3D Printing Melbourne

Tour of our Makerspace

Have you been interested in woodworking, 3D printing, CNC, cosplay or Electronics? Come visit Maker Community to get a tour of our space, learn about our memberships, have a chat with our members and discuss your dream projects.

Tour of our Makerspace

Have you been interested in woodworking, 3D printing, CNC, cosplay or Electronics? Come visit Maker Community to get a tour of our space, learn about our memberships, have a chat with our members and discuss your dream projects.

Physical AI Meetup - Year-ender

A premier platform to share insights, expand your network, and bridge the gap between Academia, Industry, and Suppliers. The Physical AI Meetup Melbourne brings together researchers, engineers, and industry practitioners working across artificial intelligence, robotics, embedded systems, sensing, and edge computing. Important: Please grab your[ FREE Eventbrite ticket to attend.](https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/physical-ai-meetup-melbourne-year-ender-tickets-2003999424224) Hear 4 expert talks, ask your questions in a panel Q&A, take the mic for an AI / hardware demo or announcement, and connect over pizza & drinks. A special thanks to the **La Trobe Business School** for hosting us, brought to you by **element14 Electronics** — our trusted electronic components distributor. Take the mic at our Community Open Mic! Bring your demo, prototype, or announcement — whether it is AI, hardware, robotics, embedded systems, sensing, or edge computing. All welcome. This is our last 2026 Physical AI Meetup in Melbourne, with more exciting topics and event formats in 2027! Agenda for this one: **5:30 – 6:00 pm \| Pizza & Networking** Enjoy pizza and drinks and connect with other attendees. **6:00 – 6:10 pm \| Welcome & Official Start** Hear a short welcome from the event hosts and an introduction to the Physical AI Meetup community. **6:10 – 6:30 pm \| Talk 1 – Practical case studies of Physical AI in Product Development** **Overview:** 2026 has been a wildly accelerated year in Physical AI. This talk dives into case studies on how the technology has evolved and is being used – from diagnostic medical imaging to battery-powered image recognition in the outback. **Speaker:** Blake Fuller, Head of Product Design and Engineering, Capgemini Australia Bio: Blake is the Head of Product Design and Engineering at Capgemini Australia. He has released more than 50 products to market and leads high-calibre product development teams. **6:30 – 6:50 pm \| Talk 2 – Technology and Innovation in Home\-Based Care Using Social Robot Matilda** **Overview:** Attendees will learn how social robotics and AI are transforming residential and home-based care. Key takeaways include: • AI & human-centred interaction: how emotional intelligence, facial/voice recognition, and multimodal communication enable human-like engagement. • Personalised care: how Matilda delivers cognitive stimulation, social connectivity, daily routine support, and health monitoring. • Supporting caregivers: reducing carer burnout, streamlining workflows, and enabling real-time analytics. • Ecosystem integration: combining companion robots with smart home devices and wearables for proactive, independent living. **Speaker:** Dr. Debbie Mei-Tai Chu, A/Prof, Director at Computer, Communication and Social Innovation Hub, La Trobe University Bio: Dr Debbie Mei-Tai Chu is an Associate Professor at La Trobe Business School and Director of the Computer, Communication and Social Innovation Research Hub. She was Program Director of the Master of Business Analytics and Master of Business Information Systems for over 10 years, and has more than 10 years of global industry experience, including as a knowledge management consultant across the public and private sectors. **6:50 – 7:10 pm \| Talk 3 – Beyond LLMs: Developing physical grounded agentic memory** **Overview:** As AI systems move beyond text generation toward autonomous decision-making in the physical world, memory becomes a critical missing capability. This talk explores how physically grounded agentic memory can enable AI agents to learn from real-world experience, retain context, and continuously improve their decisions. Drawing on Generative AI, embodied intelligence, edge computing, and adaptive reasoning, Dr Wei Peng will share insights into building agents that can perceive, remember, reason, and act in dynamic environments. **Speaker:** Dr. Wei Peng, A/Prof, Principal Research Fellow in AI, RMIT University Bio: Dr Wei Peng brings over 15 years of international experience bridging AI research and product innovation across academia and industry. After developing enterprise-scale Generative AI applications at global technology companies, he now leads industrial AI development at RMIT University. He has published at top AI conferences including ACL, CVPR, EMNLP, and NeurIPS, and holds multiple patents. **7:10 – 7:30 pm \| Talk 4 – Brain\-Inspired AI for Robotics: Visual Place Recognition on Neuromorphic Hardware** **Overview:** As robots become more autonomous, the computational demands of visual perception become a major challenge in energy-constrained environments. Can the human brain inspire more energy-efficient robotic intelligence? This talk shares recent research on neuromorphic computing for Visual Place Recognition (VPR), which lets robots recognise previously visited locations. The approach combines Vector Symbolic Architectures (VSA), Spiking Neural Networks (SNNs), and Intel's Loihi 2 neuromorphic processor, replacing conventional nearest-neighbour search with brain-inspired, event-driven computation. Experiments show lower power consumption than a conventional CPU implementation, with competitive recognition accuracy. **Speaker:** Dr. Vidura Sumanasena, Lecturer, AI and Analytics, La Trobe Business School Bio: Dr Vidura Sumanasena is a Lecturer in AI and Analytics at La Trobe University. He holds a PhD from La Trobe and a bachelor's degree in Electronic and Telecommunication Engineering from the University of Moratuwa, Sri Lanka. His research covers brain-inspired AI, neuromorphic computing, Spiking Neural Networks, and Vector Symbolic Architectures, including evaluating neuromorphic algorithms on Intel's Loihi research processors for autonomous robotic systems. **7:30 – 7:50 pm \| Panel Q&A** There will be no question portion after each talk. Please hold your questions for this session, so you can ask anything that may be answered by any and all of the speakers. **7:50 – 8:00 pm \| Community Open Mic** Take the mic and share with the group — from hardware demos and embedded prototypes to quick AI-at-the-edge announcements, project showcases, and calls for collaboration. Last reminder: Please make sure to register on Eventbrite for your free ticket: [https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/physical-ai-meetup-melbourne-year-ender-tickets-2003999424224](https://www.eventbrite.com.au/e/physical-ai-meetup-melbourne-year-ender-tickets-2003999424224)

Monday night badminton @ Beyond Badminton Centre - Clayton

Origami and Chocolate

Join us for a relaxing time of folding together at the Ratio chocolate factory in Brunswick! Bring a fun origami project to fold and share, all while sipping on delectable hot chocolate! Standard origami paper will be provided. We just ask for a gold coin to help with group expenses.

Saturday morning badminton @ Beyond Badminton Centre - Clayton

Neural Processing from the Ground Up, & Phoenix Architecture

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 **Tristan Penman: "Neural Processing from the Ground Up"** **Talk description:** Have you ever wondered how an NPU or TPU works under the hood? A lot is written and said about how these purpose-built chips can accelerate neural networks, but not so much about how they actually work. In this talk we'll see how, starting from basic operations like dot products and matrix multiplications, we can implement non-trivial model architectures such as CNNs and Transformers. From there, we'll see how those same techniques are applied in real embedded NPUs and data-centre scale TPUs. Some concepts we’ll touch upon include systolic arrays, tiling, and the impact of memory hierarchies. Code examples will be shared where possible, along with diagrams to help build intuition. **Speaker bio:** Tristan is a Principal Engineer at a Melbourne-based EdTech startup. His recent work centres around bringing AI to the classroom, in ways that improve learning outcomes, increase student engagement, and minimise strain on teachers. In his spare time, Tristan dabbles in reverse engineering, hardware hacking and FPGA design. **Raúl V: "Phoenix Architecture"** **Abstract:** Drop the code, (re)generate specs that are well defined for (multi) agents to replicate every single time. Machine code is no longer scarce and increasingly disposable. The limiting factor is no longer writing software, but understanding, evaluating, and governing it. **Speaker Bio:** Raúl is the solopreneur founder of Quantaliz, a private AI software development. He is a neerk (nerd + geek) systems engineer, always looking to learn, explore, exploit the most out of the computers.

Squishface Monthly Drawing Night NOVEMBER @ SQUISHFACE

LAST WEDNESDAY OF THE MONTH so **IT'S DRAWING NIGHT AT SQUISHFACE** Last one for the year! (We generally skip December) Join us at Squishface's studio space in South Melbourne: Studio Hall, on the grounds of St Kilda South Port Uniting Church on Dorcas St. There are FOUR TRAMS you can catch from the city. **58, 96, 12** or the **1!** It is even walkable from the city. Bring your sketch books, bring your pens, bring a friend. It's not a class - it's a drawing hang out. All skill levels welcome. Always lots of regulars, always newies. Be socially awkward, be confident as heck. This is informal, it's just a free drawing session. Go ahead and bring snacks. But no nuts please! Our venue is wheelchair accessible, as are the very toilets. Minors are welcome but will need an accompanying adult. Contact us on 0422 509 144 if any issues or you get lost. Please follow us both on instagram, for comic and zine related news and events. 👉 [Squishface Studio](http://www.instagram.com/Squishfacestudio) Here's an [instagram video](https://www.instagram.com/reel/C4J5GiOPLxc/) showing where Studio Hall is. You simply enter from the street, walk up toward the big bluestone church, then go left to the car park and you will find Studio Hall!

Shipping with AI

// OVERVIEW The Shipping with AI meetup (formerly UX Design in SaaS) has partnered with the [Outlook AI Conference 2026](https://theoutlook.io/events/outlook-ai) to bring you an in-person evening as part of the conference activities. Shipping with AI is a meetup for designers, product managers and engineers who want to move past the hype and learn how AI is actually being used to build and ship real products. No theory-heavy keynotes. Just demos, real workflows and practical tips you can take back to your team the next day. // WHAT IS HAPPENING Our three speakers come at AI from different angles: delivery in regulated industries, engineering and AI agents, and design quality. They'll each share how their teams are shipping with AI right now. That includes the tools, the workflows, what's working, and what they've learned the hard way. Expect presentations, live demos, Q&A, drinks, food, games, prizes and plenty of time to network. // WHEN 6:00 – 8:30pm, Wednesday 11th November // WHERE Nintex Offices, Level 14, 530 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 // WHY COME ALONG * See it, don't just hear about it. Live demos of real AI workflows, not slides about the future. * Practical takeaways. Tips and tricks you can try with your team straight away. * Three perspectives in one night. Delivery, engineering and design, so you get the full picture of what it takes to ship with AI. * Ask the hard questions. How do you keep AI output on-brand? How do you bring AI into regulated businesses safely? How do you give coding agents the right context? * Meet your people. Connect with Melbourne designers, PMs and engineers working through the same challenges. * It's free, and there's food, drinks and prizes. // OUR SPEAKERS ANASTAS MANOJLOVSKI – Technical Director, Whitefox Cloud Consulting Anastas has spent 20 years where customers, sales and engineering meet. He specialises in turning messy problems into solutions that actually get delivered. At Whitefox he leads sales and delivery for clients in financial services, insurance, health and logistics, and oversees 25+ engineers across Australia and offshore. His work includes governed Claude adoption with human review and audit trails for financial advice provider Padua, and AI road-defect detection models running in production. Before Whitefox, he spent nine years at Whispir, including five as AU/NZ Head of Solution Architecture. Anastas brings a grounded view on getting AI into regulated businesses without creating new risk. TOM PETERSON – Co-Founder, ctxpipe.ai Tom is a builder who orchestrates local and cloud AI models to get things done, fast. He is co-founder of ctxpipe.ai, an open-source, Git-backed context layer for coding agents and software factories. He is also Head of Product at TRU Rec AI, building computer vision analytics with open-source models. With 15 years in tech across project management, business analysis, design, product and founding, Tom is passionate about developer experience and building tools that make engineers' lives easier. Previously, he co-founded Appear, an API discovery and automation tool. HAMISH O'NEILL – Founder, UI Rules Hamish is a multi-award-winning design leader with more than two decades in digital product design across retail, telecommunications, finance and digital marketplaces. He is the founder of UI Rules, a governance layer that serves brand and design system rules to AI coding tools like Cursor, Claude Code and v0, keeping AI-generated interfaces on-brand. Previously, Hamish was Head of Design Systems at Carsales, where he led the team behind the Torq design system. Before that he was Design Chapter Lead and Design Lead for the Brand & Design System at ANZ. // OUTLOOK AI CONFERENCE The [Outlook AI Conference 2026](https://theoutlook.io/events/outlook-ai) is on Thursday 12th November in Melbourne and is not to be missed. [Tickets are on sale now](https://theoutlook.io/events/outlook-ai#block-tickets-62bf87ad-1efc-4e26-91e6-cd62d9c8affb). // SPONSORS A big thank you to Nintex, our amazing sponsor, for making this event happen.

Naarm Solarpunk Meetup + Merri-bek.Tech AGM

[Merri-bek Tech](https://www.merri-bek.tech/), a group in the inner northern suburbs of Naarm (Melbourne), invites everyone involved interested in tinkering with grass-roots technologies in support of a **Sustainable**, **Resilient** and **Just** future to join us for the **Naarm Solarpunk Meetup**. This month we have special guest speaker, **Anastasia Beasley**, with the presentation, 'Land shapes the internet'. ***Land shapes the internet*** Margo Ngawa Neale calls songlines "corridors of knowledge", and Internet infrastructure follows those same paths through Country to transport information through cable-sized corridors. The Internet is made of Country - even the fibre optic cables in the NBN are made of Queensland sand - but its protocols are very different to those that govern knowledge sharing in Indigenous systems. I am an ally with settler heritage, and I have no authority to speak about traditional knowledge, but I'd like to share some context about the Internet's history in so-called Australia and recommend some readings by Indigenous computer scientists. *Anastasia is a research fellow at auDA, the Australian not-for-profit organisation responsible for administering the .au domain.* After the presentation, at the end of the Meetup we will be running the Merri-bek.tech Annual General Meeting (AGM), presenting the annual report and nominating and confirming the committee members for the next year. This is a great opportunity to get further involved with the organisation; to become a member, or as a member to nominate as, or vote for committee members. If you do none of these things is a a good chance to see how a grass-roots organisation can be organised and run. **About the Naarm Solarpunk group** Some of us are technologists, and will be showing off software or hardware projects, and others are more interested in community organizing, responding to the climate crisis, or building local resilience. Whatever your area of interest, or your level of skill, you're absolutely welcome to dive in. At the meetups we'll have a show-and-tell time for any projects that you're working on, as well as occasional short presentations. The space will be hosted by volunteers, and we'll actively work towards inclusion through applying a [code of conduct](https://www.contributor-covenant.org/version/2/1/code_of_conduct/). Merri-bek Tech has some projects that you might be interested in updates from, including our attempt to build P2P mesh network based community hosting on Raspberry Pis, and our project to run a local fediverse social network. We aspire to keep this meetup **Solarpunk** as fuck. We support the hackers, tinkerers and makers and misfits. There are plenty of other spaces for big corporate green tech, so bring your hobby project, not your day job, unless that job is firmly rooted in the solidarity economy. We are not value neutral. We'll start with Merri-bek Tech's [values](https://www.merri-bek.tech/about/values/) and [principles](https://www.merri-bek.tech/about/principles/), and build from there together. In particular, in the context of ongoing genocide, we will ask you to leave if you're associated in any way with the weapons industry. This meetup will be hosted on the stolen, unceeded lands of the Wurundjeri people of the Kulin Nation. **Always was, always will be, Aboriginal land.**

Shipping with AI - Live in-person event

Hi folks, Exciting news. The UX Book Club is sponsoring an awesome live in-person event, happening in Melbourne Australia on 11 November. The event is an AI meetup. RSVP quick! Details below. // OVERVIEW The Shipping with AI meetup (formerly UX Design in SaaS) has partnered with the [Outlook AI Conference 2026](https://theoutlook.io/events/outlook-ai) to bring you an in-person evening as part of the conference activities. Shipping with AI is a meetup for designers, product managers and engineers who want to move past the hype and learn how AI is actually being used to build and ship real products. No theory-heavy keynotes. Just demos, real workflows and practical tips you can take back to your team the next day. // WHAT IS HAPPENING Our three speakers come at AI from different angles: delivery in regulated industries, engineering and AI agents, and design quality. They'll each share how their teams are shipping with AI right now. That includes the tools, the workflows, what's working, and what they've learned the hard way. Expect presentations, live demos, Q&A, drinks, food, games, prizes and plenty of time to network. // WHEN 6:00pm – 8:30pm, Wednesday 11th November // WHERE Nintex Offices, Level 14, 530 Collins Street, Melbourne VIC 3000 // WHY COME ALONG * See it, don't just hear about it. Live demos of real AI workflows, not slides about the future. * Practical takeaways. Tips and tricks you can try with your team straight away. * Three perspectives in one night. Delivery, engineering and design, so you get the full picture of what it takes to ship with AI. * Ask the hard questions. How do you keep AI output on-brand? How do you bring AI into regulated businesses safely? How do you give coding agents the right context? * Meet your people. Connect with Melbourne designers, PMs and engineers working through the same challenges. * It's free, and there's food, drinks and prizes. // OUR SPEAKERS ANASTAS MANOJLOVSKI – Technical Director, Whitefox Cloud Consulting Anastas has spent 20 years where customers, sales and engineering meet. He specialises in turning messy problems into solutions that actually get delivered. At Whitefox he leads sales and delivery for clients in financial services, insurance, health and logistics, and oversees 25+ engineers across Australia and offshore. His work includes governed Claude adoption with human review and audit trails for financial advice provider Padua, and AI road-defect detection models running in production. Before Whitefox, he spent nine years at Whispir, including five as AU/NZ Head of Solution Architecture. Anastas brings a grounded view on getting AI into regulated businesses without creating new risk. TOM PETERSON – Co-Founder, ctxpipe.ai Tom is a builder who orchestrates local and cloud AI models to get things done, fast. He is co-founder of ctxpipe.ai, an open-source, Git-backed context layer for coding agents and software factories. He is also Head of Product at TRU Rec AI, building computer vision analytics with open-source models. With 15 years in tech across project management, business analysis, design, product and founding, Tom is passionate about developer experience and building tools that make engineers' lives easier. Previously, he co-founded Appear, an API discovery and automation tool. HAMISH O'NEILL – Founder, UI Rules Hamish is a multi-award-winning design leader with more than two decades in digital product design across retail, telecommunications, finance and digital marketplaces. He is the founder of UI Rules, a governance layer that serves brand and design system rules to AI coding tools like Cursor, Claude Code and v0, keeping AI-generated interfaces on-brand. Previously, Hamish was Head of Design Systems at Carsales, where he led the team behind the Torq design system. Before that he was Design Chapter Lead and Design Lead for the Brand & Design System at ANZ. // OUTLOOK AI CONFERENCE The [Outlook AI Conference 2026](https://theoutlook.io/events/outlook-ai) is on Thursday 12th November in Melbourne and is not to be missed. [Tickets are on sale now](https://theoutlook.io/events/outlook-ai#block-tickets-62bf87ad-1efc-4e26-91e6-cd62d9c8affb). // SPONSORS A big thank you to Nintex and the UX Book Club, our amazing sponsors, for making this event happen.

AI & Tech Networking Event in Melbourne by Ascent Valley

Join founders, investors and tech talent at this curated **startup networking event in Melbourne.** Meet ambitious builders, exchange ideas and discover new opportunities in a dynamic community environment. **RSVP: [Use this link](https://www.eventbrite.com/e/ai-tech-networking-event-in-melbourne-by-ascent-valley-tickets-1999727725458?aff=oddtdtcreator)** **Please note that RSVP is managed via Eventbrite to control attendee lists — don’t ignore it to avoid issues with on-site payment.** **🚀 Meet investors, founders, AI experts, operators, and immigrant entrepreneurs building the next generation of global companies.** * Share your project and get feedback. * Connect with capital. * Expand your network. * This is where conversations turn into partnerships. * Use our participant mini app to keep every contact and insight from the event — nothing gets lost. 👥 Who You’ll Meet • Startup Founders • Angel Investors & VC firms • AI Experts • Entrepreneurs from Europe, Asia & the UK • Marketers, Sales leaders & Business Advisors • Builders & Game Changers Startup Pitch Session Selected founders take the stage for a focused 5-minute presentation in front of active investors and tech leaders. Each startup receives: ⚡ Professional evaluation ⚡ Investor feedback ⚡ Visibility inside our global ecosystem **Why You Can’t Miss It** • Meet Tech & Business professionals, founders, and active investors • Gain real feedback from venture capitalists and angel investors • Discover new opportunities in AI, Tech & early-stage startups • Build meaningful connections in a global entrepreneurial community If you’re serious about startups — you should be in the room. 📈 Want to Pitch? Send your deck to: 📧 events@ascentvalley.club or fill [form](https://ascentvalley.com/pitch) Limited spots. Curated selection. 🏆 The startup recognized as “Most Investment-Worthy” will be featured across our social media and included in our investor newsletter. **🌟 About Ascent Valley** [Ascent Valley ](https://ascentvalley.com/infrastructure)is a global ecosystem connecting founders, innovators, and investors. We believe great ideas shouldn’t stay hidden — they deserve to be heard, challenged, and supported by the right people. Our mission is to create environments where ambitious builders connect, collaborate, and grow together.