an open room
Edinburgh — An Open Room

Tech events in edinburgh

What's happening: Week of 26 October 2026

spotlight
SA
Software Acumen
spotlight
Lean Agile Scotland 2026
Thu 29 Oct · 9:00amJohn McIntyre Conference Centre, The University of Edinburgh

Europe's longest-running practitioner-led lean and agile conference, now in its thirteenth year, over two days at the John McIntyre Conference Centre at Pollock Halls. The programme is keynotes, workshops, case…

£368
OtherFounders
LO
Library of Mistakes
spotlight
Weekend of AI
Fri 30 Oct · 10:15amLibrary of Mistakes

The Library of Mistakes — Edinburgh's financial-history library in the West End — runs three days of conversations about AI, deliberately pitched away from the usual industry framing. Friday 30…

Free
AI & MLInvestors
VC
Venture Café Edinburgh
spotlight
Thursday Gathering #30
Thu 29 Oct · 5:00pmEdinburgh Futures Institute

Venture Cafe Edinburgh's weekly Thursday Gathering at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, this edition themed Neurotech Night and powered by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Free and open-door from 17:00…

Free
FoundersSocial

Thursday 29 October— 4 events

8:30am£100
TD
Tynecastle Park, Tynecastle Park

with Linda Scott (Chair, SEMTSF 2026, West Lothian Chamber of Commerce)

A full day on how Scotland's workforce absorbs AI and economic shift, and on who gets a say in it. Keynotes, panels and roundtables run 08:30 to 16:00 in the Gorgie Suite at Tynecastle Park, in a room built for 500-plus. This is the Edinburgh finale of a week that has already run in Aberdeen, Glasgow and Fife, and the day the organisers call the national convergence point for policy, finance and tech. The DataKirk runs it and Linda Scott chairs. The 2026 programme across the four editions lists 118 speakers, among them Simita Kumar MSP and Tom Arthur MSP. Standard tickets £100, students £30. The evening Awards and Festival at the same venue is booked separately. Why go: ministers, tech employers and the people shut out of tech careers in one session on talent and AI is not a room Edinburgh gets often. Best for anyone who hires, sets policy or carries a diversity brief in tech or finance.

AI & MLOther
9:00am£368
SA
John McIntyre Conference Centre, The University of Edinburgh, 18 Holyrood Park Road

Europe's longest-running practitioner-led lean and agile conference, now in its thirteenth year, over two days at the John McIntyre Conference Centre at Pollock Halls. The programme is keynotes, workshops, case studies and lean coffees, with around 250 software engineers, engineering managers, product managers, delivery leads and agile coaches attending. Software Acumen runs it on an explicit no-vendor-pitch rule: practitioners teaching practitioners. Tickets start at 280 pounds plus VAT and the listing currently shows 368 pounds. Why go: the one Scottish conference where delivery and engineering-leadership practice is argued out by the people doing it rather than sold by consultancies, and two days is long enough to change how a team actually works. Best for engineering managers, delivery leads and product people with a team to run.

OtherFounders
5:00pmFree
VC
Edinburgh Futures Institute, Edinburgh

Venture Cafe Edinburgh's weekly Thursday Gathering at the Edinburgh Futures Institute, this edition themed Neurotech Night and powered by the Advanced Research and Invention Agency. Free and open-door from 17:00 to 20:00, no application. The programme runs in parallel: an Innovator Showcase featuring NeuroStripe, whose chipsets do neural recording, stimulation and on-chip signal decoding at once; NeuroArt, an interactive piece where brain and body signals drive digital artwork, with no technical experience needed; a 30-minute practical workshop from Jake Barrett-Mills of Ailsa on where grants fit a funding plan and how not to become dependent on them; and a welcome from director Claudia Cavalluzzo at 18:00. Why go: the usual reliable Thursday room, with a neurotech slant that puts a live chipset company and an Edinburgh research crowd in the same space. Best for deeptech founders, researchers and anyone chasing grant funding.

FoundersSocial
5:00pmFree
BS
The Bayes Centre, Edinburgh

Blockchain Scotland's monthly meetup at the Bayes Centre, run by Scotland's blockchain industry association, which describes its remit as connecting builders, banks, regulators and government. The organiser moved the start on 28 October: doors 17:30, finishing 22:00. The association runs these monthly sessions alongside two flagship summits a year. Admission is free but approval-gated and tiered: free developer places for startups that have raised under £1m, free student and academic-researcher places, and free entry for members. Each ticket includes dinner and drinks, so expect a sit-down evening rather than a stand-up mixer. Apply with a LinkedIn or X profile; applications without one are rejected. Why go: the regulator-and-bank side of the room is what makes this different from a crypto social — it is one of the few Scottish settings where protocol builders and financial-institution people are in the same conversation. Best for fintech and Web3 engineers, and founders working on anything that will need a bank's sign-off.

Web3FintechFounders

Friday 30 October— 1 event

10:15amFree
LO
Library of Mistakes, Edinburgh

The Library of Mistakes — Edinburgh's financial-history library in the West End — runs three days of conversations about AI, deliberately pitched away from the usual industry framing. Friday 30 October opens with workshops aimed at students: how to use AI, and how to build a career as it becomes ever-present. Those sessions feed the Saturday and Sunday discussions, which the organisers say will cover what AI actually is, what it might do to the economy, who it will be good for, how it changes investment management, and the new security and governance risks it creates — alongside the question of what it means to be human living with it. Being Halloween, Saturday includes a film screening. Free to attend. Why go: a library whose entire subject is how confident people get things wrong is an unusually good venue for an AI weekend, and the investment-management thread is one you will not find at a developer meetup. Best for investors, analysts and students, and anyone tired of the vendor version of this conversation.

AI & MLInvestorsOther

Saturday 31 October— 1 event

1:00pmFree
E
LEVELS cafe and lounge, Edinburgh

Edindies is Edinburgh's independent game development community. It meets most Saturday afternoons at LEVELS cafe and lounge on Holyrood Road to co-work, playtest each other's builds and talk shop. The format is deliberately plain: turn up from 13:00 with whatever you are building, sit with other people doing the same, and talk when it helps. Free, no programme, no speakers, no experience required. RSVP on Meetup. Why go: Edinburgh has a real games cluster but very little that is open to people outside a studio, and this is the standing weekly fixture that is. Best for indie developers, artists and anyone shipping a game on the side.

SocialDesign

week of 2 November 2026

spotlight
EF
Edinburgh Futures Institute
spotlight
Technomoral Conversations — AI and the Future of Fundamental Rights
Tue 3 Nov · 6:00pmEdinburgh Futures Institute

Javier Ruiz Diaz (Amnesty International UK) · tèmítópé lasade-anderson (Glitch) + 3 more

A fireside chat in the Edinburgh Futures Institute's large event space on how AI is reshaping fundamental rights — speech, labour, privacy and freedom of movement — and the politics…

Free
AI & MLOther
TI
The Investment Association
spotlight
IA Conference Scotland 2026
Thu 5 Nov · 8:00amThe Exchange

John Owen (The Investment Association) · Sandra Boss (BlackRock) + 5 more

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…

£199
FintechAI & ML
BT
BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT
spotlight
Management, AI and the Social Life of Software Delivery
Wed 4 Nov · 6:30pmSkyscanner

Marc Burgauer (BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT)

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…

Free
AI & MLSaaS

Monday 2 November— 1 event

4:00pmFree
NS
CodeBase, Edinburgh EH1 2EL

A short, self-directed dev jam built around Jev, TypeSafe's new decision model. It does not write text: you give it messy unstructured input and it returns typed decisions with a confidence score, in well under a second. Think of it as a smart if-statement you can drop into normal code - classify this, route that, pick the right option from a long list. Run by new stacks, the Edinburgh nocode, visual development and AI community, hosted at CodeBase. 16:00 intro and setup, build until 18:00, then a couple of minutes each for show and tell. No prior experience needed; bring a laptop and an idea. You need your own Jev credits. Why go: two and a half hours actually building with a model most people have only read about, in a room small enough to see what everyone else got working. Best for engineers and technical founders who learn by shipping something.

AI & MLSaaS

Tuesday 3 November— 3 events

9:00amFree
BE
CodeBase, Edinburgh

with Sid Kathirvel (Growth advisor, Unlock Growth)

Barclays Eagle Labs Scotland runs a half-day working session at CodeBase on the thing most early-stage founders get wrong: they treat stalled revenue as a sales or marketing problem when it is a customer problem. Sid Kathirvel of Unlock Growth leads it across three stages - why customers actually switch, turning that into positioning and messaging they recognise, and spotting the moment someone is ready to act. Kathirvel has spent 25 years on revenue ceilings and mentors founders through Barclays Eagle Labs, CodeBase Techscaler, Geovation and Edinburgh Innovations. He stays on afterwards for a round table on attendees' own problems. Free and in person, 09:00 to 12:30 at CodeBase, 37a Castle Terrace. You leave with a messaging framework you can use on a website, a pitch and a sales call. Why go: Edinburgh has plenty of founder breakfasts and few sessions that make you rewrite your positioning before lunch. Best for pre-launch and early-revenue founders who cannot say why growth stopped.

FoundersMarketingSaaS
10:00amFree
SS
COSLA Conference Centre, Edinburgh

The Scottish Social Services Council's day-long symposium at the COSLA Conference Centre on using AI responsibly in social work, social care and children's services. The SSSC launches its new guidance for workers and employers here, putting into practice the five principles it published earlier this year. Presentations, workshops and a panel across 10:00 to 16:15, covering where AI is already used in social services, how ready an organisation is to adopt it safely, what research says about AI's effect on professional judgement, and a human-rights approach that keeps dignity and choice central. Deliberately interactive — what the room says shapes how the SSSC supports the sector next. Free with lunch, and currently sold out. Why go: this is applied AI where getting it wrong harms people, discussed by the people accountable for it. Best for anyone leading AI adoption in a public-service or care setting.

AI & MLOther
6:00pmFree
EF
Edinburgh Futures Institute, Edinburgh

with Javier Ruiz Diaz (Technology and Human Rights Lead, Amnesty International UK) · tèmítópé lasade-anderson (Executive Director, Glitch) · Haylea Campbell (Senior Associate, Pro Bono Practice, Hogan Lovells Cadwalader) + 2 more

A fireside chat in the Edinburgh Futures Institute's large event space on how AI is reshaping fundamental rights — speech, labour, privacy and freedom of movement — and the politics around them. Chaired by Dr Zeerak Talat of the Centre for Technomoral Futures, the panel is Javier Ruiz Diaz (Technology and Human Rights Lead, Amnesty International UK), tèmítópé lasade-anderson (Executive Director, Glitch), Haylea Campbell (Senior Associate in the pro bono practice at Hogan Lovells Cadwalader) and Professor Michael Veale (Technology Law and Policy, UCL). Part of the Technomoral Conversations series. Free, 18:00 to 19:30, with audience questions. The event is hybrid and live-captioned, with a real room at Lauriston Place. Why go: a human-rights lawyer, a digital-harms organiser, a City pro bono lawyer and a tech-policy professor rarely share a stage, and the questions are the ones AI teams get asked by their own legal departments. Best for people shipping AI in regulated or public-facing products, and for policy and legal staff who have to review it.

AI & MLOther

Wednesday 4 November— 4 events

8:30amFree
C
CodeBase, Edinburgh EH1 2EL

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. Why go: it is the cheapest way into Edinburgh's startup network, and the Community Bell means you leave knowing what else is on. Best if you are new to the city's tech scene, or recruiting for something.

FoundersInvestors
9:30amFree
SE
COSLA Conference Centre, Edinburgh

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. Why go: most AI sessions for leaders stop at awareness; this one makes you produce the documents your board will ask for. Best for SME leaders already running AI pilots who need to make them official.

AI & MLFounders
6:00pmFree
BH

with Kuan-Chuan Pao (Co-Founder and Principal Scientist, Outrun Therapeutics) · Elijah Nazarzadeh (Founder & CSO, Nebu-Flow) · Dr Poonam Malik (Investor and Executive Board Chair, Independent)

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. Why go: three people who have actually raised and scaled life-sciences companies, in one room - which Edinburgh gets less often than its research base would suggest. Best for founders raising now or soon, and investors covering healthtech.

FoundersInvestorsHealth & Bio
6:30pmFree
BT
Skyscanner, 15 Lauriston Place

with Marc Burgauer (Speaker, BCS, The Chartered Institute for IT)

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. Why go: nearly every engineering-management talk this year is either an AI demo or a scepticism piece; this one is about the organisational mechanics underneath, which is the part that decides whether the tools land. Best for engineering managers, tech leads and delivery leads with a team whose process has drifted from its documentation.

AI & MLSaaSOther

Thursday 5 November— 2 events

8:00am£199
TI
The Exchange, Edinburgh EH3 8EE

with John Owen (CEO, The Investment Association) · Sandra Boss (Senior Managing Director, Chair, BlackRock) · Kirstie MacGillivray (CEO, Aegon) + 4 more

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. Why go: Edinburgh's investment-management industry is one of the UK's largest buyers of financial technology, and this is the one day a year its decision-makers are all in one building. Best for fintech founders selling into asset managers, and anyone working on tokenisation or AI in regulated finance.

FintechAI & MLInvestors
5:00pmFree
VC
Edinburgh Futures Institute, Edinburgh

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. Why go: it is the most reliable room in the city — on every Thursday, so it is the easiest place to be found and the easiest thing to bring someone along to. Best for founders who want conversations rather than talks, and for anyone new to Edinburgh tech.

FoundersSocial

Friday 6 November— 3 events

9:30amFree
FH
The Bayes Centre, Edinburgh EH8 9BT

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. Why go: the round table is what earns the morning. You say what you need and what you can offer in front of a room of other founders, which beats any amount of coffee-chasing. Best for Edinburgh founders building alone who want a standing fixture in the week.

FoundersSocial
12:30pmFree
L-
Assembly Roxy, Edinburgh EH8 9SU

with Dr Rupert Nash (Research Fellow, EPCC, University of Edinburgh) · Steph Wright (CEO and Co-Founder, Our AI Collective) · Dr Victoria Plutshack (Coordinator, No Gyle Data Centre campaign, Independent research consultant) + 2 more

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. Why go: a supercomputing researcher and a datacentre campaigner on one panel is rare, and the Gyle proposal makes it local rather than abstract. Best for anyone working on AI infrastructure, energy or public policy.

AI & MLCleanTech
5:30pm£10.92
SO
Martin Hall, New College, School of Divinity, Edinburgh

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. Why go: a serious critique of how AI actually gets built and governed, argued without the existential-risk framing that dominates everything else. Best for people working on AI policy, ethics or responsible-AI teams.

AI & MLOther

Saturday 7 November— 2 events

11:00amFree
LU
Canopy Kitchen & Courtyard, Edinburgh EH3 9EH

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. Why go: one of the few Edinburgh rooms where you can turn up with a broken GRUB or a driver problem and leave with it fixed by someone who has seen it before. Best for sysadmins, self-hosters and anyone moving a daily driver to Linux.

OtherSocial
1:00pmFree
E
LEVELS cafe and lounge, Edinburgh

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. Why go: playtesting is the part that is hard to arrange on your own, and this is a dependable weekly slot where someone will pick up your build and tell you what they actually felt. Best for solo and small-team game developers in Edinburgh who want company and a second pair of eyes on a Saturday.

SocialDesign

week of 9 November 2026

spotlight
UE
UX Edinburgh
spotlight
World Usability Day special: Tech for Good
Thu 12 Nov · 5:15pmCodeBase

James Buchan (ePass) · Tirtho Dasgupta (Nirmanaa)

UX Edinburgh marks World Usability Day with two founders who have built public-good products, talking about what it actually took. James Buchan, founder and CEO of ePass, traces the route…

Free
DesignFounders
TE
TechTalks Edinburgh (adhocSpace)
spotlight
TechTalks Edinburgh #10 — Keeping AI-Written Code Safe to Change
Tue 10 Nov · 6:00pmCodeBase Edinburgh

Dmitriy Fedoryshchev (Independent)

Dmitriy Fedoryshchev, a lead software engineer, on how to tell whether agent-written code is making a codebase safer or riskier. His case study is modernising a 600-table, 21TB legacy core…

Free
AI & MLDeepTech
SE
Solar Energy UK
spotlight
The Future for Solar & Storage in Scotland 2026
Tue 10 Nov · 9:00amCOSLA Conference Centre

A full-day industry conference on Scotland's solar and battery storage pipeline, covering domestic rooftops and home batteries through commercial and industrial installations to utility-scale projects, with the policy and investment…

£96
CleanTechInvestors

Tuesday 10 November— 4 events

9:00am£96
SE
COSLA Conference Centre, Edinburgh

A full-day industry conference on Scotland's solar and battery storage pipeline, covering domestic rooftops and home batteries through commercial and industrial installations to utility-scale projects, with the policy and investment conditions attached to each. Run by Solar Energy UK and hosted by its Solar Energy Scotland arm, 09:00 to 17:00 at the COSLA Conference Centre in Haymarket. The organisers are assembling industry leaders, policymakers, investors and local authorities. The speaker list was not published at the time of writing and ticket prices are not shown on the registration page. Why go: this is where Scottish solar and storage deployment gets negotiated — grid connections, planning, procurement — rather than discussed in the abstract. Best for cleantech founders, energy developers and investors who need the policy side and the buyer side in one day. Less useful if you came for technical depth.

CleanTechInvestors
9:30amFree
ER
Edinburgh Royal Bank Accelerator, Edinburgh

A three-hour pitching workshop at the Royal Bank Accelerator on Princes Street, the sixth session in its 12-week Funding Accelerator programme. You can come to this one alone without signing up for the full series. The agenda covers storytelling principles for a memorable pitch, the ingredients every pitch needs, practical exercises on message and structure, and real founder stories. It ends with a Pitch Club slot where you practise delivery and get feedback. It runs 9:30 to 12:30 and the speaker is still to be confirmed. The listing doesn't show a price. Why go: it's hands-on, not a talk. If you've got a pitch to give in the next few months, you leave having said it out loud to a room and heard what lands. Best for early-stage founders pitching for funding.

FoundersInvestors
6:00pmFree
TE
CodeBase Edinburgh, Edinburgh

with Dmitriy Fedoryshchev (Lead Software Engineer, Independent)

Dmitriy Fedoryshchev, a lead software engineer, on how to tell whether agent-written code is making a codebase safer or riskier. His case study is modernising a 600-table, 21TB legacy core into microservices — the fifth attempt after four that failed — with a squad that went AI-native on a custom multi-agent system under one rule: only merge code you can explain. He also covers turning the rules the agent kept breaking into checks it cannot skip, built into his own open-source tooling. Tenth edition of the TechTalks Edinburgh series, at CodeBase on Castle Terrace. Doors 18:00 with pizza and drinks, opening talk 18:30, main talk 18:40, Q&A 19:30, pub afterwards. Free, 100 places on Meetup. Partners include CodeBase and Scottish Technology Club. Why go: the most concrete Edinburgh talk this autumn on AI-generated code in a real legacy migration rather than a demo repo. Best for engineers and tech leads deciding how far to let agents into production.

AI & MLDeepTech
6:00pmFree
GE
OX184 Bar, Edinburgh

GameDevEd's November social for Edinburgh game developers, one of a fortnightly run of informal Tuesday evenings for the city's games community. Ground floor of OX184 on the Cowgate, at the grid of four tables by the western entrance, usually with the group's logo on the table. 18:00 to 21:00, free, no ticket. All stages and disciplines — studio staff, indies, students, artists, audio and community people. Bring a build or a video if you have one and you will get an audience; the hosts are explicit that nobody has to drink, and plenty of the group eat dinner instead. Hosted by Ewan Fisher and Fallible, with a Discord for the wider local gamedev calendar. Why go: games hiring and collaboration in Scotland runs almost entirely on who people know, and this is the most regular room in Edinburgh where that happens. Best for anyone working in or trying to get into games.

DesignSocial

Wednesday 11 November— 1 event

7:00pmFree
ET
The Slug and Lettuce George Street, Edinburgh

Edinburgh Tech Network's monthly evening drinks for people working in tech — engineers, product managers, designers, UX. No talks, no slides, no agenda; the whole format is conversation in a pub. From 19:00 at The Slug and Lettuce on George Street, free, RSVP on Meetup. It runs on a repeating Wednesday pattern, so there is another one along shortly if you miss it. The group is one of the larger general tech networks in the city and the room is mixed by discipline and seniority rather than organised around a stack. Why go: it is the lowest-effort way to meet people in Edinburgh tech — no ticket, no talk to sit through, and you can leave after twenty minutes. Best if you have just moved to the city or are between roles; less useful if you want substance on a specific technical topic.

SocialSaaS

Thursday 12 November— 4 events

10:00am£15
FC
Jamaica Yard, Edinburgh

Founders Coffee Club is a monthly coffee morning for founders at Jamaica Yard, 3 Jamaica St, EH3. No speeches, no presentations, no selling. You turn up, get introduced to someone on arrival and talk. Founders only. Registration goes through Luma and needs host approval. The ticket also covers coworking at Jamaica Yard for the rest of the day, so you can stay and work after the 10:00 start. Why go: a low-pressure hour to meet other Edinburgh founders without a pitch in the way. Best for early-stage founders who work alone and want peers, not for anyone hunting investors or customers.

FoundersSocial
5:00pmFree
VC
Edinburgh Futures Institute, Edinburgh

The weekly Venture Cafe Edinburgh Thursday Gathering at the Edinburgh Futures Institute on Lauriston Place — the thirty-second edition. Free, no ticket and no application needed. Doors from 17:00, Connection Collider and parallel sessions through the evening, open networking floor to around 20:00. The week's programme is published on the Venture Cafe community site closer to the date. Edinburgh's edition has run continuously since April 2026 and draws founders, university researchers, investors and the city's support organisations without anyone needing a particular reason to be there. Why go: a standing weekly slot does more for a network than an occasional good event, because you can come back the following week with the person you were told to meet. Best for founders and operators who want unstructured time with the ecosystem rather than a panel.

FoundersSocial
5:15pmFree
UE
CodeBase, Edinburgh EH1 2EL

with James Buchan (Founder and CEO, ePass) · Tirtho Dasgupta (Founder, Nirmanaa)

UX Edinburgh marks World Usability Day with two founders who have built public-good products, talking about what it actually took. James Buchan, founder and CEO of ePass, traces the route from a CivTech challenge to national government infrastructure: doing discovery when every council works differently, designing for citizens, businesses, licensing officers and policy teams at once, and building one common component that 160+ licence types can configure. Tirtho Dasgupta, founder of Nirmanaa, built an accessibility co-pilot solo in nine weeks and talks about designing for uncertainty rather than certainty. Doors 17:15, talks from 17:45, close 19:30, at CodeBase. Free. Why go: both talks are first-hand delivery stories rather than theory, and the government-services one is material you rarely hear outside closed service-design circles. Best for designers, researchers and product people, and anyone working on public-sector digital in Scotland.

DesignFounders
6:00pmFree
O-
The Melting Pot, Edinburgh

OutGeekWomen's Edinburgh evening at The Melting Pot on Calton Road, with short talks and open networking for women working in technology. The group describes itself as built for women in tech and open to anyone who wants in, and runs the same format across several UK cities. The Edinburgh edition is free, starts at 18:00 and runs to about 20:30, with the talks kept short so most of the evening is conversation. The Melting Pot is a co-working space rather than a bar, which keeps the room usable for actually talking. Why go: Edinburgh's technical meetups skew heavily male and this is the city's most consistent counterweight — a room where the networking is the programme rather than an afterthought. Best for women working in engineering, data, product and design, and for anyone recruiting into those teams who wants to meet people outside their referral network.

SocialOther

Saturday 14 November— 2 events

10:00amFree
NS
CodeBase, Edinburgh EH1 2EL

A six-hour co-working day at CodeBase for people building digital products: a new MVP, UX work, the marketing outreach you keep deferring. Run by new stacks, the Edinburgh nocode, visual development and AI community. There is no programme. No presentations, no sponsored lunch, no pitching. Ambient music and a room of other people working on their own thing, with the implicit deal that you turn up and move something forward. Free, 10:00 to 16:00. The door is locked, so buzz it. Why go: Edinburgh has plenty of evening talks and very few long daytime blocks where founders sit and build alongside each other. If your side project only moves when someone else is in the room, this is the format. Best for solo founders, indie builders and anyone with something half-finished.

FoundersSaaS
1:00pmFree
E
LEVELS cafe and lounge, Edinburgh

Edindies is Edinburgh's indie game development community, meeting every Saturday afternoon at LEVELS for co-working, playtesting and chat. Drop in with whatever you are building.

SocialDesign

week of 16 November 2026

spotlight
AC
Apache CloudStack Community
spotlight
CloudStack Collaboration Conference 2026
Wed 18 Nov · 12:00pmJohn McIntyre Conference Centre, The University of Edinburgh

The Apache CloudStack project's annual community conference, in Edinburgh this year and running three days. Wednesday 18 November is a hackathon for developers, engineers and project committers working on live…

£88.55
DeepTechSaaS

Monday 16 November— 1 event

12:00pmFree
TC
DoubleTree by Hilton Edinburgh City Centre, Edinburgh

The annual in-person gathering of the Trusted Research Environment community, in Edinburgh for three days. TRE Communities brings together the people who build and run the secure data environments behind health and population research — platform engineers, data managers, information governance leads and the researchers who depend on them. Grown from an informal meeting of 30 into a multi-day conference, it is the one time this community meets face to face each year. Currently sold out; a returns list may open closer to the date.

DeepTechHealth & Bio

Tuesday 17 November— 2 events

6:00pm£5
FM
Shepherd and Wedderburn LLP, Conference Square

The November edition of Edinburgh's monthly founders meetup, hosted in the offices of Shepherd and Wedderburn. An informal evening for people building companies in the city — early-stage founders, people thinking about starting, and the operators and investors around them. No pitches and no agenda beyond good conversation; the £5 ticket covers drinks.

FoundersSocial
6:30pmFree
E
Perk, Nova House

EdinburghJS's November meetup pairs developer wellbeing with open-source maintenance — two talks and the usual pizza-and-questions second half. The group is Edinburgh's longest-running JavaScript community and draws engineers from across the city's product teams, not just front-end specialists.

SaaSSocial

Wednesday 18 November— 3 events

9:30amFree
ER
Edinburgh Royal Bank Accelerator, Edinburgh

A morning of networking and co-working for women founders at the Royal Bank Accelerator on Princes Street. She Scales runs monthly and mixes structured introductions with unstructured desk time, so you leave with both new contacts and a morning's work behind you. Open to founders at any stage, not only Accelerator members. Free.

FoundersSocial
12:00pm£88.55
AC
John McIntyre Conference Centre, The University of Edinburgh, Edinburgh

The Apache CloudStack project's annual community conference, in Edinburgh this year and running three days. Wednesday 18 November is a hackathon for developers, engineers and project committers working on live issues; 19 and 20 November are technical sessions, talks and panel discussions on CloudStack and cloud infrastructure. At the John McIntyre Conference Centre on Holyrood Park Road. Ticket prices are not listed. Project committers and students can request a free ticket by emailing info@cloudstackcollab.org, and those registrations are approved against criteria rather than granted automatically. The speaker programme had not been published at the time of writing. Why go: an upstream open-source project bringing its contributor conference to Edinburgh is rare, and the hackathon day is the part that is genuinely hard to get elsewhere. Best for infrastructure and platform engineers; of little use if you do not run virtualised compute.

DeepTechSaaS
5:00pmFree
DA
107 George Street, Edinburgh

with David Reid (Founder, Because Brands Matter)

An evening on job hunting and personal brand, run by the Denholm team on George Street. The first half is an open Q&A with Denholm's consultants on how hiring actually works right now in Scotland's digital, marketing and tech market; the second is a session from David Reid of Because Brands Matter on building a personal brand that holds up. Useful whether you are actively looking or just keeping an eye on the market. Free.

MarketingSocial