Consulting Groups Melbourne

KMLF August 2026 - Alison Bulbeck

This month we have Alison Bulbeck from the UK joining us to talk about expertise capture. Sarah and Stuart got to see this at the Knowledge Summit in Dublin and you really don't want to miss it! Alison is a Business Change leader and CILIP Knowledge Management Fellow with extensive experience delivering transformation and organisational change across the defence, life sciences, pharmaceutical, and financial services sectors. As Deputy Head of Business Change within the National Armaments Director Group (UK Ministry of Defence) she helps shape and deliver complex change programmes in a rapidly evolving environment. A passionate advocate for knowledge management as a strategic enabler, Alison focuses on improving collaboration, decision-making, organisational learning and business performance through effective knowledge practices. She is particularly interested in human centric behavioural aspects of knowledge. Her role puts her at the intersection of knowledge management, business change, organisational culture and emerging technologies, bringing a practical and results-focused perspective to embedding knowledge into everyday business operations. **Session Details:** * **Date & Time:** 6:00pm AEDST, Fourth Wednesday of each month * **Format:** Virtual session on Teams * **Agenda:** * 6-6:30 pm networking * 6:30-7:45pm exploration of the topic * 7:45-8pm wrap up * 8pm dinner for those interested. KMLF has run monthly, almost uninterrupted since 1998, serving the Victorian Knowledge Management community with close ties to Change Mgt, Records Mgt, Information Governance and Academic communities.

Community Conversations: Education for the Mind and Heart

Education is about more than acquiring knowledge. It is also an opportunity to develop the qualities that help us navigate life with purpose and compassion. Building on a previous program on the theme of education, join us for an evening to explore how a deeper perspective of education, and spiritual development, has the potential to shape lives in lasting ways. The evening will begin with a brief presentation by Andre Pitts, an educator with decades of experience in Melbourne schools, who will share his reflections on the theme. Community Conversations provides a warm and inclusive space for meaningful discussions, and to spark positive initiatives in our neighbourhoods. This will be followed by shared group consultation, where we can explore the ideas together, along with time to connect, socialise, and enjoy light refreshments. This is a free event and all are invited to attend.

Tell better stories, or we are stuck with this…

* Topic: Tell better stories, or we are stuck with this… * Date: Thursday 20th August 2026 at 5:30 pm - 7:30 pm * Networking: 5:30 pm - 6:00 pm and 6:45 pm - 7:30 pm * Presentation Time: 6:00 pm - 6.45 pm *(includes welcome, presentation 30 mins & community marketplace)* * Location: Thoughtworks HQ Level 35/360 Collins St, Melbourne VIC 3000 * Ticket: Free of cost, however, registrations and RSVP are required! * Sponsor: Thoughtworks **Precis** In a room at the Canberra Parliament in late 2013, a group of engineers and officials gathered to brief Federal Communications Minister Malcolm Turnbull on the struggling NBN rollout. There was a hard choice to make - fibre to the node, or fibre to the premises. The topic was so complex, the explanations so extensive, the impacts so varied, and the powerpoint slides so detailed, that making a decision proved vexing to the Minister. In the end, he chose the 'hybrid' model, based on data he could fathom the meaning of. This proved famously costly to Australia's economic development. Nigel Dalton will relate this moment to the decisions being made in Boardrooms in 2026, about similar choices on the adoption of AI & ML tech that could be equally momentous. How can data professionals ensure the narratives they are producing provide the maximum clarity to decision-makers, and avoid another NBN? **About The Speaker** Nigel Dalton is a social scientist at Thoughtworks Asia-Pacific. He is well-known for his work in technology and innovation, stemming from his time as CIO of REA Group and GM of Technology at Lonely Planet, as well as a diverse background in government, startups, and private enterprise across multiple countries. Nigel joined Thoughtworks in 2020, and has continued his work speaking at conferences, writing articles, podcasting, advising executives, and mentoring. After witnessing the highs and lows of high-stakes story-telling around technology and business decision-making for 4 decades, he is passionate about improving the quality of tech communications. The AI era is providing plenty of opportunities to improve that.

Engineering Machine Consciousness Monthly Meetup

The discussion topic for this meetup will be identity and whether or not history is a necessary condition for consciousness as Dretske proposed. James

TechWalking - Networking Event for Tech Professionals

**"TechWalking" - Networking + Walking** Are you a tech professional looking to network beyond the screen? Look no further than my upcoming #TechWalking event! ‍ Join us for a refreshing walk around the scenic Albert Park Lake. It’s the perfect chance to connect with industry peers while getting in some steps! I'll be away this time, but you're in great hands! Our amazing co-host team — Ajay, James, Duncan and Dilpa — will be there to keep everything running smoothly. Check out the video from the last event: https://www.youtube.com/shorts/KsPvJzE4Nlg We'll kick things off at **10 am sharp** at the Albert Park Fitness Station. Please, don't be late! We're hitting the trail around the lake as soon as we gather. And trust me, you won't want to miss it – unless you're up for a bit of a sprint to catch up! (we're going anti-clockwise) This event is pet and kid-friendly, as long as your little ones and furry friends can manage a 5 km walk, they're more than welcome to join. Looking forward to meeting you all in real life! Join the TechWalking group on LinkedIn! [https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14477058/](https://www.linkedin.com/groups/14477058/) **TechWalking Community page: [https://tech-walking.yanamartens.com/](https://tech-walking.yanamartens.com/)** \*\*\* Follow me on LinkedIn for more information: [https://www.linkedin.com/in/yana-martens/](https://www.linkedin.com/in/yana-martens/) Just moved to Australia? Grab your FREE guide to land your tech job! [https://yanamartens.com/first-tech-job-in-australia/](https://yanamartens.com/first-tech-job-in-australia/) Subscribe to YouTube Channel: [https://www.youtube.com/@ITCareerinAustralia](https://www.youtube.com/@ITCareerinAustralia)

In Conversation: Patricia Piccinini and Professor Melissa Little

Welcome to the next 2026 AWS Melbourne Well-Architected User Group Meetup!

Hi Architects, Welcome to our next AWS Melbourne Well-Architected User Group Meetup for 2026, including more exceptional speakers and topics! :-D At each meetup we covered off various pillars in detail, best-practices and insights from industry leaders that specialise in the Well-Architected Framework. And giving away drones, of course. Lots of drones. **Please also note that AWS Security now requests a company name and company email where it is available. If you are a student, please list your institution and your student email address at that institution 👍** We'll be announcing more speakers on [https://well-architected.me](https://well-architected.me/) and previewing presentations during the coming weeks - our speakers and details this month include: * **Mystery Speaker** **AWS Partner Revenue Management; A New Dawn or... ;-)** Partner Revenue Measurement (PRM) is the biggest change to the AWS Partner Network (APN) and in this session we will dive deep into the details and importance - essential for any AWS partner or customer. This month's menu will include: * Pizzas * Beer: Nastro Azzurro * Wine: Big and red 🤤 NB: Please check in up the stairs from the ground floor to the Mezzanine Level. So come join us at 5:30 for a 6pm **SHARP** start, followed by beer, wine, pizza and friendly networking after our talks :-) Tired of Linkedin’s "thought leadership”, spam and advertising? Join https://well-architected.me/ , the AWS community built for architects, developers and cloud professionals. * Connect with experienced AWS practitioners * Preview upcoming AWS Meetups and relive past content * Create and review beautiful AWS case studies in minutes * Prepare for AWS certifications with curated quizzes * Show your manager and reports you’re well-architected (Please note that by registering to attend you agree to your details being shared as and where required with Amazon Web Services and AWS Well-Architected User Group partners)

From Conversation to Execution: Building Agents with ERP, Dataverse & MCP

**Melbourne Biz Apps User Group — Session 03** 🎉 We're back for our third event! After two fantastic sessions, this time we're going beyond chat — into the world of AI agents that actually execute business processes. 🤖 **From Conversation to Execution: Enterprise Agents with ERP, Dataverse & MCP** Generative AI is rapidly evolving from answering questions to executing business processes. In this session, we'll explore how AI Agents, Model Context Protocol (MCP), Dynamics 365 ERP, Dataverse and Power Platform can work together to automate real-world business operations. Using a practical business scenario, we'll demonstrate how an AI Agent can understand business intent, retrieve enterprise context through MCP servers, interact with Dynamics 365 Finance & Supply Chain Management, update Dataverse records, orchestrate approvals, and complete transactions with governance and security controls. **What you'll learn:** ✅ What Agentic AI means for business applications ✅ The role of MCP in connecting enterprise systems ✅ How Dynamics 365 ERP and Dataverse become agent-enabled ✅ Designing business processes executed by agents ✅ Governance, security and human-in-the-loop considerations ✅ Practical architecture and implementation patterns By the end of the session, you'll understand how to move beyond chat experiences and build enterprise-grade AI agents that perform real business work. 🍕 **Food, Drinks and Networking** Good food, good drinks, and good people. Plenty of time to connect with your fellow Biz Apps practitioners in Melbourne. All experience levels welcome. Come as you are. See you there! 🙌

Melbourne Data Eng meetup, August Edition

Hey all, please join us for our August Melbourne Data Eng meetup. Join us for an engaging session filled with exciting discussions and networking opportunities. Don't miss out—RSVP to secure your spot. Same venue as the afternoon ClickHouse workshop — join us for talks and networking from 5–8pm. 🏠 Location: Cremorne Digital Hub REA Garage Workshop Space · 80 Balmain St, Cremorne VIC 3121 🍕 Catering: TBC 💬 Join our Slack Group here: Data Engineers Slack Channel Schedule: \- 5\.00pm: Doors Open \- 5\.30pm: Announcements and Welcome \- 5\.40pm: Talks \- 7\.00pm: Networking \- 8\.00pm: Doors Close If you'd like to present at future meetups, please submit your talk here! Remember to bring along some great questions! See you all there...

🤖 Group Therapy: An Honest Session on How We Actually Feel About AI

We are finally doing it. A talk themed around AI. But we know it's session nobody wants to admit they need. We've all heard the AI buzzwords - "excited," "leaning in," "embracing the tools", "It's about Taste" But what's the version we tell our partner at 11pm? This session is a confession booth disguised as a meetup: no corporate talking points, no performative optimism, just a room full of professionals finally saying the quiet part out loud. What you'll hear: ✨ The mood ring check-in: Has your relationship with AI actually evolved - curiosity, to fatigue, to something like grudging acceptance? Or are you stuck on repeat? ✨ Empowered or expendable: The gap between the tools making us faster and the fear that "faster" was never really the point ✨ The honesty audit: Are we saying what we actually feel, or reciting the script we think we're supposed to perform? ✨ Slop or stealth: Is AI-generated mediocrity actually improving - or has it just gotten better at hiding in plain sight? ✨ The invoice after the honeymoon: Businesses got the discounted intro rate. Is anyone budgeting for what this actually costs once the novelty pricing ends? ✨ Who's actually watching the risk: How leaders are (or aren't) identifying, assessing, and managing AI risk before it becomes a headline 👉 The debate on the table: "Most people are more anxious than they admit" vs "People are largely fine and adapting" Pick a side. Defend it. Or admit you're not sure, which might be the most honest answer in the room. 📌 The details: * Date: Thursday 13th August * Host: Melbourne Design Thinking Meetup x Scyne Advisory * Refreshments included: Pizza and fizz! Our Speakers: **Liz Collins León** *Experience Architect \| Design Operations Strategist* Liz is an Experience Architect with over 15 years designing systems, campaigns, and communication solutions across retail, telecommunications, and front-to-back office operations. With tenure at Telstra, Google, and more recently Genesys, she is a design leader and mentor whose passion for creating inclusive experiences expands beyond delivering data-driven, digital products. Whether fostering a community effort to found a greenbelt reserve, designing learning spaces, or promoting psychological safety in the workplace, she endeavors to strengthen communities through online and offline connections. **Gemma Mooney** *Product Design Lead \| RACV* With over 20 years of experience spanning UX, digital product design and design leadership. She specialises in helping organisations understand customer needs and translate insights into improved products, services and experiences. At RACV, Gemma leads strategic discovery, research and experience design initiatives across a range of member experiences, including onboarding, emergency roadside assistance, payments, chat and AI-enabled digital services. She also led the design of the RACV app from concept through to launch, helping shape the vision, user experience and member proposition for one of RACV's most important digital products. More recently, she has been helping embed AI into the design practice, developing practical approaches for using tools such as Copilot to support research, synthesis, journey mapping and opportunity identification. Prior to RACV, Gemma was UX Manager at Intrepid Travel, where she established the company's UX practice and championed user-centred design across the organisation. She also led Intrepid's first innovation hackathon, bringing together cross-functional teams to solve customer and business challenges through design-led thinking. Throughout her career, Gemma has been passionate about creating evidence-based, customer-centred experiences and helping teams use research and emerging technologies to drive better outcomes for customers and organisations alike. Her work has been recognised with Intrepid Travel's Outstanding Achievement Award and Travel Weekly's Women in Travel Award. **David Cullen** *Managing Director, Scyne Advisory (GAICD)* David has spent two decades on the front line of Australia's cyber resilience — the kind of career where "incident response" isn't a slide in a deck, it's a 3am phone call. As Victoria's former Chief Information Security Officer, he built the state's Cyber Incident Response Service from scratch and led the response to Victoria's largest-ever public sector cyber-attack, all while establishing the frameworks that now coordinate cyber emergencies statewide. At the national level, David represented Victoria on the National Cyber Security Committee and built the National Operations Subcommittee to get states talking to each other before a crisis, not during one. He's now a Managing Director at Scyne Advisory, leading national incident response capability and helping organisations across the public and private sector get serious about cyber preparedness before they need to. David holds a Master of Public Policy and Management, is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors, and is a recipient of the Resilient Australia Award. He brings a rare thing to a stage: someone who's actually been the person picking up the phone when it all goes wrong — and has the scars, systems, and stories to prove it.

AI & Integration Meetup: Melbourne

Join us in Melbourne for an event bringing together integration architects, enterprise technologists, and AI practitioners from across Victoria and beyond. The topic in Q3 will be on **Using AI to power Integration Development and Operations to Scale Participation and Centralise Control**. We will be demonstrating the Integration, Observability and API Agent to scale integration without losing control. Venue: IBM Design Hall in Melbourne, Level 28 Hosted by: IBM Australia

When Maps Aren’t Enough: Using Spatial AI to Measure the Green We See

The MLAI Meetup is a community for AI researchers and professionals which hosts monthly talks on exciting research. Our format is: * 6:00 - 6:20: Socializing * 6:20 - 6:40: Announcements and AI news * 6:40 - 7:40: Talk(s) and Q&A * 7:40 - 8:00 Networking * 8:00: Head to the nearest pub for dinner **Shinjita Das: When Maps Aren’t Enough: Using Spatial AI to Measure the Green We See** **Talk description:** A tree can cool a street, appear clearly on a map – and still be completely invisible from someone’s window. That gap between what exists in a city and what people actually see and experience has shaped much of my research journey. When I first started working with geospatial science, I was fascinated by the idea that spatial data could reveal patterns in cities that are difficult to notice on the ground. During my Master’s research, I used deep learning to detect individual urban trees and examined their contributions to urban cooling. That was my first real encounter with machine learning, and it changed the way I thought about maps: they were no longer just tools for showing where things are, but platforms for asking what else we could learn from the environment. That curiosity led me further into GeoAI. If machine learning could help identify trees and quantify their environmental role, could similar computational approaches help us understand how people actually experience greenery? This question followed me into my PhD, where my toolkit expanded from 2D GIS and spatial statistics to 3D city modelling, computer vision and emerging GeoAI approaches. At the same time, the research question became more human. Instead of simply asking “Where is the green?”, I began asking, “Who can actually see it and how does the view impact mental health?” In this talk, I’ll trace that journey through examples from my research: from detecting trees and measuring their cooling effects to reconstructing urban environments in 3D and modelling greenery from the perspective of apartment residents. Along the way, I’ll explore how GeoAI, computer vision and spatial modelling can help us move beyond mapping cities from above and start understanding them from the perspective of the people who live within them. **Speaker bio:** Shinjita Das is a PhD candidate in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies and the Department of Mathematical and Geospatial Sciences at RMIT University. Her ARC-funded High Life Study research examines apartment living, urban greenery and mental health using 3D GIS modelling and spatial statistics. Her interest in machine learning began during her Master’s research, where she used Faster R-CNN to detect urban trees and investigate their cooling effects. As a member of RMIT’s GISail research group, her broader research interests lie in GeoAI, spatial machine learning, 3D urban modelling, urban heat vulnerability, environmental exposure assessment, health-integrated spatial analysis, and the use of emerging geospatial technologies to support healthier, more sustainable, and liveable cities. She is also a tutor and aims to cultivate critical thinking and innovation in spatial science, helping foster the next generation of geospatial professionals equipped to address complex urban and environmental challenges.