Tech Events in Newcastle upon Tyne

Hello!
We have an amazing night planned and many thanks to hedgehog lab for supporting us on the night.

Fafa Modey
Platform Engineer @ hedgehog lab
Your New Engineering Teammate: Working with AI Agents
AI agents are quickly becoming part of the software engineering process, so let’s explore them through a familiar lens: as a new member of the engineering team. Using real experiences and lessons learned from building and deploying software with AI agents, this session focuses on three practical areas: What does onboarding an AI agent to projects look like? How do you get them to execute meaningful work? How do you know whether the output is good enough to trust? This is a conversation about operating models, team habits, and the realities of adopting AI into modern engineering workflows.

James Kelly
AWS Lead @ Capgemini

Date: Tuesday June 23rd
Time: 18:00-20:00
Venue: hedgehog lab, Haylofts, 5 St. Thomas Street, Newcastle, NE1 4LE

Many thanks to our sponsor hedgehog lab for hosting us on the night.
Hope to see you all there!

Hey FaithTechsters,
We are excited to invite you for our June meetup for a time of fellowship with fellow believers in the tech sector, learning and building transformational redemptive technology projects together

What to expect

• Meet: Pizzas & connecting with others who love Jesus & Technology
• Learn: A time of learning with our guest speaker, Dr. Dan Strange.
• Create: A time for us to roll up our sleeves and build our projects together in our teams.

This event brings together believers passionate about technology + faith which include (but not limited to:

👉🏽 User Researchers, Data, AI, and CyberSecurity Professionals
👉🏽 Software Engineers, Software Architects, QA Testers
👉🏽 Product Managers, Product Designers
👉🏽 Business Analysts, Project Managers, Business Development professionals
👉🏽 Content Creators, Marketing Professionals, Compliance & Legal Professionals
👉🏽 Founders, Pastors, or Ministry Leaders etc

The event details are as follows:
Date: Thursday, 25th June, 2026.
Time: 6PM-8:30PM
Venue: NUCASTLE- Newcastle United Foundation
Diana Street,
Newcastle upon Tyne
NE4 6BQ

Speaker's Bio
Dan Strange is in theological leadership at the London Project (City to City) and a Fellow of The Keller Center for Cultural Apologetics. He was the former Academic Director of Crosslands Forum, a center for cultural engagement and missional innovation.
Formerly he was college director and tutor in culture, religion, and public theology at Oak Hill College, London. Strange is a contributing editor for Themelios, and is a member of Hope Community Church, Gateshead, UK, which is part of the Fellowship of Evangelical Churches (FIEC). A former UCCF worker with a PhD in Theology and Religious Studies, he is author of several books including Their Rock Is Not Like Our Rock: A Theology of Religions which received an award of merit for theology/ethics in the Christianity Today 2016 Book Awards. His most recent books are Plugged In and Making Faith Magnetic.

To register for the event, please visit here: Link

Come hang out with us at FaithTech Meetup in June!

About FaithTech Newcastle

We are a global community at the intersection of faith & technology here in the North East! Are you a Christian working in tech, or just someone curious about the the inmtersection of faith & tech? Then you won't want to miss FaithTech Newcastle community meetups!

What to Expect

• Meet: Pizzas & connecting with others who love Jesus & technology
• Learn: We will be learning about the world where Christian faith & technology meet by our speaker
• Create: This is where we take what we learn, we put to practice. FaithTech create is where we build tech solutions using Redemptive technology design.

This event brings together anyone simply curious about tech + faith which include (but not limited to:

👉🏽 User Researchers, Data, AI, and CyberSecurity Professionals
👉🏽 Software Engineers, Software Architects, QA Testers
👉🏽 Product Managers, Product Designers
👉🏽 Business Analysts, Project Managers, Business Development professionals
👉🏽 Content Creators, Marketing Professionals, Compliance & Legal Professionals
👉🏽 Founders, Pastors, or Ministry Leaders etc

Invite a friend as you come and we can't wait to meet you!

Sincerely,

FaithTech Newcastle Team.

🎒🪪 Please be aware bag and/or ID checks may be in operation by our Security team at the entrance.

Background

The BBC has been broadcasting from Newcastle for over 100 years. Now it's also the base of our North East Technology Hub and home to teams from the BBC's Product Group, responsible for developing world-beating services like iPlayer, Sounds, Sport and Bitesize.

The event is informal, and the doors will open at 17:30, starting 18:00 running through to 20:00.

Every Experience is a Lesson (Chaye Foster - Sage)
Growth rarely follows a straight line, but every experience leaves us better prepared. In this talk, I reflect on my journey from university, volunteering abroad, navigating rejection and uncertainty to becoming a graduate software engineer.

Japanese Trains & Tech (Matthew Tinn - BBC)
We look at some of the amazing technology behind Japanese trains!

Building infrastructures for non-profits, their supporters and conscious consumers (Rousseau Jean-Julien - Nucha)
Online resale, The Cost of Living Crisis and a Charity Shop walk into a bar

The July Meetup is on it's way.

Remember that to register for this and future events you'll need to sign up and join the Newcastle Chapter on Ministry of Testing, it's free to join and you get access to some other stuff on there too! Just follow this link:

Ministry of Testing - July Event

On the 7th of July The Ministry of Testing Newcastle Team are returning with not 1, not 2, not 3 but 4 great talks lined up!

The organisers are putting together some shorter 15 to 20 minute talks for this session to give some of us a chance to speak.

- We've got Connor Irvine with a talk entitled 'Don't lose Empathy with AI'

- Himanshu Tiwari is going to take us From Test Cases to AI Guardrails.

- We're going on a journey with Paul Alexander who will describe how his team's automation strategy has changed over the years

- John McGee is going to give you a choice of talks, he could take you through experimenting and building a QA Artifact Factory in GitHub copilot, Quality Charters, what they are and how to use them or Reviewing a Test Automation Strategy - on the night you can decide.

We'll be hosting this event at Thought Works:

Newcastle - 78 Grey St, Newcastle upon Tyne NE1 6AF

As always we'll be providing food and refreshments.

This is a collaborative, hands-on session where we work on a programming problem (or coding kata). We encourage pair programming, and practicing Test Driven Development (TDD). The goal is to practice, learn from each other, and explore new approaches. There’s no pressure to arrive at a working solution.

You can code in the language of your choice – whether it's one you're proficient with, or one you're exploring for the first time. This session is all about collaboration, honing your skills, and expanding your network in a fun and relaxed setting.

Throughout the event, we’ll share ideas, discuss best practices, and take the opportunity to learn from one another. A basic knowledge of programming is recommended to get the most out of the session, but you don’t need to be an expert.

Food and drinks will be provided, with vegetarian and vegan options available.

Join WordPress North East in July 2026, which will look into anything AI related to WordPress, with Jon starting up the topic of conversation.

This looks more into the linked AI tools into WordPress, as in June we covered the tools to help write code, ideas, or troubleshoot, which arent directly but assist with WordPress.

It is free to join online - you need to install the free Zoom app (https://zoom.us) to join.
—
**\ *All timings are in UK Time (BST) ***
18:00 - Zoom video link open.
Chat to other WordPress users while we get started.
18:15 - Introduction - Jon Waite
18:20 - Discussion - Lead by Jon Waite
19:20 - Summary
19:30 - Close

***
Please note: RSVP will close at 6pm BST on the day of the event.

Welcome to our July meetup! Pizza and soft drinks will be provided on a first-come-first-served basis from 6pm as usual.

We have two excellent talks to look forward to from [SPEAKERS]. Full details below :)

Schedule

1800--1825h: Refreshments

1830--18:35h: Welcome

1835--1855h: [TALK 1]

1855--1900h: Intermission

1900--1950h: Maciej Misiura & Rob Geada @ Red Hat
Open Source Guardrails for AI: Securing LLM Applications at Scale

1950--2000h: News & Announcements

Talks

Speaker 1
Title 1

Abstract 1

Maciej Misiura & Rob Geada @ Red Hat
Open Source Guardrails for AI: Securing LLM Applications at Scale

Large language models ship with alignment training, but alignment alone cannot enforce the custom policies every enterprise deployment requires. Guardrails, ie. runtime inspection layers that examine inputs and outputs against pre-defined rules, fill this gap without modifying model weights. This talk explores how to build a layered defense for LLM applications using open source tools. It covers the spectrum of guardrail techniques, from fast deterministic checks through purpose-built classifiers to full LLM-as-judge evaluation, how to configure multiple guardrail profiles and swap them at runtime, and how to monitor detection events. The talk also addresses how to evaluate guardrail effectiveness through red teaming, ensuring defenses keep pace as models, policies, and attack techniques evolve.

News and Announcements

Have a news item or announcement you'd like to make about upcoming data events or job opportunities in the North East? Comment below or email us at neds@jumpingrivers.com and we'll do our best to circulate this information during the session.

Please also get in touch if you'd like to volunteer yourself for a talk at a future meetup!