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

• AI and the zone of proximal development (30 mins) - Vicky Hawley

  Session description

  Vygotsky's Zone of Proximal Development describes the space between what a learner can achieve independently and what they can achieve with guidance. Traditionally, bridging that gap required a more knowledgeable other — a teacher, a mentor, a senior colleague. The constraint has always been human: one expert can only scaffold so many learners at once. AI changes this. Not by replacing the expert, but by making expert knowledge available at scale, at the moment of need, personalised to each learner's specific gap. This talk draws on three live implementations — an AI-powered ballet examination tool, an administrative learning loop for a property management team, and an AI technical assistant deployed within a software development team — to explore how AI can compress the ZPD in ways that were previously impossible. How junior developers can be brought up to speed without draining senior bandwidth. How users can create personalised learning loops that question them, surface their gaps, and scaffold them toward mastery. And how teams can preserve essential institutional knowledge even as they grow and change. The talk will be honest about the limits: AI scaffolding without human expertise to validate it produces confident learners with confidently wrong knowledge. The more knowledgeable other still matters. But used well, AI doesn't just assist learning — it democratises the conditions for it.

• The One with the Cybersecurity hack (120 mins) - Will T. & Mark Oliver

  Session description

  Attendees will participate in a no pressure, hands-on cybersecurity vibe coding challenge. We will be set a task by our cyber security expert, and in collaboration in teams, we will work together with the members of the B2600 community to build some working software using AI. No previous experience of Cybersecurity, or software development is required. This is designed to be a chance to learn a bit about Cybersecurity and Vibe coding. We will be asking attendees to bring a laptop if you can (pre-requisite software required will be sent out in advance).

• 3D Asset Creation, Integration & Publishing for Games (60 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.

• 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

• One Tool to Run Them All: Simplifying Your Dev Environment (45 mins) - Mark Oliver

  Session description

  Do you wander across many repositories and technology stacks? Have you ever stood before your terminal, wondering which incantation must be spoken in which environment? In the lands of modern development, every project brings its own tools, versions, and commands. What begins as a simple journey soon becomes a tangle of scripts, forgotten setup steps, and environments that refuse to behave. But... there is another way. In this talk, I will introduce mise-en-place* — a small yet powerful tool that brings order where there is chaos, consistency where there is uncertainty, and a sense of calm to the ever-shifting world of developer environments. With mise, your tools, tasks, and runtimes can be gathered and managed in one place, a single, reliable front-end to your development environment, no matter how many repositories you travel between. Join me to discover how one simple tool can restore harmony to your workflow and lighten the burden of managing modern development setups. *Pronounced “MEEZ ahn plahs.”

• 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

• May 20th 2026: {dev.talk} - The One with the Cliffhanger

  This event explores how AI can accelerate learning and skill growth in teams, alongside practical ways to simplify day-to-day developer setup. Attendees will gain real examples of AI-supported development and a clear approach to managing tools, tasks, and runtimes consistently across projects.

• June 24th 2026: {dev.talk} - The One with the Cybersecurity hack

  This is a collab with the B2600 Cybersecurity community. Attendees will participate in a no pressure, hands-on cybersecurity AI vibe coding challenge. No experience of cybersecurity or software development is required.

• July 22nd 2026: {dev.talk} - The one in July

  This event dives into practical 3D game asset production, covering modelling and UV workflow, texturing pipelines, integration into modern game engines, optimisation techniques, and packaging assets for publishing.

• August 31st 2026: NO EVENT IN AUGUST - The one where we all go on holiday

  We are not having an event in August as we know many people will be on holiday - we hope you have a great break and we'll see you at the next one in September!

• 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.

• 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.

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

  The second installment of delving into JarvisOS.

• December 16th 2026 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• 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 30th 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• July 21st 2027 🎤 Speaker wanted: submit a talk idea or get in touch.
• August 25th 2027: NO EVENT IN AUGUST - The one where we all go on holiday

  We are not having an event in August as we know many people will be on holiday - we hope you have a great break and we'll see you at the next one in September!

• 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.