Product and DS Co-Design the Future of Trust** **Panellists:** Aaron Wilson, Fraud and Victim Prevention Product Lead & Mohammed Topiwalla, Fraud and Victim Prevention Data Science Lead. **Abstract:** Fireside chat to understand how DS and Product work hand in hand to keep wise safe. **Key takeaways:** How do you find the middle ground between business growth and risk precision? What is the future of DS in fraud prevention? **Schedule:** **6:00 PM** – Doors open – networking with food and refreshments **6:45 PM** – Intro **6:50 PM** – Talk 1 (20 minutes + 5 minute Q&A) **7:15 PM** – Talk 2 (20 minutes + 5 minute Q&A) **7:40 PM** – Comfort break **7:50 PM** – Talk 3 (20 minutes + 5 minute Q&A) **8:15 PM** – Talk 4 (30 minutes) **8:45 PM** – Networking with refreshments **9:30 PM** – Event close **Registering for the event:** Click the 'Sign up here!' button on the specific event page following the link below. Once you have completed the registration form, you will be emailed a link to join the webinar. You will also receive a reminder link one week, one day and one hour prior to the event. **PLEASE NOTE: Clicking 'attend' on Meetup does not register you for the event. You will need to register for the event on the link provided below to receive a joining link. If you do not, you will not be able to join the event.** **[Click here to sign up for this specific event](https://datasciencefestival.com/session/wise-sandbox-session/)** Please note the time zone when you book this event.

PLEASE NOTE YOU MUST book and pay for your ticket in advance at http://www.londonbuiltenvironment.com/ The London Built Environment committee would like to extend you an invitation to our April 2026 Mayfair Networking Reception to be held at the famous Davys at St.James - and hope you can join us for after-work drinks, their canapés and productive business networking to make new contacts and deals for 2026. We now have over 20,000 diverse and relevant London members so it’s the perfect opportunity for making new business connections. See photos from our latest events at http://www.londonbuiltenvironment.com/ PLEASE NOTE YOU MUST book and pay for your ticket in advance at http://www.londonbuiltenvironment.com/ 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 70-100 guests).

***WARNING*** *If you are new to our Meet Up or haven't attended any class for months, please, BEFORE signing up to a conversation class, send an email in French to Christian at frenchlondonexperience at gmail dot com ; Anyone -* aforementioned - *signing up to a class before getting an agreement will be removed from the list. Thanks for your cooperation.* You want to improve your fluency, your pronunciation and your French skills? You want to get more vocabulary, knowledge and understanding of French, the French and France? You want to speak on various topics with the support of a French native tutor? Each week, we come up to a different theme. It pushes your conversation skills up. It helps you to speak about many topics and to interact in French in multiple contexts. Regular attendees learn a lot, make improvements and are able to have a chat about numerous topic! The bonus, you will be able to ask questions to an authentic French native! **THE CLASS:** This is a face-to-face conversation class lasting 60 minutes run by a French native & professional tutor (in London since 2016). This is a Conversation Class dedicated to French learners who struggle to have a spontaneous conversation. If you think your French is rusty, if you feel not really comfortable to interact among a group of other French speakers, this class is for you (if not sure, send a message in French to the organiser). The class goes on an adapted pace with a first part dedicated to a chit-chat and then we'll focus on a short text to learn about French culture and the language. We approach the theme, read a short text (you get a copy for the session), speak, learn vocabulary and things about French culture. The theme is always linked to French, the French and France. At the end, we wrap up and keep a few minutes for some miscellaneous questions. After the class, you will get an email with a list of vocabulary (some words / expressions seen along the class). This is a very small group class: maximum of 4 attendees and a minimum of 2. So you will speak directly to the tutor. During the class, the tutor helps you to structure and improve your phrasing, and to develop your understanding. **IMPORTANT** If you are new to our Meet Up, please send ASAP an email at frenchlondonexperience at gmail dot com to introduce yourself, to check your level, to confirm your space and to get the Bank details for payment. **PRICING:** You can pay each time or by block (then you save money) \- £15 per session \(to be paid when signing up by bank transfer \- Bank details on request\) \- £60 for 6 sessions \(to be used within 3 months \- to be paid in advance by bank transfer \- Bank details on request\) People who sign up without paying will be removed from the list. If, after your first attendance, you decide to subscribe to the offer of £60 for 6 classes, you add £45 and then you incorporate your first class in the subscription. The pricing is made to encourage you to attend more regularly as improvements will come with regularity. **TERMS & CONDITIONS** If you are to join, you are more than welcome to sign up. But, please, if you have an unforeseen hitch, up date your status as soon as possible. As spaces are limited, if you don't turn up or if you cancel at the last minute, a space is wasted. Thanks for helping. \- Fees are payable at the booking \- No refund \(exchange for cancellation more than 12 hours before the start of the event\) \- No refund\, no exchange for late cancellation \(less than 12 hours\) or non\-attendance \- People who don't turn may be banned\. If the session is fully booked, please put your name on the waiting list but ONLY if you are sure to be able to attend the session. As soon a space becomes available, even at the very last minute, you will be on the attendance list. Then you will be expected to attend the session and it will be due, even if you don't actually attend. Thanks for your cooperation and thanks for understanding. Follow French London Experience [http://www.facebook.com/frenchlondonexperience/](http://www.facebook.com/frenchlondonexperience/) [https://www.instagram.com/frenchlondonexperience/](https://www.instagram.com/frenchlondonexperience/) [https://twitter.com/FLE_Christian](https://twitter.com/FLE_Christian) https://www.youtube.com/channel/UC0ZB8-AhXTeqNF9MwEySmeg Website: [www.french](http://www.frenchlondonexperience.com/)

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

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

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

**AI is changing product management faster than most teams can adapt. Join us for an evening exploring what this means for your role, your skills, and your future.** **Are you ready for what AI is doing to product management?** Artificial intelligence is no longer a future trend. It is already reshaping how products are designed, built, and managed. From generating requirements to analysing data and automating workflows, AI is changing the day-to-day work of product managers. The real question is no longer *if* things will change, but *how your role will evolve*. **What this session will explore** In this keynote, we will go beyond the hype and look at what is actually happening in the industry right now: * What AI can already do in product management * Where its limitations still lie * How the role of the Product Manager is shifting * Why judgement, strategy, and leadership are becoming more critical * The emerging split between administrative and strategic product roles * The skills you need to stay relevant in an AI-driven world This is not a theoretical discussion. It is a practical look at what product professionals need to understand and act on today. **About the Speaker** **Louise May** Director of Product Management, Product Focus Louise brings over 20 years of experience across start-ups, scale-ups, and multinational organisations. She has led product teams, coached professionals, and built development programmes that support product managers throughout their careers. She is known for her practical insights, clarity of thought, and ability to connect theory with real-world application. **About Product Playground** Product Playground is a community for product professionals who want to think more deeply, share experiences, and learn through meaningful conversations. This is not just another meetup. It is a space to: * explore ideas * challenge assumptions * connect with like-minded professionals **Who should attend** * Product Managers (all levels) * Product Leaders and Heads of Product * Aspiring Product Managers * Consultants and practitioners working with product teams **Why you should attend** You will leave with: * A clearer understanding of how AI is changing your role * Insight into what skills will matter most going forward * Perspectives you can immediately apply in your work * Connections with other product professionals in London **Important Note** This is an in-person event with limited capacity to encourage meaningful interaction. 👉 **Reserve your place early to avoid disappointment**

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

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

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

We playtest all sorts of games - strategic, silly, creative, or whatever. Some games are almost done. Some are very early ideas. We test anything that will fit into 90 minutes. You don't need to bring a game - we always love to have new playtesters! Please let us know in the comments when you plan to arrive/leave and whether you are bringing a game or not. This helps us to plan the day better. The schedule is: 10am onwards - gathering, chatting 11am sharp - playing for 90 min ('slot 1') 12:30ish - break for food/chat 1pm sharp - playing for 90 min ('slot 2') 2:30ish - break for food/chat 3pm sharp - playing for 90 min ('slot 3') 4:30ish - finish up Often, we might hang around afterwards, to play some already-published games. We are strict on timings, so please try to arrive a few minutes before the session to limit disruption. You can just come for part of the day if you wish. The reason we have fixed timings for the 3 'slots' is to make it easier for folk to do so. Designers of all levels of experience are welcome! But if it's your first time, we ask that you don't bring a game and just spend some time learning how the group works. The group works based on reciprocation. If you expect to test your own game, make sure stay for long enough to play other games. As a general rule of thumb, you can expect to play one of your own games every third 90-minute session. So if you stay a whole day (3 sessions), you can expect to have one session to play your game(s). A good rule of thumb is that if you come all day, you will have one 90 minute session with two other playtesters in which to test your own games. It is sometimes possible to test games with more players. If your game requires 4 or more, please note that as standard you will be allocated half of a session (45 minutes). Pre-covid, we were getting unmanageable. As a result, we may have to limit attendees. This is a free-to-use venue, and we have to be mindful that other folk want to use the same space. Please note: This is an adults only event. We look forward to seeing you!

Welcome to our April event. We're delighted to welcome [Alex Le Peltier](https://www.linkedin.com/in/alex-le-peltier/), Chief Technology Officer, Signapse and [Daniel Jones](https://www.linkedin.com/in/danieljoneseb/), Head of Product, re:cinq. **Alex** answers - “what if AI could sign for the entire world - in real time?” From Heathrow flight announcements to Netflix live streams, find out how Signapse is making accessibility possible at scale on AWS. **Daniel** answers - “how do you turn 100 developers AI-native in just a few weeks?” Daniel reveals the psychology, strategy, and surprising human side behind one of the most ambitious agentic coding rollouts in enterprise tech. A big thank you to our sponsors [The Scale Factory](https://rebrand.ly/scalefactory) and [Cloudscaler](https://rebrand.ly/cloudscaler)! **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:** ***Real-Time Sign Language in the Cloud: Building Accessibility Infrastructure on AWS with Alex Le Peltier*** Accessibility is too often an afterthought - bolted on at the end, limited by budget, or simply impossible without a human interpreter in the room. Signapse is changing that. In this talk, Alex Le Peltier, CTO of Signapse, will show how a proprietary GenAI model hosted entirely on AWS is delivering real-time AI sign language at mass-market scale - from live flight announcements at Heathrow to Netflix live streams. By combining AWS infrastructure with custom and public LLMs, Signapse has built a platform that fills the critical gap where interpreters can't be present, freeing up scarce interpreter resources for where they matter most. **Alex** is a serial startup-er and tech leader with over 13 years of experience in both the public and private sectors. He’s passionate about understanding what challenges are faced by the deaf community and building innovative solutions that make a difference in people's lives. **Talk 2:** ***Agentic Coding For 100 Developers with Daniel Jones.*** How has a $3b Stockholm SaaS company transitioned 100 developers to AI-native development over a few weeks? Daniel shares how he helped Odevo with exactly this, but the answer might be more than you expect - it involves just as much discovery and psychology as it does training. Learn about the social and business prerequisites for such a transformation, the syllabus that enables developers to use multi-agent workflows, and how 'one-and-done' training is insufficient for this type of behavioural change. **Daniel** is Head of Product at re:cinq, an AI-native transformation consultancy, and a CTO Craft 100 member. He founded cloud consultancy EngineerBetter, spent six years helping banks, government and defence organisations deliver software faster, then scaled and sold the business. Now he focuses on agentic coding, AI-native engineering, and software factories - with a practical, engineer-first perspective: fix your path to production before you let agents anywhere near it. **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/)

Columbus Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. People of all skill levels attend, and we love it that way. Many people (optionally) bring projects to work on, and many other people (optionally) socialize the entire time. It's entirely up to you! **What to Expect at the Intro Circle** \~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ Near the beginning of the event (1:30 pm), we do a standup: * Organizer announcements, updates, and logistics Round 1 - (7 secs max): * Your name * What you're working on * What you can help others with Round 2: * Community events you wanna plug. If none, that's cool too. Round 3: * Job opportunities you're hiring for OR announce that you are looking for one. If none, that's cool. After the introduction circle, everything is self-organized! Feel free to work alone, pair up, attend one of our workshops/presentations, or mingle!

AI is changing how art is made. But when does it stop being your work and start being the machine’s? This month we're going to be doing a panel with with digital image, music, and written word artists, talking about at what point, while using AI in the creation process, does the work become not the artist creation? We encourage audience participation during this event that will be moderated by Chris Slee. Whether you’re deep in the field or just getting curious, come connect with others building and exploring AI in Columbus. Sponsored by [Transform Labs](https://www.transformlabs.com/services) Sign up also accessible via [Transform Labs Luma](https://luma.com/55umjqta)

Join us for lunch at Cooper’s Hawk in Easton. If the weather is nice, we’ll enjoy lunch on their gorgeous patio!

NFT's are here to stay folks! This is a group for like minded people interested in understanding, leveraging, using, creating for, profiting from, trading too i suppose, NFT's.. everything around them, complexity, fear and exploits, best practices and more. **PLUS** This group will talk AI ART tools, techniques, artists, video, audio, prototypes and more in the AI assisted production space- ART specifically, but we can get into any aspect of some of the cooler things happening in AI in general.

⚠️ **IMPORTANT: You must sign up and buy a ticket here to attend:** [https://groupvibe.com/](https://groupvibe.com/) **Join the Columbus City Brunch Club and make new friends!** Each meetup brings together 4–6 people for casual conversations over brunch. We use the Groupvibe platform to facilitate the meetup and ensure everyone’s a good fit. 👉 **To attend, you’ll need to complete registration via this link:** [https://groupvibe.com/](https://groupvibe.com/) We’ll share the exact location of the upcoming meetup the night before only if you have bought a ticket or membership plan. **Why this works:** \* Smaller groups make real conversations easier. \* Discover new restaurants in your city, together. \* Curated lunch venues with good food and vibe. \* If you hit it off with your group, there’s plenty of time to hang out afterwards. **Note:** RSVPs on Meetup don’t reflect total attendance. Many attendees register directly via our website. The event on [Meetup.com](http://meetup.com/) is only a placeholder. This meetup is organized by Groupvibe, a small team passionate about helping people form meaningful friendships offline.

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

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