Hi everyone, Many of you asked for more practical, real-world AI use-cases, and we listened!

For our first meetup of 2026, we're bringing you two deeply technical stories from the front lines of applied AI. We'll hear how the ANWB navigates the challenges of imperfect data in a legacy organization, and then dive into a practical guide for building production-grade AI agentic workflows with Elastic.

A huge thank you to our friends at Elastic for hosting us at their Amsterdam office. Food and drinks will be provided!

We’ll cover:

• ANWB's journey from manual operations to real-world AI predictions.
• Balancing the human and technical challenges of AI innovation.
• A practical guide to building production-grade agentic workflows.
• Integrating LLMs, vector search, and security into a simplified stack.

Speakers 1: Yke Rusticus & David Brummer (ANWB) Yke is a data engineer at ANWB with a background in astronomy and artificial intelligence. In the industry, he learned that AI models and algorithms often do not get past the experimentation phase, leading him to specialise in MLOps to bridge the gap between experimentation and production. As a professional in this field, Yke has developed ML platforms and use cases across different cloud providers, and is passionate about sharing his knowledge through tutorials and trainings.

David is a self-acclaimed “not your typical Data Scientist” who loves analogue photography, vegan food, dogs, and holds an unofficial PhD in thrifting and sourcing second-hand pearls. With a background in growth hacking and experience in the digital marketing trenches of a startup, a scale-up, and a digital agency, he now brings together lean startup thinking, marketing know-how, and sales pitches, blending it all with a passion for creativity and tech at the ANWB. As a bridge between business and data, David focuses on building AI solutions that don’t just work, but actually get used.

Talk: How AI is helping you back on the road We learn at school what AI can do when the data is perfect. We learn at conferences what AI can do when the environment is perfect. In this talk, you'll learn what AI can do when neither is perfect. This story is about the process of overcoming these challenges in an organisation that has been around since the invention of the bike. We'll balance the technical aspect of these solutions with the human aspect throughout the talk. Because in the end, it's not actually AI helping you back on the road, it's people.

Speaker 2: Hans Heerooms (Elastic) Hans Heerooms is a Senior Solutions Architect at Elastic. He has worked in various roles, but always with one objective: helping organisations to get the most out of their data with the least amount of effort. His current role at Elastic is all about supporting Elastic’s customers to help them evolve from data driven decisions to AI guided workflows.

Talk: Building Production-Grade AI Agentic Workflows with Elastic This talk tells and shows how Elastic Agent Builder can help to build and implement agentic workflows. It addresses the complexity of traditional development by integrating all necessary components—LLM orchestration, vector database, tracing, and security—directly into the Elasticsearch Search AI Platform. This talk will show you how to build custom agents, declare and assign tools, and start conversations with your data.

Agenda: 17:45 — Arrival, food & drinks 18:30 — Talk #1 \| Yke & David (ANWB) 19:15 — Short break 19:30 — Talk #2 \| Hans Heerooms (Elastic) 20:15 — Open conversation, networking & more drinks 21:00 — Wrapping up

Please note that the main door will close at 18.00. You will still be able to enter our office, but we might ask you to wait a little bit while we come down to open the door for you.

What to bring: Just curiosity and questions. If you're working on MLOps, applied AI, or building agentic workflows, we’d love to hear your thoughts.

Who this is for: Data scientists, AI/ML engineers, data engineers, MLOps specialists, SREs, architects, and engineering leaders focused on building and using real-world AI solutions.

Where to find us: Elastic Amsterdam Keizersgracht 281, 1016 ED Amsterdam

Google SRE NYC proudly announces our last Google SRE NYC Tech Talk for 2025.

This event is co-sponsored by sentry.io. Thank you Sentry for your partnership!

Let's farewell 2025 with three amazing interactive short talks on Site Reliability and DevOps topics! As always the event will include an opportunity to mingle with the speakers and attendees over some light snacks and beverages after the talks.

The Meetup will take place on Tuesday, 16th of December 2025 at 6:00 PM at our Chelsea Markets office in NYC. The doors will open at 5:30 pm. Pls RSVP only if you're able to attend in-person, there will be no live streaming.

When RSVP'ing to this event, please enter your full name exactly as it appears on your government issued ID. You will be required to present your ID at check in.

Agenda: Paul Jaffre - Senior Developer Experience Engineer\, sentry.io One Trace to Rule Them All: Unifying Sentry Errors with OpenTelemetry tracing SREs face the challenge of operating reliable observability infrastructure while avoiding vendor lock-in from proprietary APM (Application Performance Monitoring) solutions. OpenTelemetry has become the standard for instrumenting applications, allowing teams to collect traces, metrics, and logs. But raw telemetry data isn't enough. SREs need tools to visualize, debug, and respond to production incidents quickly. Sentry now supports OTLP, enabling teams to send OpenTelemetry data directly to Sentry for analysis. This talk covers how Sentry's OTLP support works in practice: connecting frontend and backend traces across services, correlating logs with distributed traces, and using tools to identify slow queries and performance bottlenecks. We'll discuss the practical benefits for SREs, like faster incident resolution, better cross-team debugging, and the flexibility to change observability backends without re-instrumenting code. Paul’s background spans engineering, product management, UX design, and open source. He has a soft spot for dev tools and loses sleep over making things easy to understand and use. Paul has a dynamic professional background, from strategy to stability. His time at Krossover Intelligence established a strong foundation by blending Product Management with hands-on development, and he later focused on core reliability at MakerBot, where he implemented automated end-to-end testing and drove performance improvements. He then extended this expertise in stability and scale at Cypress.io, where he served as a Developer Experience Engineer, focusing on improving workflow, contribution, and usability for their widely adopted open-source community.

Thiara Ortiz - Cloud Gaming SRE Manager\, Netflix Managing Black Box Systems SREs often face ambiguity when managing black box systems (LLMs, Games, Poorly Understood Dependencies). We will discuss how Netflix monitors service health as black boxes using multiple measurement techniques to understand system behavior, aligning with the need for robust observability tools. These strategies are crucial for system reliability and user experience. By proactively identifying and resolving issues, we ensure smoother playback experience and maintain user trust, even as the platform continues to evolve and gain maturity. The principles shared within this talk can be expanded to other applications such as AI reliability in data quality and model deployments.

Thiara has worked at some of the largest internet companies in the world, Meta and Netflix. During her time at Meta, Thiara found a passion for distributed systems and bringing new hardware into production. Always curious to explore new solutions to complex problems, Thiara developed Fleet Scanner, internally known as Lemonaid, to perform memory, compute, and storage benchmarks on each Meta server in production. This service runs on over 5 million servers and continues to be utilized at Meta. Since Meta, Thiara has been working at Netflix as a Senior CDN Reliability engineer, and now, Cloud Gaming SRE Manager. When incidents occur and Netflix's systems do not behave as expected, Thiara can be found working and engaging the necessary teams to remediate these issues.

Andrew Espira - Platform and Site Reliability Engineer\, Founding Engineer kustode ML-Powered Predictive SRE: Using Behavioral Signals to Prevent Cluster Inefficiencies Before They Impact Production SREs managing ML clusters often discover resource inefficiencies and queue bottlenecks only after they've impacted production services. This talk presents a machine learning approach to predict these issues before they occur, transforming SRE from reactive firefighting to proactive system optimization. We demonstrate how to build predictive models using production cluster traces that identify two critical failure modes: (1) GPU under-utilization relative to requested resources, and (2) abnormal queue wait times that indicate impending service degradation. The SRE practitioners will learn how to extract early warning indicators from standard cluster logs, build ML models that provide actionable confidence scores for operational decisions, and take practical steps to integrate predictive analytics into existing SRE toolchains to achieve 50%+ reduction in resource waste and queue-related incidents This talk bridges the gap between traditional SRE observability and modern predictive analytics, showing how teams can evolve from reactive monitoring to intelligent, forward-looking reliability engineering" Andrew has over 8 years of experience architecting and maintaining large-scale distributed systems. He is the Founding Engineer of Kustode (kustode.com), where he develops cutting-edge reliability and observability solutions for modern infrastructure in the Insurance and health care solutions space. Currently pursuing graduate studies in Data Science at Saint Peter's University, he specializes in the intersection of reliability engineering and artificial intelligence. His research focuses on applying machine learning to operational challenges, with publications in peer-reviewed venues including ScienceDirect. He's passionate about making complex systems more predictable and maintainable through data-driven approaches. When not optimizing cluster performance or building the next generation of observability tools, Andrew enjoys contributing to open-source projects and mentoring early-career engineers in the SRE community.

Our Tech Talks series are for professional development and networking: no recruiters, sales or press please! Google is committed to providing a harassment-free and inclusive conference experience for everyone, and all participants must follow our Event Community Guidelines. The event will be photographed and video recorded.

Event space is limited! A reservation is required to attend. Reserve your spot today and share the event details with your SRE/DevOps friends 🙂

Berlin Builder Circle #1

​ LLMs for Confidential Data

​🗓️ November 13 \| 6:00–8:30 PM

​APPLY TO JOIN - 15 SEATS ONLY - EVENT NOT CLOSED ( JOIN WAITLIST)

JOIN THE WAITLIST ON LUMA: https://luma.com/jnxr0dx8

​Builder Circles are small, invite-only sessions where experienced practitioners exchange hard-earned insights on building real systems. Each circle focuses on a single topic, bringing 20 experts together for honest, high-signal discussions no slides, no fluff, just depth. ​We’re trying something new beyond your typical meetup. ​This pilot session is an expert-led, peer-to-peer session for practitioners who’ve actually built or worked with systems involving LLMs and confidential data. ​No spectators. No vendor pitches. No Talks. Just a small group of people who know what they’re doing, getting together to compare notes, exchange ideas, and dig into what’s really working and what isn’t.

JOIN THE WAITLIST ON LUMA: https://luma.com/jnxr0dx8

​🧠 What to Expect ​We’ll kick off with a quick intro from the hosts, followed by a round-robin where every participant shares:

• ​What they’re working on
• ​The key challenges or open questions they have
• ​Anything interesting they’ve built, learned, or want feedback on

​Then we’ll move into a guided discussion around core questions — pre-collected from the group and refined live, based on the room’s interests. Expect deep dives, hard questions, and genuine insights — not conference talk fluff.

JOIN THE WAITLIST ON LUMA: https://luma.com/jnxr0dx8

​💡 Why This Exists ​Workshops are great , but they take time to prepare and often end up one-directional. ​This format is lighter, sharper, and way more valuable: ​A closed-door mastermind session where everyone contributes, learns, and leaves smarter. ​Only 20 people will be admitted. Not one more. ​If you’re actively working with LLMs and data privacy, this is your room. ​If you’re not , sit this one out.

JOIN THE WAITLIST ON LUMA: https://luma.com/jnxr0dx8

​⚙️ The Plan Going Forward ​This is the pilot session of a new event series. ​If it works, we’ll host one of these every one to three months — each focused on a specific frontier topic in machine learning, data, and AI systems. ​We’re building a community of builders who want to go beyond theory and talk about what’s actually happening in the field.

JOIN THE WAITLIST ON LUMA: https://luma.com/jnxr0dx8

​Hosted at the Rasa Office, with thanks to the Rasa team for opening their doors. ​🗓️ November 16 ​🕕 6:00 PM – 7:30/8:00 PM ​📍 Rasa HQ, Berlin

JOIN THE WAITLIST ON LUMA: https://luma.com/jnxr0dx8

Everyone's trying to make LLMs "accurate." But the real challenge isn't accuracy — it's context. We'll explore why traditional approaches like evals suites or synthetic question sets fall short, and how successful AI systems are built instead through compounding context over time. Hex enables a new workflow for conversational analytics that grows smarter with every interaction. With Hex's Notebook Agent and Threads, business users define the questions that matter while data teams refine, audit, and operationalize them into durable, trusted workflows. In this model, "tests" aren't written in isolation by data teams — they're defined by the business and operationalized through data workflows. The result is a living system of context — not a static set of prompts or tests — that evolves alongside your organization. Join us for a candid discussion on what's working in production AI systems, and get hands-on building context-aware analytical workflows in Hex!

🎄 Build & Learn: Christmas Special- "Agents & the Future of Work" This is our Fifth 7-week cycle. This cycle, instead of everyone building different projects, we’re diving deep together — into one of the most exciting frontiers in AI: Agentic Flow.

🤖 How can we make LLMs reason, plan, and act more like agents? 💰 How do we evaluate cost, performance, or collaboration between agents? 🧩 Which frameworks actually make this easier — LangChain, CrewAI, Autogen, or something new?

Week 1 — Kickoff: What is Agentic Flow?

• Short intro talk + demos of different agent frameworks (LangChain, CrewAI, Autogen, etc.)
• Everyone defines a subtopic or question to explore (e.g., cost tracking, evaluation, multi-agent orchestration).
• Set up environment and pick framework. *

🧭 Possible Individual Topic Ideas

• 📊 Cost Analysis: Track and visualize token usage across frameworks.
• ⚙️ Evaluation: Compare performance of 2 frameworks on the same multi-step task.
• 🧠 Reasoning Styles: Study how different agent setups approach problem-solving.
• 💬 Communication: Design multi-agent conversations for task delegation.
• 💼 Use Case Mini-Build: A practical agent (data summarizer, code reviewer, customer insight bot).

This 7-week themed cycle is about experimenting together — each of us exploring a small slice of the same big question, so we can learn faster by comparing notes.

✨ Who’s Hosting? I’m Lindsey, a senior data scientist working on AI, causal inference, and data products. I’ve built models for fraud detection, uplift modeling, and LLM applications.

📅 When? Saturday , Nov 1, 10:00 AM- 12:00 PM 📍 Where? : Wework Alexanderplatz

💻 Bring: Your laptop, an idea, or just curiosity! 👩‍💻 **No experience needed—just curiosity.**Grab a coffee, meet cool people, and work on something fun.

Important: Register on the event website to receive joining link. (rsvp on meetup will NOT receive joining link).

Description: Welcome to the AI virtual seminar series, in collaboration with Docker. Join us for deep dive tech talks on AI, GenAI, LLMs, Agentic AI, hands-on experiences on code labs, workshops, and networking with speakers & fellow developers from all over the world.

Tech Talk: Going beyond the chatbot with event-driven agents Speakers: Michael Irwin (Principal Engineer at Docker) Abstract: Agentic systems have the ability to use models and tools to perform many different types of tasks. However, many of them are launched by a user opening a browser tab to a chatbot and entering a prompt that then initiates the action. While that's still valid, it is quite limiting. What if we can go farther? In this talk, we're going to take a real-life scenario in which PRs are opened for training/workshop repos with completed work and create an agent that will analyze the PRs to determine if it can be automatically closed. To automate the process, we'll connect the agent to GitHub webhooks. We'll walk through the steps - from model and tool selection to writing the code to final packaging. You'll be introduced to some of Docker's tooling, including the Docker Model Runner and MCP Gateway. Regardless if you're new or seasoned to AI development, there will be something for everyone!

More upcoming sessions:

• Oct 15th: AI DevTalks Live with Google Cloud - Ep 3
• Oct 28th: AI Webinar with Oracle (Ep 10) - Implementing AI Vector Search

Local and Global AI Community on Discord Join us on discord for local and global AI tech community:

• Events chat: chat and connect with speakers and global and local attendees;
• Learning AI: events, learning materials, study groups;
• Startups: innovation, projects collaborations, founders/co-founders;
• Jobs and Careers: job openings, post resumes, hiring managers *

Important: Register on the event website to receive joining link. (rsvp on meetup will NOT receive joining link).

Description: Welcome to the AI virtual seminar series, in collaboration with Docker. Join us for deep dive tech talks on AI, GenAI, LLMs, Agentic AI, hands-on experiences on code labs, workshops, and networking with speakers & fellow developers from all over the world.

Tech Talk: Going beyond the chatbot with event-driven agents Speakers: Michael Irwin (Principal Engineer at Docker) Abstract: Agentic systems have the ability to use models and tools to perform many different types of tasks. However, many of them are launched by a user opening a browser tab to a chatbot and entering a prompt that then initiates the action. While that's still valid, it is quite limiting. What if we can go farther? In this talk, we're going to take a real-life scenario in which PRs are opened for training/workshop repos with completed work and create an agent that will analyze the PRs to determine if it can be automatically closed. To automate the process, we'll connect the agent to GitHub webhooks. We'll walk through the steps - from model and tool selection to writing the code to final packaging. You'll be introduced to some of Docker's tooling, including the Docker Model Runner and MCP Gateway. Regardless if you're new or seasoned to AI development, there will be something for everyone!

More upcoming sessions:

• Oct 15th: AI DevTalks Live with Google Cloud - Ep 3
• Oct 28th: AI Webinar with Oracle (Ep 10) - Implementing AI Vector Search

Local and Global AI Community on Discord Join us on discord for local and global AI tech community:

• Events chat: chat and connect with speakers and global and local attendees;
• Learning AI: events, learning materials, study groups;
• Startups: innovation, projects collaborations, founders/co-founders;
• Jobs and Careers: job openings, post resumes, hiring managers *

Important: Register on the event website to receive joining link. (rsvp on meetup will NOT receive joining link).

Description: Welcome to the AI virtual seminar series, in collaboration with Docker. Join us for deep dive tech talks on AI, GenAI, LLMs, Agentic AI, hands-on experiences on code labs, workshops, and networking with speakers & fellow developers from all over the world.

Tech Talk: Going beyond the chatbot with event-driven agents Speakers: Michael Irwin (Principal Engineer at Docker) Abstract: Agentic systems have the ability to use models and tools to perform many different types of tasks. However, many of them are launched by a user opening a browser tab to a chatbot and entering a prompt that then initiates the action. While that's still valid, it is quite limiting. What if we can go farther? In this talk, we're going to take a real-life scenario in which PRs are opened for training/workshop repos with completed work and create an agent that will analyze the PRs to determine if it can be automatically closed. To automate the process, we'll connect the agent to GitHub webhooks. We'll walk through the steps - from model and tool selection to writing the code to final packaging. You'll be introduced to some of Docker's tooling, including the Docker Model Runner and MCP Gateway. Regardless if you're new or seasoned to AI development, there will be something for everyone!

More upcoming sessions:

• Oct 15th: AI DevTalks Live with Google Cloud - Ep 3
• Oct 28th: AI Webinar with Oracle (Ep 10) - Implementing AI Vector Search

Local and Global AI Community on Discord Join us on discord for local and global AI tech community:

• Events chat: chat and connect with speakers and global and local attendees;
• Learning AI: events, learning materials, study groups;
• Startups: innovation, projects collaborations, founders/co-founders;
• Jobs and Careers: job openings, post resumes, hiring managers *

Important: Register on the event website to receive joining link. (rsvp on meetup will NOT receive joining link). If you can't make to the live session, still register to receive the recordings/credits.

Description: Welcome to the AI virtual seminar series, in collaboration with Docker. Join us for deep dive tech talks on AI, GenAI, LLMs, Agentic AI, hands-on experiences on code labs, workshops, and networking with speakers & fellow developers from all over the world.

Tech Talk: Going beyond the chatbot with event-driven agents Speakers: Michael Irwin (Principal Engineer at Docker) Abstract: Agentic systems have the ability to use models and tools to perform many different types of tasks. However, many of them are launched by a user opening a browser tab to a chatbot and entering a prompt that then initiates the action. While that's still valid, it is quite limiting. What if we can go farther? In this talk, we're going to take a real-life scenario in which PRs are opened for training/workshop repos with completed work and create an agent that will analyze the PRs to determine if it can be automatically closed. To automate the process, we'll connect the agent to GitHub webhooks. We'll walk through the steps - from model and tool selection to writing the code to final packaging. You'll be introduced to some of Docker's tooling, including the Docker Model Runner and MCP Gateway. Regardless if you're new or seasoned to AI development, there will be something for everyone!

More upcoming sessions:

• Oct 28th: AI Webinar with Oracle (Ep 10) - Implementing AI Vector Search
• Nov 4th: NVIDIA FLARE Webinar 4 - Federated Learning from Industrial Perspectives

Important: Register on the event website to receive joining link. (rsvp on meetup will NOT receive joining link).

Description: Welcome to the AI virtual seminar series, in collaboration with Docker. Join us for deep dive tech talks on AI, GenAI, LLMs, Agentic AI, hands-on experiences on code labs, workshops, and networking with speakers & fellow developers from all over the world.

Tech Talk: Going beyond the chatbot with event-driven agents Speakers: Michael Irwin (Principal Engineer at Docker) Abstract: Agentic systems have the ability to use models and tools to perform many different types of tasks. However, many of them are launched by a user opening a browser tab to a chatbot and entering a prompt that then initiates the action. While that's still valid, it is quite limiting. What if we can go farther? In this talk, we're going to take a real-life scenario in which PRs are opened for training/workshop repos with completed work and create an agent that will analyze the PRs to determine if it can be automatically closed. To automate the process, we'll connect the agent to GitHub webhooks. We'll walk through the steps - from model and tool selection to writing the code to final packaging. You'll be introduced to some of Docker's tooling, including the Docker Model Runner and MCP Gateway. Regardless if you're new or seasoned to AI development, there will be something for everyone!

More upcoming sessions:

• Oct 15th: AI DevTalks Live with Google Cloud - Ep 3
• Oct 28th: AI Webinar with Oracle (Ep 10) - Implementing AI Vector Search

Local and Global AI Community on Discord Join us on discord for local and global AI tech community:

• Events chat: chat and connect with speakers and global and local attendees;
• Learning AI: events, learning materials, study groups;
• Startups: innovation, projects collaborations, founders/co-founders;
• Jobs and Careers: job openings, post resumes, hiring managers *

Data is one of the most valuable assets in any organisation, but accessing and analysing it has been limited to technical experts. Business users often rely on predefined dashboards and data teams to extract insights, creating bottlenecks and slowing decision-making.

This is changing with the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) and Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG). These technologies are redefining how organisations interact with data, allowing users to ask complex questions in natural language and receive accurate, real-time insights without needing deep technical expertise.

In this session, I’ll explore how LLMs and RAG are driving true data democratisation by making analytics accessible to everyone, enabling real-time insights with AI-powered search and retrieval and overcoming traditional barriers like SQL, BI tool complexity, and rigid reporting structures.

We will be hosting our September Meetup.

Thanks to Amazon for sponsoring us. Please note that you have to show sign up with your real name and show a Photo ID to the building security before entering the building. This is a requirement from the building security. If you are not ok with that, please do not sign up. You can not bring a +1, everyone needs to sign up. Please only sign up if you plan to come, we will keep notes.

Speakers: Divyendu Singh: How LLMs Help Us Manage PostgreSQL at Scale Marko Coha: Postgres in the Cloud

Additional information for Meetup attendees are available here: https://andreas.scherbaum.la/post/2025-05-05_attending-organizing-or-speaking-at-a-meetup/

How LLMs Help Us Manage PostgreSQL at Scale: The Xata Agent is an open-source AI PostgreSQL expert. It monitors Postgres clusters by analyzing metrics and logs, checking pg_stat_statements for slow queries, running EXPLAIN and interpreting the output. We have been using the Agent internally on a large fleet of production PostgreSQL clusters, and we have gathered valuable insights, including: - Comparing different models and providers and their benefits. - Combining cloud hosting observability data with Postgres tools. - The cost implications of using LLMs for database monitoring. - Testing the agent’s effectiveness in detecting performance regressions.

Postgres in the Cloud: This presentation provides a comprehensive overview of hosting PostgreSQL in the cloud, examining both strategic benefits and potential trade-offs. Attendees will first gain an understanding of the key reasons organizations choose cloud-based PostgreSQL deployments, including scalability, operational efficiency, and cost optimization. We will explore how cloud platforms can simplify database administration, accelerate time-to-market, and support dynamic workloads, while also enabling global accessibility and high availability.

Get ready for an exciting PyData Glasgow meetup this July! 🌟 This month, we’re exploring the fascinating world of Large Language Models (LLMs) — how they’re reshaping data workflows, and how everyone, including non-engineers, can play a role in advancing these powerful systems. Here’s what to expect: 🔹 Using LLMs to Power Exploratory Data Analysis Speaker: Toluwaleke O. Discover how LLMs can revolutionize the way we explore and interpret data, making analysis faster, easier, and more intuitive. 🔹 Contributing to LLM Systems as a Non-Engineer: The Human Side of AI Speaker: Nwaamaka Iduwe, MSc. Peek into the essential contributions non-engineers can make to LLM systems, and why diverse skills are critical in AI development. 📅 Date: 11th July, 2025 🕔 Time: 5:00 PM GMT 📍 Location: Online via Zoom

Wednesday 9th July for our next meetup. Let's talk about open source cybersecurity tools and how to make your open source project more secure!

6:30 pm: Arrive on time, grab a bev, a slice and a chat. Scope out our swag table (bring pieces to contribute or trade!) 6:50 pm: Welcome, code of conduct and warmup!

7:00 pm: Security, Privacy and Authenticity, by Daniel Appelquist 7:20 pm: Securing Agentic: Evolution of Security Posture, by Sal Kimmich 7:40 pm: Using LLMs to discover malware and undisclosed vulnerabilities in OS tools, by Oliver Taylor of Aikido Security. A presentation about a multi-year research project that culminated in better open source security (and open source intel) 8:00pm: NPM Imposters Game, a fast, team-based game where players must spot malicious NPM packages hiding in plain sight. A game for in-person attendees only

8:45 pm: Clean up and leave.

We are skipping August for the meetup so see you 17 September to talk how to market your open source project!

This remains an interactive Hybrid event, however, the meetup invites are split up and RSVPs for in-person are opened three weeks out. Please only sign up for this event if you can definitely attend in person. We welcome everyone to signup for the online version even as a save the date!

Please remember to bring your I.D. if you are attending in person, as it is required to access the venue. Note the venue does not permit e-scooters or bicycles within the building. Thank you to our sponsors Avanade for providing this great space and yummy pizza!

The link for the online version of this event will be added about a week before, so please check back.

By attending this or any OpenUK event, you are adhering to our Code of Respect and OpenUK's Competition Policy. Please read ahead.

If you would like to hear more about OpenUK's other events, you can join our Newsletter. After attending, look out for an email with an invite to our burgeoning Slack community as a way to keep in touch and support each other between activities.

This event will be online on YouTube and in-person. The speaker and live stream starts at 7:30 pm ET. In-person attendees may arrive as early as 7 pm ET.

Important note Google Maps currently incorrectly pins the location around the corner on Crosby Street. The entrance is not on Crosby. The entrance is on Spring Street, inside the Marc Jacobs International building. It is roughly halfway between Crosby and Lafayette, almost directly across Spring Street from the Chipotle restaurant.

Description From inaccessible PDFs to fragmented mobile platforms, digital accessibility today feels like navigating a labyrinth. In this dual-perspective session, Jason Tan and Michael Bervell explore the thorniest challenges in both mobile and web accessibility -- and how emerging AI techniques, automation strategies, and platform shifts are changing what’s possible.

They begin with mobile: an arena full of friction, from the lack of concrete native accessibility standards to tooling fragmentation across iOS, Android, React Native, and Flutter. Through mythological analogies and practical examples, we’ll unpack what makes mobile accessibility so uniquely hard -- and what an ideal tooling ecosystem might look like.

Then they transition to the web, where AI is making significant strides. They'll show how LLMs and human-in-the-loop design are already streamlining accessibility tasks like alt text generation, PDF remediation, and context-aware WCAG compliance. Along the way, we’ll share insights from cutting-edge studies on how AI boosts productivity, reduces burnout, and supports non-experts in making meaningful contributions to accessibility.

You will leave with:

• A deep understanding of the “Four Horsemen” of mobile accessibility complexity.
• A sense of what’s newly possible (and not yet possible) in AI-assisted accessibility workflows.
• Tangible practices for integrating automation and assistive AI into your own dev or audit workflows.

This session is for accessibility professionals, developers, and tech leads who want to level up their impact -- and have a little fun doing it.

Bring your questions. Bring your war stories. Join us for a deeply technical (and hopefully mythically entertaining) exploration into what’s next for digital accessibility -- on both mobile and web.

Presenter bios Jason Tan is the co-founder and CTO of TestParty, a startup automating digital accessibility testing across platforms. Jason studied Computer Science, Economics, and Latin at Princeton, and previously worked as an iOS engineer at Twitch, where he encountered accessibility challenges during a live lawsuit.

At TestParty, he brings a uniquely technical and humanistic lens to mobile and web accessibility. Jason is passionate about building developer-first tools that don't just detect problems -- but help fix them.

Michael Bervell is the CEO and co-founder of TestParty, an AI-powered digital accessibility platform that automates WCAG remediation across web and mobile. He previously consulted on accessibility for Google and the United Nations and was awarded an NSF SBIR grant for advancing automated compliance technologies.

A published author and Harvard graduate, Michael's work sits at the intersection of AI, education, and inclusion. He’s passionate about building tools that make the internet equitable for everyone.

Accessibility The presentation will have human captions [CC], not automatic captions. There will be an ASL interpreter.

For Aira Visual Interpreter access for the Blind and Low Vision community, download the Aira Explorer app on the Apple App Store or Google Play. For access in the physical space, the A11yNYC geofence should apply automatically.

To access the online webinar for audio description, use the A11yNYC Access Offer to call, or simply inform your Visual Interpreter that you'd like that offer applied when you connect.

Please let us know about any other accessibility requirements two weeks before the event.

Livestream View on YouTube

Provided by Internet Society Accessibility SIG.

Location details The event is on the 4th floor. Everyone must be accompanied to the event on the 4th floor. Because everyone needs to be escorted, please arrive early or on time. When you enter the ground floor, a representative from A11yNYC will be there to provide elevator access. Attendees can enter on the third floor and go up the staircase, or request accommodation to go directly to the 4th floor. Thanks to Ben Ogilvie for making this possible! Let us know if you're coming! The building is near several transit stops: 6 train

• Spring Street (non-accessible stop): 100 feet
• Canal Street (accessible stop): 0.4 miles

NQRW trains

• Prince Street (non-accessible stop): 0.2 miles
• Canal Street (accessible stop): 0.3 miles

M1 / M55 Bus lines

• Broadway/Spring Street stop: 500 feet

Cabs and rideshares can let passengers out right near the building entrance

Accreditation All A11yNYC meetups are pre-approved for IAAP Continuing Accessibility Education Credits (CAEC).

Sponsors Thanks to AKQA, Deque, Evinced, Equal Entry, and Fable for sponsoring. Want to be a sponsor? Contact [email protected]

Go beyond the user interface and explore the cutting-edge technology driving AI/BI Genie. This session breaks down the AI/BI Genie architecture, showcasing how LLMs, retrieval-augmented generation (RAG) and finely tuned knowledge bases work together to deliver fast, accurate responses. We’ll also explore how AI agents orchestrate workflows, optimize query performance and continuously refine their understanding. Ideal for those who want to geek out about the tech stack behind Genie, this session offers a rare look at the magic under the hood.

Welcome to the PyData Berlin May meetup!

We would like to welcome you all starting from 18:45. There will be food and drinks. The talks begin around 19.30 and the doors will close at 19:30. 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: Ecosia is excited to welcome you to this month's version of PyData.

Entrance is in Hof 4 - there will be signs - then up to the 3rd floor of the building.

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The Lineup for the evening

Talk 1: Specializing Small Language Models With Less Data Abstract: I will present a practical, end-to-end solution for training SLMs using synthetic data, covering key aspects from data curation through training to model evaluation. You will leave with concrete strategies for building efficient, domain-specific language models for production environments. Most AI teams are exploring the possibilities of LLMs rather than being focused on margins, but soon, efficiency will become important. Small, specialized language models (SLMs) offer a promising alternative, but training them requires extensive manually-labeled datasets - a significant engineering bottleneck. In this talk, I will discuss how large language models can be used to help generate and curate the data needed for SLM training. Using extractive question answering as a case study, We'll examine how this approach can dramatically reduce data collection time while maintaining model performance.

Speaker: Jacek Golebiowski Bio: Jacek is the CTO of distil labs, building specialised AI agents that can be deployed on-device/on-prem with minimal data. Before that, he was a machine learning team lead at AWS, focused on Automated ML and natural language processing. He holds a PhD in Machine Learning for Quantum Mechanics from Imperial College London.

--- Talk 2: Exploring fairlearn and practical strategies for assessing and mitigating harm in AI systems Abstract: As AI becomes a more significant part of our everyday lives, ensuring these systems are fair is more important than ever. In this session, we’ll discuss how to define fairness and the potential harms our algorithms can have on people and society. We'll introduce fairlearn, a community-driven, open-source project that offers practical tools for assessing and mitigating harm in AI systems. We’ll also explore how to discuss bias, different types of harm, the idea of group fairness and how they all relate to fairlearn's toolkit. To make it all concrete, we’ll walk through a real-world example of assessing fairness and share some hands-on strategies you can use to mitigate harm in your own ML projects.

Speaker: Tamara Atanasoska Bio: Tamara is a software engineer, OSS contributor and maintainer and NLP researcher.

--- Lightning talks There will be slots for 2-3 Lightning Talks (3-5 Minutes for each). Kindly let us know if you would like to present something at the start of the meetup :)

*** 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 ***

Join PyData Boston for a night of in-person networking and expert speakers! NOTE: RSVP is REQUIRED to attend 6:30-7:00 - Networking 7:00-7:45 - Shereen Bellamy (IBM) - Granite LLM Model workshop 7:45-8:15 - Break + Networking 8:15-9:00 - Hack session - Exploring Granite model workflows 9:00-9:30 - Wrap up

Speaker: Shereen Bellamy (Developer Advocate, IBM) Hack session: Organize into groups and work on projects using Granite LLMs (with help from organizers!)

Please fill out the registration form, this will make signing in to the Moderna office much faster. Everyone will get a card with their name + company on it! 🏠 Venue provided by Moderna 🍕 Pizza provided by IBM This, and all NumFOCUS-affiliated events and spaces, both in-person and online are governed by a Code of Conduct. More at https://pydata.org/code-of-conduct/ This event will not be recorded or streamed. ⚡⚡Speak at PyData! ⚡⚡ We are always looking for speakers! Sign up here and we'll be in touch: https://forms.gle/kfFZ5hiqA9W57Ewg7 ⚡⚡Sponsor an event! ⚡⚡ PyData events are totally free and open to all! We have a broad reach to tech professionals of all kinds. We're always looking for sponsors and hosts for our events. Please get in touch if you're interested in supporting the community: [email protected]

On 2025-04-17, we will have 3 amazing speakers to share with you how AI can help you solve problems you may have. And thank you very much to Google Berlin for hosting us this time. Reserve your seats now and see you very soon!

Agenda

5:30 PM: Doors open, Registration, Dinner and Drinks

6:30 PM: Build with Gemini – Learn about Gemini's multimodal and agentic capabilities" + Q&A by Patrick Löber

Gemini 2.0 and 2.5 are the latest foundational models released by Google DeepMind, offering multimodal understanding, realtime interactions, text-to-image generations, thinking, and tool support for agentic use cases. In this talk you'll get an overview of Gemini's capabilities, learn about prototyping with Google AI Studio, and how to build with Gemini models.

7:00 PM: "Applied NLP in the Age of Generative" + Q&A by Ines Montani

Large Language Models (LLMs) and in-context learning have introduced a new paradigm for developing natural language understanding systems: prompts are all you need! Prototyping has never been easier, but not all prototypes give a smooth path to production. In this talk, titled "Reality is Not an End-to-End Prediction Problem: Applied NLP in the Age of Generative AI," I'll share the most important lessons we've learned from solving real-world information extraction problems in industry and show you a new approach and mindset for designing robust and modular NLP pipelines in the age of Generative AI.

7:50 PM: Break

8:00 PM: AI Engineering for Everyone + Q&A by Tejas Kumar

This talk dives deep into the landscape of AI in 2025 with a focus on agents and extending the capabilities of language models through Model Context Protocol (MCP). After this talk, the audience will have a holistic understanding of AI for 2025 and will be able to build real-world solutions with them.

8:50 PM: Drinks and Networking

Speakers

Patrick Löber - Google DeepMind (Developer Relationships Engineer)

Ines Montani - Explosion (CEO & Founder)

Ines is a software developer working on Artificial Intelligence and Natural Language Processing technologies, and the co-founder and CEO of Explosion (https://explosion.ai/) https://bsky.app/profile/inesmon…

Tejas Kumar - DataStax (Developer Relations Engineer)

Tejas Kumar is an international keynote speaker, best selling author, and host of the developer-loved ConTejas Code podcast with an engineering background spanning 23 years, from design to frontend to backend to devops. Today, Tejas shares talks at large with developer communities worldwide, equipping them to do their best work.

Hosted By

Alex Mir, GDG Organizer

GDG Berlin co-lead and Software Engineer

Emy Jamalian, QA engineer

I am a girl, a middle eastern, a European residence, an extra extroverted, a believer in making things work, a fighter for fairness, a motivator.

Jerome Mouton, Organizer

Louis Tsai, GDG Organizer

manjula dube, Organizer

I am Software Engineer & teacher. I'm a world renowned tech speaker.I am from India currently living in Berlin with my husband Sahil Mhapsekar.

I work at The Vanguard Group Europe. I am Founder of Geekabyte that aims to deliver in person tech workshops on Web Development & organises international conferences, React India & JS Conf India. I'm also a Google Developer Expert. I have been obsessed with coding ever since I graduated out of college.

I am founding member of Mumbai Women Coders that aims to encourage more women in tech & provide an avenue into the technology world. I love contributing to open source in my free time. I love Javascript, React & my family ❤️ In coming years I see my self teaching people to code.

Shrinish Donde,

Passionate about telecom and sports. Likes to be in organising and networking.

Mohamed Islem Ayari, Junior cloud Developper

Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-berlin-presents-using-ai-to-help-solve-problems-both-big-and-small/.

Heya everyone,

We're excited to announce the next PyData Lisbon Meetup is happening next week! We're going back to our beautiful venue in Idea Spaces São Sebastião and we're sponsored by our great friends at Noxus. As usual, we'll have two presentations followed by pizza, drinks, and networking. Check the details below 👇

UV Got to Be Kidding: Making Dependency Management Fun Again - Vitor Manita (Loka) Explore UV, the new Python dependency management tool that's revolutionizing project setups. In this session, we'll cover UV's meteoric rise over the past year, comparing its performance with popular tools like Poetry, and demonstrate how it addresses common developer pain points. Through practical demonstrations, you'll learn how UV optimizes workflow speed and simplifies dependency handling. Whether you're a seasoned Python developer or just getting started, you'll walk away with practical insights and best practices for integrating UV into your projects.

After the Hype, there’s Production: using AI Workflows Agents, and Agentic Workflows - Jorge Pessoa (Noxus) In the rapidly evolving world of AI, there's a constant barrage of new approaches and techniques, each promising to revolutionize the way we build intelligence. One of the key applications of LLMs is the potential to automate laborious and ever-more complex tasks. With a new wave of agents flooding the conversation, it raises a lot of questions: what are the challenges of deploying these systems in production? How do they compare to established automation structures like workflows? Do workflows have a place in the age of the agent, or are they destined to become legacy systems? This presentation goes beyond the hype and delves into the difficulties of actually shipping AI solutions in at-scale production use cases. We'll explore the pros and cons of agents and AI workflows, when to use them, and offer implementation suggestions and frameworks to consider.

Program: 18:00 - 18:30: Walk-in 18:30 - 19:15: “UV Got to Be Kidding” by Vitor Manita 19:15 - 19:30: Quick Break 19:30 - 20:30: “After the Hype, there’s Production” by Jorge Pessoa 20:30 Onwards: Networking, Pizza and Drinks

Looking forward to seeing you, Telmo @ Loka