Since Issue 21, the calendar has moved on a fortnight and the picture has firmed up further out too - this issue extends coverage six weeks further, through late October. Hampshire AI's Trust, Confidence & Capability session and Developer South Coast's Copilot/SEO evening have both now passed. Taking their place: the British Science Festival's confirmed AI programme runs 16–20 September across Southampton, headlined by Dame Wendy Hall's Presidential Address with the BBC's Zoe Kleinman. A Chinwag About AI keeps its informal, no-slides format on 18 September at The Dancing Man Brewery. PyData Southampton has newly confirmed its 26th meetup for 22 September at a new venue, Network Eagle Lab. Looking further out, the Microsoft Cloud (South Coast) User Group's first-ever two-day flagship event lands 22–23 October at the Hilton, Utilita Bowl - its biggest event yet, upgraded from a monthly meetup to a full conference. Hampshire AI's next Spectrum IT session hasn't got a confirmed date beyond 8 September at time of writing - worth checking spectrumit.co.uk/tech-community/hampshire-ai if you're waiting on it.
Top Picks
Fri, 18 Sep · Southampton, The Dancing Man Brewery
A Chinwag About AI
No talks, no slides - just developers, designers and project managers comparing notes on what's actually working with AI day to day.
RSVPTue, 22 Sep · Southampton, Network Eagle Lab
PyData Southampton – 26th Meetup
Talks on mapping the PyData community with Python and web scraping, plus lightning talks - a solid read on practical data tooling for South Coast practitioners.
RSVP
Full Event Listings (Summer 2026)
Date & Time | Event (Host) | Venue / City | Type | Cost | RSVP / Info |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Fri 18 Sep, 19:00-21:00 | A Chinwag About AI | The Dancing Man Brewery, Town Quay, Southampton | Meetup | Free | |
Wed-Sun, 16-20 Sep | British Science Festival 2026 (incl. "AI: Friend or Fraud?" lecture & Presidential Address) | University of Southampton campuses & city venues, Southampton | Festival / Lectures | Free | |
Tue, 22 Sep, 19:00-21:00 | PyData Southampton – 26th Meetup | Netwrok Eagle Lab, Southampton | Talks | Free | |
Thu-Fri 22-23 Oct, 8:00-16:00 | British South Coast User Group Flagship – workshops (Thu) & speaker sessions (Fri) | University of Hilton, Utilita Bowl, Southampton | Conference / Workshops | TBC |
Conference / Workshops📰 Hampshire AI in the News
Southampton AI tool splits a hidden breast cancer marker into two
A University of Southampton team has built an open-source AI platform, CenSegNet, which separates two centrosome defects in breast cancer that pathology has long counted as a single abnormality. Working with data from 127 patients at the city's hospital, the study found one of the two patterns tracks with more aggressive disease and shorter survival - a genuinely local example of AI research feeding directly back into NHS diagnostics, though the tool isn't yet ready for routine clinical use.
Read moreUniversity of Southampton drops Turnitin over AI training-data terms
Southampton has said it will not renew its contract with Turnitin beyond the end of the 2026–27 academic year, citing proposed licence changes that would have allowed the company to use student submissions to train its AI services. Turnitin denies training its own tools on student work. A notable data-governance stance from one of Hampshire's largest universities, and a live example of the tension between institutional AI adoption and control over training data.
Read moreAI floated as one answer to Hampshire County Council's £179.7m budget gap
New analysis from the BBC Shared Data Unit shows Hampshire County Council needs to find £179.7 million by the end of 2027/28, with commentators pointing to AI-driven efficiency tools as one option councils across the South are exploring to help close the gap. Relevant for anyone in Hampshire selling into, or working inside, local government right now.
Read more
Citations & Sources
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