Web Directions

Run a meetup or a community for people building with AI? December 6–13 is the best week you'll ever have to run it — NeurIPS is in Sydney, AI Engineer Sydney is on. We'll list it, promote it, send people your way. Costs nothing, stays yours. aiweek.com.au/host

AI Week Melbourne had two hackathons, one from Google DeepMind. Vercel brought their Sydney AI Meetup down with Maincode. Microsoft, Atlassian and Zendesk all hosted events. Sydney is Dec 6–13, with NeurIPS in town. Want your company in it? Now's the time to talk. aiweek.com.au/partners

AI Week Melbourne brought two dozen AI events to the city in a week. So we're bringing it to Sydney: December 6–13. Conferences, hack days, meetups, workshops — from AI Engineer, our partners, and maybe even you. NeurIPS is in town the same week. aiweek.com.au

Most of AI Week Sydney hasn't been announced yet. The conference and the Hack Day are locked in. The meetups, workshops and evening events land between now and December. Sign up and we'll email you as each is confirmed: aiweek.com.au

Run a meetup or a community for people building with AI? December 6–13 is the best week you'll ever have to run it — NeurIPS is in Sydney, AI Engineer Sydney is on. We'll list it, promote it, send people your way. Costs nothing, stays yours. aiweek.com.au/host

"AI Engineer here in Melbourne has been amazing." — AJ Fisher, VP Digital Science, TetraTherix. Next: AI Engineer Sydney, Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now, early bird ends Aug 28. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

"Absolutely worth the trip." — Mal Curtis, NVIDIA, on AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8, and the trip's probably shorter for you. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

AI Week Melbourne had two hackathons, one from Google DeepMind. Vercel brought their Sydney AI Meetup down with Maincode. Microsoft, Atlassian and Zendesk all hosted events. Sydney is Dec 6–13, with NeurIPS in town. Want your company in it? Now's the time to talk. aiweek.com.au/partners

"I wish I could attend more and more things, but there's too much going on." — Lovee Jain, Prezzee, on AI Engineer Melbourne. A good problem to have. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

"This conference is great... incredible. 10." — Ben Taylor, Stile Education, on AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

AI Week Melbourne brought two dozen AI events to the city in a week. So we're bringing it to Sydney: December 6–13. Conferences, hack days, meetups, workshops — from AI Engineer, our partners, and maybe even you. NeurIPS is in town the same week. aiweek.com.au

"Four or five talks I thought were great that I'm going to work into my day-to-day workflows." — Adam Hudson, Notion (Sydney), on AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

"The calibre of people is really high… you can have really, really in-depth conversations." — Michael Hart, Cloudflare, at AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

Most of AI Week Sydney hasn't been announced yet. The conference and the Hack Day are locked in. The meetups, workshops and evening events land between now and December. Sign up and we'll email you as each is confirmed: aiweek.com.au

"This is so much fun. I've had so many random good conversations." — Aubrey Blanche, AI Ethicist, The Ethics Centre, at AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

"How exciting it is to have this sort of energy again." — Annie Vella, Distinguished Engineer, Westpac NZ, 22 years in the industry, at AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

"It's got a lot of energy… I've already picked up a few ideas from people." — Mic Neale, Principal Engineer at Block, at AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

Run a meetup, an industry group, or a company with something to show? AI Week Sydney (Dec 6–13) is an open invitation — your event, your format, we put it on the map. Planning something for December? Tell us by late September. aiweek.com.au

Homebrew Agents Club is tonight — Blackwattle, 76 McEvoy St, Alexandria, from 6pm. A couple of short demos, plenty of good conversation, food and drinks on us. homebrewagents.club/meetups/2026...

"As a benchmarking company, we can never rate a 10… So let's say 9.5" — George Cameron, Artificial Analysis, rating AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

"There's never been this much concentration of AI talent for two days." — Sajjad Kamal, CEO, Onset Health, on AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

"No other conference today does that so closely." — Shivay Lamba (Qualcomm), who speaks at 10–15 conferences a year, on AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

AI Engineer Sydney sits inside AI Week Sydney — Dec 6–13. In Melbourne that week drew close to two dozen events: meetups, workshops, hackathons, dinners, mostly run by other people. Sydney's edition is next. aiweek.com.au

Homebrew Agents Club is back Tue Aug 4, 6–9pm — Blackwattle Bar & Brewery, Alexandria. Monthly night for people building with agents. No talks, no pitches. Free, food and drinks on us. RSVP: homebrewagents.club/meetups/2026...

"It's why I flew from San Francisco to Melbourne." — Sarah Sachs, Head of AI Engineering at Notion, on AI Engineer. Sydney's a shorter trip: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

Most conference programs this year have an AI talk. Ours has about six, and they don't agree with each other. That's roughly where the honest conversation is right now. UX Week, Sydney 26–28 Aug: webdirections.org/uxaustralia/...

"11 out of 10... I love it." — Igor Costa, Founder & CEO, AutoHand AI, on AI Engineer Melbourne. AI Engineer Sydney: Dec 7–8. Tickets + CFP open now. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

Design Research: nine talks, one day. Sydney, Wed Aug 26 — the day before UX Australia, same venue, and the bundle covers all three days. Full schedule now live. webdirections.org/design-resea...

William Anthony Yanko, PhD (Flight Centre) at Design Research 2026: Applying Anthropology in Design Research — Why Culture Is the Method. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

UX Australia is a month away and the full schedule is live. Twenty sessions, two days, single track — so you'll see all of it. Sydney, Aug 27 & 28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/...

Weiyan Chee (Bupa) at Design Research 2026: Designing ResearchOps for uncertainty — how to build a research function that bends when priorities shift. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

Rebecca Klee at Design Research 2026: Designing research for AI moderators — lessons from running 100 interviews a week. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

Melissa Voderberg (Publicis Sapient) at Design Research 2026: What Can't AI See? Ethnographic research in a post-screen world. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

Dr Chandra Harrison (Access Advisors) at Design Research 2026: Nothing about us flying, without us — researching WITH, not about, the people our designs affect. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

AI Engineer Sydney's CFP is open. Building production AI systems, or leading the teams that are? We want your story on stage. AI Engineering · SWE and Agentic Coding · AI Leadership. Closes September 4. webdirections.org/ai-engineer/...

Dr Asma Qureshi (A2 Online) at Design Research 2026: Insight Is Not Enough — the next chapter of design research, in an industry where insight has become a deliverable. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

AI Engineer — the world's leading conference for AI and software engineers — is coming to Sydney, Dec 7–8, the same week as NeurIPS. Three tracks, a Workshop Day, and a free Hack Day. Super Early Bird is $995 until Aug 28, or until it sells out. webdirections.org/ai-engineer

Bhaven Chauhan & Chanel Lee co-present at Design Research 2026: In defence of a long pause — designing better through lived experience. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

Ania Mastalerz (Atlassian) at Design Research 2026: The Researcher as a Diplomat — carrying truth across boundaries between teams that don't speak the same language. Sydney, Wed Aug 26. webdirections.org/design-resea...

Sakib Jalil (UTS & CQU) at UX Australia 2026: Enjoyment as a Design Principle and Metric — taking seriously something often dismissed as fluff. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Rachael Wilson & Sarah Fennelly (Deakin University) co-present at UX Australia 2026: Beyond Designers — Building a Culture of UX Through a Playbook. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Peter Barber (Airwallex) at UX Australia 2026: The Human Margin — what stays human when the rest of the system gets automated. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Patima Tantiprasut (PetRescue) at UX Australia 2026: Designing for disappointment — how to design systems that handle the moments people don't get what they hoped for. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

"You're not designing the experience. You're inheriting it." Mina Giang (Oexa) at UX Australia 2026 — a reckoning for any team trying to design the customer journey from scratch. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Josephine Abbatangelo (Movember) at UX Australia 2026: The Masking Tax — how workplace products charge an invisible cost on disabled employees. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Design leader Jessie Pahng at UX Australia 2026: From reactive systems to proactive intelligence — what it takes to build interfaces that anticipate rather than respond. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Gian Wild (CEO, AccessibilityOz) at UX Australia 2026: History of web accessibility — where we've been, what's worked, what hasn't, what we're still getting wrong. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Emma Buckland (Lead UX Designer) at UX Australia 2026: Why most Mobile UX increases risk — and how to reduce it. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Emily Smith & Nadine Raydan (ReachOut Australia) at UX Australia 2026: The architecture of human mental health support — re-designing PeerChat for on-demand support. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/

Elise Loeuille (Transport for NSW) at UX Australia 2026: Unplanned Disruption — Mind the Gaps. Designing for the moments when service journeys fall apart. Sydney, Aug 27–28. webdirections.org/uxaustralia/