Meet Atlanta Tech Week & RenderATL Speakers!
A joint meetup during Atlanta Tech Week Hosted by REFACTR.TECH, Atlanta JavaScript, ReactATL, Modern Web, and Atlanta Vue.js. Sponsored and hosted by CallRail.
Tuesday, August 11, 2026 · 6:30–9:00pm CallRail, Atlanta
Some of the most influential voices in tech are in Atlanta for RenderATL, and we're getting them in a room with our community for a night of real career stories.
This is a joint meetup across five of Atlanta's developer communities, built around a simple idea: the people who shape the industry got there through pivots, detours, and lessons that rarely make it onto a conference slide. We're giving four of them the space to share those stories, then opening the floor for a conversation about where the industry is headed.
Come for the speakers. Stay for the conversations that happen after.
Who it's for
Anyone technically minded and curious, whether you're early in your career, mid-pivot, or deep into senior and leadership work. Expect a friendly, engaged crowd from across Atlanta's JavaScript, React, Vue, and broader tech communities.
Format
Career Stories — 4 speakers, 15 minutes each Fireside-style conversations focused on each speaker's journey: the key moments, the pivots, and the lessons learned along the way. We'll shape the questions together ahead of time.
Full Panel — 30 minutes A collaborative discussion on the future of the industry, practical advice you can actually use, and audience Q&A.
Agenda
6:30–7:00pm — Arrivals and food
7:10pm — Welcome and overview from the joint meetup hosts and CallRail
7:15pm — Career Stories
8:15pm — Panel
8:45pm — Socializing
Speakers
Kelsey Hightower — Distinguished Engineer One of the most influential voices in modern software development. A self-taught engineer who helped grow the open-source movement from the inside and shaped how the world builds and runs software at scale. Before becoming a Distinguished Engineer at Google Cloud, he passed through CoreOS, Puppet Labs, and New Relic, describing himself as "a system administrator by trade, a programmer by necessity, but a problem-solver at heart." An early and tireless evangelist for Kubernetes, he co-authored Kubernetes: Up and Running and created Kubernetes the Hard Way, which taught a generation of engineers how container orchestration actually works. He's known equally for his technical command and his gift for storytelling, making intricate infrastructure feel clear, human, and worth caring about. There's a fitting symmetry in this one: Kelsey came up in Atlanta, moving to the city with his mother at the start of high school before launching the IT career that would reshape the industry.
Sarah Drasner — Sr. Director of Engineering @ Google Sarah runs Core Infrastructure for Web, Android, iOS, Multiplatform, Client o11y, and Experimentation at Google, powering apps that billions use daily, including YouTube, Search, and Workspace. She's also the Reliability Lead for Google's internal infrastructure, handling incident management for Core. A former Vue core team member and VP at Netlify, Sarah co-organized Concatenate, a free conference for African developers.
Angie Jones — VP, Agentic Engineering @ Block, Inc. An award-winning educator and international keynote speaker, Angie shares her expertise with software companies and conferences around the globe. As a Master Inventor, she's celebrated for innovative thinking that has led to more than 25 patented inventions across fields like virtual worlds, collaboration software, social networking, and software development processes.
Bree Hall — Senior Developer Content Lead @ Sanity A frontend software engineer turned developer advocate, Bree has a passion for coding and for making technology more accessible to everyone. She creates technical content that helps developers build autonomously. When she's not working, you can find her playing video games, baking, or traveling to magical destinations.
Everyone participating in the REFACTR.TECH conference, events and Discord/Slack community—including, but not limited to attendees, speakers, sponsors and volunteers at REFACTR.TECH, are required to agree to the following code of conduct. Organizers will enforce this code throughout the event.