Tech events in Edinburgh this week: a lunchtime argument about datacentres (6-12 November 2026)

Lighthouse, Edinburgh's radical bookshop, has taken Assembly Roxy for an hour today to argue that hyperscale AI datacentres are a political choice rather than a foregone conclusion: what they draw in power and water, and who carries the cost. Fighting the "Inevitable": AI, Hyperscale Datacentres, and Resistance runs 12:30, free, one hour, and carries the highest interest score of the fourteen tech events in Edinburgh this week. That is the city being itself: the best networking events in Edinburgh tend to be the ones where everybody arrives with a position already formed.

By the numbers

Fourteen events, Friday 6 to Thursday 12 November. Eleven free to register. Three cost money: £10.92, £15, £96. Tuesday and Thursday carry four rooms each. Sunday and Monday carry nothing at all - not quiet, empty.

Friday and Saturday

Founders Hub - by Bayes and ScotlandIS opens the week at 09:30 in the Bayes Centre, free. ScotlandIS runs it and the shape never changes: 9:30 arrival, networking, then work. Predictability is the whole value of a Friday morning.

Friday evening, New College Festival - Eleanor Drage at 17:30 in Martin Hall, New College, £10.92. Drage on her book What If We Got AI Right? (Profile, 2026), with Marion Thain in the chair. It sits in a festival of books and belief rather than a tech programme, which is why the floor's questions will be unlike last week's.

Saturday splits. Linux Users' Group Edinburgh meets at 11:00, free - and it is not where it used to be, so read Worth knowing before you set off. Then edindies at 13:00, LEVELS on Holyrood Road, free: three hours of co-working for the city's indie game developers, builds playtested by whoever is next to you.

Tuesday is the week's hinge

Four rooms, and they barely overlap. The Future for Solar & Storage in Scotland 2026 takes the COSLA Conference Centre for the day from 09:00, £96 - Solar Energy UK on Scotland's pipeline, from domestic rooftops and home batteries through to commercial and industrial installations - the only room this week built around an energy balance sheet.

Fund Your Business Your Way: Pitching 101 is three hours at the Royal Bank Accelerator on Princes Street from 09:30, free. Session six of a 12-week Funding Accelerator programme, and you can take it alone without joining the rest - which the listing does not say.

Tuesday night runs two in parallel. TechTalks Edinburgh #10 at CodeBase, 18:00, free: Dmitriy Fedoryshchev, a lead software engineer, on how to tell whether agent-written code is making a codebase safer or riskier, with a 600-table, 21TB modernisation as the case study, which puts it well above the average AI-and-code talk. Across town, GameDevEd takes the ground floor of OX184 on the Cowgate from 18:00, free, fortnightly, no programme.

Wednesday and Thursday

Wednesday is one room: Edinburgh Tech Network's evening drinks at the Slug and Lettuce on George Street, 19:00, free. No talks, no slides, no agenda - some weeks that is the format you want.

Thursday is busy again. Founders Coffee Club at Jamaica Yard, 3 Jamaica Street, 10:00, £15 - no speeches, no selling; you get introduced, and that is the service. Thursday Gathering #32 at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, 17:00, free. And Women in Tech Edinburgh - OutGeekWomen at The Melting Pot on Calton Road, 18:00, free, short talks then open networking.

Organiser spotlight: Venture Café Edinburgh

Thursday Gathering hits edition thirty-two this week. Same room on Lauriston Place, same 17:00 start, no ticket, no application, every week. A gathering nobody has to decide about is a gathering people actually attend, which is how it became the default answer to "where do I meet people in Edinburgh tech". Venture Café Edinburgh turns one on 19 November, back at the Futures Institute - if you only go once, go to that.

Who should go where

Builders, Tuesday night is the call. TechTalks #10 if you ship anything an agent has touched. Saturday at LEVELS if you make games; GameDevEd on Tuesday if you would rather talk about it over a pint.

Founders, Tuesday morning and Thursday morning. Pitching 101 if your deck has never been in front of a stranger; Founders Coffee Club at £15 if you need two introductions rather than a workshop. Friday's Founders Hub is the free version of the same instinct.

Designers and product people, Thursday at 17:15. World Usability Day is the strongest room of the week for you, and the only one with founders talking about shipped products rather than process.

Investors, your week is thin and honest about it. Solar & Storage on Tuesday is the one room with a pipeline in it, and it costs £96. No demo day, no pitch competition, no showcase. Skip the evening socials unless you are sourcing at the earliest end.

Worth knowing

A venue correction we owe you, six weeks late. Founders Meetup Edinburgh has been listed at EH3 8UL. The address is 9 Haymarket Square, EH3 8FY. Our row carried the wrong postcode for six weeks. The next edition is Tuesday 17 November at 18:00 - outside this week, but fix your calendar now rather than at 17:50 on the night. The fireside guest is Valentin Hinov of ThankBox. The row reads paid with no figure published, so check the page before you budget.

Linux Users' Group has moved and the door is the tricky bit. It is no longer Old College. The November meeting is in the study space at the Futures Institute, entered through the Canopy Cafe door off Middle Meadow Walk. Our venue field reads Canopy Kitchen & Courtyard - right building, unhelpful name for finding the door.

Eleven free rows is a number to hold loosely. Our price field defaults to free when an organiser publishes nothing. The community fixtures - Founders Hub, edindies, EdLUG, Thursday Gathering, the ETN drinks, OutGeekWomen - genuinely are free. Check anything that looks institutional before you build a day around it.

The Big One: World Usability Day, Thursday 12 November

World Usability Day special: Tech for Good at CodeBase, Thursday at 17:15, free. UX Edinburgh marks the day with two founders who have built public-good products, on what it actually took. One is James Buchan, founder and CEO of ePass.

It is the pick of the week because of the gap it closes. Most tech-for-good evenings are about intention: the mission, the theory of change, the deck. This one is two people who shipped, in front of designers and researchers who will ask how it got funded, who said no, and what broke in year two. Public-good products fail at delivery far more often than at conception. It starts at 17:15 against Thursday Gathering at 17:00 and OutGeekWomen at 18:00, so Thursday needs a decision, not a plan.

Fourteen rooms, eleven of them free, and two days with nothing in them: the full Edinburgh calendar is here. If you run something in Edinburgh in December, send it to us this week - December is the month organisers forget to list and readers keep searching for.