About Refactor
South Florida has no shortage of tech meetups. It has a shortage of honest ones.
Why this exists
Most local tech events follow the same template: a sponsor pays for the pizza, a vendor gets twenty minutes on stage, and the networking after consists of recruiters collecting LinkedIn connections. Nobody says anything interesting because interesting things are risky. The incentives are wrong.
Refactor is an attempt to fix the incentives. It's a non-profit — no investors, no revenue targets, no reason to compromise the format for a check. The events are free because charging for attendance changes who shows up and why. The speakers aren't paid because we want people who have something to say, not something to sell.
What we're trying to be
The model is simple: one topic, a small group of engineers who actually work in the space, and an audience that's there to think, not to be sold to. The best conversation at a conference is usually the hallway track — we're trying to make that the whole event.
We meet on the second Thursday of every month. In-person in Broward County for the people who can make it. Livestreamed on YouTube for everyone else. Recordings published after because good conversations shouldn't disappear.
The topics are technical and human in equal measure: how we actually use AI tools at work, what it's like to inherit a system you didn't build, how to have hard conversations with your team, what we got wrong about [thing we were all excited about three years ago].
What we're not
We are not a vendor pitch. We are not a recruiting event. We are not an excuse to put a logo in front of engineers and call it community sponsorship. Vendors are welcome to attend — we're not precious about that — but the stage isn't for sale.
Recruiters can come. They just have to be honest about being recruiters. "I'm here to hire" is a fine thing to say. Pretending to be a fellow engineer and pivoting to a job pitch after ten minutes is not. The Code of Conduct is explicit about this because it has to be.
Who it's for
Anyone writing software, thinking about software, or learning to write software. Senior engineers, new grads, career-changers, people who haven't touched code in two years but still think about it. The community is defined by curiosity, not seniority.
How to get involved
- Attend. Show up on the second Thursday. Bring someone you'd want to have this conversation with.
- Speak or be on a panel. If you've built something interesting, hit a wall you learned from, or have a nuanced take on something everyone else has a hot take about, we want to hear from you. Reach out: refactor.community@gmail.com
- Host. We need a venue with space for 30-80 people and a reliable projector. No sponsorship required — hosting is its own form of contribution.
- Sponsor. If you're a company that wants to support without strings attached, we'll take it. What sponsorship gets you: your name in the event announcement and a thank-you at the start of the event. That's it.
Inspirations
Refactor exists because other communities showed it was possible to do this right: Code & Coffee, Seattle Software Craftsmanship, and LeadDev — each a different proof that engineers will show up for something honest and useful.
Where craft meets community.