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

• How becoming a manager made me a better engineer (45 mins) - Chris Sherry

  Session description

  In the last 5 years, I have transitioned from an individual contributor, to a manager of an engineering team with increasingly more reports and more responsibility. In this talk, I'll guide through what this journey has taught be about management, but also what it has taught be about being a better engineer. Topics include: management styles and traps, prioritisation, estimation and time management, recruitment (and being recruited), and staying mentally healthy.

• Building Agentic Mobile OS for privacy (30 mins) - Kevin Djabaku Ocansey

  Session description

  I'll be sharing my journey of building JarvisOS; a privacy-first mobile operating system that keeps AI local on your device. The talk will walk through how I got here: starting with learning how AI systems remember and retrieve information (RAG), understanding how computers can find similar pieces of data quickly (vector databases), and diving into Android's deep internals to make it all work at the system level. I'll then introduce JarvisOS itself - what we're building, why it's different from existing solutions, and how we're using Cactus (a lightweight AI framework) to make powerful AI run entirely on your phone without sending anything to the cloud. We'll wrap up with a practical demonstration: a live notebook showing how AI models get compressed to fit on mobile devices - taking something that normally requires massive servers and making it work in your pocket.

• Anatomy of an Incident (featuring CrowdStrike) (60 mins) - Liam Westley

  Session description

  Back in 2022 I gave a talk about how to handle incidents (google: "youtube incident liam westley") providing a strategy for how to prepare for incidents, how they should be managed and how you talk to your customers. In July 2024, along came CrowdStrike, and our incident plan went into action, honed over the previous three years. In this session we will have a quick review of what an incident plan should look like. Then will move onto a timeline, taken from our Post Incident Review (PIR), of how that incident plan was put into action when CrowdStrike arrived, what worked (most of it) and how we have tweaked our incident plan for the future.

• Spatial Data Basics: Concepts, Tools, and Use Cases (20 mins) - George Buckingham

  Session description

  Spatial (and geospatial) data helps software understand the physical world. This talk explores high-level concepts, free-to-use tools and some real world examples of applications.

• 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

• April 29th 2026: {dev.talk} - The One with Geospatial Clues and Post-Incident Truths

  Attendees will explore practical geospatial concepts and tools, then see a real incident case study showing how teams can prepare, respond, and improve after major production issues.

• May 20th 2026: {dev.talk} - The One About Cybersecurity
• June 24th 2026: {dev.talk} - The one in June
• July 22nd 2026: {dev.talk} - The one in July
• September 16th 2026: {dev.talk} - The one after the holidays
• October 21st 2026: {dev.talk} - The one with the spoooky season
• November 25th 2026: {dev.talk} - The one where we all want to stay in doors
• December 16th 2026: {dev.talk} - The one where we celebrate together