Tech Events in Belfast

Join us for a relaxed informal Combat robotics meet up! Whether you are looking for ideas for how to build the next blender or you simply want to see if your bot is the best, come along and share your experiences and ideas and talk all things bots. Get the chance to test your bot in the CRNI arena and find out what your competitors are doing to make your bot victorious in a tournament in the future. Have an idea but don’t have the right tools? Use Farsets machines and bring your bot to life.

We currently have two arenas out at the meetup one non-destrictive and one destructive for 150g and 454g robots!

Kicking off a regular series of monthly community events, we're heading to the pub, and we're gonna pick some locks.

Bring your picks, tumblers, shims, decoders, tensioners and most importantly, locks, and we'll keep picking them till we can pick no more!

Or, if lockpicking isn't your thing, just come and chill out and chat about everything infosec.

Food is available at the venue, please see their website if you want more info.

Belfast Design Meetup is a free after-work event for designers to learn, connect, and grow together. Starting at 5:30 PM, we’ll have talks, discussions, and real-world experience sharing in Belfast City Centre at the stunning MCS Group event space.

This time, we’ll have our very first speaker from London, who is traveling specifically for the Belfast Design Meetup, our first speaker from Citibank, and a web entrepreneur.

T A L K S

​✅ How to Be Creative by Brian O'Neill, Web Entrepreneur and Writer. ​​

✅ Building a Multi-Brand Design System by Venkateswaralu Srinivasan, Senior UX Designer at Citi Bank. ​

✅ The Real Reason Your Designs Get Pushback by Rachel Anderson, Head of Design at Synechron (London).

Where
The venue is the MCS Group office event space, located on the 10th Floor of The Ewart, 3 Bedford St, Belfast BT2 7EP. We’d like to thank MCS Group for hosting the event and providing beers and soft drinks. It’s a space designed for open conversation, fresh ideas, and community learning.

Parking
🅿️ Around The Ewart – 3 Bedford St, Belfast BT2 7EP. It might be a bit challenging to find a spot, but since it’s an after-work event and people tend to linger, you’ll likely find one with a bit of patience.
🅿️ Little Victoria Street Car Park – Downshire Pl, Belfast BT2 7JQ. Conveniently located nearby.
🅿️ NCP Belfast The Tannery – 1 Francis St, Belfast BT1 1EJ. The most affordable option, about a 12-minute walk from the venue.

For Who
Everyone is welcome, including Developers, Managers, Experience Designers, Product Designers, all types of Designers, Marketers, Researchers, and all UX-related professionals. This event isn’t just for designers; it’s for anyone interested in creating better user experiences and learning from one another.

​Keep learning and meet new people.

​The event takes place on the first Thursday of every month.

​​Join the Belfast Design Community at www.belfast.design to access our WhatsApp chat, the largest experience and product design library, and exclusive discounts.

We're just getting started!🚀
After an incredible kickoff, we are diving straight into Session 2 of our Build With AI series: AI in Industry. ⚙️

If you've ever wondered how AI is actually moving the needle in the professional world, this is the session for you. We're stripping away the hype to look at the foundational tools and real-world shifts transforming global industries.

Explore the Session

Bridging the Gap: Strategy, Culture, and the AI-Driven Future (Moving from Hype to Operational Excellence)
While AI capabilities are accelerating at pace, most organisations remain stuck in pilot mode, unable to translate experimentation into real business value.

This session cuts through the noise

Rachel Nixon explores how organisations can move beyond proof-of-concept thinking to embed AI as a core part of their operating model. Through practical frameworks and real-world insight she shows how to identify the right opportunities, avoid common pitfalls and navigate the cultural shift required for successful adoption.

Rachel Nixon

Sr Director Product Manager - CME Group

Enterprise GenAI: Transforming the Developer Experience at CME Group
As Generative AI shifts from experimentation to enterprise-scale adoption, successfully rolling out tools like Gemini Code Assist (GCA) to accelerate development while actively securing the software supply chain has never been more critical especially for a leading global derivatives marketplace like CME Group.

In this talk, we explore an insight into CME Group’s transformation and their strategic adoption of Generative AI across their engineering organization. We touch on the adoption of Gemini Code Assist and how it adds value to scale solutions more quickly to deliver client needs. We also explore how CME Group is going beyond basic code generation to build a smarter, more resilient secure software supply chain with autonomous capabilities.

Gerry Maguire

Senior Staff Platform Engineer - CME Group

Offense and Defense: The Reality of AI in Modern Cybersecurity
As AI transitions from a curiosity to a core architectural component, it is fundamentally changing the security landscape. This session moves past the hype to examine the practical impact of AI on both offensive and defensive operations. We will discuss how AI facilitates automated attack surface discovery and exploitability, while also exploring how defensive teams are using it to move from reactive remediation toward more autonomous, proactive operations.

Conor McLaughlin

Cyber Defence Center Manager - CME Group

Leo McCavana

Sr Staff Security Engineer - CME Group

Donal Campbell

Cyber Threat Intelligence Analyst - CME Group

Fortran and the end of assembly programming (Yes, that is the correct title)
Fortran is regarded by many as the first high-level programming language. Introduced in the 1950s, it was influenced by “Speedcoding” and was designed so that programmers would not have to write their solutions in assembly code. Productivity gains would be in the region of 1000%. Sound familiar? In the decades since, no one, except in specialist domains, writes in assembly language – it ended. And now, will LLMs eventually herald the end of programming as we have known it for the last 60 years? Taking this long view, we will explore future scenarios for software engineering. For the mainstream software engineer, requirements specification and verification will be paramount, informed by a deep understanding of technology capability and constraints. What skills will software graduates need? How will software engineering education change? How will universities adapt?

Dr Ian McChesney

Sr Lecturer: School Of Computing - Ulster University

Keep an eye out for other events in this Build With AI series! 👀

Agenda

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Hosted By

Rachel Connor, GDG Organizer

Imogen Greene, GDG Organizer

As a first-class honours graduate in BSc (Hons) Computer Science with a distinction in professional practice, I am motivated to use technology to make a lasting impact. I am driven by a passion for collaboration, mentorship, and inclusivity—working to help others succeed, improve team dynamics, and contribute to a more open and supportive tech community.

Over my years in university and also my internship and graduate programme with CME Group I have gained strong full-stack application development experience and skills in JavaScript, the Google Cloud Platform, Python, C#, and industry-standard development cycle tools.

I am equally invested in leadership and interpersonal development. During my four years at university, I led two student societies, including founding the Women in STEM Society. I was an active member of Ulster University’s Google Developer Student Club, serving on the committee for three years and as its lead for one year. I also represented my peers as a course representative for four years, where I acted as a liaison between students and faculty. In this role, I presented evidence on academic concerns, advocated for fair treatment, and negotiated solutions such as resits—developing strong communication, problem-solving, and negotiation skills while ensuring that student voices were heard.

Beyond university, I continue to give back as a STEM Ambassador, delivering presentations in classrooms, mentoring students, judging coding competitions, and supporting the organisation of large-scale events such as DevFest Ireland. In 2025, I was accepted into Ulster University’s Go Global: Experience China programme, broadening my cultural and professional perspective through international opportunities.

Currently, I am proud to serve as an organiser of GDG Belfast, helping to bring the local developer community together through events, collaboration, and knowledge sharing. Alongside this, I work as a software engineer at CME Group, where I continue to grow as both a technologist and a community contributor.

Caitlin Hanna, Associate Software Engineer

Yuan Zhang, GDG Organizer

Complete your event RSVP here: https://gdg.community.dev/events/details/google-gdg-belfast-presents-build-with-ai-session-2-ai-in-industry/.

Bring your knitting, beads, sewing, or any crafty project and join us for a relaxed afternoon of making, sharing, and hanging out!

Swap tips, show off your work, or just chill and get inspired by what others are creating. Whether you’re stitching, gluing, or beading, there’s space for all kinds of crafty fun.
Come craft, chat, and connect.

Come down to Farset Labs Hackerspace to our Maker Night in the workshop. Bring your own ideas, or just come to see some awesome 3D Printing or the pretty burning lights from the safety of our Glowforge Pro laser cutter.

You will get a chance to learn and to use machines in our 24/7 workshop.
This event we will be focusing on :

• Laser cutter
• 3D printer

Depending on interest we can focus next month on :

• CNC router
• Resin casting
• Electronics

Everyone, of any skill level, or no skill at all is very welcome to join, enjoy the event and learn along the way.

Bring your own computer/laptop/tablet, you will need to use design software and a browser for some of the machines.

Enjoyed the event and want more?
Why not join Farset Labs Hackerspace for 24/7 access to the workshop, and many other benefits.

https://www.farsetlabs.org.uk

Join us for Tech n Tipples with Amicis Group for a mix of tech talks and panel discussion.

Tech n Tipples with Amicis Group

Get ready for our next Tech n Tipples in-person gathering, Tech n Tipples with Amicis Group, kindly hosted by Urban HQ. This is your chance to share insights, ideas, and enjoy some great company.

he response to this has been a bit mental and I’m grateful for all who has joined.

I’m a backend dev and into my security, and I basically just wanted to find a community of people into the same stuff. To be honest, I’m a bit nervous about running this for the first time, but the goal is just to get everyone in a room, grab some pizza, and figure out what we want to build together.

The plan:

6:30 PM: Pizza & Drinks. Just a casual chat to see what everyone is working on.

7:00 PM: Planninh. We'll have a chat about what we want to tackle in the next few months whether that’s Wireshark, AWS, Home Labs, Research into latest exploits, or CTFs. You lot choose what we focus on.

8:00 PM: Help needed. I’m looking for a partner or a co-host to help me run the technical labs and get things organized. If you’re interested, let’s chat.

8:30 PM: Wrap up.

What to bring:
Nothing. No laptops needed for the first one. Even if you’re just starting out, come along for the pizza and a chat about the local tech scene .

Location: TBD (Aiming for Innovation Factory)
Date: May 22nd

See you all there

Could your product be causing harm — and you don't even know it?

Join us for a hands-on ProductTank workshop rooted in the "Do No Harm" principle, using Spotify's Ethics Checklist as our foundation.

This workshop is designed to help product teams identify, prevent, and mitigate harm across every stage of the product lifecycle.

From addictive design patterns to data exploitation, from biased algorithms to exclusionary experiences — harm can be subtle, systemic, and unintentional.

This session will sharpen your ability to spot potential harms before they reach your users and build a culture of ethical responsibility on your team.

The must-attend tech conference in Belfast for 2026.

On the 11thJune 2026, join a vibrant mix of business professionals, technologists, students, and entrepreneurs from across NI and Ireland at the ICC in Belfast for TechTides, the must-attend tech conference in Northern Ireland.

Connect with big thinkers, explore emerging technologies, and get inspired by the innovations and technology decisions shaping our world today—and tomorrow!