Tech Events in Birmingham

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Building a Children’s Physiotherapy System with .NET MAUI and IoT

Moti‑Me is an IoT‑powered therapeutic device paired with a mobile application designed to turn structured physical therapy into engaging, child‑friendly activities. The system helps children develop key motor skills while providing clinicians and families with meaningful feedback.

In this session, we’ll start with an overview of the Moti‑Me ecosystem before diving into the architecture and implementation of the .NET MAUI mobile application. We’ll explore how the app communicates with the device’s onboard controller over Bluetooth, how activities are initiated and tracked, and how the application manages state throughout each interaction.

From there, we’ll look at how user feedback and activity results are captured, processed, and presented within the app. We’ll also walk through the configuration and device‑management features available in the Settings area, highlighting how these support both everyday use and troubleshooting.

Finally, we’ll cover the build and deployment pipeline, including how GitHub Actions is used to produce Android and iOS builds and deliver them to the respective app stores for testing

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.

Welcome to our first Birmingham meetup of 2026, hosted and sponsored by AND Digital in Brindley Place!

Details below:
Location: The Foundry, 6 Brindley Pl, Birmingham, B1 2JB.
Time: Doors open at 6PM
Drinks, Pizza, talks, and networking.

We’re excited to invite you to our 6th DevOps Society Meetup of 2026, proudly sponsored by AND Digital.
This event has two technical talks, which can be a fit for anybody. There will be some really technical bits in both talks, but also some high-level bits too, with two really exciting speakers lined up for this one in Jim and Toli.

Format of the Meetup:
6:00pm – 6:30pm — Networking on arrival, with food and drinks provided by AND Digital.
6:30pm – 7:10pm — First speaker + Q&A
7:10pm – 7:20pm — Break for refreshments and networking
7:20pm – 8:00pm — Second speaker + Q&A
8:00pm onwards — More networking at the venue, then at a nearby pub.
Timings can vary slightly depending on Q&A.

SPEAKER #1 - Jim Hanmer - Principal Solutions Architect @ AWS

Bio
Jim Hanmer is a Principal Solutions Architect at AWS, where he advises startup CTOs on cloud and AI architecture. A builder at heart and distributed systems practitioner for over 25 years, he collaborates closely with AWS service teams to translate hard-won engineering lessons into practical guidance for teams building at any scale.

Talk Title:

Behind the Curtain: Lessons from Building the World's Largest Distributed Systems at Amazon
For 20 years, Amazon's engineers have shaped the design principles behind some of the world's largest distributed systems. This talk distils the lessons that matter most.
We'll explore the design principles that tackle the hardest challenges in distributed computing, including cell-based architectures, regional redundancy, static stability, and targeted fallback strategies. We'll also look at why operational observability and thorough instrumentation aren't optional extras, but survival skills when you're running systems at scale.
Whether you're building for millions of users or dozens, you'll leave with principles you can apply to your own systems.

SPEAKER #2 - Apostolis (Toli) Apostolidis - Lead Architect @ Flipdish & Datadog Ambassador

Bio:

Toli is a Software Engineering Practitioner who believes that learning and working together are catalysts for high-performing software-first teams who care about how their software serves their customers.
Toli's career began in the field of maths and physics, which led him into the world of software engineering, where he spent his formative first few years learning the craft while writing algorithms for solving large-scale "travelling-sales-person" problems across the globe. He has since worked with Brent from The Phoenix Project for a B2B energy company, the initial core team at cinch to build the fastest-growing unicorn in UK startup history, while he is currently helping Flipdish build the next generation of restaurant tech.

Throughout this journey, Toli fell in love with DevOps, Observability and Team Topologies, while he discovered a new passion for serverless, event-driven socio-technical architectural paradigms and product thinking.

Talk title:

Pay for What You Use, Use What You Pay For: Frugal Architecture with Datadog Cloud Costs

Description:
We've all seen that Slack message. Someone senior forwards the monthly cloud bill with a single line: "Can someone take a look at this? Why has it spiked so much?" Nobody knows. Even worse, nobody owns it. And that's exactly the issue.
At Flipdish, we fixed that by bringing cloud and SaaS cost data into Datadog: the same tool our engineers already use for logs, metrics and traces. Now spend wasn't a finance report. It was a dashboard any engineer could pull up, attribute to a service, and act on like any other signal.
In this talk, I'll share what we found when we actually looked, how we embed cost awareness into architecture reviews and incident response, and why AI workloads are making this discipline urgent, where a single runaway prompt can spike your bill overnight in a way no latency alert would catch. If you can alert on a p99 spike, you can alert on a cost spike. Same signal. Different dimension.

Please register now to book your spot!

Location - The Foundry, 6 Brindley Pl, Birmingham, B1 2JB.
Sponsors - AND Digital.

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.

The second Wednesday of every month is now a software and microelectronics social as well as our usual public open night - a great opportunity to muck about with like-minded hackers to discuss electronics projects, bounce ideas off each other for your latest coding challenge, or just to pop down and ask for some help getting started!

Everyone welcome - from beginners to advanced. Come talk to us about your home automation projects, bring your empty breadboard to be filled with ideas, or bring your stories of projects past. Ask for some help mastering a programming language - or find out you're the relative expert in the room, and offer others light instructionals* on the subject. Bring your Python, your JavaScript, your Go and your Rust - or regale us with C/C++ and 6502 Assembly. Your Robot Vacuum or your blinkenlights, your Raspberry Pi's, your Arduinos, your ESP32s..

fizzPOP has a well-stocked electronics room and some great spaces to crack out your laptop, so if you're not a member then this is a great time to pop down and check it out - and if you are a member, this is a great chance to get cracking with all the tools and equipment.

See you there!

*we have some very helpful members, and welcome people of all skill levels - but this is not an organised event, we cannot commit to formal teaching, and we probably won't build your project for you (yes, people have asked)! This is a themed social event; please calibrate your expectations accordingly, and look forward to a great night!

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.

This time, we’re doing something a bit different.
We’re stepping into a real working lab to explore how products are built in one of the most complex industries out there and then bringing it back to what we do best: connecting product people.

🎤 Meet the speaker
We’ll be joined by Ahmed Khan, Founder & CEO of LipoActive.
With over 20 years across AI, telecom, and now biotech, Ahmed has built and led ventures across multiple industries and is now focused on applying product thinking to scientific innovation.

👀 What to expect
We’re keeping this session focused and accessible:

1. Founder story
   Ahmed will introduce LipoActive and share:

• The problem they’re solving (why many supplements don’t work as expected)
• How they’re building a solution
• What makes building in biotech different from digital products
• How AI and data are helping speed things up

No heavy science, just the product story.

2. Lab Visit (limited to 10 people)
   After the talk, 10 attendees will have the chance to join Ahmed for a short lab walkthrough while others stay for a session of networking.
   This is a behind-the-scenes look at where the work actually happens and how research connects to real products.

3. Open Networking (main session)
   For everyone else and once the lab visit wraps, we’ll move into a networking session similar to our previous networking event:

• Meet other product people in Birmingham
• Share what you’re working on
• Exchange ideas and experiences

Why this event is different?
Most of us build digital products.
This is a chance to see product thinking in a completely different environment:

• Slower cycles
• Higher uncertainty
• Real-world physical outcomes

And then bring those conversations back into the room.

⚠️ Notes

• Lab visit capacity is limited to 10 people due to lab restrictions and clean environment
• Details on how the 10 will be selected will be shared at the event
• Full venue details will be sent before the session

🍕 Food & Drinks
Thanks to UoB Molecular Sciences Team, we’ll have pizza and drinks available, and we'll be ready to connect!

🤝 Thanks to our Sponsors
AND Digital – A digital delivery partner helping ambitious companies build world-class digital capabilities and close the digital skills gap.
x+why Foundry – A flexible workspace provider combining purpose-driven design with entrepreneurial energy to create impactful workspaces across the UK.
Coinley – An entirely new payment infrastructure, built with blockchain technology, to simplify global crypto transactions, empowering modern businesses with crypto payments.
IntelStream UK – A Birmingham-based content and storytelling company, providing professional photography, videography and PR content for events.

Join us for a community-led developer event focused on AI-assisted coding with GitHub Copilot. Click here to sign up please
RSVP here

Working in progress

What to Expect
🧑‍💻 Live demos from engineers
🤝 A friendly, social space to connect with fellow developers
🍕 Pizza

17:30 – Check‑in & Networking

18:00 – Welcome & Opening Kickoff
Event overview, agenda walkthrough, and what to expect this evening.

18:05 – Speaker 1 - Alex Yochev | Senior Solution Engineer@Microsoft

Session: From Primitives to Production: Building Real Agents with the GitHub Copilot SDK

18:30 – Speaker 2 - Marcel Lupo | Microsoft MVP DevOps | Technical Speaker and Mentor | Microsoft Azure Solutions & DevOps Architect - To be Confirmed

Session

19:00 - 19:30pm – Networking Break

19:30 – Hands‑On Workshop / Lab - Emanuele Bartolesi@ Xebia - GitHub Technical Lead, Technical Writer & Mentor

Lab: Guided, practical lab using GitHub Copilot.

20:30 – Panel Discussion - Open discussion

20:40 – Closing & Next Steps

Wrap‑up, community announcements, upcoming events, and ways to stay involved.

Click here to sign up please
RSVP here

Welcome!
We organise friendly informal networking events for people in Tech to share ideas, learn from each other, and have genuinely useful conversations. There’s no PowerPoints or speeches to sit through - it’s all about great conversation and building connections.
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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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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
RSVP on Meetup
Secure your place and join a group of people working in and around tech.
Just 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 👋

AWS Community Summit makes it’s debut in Birmingham on 4th June 2026!

Tickets are only available via the ComSum website - https://www.comsum.co.uk/birmingham-26

RSVP'ing here on meetup does not give you a ticket / place at the event!

Hosted at The Bond we'll have 20+ talks and workshops across 2 tracks from leading figures in the AWS community.

Early Bird pricing (£50 per ticket) closes on the 13th April at which point standard tickets will go on sale at £75.

All food and caffeine is included in the price so no need to pack your sandwiches!

Also, we're really keen to remove blockers to ensure as many people as possible can join us, so free tickets are available for students and anyone in the early stages of their careers - email - hello@comsum.co.uk - to request (just ask and you will receive!)