Technology
The Hidden Cost of AI | Ulysses Maclaren & Richard Campbell | NDC Melbourne 2025
What does artificial intelligence have to do with nuclear reactors, brownouts, and humanity’s last exam? At NDC, SSW’s Ulysses Maclaren sits down with tech veteran Richard Campbell to explore the energy demands of AI, Microsoft’s nuclear strategy, and how our increasing data needs are impacting global infrastructure. They also examine whether artificial general intelligence is truly within reach or still a distant goal. From understanding the environmental cost of AI to dissecting the realities behind AGI, this conversation offers practical insights into where technology is heading and how it’s reshaping our world.
Read MoreHealth Check Infrastructure | Toby Churches | SSW Rules
One broken API can bring your entire application down — and you might not know until your users are already impacted. In this video, Tony Churches from SSW shows how to proactively monitor your application’s health using infrastructure health checks in ASP.NET Core. Learn why hope is not a strategy, and how you can build confidence in your system’s reliability.
Read MoreMCP : Ensuring our tools are ready for the Robot Overlords | Anton Polkanov | SSW User Groups
Learn everything you need to know about MCP (Model Context Protocol) — the new standard for integrating tools, resources, and prompts into AI applications. In this talk, Anton explores the architecture, SDKs, transports, server features, and the future of MCP, including real-world demos in GitHub Copilot and Cloud Desktop.
Whether you’re new to MCP or looking to go deeper, this session covers it all — with tips, pitfalls, and even how to debug with Inspector.
Read MoreChoosing the Right Messaging Solution for Your Architecture with Poornima Nayar
Discuss the most popular queuing systems – benefits, trade-offs and gotchas, with code samples.
Read MoreHigh-Performance Content Management | Matt Wicks | SSW User Groups
Dive into customizing a high-performance Next.js site to build a fully editable company landing page.
Read MoreTech News # 47 | Eve Cogan | OpenAI, MCPs and Tariffs
Agent to agent communication, copyrights and tariffs the world of tech is being shook. Where will we all land?
Read MoreShaving the Yak with AI: Devs want specs, Product Owners want speed | Adam Cogan | User Group
Learn the lessons from deploying AI to solve one of the most persistent struggles in software development.
Read MoreIf you think AI is cheating, you’re doing it wrong | Ulysses Maclaren | SSW Rules
AI is the tool of this generation, but are we using it responsibly? Ulysses Maclaren dives into the best practices for AI use—covering transparency, critical thinking, data privacy, and how to leverage AI to boost productivity. Learn why using AI intelligently is the key to staying ahead in your career.
Read MoreThe Year of the AI Agent: Automation to Intelligence | Ulysses Maclaren | SSW User Group
Discover how AI agents differ from traditional AI-enabled workflows, delving into their capacity to autonomously gather data, reason, and seamlessly integrate tools to achieve outcomes.
Read MoreCreating Multi-Language AI-Powered Apps w/ Rust, Python & Blazor | TJ Gokken | SSW User Groups
Let’s do some polyglot programming. We’ll create a modern system diagnostics tool called HAL (Hardware Assistant that Learns). We’ll combine Rust’s system-level performance, Python’s AI capabilities with AutoGen, a multi-agent framework, and Blazor’s modern web interface into a cohesive application.
Key Takeaways:
Inter-process communication between Rust, Python, and .NET
Understand when and why to use different languages in AI applications
Learn to implement Microsoft’s AutoGen for multi-agent AI systems