Dublin — Week of 27 Jul 2026

with Daniel M. Kuchta (Principal Hardware System Architect, IEEE Fellow, NVIDIA)

AI workloads are breaking the interconnect. As models scale, the bottleneck moves off the chip and onto the wire — and co-packaged optics is the industry's answer. Daniel M. Kuchta, Principal Hardware System Architect at NVIDIA and an IEEE Fellow, gives the guest lecture in the CONNECT Visiting Lecturer Series at Trinity College Dublin. He covers the state of co-packaged optical transceiver technology across both VCSEL and silicon-photonics approaches, how they fit the evolving Ethernet switch and computer I/O landscape, and what large-scale AI is doing to the performance, scalability and energy-efficiency requirements of modern data centres. Kuchta spent three decades at IBM's Thomas J. Watson Research Center on optical interconnect, holds 40+ patents and 145+ publications, and chaired OFC. An hour with someone genuinely at the frontier of how AI infrastructure actually gets built — rare in Dublin, and free.

The first Medtech Brew of 2026, run by Irish Medtech and BioInnovate Ireland — an informal evening in O'Neill's on Merrion Row for medtech innovators, investors and founders. Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death and disability in Ireland, and this session looks at how digital health changes outcomes through three lenses: the patient receiving care, the company building the solution, and the hospital delivering the treatment. Expect real options and shared challenges rather than a vendor showcase. Places are limited and going fast; register via the listing.

with Tashfeen Ahmed (Senior Product Designer, Microsoft) · Shiv Rajappa (Product Manager, Mastercard) · Paula Ribeiro (Senior Software Engineer / Tech Lead, Toast)

AI Tinkerers Dublin returns with a screened, demos-first builder night sponsored by Toast — no pitch decks, just technical show-and-tell on generative AI and agentic workflows. Five-minute deep dives are followed by a hands-on "science fair" for walking through code and getting live feedback. Confirmed demos include Tashfeen Ahmed (Microsoft) on building a free-LLM API, Shiv Rajappa (Mastercard) on Compountier, and Paula Ribeiro (Toast) on a marketing agent. Attendance is screened and capped at 150 — one of the highest-signal AI rooms in Dublin.

Dublin's long-running infosec community meets in the Abbey Room of the Camden Court Hotel. Doors from 18:30, two talks from around 19:00, then drinks, food and general chat about security. The organisers are explicit that everyone is welcome — professional, amateur or merely curious — which is what has kept this one of the more accessible security communities in the city. Speakers for the July edition are being confirmed; the group takes open submissions, so if you have something to say about infosec they want to hear from you.

with Niall Maher (Founder and Host, Codú)

Codú is Ireland's biggest web developer community — 3,600+ members — and its meetups fill up. This edition runs at Marsh Ireland's office on Baggot Street: doors at 18:00 with free beer, pizza and networking, intro from Niall Maher at 18:30, two talks, then Q&A. Speakers are being locked in as the date approaches. The reason to come is the room: a genuine cross-section of Dublin's web engineering scene, from juniors to staff engineers, in a format that has been consistently well run. Currently on waitlist — join it anyway, releases happen.

The regular Dublin Tech Social mixer at The Bleeding Horse on Camden Street — afterwork drinks and networking for tech workers across engineering, AI, data, product, cybersecurity and IT. An informal, welcoming end-of-week social to expand your network, swap ideas, hear about roles and stay current on what’s happening in Dublin tech, whatever your seniority.