Software Engineering Events in Birmingham

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May 2026 - in-person event hosted by Accenture

We are very excited to be back with our first event in 2026 kindly hosted by Accenture!

Please confirm your attendance and answer our question on whether you are a current Accenture employee with site access

RSVPs now open, closing 11/04 at 10am

PLEASE DO NOT GO TO THE OLD ACCENTURE OFFICE. SEE DETAILS OF NEW OFFICE IN EVENT LOCATION PANE.

It's an opportunity to connect with entrepreneurs, researchers, people in academia, students, engineers, AI enthusiasts, and curious individuals. So bring your friends and co-workers!

Event overview:
This session will include:

• Ekip Kalir, Full Stack Engineering Specialist @ Accenture - "Your AI Dev Partner in the Terminal: Claude Code, Skills & Cowork for everyday dev work”
• Discussion with the audience facilitated by Dr Anandhi Vivek Dhukaram, co-organiser at BrumAI, on topic ''The biggest challenges people encountered with AI last year"
• Networking with like-minded individuals

Agenda
5:30 pm - 6:00 pm Arrival & Refreshments
6:00 pm - 6:30 pm Talk by Ekip Kalir, Accenture
6:30 pm - 7:00 pm Discussion led by Dr Anandhi Vivek Dhukaram
7:00 pm - 7:30 pm Networking & Close

Speaker Bios
Ekip Kalir
Full Stack Engineering Specialist @ Accenture will present the main talk "Your AI Dev Partner in the Terminal: Claude Code, Skills & Cowork for everyday dev work”
Follow Me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/ekip-kalir-428b02177

Dr Anandhi Vivek Dhukaram
As a seasoned professional with over 20 years of experience in research, technology, and global business, with a PhD in cognitive systems engineering, Dr Anandhi specialises in driving human-centric responsible AI cultures across industries.
Throughout her career, she has witnessed firsthand the transformative power of artificial intelligence (AI) when harnessed responsibly. Her mission is to bridge the gap between AI technology and organisational readiness, ensuring businesses of all sizes can seize the opportunities and leverage AI effectively.
Through tailored AI literacy programs and as an EU AI Act compliance strategist, she aims to equip teams with the critical thinking and technical proficiency necessary to navigate the regulatory complexities of AI confidently.
Personal Page: https://anandhiv.com
Follow Me on LinkedIn: linkedin.com/in/anandhi-vivek-dhukaram
Founder of Esdha: www.esdha.com

Online streaming - none
In-person event, registration only, we are really sorry, we will see if we can do something in future.

Capacity
In-person spaces are restricted, please only book if you can attend!
It will feel really good to have a full room so please don't reserve a seat unless you are coming, the event is in-person.
Please let the organisers know or cancel on meetup if you can no longer attend.

Hosted by
We are very grateful for the opportunity to be hosted by Accenture, Birmingham
https://www.linkedin.com/company/accenture-uk-ireland/
https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/careers
https://www.accenture.com/gb-en/about/company-index

Please feel free to connect with our hosts:
Tejas Kunjapur, Delivery Manager - DevOps Lead, and AI Community Lead
https://www.linkedin.com/in/tejaskunjapur/

Annam Khan, Technology Delivery Lead Senior Consultant https://www.linkedin.com/in/annam-k-36036033/

Accenture is a leading solutions and services company that helps the world’s leading enterprises reinvent by building their digital core and unleashing the power of AI to create value at speed across the enterprise, bringing together the talent of our approximately 784,000 people, our proprietary assets and platforms, and deep ecosystem relationships.
Our strategy is to be the reinvention partner of choice for our clients and to be the most client-focused, AI-enabled, great place to work in the world. Through our Reinvention Services we bring together our capabilities across strategy, consulting, technology, operations, Song and Industry X with our deep industry expertise to create and deliver solutions and services for our clients.
Our purpose is to deliver on the promise of technology and human ingenuity, and we measure our success by the 360° value we create for all our stakeholders. Visit us at accenture.com

PLEASE DO NOT GO TO THE OLD ACCENTURE OFFICE. SEE DETAILS OF NEW OFFICE IN EVENT LOCATION PANE.

Our next in-person meeting of the year will take place on Thursday 14th May 2026 from 18:30 at the Wesleyan Building. Parking is available close by at the B4 Car Park or it’s a short walk from any city centre train station.

Presentation 1: Using the Right Tool: Building Reusable Validation Without Over-Engineering (Speaker: John Andrews)
This session walks through a real problem that needed field-level regex validation in Model-Driven Apps, including patterns, custom error messages, and consistency across forms. Whilst looking for projects that would need a PCF, the journey led back to plain JavaScript as the most appropriate tool: lightweight, repeatable, and easy for teams to adopt without additional framework knowledge. The session covers designing a reusable validator that takes JSON configuration, attaches specific RegEx checks to fields, and provides clear messaging to users. We’ll look at the journey of evaluating options, deciding when not to introduce PCF, and how the solution aligns with DRY principles, portability, and team skills. Attendees will see the design, implementation, usage patterns, and how this approach reduces maintenance across multiple forms and environments.

Presentation 2: From Bottleneck to Empowerment: Building Intelligent Copilot Agents in Dynamics 365 (Speaker: Josh Kility)
In regulated environments, speed and accuracy aren't optional — they're essential. But when specialist knowledge sits with just a handful of people, that's not just an inefficiency, it's a risk.

In this session, I'll share my real-world experience building a Microsoft Copilot Agent integrated with Dynamics 365, empowering support team members to confidently handle enforcement, registration, and timeline management workflows using purpose-built Agent Flows. I'll cover the design decisions, the challenges, and how shifting knowledge into an agent-driven experience has reduced key-person dependency while improving the speed and accuracy of support delivered to end users.

We strongly encourage you to arrive early to meet other user group members. We will be providing food and refreshments and you are welcome to stay afterwards for a chat!
We are always looking for people passionate about Dynamics 365 and the Power Platform to present at our events. If you would like to speak at any of our future events please register here.