Strategic Sourcing

Meet us for talks with EBCONT on January 20, 2026! Doors open at 18.00, first talk starts at 18.20. We wrap up at 20.30. Please make sure you sign up with your full name. 📅**Date and Time:** Tuesday, January 20, from 6:00-8:30 PM 📍**Location:** [Beyond Office, Heidestrasse 34, 10557 Berlin](https://maps.app.goo.gl/QJTtLBsyWdBXo9iA6) We will need your full name to allow your entrance at the building. 📝 **Agenda:** * **18:00 - Doors Open** * **18:20 - Talk #1** **\- Elastic Agent: Ingesting log files\, how hard can it be?** **[Denis Rechkunov](https://www.linkedin.com/in/rdner/)**, Principal Software Engineer at Elastic **Abstract:** Logs are the foundation of any observability solution, but to make them useful, they need to be ingested into a search index. One of the features provided by our Elastic Agent offering is to ingest log files into Elasticsearch so our customers can quickly navigate events in their systems. Reading files and sending data to Elasticsearch sounds simple, right? Not quite. In this talk we're going to dive deep into challenges associated with reading log files and sending them to Elasticsearch. * **18:50 - Talk #2 Flexible Chatbots with Elasticsearch - Integrating Elasticsearch, Confluence, and LLMs** **[Christoph Eder](https://www.linkedin.com/in/christoph-eder-0ab776194/)**, Senior IT Consultant at **[EBCONT](https://www.ebcont.com/en)** **Abstract:** In this talk, we'll show how we developed a flexible enterprise search solution using Elasticsearch — one that not only works in the cloud and with LLMs, but can also run on-premises and be easily combined with different LLMs. * **19:20 - Pizza, drinks and networking** * **20:30 - Wrap up** Invite your friends and join our meetup. Special thanks to our partner **[EBCONT](https://www.ebcont.com/en).** Want to speak at our next meetup? Submit your talk on **[this link](https://sessionize.com/elastic-meetups/)** and we will get in touch with you as soon as possible.

### ***This is a closed course that can only be booked and attended as a whole.*** ***So it’s best to join one of the other sMove! trainings beforehand – either on Thursdays in the park or online on Saturdays: [www.baerbelsinger.de/smove ](www.baerbelsinger.de/smove)*** \-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\-\- ### Sensing and Expanding 🌿 sMove! invites you to expand your sensations and ways of expression through the body. The movements are simple and playful – yet they go deep: by moving with awareness, you discover qualities within yourself that are often covered by habit or tension. ### The Body as a Container 🌀 The body is more than muscles and bones – it is a container of memories, energy, and possibilities. In sMove! training, we explore this potential through rhythm, new movements, and focused attention. Each movement becomes an opportunity to sense more clearly, to shift old patterns, and to unfold new qualities – vitality, calm, presence, joy. ### Clarity through Intention 🎯 What makes sMove! special is not performance or perfection, but the direct experience of your body paired with intention, precision, and letting go. When you allow your body to guide you, space opens: your mind becomes quieter, energy can flow, aliveness grows. sMove! strengthens you inside and out – with more flexibility, strength, and ease. ### Experiencing Community 🤝 In the group, connection arises. Everyone moves in their own way – and yet we resonate with the shared rhythm. This collective presence builds trust in your own strength, encourages curiosity, and makes it easier to try something new. ### Who is sMove! for? 🌍 sMove! is open to everyone – previous experience is recommended (feel free to ask). 15 sessions * **November 2025**: 11., 18. * **Dezember 2025**: 9., 16. * **Januar 2026**: 20., 27. * **Februar 2026**: 3., 10., 17., 24. * **März 2026**: 24., 31. * **April 2026**: 7., 14., 28. 💶 Fee Early Bird: 280€ Full package: **320 €**

This time, we explore **how the growth of AI is shaping a new SDLC and which evolution strategy to choose for your team**. We will focus on which metrics truly help manage delivery, and which ones only create an illusion of progress and AI adoption. Hands-on practice in small groups and a live battle of different views and approaches — everything that you love in EM Katas. ❗❗❗ **Register here** ➡️ https://luma.com/aug0ujkl ⬅️ ❗❗❗ **❓ What is an EM Kata?** EM Kata is a playground where Engineering Managers\* can practice their skills and receive immediate feedback. **\* - 👨‍🔬 / 👩‍🔬EM Kata is also beneficial for** * **Senior Leaders:** Head of Engineering, Engineering Directors, VPs, CTOs - to practice and enhance mentoring and coaching skills. * **Tech/Team Leads:** To acquire essential skills for a successful transition to an EM role. * **Senior Software Engineers:** To gain insight into EM responsibilities and explore if a leadership career path interests them. * **Agile Coaches:** To better understand the challenges faced by EMs and the skills they require, enabling better support for them at work. Each small group works on identifying the root causes of the challenges by analysing them from different perspectives, determining the most efficient strategy to solve them, developing a detailed plan, and necessary team constellation changes & architecture. **🕑 Event Schedule** 18:00 – Doors open for snacks, drinks, and networking 18:30 – Introduction 18:50 – EM Kata: working and forecasting in small groups 20:00 – Senior Leadership round: challenging assumptions, shaping the future From 21:00 to 21:30 — Networking and discussions. **📍 Venue** **Contentful** Max-Urich-Straße 3, 13355 Berlin **📣 Spread the Word** **Love our meetups?** Help us grow the community! Share your experience on LinkedIn—whether it’s what you’ve learned, key takeaways, or why you enjoy EM Kata. By spreading the word, you’ll help more engineering managers and aspiring tech leaders find a safe environment to practice and enhance their skills. We believe it’s much more fun to have fun with friends, so come join us and bring your friends along! Tag us **#EMKata #Meetup by #SEML about #TechLeadership**. **🤝 Sponsored by Contentful** A big shout-out to Contentful for sponsoring our event and supporting our mission to foster a tight-knit community of engineering leaders. **👍 Code of Conduct** We adhere to the [Berlin Code of Conduct](https://berlincodeofconduct.org/) to ensure a welcoming and respectful environment for all participants.

**[www.BerlinPortraitAcademy.com](www.BerlinPortraitAcademy.com)** **More information:** Berlin Portrait Academy teaches realistic oil painting in the tradition of academies in Florence, Barcelona and London, bringing the Atelier experience to Berlin. Open to all levels from absolute beginner, to those who are more experienced but interested in tackling the academic method. Places are limited to six students per session. Cost is 45 euros per class 350 for a package of ten classes (enquire via email). Materials are provided free for the first lesson. **Please email [peter@pakd-gallery.com](peter@pakd-gallery.com) with any further questions!** See you there! **[www.BerlinPortraitAcademy.com](www.BerlinPortraitAcademy.com)**

The Test Tribe 11th Berlin Meetup – Making QA Work Smarter with Generative AI Generative AI is no longer a future concept-it’s already reshaping how QA engineers design tests, debug failures, write documentation, and even collaborate with development teams. But beyond the buzzwords, many testers are still asking the same questions: How do I actually use AI in my day-to-day work? What makes a good prompt? And where does agentic AI really fit? At the 11th Berlin Meetup, we’ll cut through the hype and focus on practical, QA-first applications of Generative AI, showing how testers can work smarter today and prepare for an agent-driven tomorrow. **Event Details** Date: 20th January 2026 Time: 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM CET Venue: SumUp (Entrance via Lange Straße) Koppenstraße 8, 10243 Berlin, Germany Session: Making QA Work Smarter with Generative AI - From Prompts to Agentic AI Speaker: Vignesh Srinivasa Raghavan **Introduction** Generative AI is rapidly reshaping how Quality Assurance engineers approach their daily work-from test design and automation to debugging, documentation, and reporting (yes, even writing Jira tickets 😄). This session is a practical, QA-focused introduction to Generative AI, designed to help testers move beyond curiosity and into real, day-to-day usage. Rather than abstract theory, the focus is on how QA engineers can use AI to work faster, think better, and reduce repetitive effort-without losing control or judgment. You’ll learn how prompt engineering dramatically impacts the quality of AI outputs and get a glimpse into Agentic AI, where autonomous AI agents can assist testers across workflows in the near future. Attendees will leave with actionable ideas they can immediately apply in their QA roles. **Key Takeaways** * Understand what Generative AI is and how it applies specifically to QA workflows * Learn practical prompt engineering techniques to get better results from AI tools * Discover different prompt types for testing, automation, and documentation * Get an introduction to Agentic AI and how it can amplify tester productivity **About the Speaker** Vignesh Srinivasa Raghavan is a Lead SDET with 11+ years of experience in Software Automation Testing, specializing in Web, Mobile, API, and Performance Testing. He is also an experienced trainer with 9+ years of teaching experience, having trained 7,000+ students globally. Vignesh is a top-rated Udemy instructor and regularly conducts corporate training sessions, both online and offline. Expertise & Tools * AI: Generative AI for QA, Agentic AI for QA * Web Automation: Playwright, Cypress, Selenium, WebdriverIO * Mobile Automation: Appium, Espresso, XCUITest * API Automation: RestAssured, Postman, Karate, Katalon * Performance Testing: Gatling, JMeter * Languages: Java, JavaScript, TypeScript, Python, Kotlin, Scala Vignesh is deeply passionate about helping QA engineers embrace modern tools and future-ready practices while staying grounded in strong testing fundamentals. Why You Should Attend * Learn how QA engineers can practically use Generative AI today * Improve productivity without compromising quality or ownership * Understand prompt engineering through a tester’s lens * Get early insights into Agentic AI and its impact on QA * Connect with Berlin’s growing QA and testing community * Be part of The Test Tribe’s 11th Berlin Meetup About The Test Tribe The Test Tribe is the world’s largest software testing community, empowering testers globally since 2018. With 700+ events and 150K+ members across 130+ countries, we bring testers together to learn, grow, and connect through meetups, conferences, cohorts, masterclasses, and more. By RSVPing, you agree to our Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy and consent to be contacted by The Test Tribe and our event partners.

! All sessions in English except for 17.02, 24.02 & 21.03 - these sessions will be in German ! Wanting to connect deeper with your partner? Looking for new ways to be intimate? Hoping to foster love, awareness, and communication in your relationship? Take some quality time away from the daily grid and explore Tantra together through embodied practice. The practice is designed to foster deeper intimacy, attunement and harmony between the two of you. Tantra invites you to allow your life force energy to flow without inhibition and to cultivate it for self-realization. Part of the practice is about inviting in more opening. Openness creates union, resistance creates separation. Deep connection, more pleasure and joy are a result of experiencing more openness. Tantra is for everyone! All couples are welcome regardless of sexual orientation and experience level. Not in a romantic relationship? Feel free to bring anyone you'd like to practice Tantra with. **What to expect:** * **Discourse, demo practice and Q&A**: learn about Tantra through discourse, ask your questions * **Tantra meditation practice**: presence, movement, sound and breath * **Sharing before and after practice**: share about your fears and desires & reflect on your experience * **Cozy studio setting**: enjoy a comfortable and intimate environment * **No partner-exchange:** practice only with your partner * **Fully clothed:** you may keep your clothes on during the entire practice **What to bring:** * Wear comfortable clothing * Water bottle to stay hydrated **Tickets:** 65€ per couple. Please purchase your ticket via [sophieheldens.com](https://www.sophieheldens.com/tickets?utm_source=meetup&utm_campaign=datenight) **Location:** Praxis Köpi Köpenicker Straße 175 10997 Berlin Kreuzberg Walk to the second courtyard and take the stairs to the front door on the left. **Please note:** Praxis Köpi is located on the 5th floor and there is no elevator available. Only book a ticket if you can walk the stairs. The benefit: a beautiful private studio with loads of natural light. **!! Please arrive 10 minutes early so we can start on time !!** Once we start the session, I can’t let you in anymore because it disturbs the class. Please do yourself and the group a favour by coming on time. Thank you! **Workshop facilitator** Hi! My name is Sophie. My passion for Tantra is rooted in a deep spiritual yearning and an inner knowing that Tantra is my path. My desire to teach Tantra has been sparked by having witnessed my own growth and healing as a result of these practices and it is inspired by a vision to create a more beautiful world. I create a space that is loving and nurturing, with a strong emphasis on ensuring that you feel save and supported. My workshops are gentle yet transformative, spiritual yet grounded and always heart-centered. I'm passionate about bridging the wisdom of ancient Tantra with modern-day practices. For more information, feel free to visit my website: [www.sophieheldens.com](https://www.sophieheldens.com?utm_source=meetup&utm_campaign=datenight)

**Topic: How Could Low-Tech Industry Be More Data-Driven?** **What to Expect:** * A concise, 5-10 minute expert presentation introducing us to the nuances of the topic. * Engage in insightful discussions with fellow participants in breakout groups, exploring diverse experiences and practices. * Dive into prepared questions designed to challenge and expand your perspective on the topic. * A fantastic opportunity to network with like-minded professionals and enthusiasts passionate about software development and team building. *** **Broadening Our Discussions:** We explore a wide range of topics, including Extreme Programming (XP), agile management methods, lean theory, career management, programming katas, and other areas related to software development. Whether you're new to software, a seasoned practitioner, or an expert, your insights and experiences are valued here! *** **Event Details:** We'll gather from 7:00 PM, officially start the session at 7:15 PM, and take a break at 8:30 PM to decide the topic for our next session. Don't miss this chance to learn, share, and connect!

Open Source Frühstück: enjoy food and deep technical talks Open your day with a solid breakfast and practical discussions on **Apache Kafka**, **ClickHouse**, **PostgreSQL** and much more. Enjoy a session designed for data engineers, architects and technical decisions-makers like you, who want to address the challenges they face in data-infrastructure. No high-level pitches but straight into practical discussions on how to build scalable, efficient open sourced-powered data platforms. What's on the menu (other than a delicious breakfast): * **Deep dives** into new features and upcoming technical roadmaps, including **Aiven Inkless**, **Kafka,** **Apache Iceberg**, **OpenSearch**, **PostgreSQL**, and **ClickHouse** * **Real case studies** demonstrating how top engineering teams are solving core data problems with these stacks, including search, observability, and analytics use cases powered by OpenSearch. * **Optimization techniques** for performance, cost-efficiency, and operational simplicity. So what are you waiting for? Secure your seat now!

We are excited to announce our next meetup, which will again be hosted at the beautiful [HubSpot](https://www.linkedin.com/feed/#) Berlin offices. Get ready for rooftop views, snacks, drinks and plenty of opportunities to learn and share. Agenda: 6.00pm - Casual arrival 6.30pm - Welcome and intro to "To Customer Value and Beyond" 6.45pm - Benefits of a value-driven sales approach: Led by Angeley Mullins ([Aetheris Ventures](https://www.linkedin.com/company/aetherisventures/)), we’re bringing together three leaders who have cracked the code on value-driven growth: - [Caroline Dépierre](https://www.linkedin.com/in/cdepierre/) ([Pollup AI](https://www.linkedin.com/company/pollup-data/)): Elevating customer ops through AI. - [Pavel Novák](https://www.linkedin.com/in/mgrpavelnovak/) ([Pricefx](https://www.linkedin.com/company/pricefx/)): Architecting revenue enablement. - [Balaji Kannadasan](https://www.linkedin.com/in/balajikannadasan/) (ex-[Infor](https://www.linkedin.com/company/infor/)): Mastering value engineering. 7.45pm - Q&A 8.00pm - Networking A heartfelt thank you to our friends at HubSpot for providing the location! Drinks and snacks will, of course, be provided. Expect an exciting and engaged discussion and feel free to bring questions of your own.

Join us for an upcoming in-person Lean Coffee meetup. Lean Coffee is a lightly-structured meeting format where the attendees create the agenda. Bring your management challenges; whether you're managing people, products, processes or beyond, and solve them together with peers from a diverse set of backgrounds. This event is great for anybody trying to create better ways of working and wants to share with + learn from others trying to do the same.

We are kicking off the year by celebrating 2 years of Berlin Cybersecurity Social and starting strong with two highly practical sessions focused on impact, growth, and doing more with less. As budgets tighten and expectations rise, security leaders are being asked to optimise spend while also advancing their own careers. This anniversary edition of BCS is all about exactly that. How to make smarter security decisions, stretch limited resources, and make sure your work gets the recognition it deserves. Think new year, new priorities, and new momentum. *** **Talk 1: Why Risk Appetite Statements Matter: Getting the Board Onboard** James Tucker, Group Head of Information Security at Awin Global This session explores how risk appetite statements can be used to connect technical security controls to board-level decision-making. James will share how framing security through risk appetite enables clearer conversations about prioritisation, investment, and trade-offs, particularly when budgets are tight. **Key Takeaways** * How to use risk appetite statements to frame security decisions * How to translate technical controls into business and board-level language * How to support risk-based investment and prioritisation discussions * **Talk 2: Making Invisible Security Work Visible** **Alisa Reznik, COO, tech consultant, and mentor for tech leaders** Security professionals protect the company constantly, yet their impact is often invisible by design. In this session, Alisa will show how to make security work visible without bragging, translate technical outcomes into business value, and build career momentum alongside fast-moving threats. **What you will learn** * How to make your work visible without bragging * A simple system to gain recognition and career momentum * How to communicate security impact in business terms *** We will be celebrating the 2-year anniversary of Berlin Cybersecurity Social with networking before and after the talks, familiar faces, new connections, and the same community energy that has shaped BCS from the start. A practical start to the year. Smarter budgets. Clearer impact. Stronger careers. **About Berlin Cybersecurity Social:** This meetup is open to cybersecurity professionals of all levels, from beginners to experts. Whether you're a seasoned pro or just starting your journey in the field, this event is the perfect opportunity to connect with others who share your passion for cybersecurity. **About** **James Tucker:** James is Group Head of Information Security at Awin Global, where he leads global security strategy across cloud, infrastructure, and enterprise environments. With a background spanning hands-on network security, incident response, and executive security leadership, James brings a pragmatic, business-focused approach to building effective security programs at scale. **About** **Alisa Reznik:** Alisa is a COO, tech consultant, and mentor for technical leaders. She helps engineers and security professionals gain visibility, advance their careers, and build work lives aligned with what they actually want. With experience leading engineering and product teams under pressure, Alisa brings a practical perspective on influence, impact, and growth in technical roles.

Welcome to the PyData Berlin January meetup! We would like to welcome you all starting from 18:30. There will be food and drinks. The talks begin around 19.15 and the doors will close at 18:45. **Make sure to arrive on time!** Please provide your first and last name for the registration because this is required for the venue's entry policy. If you cannot attend, please cancel your spot so others are able to join as the space is limited. **Host**: **Spiced Academy** is excited to welcome you to this month's version of PyData. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* The Lineup for the evening **Talk 1: From Grape Stomping to Gorilla Trekking: AI-Driven Discovery of Novel Interests at GetYourGuide** **Abstract**: UX research shows that discovering new, unexpected and unique things to do in a destination is among the most important needs for travelers. However, surfacing these “hidden gems” at scale is a major challenge for any dynamic marketplace. At GetYourGuide, we tackled this by combining large language models, semantic vector embeddings, and a robust human-in-the-loop process to automatically identify and categorize novel customer interests. Join me as I dive into how we created this AI-driven solution and how we achieved scalable, granular and relevant categorization of our activities. **Description:** How do you help a traveler find something they never knew they wanted? In this talk, I will explore the exciting journey of developing an AI-driven solution to identify novel customer interests at GetYourGuide. With thousands of new activities onboarded weekly, manual categorization became impractical, prompting the need for automation. This talk will walk you through our end-to-end solution: * The problem: the challenges travelers face in discovering relevant and unique experiences, the organizational complexity of this on our platform and its business impact * The AI journey: From raw LLM-based extraction to vector embeddings, clustering, all the way to a robust human-in-the-loop pipeline. I’ll share how we iterated from noisy prototypes to an impactful system, launching 300+ new interests and driving significant engagement and net revenue uplifts * What we learned: The realities of working with LLMs in production-like settings, more specifically hallucinations and issues with relevance, granularity and semantic deduplication. We found out that the line between useful innovation and unwanted noise can be surprisingly fine when using LLM’s. I’ll share practical examples of these challenges and how we addressed them. * Impact and future directions: How we achieved a 10x increase in manual acceptance of AI-suggested interests in just two iterations, and what’s next for AI-driven discovery at GetYourGuide **Bio**: **Morena Bastiaansen** holds a master’s degree in Econometrics from the University of Amsterdam and currently works as a Data Scientist at GetYourGuide in Berlin. She combines her passions for machine learning, language, and travel to build impactful systems for travelers worldwide, with a current focus on personalization in email marketing. Morena is also actively involved in the local tech and ML community. **Talk 2: Deep dive into data streaming security** **Abstract**: Data streaming is powering everything from fraud detection and real-time analytics to patient monitoring and order fulfillment. But as the role of streaming grows, so does the risk - because many streaming platforms, like Apache Kafka, aren't secure by default. In this talk, we’ll take a practical look at data streaming security through the lens of Kafka, one of the most widely adopted streaming platforms in the world. We'll walk through what can go wrong - real examples of exposing 14M patient-doctor messages, or years of real-time delivery info to the internet - and what it takes to do it right. We'll cover the key pillars of securing a streaming system: encryption in transit and at rest, access control, monitoring, and key management. Along the way, we’ll look at the trade-offs like disk encryption vs. end-to-end encryption, what is behind field-level and envelope encryption, and the realities of using customer-managed keys in regulated industries. We'll also explore how streaming security has evolved, how real vulnerabilities (like CVE-2019-12399) highlight the need for patching and monitoring, and what successful multi-layered security looks like in production - from financial institutions to healthcare platforms. If you're building, running, or scaling streaming systems, this talk will help you see the security blind spots and give you concrete steps to protect the data flowing through your pipelines. **Bio**: Olena Kutsenko 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. **Lightning talks** There will be slots for 2-3 Lightning Talks (3-5 Minutes for each) between the two main talks. Kindly let us know if you would like to present something :) \*\*\* NumFOCUS **Code of Conduct** THE SHORT VERSION Be kind to others. Do not insult or put down others. Behave professionally. Remember that harassment and sexist, racist, or exclusionary jokes are not appropriate for NumFOCUS. All communication should be appropriate for a professional audience including people of many different backgrounds. Sexual language and imagery are not appropriate. NumFOCUS is dedicated to providing a harassment-free community for everyone, regardless of gender, sexual orientation, gender identity, and expression, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, or religion. We do not tolerate harassment of community members in any form. Thank you for helping make this a welcoming, friendly community for all. If you haven't yet, please read the detailed version here: https://numfocus.org/code-of-conduct \*\*\*

**IMPORTANT PLEASE RSVP AT:** https://www.meetup.com/pydata-berlin/events/312771201/ \*\*\* We would like to welcome you all starting from 18:30. There will be food and drinks. The talks begin around 19.15 and the doors will close at 18:45. **Make sure to arrive on time!** Please provide your first and last name for the registration because this is required for the venue's entry policy. If you cannot attend, please cancel your spot so others are able to join as the space is limited. **Host**: **Spiced Academy** is excited to welcome you to this month's version of PyData. \*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\*\* The Lineup for the evening **Talk 1: From Grape Stomping to Gorilla Trekking: AI-Driven Discovery of Novel Interests at GetYourGuide** **Abstract**: UX research shows that discovering new, unexpected and unique things to do in a destination is among the most important needs for travelers. However, surfacing these “hidden gems” at scale is a major challenge for any dynamic marketplace. At GetYourGuide, we tackled this by combining large language models, semantic vector embeddings, and a robust human-in-the-loop process to automatically identify and categorize novel customer interests. Join me as I dive into how we created this AI-driven solution and how we achieved scalable, granular and relevant categorization of our activities. **Description:** How do you help a traveler find something they never knew they wanted? In this talk, I will explore the exciting journey of developing an AI-driven solution to identify novel customer interests at GetYourGuide. With thousands of new activities onboarded weekly, manual categorization became impractical, prompting the need for automation. This talk will walk you through our end-to-end solution: * The problem: the challenges travelers face in discovering relevant and unique experiences, the organizational complexity of this on our platform and its business impact * The AI journey: From raw LLM-based extraction to vector embeddings, clustering, all the way to a robust human-in-the-loop pipeline. I’ll share how we iterated from noisy prototypes to an impactful system, launching 300+ new interests and driving significant engagement and net revenue uplifts * What we learned: The realities of working with LLMs in production-like settings, more specifically hallucinations and issues with relevance, granularity and semantic deduplication. We found out that the line between useful innovation and unwanted noise can be surprisingly fine when using LLM’s. I’ll share practical examples of these challenges and how we’re iterating to address them. * Impact and future directions: How we achieved a 10x increase in manual acceptance of AI-suggested interests in just two iterations, and what’s next for AI-driven discovery at GetYourGuide **Bio**: **Morena Bastiaansen** holds a master’s degree in Econometrics from the University of Amsterdam and currently works as a Data Scientist at GetYourGuide in Berlin. She combines her passions for machine learning, language, and travel to build impactful systems for travelers worldwide, with a current focus on personalization in email marketing. Morena is also actively involved in the local tech and ML community. **Talk 2: Deep dive into data streaming security** **Abstract**: Data streaming is powering everything from fraud detection and real-time analytics to patient monitoring and order fulfillment. But as the role of streaming grows, so does the risk - because many streaming platforms, like Apache Kafka, aren't secure by default. In this talk, we’ll take a practical look at data streaming security through the lens of Kafka, one of the most widely adopted streaming platforms in the world. We'll walk through what can go wrong - real examples of exposing 14M patient-doctor messages, or years of real-time delivery info to the internet - and what it takes to do it right. We'll cover the key pillars of securing a streaming system: encryption in transit and at rest, access control, monitoring, and key management. Along the way, we’ll look at the trade-offs like disk encryption vs. end-to-end encryption, what is behind field-level and envelope encryption, and the realities of using customer-managed keys in regulated industries. We'll also explore how streaming security has evolved, how real vulnerabilities (like CVE-2019-12399) highlight the need for patching and monitoring, and what successful multi-layered security looks like in production - from financial institutions to healthcare platforms. If you're building, running, or scaling streaming systems, this talk will help you see the security blind spots and give you concrete steps to protect the data flowing through your pipelines. **Bio**: Olena Kutsenko 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.

Welcome to Sunday Tech Coffee. This is a **networking** event for those in the tech industry in Berlin. We are usually inside and to the right

Why are we unhappy? Where does emotional pain come from? Studies show that people who suffer from long-term emotional pain have painful experiences in their lives that were never fully resolved in their mind. In other words, there were issues in the past that were not completely dealt with. This can include abuse in childhood, breakups, divorce, death of a loved one, to name a few. How do you know whether you have gotten over something painful? Here is an easy test: Do you still have attention on what had happened to you? For instance, do you still find yourself thinking about something painful that you went through? If you are, then you are not over it. In fact, in severe cases, people find themselves playing a "tape" in their mind over and over again. So how do you heal from your past? How do you stop the "tape" playing in your mind? In this meeting, you will learn a technique to help you with that. Come join us! Be sure to click on the red "Attend" button below to come to this local event. We look forward to seeing you there. This group is created by the Dianetics and Scientology life improvement center.

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

### Tools in your AI's Toolbox : An introduction to MCP Servers The generative AI revolution has unlocked unprecedented capabilities, but the next frontier is agency: empowering models to interact with, query, and act upon the world. The current challenge is the “N x M integration problem,” where every AI model requires a custom, brittle integration for each external tool or data source. This approach simply doesn’t scale. How can we give an AI access to our sales leads, code repositories, or IoT devices in a standardized, secure, and reusable way? This session introduces Anthropic’s Model Context Protocol (MCP), the open-source framework designed to solve this challenge and become the universal connector—the USB-C port—for AI. MCP standardizes how AI models discover and use external tools, moving beyond simple function-calling to a robust, client-server architecture. We will dive into how this open protocol is creating a new ecosystem for building powerful, context-aware AI agents. Join this session for a developer-focused introduction where you will learn how to: Understand the core concepts of the open-source Model Context Protocol and its architecture. Utilize pre-built, open-source MCP servers to instantly connect AI to tools like Git, Slack, and databases. Build a custom MCP server to securely expose your own proprietary data and APIs as tools for any compliant AI. Move beyond bespoke integrations and contribute to a standardized, collaborative, and open ecosystem. Stop building one-off connectors and start building intelligent agents. This session will give you the practical knowledge to leverage MCP and create the next generation of AI that doesn’t just talk, but does. Want to be a speaker? submit your talk to our Call for Presenters!!! [https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/](https://sessionize.com/azure-cbus-2026/)

It’s time to take control of your mental health. How do you get rid of stress, anxiety and uncertainty? These emotions are buried deep in your reactive mind. Find out what the reactive mind is, and in the process find yourself. Here is the secret of being positive and free: Thinking positively is not enough. You also have to get rid of the negative thinking. Your mind is like a garden. You can plant many beautiful flowers in it, but if you don't get rid of the weeds when you plant your flowers, the weeds will soon take over the whole garden. A positive thought is like a flower in your mental garden, and a negative thought is like a weed. You cannot expect to have a positive mindset if you continue to have negative thoughts dwelling and growing there. So, how do you get rid of the negative thoughts? That's what this Meetup is all about. Attend this local meeting and find out! The Meetup event will be led by a consultant who had helped many people live happier in life. Be sure to click on the red "Attend" button below to come to this local event. We look forward to seeing you there. This group is created by the Dianetics & Scientology life improvement center.

2026 may be the last year many developers write code by hand. We need coding agents to solve complex problems in production codebases, but vibe coding alone won’t get us there. Vibe coding is all gas, no brakes. It burns up the context window until the agent slips on its own slop. You can go fast at first, but the more you stuff into the context window, the more tangled its outputs get. While the industry is rapidly increasing code generation speed, we still have to understand, review, merge, and maintain what gets shipped. This talk featuring Michael Geiger will outline how coding agents (Claude Code + Gas Town) work and a framework for orchestrating them to solve complicated problems in complex codebases. It’s about steering the model: doing the research to align intent, planning the approach up front, implementing in parallel steps, and breaking early. Human judgment still matters, but it should be spent on high-leverage decisions: what to build, what to forbid, and “what is quality?”, not cleaning up slop. Attendees will leave with a checklist to identify workflow and environment gaps that hold agents back, so you and your team can ship higher-quality software starting tomorrow.