Triangle Devs Talks @ Bandwidth HQ

At this Triangle Devs meetup, we’ll kick things off with a talk on React Native by Mazen Chami from Infinite Red. Following the presentation, join us for a fireside chat on AI featuring Alex Malic, Head of the Model Manager Team at SAS, and Rob Ocel, VP of Innovation at This Dot Labs.

Doors at 6:30pm - talks start at 7pm

Join us on March 12th for pizza, networking and talking tech!

React Native: 2015 & Beyond
Presented By: Mazen Chami
From a scrappy Facebook experiment to powering AI apps, 4 million weekly downloads, and a 1.0 on the horizon. Buckle up for a high-speed tour through a decade of React Native: the Bridge era, the New Architecture revolution, the explosive 2025 that changed everything, and where this rocket ship is headed next.

Fireside Chat: AI in Software Engineering 2026
Join us in an open-format discussion with Alex Malic, Head of the Model Manager Team at SAS, and Rob Ocel, VP of Innovation at This Dot Labs. In this panel-style fireside chat, we will share how AI is and has revolutionized our industry for better or worse. Our panelist will share first hand accounts of working with AI and how businesses are tackling this game-changing new tech.

Submit your questions for the fireside chat here:
https://forms.gle/oLaAu7RQt7RAGpnP8

About Mazen
Mazen Chami is a Staff Software Engineer with over 6 years of experience in React Native. Mazen is the host of React Native Live and co-host of the React Native Radio podcast and an expert in Ignite and open source development. In his free time, Mazen loves to play soccer and enjoys time outdoors with his wife and 2 kids.

About Alex
Alex Malich is an engineering leader with more than 15 years of experience building and scaling platform, DevOps, and cloud-native systems across startups and enterprise environments. By day, he works in SAS R&D on Model Manager, where he focuses on modernization, resilient architecture, and making AI adoption practical and measurable, including Agentic AI and MCP-based tooling.

By night, Alex wears a different kind of helmet as a volunteer firefighter, bringing the same calm, systems-thinking mindset from production incidents to real-world emergencies. He is the founder of Triangle Tech Talks, a community built around sharing ideas, lessons learned, and honest conversations about technology. He is also the co-founder and co-host of the AI on Fire podcast, where AI, engineering, and reality checks meet.
Alex is especially passionate about modern AI architecture, exploring how LLMs, agents, and platforms can work together in ways that are reliable, scalable, and grounded in real engineering constraints.

About Rob:
Rob is VP of Innovation at This Dot Labs, a software and product consultancy helping companies build and launch large scale products. He is a co-host of the Modern Web and Leadership Exchange podcasts and a frequent speaker at local meetups. Rob has a passion for mentoring new developers and finding ways to explain difficult concepts in modern JavaScript development. He has been doing software development for nearly 20 years and is fascinated with agentic AI-human integrated coding and its promise to make software more affordable than ever before. When not developing, Rob spends time keeping up with his eight year old son, is an avid fan of JRPGs, and is obsessed with college basketball.