Software Engineering Events in Birmingham

We organise friendly informal networking events for people in Tech to share ideas, learn from each other, and make new connections.

Who are the events for?
People working in tech who want to connect with others in the Birmingham tech community, including:

• Software engineers
• Product managers
• Data / AI professionals
• Startup founders & operators

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🍕 Action Required: get 20% off food & drinks 🍹

To attend, please become a member at OkGather for only £2.99 p/m (only takes 1 minute to join) and you will also get 20% off food & drinks at the gathering (show your OkGather profile at the bar). This small membership fee means we can keep running the gatherings, cover our costs and help more people meet new people! 🥳

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You’ll meet people who are:

• Working in software engineering, product, data, AI, or startups
• Building projects, products, or growing their careers in tech

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Why should you join?

• Learn from others working in tech
• Expand your network to help your career
• It could lead to collaborations or new opportunities
• It’s a lot of fun!

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✨ How it works
1. Get your ticket

2. Become a member at OkGather to attend:

https://okgather.com/theme/birmingham-tech-network-btn?src=btn&platform=eventbrite&placement=event_description_how_works

Arrive at the venue:

• Grab a drink, find the group, and settle in
• Ask the bar staff for the "Birmingham Tech Network" table booking
• Expect a friendly, welcoming group and a great atmosphere 👋

Have better conversations

• You’ll be surrounded by people interested in tech and building things
• Discussions are naturally more engaging and relevant 🤝

Build connections + opportunities

• Meet people you can stay in touch with
• Learn from others in the space
• Potentially collaborate on projects or opportunities ⚡

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📍 Location
We host events at relaxed venues in central Birmingham:

• Easy to get to locations
• Pubs or bars with a good atmosphere
• Spaces that are ideal for conversation 🍻

Spots are limited to keep the group high quality.

If you work in tech and want to meet others in your space, you’ll get a lot from this 👋

What Even Is .NET Aspire? A Practical Tour from Local Dev to Real Systems

.NET Aspire has been getting a lot of attention in the .NET world, but it is not always obvious what it actually is, when you would use it, or how it fits into a real application.

In this talk, I’ll give a practical introduction to Aspire for developers who have heard the name but have not yet had a clear mental model for it. We’ll look at the problems it tries to solve, including local orchestration, service discovery, configuration, observability, integrations, and the Aspire dashboard.

There will be a small demo showing how Aspire can bring together a web app, API, database, cache, and telemetry into one understandable development experience. I’ll also share some lessons from using Aspire in larger real-world projects, and touch on other use cases beyond my own experience.

This talk is aimed at a mixed audience: no prior Aspire experience required.

Agenda:
18:30 Arrive, Network and Food.
18:45 Introductions and catch-up.
19:00 Talk
20:30 Close and head off to pub (The Good Intent?) for some more talking.

Our next in-person meeting of the year will take place on Thursday 17th September 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.

Agenda

Presentation 1 : Architecting multi agent solutions - Varsha Mahesh

This session explores how Copilot Studio enables intelligent, purpose‑built agents, and how to combine them to create coordinated, resilient, and scalable multi‑agent systems inside your organisation.
Copilot Cookbook: From Low-Code to Custom Engine Agents - Join us as we start with the low-code ways to build agents, then work our way up step by step until we’re cooking up fully custom agents from scratch. Copilot Studio vs Agents Toolkit - Comparing M365 Agents Toolkit and Copilot Studio and understanding how they enable multi agent solutions.

Presentation 2 : Copilot City: Agents, Anarchy & the Law - Emma-Claire Shaw & Keith Atherton

Agents are opening doors faster than most organisations can keep up with. With a few clicks, anyone can spin up an agent that talks to customers, processes data, or interacts with internal systems and that speed is both the opportunity and the risk. In this session, we’ll follow two familiar characters you’ve probably met in your own organisation:

Keith – a renegade Copilot Studio builder. He moves fast, breaks things, and spins up agents quickly to solve real problems but at what cost?

Guardrails? “Suggestions.” Best practices? “Optional.” If there’s a limit, Keith has already found a way around it.

Emma – the uncompromising force of Copilot governance. Badge, rulebook, and risk register in hand, she’s here to protect the organisation from data leaks, compliance nightmares, and AI agents that have gone completely off the rails.

We’ll use them to explore the real tension many organisations face right now: balancing creativity and innovation with security, oversight, and responsible use of AI agents living in your very own Copilot city.

This session is grounded in real-world experience from working with organisations who are trying to get Copilot Studio implementation right – not by slowing people down, but by putting the right conversations, boundaries, and support structures in place.

By the end, you’ll have a clearer picture of how to encourage responsible innovation, keep things on track, and avoid turning your AI rollout into a firefight.

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.

Join us for Service Mesh Night Birmingham, an evening dedicated to Service Mesh, Kubernetes networking, security, observability, traffic management, and real-world cloud native engineering.
Service Mesh has become an important part of modern cloud native platforms, helping teams manage secure service-to-service communication, traffic routing, workload identity, reliability, and observability across Kubernetes and distributed environments.

This meetup is for Platform Engineers, DevOps Engineers, SREs, Cloud Engineers, Kubernetes Engineers, Developers, Architects, students, and anyone interested in learning how Service Mesh technologies are being used in real-world environments.
Expect practical talks, community discussions, lessons from production implementations, and plenty of opportunities to connect with engineers from the Birmingham and West Midlands cloud native community.
Whether you are already working with technologies such as Linkerd, Istio, Envoy, Consul Service Mesh, or just beginning to explore Service Mesh, this session will help you understand the concepts, use cases, challenges, and how Service Mesh fits into modern cloud native platforms.

What to Expect
Real-world Service Mesh talks and demonstrations
Kubernetes networking and service-to-service communication
mTLS, workload identity, and zero-trust security
Traffic management, routing, and reliability
Observability and troubleshooting
Lessons learned from production environments
Networking with local engineers and community members
Food, drinks, and community conversations

Agenda
17:30 – Doors Open, Networking, Food & Drinks
Welcome attendees and allow time for informal networking.
18:15 – Welcome & Introductions
Introduction to Cloud Native Birmingham, Service Mesh Night, speakers, sponsors, and the evening agenda.
18:30 – Talk 1: Speaker 1
Session details will be announced soon.
19:15 – Short Break
Networking and refreshments.
19:30 – Talk 2: Speaker 2
Session details will be announced soon.
20:15 – Community Q&A and Open Discussion
Interactive discussion with speakers and attendees around Service Mesh, Kubernetes networking, security, observability, and real-world implementation challenges.
20:30 – Networking Continues
Continue conversations with speakers, sponsors, and community members.
21:30 – Close
Speakers

🎤 Speakers will be announced soon.

Stay tuned for speaker and session announcements.

Who Should Attend
This event is ideal for Platform Engineers, DevOps Engineers, SREs, Cloud Engineers, Kubernetes Engineers, Developers, Security Engineers, Network Engineers, Architects, students, beginners, and anyone interested in cloud native technologies and Service Mesh.

Come and join us for an evening of learning, sharing, and networking with the Birmingham cloud native community.

Let’s explore how Service Mesh is helping teams build secure, observable, and reliable cloud native platforms together.

Register here: https://ocgroups.dev/cncf/group/982yqj6/event/9gmejqy

A quarterly lunch for tech Founders based in the Midlands. A Place to build your network of peers, share ideas and learn.

Welcome to the Tech Founders Lunch Club

We’re a quarterly gathering of tech-focused founders, coming together to share pain points, celebrate successes, and connect with others who truly understand the journey you’re on.

Growing a business is tough- but the right network can make all the difference. That’s exactly why we’re here.

Who’s it for?
We’re a community built around technology. If your business has tech at its core, you’ll be warmly welcomed. Whether you’re scaling your first startup, navigating life post-exit, or building your next big idea, you’ll find value in our informal, supportive lunches.

Join us to learn, share, and grow alongside like-minded founders in Birmingham.