The Cost of Good Enough

What do we accept without questioning? The tools we build on. The standards someone else set. The career we chose because we knew we could handle it. This month, three speakers pull apart the defaults we rarely stop to examine, and the real cost of leaving them unexamined. It's a night about refactoring the things we've accepted: our tech stacks, our industry's assumptions, and our own definitions of success. Whether you write code, lead teams, or are rethinking where you're headed, there's something here for you. Jay Miller: Creating a Global Community Platform with Django Jay Miller, Founder of Black Python DevsIn the last three years Black Python Devs has grown from trying to get more Black Pythonistas to conferences, to being a major sponsor of Python conferences across the globe. That scope creep has made us need to rethink our tech stack.Learn the why and how we migrated from a static site to and away from commercial tools to Django in order to serve our members, student ambassadors, and the events we support. Jasmine Blackston: The Cost of Being Capable: When the Life You Can Handle Isn't the Life You Want Jasmine Blackston, Program Management and Strategy ProfessionalHigh-achieving people are often rewarded for being adaptable, dependable, and capable of making almost anything work. But capability can become a trap when we keep choosing careers and lives simply because we know we can handle them. This talk explores how to separate ability from desire, redefine success, and make more intentional decisions about the life and career you’re building. Kim Crayton: The Hidden Cost of Letting White Dudes Define "Good Enough" Strategic Advisor, Kim Crayton LLCThe myth of white male supremacy has always decided what counts as true, complete, and good enough. Now it is coded into the tools. This talk names three specific failure patterns in working with LLMs: false and forced binaries that collapse complexity, gate skipping that rushes past the context that would have produced a usable output, and the refusal to acknowledge error that turns the gap into the user's problem. Each one is traceable back to who got to direct what got built. And none of it changes until the people who built it develop something the myth has never required of them: a genuine questioning practice built on humility. Agenda 6:00 – 6:30 PM: Networking in the bar area 6:30 – 6:40 PM: Welcome 6:40 – 7:05 PM: Talk 1, Jay Miller 7:05 – 7:10 PM: Speaker transition 7:10 – 7:35 PM: Talk 2, Jasmine Blackston 7:35 – 7:40 PM: Speaker transition 7:40 – 8:25 PM: Talk 3, Kim Crayton 8:25 – 8:30 PM: Closing 8:30 – 9:00 PM: Networking in the bar area Logistics Westside Motor Lounge, West Midtown Free parking on site Food and drinks are not provided at this event, but Westside Motor Lounge has a full bar and menu available for purchase. Come a little early, grab something, and settle in. 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.