How The Iron Yard fits in with all the code schools in Austin The Iron Yard has historically been in places that are not known as tech hubs. It was founded in Greenville, South Carolina and its early expansion was in North and South Carolina and Georgia – not areas known for as bustling technology sectors. Austin is different than most of the other communities that The Iron Yard is a part of: it’s a tech hub with everything from startups to Visa, Oracle, and Dell and everything in between.

About a year and a half ago I started looking for my next thing in a post-Tribune world and my first email was to my friend Peter Wang. A few months after we closed down Quickie Pickie talking about the future of Continuum Analytics and data science I joined as the Web and UX Architect. During my time there I’ve had the opportunity to contribute to almost every product with a UI that the company ships.

I took over as the Director of Technology at the Texas Tribune a year ago this month, but if you’re reading this you probably already knew that. What you probably don’t know is that year ago June I had one foot out the door. So what kept me at the Tribune? A beer with Emily Ramshaw. She reminded me why I left the start-up world in the first place: to make a difference in the world with my work.

Two weekends ago I quietly rolled out a new feature that people have been clamoring for here at TravisSwicegood.com. Feeds for tags. So say you’re only interested in following my personal posts, you can add that tag page to your favorite RSS reader to subscribe to it. Or if you’re geeky, you might want to subscribe to my armstrong feed but don’t like the automagical discovery. In that case, just add /atom/ to the end of the URL and you’ve got your RSS feed.

I’m excited to announce that I’ve accepted the senior position on the tech team at the Texas Tribune, a policy and politics news outfit based out of Austin, Texas. I’m helping them round out their internal tools and data processing starting next week (the 11th to be precise). This means some big changes for me and my family. First, I’m moving to Austin. I love Lawrence, the quirky little town that it is, but it’s time for a change.