Open Source Night

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Open source runs the world, and most of us build on it every day without thinking about it. For our next joint meetup, Atlanta's dev communities are teaming up for a night about the code, the tools, and the people behind it.
We'll get into why open source matters, what it actually looks like to contribute, and how modern tooling is changing the way we build. Whether you've shipped a hundred PRs or you've never opened one, there's a seat for you here. Come curious.

Speakers
Anjie Adeyemo — Lead Advanced Analytics, AT&T
Down the Rabbit Hole: Real-World Workflows With GitHub Copilot
AI isn't magic, but it can be a workflow multiplier if you learn to use it intentionally. Anjie shares how she actually uses GitHub Copilot day to day, what she calls "vibe coding": editing scripts, debugging, brainstorming, and speeding up the small tasks that quietly eat your time. She'll walk through real examples of exploring solutions and experimenting with ideas, plus how to go down the AI rabbit holes responsibly by asking better questions, iterating on prompts, and challenging the output instead of trusting it blindly. Expect an honest look at what's working with Copilot, what isn't, and how to get more value from AI without becoming dependent on it.

Anjie is a lead advanced analytics professional who loves experimenting with AI tools to make coding and everyday workflows more efficient. She works with SQL, automation, and data pipelines, and enjoys sharing practical lessons from her learning journey while keeping the human developer in the driver's seat. Outside of work, she mentors students through Girls Who Code.

Dwane Hemmings — Developer Advocate, Vonage
Drop In, Keep Coding: Let Web Components Do the Heavy Lifting
Building real-time video into your app shouldn't require learning every intricate detail of the SDK. Ideally, you just drop in where you'd like your and other participants' videos to appear, then keep building, regardless of which JavaScript framework you're using. We'll do just that in this talk with open-source Web Components: you'll see before-and-after code, interact through live in-session polls, and leave knowing exactly how to add video to your next project without the heavy lifting.

Hi, I'm Dwane. Long-time hobby coder turned professional. I'm a JavaScript Developer Advocate at Vonage

Drew Schillinger — Enterprise Architect, Connexure
Nightshift: From Copilot to Autopilot (Engineering Guardrails for AI Coding Agents)
AI coding tools are moving fast from helpful copilots toward increasingly autonomous agents, but autonomy without engineering discipline is just a faster way to create expensive mistakes. This talk walks through Nightshift, a spec-driven AI engineering harness that uses structured planning, adversarial review, TDD, SOLID/ACID principles, drift detection, and human checkpoints to explore how we can safely give coding agents more responsibility without giving up control.

Drew Schillinger (DoctorEw) is an Enterprise Architect, AI builder, and community organizer focused on practical, production-minded uses of AI. He builds agentic development workflows, turns chaos into code, and helps engineering teams figure out where AI improves the way software gets built. Outside of work, Drew leads the Atlanta Tech Community Network, organizes AI Collective’s Vibe Night Midtown, and is active in Atlanta’s growing AI community.

What to expect

• Talks on open source and modern dev tooling from people doing the work
• Time to connect across Atlanta's tech communities
• Food and drinks, on us (thanks to our friends at Vonage)

When: Tuesday, October 20, 2026 · 6:30 to 8:30 PM
Where: Tech Square ATL

This is a joint meetup with REFACTR.TECH and our partner communities:

• Atlanta JavaScript
• React ATL
• Modern Web
• Atlanta Vue.js

Food and drinks sponsored by Vonage.

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.