Support
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Frequently Asked Questions
Yes! Check out support events happening today here. These are in-person gatherings where you can meet fellow enthusiasts and participate in activities right now.
Discover all the support events taking place this week here. Plan ahead and join exciting meetups throughout the week.
Absolutely! Find support events near your location here. Connect with your local community and discover events within your area.
Support Events Today
Join in-person Support events happening right now
Profs & Pints DC: How AI Alters Thinking
[Profs and Pints DC](https://www.profsandpints.com/washingtondc) presents: **âHow AI Alters Thinking,â** on dealing with artificial intelligenceâs capacity to change and undermine our thought processes, with Eli Alshanetsky, assistant professor of philosophy at Temple University, principal investigator at its Cognitive Integrity Lab, and author of an upcoming book on AI and freedom of thought.
[Advance tickets: $13.50 plus sales tax and processing fees. Available at [https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-how-ai-alters-thinking](https://events.ticketleap.com/tickets/profsandpints/dc-how-ai-alters-thinking) .]
Doctors who give bad advice can be sued for malpractice. Teachers belong to a profession with set standards. When artificial intelligence guides you, however, that guidance comes with a disclaimer: Use at your own risk.
Every day millions of people take that risk, and usually AI seems genuinely helpful. But even if AI gives us good answers, might its use over time do bad things to how we think?
Explore the relationship between AI and our own minds with Eli Alshanetsky, whose Cognitive Integrity Lab studies how artificial intelligence changes how we think, learn, and build trust. Author of *Articulating a Thought* and the upcoming book *Freedom of Thought in the Age of AI*, heâs on the cutting edge of efforts to answer AI-related questions such as: How can we tell when work is truly our own? How can technology support rather than replace authorship and reflection? What does trust mean when AI mediates our relationships with others and with our own thoughts?
To set up his discussion of potential consequences of AI, heâll describe how social mediaâs impact on society serves as a preview.
Social media didnât just give people what they wanted to click on, it actually changed what they regarded as click-worthy. It broke attention spans and fueled radicalization across millions of very different people. It left us with people who doom-scroll for hours, who canât focus, who donât know what to trust anymore.
If youâd shown people this version of themselves ten years ago, would they have chosen it?
Artificial intelligence is making a similar deal with us, but the stakes are higher. It isnât chasing clicks. Itâs optimized for giving you the most satisfying response to whatever is on your mind right now.
The risk over time isnât just that youâll get lazy. More profoundly, even when you think hard, your sense of what counts as good thinkingâas well as what sounds like youâwill shift to match what AI has been feeding you.
Weâll consider what kind of person this produces and whether this is someone we want to be or want children to become. Professor Alshanetsky will lay out a practical framework, which he calls âthe interaction layer,â for using AI without letting it replace the thinking itâs supposed to support. Heâll also talk about what AI-related concerns should be the focus of parents and educators. (Doors: $17, or $15 with a student ID. Listed time is for doors. Talk starts 30 minutes later.)
Image: Illustration by David S. Soriano / Creative Commons.
Volunteer Night @ The Warehouse
Volunteer with us refurbishing donated bicycles to help us get them back out in the community! This event is open to both new and existing volunteers. No mechanical experience is necessary.
Note: The warehouse location is in the alley behind 1502 Mt Vernon Ave. Enter through the gray door next to a roll-down garage door. If you drive to the location, be sure to park in the street, not in the alleys or parking lots surrounding the warehouse. And wear clothes you don't mind getting dirty with bicycle grease!
Please be aware that volunteers under 18 need a parent or guardian to accompany them to their first volunteer experience and sign a liability waiver, while volunteers under 16 need a parent or guardian to accompany them at all times while volunteering with VĂŠlocity.
Doubles Volleyball - Competitive
BB/A level @Bluemont Park
Doubles Volleyball - Competitive BB-A level @Bluemont Park
Let's get together to play some fun A level Doubles games at Bluemont.
Format: Doubles
COST: FREE
Court Type: Outdoor grass
Minimum Skill Requirements: A level (click [here](https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/1PojSi4qdlRsv1msCHhvpQ43iDc4FfzQwpWCc3kafVMY/mobilebasic) for details)
Attention:
1. This event is not always on a first come, first served basis. Those who can bring a net and ball, may get priority over others on the waitlist.
1. Since skill levels are self-reported, some attendees may not meet the expected level in reality, so we encourage you to choose a partner you can enjoy the game with, and since this is a competitive event, it is okay if you make a strong team and win all the games.
1. Since people arrive at different times, each group of
1. Players will set up and claim a net as they arrive, and may continue playing without rotating until all nets are set.
âââ
Smiley Social documents:
[Group Rules](https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/1HrG35p_0M08leRvCp8XWG3CMkr_GL928XFabl5T6Dvg/mobilebasic)
[Liability Waiver](https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/1W2mq-7m99lmvd7gdWYaSUFtvVg4UGnzV6koafAbHmco/mobilebasic)
[Volleyball Levels](https://docs.google.com/document/u/2/d/1PojSi4qdlRsv1msCHhvpQ43iDc4FfzQwpWCc3kafVMY/mobilebasic)
Support Events This Week
Discover what is happening in the next few days
Less Noise, More Signal: SBOMs + Agentic Observability
Weâre excited to bring the community together for an evening of learning and connection. This time, we'll have a community member from Chainguard sharing a use case and, as usual, an Elastic employee sharing their expertise as well.
Come support your fellow developers, learn something new, and meet others who are passionate about search, observability, and security.
**Date and Time:**
Tuesday, May 19th, from 5:30-7:30 pm EDT
**Location:**
Elastic Arlington Office - 4100 Fairfax Drive, Ste 500, Arlington, VA 22203
**Agenda:**
* 5:30 pm: Doors open; say hi, grab a seat, and eat some food.
* 6:00 pm: The SBOM Pile in Your S3 Bucket: Turning Bills of Materials Into a Risk Dashboard; and Watching It Shrink with Chainguard, by Mike Barreta, Senior Manager, Engineering at Chainguard
* 6:30 pm: Q&A
* 6:40 pm: **Agentic Observability: Next-Gen Alerting and Auto-Detected Significant Events**, by Jason Rhodes,
Senior Manager, Software Engineering at Elastic
* 7:10 pm: Q&A
* 7:20-7:30 pm: Networking & refreshments
**Talk Abstracts:**
**"The SBOM Pile in Your S3 Bucket: Turning Bills of Materials Into a Risk Dashboard; and Watching It Shrink with Chainguard**"
Most organizations now generate SBOMs because someone â EO 14028, a FedRAMP auditor, an ISSM â told them to. They land in an S3 bucket, get versioned, and are almost universally never queried. This talk is about what happens when you finally do. I'll stand up a self-contained Elastic stack, pour in SBOMs (SPDX), SLSA provenance, Sigstore signatures, Grype vulnerability scans, the CISA KEV catalog, and OpenVEX adjudication for 30 container images, and show the queries that only become possible once SBOMs stop being compliance artifacts and start being telemetry: which packages I actually run right now, which CVEs are real exposures versus VEX-suppressed noise, what swapping a stock image for its Chainguard equivalent would buy me, and how much of my CVE list is just stuff I inherited from the base layer.
Then the cleanup. The same dashboards on Chainguard images show what disappears when the SBOM is small, the signatures verify, and the advisory feed is active: \~9,000 fewer CVEs and \~2.5 GB saved across 20 image pairs, KEV exposure dropping from 7 hits to 0, compliance pass rate going from 0% to 76.5% against NIST 800-218 / FedRAMP Moderate / SSDF.
**Bio:**
Mike Barretta leads Chainguardâs public sector solutions engineering team, focused on helping ensure the federal government receives its fair share of the future. Barretta has worked across civilian, defense and intel programs in a variety of rolesâsoftware developer, data scientist, solution architectâfor a variety of organizationsâsystem integrators, consulting companies, software vendorsâwith the common purpose of creating and championing technologies and techniques for simplifying the extraction and utilization of information from lots of data. Having witnessed the ever-increasing threats to those systems, Barretta is now focused on methods and mitigations to secure them
**Agentic Observability: Next-Gen Alerting and Auto-Detected Significant Events**
We're rebuilding Elastic's alerting engine to make alerts more flexible\, more powerful\, and more valuable as data\. Next\-gen alerting rules will run anything ES\|QL supports and capture whatever fields matter to you\, so alerts carry the context you need for real downstream analysis\. And if you'd rather not manage these rules yourself\, AI agents can help\, drafting them from natural language\, recommending tuning and configuration changes\, and reducing noise through deduplication\.
On top of this, we're also building a new Significant Events system which automatically builds a continuously updated knowledge base of your incoming data's own metadata. Using this deep understanding, our agentic tools will detect significant events from log patterns, anomalies, and predicted behavior â without you having to create a single rule.
**Bio:**
Jason Rhodes is a software engineering lead at Elastic, where he works on alerting and observability features. Based in the DC area, he has over 15 years of experience in software development and has been an active contributor to the local tech community â creating and organizing Baltimore NodeSchool and charmCityJS. When he's not writing and reviewing code, he's probably watching too many movies.
**Parking:**
* The buildingâs parking garage is operated by Colonial Parking and is located off N. Randolph Street
* Book a spot on[ SpotHero](https://spothero.com/search?kind=address&latitude=38.8818514&longitude=-77.1095268&search_string=4100+Fairfax+Dr+%23500%2C+Arlington%2C+VA+22203%2C+USA)
* A Metro Station is located across the street
(Del Ray) Sunday 1st Shift: Customer Service Help (12pm-2pm)
Sign up to help with customer service at our Del Ray shop! **If this is your first time doing customer service at our shop**, **please direct message Elizabeth here via MeetUp** so she can ensure someone can be there to orient you.
**What you'll do:**
* greet customers
* manage customer traffic
* help customers find basic bike parts in our store
* direct customers to the mechanics if they need a bike repair
* help customers find a bike that fits them
* set customers up to test ride bikes
* work the register to conduct customer payments
**Qualities of a good volunteer for this role:**
* customer service oriented
* willing to work outside most of the shift
* able to work on their feet most of the shift
* comfortable working in a faced-paced environment
* open to a steep learning curve with a rewarding experience the more times you volunteer
* excited to learn about Velocity Bicycle Cooperative and become part of our volunteer team that keeps our wheels turning!
**What to Bring/Attire**
* A water bottle & snack
* Wear comfortable shoes and clothes appropriate for the day's weather
* Sunscreen and a baseball hat if it is sunny
**Age Requirements:** If you are under 18, you must bring a parent/guardian with you to the orientation to sign the waiver.
(Del Ray) Saturday 1st Shift: Customer Service Help (10am-1pm)
Sign up to help with customer service at our Del Ray shop! **If this is your first time doing customer service at our shop**, **please direct message Elizabeth here via MeetUp** so she can ensure someone can be there to orient you.
**What you'll do:**
* greet customers
* manage customer traffic
* help customers find basic bike parts in our store
* direct customers to the mechanics if they need a bike repair
* help customers find a bike that fits them
* set customers up to test ride bikes
* work the register to conduct customer payments
**Qualities of a good volunteer for this role:**
* customer service oriented
* willing to work outside most of the shift
* able to work on their feet most of the shift
* comfortable working in a faced-paced environment
* open to a steep learning curve with a rewarding experience the more times you volunteer
* excited to learn about Velocity Bicycle Cooperative and become part of our volunteer team that keeps our wheels turning!
**What to Bring/Attire**
* A water bottle & snack
* Wear comfortable shoes and clothes appropriate for the day's weather
* Sunscreen and a baseball hat if it is sunny
**Age Requirements:** If you are under 18, you must bring a parent/guardian with you to the orientation to sign the waiver.
(Del Ray) Sunday 2nd Shift: Customer Service Help (2pm-4pm)
Sign up to help with customer service at our Del Ray shop! **If this is your first time doing customer service at our shop**, **please direct message Elizabeth here via MeetUp** so she can ensure someone can be there to orient you.
**What you'll do:**
* greet customers
* manage customer traffic
* help customers find basic bike parts in our store
* direct customers to the mechanics if they need a bike repair
* help customers find a bike that fits them
* set customers up to test ride bikes
* work the register to conduct customer payments
**Qualities of a good volunteer for this role:**
* customer service oriented
* willing to work outside most of the shift
* able to work on their feet most of the shift
* comfortable working in a faced-paced environment
* open to a steep learning curve with a rewarding experience the more times you volunteer
* excited to learn about Velocity Bicycle Cooperative and become part of our volunteer team that keeps our wheels turning!
**What to Bring/Attire**
* A water bottle & snack
* Wear comfortable shoes and clothes appropriate for the day's weather
* Sunscreen and a baseball hat if it is sunny
**Age Requirements:** If you are under 18, you must bring a parent/guardian with you to the orientation to sign the waiver.
Support Events Near You
Connect with your local Support community
Vision Loss Support Group: Discussion of Ohio Theatre Tour
You can also join the meeting by Conference Call at (518) 263-8851.
Building Scalable Customer Identity Resolution Pipelines on AWS Using AI
Customer identity resolution becomes increasingly complex as organizations scale across multiple systems, regions, and data formats. Traditional rule-based approaches often fail to keep up with data variability, require constant manual tuning, and struggle with real-time processing needs.
This session presents a practical approach to building a scalable identity resolution pipeline using AWS services and modern AI techniques. The architecture combines data ingestion through Amazon S3 and AWS Glue, transformation pipelines using Spark on EMR, and machine learning models deployed via SageMaker for entity matching and standardization. Graph-based relationship modeling is implemented using Amazon Neptune to improve resolution accuracy by incorporating household and shared attribute context.
We will walk through how machine learning models can be used for name and address normalization, how intelligent blocking strategies improve matching efficiency, and how feedback loops can be introduced to continuously improve accuracy. The session also highlights how serverless components such as AWS Lambda can be used for orchestration and real-time processing.
**SPEAKER BIO**
Mosaic Syed is a Senior Data Engineering and Cloud Solutions Architect with over 20 years of experience designing and delivering scalable, secure, and high-performance data solutions across global enterprise environments.
https://www.linkedin.com/in/mosaic-basha-syed-92300856
**CALL FOR SPEAKERS**
Learn more: [https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/](https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/)
**THANK YOU** *VEEAM* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Veeam*, please visit their website: [https://www.veeam.com/](https://www.veeam.com/)
**DIRECTIONS**
8800 Lyra Dr #450 ¡ Columbus, OH
go to 4th floor.
**Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab?**
Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com
Brain Tumor Support Group
**Welcome to the Brain Injury Alliance of Kentuckyâs Support Group.**
*\*\*This meeting has been moved to the 4th Monday of each month.*
This group is a safe space for **survivors of traumatic and acquired brain injuries**, as well as their **families and caregivers**, to find support, share experiences, and connect with others who understand the journey.
Whether you're newly injured, a longtime survivor, or supporting a loved one, youâll find comfort, information, and encouragement here. Our professionally facilitated groups offer a confidential, compassionate setting for healing, learning, and growing together.
Join us to discover the power of communityâbecause no one should walk this road alone.
*All survivors of ABI/TBI and those who care for them are welcome.*
\* This meeting is for persons with brain tumors and their guests.
\*\* This is a hybrid meeting. For those meeting in-person dinner is served at 5:45pm. Online begins at 6:30pm.
TBD
**Important time note:** Please plan on arriving between 5:30 and 6:00 as the elevators lock after 6 and you'll need to message us and we'll need to come get you.
The building address is 4450 Bridge Park
The entrance is 6620 Mooney St, Suite 400
You will need to scan your ID at the door to get a visitor badge.
**Abstract**
TBD
**YouTube Link**
TBD
Quarterly Community Gathering
Join the Columbus AI community for our quarterly gathering â a casual, community-focused evening where everyone has a chance to share, learn, and connect. These open micâstyle events give anyone in the community up to **5 minutes** to present a project, share a tool, pose a question, or offer a perspective on the evolving AI space.
No slides required â just a welcoming space to exchange ideas and keep the local AI conversation moving.
If youâd like to take the stage, message \*\*Chris (the organizer)\*\*with a **title and short description** of what youâd like to share.
Whether youâre deep in the field or just getting curious, come connect with others building and exploring AI in Columbus.
Sponsored by [Transform Labs](https://www.linkedin.com/company/transformlabs/)
Sign up also accessible via [Transform Labs Luma](https://luma.com/transformlabshq)
Ask an Expert @ CML: Minority Business Assistance Center
No appointment needed - just support from a real, live person.
Access services offered through the Ohio Department of Development
The Department of Development Minority Business Development Division supports the growth and sustainability of small, minority-owned, and disadvantaged businesses in Ohio.
Supporting these businesses means providing them with resources that include technical and professional assistance, access to capital, surety bonding, and connection to business opportunities through the assistance of the Minority Business Assistance Centers (MBAC).
The Division leverages these resources to support the achievement of the state's 15% Minority Business Enterprise (MBE) set-aside requirement.
The Division works with entrepreneurs and emerging business enterprises to help them achieve scale and market success. The overarching goal is to help small, minority-owned, and disadvantaged businesses contribute to job creation and economic growth in Ohio.
The Centers provide the following services:
* Accounting assistance
* Business management counseling
* Completing federal, state, and local certification applications
* Contract procurement assistance
* Estimating/bidding assistance
* Identifying local resources
* Loan packaging assistance
* Marketing plan development
* Referrals to financial assistance program
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