Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session: drink your beverage of choice, bring your laptop, and hang out with your peers! Have engaging conversations, or focus on work or projects. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work.

---- Schedule ----

You're welcome to drop in anytime during the event. We understand that everyone may have external commitments and challenges - join us when you can!

We have informal unscheduled introductions - practice your personal elevator pitch, or take things slower to build your confidence.

---- Venue ----

Fly Chai allow us to informally and freely use their space. If within your budget, we'd appreciate your help to sustain our use of the venue, by purchasing something tasty, whether Chai or otherwise.

Find us at tables with a Code&Coffee sign - or a clump of laptop-users!

Wifi and power outlets are available. Our meeting area should be accessible - please let us know if not.

---- What to expect ----

Smaller events than you may be used to, with a mixed crowd week-to-week. We expect this is likely due to us meeting weekly, at a less central location.

These may result in what you're looking for:

A smaller, less intimidating, lower pressure, cozy atmosphere.
A mix of regular and new faces.
A simpler schedule - every week, same time, same place - that you can drop into when you like.
Being closer to you than other events.

Whether those are generally or partly to your liking, we hope you'll consider dropping by sometime!

---- Getting to the venue ----

Look for the venue on the meetup Google map, or alternatives like OpenStreetMap.

-- Driving --

There are limited parking spaces on a lot outside the venue (4+1 accessible), with more in the surrounding area.

-- Transit options --

Beaverton Central (Red/Blue MAX), then walk~ 8 minutes

Beaverton Transit Center (Red/Blue MAX, bus, WES) then walk ~11 minutes

For a shorter walk to the venue, take a bus from Beaverton Transit Center (52 to Farmington/Hall, 76 to Watson/Broadway, 57 to Canyon/Watson)

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session: drink your beverage of choice, bring your laptop, and hang out with your peers! Have engaging conversations, or focus on work or projects. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work.

---- Schedule ----

You're welcome to drop in anytime during the event. We understand that everyone may have external commitments and challenges - join us when you can!

We have informal unscheduled introductions - practice your personal elevator pitch, or take things slower to build your confidence.

---- Venue ----

Fly Chai allow us to informally and freely use their space. If within your budget, we'd appreciate your help to sustain our use of the venue, by purchasing something tasty, whether Chai or otherwise.

Find us at tables with a Code&Coffee sign - or a clump of laptop-users!

Wifi and power outlets are available. Our meeting area should be accessible - please let us know if not.

---- What to expect ----

Smaller events than you may be used to, with a mixed crowd week-to-week. We expect this is likely due to us meeting weekly, at a less central location.

These may result in what you're looking for:

A smaller, less intimidating, lower pressure, cozy atmosphere.
A mix of regular and new faces.
A simpler schedule - every week, same time, same place - that you can drop into when you like.
Being closer to you than other events.

Whether those are generally or partly to your liking, we hope you'll consider dropping by sometime!

---- Getting to the venue ----

Look for the venue on the meetup Google map, or alternatives like OpenStreetMap.

-- Driving --

There are limited parking spaces on a lot outside the venue (4+1 accessible), with more in the surrounding area.

-- Transit options --

Beaverton Central (Red/Blue MAX), then walk~ 8 minutes

Beaverton Transit Center (Red/Blue MAX, bus, WES) then walk ~11 minutes

For a shorter walk to the venue, take a bus from Beaverton Transit Center (52 to Farmington/Hall, 76 to Watson/Broadway, 57 to Canyon/Watson)

Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session: drink your beverage of choice, bring your laptop, and hang out with your peers! Have engaging conversations, or focus on work or projects. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work.

---- Schedule ----

You're welcome to drop in anytime during the event. We understand that everyone may have external commitments and challenges - join us when you can!

We have informal unscheduled introductions - practice your personal elevator pitch, or take things slower to build your confidence.

---- Venue ----

Fly Chai allow us to informally and freely use their space. If within your budget, we'd appreciate your help to sustain our use of the venue, by purchasing something tasty, whether Chai or otherwise.

Find us at tables with a Code&Coffee sign - or a clump of laptop-users!

Wifi and power outlets are available. Our meeting area should be accessible - please let us know if not.

---- What to expect ----

Smaller events than you may be used to, with a mixed crowd week-to-week. We expect this is likely due to us meeting weekly, at a less central location.

These may result in what you're looking for:

A smaller, less intimidating, lower pressure, cozy atmosphere.
A mix of regular and new faces.
A simpler schedule - every week, same time, same place - that you can drop into when you like.
Being closer to you than other events.

Whether those are generally or partly to your liking, we hope you'll consider dropping by sometime!

---- Getting to the venue ----

Look for the venue on the meetup Google map, or alternatives like OpenStreetMap.

-- Driving --

There are limited parking spaces on a lot outside the venue (4+1 accessible), with more in the surrounding area.

-- Transit options --

Beaverton Central (Red/Blue MAX), then walk~ 8 minutes

Beaverton Transit Center (Red/Blue MAX, bus, WES) then walk ~11 minutes

For a shorter walk to the venue, take a bus from Beaverton Transit Center (52 to Farmington/Hall, 76 to Watson/Broadway, 57 to Canyon/Watson)

Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session: drink your beverage of choice, bring your laptop, and hang out with your peers! Have engaging conversations, or focus on work or projects. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work.

---- Schedule ----

You're welcome to drop in anytime during the event. We understand that everyone may have external commitments and challenges - join us when you can!

We have informal unscheduled introductions - practice your personal elevator pitch, or take things slower to build your confidence.

---- Venue ----

Fly Chai allow us to informally and freely use their space. If within your budget, we'd appreciate your help to sustain our use of the venue, by purchasing something tasty, whether Chai or otherwise.

Find us at tables with a Code&Coffee sign - or a clump of laptop-users!

Wifi and power outlets are available. Our meeting area should be accessible - please let us know if not.

---- What to expect ----

Smaller events than you may be used to, with a mixed crowd week-to-week. We expect this is likely due to us meeting weekly, at a less central location.

These may result in what you're looking for:

A smaller, less intimidating, lower pressure, cozy atmosphere.
A mix of regular and new faces.
A simpler schedule - every week, same time, same place - that you can drop into when you like.
Being closer to you than other events.

Whether those are generally or partly to your liking, we hope you'll consider dropping by sometime!

---- Getting to the venue ----

Look for the venue on the meetup Google map, or alternatives like OpenStreetMap.

-- Driving --

There are limited parking spaces on a lot outside the venue (4+1 accessible), with more in the surrounding area.

-- Transit options --

Beaverton Central (Red/Blue MAX), then walk~ 8 minutes

Beaverton Transit Center (Red/Blue MAX, bus, WES) then walk ~11 minutes

For a shorter walk to the venue, take a bus from Beaverton Transit Center (52 to Farmington/Hall, 76 to Watson/Broadway, 57 to Canyon/Watson)

Join us at DevOpsDays Portland - September 8-10, 2026 at Portland State University!

Devopsdays is a worldwide series of technical conferences covering topics of software development, IT infrastructure operations, and the intersection between them. Each event is run by volunteers from the local area. We welcome speakers of all backgrounds and experience levels. DevOpsDays Portland is about sharing real stories, practical lessons, and building community.

The CFP and registration are both open now, so go get your tickets now.

For September, we're taking advantage of a speaker in town for DevOpsDaysPDX, and making it an all-observability night, with FluentBit and OpenTelemetry.

Date: Wednesday, September 16, 2026 Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM Location: SteepleJack Brewing, Fireside Room, 2400 NE Broadway, Portland

Talks are typically recorded (opt-in by speakers)

A big thank you to SuSE for sponsoring catering at SteepleJack, as well as Eric's travel.

First Presentation: No C, No Opaque AI: Watch Your First Fluent Bit Contribution Happen Live

Speaker: Eric D. Schabell, SuSE

Contributing to a CNCF graduated project feels out of reach until someone shows you exactly how it happens. In this session, that someone is on stage doing it in real time — spotting a gap between what the Fluent Bit codebase actually does and what the docs say, opening a branch on a live fork, running the project's prose linter, writing a properly signed commit, and pushing a pull request that closes a real tracked issue. Every step, no shortcuts, no slides pretending to be a terminal.

You will leave knowing the two-repo mental model that makes Fluent Bit doc contributions work, the git habits that signal credibility to maintainers, and the AI guardrails that keep your name attached to work you actually stand behind. Your first PR does not require deep C knowledge. It requires knowing where to look, how to show your work, and when to keep your hands on the wheel."

Second Presentation: Devs, Transform (Your Data) and Roll Out!: Learning and Leveraging OTTL

Speaker: Reese Lee, New Relic

The OpenTelemetry Collector is OTel’s power tool for ingesting and processing your app and infrastructure data, but there’s even more you can do with your data before it reaches your backend! Learn how to start leveraging OTTL, or OpenTelemetry Transformation Language, to manage your data volume and quality. We’ll explore the syntax basics and its underlying architecture within the Collector, where its strength really comes into play, when to use it (or not!), and more.

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session: drink your beverage of choice, bring your laptop, and hang out with your peers! Have engaging conversations, or focus on work or projects. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work.

---- Schedule ----

You're welcome to drop in anytime during the event. We understand that everyone may have external commitments and challenges - join us when you can!

We have informal unscheduled introductions - practice your personal elevator pitch, or take things slower to build your confidence.

---- Venue ----

Fly Chai allow us to informally and freely use their space. If within your budget, we'd appreciate your help to sustain our use of the venue, by purchasing something tasty, whether Chai or otherwise.

Find us at tables with a Code&Coffee sign - or a clump of laptop-users!

Wifi and power outlets are available. Our meeting area should be accessible - please let us know if not.

---- What to expect ----

Smaller events than you may be used to, with a mixed crowd week-to-week. We expect this is likely due to us meeting weekly, at a less central location.

These may result in what you're looking for:

A smaller, less intimidating, lower pressure, cozy atmosphere.
A mix of regular and new faces.
A simpler schedule - every week, same time, same place - that you can drop into when you like.
Being closer to you than other events.

Whether those are generally or partly to your liking, we hope you'll consider dropping by sometime!

---- Getting to the venue ----

Look for the venue on the meetup Google map, or alternatives like OpenStreetMap.

-- Driving --

There are limited parking spaces on a lot outside the venue (4+1 accessible), with more in the surrounding area.

-- Transit options --

Beaverton Central (Red/Blue MAX), then walk~ 8 minutes

Beaverton Transit Center (Red/Blue MAX, bus, WES) then walk ~11 minutes

For a shorter walk to the venue, take a bus from Beaverton Transit Center (52 to Farmington/Hall, 76 to Watson/Broadway, 57 to Canyon/Watson)

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session: drink your beverage of choice, bring your laptop, and hang out with your peers! Have engaging conversations, or focus on work or projects. This is a great opportunity to learn from others, share your knowledge, and possibly collaborate on side projects, online courses, or even your day-to-day work.

---- Schedule ----

You're welcome to drop in anytime during the event. We understand that everyone may have external commitments and challenges - join us when you can!

We have informal unscheduled introductions - practice your personal elevator pitch, or take things slower to build your confidence.

---- Venue ----

Fly Chai allow us to informally and freely use their space. If within your budget, we'd appreciate your help to sustain our use of the venue, by purchasing something tasty, whether Chai or otherwise.

Find us at tables with a Code&Coffee sign - or a clump of laptop-users!

Wifi and power outlets are available. Our meeting area should be accessible - please let us know if not.

---- What to expect ----

Smaller events than you may be used to, with a mixed crowd week-to-week. We expect this is likely due to us meeting weekly, at a less central location.

These may result in what you're looking for:

A smaller, less intimidating, lower pressure, cozy atmosphere.
A mix of regular and new faces.
A simpler schedule - every week, same time, same place - that you can drop into when you like.
Being closer to you than other events.

Whether those are generally or partly to your liking, we hope you'll consider dropping by sometime!

---- Getting to the venue ----

Look for the venue on the meetup Google map, or alternatives like OpenStreetMap.

-- Driving --

There are limited parking spaces on a lot outside the venue (4+1 accessible), with more in the surrounding area.

-- Transit options --

Beaverton Central (Red/Blue MAX), then walk~ 8 minutes

Beaverton Transit Center (Red/Blue MAX, bus, WES) then walk ~11 minutes

For a shorter walk to the venue, take a bus from Beaverton Transit Center (52 to Farmington/Hall, 76 to Watson/Broadway, 57 to Canyon/Watson)

Cloud Native PDX July: An API for Linux and Learning OTTL

This July is all about infrastructure: Your systems infrastructure and your monitoring infrastructure.

Date: Thursday, July 16, 2026

Time: 6:00 PM – 8:00 PM

Location: ProFocus Technology, 10200 SW Eastridge St #100, Portland, OR 97225

Recording: Talks are typically recorded (opt-in by speakers)

A big thank you to New Relic for sponsoring food & beverage, and to ProFocus, our venue host.

First Presentation: An API for Linux (Speaker: Justin Garrison, Sidero Labs)

We treat infrastructure and application as code thanks to cloud providers and Kubernetes, but we're still SSHing to Linux machines and running shell scripts. What if Linux had an API? How would it change how we manage servers? What would it do, and how would we secure it? Talos Linux has been building an API for Linux to create a new way to manage your operating system. Let's see why an API is better than SSH and what parts don't

Second Presentation: Devs, Transform (Your Data) and Roll Out!: Learning and Leveraging OTTL (Speaker: Reese Lee, New Relic)

The OpenTelemetry Collector is OTel's power tool for ingesting and processing your app and infrastructure data, but there's even more you can do with your data before it reaches your backend! Learn how to start leveraging OTTL, or OpenTelemetry Transformation Language, to manage your data volume and quality. We'll explore the syntax basics and its underlying architecture within the Collector, where its strength really comes into play, when to use it (or not!), and more.

The Portland Linux Kernel Meetup for July 2026 will be at...

• Date: Thursday, July 16, 2026
• Time: 06:00 PM to 09:00 PM US/Pacific
• Location: Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, 1945 NW Quimby St, Portland, Oregon 97209 US

Come enjoy a beverage and chat with other people who are interested in the Linux kernel. All experience levels are welcome. This is a friendly and casual meetup. Look for a table with a plush Tux penguin.

To get timely reminders of Portland Linux Kernel Meetups, see https://ikluft.github.io/pdx-lkmu/subscribing-to-pdx-lkmu-events.html.

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

You are invited to our community meeting to kick-off our new campaign for a publicly-owned broadband network in Portland!

We'll present a campaign strategy overview, with time for questions, and lots of information about how you can help. After the presentation, we'll have a snack and move on to the fiber-optics hands-on demo and lab activity. Come see in person what fiber optic conduit, and fiber optic cable look and feel like. Experiment with fiber optics by sending a communication over a mini-fiber network.

Special guest from Hillsboro's 100% publicly owned fiber optic boadband network, HiLight.

Spend an hour or stay for the entire community meeting. Ok to stop by anytime during the meeting. Looking forward to seeing you on Saturday June 27 at the Albina Library Branch in Room 2A! Everyone is welcome! Children too!

RSVP Here - Not required, but it helps us know how many snacks to bring and chairs to set up!"

The Portland Linux Kernel Meetup for June 2026 will be at...

• Date: Thursday, June 25, 2026
• Time: 06:00 PM to 09:00 PM US/Pacific
• Location: Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, 1945 NW Quimby St, Portland, Oregon 97209 US

Come enjoy a beverage and chat with other people who are interested in the Linux kernel. All experience levels are welcome. This is a friendly and casual meetup. Look for a table with a plush Tux penguin.

To get timely reminders of Portland Linux Kernel Meetups, see https://ikluft.github.io/pdx-lkmu/subscribing-to-pdx-lkmu-events.html.

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

Happy start of summer PDXOSGeo! 

Join us tonight fourth Wednesday (June 24th) for more of your favorite open source geo-goodness. Tonight's topic is loosely organized around QGIS and its massive plugin ecosystem. We have a few featured cool plugins to demo, and as always we'd love to hear what QGIS tools help you the most in your projects or day to day work. This is our last meetup before our summer hiatus, so drop in and say hello!

As always there will be pizza, and BYOB is available from across the hall at HotLips.

Time / Space Coordinates:Wednesday June 24th, 6:30–8pm | Hot Lips Pizza @ the Natural Capital Center: 721 NW 9th Ave, Portland OR  See you there!

Our mailing list is here, drop us a line with any questions: http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-osgeo

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

RSVP https://luma.com/biksnjuh?tk=M5XHg5

Join us for AI in the AM, a relaxed coffee hour where AI enthusiasts, professionals, and curious minds come together to share ideas, insights, and connections. This is the perfect opportunity to start your day with stimulating discussions and meet other members of the AI Portland community.

​ ​Whether you're an AI expert, a startup founder, or just curious about the potential of artificial intelligence, this event is for you. Our casual setting encourages open conversation, networking, and the exchange of innovative ideas.

June dMob will be held at Rontoms in SE Portland on Wednesday, June 10 from 6-8pm.

🥃 Cocktails and conversations? Outside? In a beautiful patio space? Sounds like a great time to hang with AIGA Portland!

☀️ Meet us at Rontoms on Wednesday, June 10, from 6 to 8 pm on the Central Eastside for drinks, snacks, and community. Let's take a midweek break and talk about your latest projects and meet other creatives!

(This is a 21+ venue so unfortunately it is age restricted. If you are under 21, please look out for next month's dMob!)

What is dMob?

dMob is a FREE social event launched by AIGA Portland in 2003. Hosted on the 2nd Wednesday of every month, it’s a great way to get out and connect with members of Portland’s energetic design community while exploring the city’s various neighborhoods. AIGA Portland wants to encourage discussion, business development, and foster a more dynamic design community in Portland. You’re bound to find inspiration, and opportunity with this friendly, laid-back group of design professionals!

When you arrive, you’ll get a sticker to wear. Venture forth, find another sticker-wearer and introduce yourself or offer to buy them a drink. It’s a great way to break the ice and meet new people.

Portland Starlight Parade

In 2026, the Portland Rose Festival proudly introduces an exciting evolution of two beloved traditions: the CareOregon Grand Floral Starlight Parade. This newly reimagined parade brings together the pageantry of the Grand Floral Parade with the energy and excitement of the Starlight Parade into one unforgettable celebration. By combining these iconic events, the Rose Festival is creating a single, dynamic parade experience that honors tradition while embracing creativity, community, and innovation.

To preserve the distinct character of each parade, the event will unfold in two phases. The Grand Floral portion will step off at 6:30 pm, featuring floral floats, marching bands, equestrian units, and community groups in daylight. Later in the evening, as darkness falls, the Starlight portion will step off at 8:30 pm, showcasing illuminated floats, lighting effects, and nighttime spectacle. The two portions will run sequentially allowing each to shine in its own way.

This format allows for richer storytelling, broader representation, and an enhanced experience for both participants and spectators, while also enabling the Rose Festival to focus resources more intentionally—strengthening production quality, improving operational efficiency, and ensuring the long-term sustainability of one of Portland’s most cherished civic celebrations.

We look forward to welcoming the community to this bold new chapter of the Rose Festival.

Ways To Watch

From The Street Get in on the action for free with a city street spot! The CareOregon Grand Floral Starlight Parade travels through downtown Portland and ends at Lincoln High School. View the Route Map below and find your favorite spot!

Pro Tip! Set your chairs for the parade in the afternoon and enjoy some fair food and carnival rides at CityFair before the parade steps off!

topic: Agentic AI

description:

You're a developer. You know AI can write code. You've used Copilot, Claude, or ChatGPT to ship faster, debug, or figure out what a library is doing. That part is well-trodden ground.

This talk explores something different: using agentic AI as a general-purpose problem-solving tool. Yes, the tool is called Claude Code. But what I want to show is what happens when you stop thinking of it as "the thing that writes my code" and start thinking of it as "the thing that can build me something useful in 20 minutes."

That's the idea behind disposable software: small, single-purpose tools you spin up to solve one specific problem, use as long as you need, and then move on. There's a whole class of problems sitting on your plate right now that don't warrant a project plan, a sprint, or a code review. They need someone to build the thing and move on.

In this session, we'll go over how to set up an agentic environment, dive into a real-world problem, and then spend a good amount of time on Q&A and diving into real solutions that people are solving today with agentic AI.

Speaker Lucas Bennington is the founder of Codi Tech, an AI-native software development agency. Over the past three years, he's built a practice around helping teams turn ideas into working products using AI and modern development tools. His team uses AI across every part of how they operate, from project intake and scoping to building internal tools and delivering client work. Lucas brings a practitioner's perspective: he's not talking about AI in the abstract, he's building with it every day.

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

Topic

Writing proper alt text is hard. But it doesn't have to be. There's a minimum standard and an advanced approach. People who need alt text will appreciate you for the former and love you for the latter. Alt text is also a whole lot more than the alt attribute. That's just one of the many ways to make content accessible. In fact, there are a number of considerations for writing great alt text.

In this presentation, Mark Wyner will help you understand the spectrum of options so you can take good care of your audience. We'll walk through implementation methods, phonetics, composition, complex sources, and tackling social media.

Let’s give screen readers and other assistive technologies something to talk about.

Agenda

The event begins at 6 pm; join early, starting at 5:45 pm for networking.

• 5:45 Networking
• 6:00 Introductions and announcements
• 6:15 Presentation
• 6:45 Q&A and discussion

About the presenter

Mark Wyner is an autodidactic polymath with over two decades of experience in design and development. His approach prioritizes usability, accessibility, and inclusivity. He’s also an antifascist humanitarian. So diversity and equity are overarching principles for everything he does in this space. Currently, as the Lead Product Designer at BookNook. His pronouns are he/him/his. You can follow him on Mastodon or his accessibility writings on his website.

Accommodation requests

If you have any accommodation requests, don't hesitate to contact us before the event to discuss.

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

Come join Community Broadband PDX to talk about building a publicly owned broadband network here in Portland.

See you there!

The Portland Linux Kernel Meetup for May 2026 will be at...

• Date: Thursday, May 14, 2026
• Time: 06:00 PM to 09:00 PM US/Pacific
• Location: Lucky Labrador Beer Hall, 1945 NW Quimby St, Portland, Oregon 97209 US

Come enjoy a beverage and chat with other people who are interested in the Linux kernel. All experience levels are welcome. This is a friendly and casual meetup. Look for a table with a plush Tux penguin.

To get timely reminders of Portland Linux Kernel Meetups, see https://ikluft.github.io/pdx-lkmu/subscribing-to-pdx-lkmu-events.html.

Cloud Native PDX May: Change-driven Architecture and Serving Inference at Scale

This May is all about scaling; scaling your infrastructure management, or scaling your LLM inference serving. Join us to find out about some open source tools to make managing large modern stacks easier.

Date: Thursday, May 14 Time: 5:30–7:30 PM Location: Reperio Health, 4784 SE 17th Ave Suite 120, Portland, OR

Recording: Talks are typically recorded (opt-in by speakers)

A big thank you to Microsoft for sponsoring food & beverage, and to Reperio Health, our venue host.

Drasi, a new take on Change Driven Architectures: Aman Singh, Microsoft

Modern cloud-native systems constantly generate data changes, and applications often need to react to them. Building change-driven solutions that respond to specific changes in distributed data is challenging. This talk introduces Drasi, a CNCF Sandbox project that simplifies the design and implementation of change-driven architectures using Graph Queries and pluggable components. For example, with Drasi you can declaratively write automation to detect and respond to running containers with newly identified vulnerabilities across pods and deployments in a Kubernetes cluster. Join us for a walkthrough of real-world use cases that show how Drasi’s approach brings structure and responsiveness to complex distributed environments - without writing custom code.

Dynamo: Large Scale Distributed Inference David Zeir, Director, DL System Software, Nvidia Neelay Shah, Distinguished Engineer, Nvidia

This talk introduces Dynamo, NVIDIA's open-source Kubernetes-native distributed inference platform. We'll cover the problem space, walk through Dynamo's architecture — disaggregated prefill/decode, KV-cache-aware routing, and a transport layer that moves KV blocks directly between GPUs — and dig into the Kubernetes integration for scheduling, autoscaling, and graceful failure handling. We'll close with a demo of Dynamo serving a real workload.

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)

Note: Your RSVP is required in order to attend this event.

Let’s get together for an informal BEAM PDX hangout: coffee, conversation, and light co-working.

This is a low-key monthly meetup for folks working with Elixir, Erlang, Gleam, and other BEAM languages, aimed at reconnecting the local community and rebuilding momentum after a long quiet stretch. We'll holding this on the second Thursday of each month.

There will be opportunities to:

• Ask questions about Elixir and other BEAM languages
• Share what you’ve been working on (or stuck on)
• Get help with programming or design problems
• Co-work: get things done with like-minded folks nearby
• Brainstorm ideas for future talk-based meetups and identify potential speakers
• Bring your laptop if you’d like. It's totally optional.

New to BEAM languages, or just curious? You’re very welcome.

Please RSVP so we know roughly how many people to expect. If your plans change, un-RSVP when you can.

This meetup is also part of our transition away from Meetup to a new home for the group, where we’ll be organizing future events.

Pull your shorts out of the back of the drawer and don’t forget the sunscreen! 🍷

Join us on Wednesday, May 13 at 6:00 PM for a golden hour evening with friends, wine, and refreshing drinks at Company Wine Bar in SE Portland.

Come join Community Broadband PDX to talk about building a publicly owned broadband network here in Portland.

See you there!

A toolkit for founders from Ali Maaxa, Ph.D., incubation product & marketing strategist (founder: ProductTheory.io, former: AWS AI, New Relic AI, Meta AI, Recreation.gov), guest VC expert Marianne Motus (UC Berkeley Business School), PDX startup dev team Semi-Decent, and leaders from CHIFOO and the ORPIB Incubator.

This is a FREE lightning workshop to help scrappy startup founders nail product-market fit (PMF) and go-to-market strategy (GTM). Be your own incubator, be nimble, and be ready to answer deep strategic questions for potential investors, flagship customers, or strategic partners — in a flash.

Sure, PMF and GTM are buzzwords thrown around constantly. But they stand in for due diligence that actually makes a difference. Skipping the fundamentals is the primary reason 91% of startups fail:

The classic frameworks that undergird successful incubations — from enterprise AI to EdTech startups Rigorous market research powered by smart AI context engineering Real-deal, progressive hypothesis-testing toward a heavy-hitting MVP In fact, 82% of "failed" founders say that challenging their assumptions about their market would have saved their business.

Most startups don't find product-market fit for one of two reasons: consultancies charge high overhead to run studies and then throw their findings over the wall — or founders rely on raw AI outputs without the frameworks and context engineering that hold up under VC scrutiny and real product + user discovery.

Founders need a toolkit they can use throughout their entire product and business development journey. Before you hire a fractional, take generic expert advice from someone who doesn't understand your context, or worse — guess your way into brand damage — let us help you develop your ProductTheory with startup-friendly canvases that will anchor your pitch deck and your upcoming rounds of critical business decisions.

Learn more about Ali Maaxa's work: https://www.linkedin.com/in/alimaaxa/

Get on board with ProductTheory.io: https://www.producttheory.io/

People doing strange things with electricity (and code)!

DorkbotPDX is a laid-back meetup and show-and-tell for those who make, modify and use technical tools to weird and imaginative ends. You might run into creative coders, electronic artists, circuit designers, retro computing archaeologists, video game devs, modular synth gearheads and cyberpunk DIYers.

Bring your electronic wonders, monsters, and works-in-progress to show off, or come see what others have been working on! Code or circuits, electronic creativity of all sorts is welcome here.

Most of Dorkbot is a freewheeling hangout, but each month we feature a short talk about a cool project or teaching some esoteric wizardry.

This month, Matthew Nielsen is sharing: A novel, super efficient data compression technique used for audio time stretching (and more!). The intended audience is not just synthesizer/sampling nerds but anyone with an interest in digital signal processing, particularly the efficient embedded variety. I've successfully applied this to weather data, GPS/IMU, and a range of industrial transmitters. See demo here https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hQ3FgaHN-ig

Table space with power will be available for project show-and-tell; we have a table for drinks and snacks, feel free to contribute to the communal cache/BYOB.

We do this every month, usually on the second Monday night (check the site for upcoming dates to be sure)

Note: We may be famous for the free parts cart…but the pile has gotten unruly, so we’re not accepting new stuff. If you have things to give away, check the Discord offer/ask channel to see if anyone would like to claim them. Feel free to exchange items at Dorkbot, just no leftovers please!

You can subscribe to our calendar and mailing list, join the Discord and find our social links on https://www.dorkbotpdx.org (It also has our Code of Conduct, which we'd like you to check out while you're there)

​Better Futures Club is a weekly event (alternating Tuesdays and Thursdays) focused on imagining and making better futures.

Imagine an artist community, a think tank, and a research center in the same building. People in all of those fields working alongside each other imagining and creating different futures together. Cross pollination and inspiration. Liberal Arts and STEM and R&D. Photographers, physicists, authors, astronomers, musicians, makers, mathematicians, designers, developers, fashionistas, climatologists and all manner of imaginative optimists.

All Better Futures Club events are covered by the Contributor Covenant Code of Conduct (https://www.contributor-covenant.org)