Welcome to our December meetup! Pizza and soft drinks will be provided on a first-come-first-served basis from 6pm as usual. We have two excellent talks to look forward to. Full details below :) **Schedule** **1800--1830h:** Refreshments **1830--18:35h:** Welcome **1835--1905h:** **Ishbel Carlyle @ [Northumbria University](https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/)** *MCPs: A What, Why, How Guide* **1905--1915h:** Intermission **1915--1945h: Speaker 2** *Talk 2* **1945--2000h:** News & Announcements **Talks** **Ishbel Carlyle, PhD Researcher @ [Northumbria University](https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/)** *MCPs: A What, Why, How Guide* Model Context Protocols (MCPs) are the industry standard of connecting your AI model to the outside world. But how do they do that? Why would you want to and how would you go about setting this up? I spent 3 months working at Jumping Rivers doing just that, so come learn how I used an MCP to connect Claude to [diffify.com](https://diffify.com/) and let's find out if my MCP actually made Claude Code better or worse... Bio: Ishbel is a PhD candidate in Space Weather and Data Science at [Northumbria University](https://www.northumbria.ac.uk/). She recently completed a 3-month Data Science internship at [Jumping Rivers](https://www.jumpingrivers.com/), and has also worked as a Science Communicator at [Kielder Observatory](https://kielderobservatory.org/). **Speaker 2** *Talk 2* Abstract 2 **News and Announcements** Have a news item or announcement you'd like to make about upcoming data events or job opportunities in the North East? Comment below or email us at neds@jumpingrivers.com and we'll do our best to circulate this information during the session. Please also get in touch if you'd like to volunteer yourself for a talk at a future meetup!

Description supplied by the event organiser.