Software Engineering Events in Cardiff

Laravel Wales brings together Laravel developers and the wider developer community from Cardiff and beyond to learn, connect, and share ideas.

Speaker 1: Stephen McDougall - Waiting is a Feature: Modelling processes that stop, in Laravel

Order #4471 took 54 hours and 21 minutes to fulfil. It spent 0.89 seconds actually executing. Everything else was waiting - on a person, on a payment provider, on a courier, on a date.

Frameworks, queues and tutorials are all built around making things run. So we model the running carefully, and we model the waiting with a `status` column.

This talk pulls that column apart. We'll look at the state machines you've already written and the five ways they fail, separate the four kinds of waiting that shouldn't share a field, and ask what Laravel would look like if waiting were first-class. Then the parts that will bite you: webhooks that arrive before you commit, steps that run twice, deploying mid-flight, and compensation that fails on its own.

Speaker 2: TBA

Whether you work with Laravel every day, are curious about software architecture, or just enjoy chatting about building for the web, Laravel Wales is a welcoming space to meet people, swap ideas, and be part of the local developer community.

Join us for a community driven, relaxed evening, of talks and networking!

Talks

• "Ghosts of Umbraco Past: Coding Practices to Lay to Rest in 2027"
  by Joe Glombek - Senior .NET Developer, Umbraco MVP
  "Some ideas just outlive their usefulness. A pattern that made sense when you learned it (recommended in a blog post, baked into a starter kit, or simply "how it's done") can quietly become the wrong choice once the platform moves on; it doesn't matter whether your project is brand new or years old.
  This talk takes a tour through Umbraco habits that are still common today but no longer serve us as well as they used to. We'll look at performance patterns that made sense before the underlying behaviour changed, content architecture that seems developer-friendly but frustrates editors, and technical choices - from redirects to front-end bundling - that had good reasons once and better alternatives now.
  Expect a technical, practical session with real code and real config. You'll leave with a checklist of ideas worth reconsidering, a clear sense of why each one changed, and some concrete alternatives to start applying immediately.
  No judgement; just an honest look at which Umbraco habits have earned retirement, and how to spot the next one yourself."

Venue
The meetup will be hosted at Spindogs, 3, Sovereign Quay, Havannah St, Cardiff CF10 5SF, which is about a 10-15-minute walk from Cardiff Bay Train Station.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/uJEAM4U4wqoTMV6W9

Parking options

• Havannah Street Pay and Display Car Park ~ less than 1-minute walk.
• Q-Park Cardiff Bay ~ 15-minute walk.
• The Red Dragon Centre Cardiff ~ 15-minute walk.

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If you’d like to contribute to this or a future meetup, please get in touch, we’d love to have you join us.
https://sessionize.com/umbracymru/
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If you need any specific accessibility needs or accommodations, please get in touch with one of the hosts or message the UmbraCymru Twitter, Mastodon, or BlueSky accounts.

An event for women across every discipline of tech in South Wales, coming together for speakers, discussion and real networking.

Women in Tech: Leading as Yourself
Who you are, not who you're expected to be

An event for women across every discipline of tech in South Wales, celebrating Women in Tech Week 2026.

If you're a woman in tech from industry, academia, or looking to move into tech, we would love to welcome you. We're bringing together women working in software, hardware, AI, cyber, design, web, data, analytics, and everything in between. Whether you're leading a team, building your career, feeling stuck and ready for what's next, researching, studying, or exploring a move into the industry, this event is built for you.

Join us for inspiring speakers, honest discussion, and real networking, connecting women across every corner of tech and every stage of the journey in South Wales. Women in tech don't always have the support they need, and this event is about strengthening that network, bringing academia, industry, and personal development into one place to help you grow.

This event is exclusively for women working in, or wanting to work in, any area of technology, and is proudly partnering with WeAreTechWomen and Women in TECH-Connect Wales.

What to expect
Speaker sessions, open discussion, and dedicated time to network and connect with other women in tech.

Who this is for
Women in tech, IT, software, hardware, AI, cyber, data, and every other discipline under the tech umbrella. Whether you're an experienced leader, mid career, a graduate, a student, or exploring a move into the industry, you're welcome here.

We want to build connections so you feel less alone in a world that does not always celebrate the success of the women in it.