Psychology of Fake News & Pivoting to a New Career

The Psychology of Fake News (and What Tech Can Do About It)

Presented by Cecy Correa (@cecycorrea), software engineer at Return Path

Fake news is not a tech problem, it’s a human problem. To build the tools necessary to combat fake news, technologists must think differently. Cecy will discuss how we must understand the psychology behind fake news to arrive at a solution that is human-centric and attainable.

Pivoting to a New Career - Panel Discussion

Our Panelists

Sara Ines Calderon (@sarachicad) (moderator)

Caren Valeria García (@carenvaleria)

JP Lynch (@jpl_lux)

Ofelia Rodríguez (@oerrodriguez)

As the web changes, new job roles emerge and others become more in demand. Code schools proliferate, but successfully changing careers can still be tricky and intimidating. Hear from folks who have done it and stuck the landing: Caren decided to become a developer in her last months of college, JP is an academic turned UX designer, and Ofelia moved from account management to QA. They’ll discuss the role of self-teaching vs. formal schooling, the importance of community and meetups, and how switching careers actually allows you to bring more to the table. They’ll also cover some challenges associated with career pivots that you might not have thought about. Whether you’re bored or just want to switch to a higher paying position, this talk will help you start asking the right questions and making a plan that fits your situation.

Previous meetings

  • Data-Driven Product and The Happiness Metric

    June 13, 2017

    Drive Revenue with a Data-Driven Product
    Michelle Greer
    How do SaaS companies like Dropbox, Slack, and Github crush revenue figures when they have small Sales Teams and a free price tag? This talk explains what Product, Engineering, and Marketing Teams need to consider to go freemium. We’ll go over the requirements, metrics, tools, and gotchas of this model. We’ll also compare how a freemium model evolves as your company grows from startup to major player in the space. By the end of this talk, you, as a builder, should feel empowered. Good companies should be driven by data and good products – not by giant teams of enterprise salespeople!

  • The 5 existential crises of working in tech & Indie Microblogging

    May 09, 2017

    Indie Microblogging Manton Reece (@manton2) It used to be that if you wanted to write on the web, you posted to your own blog. Now, most text and photos go into closed platforms like Twitter and Facebook. But what if we could bring the UI innovations of today’s social networks and apply them to blogs and independent publishing? In this talk we’ll explore why it’s important to control your own content, the problems with today’s social networks, the rise of Mastodon, and the architecture of Micro.blog. We’ll go over steps for starting a microblog with WordPress and integrating it into a growing ecosystem of indie microblogs.

  • Building a Real World Inspired UI & Getting Unstuck

    February 08, 2017

    Building a Real World Inspired UI
    Youssef Chaker (@ychaker)
    Showing how a “can do” attitude and some patience can tap into the power of CSS to create very complex, yet fun, UIs without resorting to images. In other terms, why developers and designers should not be scared of creating something fun.

  • The Austin Web Bash 2016

    November 21, 2016

    THE BIGGEST HOLIDAY PARTY IS BACK

  • November 2016 Go vote!

    October 27, 2016

    We’re taking a break from our normally scheduled programming on Election Day, and we want to encourage you to GO VOTE. We don’t care who you vote for, so long as you do!

  • october 2016 meeting

    October 04, 2016

    VOICE ON THE WEB Matt Buck (@techpeace)

  • blurred lines and hackathoning a salary

    September 01, 2016

    BLURRED LINES Kyle Fiedler (@kylefiedler)

  • Style Guide Driven Development and Custom CSS Properties

    August 09, 2016

    Learn all about creating Live Style Guides, and the new custom properties in CSS.

  • Impostor Syndrome and Security for Non-hackers

    July 08, 2016

    This month we're discussing how to deal with impostor syndrome, and security best practices for everyone.

  • Javascript edition

    June 14, 2016

    Join us one more time for Refresh Austin Javascript edition!

  • Lightning Talks & #Prop1 Discussion

    May 10, 2016

    Lightning talks from community members and a community discussion on Prop1

  • Bayes is Bae & Linking the world's data

    April 12, 2016

    Richard Schneeman teaches us about Bayes Rule and Jon Loyens shares about Linked Data

  • Copywriting in Git and Life After Bootcamps

    April 12, 2016

    Michael Neal shows us how to use Git for copywriting, plus a life after bootcamp panel

  • sxsw-kickoff-lunch

    March 11, 2016

    Our yearly SXSW get together!

  • Bots on Botkit and Getting to 90000ft and back again

    February 09, 2016

    Michael Way shares how to create bots with botkit, and Tom Dickman and Shaun Dubuque share the do's and don'ts of launching a payload into the far reaches of the atmosphere

  • Securing Applications Without Compromising User Experience

    January 12, 2016

    David Vo talks about how security and user experience can work together

Get in touch

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