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Edinburgh — An Open Room

Tech events in edinburgh

What's happening: Week of 2 November 2026

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Wednesday4 Nov

Founders · Investors

Unfiltered Edinburgh — November

CodeBase's monthly drop-in morning at its Castle Terrace building: coffee, a loose agenda, and the Edinburgh tech community in one room on the first Wednesday of the month. Open to everyone, no tech background needed. Two structured bits inside an otherwise unstructured hour and a half. The Community Bell is an open floor for anyone to announce an opportunity or an event in the month ahead. The Spotlight is a five-minute slot to tell the group something — a founder journey, an investor's lessons, an odd career path — with no slides and no pitch. Drop in any time between 08:30 and 10:00. Free, but register, because CodeBase checks people in on the door.

Wed 4 Nov · 8:30am · CodeBase

AI & ML · Founders

Leading AI: Strategy, Governance & Policy Programme

A full-day in-person masterclass from Scottish Enterprise at the COSLA Conference Centre, aimed at SME leaders who have to make decisions about AI investment and governance rather than build models. The day is built around frameworks and peer work, not technology: establishing AI governance, drafting usable policies, and getting from scattered pilots to a strategy with measurable value. You work on your own business through the day and leave with a draft AI strategy, a prioritised list of AI opportunities and an outline governance and policy framework. Aimed at senior decision-makers and functional leads in digital, operations, innovation, technology and HR. Runs 09:30 to 16:30. Free, and currently sold out with a waitlist.

Wed 4 Nov · 9:30am · COSLA Conference Centre

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SPOTLIGHT

Founders · Investors · Health & Bio

Edinburgh Startup Panel | Bae HQ | HSBC Innovation Banking | CMS equIP

Bae HQ brings its scaling panel to Edinburgh with HSBC Innovation Banking and CMS equIP, aimed at founders working out how to grow past the early stage. Three speakers. Kuan-Chuan Pao, co-founder and principal scientist at Outrun Therapeutics, a healthtech unlocking the therapeutic potential of protein stabilisation, backed by M Ventures. Elijah Nazarzadeh, founder and CSO of Nebu-Flow, rebuilding nebuliser technology for biologic drugs, backed by Scottish Enterprise and SIS Ventures among others. Dr Poonam Malik, a serial entrepreneur, board chair and investor across biotech, medtech and healthtech. Networking with the speakers and the Bae HQ community follows. Registration is by host approval and the exact address goes to registrants. Bae HQ is the UK ecosystem for Asian-heritage founders and investors.

Wed 4 Nov · 6:00pm

SPOTLIGHT

AI & ML · SaaS · Other

Management, AI and the Social Life of Software Delivery

Marc Burgauer's talk for BCS, hosted in Skyscanner's Quartermile office, argues that the practices a development team writes down are not the practices it actually uses — and that this is the gap where AI tooling either helps or quietly makes things worse. Billed as "Nobody Knows Where We're Going", the session offers methods for surfacing how delivery really happens inside a team and then deciding where AI belongs in it. Seventy-five minutes, 18:30 to 19:45, free, in person at a working engineering office rather than a hotel suite. The organiser asks attendees to use the Lauriston Place entrance to Quartermile One and to arrive a few minutes early for check-in.

Wed 4 Nov · 6:30pm · Skyscanner

Thursday5 Nov

SPOTLIGHT

Fintech · AI & ML · Investors

IA Conference Scotland 2026

The Investment Association's flagship Scottish conference, at The Exchange in Edinburgh — 20-plus sessions across more than eight hours, for an expected 300-plus asset managers, regulators and policymakers. Technology runs through most of it: a leadership panel with Xavier Meyer (Aberdeen), Kirstie MacGillivray (Aegon) and Sandra Boss (BlackRock); a tokenisation spotlight with Janus Henderson and Baillie Gifford; an operational-resilience fireside with M&G; Lucy Castledine of the FCA on consumer investments; and a Power Pitch from Dr Sonia Schulenburg of Level E Research. Stephen Flynn MSP, Cabinet Secretary for the Economy, is in conversation. Free for IA full members, £49 plus VAT for affiliate members, £199 plus VAT otherwise.

Thu 5 Nov · 8:00am · The Exchange

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Founders · Social

Thursday Gathering #31

The weekly Venture Cafe Edinburgh Thursday Gathering at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on Lauriston Place — the thirty-first edition. Free, no ticket and no application. Doors from 17:00, with parallel sessions and an open networking floor running to around 20:00, and you can leave whenever it stops being useful. Each week's specific programme goes up on the Venture Cafe community site a few days beforehand; the shape of the evening does not change. The Venture Cafe network runs the same Thursday pattern in cities across Europe, and in Edinburgh it has become the one weekly fixture founders, students, investors and support organisations all pass through.

Thu 5 Nov · 5:00pm · Edinburgh Futures Institute

Friday6 Nov

Founders · Social

Founders Hub — by Bayes and ScotlandIS

The Friday co-working morning for founders building scalable technology businesses, run by ScotlandIS and hosted at the Bayes Centre. The shape is fixed: 9:30 arrival and networking, 10:00 a round table of asks, offers and ideas, then ad-hoc discussions and co-working until 13:00. The space stays open until 17:00 if you want to keep working or take calls. ScotlandIS covers the refreshments, and guest speakers and office hours are being added to the schedule. The group gathers in the Bayes Lounge, at the large white tables to the left of the main concourse. Free, and experience levels run from pre-launch to scaling.

Fri 6 Nov · 9:30am · The Bayes Centre

AI & ML · CleanTech

Fighting the "Inevitable": AI, Hyperscale Datacentres, and Resistance

A one-hour lunchtime panel arguing that hyperscale AI datacentres are a political choice rather than a foregone conclusion: what they draw in power and water, who carries the cost, and what communities have actually managed to stop. Dr Rupert Nash of EPCC, the UK's national supercomputing centre, sits alongside Steph Wright of Our AI Collective, who worked on Scotland's first national AI strategy, Dr Victoria Plutshack of the No Gyle Data Centre campaign, and Kim Pratt of Friends of the Earth Scotland. Anna Komendantskaya of People & Planet chairs. Part of Edinburgh's Radical Book Fair at Assembly Roxy. Free, with a £5 ticket and a pay-it-forward fund for those who can.

Fri 6 Nov · 12:30pm · Assembly Roxy

AI & ML · Other

New College Festival – Eleanor Drage

Eleanor Drage on her book What If We Got AI Right? (Profile, 2026), as part of the New College Festival of Books and Belief. Marion Thain chairs. Drage's argument is that the real risks of AI sit in the systems, incentives and power structures already deployed rather than in doomsday scenarios, and that feminism, reparative justice and climate politics belong in the debate rather than at its margins. She is an AI ethicist and co-author of The Good Robot. One hour, 17:30 to 18:30, in Martin Hall at New College on Mound Place. Enter through the glass door at the main gated entrance. Supported by Kenneth and Isabel Morrison.

Fri 6 Nov · 5:30pm · Martin Hall, New College, School of Divinity

£10.92
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Saturday7 Nov

Other · Social

Linux Users' Group Edinburgh Meetup — November

EdLUG's monthly Edinburgh meeting. It moved venue in late October: now the study space at the Futures Institute, entered through the Canopy Cafe door off Middle Meadow Walk, not Old College. The format is open: people bring laptops and work through whatever is broken, and the group trades notes on distros, shell scripting, desktop customisation, server management and self-hosting. There is a show-and-tell strand too: hardware projects, open-source replacements for everyday software, and which machines run Linux cleanly. Beginners are explicitly welcome — several regulars arrived wanting help moving off Windows or macOS. The group also runs a public mailing list at lists.edlug.org.uk. Free, two hours, no speaker list and no programme.

Sat 7 Nov · 11:00am · Canopy Kitchen & Courtyard

Social · Design

edindies — gamedev co-working in Levels (07 Nov)

Edindies is Edinburgh's indie game development group, and this is its standing Saturday session: three hours of co-working at LEVELS cafe and lounge on Holyrood Road, on the large benches near the entrance. Hosted by Norgg and Fallible. There is no programme. People bring whatever they are building, work alongside each other, hand round builds for playtesting and talk through problems. Experience is not expected and nothing needs to be finished. The series runs every Saturday until 13 December. Free, drop-in, nothing to book beyond the Meetup RSVP.

Sat 7 Nov · 1:00pm · LEVELS cafe and lounge