Where

Prompt tricks, agent skills and the latest witchcraft only get you so far. In this talk Jag Reehal moves beyond them to show how engineering practices can make AI-generated code prove itself. Jag covers and demos the steps you can take to build quality, maintainable and observable solutions when coding with AI.

Jag Reehal
Jag is a Principal AI Engineer based in Cambridge, with certifications in AI and AWS and over 20 years of experience architecting scalable front-end and back-end systems for both startups and large enterprises. Jag's LinkedIn

There is also a book giveaway from Packt, with copies of The Principal Engineer Handbook, Enterprise Vibe Coding for Agentic Engineering and Distributed AI Systems to be won.

An in-person talk with Paul Grenyer for dotnetsheff. Topic to be announced.

Pizza and drinks from 18:15, introduction at 18:30, followed by the talk, with socialising at a nearby pub afterwards.

In October we have an extra meetup and we are hosting a fun Coding Dojo where you'll practice your Test Driven Development software engineering skills - a key skill for Software Crafters that care about producing quality code.

Join us for an evening of coding. Come and code along, share ideas, discuss best practices with Test Driven Development and learn from our expert Crafters and your peers in the Norfolk Developers community.

What's the format?
After a short intro, we'll get into groups/pairs or work solo, whatever people feel most comfortable with, and start building.

You choose how you want to work and what language you want to code in. This session is about collaborating with others, becoming a better developer and building your network, in a fun, relaxed environment.

We'll be sharing ideas, discussing best practices and using this as an opportunity to learn from our fellow coders.

All levels of experience very welcome, if you want to brush up on your Test Driven Development skills or are a complete novice, do come along. All welcome! All you need to do is bring a laptop if you'd like to code along - please have your preferred language and editor setup.

Want to bring a friend? Great! Just ask them to RSVP so we know they are coming.

"JezCon-1. I’ve already talked about not going to the ACCU Conference this year, and I am not the only one in my circle to have made that decision. It’s the topic of much discussion, some of it quite difficult, but in the middle of that Paul (that's me!) suggested we get together somewhere for dinner.

"We are geographically dispersed so we’d all have to travel. I was game, but said I would need more notice, probably months of it. Then conversion just took off. Suddenly we were looking at big AirBnbs and plotting a conference of very own.

"Since this was apparently my idea (or my fault, I suppose), it’s been dubbed JezCon. We’ve got a logo and everything. JezCon-1. It’ll be taking place in the fine Metropolitan Borough of Dudley in October."

A double-header evening with two talks.

Charlie and the Software Factory
Everyone wants a golden ticket: a software factory that turns ideas into secure, production ready software on demand. The newest factories run themselves. AI agents plan the changes, write the code, review each other's work, and iterate, with hardly a human on the factory floor.

In this talk, we'll take the full tour. We'll see where the humans now stand. We'll meet the Oompa Loompas of the modern factory: the agents doing the work, and the paved roads, conventions, and written-down knowledge they depend on. We'll confront the Willy Wonka problem. And we'll visit the kids who didn't make it out: the common ways an AI-powered factory go wrong, and how to avoid becoming a cautionary tale.

Charlie Allen
Charlie has an unconventional background, moving from legal training into tech, teaching English in Korea, and co-founding a chai business before joining Amazon Alexa's AI organisation, where he deployed a production NER model. He was named the British Computer Society's Digital Degree Apprentice of the Year, later led infrastructure recovery at Darktrace, and went solo in 2026 to build agentic AI systems full-time from Norwich.

Charlie's LinkedIn

From Prompt to Loop
A practical guide to AI agent development, walking through four evolutionary stages: prompt engineering, context engineering, harness engineering, and loop engineering. Includes concrete examples using Claude Code and agent verification techniques.

Nishant Kumar
Nishant's LinkedIn

Join us at the Eagle Pub in Norwich for an evening of good vibes and learning together. This isn't your typical corporate mixer; it's a chance for the whole community to get together, from seasoned professionals and entrepreneurs to students and tech enthusiasts.

As software engineers, it's easy to get lost in the excitement of implementing clever business logic: the algorithms, the workflows, the elegant domain models. But the success (or failure) of a service rarely hinges on its core logic alone. What really separates a fragile prototype from a resilient, scalable system is everything that happens around that logic: the invisible scaffolding that shapes how a service behaves, communicates, and recovers when things go wrong.

In this session I'll explore the often-overlooked aspects of building robust services. The decisions that make the difference between smooth operations and painful refactors months down the line. I'll unpack how thoughtful design choices early on can pay dividends in maintainability, observability, and security later. Whether you're building your first microservice or managing an ecosystem of services, you'll leave with practical ideas for designing services.

Key Takeaways:

• Why the non-domain aspects of a service are often what determine its long-term success
• How to think holistically about design, structure, and reliability
• Strategies for evolving your services without introducing chaos

To AI or Not to AI - Kicki Frisch
How do you use AI sustainably in development, avoid the hype, and set healthy expectations? This talk isn't about agentic AI or prompting techniques. Instead, it examines developer psychology and behavioural patterns to help teams leverage AI to reduce cognitive load rather than increase it.

Kicki Frisch
Kicki is a senior engineering manager in Investment Risk at a global asset management company in London. Her technical background spans C++, C#, .Net, and Python development, with experience across FinTech, medical devices, and structural engineering. She specialises in enabling high-functioning agile teams to deliver quality products.

Kicki's LinkedIn

AI for Power BI Professionals - Duncan Boyne
A practical demonstration of AI workflows for Power BI developers covering DAX generation, logic validation, documentation, design, debugging, and stakeholder communication using various AI tools.

Duncan Boyne
Duncan is a Power BI specialist and CPiO consultant. He founded the Norfolk Power Platform User Group and co-founded the East of England Power Platform Summit.

Duncan's LinkedIn

Join One Beyond and guest speakers from Haven Holidays and Luxury Car Hire for an exclusive webinar sharing their first-hand experiences of adopting AI, the benefits they've achieved, and the lessons learned along the way.

In this session, you'll learn:

• How Haven Holidays and Luxury Car Hire are using AI to improve operations and customer experiences
• The business benefits and ROI they've realised from their AI investments
• How they approached selecting the right AI models and technologies
• Common challenges encountered during implementation
• Practical advice on avoiding the most common AI adoption pitfalls
• Key considerations for organisations starting or expanding their AI journey

Key Takeaways:

• Learn from organisations successfully using AI today
• Understand how to evaluate and select AI solutions for your business
• Avoid common mistakes that can slow down or derail AI initiatives

Speakers:

• Tim Fay, Host, One Beyond
• Paul Grenyer, Software Engineering Team Lead, Haven Holidays
• Martin Henderson, Head of Operations, Luxury Car Hire
• Vic Tabram, Head of Product, One Beyond

An inaugural networking gathering from FNDO Collective, fostering genuine connections among independent professionals. Rather than traditional pitch-focused formats, the event emphasises real conversations, good vibes, and a goodie bag. Includes a 30-minute introduction to FNDO Collective's mission and a brief feedback session to shape future community direction.

Designed for creatives, freelancers, and small business owners who find conventional networking events unappealing or exhausting. Spots are limited.

A full-day immersive event exploring Apache Iceberg and modern lakehouse architecture on AWS. Morning sessions cover strategy and architecture for technical decision makers, including keynotes on data readiness for AI, intelligent lakehouse architecture, and Iceberg adoption patterns. Afternoon hands-on labs guide data engineers through building an end-to-end Iceberg lakehouse from real-time ingestion to ML-ready analytics.

Context switching is unavoidable in the tech industry, but unmanaged it quietly destroys focus, productivity, and decision quality across teams (as well as morale!).

This talk breaks down the real cost of constant interruptions and gives practical, tested strategies to protect deep work, structure workflows, and stay effective in high-interruption environments. Also we’ll learn how to say “no” more.

Not everyone’s brain is the same, and this is taken into account when providing new habit suggestions.

A coding practice session focused on Test Driven Development skills. Participants work in groups, pairs, or solo using their preferred programming language and editor. All experience levels welcome. Pizza and drinks provided, sponsored by Codurance.

A livestream event featuring a candid conversation about what's next with agentic AI. Speakers include Matt Garman, Colleen Aubrey, Julia White, and OpenAI leaders.

An executive lunch and industry roundtable hosted by One Beyond, bringing together senior technology and digital leaders from across the travel and leisure sector.

Join Winterfylleth for an instore signing at Raven Records. Purchases from Raven Records will be given priority entry.

Claude Code is changing the way many of us write software, but the experience is uneven. Some developers report dramatic gains in productivity, while others find it underwhelming and even dangerous. Much of the difference appears to come down to how the tools are used and how development workflows adapt around them.

In this talk Steve Cresswell will share practical field notes from using Claude Code in day-to-day development, covering local setup, supporting tools, and the workflows that make the interaction with Claude productive rather than chaotic. He will also discuss how requirements and documentation influence outcomes, how to steer or constrain the model when necessary, and how these approaches begin to scale beyond an individual developer into team usage.

Steve Cresswell
Stephen Cresswell is Head of Engineering at Haven, the UK's largest holiday park operator, where he leads teams responsible for building and operating the digital systems that power the company's sales and booking platforms. He has over twenty-five years' experience in software engineering across sectors including utilities, insurance, media and education. His career spans roles from graduate developer to CTO and co-founder of the consultancy GuideSmiths. Stephen holds a first-class honours degree in Computer Science and an MBA from the Open University. He contributes to a number of open source projects, including several widely used Node.js libraries such as amqplib and Rascal.

Steve's LinkedIn

As software engineers, it's easy to get lost in the excitement of implementing clever business logic: the algorithms, the workflows, the elegant domain models. But the success (or failure) of a service rarely hinges on its core logic alone. What really separates a fragile prototype from a resilient, scalable system is everything that happens around that logic: the invisible scaffolding that shapes how a service behaves, communicates, and recovers when things go wrong.

In this session I'll explore the often-overlooked aspects of building robust services. The decisions that make the difference between smooth operations and painful refactors months down the line. I'll unpack how thoughtful design choices early on can pay dividends in maintainability, observability, and security later. Whether you're building your first microservice or managing an ecosystem of services, you'll leave with practical ideas for designing services.

Key Takeaways:

• Why the non-domain aspects of a service are often what determine its long-term success
• How to think holistically about design, structure, and reliability
• Strategies for evolving your services without introducing chaos

As software engineers, it's easy to get lost in the excitement of implementing clever business logic: the algorithms, the workflows, the elegant domain models. But the success (or failure) of a service rarely hinges on its core logic alone. What really separates a fragile prototype from a resilient, scalable system is everything that happens around that logic: the invisible scaffolding that shapes how a service behaves, communicates, and recovers when things go wrong.

In this session I'll explore the often-overlooked aspects of building robust services. The decisions that make the difference between smooth operations and painful refactors months down the line. I'll unpack how thoughtful design choices early on can pay dividends in maintainability, observability, and security later. Whether you're building your first microservice or managing an ecosystem of services, you'll leave with practical ideas for designing services.

Key Takeaways:

• Why the non-domain aspects of a service are often what determine its long-term success
• How to think holistically about design, structure, and reliability
• Strategies for evolving your services without introducing chaos