SLOAI x Google: Search & Reasoning

Date: Thursday, June 18, 2026
Time: 6:00 PM – 9:00 PM CEST (doors open 5:50 PM)
Location: Grand Plaza Hotel & Congress Center, 60 Slovenska cesta, 1000 Ljubljana
Duration: 3 hours

About This Event

Damir Sabol and Dr. Marko Velić (Google) join SLOAI in Ljubljana for an evening on LLM-powered Search and the science of reasoning in AI models.

SLOAI is bringing two of the most experienced AI engineers from the region to Ljubljana for an evening of technical conversation.

Talks

Talk 1 — Damir Sabol — Building LLM-Powered Google Search Features

The Google Zagreb team builds educational features for Google Search and the Google app. Damir will give a high-level look at how Gemini models are being used to improve and develop new Google Search experiences — from the inside.

Damir is a serial entrepreneur and founder of three VC-backed companies: Iskon Internet, Microblink, and Photomath. Photomath became one of the world's most popular education apps before being acquired by Google.

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Talk 2 — Dr. Marko Velić — How Are AI Models Trained to Think?

Do LLMs actually reason — or just appear to? Marko will explore how reasoning emerges in large language models, the role of scale, and what current models can and can't do. He'll cover reinforcement learning with LLMs, including RLHF, GRPO, on-policy distillation, and SDPO, with open-source references and practical examples.

Dr. Velić is an engineering manager with 20 years of experience building AI systems at Facebook, Google, LEGO, and Photomath. Also a university and MBA professor, and award recipient from Microsoft, Google, and NVIDIA.

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Format

• Doors open at 17:50
• Two talks + Q&A
• Networking after
• Open to engineers, researchers, founders, and anyone seriously interested in how AI is being built today

Organised by SLOAI & *codeplain.

Agenda

• 17:50–18:00 — Doors open
• 18:00–18:10 — Welcome from SLOAI
• 18:10–18:50 — Talk 1: Damir Sabol
• 18:50–19:30 — Talk 2: Dr. Marko Velić
• 19:30–21:00 — Networking

Speakers

• Damir Sabol
• Dr. Marko Velić

Registration

Register now to secure your spot at this event!

Register on Eventbrite

This event is organized by Slovenia AI Meetup and represents our commitment to bringing practical AI expertise to Slovenia's growing tech community.