Hi SaugaTech Community,
Before we talk about what happened this weekend, let’s go back to May 2025 for a moment.
SaugaTech Meetup #2 at a small room at Mississauga Valley Community Centre. About 15 people in the room. A projector that couldn’t quite decide which angle it wanted to sit at. Aries Youssefian at the front, talking to a humble group of tech enthusiasts through lean tech stacks for startups. Here is how it looked like
Our founding members, Robin and Ibrahim, who were in the room that day, still share a laugh about that projector. And feel a deep sense of gratitude about how far we’ve come in less than twelve months.
Fast forward to this Saturday, 28th March at IDEA Mississauga, Square One. Around 60 people packed into the room — and then kept coming. People were pulling up floor space in the hallway just to be part of it. Aries was back at the front, this time leading a hands-on Vibe Coding workshop with Google Antigravity and Gemini CLI. And at the end of the session, 7 people walked up on stage to demo what they had built. From scratch. In under two hours. Here is what it looked like this time
That’s the SaugaTech story in two scenes.
What Happened on Saturday
The session was called Think It, Build It: Vibe Coding with AI Agents and it did exactly what it said. Aries opened with a walkthrough of how the coding landscape has shifted — from simple autocompletes in 2021 to agentic workflows today, where you’re no longer writing every line but guiding intent and letting agents plan, build, and test alongside you.
Then everyone got to work.
Using free tools — Gemini CLI and Google Antigravity — participants started building real applications on the spot. The room had developers, product managers, architects, marketers, and people with no coding background at all. That mix turned out to be one of the best parts of the day.
A UofT grad who describes herself as mostly a non-coder built a working website in about an hour and a half. It pulled live news headlines, summarised them, and then — after a few headlines — triggered a jumping game inspired by Google’s offline dinosaur. She then iterated and built two more versions in the same afternoon. Her take: the tools felt genuinely magical.
A Senior IT Solution Architect showcased a decentralised CRM he vibecoded. His partner, who had no prior coding experience, built a personalised planner app tracking tasks, reminders, meals, and notes — and had it done before the session wrapped. His reaction: “I was surprised at how quickly she went from not knowing the tools to actually building a working application.”
A Senior AI Product Manager built Mississauga View — a situational awareness dashboard that visualises real-time municipal telemetry across critical infrastructure and transit layers, giving you a live pulse on what’s happening across the city. From idea to working application in two hours.
A Front End Developer built LinkedYet, a real-time network graph where you can add connections and watch the social graph grow live — inspired by the energy of people leaving an event with new connections, and making that experience something you can actually see and interact with.
These were not just UI demos. These were working applications, built by real people, in an afternoon, using tools that were free and publicly available. You can actually try these applications using below links
Mississauga Tech Ecosystem - Becoming More Than the Sum of Its Parts
Looking out at that crowd on Saturday, Aries reflected on something worth sitting with: “Just last April, I led a session on lean tech stacks for startups to a humble group of about a dozen people in a small room at the Mississauga Valley Community Centre. To see this community grow from a handful of tech enthusiasts to a packed house with standing-room-only energy is incredible.”
That growth isn’t just about numbers. It’s about what this community is becoming.
Mississauga has always had the talent. The engineers, the architects, the product thinkers, the founders — they’ve always been here. What’s been missing is a shared space where that talent finds each other, builds together, and compounds. Saturday felt like proof that the space now exists.
This Is What Connect, Collaborate, Innovate Actually Looks Like
Those three words sit at the heart of everything we do. Saturday was a good reminder of what they mean in practice.
CONNECT: A global marketing leader, a senior solution architect, a UofT grad, an AI product manager, a front-end developer, and dozens more — none of them in the same room by accident. They came because there’s a community worth showing up for in Mississauga. Conversations moved across org structures, go-to-market strategy, product management, and careers — not as a side effect of the workshop, but as the natural result of the right people finally being in the same room.
COLLABORATE: Participants who didnt know each other before the event helping each other debug prompts. Seven people brave enough to walk on stage and share what they made, knowing the room would cheer them on regardless of the result. And after the session wrapped, conversations seamlessly shifting to the SaugaTech WhatsApp Group, with people organically offering to collaborate and explore how to take the ideas built during the workshop further.
INNOVATE: A self-described non-coder building three versions of a website in an afternoon. A city data idea turned into a live dashboard. Networking itself turned into something you can see and interact with. People who came in saying “I don’t really code” leaving with something they built.
That’s the virtuous flywheel in action. And it’s getting stronger with every meetup.
Epilogue
Thanks Aries once again for facilitating the workshop and making all the workshop materials open-source. Starter code, prompts, and project resources are all available at github.com/ariesyous/vibecodingworkshop. If you missed Saturday or want to go deeper, everything you need is there.
And if you could not make it to the meetup this time — join the conversation in the SaugaTech WhatsApp Group. That’s where the next idea is probably already forming. Who knows maybe you might run into someone out there building the next Shopify, right here in Mississauga.
And importantly, spread the word. Tell your colleagues/friends/peers, share this with them, invite them to the WhatsApp group — this is your community, help us grow and shape it.
See you at the next one.
Let’s keep building, Let’s keep learning, Together.
Team SaugaTech
CONNECT | COLLABORATE | INNOVATE
A few more glimpses from the session
P.S. If you have ideas on what topics to you would want us to cover in future meetups or would like to share your expertise as a facilitator, please drop your thoughts in the SaugaTech WhatsApp Group or email us at saugatechproduct@gmail.com.