Freelancer Groups Near Me

< $200 /Month, Ready for Infinity: Modernizing CRM with Claude + AWS in 90 Days

What happens when a fast-growing business outgrows a CRM built to handle 100–200 customers a year? In this session, I'll walk through how I used Claude and AWS to modernize the entire operation in just three months, scaling it to handle an unlimited number of customers for under $200 a month. We'll start with the foundation: a serverless sync that pulls CRM data into RDS Postgres every hour during business hours, plus on demand when key operations happen. This gives the business fast, flexible reporting without overloading the CRM. From there, we'll look at how leads from multiple sources now flow through a single Lambda function, and how new front-end and back-end tools transformed lead handling, sales pipeline visibility, and company-wide reporting. You'll also get the behind-the-scenes examples that made this pace possible: * CI/CD pipelines that let you deploy quickly and often * Using code reviews as the main quality gate for every release * Tips for writing a CLAUDE.md file that maximizes your workflow * A shared STYLE.md that keeps standards consistent across projects * Splitting and combining projects with separate CloudFormation templates so they stay easy to update and simple to maintain Whether you're a solo developer, a consultant, or part of a lean team, you'll leave with practical patterns for building scalable, low-cost systems on AWS, and for getting the most out of AI as a development partner. **SPEAKER BIO** Angelo Mandato is an AWS Columbus User Group leader, AWS Community Builder, and Certified Solutions Architect - Associate who has been developing solutions on AWS since 2007. https://angelo.mandato.com **CALL FOR SPEAKERS** Learn more: [https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/](https://www.awscolumbus.com/get-involved/) **THANK YOU** *VEEAM* for hosting our meetup! To learn more about *Veeam*, please visit their website: [https://www.veeam.com/](https://www.veeam.com/) **DIRECTIONS** 8800 Lyra Dr #450 · Columbus, OH go to 4th floor. **Want to sponsor the pizza and/or bar tab?** Please contact me if you would like to sponsor this meetup's pizza and/or bar tab: angelo@mandato.com

Libera Animae - Freeing the Soul

Main Library, Meeting Room 2B Join us for a welcoming evening of reflection, gentle music, and meaningful conversation. We’ll begin with a short grounding moment, followed by a brief reading from spiritual or philosophical traditions, and an open reflection circle where participants can share (or simply listen). Libera Animae is an interfaith community focused on inner growth, creativity, and authentic connection. All backgrounds are welcome.

Columbus Code & Coffee 91 @ Improving

Columbus Code & Coffee is an inclusive, informal co-working session. People of all skill levels attend, and we love it that way. Many people (optionally) bring projects to work on, and many other people (optionally) socialize the entire time. It's entirely up to you! **What to Expect at the Intro Circle** \~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~\~ Near the beginning of the event (1:30 pm), we do a standup: * Organizer announcements, updates, and logistics Round 1 - (7 secs max): * Your name * What you're working on * What you can help others with Round 2: * Community events you wanna plug. If none, that's cool too. Round 3: * Job opportunities you're hiring for OR announce that you are looking for one. If none, that's cool. After the introduction circle, everything is self-organized! Feel free to work alone, pair up, attend one of our workshops/presentations, or mingle!

Free Movie Night: The Craft

Grants Boot Camp: Part 1

Hosted by Smashing Your Sales Goals, featuring Tiffany Nobles a 2-day interactive boot camp to get you grant ready.

Free In-Person Meeting: Get Over Losses & Betrayals, Build Lasting Relationships

This is a free, in-person meeting on the subject of betrayals, losses and how to get over them so you can build lasting relationships. Burdened by a stressful relationship? Unhealthy relationships can trigger feelings of anger, despair or self-doubt. They can create dwindling spirals of fights and seeking to make-up, or trying to “pin the blame” on someone or something. If you don’t find the RIGHT reasons, or select the correct sources of the problem, the problem can just get worse and worse. Whether in love or personal ties, with friends or at work, our life really IS affected by the quality of our relationships. Good ones can promote pleasure and survival while less optimum ones can lead to annoyance, anger, self-doubt, stress, or even affect our health and ability to survive well. Whether you are suffering from a divorce, or a painful break-up, don’t know who to trust (or who to CHOOSE) as a partner, friend, boss or employee - the anxiety of relationship troubles can really make a mess of things. Maybe you’ve suffered a betrayal, or are dealing with hostility or criticalness or invalidation. Dwindling relationships can involve destructive behavior, where we hurt those we love, or start succumbing to self-destructive thoughts, attitudes or behaviors that spiral out of control and affect much more than our immediate relationship. Past losses in love or life can affect how we act or react to new people and situations and hold us back from even starting to create new, possibly great relationships! How can one get back onto a saner course of action? Come to our Meetup, where we can introduce you to some of the knowledge, tools and techniques of the breakthroughs in the field of the mind that we can apply to this ever important area of life: human relationships! Break free from self imposed limitations Here we will discuss: • How to “erase” the trauma of past hurts and betrayals so that one isn’t always repeating past mistakes. • Why and how do the negative emotions of others affect you? • Why is my partner withdrawing and what can I do about it? • Why do we sometimes feel compelled to hurt the ones we love? • Fights & arguments - what's really behind them? • What underlies “corrosive criticism” or the need to invalidate self or others? • How one can stably change one’s outlook on life so they can affect positive change? • Where do compulsive destructive behaviors come from and what can be done about them? • How to form closer bonds & keep growing the relationships with the people you care about? • How to enhance one’s own ability to survive and create positive healthy relationships whether in love, family & friendships or in work, business or one’s career? Relationships can be hard and life itself IS challenging. Why not arm yourself with the knowledge and breakthroughs that have been made about the mind, mental reactions & interpersonal relationships, so that one has better awareness and control over themselves and life in general. Learn where painful experiences are “stored” and how they can unknowingly affect us. You will also find out how one can “erase” those past painful experiences so that one is free to move forward without being tripped up by the past. Learn too, about what can lead some people to become “toxic” personalities and how to identify those traits in others so you won’t be tripped up trusting the wrong person. Our free Meet-ups occur in a safe environment where one can learn, without fear of judgment or criticism, and without the recommendation of harmful mental techniques or therapies, just how YOU can get yourself onto a happier & more successful path: in love & in life. We look forward to having you join us! This class is sponsored by the Dianetics & Scientology Life Improvement Center of Central Ohio.

Building a RAG Assistant with Azure AI Search + Azure OpenAI

**From React Docs to AI Answers: Building a RAG Assistant with Azure AI Search + Azure OpenAI** In this session, I’ll walk through how to build an AI-powered documentation assistant for a modern React web product using Azure AI Search, Azure OpenAI, and a Next.js frontend. The talk will focus on a practical use case: taking documentation, component examples, and product content, indexing it for retrieval, and using that context to generate grounded answers inside a web app. I’ll cover the architecture, data flow, prompt design, chunking strategy, deployment approach, and common mistakes developers run into when adding AI to real web products. The session will include code examples and a demo-style walkthrough showing how a developer could turn static docs or internal knowledge into an interactive AI assistant. Attendees will leave with a practical blueprint for building their own RAG-powered web experience on Azure without turning it into an overcomplicated cloud architecture.

Columbus PHP: Monthly Meetup

Our monthly PHP meetup. A virtual shindig courtesy of Zoom. Check back here for the details around 6:15 pm

NFT AI ART Columbus

NFT's are here to stay folks! This is a group for like minded people interested in understanding, leveraging, using, creating for, profiting from, trading too i suppose, NFT's.. everything around them, complexity, fear and exploits, best practices and more. **PLUS** This group will talk AI ART tools, techniques, artists, video, audio, prototypes and more in the AI assisted production space- ART specifically, but we can get into any aspect of some of the cooler things happening in AI in general.

Shut Up & Write!™ Easton Town Center

We'll meet at The Capital One Café, 167 Easton Town Center, Space A-103. This is in the main mall where the Microsoft store used to be, on your left if you're standing at the bottom of the AMC Theater escalator. Join us on Saturday for an hour of uninterrupted wordmaking! • What we'll do Join us for an hour of writing! We’ve discovered that it’s strikingly helpful to write with other writers. See if it’s true for you at 10AM on Saturday mornings. Be it a book, blog, script, essay, dissertation, resume, melody, poem or just plain work stuff, you are invited to write it with us. No one will see what you've written or give you unsolicited advice. Instead of just thinking about writing, come and get some real writing done. SCHEDULE: 10:00 - SESSION 1: quick intros. 10:10 - timer starts: write for 1 hour. 11:10 - chat / take off / keep writing. OPTIONAL SOCIALIZING happens at 11A-11:30ish. Writing is very solitary. Connecting (and sometimes even commiserating) with other writers is a cool thing. BEING LATE IS OKAY: just show up and get settled, then check-in with me after the session. (I’ll be the person with the Shut Up & Write! sign.) If you were on time, please be willing to make room for the friendly latecomer. Happy writing and I look forward to seeing you! • What to bring Whatever you need to be able to write! Bring earbuds/earplugs if you want to block noise or the occasional conversation by other patrons. Electrical outlets are limited, so charge your devices before whenever possible. See you at The Café on Saturday!

Grants Boot Camp: Part 2

Hosted by Smashing Your Sales Goals, featuring Tiffany Nobles a 2-day interactive boot camp to get you grant ready.

Coding with AI Agents: Better Code, Faster

AI coding agents can write code in seconds. Getting that code to be correct, understandable, and easy to maintain takes some judgment—and a good workflow. Join Columbus AI Engineering for a practical discussion on using Codex and other AI coding agents more effectively. Through a before-and-after example, we’ll explore how to guide an agent from its first attempt to code you can confidently ship. We’ll cover: * Giving agents the context and instructions they need. * Breaking work into manageable tasks. * Spotting unnecessary complexity, excessive verbosity, and questionable assumptions. * Using feedback, code review, and testing to improve the result. * Knowing when to let the agent work and when to step in. Expect concrete examples, honest discussion of what works and what doesn’t, and plenty of room to share your own experiences. Whether you’re getting started with AI coding tools or already using them daily, come explore how to make them a more effective part of your development workflow. LOGISTICS AND PARKING: The talk starts at 7:00 PM. The first half hour is reserved for everyone to get set up and mingle. Free pizza and drinks! The cheapest parking option is to find street parking, which will only cost you a few bucks. Otherwise, park in the nearby veteran's museum lot for $8. It's highly recommended you avoid the nearby $15 garage parking.