Welcome to {dev.talk}

{dev.talk} (pronounced "dev dot talk") is a community-driven monthly meetup bringing together software engineers and tech professionals in the Bournemouth and Dorset area.

Free to attend and run by community volunteers, we create an inclusive space where developers of all experience levels can learn, share knowledge, and connect.

Each meetup features sessions from community members (mostly of a technical nature), with time for networking and discussions between talks. Whether you're a seasoned developer or just starting out, you'll find a welcoming environment to explore new ideas and "geek out" with fellow tech enthusiasts.

To extend our reach beyond the in-person events, all sessions (with speaker permission) are recorded and shared on our YouTube Channel, creating an accessible resource for the wider developer community.

Our mission is simple: build a thriving, supportive tech community in Dorset where everyone can grow professionally while making meaningful connections.

Upcoming sessions

• 3D Asset Creation, Integration & Publishing for Games (30 mins) - Rhys Green

  Session description

  The session will explore the fundamentals of how to create 3D models and assets for games development in mind. We will be exploring creating assets based on your game engine of choice, in this session will be for Unity or Unreal Engine. The modelling examples and tips will be using Autodesk's Maya 3D modelling software, where we will be diving through the fundamentals of workflow, UV's and exporting. Will then be taking a quick look when it comes to texturing models in mainstream software such as Adobe's Substance Painter and how to export your textures correctly here. And then will be deep diving into integrating game assets and textures into your game engine of choice, creating materials, and some of the engine technologies such as Unreal Engine's 'Nanite' to help with asset optimisation and performance. Once asset integration has finished, will be talking about my experience publishing assets together into asset packs, and how to handle the corporate side of things with companies involved.

• Embedded Development in Rust (60 mins) - Steve Hayles

  Session description

  What does it take to build a real, commercial-grade embedded system in Rust—on a $5 microcontroller? In this talk, I’ll walk through the development of Bluefin, an ESP32-based marine instrument processor designed for real-world yacht racing. This isn’t a toy project or a blinking LED demo—it's a performance-focused, network-connected system handling real-time sensor data, onboard analytics, and a modern web-based UI. We’ll explore what actually happens when you push the ESP32 to its limits: Running async networking and web servers on constrained hardware Dealing with Wi-Fi throughput bottlenecks and lwIP quirks Managing memory, flash, and PSRAM under real pressure Building a responsive frontend served directly from the device Integrating BLE, provisioning, and streaming telemetry Along the way, I’ll share the hard-earned lessons—the things that break, the things that don’t behave like the docs suggest, and the architectural decisions that made the system viable. A key focus will be why Rust makes this possible: Strong guarantees around memory safety in a highly concurrent environment Fearless concurrency for async execution on embedded systems Performance characteristics comparable to C/C++ without the same class of bugs Building maintainable, scalable embedded software—not just firmware This talk is aimed at developers across the spectrum—whether you're into embedded systems, backend services, or modern web development. If you’ve ever wondered whether Rust is ready for serious embedded work—or how far you can push a microcontroller—this session will give you a grounded, real-world answer.

• Knit 1, Perl 1 (30 mins) - Katy Ereira

  Session description

  Knitting and programming; a creative hobby with sticks and string, and writing complex logic in computer languages - could they be any more different? Actually, they’re not so dissimilar. Let me show you where knitting and programming intertwine!

• Archetypes - your secret superpower (45 mins) - Mike Wojtyna

  Session description

  Imagine jumping into a new project. In a very short time you start asking meaningful questions, understand the business, and model it correctly. Somehow you just feel what's right. You manage to solve some of the problems the team was facing for months. You suggest improvements that can benefit your clients tremendously. All within the first few weeks. Some team members may admire you, while others might make accusations that you are cheating or faking your abilities, or that you possess some special superpowers. Sounds like a fairy tale? During this presentation I'm going to show you how you can utilize archetypes to immediately recognize the business patterns, make right modeling decisions and astonish your fellow team members.

• Why opinionated frameworks win at small / medium scale (30 mins) - George Buckingham

  Session description

  Laravel is a highly opinionated PHP framework. We'll explore why it allows developers to be so productive, especially for small / medium sized applications.

• Livewire: Building interactive interfaces without JavaScript (30 mins) - George Buckingham

  Session description

  Say hello to Livewire - a PHP library for building interactive user interfaces. We'll explore how back-end developers can deliver a dynamic interface without writing a line of Javascript. It's very marmite - not one for the purists!

• Gender Identity & Me: Life as an autistic software engineer (30 mins) - Rose T

  Session description

  I'm a 22 year old Trans woman and have had an unusual life story - I want to use my skills and platform to educate about Autism & neurodiversity, trans rights and broadly sharing love and respect for each other especially when it comes to mental health. I attended a specialist Maths School for my A-levels where I achieved A*s in Maths, Further Maths and Computer Science before starting a degree apprenticeship at a large American bank which I have just finished achieving a 1st class degree in Digital & Technology Solutions from the University of Exeter. Throughout the last 6 years, I have gone from being on a plane for the first time to having travelled to the USA for 2 weeks solo, to Japan for 2 weeks with friends. I've come out as Rose, struggled with my mental health and learnt a lot

• Building my blog: A journey of discovery (45 mins) - Mark Oliver

  Session description

  In this session, I will explain the journey of discovery of building my fully interactive Blog website and the engine behind it, using free cloud technologies such as Azure Static Web Apps, Github Actions and Blazor WebAssembly.

• Why is there a shark in my Wire - An introduction to Wireshark (25 mins) - Mark Oliver

  Session description

  A short introduction to the network protocol analyser tool Wireshark, and why it can be helpful for software engineers. I will show the basics of running the tool, the benefits of knowing this tool for all software developers, and then cover some real life examples of where it has been used to aid development of production systems.

Upcoming events

View the full events calendar

• August 2026

  ☀️ We pause events in summer to give everyone a chance to touch grass. We will be back soon.

• September 16th 2026: {dev.talk} - The one after the holidays

  This event explores building a commercial-grade embedded Rust system on constrained ESP32 hardware, including async networking, memory and performance trade-offs, frontend delivery on-device, and real-world architectural lessons.

  🎤 Another speaker wanted for this event: come and join us.

• October 21st 2026: {dev.talk} - The one with the spoooky season

  This event combines socio-technical thinking with practical development discussion, exploring how engineering choices, team dynamics, and architecture decisions shape better software outcomes.

  🎤 Another speaker wanted for this event: come and join us.

• November 25th 2026: {dev.talk} - The one where we all want to stay in doors

  This event features two sessions: a continuation of the JarvisOS journey, followed by "Knit 1, Perl 1", which explores the surprising overlap between knitting and programming.

• December 16th 2026: {dev.talk} - The one where we celebrate together

  This event combines a practical talk on using archetypes to recognise business patterns and improve modelling decisions, followed by an interactive Lean Coffee session where attendees suggest topics, vote, and discuss what matters most.

  🎤 Another speaker wanted for this event: come and join us.

• January 27th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• February 24th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• March 24th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• April 28th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• May 26th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• June 2027

  ☀️ We pause events in summer to give everyone a chance to touch grass. We will be back soon.

• July 2027

  ☀️ We pause events in summer to give everyone a chance to touch grass. We will be back soon.

• August 2027

  ☀️ We pause events in summer to give everyone a chance to touch grass. We will be back soon.

• September 29th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• October 27th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• November 24th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• December 29th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.