Blogging Groups Sydney

Online Photography - The letter F

Parapsychology Dialogues - Day Three: Experiment and Evidence

**The Parapsychology Dialogues** is the premier annual convention in parapsychology held in a different city of the world every year. And this year, it's in Sydney - first time ever in Australia! **This landmark event** has a Welcome Reception (Thurs evening) followed by 3 days (Fri-Sun) of presentations, research briefs, panel discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities with 30+ academics, scientists, clinicians, and educators from all over the world. Plus there is a Gala Banquet event on the Saturday evening. **This is a paid conference**, and it is split into separate events in Meetup because you may choose to go to one or two days or the whole conference. The details of speakers and topics will be shown on each event post. More info and tickets are available here: [Conference Tickets](https://parapsychological.org/etn/parapsychology-dialogues-2026/) **A bunch of us from Melbourne are already going**, and if you RSVP on this series of Meetup events, we'll be in contact to add you to the Whatsapp group, so we can mutually coordinate and support the trip. ===================================================== **DAY THREE - Experiment and Evidence** **Sunday, 16 August - 8.30am to 5.00pm** * Light Breakfast * Experimental Exploration of GPS Tracker Teleportation - Damin Yin; Ping Guo; Zhe-Bin Gong * Imagination and Reactance in a Psi Task Using the Imagery Cultivation Model - Lance Storm * Morning Tea * The Imagery Cultivation Model: An Alternative to the Ganzfeld - Lance Storm * From Phantasms to Anomalous Phone Calls: A Comparative Analysis of Apparitional and Technology‑Mediated After‑Death Communications - Alex A. Álvarez * Mapping the Characteristics and Impacts of Terminal Lucidity in Children - Natasha Tassell‑Matamua; Karalee Kothe; Marjorie Woollacott; Michael Nahm; Bruce Greyson; Chris Roe; Maryne Mutis; Evrard Renaud * Lunch * Handedness Effects in Retrocausation - Jordan Wehrman * Examination of the Relationship between ‘Simultaneous Synchronization of Events’ and ‘Twin Language’ in Identical Twins - Yoko Matsuda * Workshop 2: Exceptional Experiences (ExE), Embodiment, and the Lived Body as Resonance Space - Wolfgang Fach * Afternoon Tea * Workshop 3: The Psi Games Experience - Hakim Isler * Closing Remarks * PA Annual General Meeting

Meet Nice,Productive People @ New Secret FREE Volunteer run City Restaurant+more

IMHO Our regular Saturday **FREE DINNER** meetups are the most **amazing** & **friendliest** in the world... 200+ attendees... **See our photos**, comments etc etc RING US NOW **0419500023 NOW** for IMPORTANT INFO or you may miss out You'll meet some of Sydney's nicest, brightest & most **MULTICULTURAL PEOPLE** at this beautiful **PHOTOGENIC** OUTDOOR secret location including people from several other meetup groups... DEEP & MEANINGFUL discussion topics will include SECRETS OF HAVING A NICE, AFFORDABLE & SUCCESSFUL LIFE IN SYDNEY eg **COST OF LIVING SECRETS & REAL & PRACTICAL SOLUTIONS** from locals etc etc AND have a great **FREE DINNER** with them... You'll improve your knowledge of **AUSTRALIAN LANGUAGE & CULTURE** at this nice, friendly & FREE EVENT **IMPORTANT: RING us for full up to minute info NOW 0419500023...** **Otherwise we may not be able to help you as places are very limited etc. It gets quite busy before the event, and i may not be able to take your call, and certainly not likely to have time to respond to any messages...**

Parapsychology Dialogues - The JB Rhine Gala Banquet

**The Parapsychology Dialogues** is the premier annual convention in parapsychology held in a different city of the world every year. And this year, it's in Sydney - first time ever in Australia! **This landmark event** has a Welcome Reception (Thurs evening) followed by 3 days (Fri-Sun) of presentations, research briefs, panel discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities with 30+ academics, scientists, clinicians, and educators from all over the world. Plus there is a Gala Banquet event on the Saturday evening. **This is a paid conference**, and it is split into separate events in Meetup because you may choose to go to one or two days or the whole conference. The details of speakers and topics will be shown on each event post. More info and tickets are available here: [Conference Tickets](https://parapsychological.org/etn/parapsychology-dialogues-2026/) **A bunch of us from Melbourne are already going**, and if you RSVP on this series of Meetup events, we'll be in contact to add you to the Whatsapp group, so we can mutually coordinate and support the trip. ===================================================== **DAY THREE - Experiment and Evidence** **Saturday, 15 August - 7.00pm to 9.15pm** * J.B. Rhine Gala Banquet Dinner * PA Awards Presentation - Gerhard Mayer * J.B. Rhine Address: Experiencing the Extraordinary Through an Anthropological Lens - Lynne Hume

Sydney: Tech writing in 2005, then 2026, and beyond

Technical writing has changed a lot in the last couple of years. New tools, shifting job titles, restructured teams, and a whole lot of opinions about AI. So what does it actually look like to be a tech writer in 2026? This is the second in a series of relaxed evening meetups where we dig into that question. We've got speakers from inside and outside the tech writing world sharing short talks, followed by open conversation. **For this session**, we're starting with a look way back, as far as 2005. How was it working as a technical writer in 2005, compared to 2026! **Talk: Tech Writing like it is 2005** Remember when technical writers lived in perpetual fear of the blue screen of death erasing three days of work? When “version control” meant emailing Word documents with increasingly creative filenames like “UserGuide_FINAL_v2_REALLY_FINAL_ updated.doc”? This talk takes us back to 2005, when technical writing was equal parts craft and survival skills. This nostalgic journey will cover: * Misplaced tags and reformatting nightmares * The delicate dance of managing conditional text that would mysteriously disappear during PDF generation * The herculean efforts required to generate help files that displayed correctly across the browser landscape * Backup strategies that bordered on paranoia, including the daily ritual of copying work files to storage devices * The logistics of managing review comments scribbled in margins and on sticky notes * A true appreciation of how far we have come as technical communication specialists Seasoned writers will rediscover appreciation for today’s collaborative tools, while newer professionals will gain perspective on the ingenuity and resilience that built the foundation of modern documentation practices. **About Swapnil Ogale** Over the last 20 years, Swapnil has consulted at, and worked with multiple organisations, setting up documentation teams, processes, workflows and toolchains. He initiated the Write the Docs community in Australia and organises meetup events across Australia, and has chaired the annual conference since 2016.

Parapsychology Dialogues - Day Two: Models, Mechanisms, & Clinical Integration

**The Parapsychology Dialogues** is the premier annual convention in parapsychology held in a different city of the world every year. And this year, it's in Sydney - first time ever in Australia! **This landmark event** has a Welcome Reception (Thurs evening) followed by 3 days (Fri-Sun) of presentations, research briefs, panel discussions, workshops, and networking opportunities with 30+ academics, scientists, clinicians, and educators from all over the world. Plus there is a Gala Banquet event on the Saturday evening. **This is a paid conference**, and it is split into separate events in Meetup because you may choose to go to one or two days or the whole conference. The details of speakers and topics will be shown on each event post. More info and tickets are available here: [Conference Tickets](https://parapsychological.org/etn/parapsychology-dialogues-2026/) **A bunch of us from Melbourne are already going**, and if you RSVP on this series of Meetup events, we'll be in contact to add you to the Whatsapp group, so we can mutually coordinate and support the trip. ===================================================== **DAY TWO - Models, Mechanisms, & Clinical Integration** **Saturday, 15 August - 8.30am to 7.00pm** * Light Breakfast * Platonic Computation: A Theory of Psi Based on the Computational Universe Hypothesis - Simon X. Duan * Dynamic Cognition and Anomalous Experience: A Free Energy Model - Alexander De Foe * Morning Tea * Clarifying the Existence of a Plausible Mechanism for Parapsychological Phenomena - Avanti Shrikumar * A Blinded Discrimination Test of Coherence in Tarot as a Symbolic System - Sergio Saldivar‑Salazar; Enrique Saldivar * Can Tiller’s Psychoenergetic Model Explain Parapsychological Phenomena? - Debra Greene * Lunch * What Does the Analysis of More Than 2000 Reported Poltergeist Cases from Ancient Times to the Present Day Reveal? - Eric Dullin * Panel Discussion: The Ethics of Training and Applying Psi Capacities - Julia Mossbridge; Joseph McMoneagle; Mark Boccuzzi; Damon Abraham * Afternoon Tea * Mind‑Meld: Potential Information Transfer via Inter‑Brain Neural Synchronization during Dyadic Cooperation - Jacob Sevastidis; Lance Storm; Maciej Henneberg; Arjun Burlakoti; Wenpeng You * Invited Address: The Future of Clinical Parapsychology — Integrating Exceptional Experiences into Academic Psychology and Psychotherapeutic Practice - Wolfgang Fach

SydJS: Stay tuned

What’s even better than uncovering insights into a rising technology? Getting to stand on the shoulders of giants to look ahead. The team are working to prepare another great evening. Keep an eye on your inbox and we’ll let you know when RSVPs open!

Inner West Writers Group - Write Club

Saturday 15 August is an in-person event at Marrickville Library. RSVP to secure a place. This group started in January 2020 in a beautiful private room granted by Marrickville Library. We have continued to meet in person fortnightly at the Library, with alternate weeks via Zoom. To keep up to date - sign up and receive our messages! The group is flourishing! You will need to RSVP each week for the following Saturday so we can organise the right number of Zoom rooms and Library space to ensure good quality feedback. RSVP's will receive the link. The intention is to give a supportive environment to get traction on your writing project, gain useful feedback, and exchange writing and publishing information with each other. Please note that if you are attending for the first time - you are welcome to observe and listen to how we work. Your turn to read and be critiqued will be invited in the second session. So come along, bring up to 1500 words of your latest writing - fiction writers of all types, memoirists, biographers, graphic novelists, bloggists, poets - all writers welcome. You will have up to eight minutes to read out your work, an equal time of constructive critique and feedback from the rest of the group. If you want a tribe of fellow writers to be with you as you finish your writing project, build your author profile, want to get inspired by other writers, or want to just listen and give constructive feedback (we all need beta readers), you are very welcome. This is a free event, but membership is essential in wider to attend. Many thanks to Marrickville Library! For more information, contact Maria, mariaissaris@icloud.com, or Jamie Ramjan (jamie.ramjan@gmail.com) or Sunnie Mosphilis via DM.

Data Centers, Technofeudalism & The Rise of the Surveillance State

**"Amazon is not a market; it's a fiefdom."** — Yanis Varoufakis **"AI is now infrastructure, just like electricity."** — Jensen Huang Massive data centers are spreading across the globe, consuming enormous amounts of energy while storing the information of billions. Who owns them?, who profits from them? and who benefits? Are they the infrastructure of progress or the foundations of a new **"Technofeudal"** order where privacy is extinct and surveillance is everywhere? **Join the discussion on our community** Discord [https://discord.gg/QSwa3PMzHy](https://discord.gg/QSwa3PMzHy)

SSP WED - Travel Photography - Northside Photography Chat

Meet for chat over a drink and snack or dinner. Tonight, we have a discussion on travel photography led by Strat Mairs. Strat will show images from his recent travels to the stunning island of Iceland. Strat will discuss aspects of travel photography in Iceland including what to take, what to see etc and a few pointers to get the best experience from this bucket list location. If travel photography interests you, then join us for an interesting night. More info on the venue here chatswoodrsl.com.au Plenty of free parking available nearby as well as the bus stop at the door or metro & rail just 50m away.

What Clients Actually Break On WordPress Sites

Most WordPress sites do not fall apart because of one dramatic failure. They slowly drift out of shape through normal use, ordinary edits, unclear permissions, and well-meaning changes made by people trying to get their work done. That is the awkward reality of building websites for real organisations. The launch version may be clean, tested, and carefully structured, but six months later the site has met editors, managers, contractors, plugin updates, urgent content changes, and someone who “just needed to quickly fix the homepage”. This session looks at the common places WordPress sites get damaged after handover, including content editing, user permissions, plugin decisions, SEO changes, forms, layout control, and content governance. The bigger question is not how to stop clients touching their own websites. It is about building WordPress systems with enough guardrails so that normal human behaviour does not quietly turn into technical debt, broken layouts, lost leads, or avoidable support problems. Note: this is a rescheduled event. **You'll walk away with:** ✅ A clearer way to spot the predictable break points in client-managed WordPress sites ✅ A practical mental model for deciding where clients need freedom, and where they need guardrails ✅ Better judgement around permissions, editing access, plugin decisions, and post-handover risk ✅ A simple way to think about WordPress sites as ongoing systems, not finished launch artefacts **🎯 Who's It For?** **In-person event** WordPress enthusiasts, freelancers, digital managers, and site owners who already work with WordPress and want to move beyond surface-level tutorials. This session assumes basic WordPress familiarity. It’s not designed for complete beginners. **Format** * In-person Event * Arrive 6:30 for pre-networking * Talk starts at 6:45. 👉 **Host:** Wil Brown, [Zero Point Development](https://zeropointdevelopment.com/) Thank you to [Stone Digital](https://stonedigital.com.au/) for sponsoring the venue.

Stoics in the park: LAST at Centennial Park Sydney

Unlike other philosophies, Stoicism was named after a place not a person, making it accessible to ALL people. In ancient greco-roman times people would meet at the Stoa, where they would discuss Stoic Philosophy. We can meet in the park just as the stoic sages 1000s of years ago. Join us to read through and discuss Meditations by Marcus Aurelius. Google books has a FREE PDF you can download. No need to do any homework, we will read together and discuss. Am looking forward to hearing your thoughts. Event fee (optional) is $2, this goes to admin costs of running the group, please consider I am from Wollongong and wanted to keep this group when original organiser stepped down. I have significant travel expenses and am generally organising creative events that take resources. A gratuity would be a wonderful way to make me feel appreciated. Pay on the day, payID 0416147804, PayPal: paypal.me/jonnikaren or private message for direct deposit details. In lieu of event fee, you can buy me a coffee :)