Python Software Foundation News

The PSF’s Grant Program Policies and Preferences

2017-12-01T12:57:00.000-05:00

Are you starting a new Python conference, founding a group, or beginning a workshop? The Python Software Foundation can help with a grant. But first, you need to understand our policies.

The PSF has had a grants program for many years. Over the last 4 years, the program has become increasingly known in our community, which has always been a desired outcome. As knowledge of the grants program grows, however, the PSF receives more grant requests, ultimately meaning our PSF staff and volunteers have more grant requests to process. On occasion the PSF updates our grant policies as we learn more about best practices.

Our goal with this post is to inform the public of what our current policies are. The policies may change over time so remember to review the PSF's grant policies when submitting a request to ensure you have the most up-to-date information. We also have a Frequently Asked Questions page about grants.

What are the current grant policies & preferences?

We prefer to receive your request at least 6 weeks out from the event or project start date. We receive a high volume of requests and our volunteers that review the requests are all around the world contributing remotely. A six week lead time will allow us sufficient time to thoroughly review your request and provide follow up as necessary. Effective immediately, we will not accept grants that are submitted within 10 working days of the event or project start date.
Our current focus includes: Python projects (including porting projects), workshops, conferences (especially for financial aid), and Python diversity/inclusivity efforts. Grants for non-Python specific events will only be considered where there's a clear Python component to the event. In the cases of non-Python specific events a grant will only be for the Python component of the event. The PSF will consider supporting a hackathon if the event has hands-on Python education for a minimum of 6 hours. We will not fund prizes for hackathons.
We have guidelines on how much funding we award. There is no set maximum, but grants are awarded with consideration for the annual PSF grant budget and the other grant requests that have been submitted and awarded. The Foundation reserves the right to make a grant smaller than the total you request. If this would not be acceptable you should state that in the application.

The maximum conference grant size is typically USD 10 per attendee, with a preference towards helping new events to establish themselves in their local community. Larger conferences (300+ attendees) are expected to have access to additional local funding options and hence may be granted a lower amount per attendee. Conferences that are running separate educational programs may also apply for a separate educational grant.
The maximum educational program grant size is typically USD 25 per student, provided the students each receive at least 6 hours of Python instruction as part of the educational program. We give preference to students who would otherwise not be able to attend such classes. If the class has an educational hardware component such as a Raspberry Pi that the students get to keep, you may request up to USD 50 per student. Please note that subsequent funding requests for workshops in the same region may be funded at a lower rate to encourage sustainable, long-term relationships with local sponsors. When submitting your workshop grant request, it helps the grants work group to see a brief budget for your event.
The PSF will consider grants up to USD 300 for Python-related sprints. Please provide information about focus and goal of the sprint in your application, as well as the number of expected participants.
The PSF allocates money each year for PUG website hosting costs and subscriptions to event advertising sites like meetup.com.

We require all events to have a code of conduct. The code of conduct should be a set of guidelines for your event that set the social norms and practices for the participants, organizers, and sponsors.
With regards to payments, we distribute funds via check, wire transfer, and PayPal. If you will be requesting a wire transfer, adjust your request to account for wire transfer fees. PayPal payments to organizations may incur service fees that will need to be paid by the grant recipient. If your grant request is approved, specific information will be requested in the email notification.

We prefer to make payments at an organization-to-organization level when possible due to US IRS accounting rules.
After you receive a notification with the amount of funding the PSF approved for your grant request and you submit an invoice, payment will be processed within 7 business days and the Controller will notify you when the payment has been sent. We sometimes run into issues when sending funding internationally so that is why we ask to receive grant requests 6 weeks out.

Reporting is an essential part of our grants program. The PSF would like to see how the grant was used, so we ask to receive a report on the event, project or program that was funded. The PSF has a policy that requires all events to submit reports. These reports are useful for us to gauge the impact we are having and how the event went. For subsequent events, we require past reports in order to consider additional requests. The report should include an overall overview (including location, venue, participation demographics if applicable), sponsors, reflections (including things that went well and things that could be improved, any feedback you received from participants. If your event/project has a blog, social media post, pictures that relate to the grant we'd love to see them, too.

We welcome grant requests via our CiviGrant form. We want to help new communities develop a stronger Python presence in the coming year!

The PSF awarded $170,000 grant from Mozilla Open Source Program to improve sustainability of PyPI

2017-11-27T23:09:00.001-05:00

When are we finally going to see Warehouse deployed? What's the holdup? Has this project stalled?

For the last year, we at the Python Packaging Authority have heard these questions continuously from the Python community.

Today we are excited to announce that we have applied for, and been awarded, a grant to help improve the sustainability of the Python Package Index in the amount of $170,000. This has been awarded by Mozilla, through the Foundational Technology track of their Open Source Support Program. We would like to thank Mozilla for their support.

This post will explain both the context for this request, and the work that will be funded.
Specifically, this grant funds several contributors' efforts to finish the development and deployment of Warehouse (pypi.org), the replacement for our legacy codebase that runs pypi.python.org -- which will allow more people to contribute.

Background

The Python Packaging Index (PyPI) is the principal repository of software packages for the Python programming language. Currently, over 100 million Python packages are downloaded from PyPI every week. The Python community (and indeed the wider technical community) depends on PyPI for the ongoing functioning of the entire Python ecosystem.

There are no paid staff at the PSF who work on PyPI, and there are only a handful of people who contribute regularly. This leads to a situation where we have to depend on volunteers to be on-call for outages and respond to critical security vulnerabilities in core Python Infrastructure. For deeper context, read PyPI maintainer Donald Stufft's May 2016 post "Powering the Python Package Index", (but note that since his job change in the last year his paid time to work on PyPI has decreased significantly).

This isn't a tenable situation for the long term, and we hope that this grant will help us start to change this.

Developer Sustainability

Unfortunately, the codebase that runs PyPI is old, almost entirely lacking in automated test coverage and other common best practices. (PyPI contributor Ernest W. Durbin III goes into this further in his PyGotham 2017 talk "Running Vintage Software: PyPI's Aging Codebase.") The new Warehouse code base is built with Pyramid, and is much easier to maintain. This technical debt has a number of undesirable outcomes, but the one I'd like to focus on is repelling new contributors.

Eric Holscher, like many would-be contributors to the legacy PyPI codebase, once tried to contribute a small feature to PyPI years ago, thinking it would be quite simple. However, as he opened the code base and started looking around, he discovered that the code wasn't written in a modern framework, didn't follow standard conventions or best practices, and he could barely even understand where to start adding something new.

Migrating PyPI to a new codebase will stop this from happening. We hope to gain a number of new contributors who are willing and able to help maintain the code base, and decrease the chance of burnout for the staff.

Operations Sustainability

Operations are the other large sustainability issue that we're hoping to tackle with this grant. There are only two people currently who wear a pager and are on-call for PyPI. They are not currently supported by modern automation tools or served by a continuing project manager. Once all package index activity is going through pypi.org (Warehouse) and we deprecate the old pypi.python.org codebase and site, with a stabilized infrastructure resource load, we can assess our new level of staffing and hosting needs. Based on that assessment, we'll be able to fundraise for staffing and ask our sponsors for financial and in-kind donations to keep PyPI robust.

Next Steps

With the help of many people (especially the Packaging Working Group, our MOSS liaison Gervase Markham, our Mozilla champion Dan Callahan, and Ewa Jodlowska and Mark Mangoba at the PSF), we've been figuring out the timeline for this work.

The first milestone for Warehouse is redirecting portions of the production pypi.python.org to Warehouse including traffic for the simple index and package downloads. At that milestone Warehouse will be the main entryway to Python packages for all but a small fraction of the interactions PyPI sees.

The bulk of the work will be bringing Warehouse to feature parity with the administrative capabilities users need from the Package Index. We'll keep you posted as we figure out when you can expect that to be true.

Please feel free to ask questions about the Warehouse project in the #pypa-dev channel on Freenode, or in the GitHub issues for Warehouse! If you have questions for the PSF about the grant, you can ask via email.

Thanks to Donald Stufft, Ewa Jodlowska, Nathaniel J. Smith, Nick Coghlan, Nicole Harris, Sumana Harihareswara, Ernest W. Durbin III, Dustin Ingram, Mark Mangoba, Kenneth Reitz, Eric Holscher for contributing to this post.

Eric Floehr, Community Service Award 3rd Quarter 2017 Recipient

2017-11-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

When Eric Floehr was a child growing up in Ohio, he had three interests: space, dinosaurs, and the weather. One day, his dad brought home a computer to make video games. Eric and his dad worked together copying code from magazines, thus beginning a lifelong interest in programming.

After getting his bachelor's degree in Computer Science at Ohio State, Eric worked as a software engineer, all while nurturing Python hobbies built on his childhood interests. He now works for the company he founded called Intellovations whose primary product is ForecastWatch, a tool that helps weather forecasters be more accurate. Eric has also been a consistent leader in his local Ohio Python community, all while spreading the Python love by encouraging others to get involved and create groups of their own.

The Python Software Foundation has awarded Eric with the Q3 2017 Community Service Award.

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Q3 2017 Community Service Award be given to Eric Floehr for his work chairing the PyOhio Conference. He is the founder and co-organizer of the Central Ohio Python User Group. COhPy has served as a resource for Python programmers in Columbus, OH. Eric's efforts to "spread Python love" via discussions with leaders of PyNash and IndyPy lead directly to the creation of the annual PyTennessee conference and the Pythology quarterly mini-conferences.

Contributions to the Python Community

PyOhio

While large events like PyCon US are incredibly important for the Python community and bring diverse groups together, it could be argued that smaller groups with more frequent events provide even more benefit. Here attendees are more likely to meet a potential employer/employee, find someone to talk through a problem at work or fun project idea, and socialize with like-minded locals. Eric works from home, which is one of the reasons he enjoys engaging socially with his local Python community. He started by attending PyOhio, a free annual regional Python conference, and quickly wanted to help out. “The first year I helped with pizza, cleanup, and video”, he recalls. By the second year, he was a full-on organizer, “you don’t really need to have any particular skills to organize, just jump in there and do it.”

COhPy

In 2010, when he realized there was no Python group in Columbus, he started The Central Ohio Python User’s Group (COhPy). COhPy hosts meetings once a month where people can listen to talks and chat with local Pythonistas. It also holds networking events and offers other services for the community such as a Slack channel. “Eric's efforts as an organizer of PyOhio and COhPy have given hundreds of Python developers the opportunity to teach and share with thousands of other Python developers”, says Brian Costlow, fellow PyOhio and COhPy organizer, “It gives people the opportunity to grow into speakers and teachers in a small, safe venue, and for many, myself included, to make new and lifelong friends.“ Jason Green, a PyOhio organizer, credits Eric’s gregarious and inclusive nature with his own integration into the Python community. Not only did he welcome Jason to the group, he encouraged him to get involved. “As a leadership mentor, for the last several months,” Jason says, “he has made a point of having me introduce the speakers and welcome new guests.”

Spreading the Python Love

Eric encourages others to get outside of their comfort zone, try new things, and start groups in their own areas. For example, at the PyOhio 2013 conference, Eric put out a call for more regional Python conferences. This struck Jason Myers, a PyOhio attendee, as something that would benefit his Python community in Tennessee. Jason approached Eric with the idea of starting a PyTennessee conference, and Eric immediately offered to help. “Over the course of our first conference planning, call for proposals, and the event itself, Eric was always there with guidance.” Eric’s support didn’t stop there, Jason goes on, “for all four years that I ran PyTennessee, Eric was our best supporter, cheerleader, and advisor.” Jason credits Eric for PyTennessee’s success explaining, “I know without a shadow of a doubt that there would be no PyTennessee without him, and I am eternally grateful for his wisdom, assistance and his friendship.”

Python for Fun

Eric’s love for Python does not end with work and community but is a large part of his hobbies as well. Perhaps his most interesting hobby combines his love of Python and the weather. He set up an old digital camera out his window at home with a Raspberry Pi to take photos every 10 seconds for 3 years. Not only was he able to capture beautiful and dramatic images of weather events, he collected 6 terabytes worth of pictures and metadata that he used Python to analyze in interesting ways. When his analysis was complete in 2015, he gave a fantastic talk on this project at PyOhio.

Time-lapsed images from Eric’s digital camera and raspberry pi

When asked why Python is his language of choice, Eric beams, “Python is a great enabler. It allows people to do more in less time and to build amazing things. From creative works to scientific research, from scratching personal itches, to helping solve critical problems, Python is an incredible tool for growth and exploration. But more than the tool itself,” Eric goes on to say, “it's the community around the tool that I have really fallen in love with. Its focus on inclusivity, tolerance, and respect has been a model for other communities, and it's not only a community I love but one that I'm proud to be a part of.”

What’s next for this Python hobbyist? “Have you seen Westworld?”, he asks. “Like the piano playing by itself in the opening sequence, I’d like to make a mechanical xylophone with 30 keys and 30 hammers that plays itself like a music box.”

Community Service Award Winner Q3 2017 Eric Floehr

PSF's October Board Meeting

2017-10-25T10:00:00.000-04:00

Last week Monday, October 16th, the Python Software Foundation held its first in-person director meeting outside of PyCon. We were able to get 9 directors together and address a hefty agenda. Each section below summarizes a major topic that we addressed during the meeting.

PSF Directors and friends having dinner in Chicago the night before the meeting

Fiscal Sponsorship

We started the day with a discussion on fiscal sponsorship. From a community perspective, a broader fiscal sponsorship program would allow greater opportunities for corporate funding of key Python projects. Van Lindberg, PSF's General Counsel, gave directors an explanation of what it meant and we discussed the risks and benefits involved in such a program. While the PSF currently has a limited fiscal sponsorship program, we are considering expanding the range of our sponsorships to include Python dev projects such as PyPy. Van is creating a new template contract to use in such agreements, with additional research required to identify the legal implications of fiscally sponsoring organizations that are located outside of the United States. Another necessary change to accommodate the broader fiscal sponsorship requires the PSF's financial staff, Kurt B. Kaiser and Phyllis Dobbs, to document a workflow for how payments/reimbursements will be made in these arrangements.

Official Board Meeting

Our second session of the day was an official board meeting where we began by approving September's meeting minutes. A subsequent discussion began on how we can use the python.org/jobs page to enhance our fundraising efforts. PSF employee, Betsy Waliszewski, will contact the python.org/jobs volunteer group to solicit feedback on how we can tie in their work with fundraising more directly. Another item decided at the board meeting includes the PSF IT Manager, Mark Mangoba, beginning to produce periodic reports for the board on PSF infrastructure traffic. Lastly, Director Eric Holscher and I gave a status update on the Python Packaging Work Group's recent receipt of Mozilla's MOSS Grant. A blog will be written on this topic once more details are confirmed.

PyCon's "Everyone contributes"

The third session of the day continued with Ernest W. Durbin III, PyCon Conference Chair, joining us via phone to discuss various PyCon items. A significant part of the conversation tackled the "Everyone pays" policy that PyCon has historically maintained. Responsibilities have increased over time so that phrase no longer applies. For example, the PSF employs two full-time employees to execute PyCon in addition to all of the volunteer work that happens. Additionally, volunteer appreciation has evolved. Due to changes like this, we have agreed to change the phrase to "Everyone contributes." Since everyone that attends contributes their time and/or money, we found that to be a more suitable phrase to use.

PyCon's Speaker Financial Support

Recently we heard from our community that PyCon's speaker financial support could be improved. Ernest recently made a change in our process that will help financial support easier on behalf of both the PSF and PyCon speakers. The change Ernest made lives on the speaker profile page us.pycon.org. When potential speakers are completing their speaker profiles, they can check the "I require a speaker grant if my proposal is accepted" option, and the speaker will receive financial support needed if their talk is accepted. Another suggestion came from PSF Director Trey Hunner. Trey pointed out various conferences around the world the PSF can learn from. Furthermore, we discussed that we need to be more transparent about the availability of speaker grants.

An option considered was the possibility of providing all speakers free registration to PyCon. Ultimately we decided on PyCon providing speaker financial assistance to anyone that requests it. The reasoning behind that decision is that PyCon profits help fund the Python Software Foundation's global community giving. Given the significant impact that PyCon profits have, we encourage those that can to pay for their conference registrations. In 2016, the PSF gave out $292,471 in grants worldwide thanks to the revenue generated through PyCon. So far this year (up to Q3), we have given $221,763 and we anticipate to give more than $300,000 in grants next year.

The below graphs show that PSF international support is increasing. For example in 2017 we increased support in Africa by 13.86% and the year is not over yet. Everyone who contributes to PyCon financially helps us make a global difference.

PSF Grant spending by continent. A clearer view is available here.

Trademark for PyPI

The next agenda item the board discussed pertained to filing a PyPI trademark. One of the core missions of the PSF is the protection of the Python community – including the safeguarding of Python’s intellectual property. An increasingly important part of Python’s intellectual property are the trademarks and logos we use to identify Python and its associated services to the world. Given the increasing importance of PyPI, the board decided that it would be wise to officially register some PyPI-related trademarks in various places around the world. We discussed the various ways we can file trademark requests and we also reviewed financial quotes from three law firms. We decided to file the logo trademark and also the word mark "PyPI". Van Lindberg will continue working on that process.

Grant Accountability

Since the PSF has continued to fund more grants each year, we discussed the idea of grant accountability. One of our directors, Paul Hildebrandt, is working on an event report template to help us better understand and track the benefit that our grant giving is having on communities that we sponsor. We will report on this issue further as it develops.

Alternative Ways of Giving Money

During this agenda item we discussed the benefits that matching grants may have for the PSF. Eric Holscher brought up the idea that matching grant agreements can help improve PSF's marketing, along with helping the grantee generate more total revenue. Additionally, we discussed the possibility of being proactive with soliciting specific grant types. For example, this would be useful if we wanted to zone in on specific support for Python development work and/or to support Python educators. Jacqueline Kazil, PSF Director, suggested that we make some improvements to our grant policy page by including more reference points for improved guidance. Work on this will continue remotely. We also decided to work on slides we can provide to PSF-funded events that will inform the public about what the PSF does.

Board Role in Fundraising

As part of her efforts to help the foundation mature, PSF Chair Naomi Ceder started a discussion on how board members can more directly help the PSF’s overall financial standing through supporting PSF fundraising efforts. No concrete plans were made, but the board will continue exploring its role under Naomi’s leadership.

Multi-lingual Blog/Documentation/Website

The PSF's Communication Chair, Lorena Mesa, gathered input from the group on how we can improve our community support by improving our translations efforts. The next step will be to list all of the community assets that could be translated, prioritize them, and get a work group started to help with the efforts. As a part of this effort Lorena is seeking community input on assets of particular importance and community priorities in translation efforts.

Strategic Planning

The last two hours of the day were dedicated to high-level strategizing, particularly in discussing the future of the PSF. During this conversation, the PSF decided that, over time, the PSF needs to gradually rebuild and professionalize to permit better efficiency in supporting the global Python community.. Unfortunately we realized that two hours was not enough time to cover everything we would like to discuss.

Some items we did get to discuss included determining what we wanted our financial reserve to be. Thomas Wouters, the PSF's Vice Chairperson, guided the discussion through various questions and comments pertaining to the types of risks we are facing and the types of things we can do with the financial reserve. We discussed the need to invest our reserve as well.

Another item briefly addressed included ways the PSF can grow by connecting PyPI to our fundraising efforts. We discussed how we can collaborate with related groups to be more intentional with our grant giving.

Aside from these future goals, we decided to arrange for nonprofit board training at PyCon 2018. This will help us with expectations and will strengthen the strategic planning process.

Executive Committee

The goal of the October 16th discussions was to begin the process of strategic planning. Even though we are still at the beginning of the process, we did create an Executive Committee to follow this through. Naomi Ceder, Van Lindberg, Thomas Wouters, and I met at the end of the day and decided our next step is to create an Executive Summary of the PSF. We need to have a better grasp of all PSF details before we continue. Our goal is to have it completed by PyCon 2018 so the board members can meet once again and continue the process of strategic planning.

All in all, it was a very productive meeting and we will aim to hold these meetings annually. At future in-person meetings, we will try to have fewer items on the agenda to enable more conversation around each topic. It is surprising how fast an hour goes by when 10 people are contributing to the discussion. Since we don't meet in person often, we all have a lot to say!

Why Become A PyCon Sponsor?

2017-10-17T05:00:00.000-04:00

Sponsors help keep PyCon affordable and accessible to the widest possible audience. Sponsors are what make this conference possible. From low ticket prices to financial aid, to video recording, the organizations who step forward to support PyCon, in turn, support the entire Python community. They make it possible for so many to attend, for so many to be presenters, and for the people at home to watch along.

The benefits of sponsorship are many - here are a few to consider:

Being part of the biggest and most prestigious Python conference in the world. 
Being matched with those who could potentially become clients. 
Staying in front of your current customers - 3300+ attendees will see your products.
 Building relationships with the Python community - people look to sponsors to see who is using and supporting Python. 
Recruiting - if you’re hiring, PyCon is the place to be. 
A private meeting or interview room to conduct business onsite.  
The opportunity for innovators and practitioners in your company to talk about how you’re using Python.

Depending on your level of sponsorship, packages include complimentary conference passes, booth space, lead retrieval scanners, speaking opportunities, and a table in the Job Fair.

We’re flexible and willing to work with you to design the sponsorship package to fulfill your business needs. Starting a discussion now is a great way to design a more custom program for you. Our sponsorship prospectus can be found here: https://us.pycon.org/2018/sponsors/prospectus/

PyCon 2018
Huntington Convention Center May 9th - May 17th, 2018 Cleveland, Ohio USA
For more information please contact: pycon-sponsors@python.org

Photo by Mike Pirnat

Thomas Kluyver, Community Service Award 3rd Quarter 2017 Recipient

2017-10-12T07:00:00.000-04:00

People love Python for its ease of use, breadth of modules, and vibrant community. These qualities are made possible by people like Thomas Kluyver who, during the course of his career using Python for scientific research, has identified and implemented various modules, upgrades, and enhancements to Python. He is also an active member of the Python community, attending conferences, participating in his local Python User Group, and contributing his expertise to Python Subreddits.

For these reasons, the Python Software Foundation has awarded Thomas with the Q3 2017 Community Service Award.

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Q3 2017 Community Service Award be given to Thomas Kluyver for his contributions to the Scientific Python Community. Thomas has also served on many other open source projects and is active on the Python subreddit helping many people in the Python community.

Contributions to Scientific Python

Thomas earned his Ph.D. in plant biology at the University of Sheffield in England. As a scientist, Thomas’ interest in programming stemmed from childhood where he learned QBasic with support from his father. During his Ph.D. program, Thomas became a regular contributor to Jupyter/IPython, working single-handedly to port it from Python 2 to Python 3. This caught the attention of Fernando Pérez, creator of IPython and co-founder of Project Jupyter, who just happened to be looking for a post-doc. “Given his amazing contributions even while he was still a student,” says Fernando, “I was looking for an opportunity to engage him more with the project.” Thomas accepted the offer to work with Fernando at UC Berkeley developing IPython and open source tools for science. Looking back Thomas recalls, “it was a great opportunity for me.” Thomas stayed at Berkeley for 2 years before returning to England for a position at the University of Southampton. There he continues to work on Jupyter and IPython and is also involved in the NGCM Summer Academy, teaching scientists a variety of computational skills in Python.

Contributions to Other Open Source Projects

Thomas has worked on a number of tools outside of his profession as well, such as Flit. Flit is a packaging tool which aims to make it simpler to publish your Python code on PyPI. This tool and the concepts it presents have led to discussions about standard interfaces for different packaging tools to work together better, documented in PEP 517 and 518. Nick Coghlan, a CPython core developer who has worked with Thomas in his efforts to help move the Python packaging ecosystem forward, characterizes Thomas contributions to Flit as “rather than just writing it as a standalone tool, Thomas worked hard to ensure that the underlying interoperability standards also evolved to make it easier to write tools like Flit, and that such tools integrate nicely with frontend installation tools like pip.”

Distributing applications to end users is still a weak point for Python, whereas distributing libraries and developer tools have become better equipped to handle this challenge in recent years. That is why Thomas built Pynsist, a tool to build Windows installers for Python applications. Pynsist can even build a Windows installer from a Linux system, which builds on the work of other projects like NSIS. Fernando says, “considering that Thomas is mostly a Linux user, this is a great example of how he does work that has great value to the Python community even beyond his immediate needs.”

Contributions to the Python Community

Thomas is a regular speaker at Python events around the world such as SciPy, PyData, EuroSciPy, and PyCon conferences. He is also involved in his local Southampton Python User Group. “Basically he's all over the community,” says Fernando, “helping others on the mailing lists, working on IPython/Jupyter, building multiple tools of great value to many, and teaching across a variety of spaces.” Fellow Jupyter/IPython developer and Flit collaborator Matthias Bussonnier agrees saying, “Thomas has always cared a lot about community and has spent hours teaching new contributors how to do things, even if it would take him less time to do them himself.”

Why Python?

Working on the Black Python

When asked why Python is his language of choice, Thomas explains, “It's a beginners language, but it's also a language that many experienced programmers are using to solve real problems. I also like the breadth of domains in which Python is used and the strong open source ethos in the community around Python.”

As if Thomas has yet to prove the full breadth of Python’s domains, Thomas recently participated in the World Robotic Sailing Competition. His team entered in their model sailboat, named the Black Python, which carries a Raspberry Pi to control the sails and the rudder. The Black Python took first place in the 'micro sailboat' class both this year and last. Read more about this project on their blog.

Despite these significant accomplishments, Thomas recognizes the support he has gotten over the years recalling, “I've benefited immensely from other people: from my father helping me to learn programming, to the IPython team welcoming me and bringing me into the scientific Python community, to the thousands of programmers whose open source code I've used.”

Community Service Award Winner 2017Q3 Thomas Kluyver

Python Software Foundation Fellow Members for Q3 2017

2017-10-02T10:00:00.000-04:00

We are happy to announce our 2017 3rd Quarter Python Software Foundation Fellow Members: 

Aisha Bello

Brian Costlow

Carol Willing

Carrie Anne Philbin

Cory Benfield

Damien George

Daniel Pope

Daniele Procida

Dusty Phillips

Jackie Kazil

Laura Cassell

Lorena Mesa

Łukasz Langa

Peter Inglesby

Ruben Orduz  

Congratulations! Thank you for all of the contributions you continue to make. We have added you to our Fellow roster online.

The PSF Fellow Work Group was established in July of 2017. This is the first set of Fellows the Work Group has reviewed and voted on. Since we are a new group, we spent a few months establishing policies and criteria.

The work group voted to review nominees 4 times a year:

Q1: January to the end of March (01/01 - 31/03) Cut-off for nominations will be February 20. New fellows will be announced before March 31.
Q2: April to the end of June (01/04 - 30/06) Cut-off for quarter two will be May 20. New fellows will be announced before June 30.
Q3: July to the end of September (01/07 - 30/09) Cut-off for quarter three will be August 20. New fellows will be announced before end of September. 
Q4: October to the end of December (01/10 - 31/12) Cut-off for quarter four will be November 20. New fellows will be announced before December 31.

In addition to the schedule, we also voted on the following criteria:

 For those who have served the Python community by creating and/or maintaining various engineering/design contributions, the following statement should be true:

 Nominated Person has served the Python community by making available code, tests, documentation, or design, either in a Python implementation or in a Python ecosystem project, that 1) shows technical excellence, 2) is an example of software engineering principles and best practices, and 3) has achieved widespread usage or acclaim.

For those who have served the Python community by coordinating, organizing, teaching, writing, and evangelizing, the following statement should be true:

 Nominated Person has served the Python community through extraordinary efforts in organizing Python events, publicly promoting Python, and teaching and coordinating others. Nominated Person's efforts have shown leadership and resulted in long-lasting and substantial gains in the number and quality of Python users, and have been widely recognized as being above and beyond normal volunteering.

If someone is not accepted to be a fellow in the quarter they were nominated for, they will remain an active nominee for 1 year for future consideration. 
It is suggested/recommended that the nominee have wide Python community involvement. Examples would be (not a complete list - just examples):

Someone who has received a Community Service Award or Distinguished Service Award
A developer that writes (more than one) documentation/books/tutorials for wider audience .
Someone that helps translate (more than one) documentation/books/tutorials for better inclusivity.
 An instructor that teaches Python related tutorials in various regions .
Someone that helps organize local meet ups and also helps organize a regional conference.

 Nominees should be aware of the Python community’s Code of Conduct and should have a record of fostering the community. 
Sitting members of the PSF Board of Directors can be nominated if they meet the above criteria.

If you would like to nominate someone to be a PSF Fellow, please send a description of their Python accomplishments to psf-fellow at python.org. If you send in your nomination before November 20, it will be considered in Q4. More info is available here. 

We are still looking for a few more voting members to join the Work Group. If you are a PSF Fellow and would like to join, please write to psf-fellow at python.org.

A New Python Security Mailing List

2017-09-29T10:00:00.000-04:00

The Python community takes security very seriously. In an effort to enhance security and promote transparency about security matters, the Python Security Response Team (PSRT) has created a security-announce mailing list. This mailing list will allow the PSRT to communicate about security-related matters to anyone in the Python community who signs up. Join this list to stay on top of the most recent security fixes to the Python language. Click here to learn more about the mailing list and to sign up!

Join the Python Developers Survey 2017: Share and learn about the community

2017-09-26T11:01:00.000-04:00

2017 is drawing to a close and we are super-excited to start the official Python Developers Survey 2017!

We’ve created this survey specially for Python developers who use it as their primary or supplementary language. We expect the survey findings to help us map an accurate landscape of the Python developer community and to provide insight into the current major trends in the Python community.

Please take a few minutes to complete the Python Developers Survey 2017!

Your valuable opinion and feedback will help us better understand how different Python developers use Python and related frameworks, tools and technologies. We also hope you'll have fun going through the questions.

The survey is organized in partnership between the Python Software Foundation and JetBrains. After the survey is over, we will publish the aggregated results and randomly choose 100 winners (from those who complete the survey in its entirety), who will each receive an amazing Python Surprise Gift Pack.

The PyLady Behind PyLadies: Lynn Root, Community Service Award 2nd Quarter 2017 Recipient

2017-09-25T09:00:00.000-04:00

PyLadies is an international mentorship community for women that use Python. Started with a grant in 2011, PyLadies has continued to bring women into the Python community through a variety of methods, including hosting events in local PyLadies chapters as well as offering a grant opportunity to attend PyCon. One woman in particular has contributed to PyLadies' success, for which the PSF recognized her as a Community Service Award recipient for the 2nd Quarter of 2017:

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation Q2 2017 Community Service Award to Lynn Root for her work as the founder of the San Francisco Chapter of PyLadies, a member of the Django Software Foundation, and as a tireless volunteer at PyCon.

PyLadies in the early days, the Start of the San Francisco Chapter

If you can name one person associated with PyLadies, it is Lynn Root. Lynn’s relentless support, organizing, and evangelizing on behalf of PyLadies is known by many. “Lynn’s enthusiasm and passion for bringing more women into tech are well complemented by her organizational skills, which were especially needed at pivotal moment in early PyLadies history. Lynn helped grow PyLadies into, what is now, a global organization that’s had a huge impact on the Python community,” PyLady Esther Nam, one of the founders of the PyLadies Los Angeles chapter, explains.

In late 2011, Lynn began learning to program, as some of graduate programs she was considering required her to have some programming expertise. “I reached out to San Francisco’s Women Who Code to organize a Python study group,” Lynn recalls, trying to find like-minded women to join. She had used Python in a weekend hackathon and found it to be a beginner friendly language. The following year, in 2012, PyCon was held in Santa Clara. “Lynn reached out and organized a carpool of Bay Area Pythonistas to attend the conference”, Esther remembers. PyLadies from the first chapter in Los Angeles attended, where Lynn met with them to learn more about PyLadies. The next month, she founded the San Francisco chapter. Lynn continued to act as a principal organizer for PyLadies San Francisco for the next four years.

Growing PyLadies in the Global Community

Overlapping with her time as PyLadies San Francisco lead organizer, Lynn championed other significant projects including the creation of `pip install pyladies`, the PyLadies open source kit for new organizers. The development of open source tools for PyLadies has been instrumental in getting the word out about PyLadies. Lynn was able to use these tools to help start international PyLadies communities in Stockholm, Zagreb, and Brno.

Lynn also took an active role in bringing PyLadies content to PyCon. During Lynn’s first term on the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors in 2013 to 2014, Lynn helped plan and run the first PyLadies Charity Auction at PyCon. Months of work go into organizing the charity auction; it requires donations to be procured beforehand, besides auctioneering on-site. The inaugural PyLadies Charity Auction raised $10,000.00 USD for PyLadies. Commenting in a 2013 press release about the auction, Atlanta PyLadies founder Laura Cassell explains, “we're all so resourceful already that I suspect this money is going to go a long way towards helping women who want to get into the industry. I'm still a little misty-eyed at the whole thing, to be honest."

Besides her PyLadies work, Lynn has been a speaker at PyCon four times, PyCon Lightning Talk Chair since 2014, frequent session runner, and recurring PyCon volunteer.

PyLadies Benevolent Dictator for Life?

I asked Lynn if she has ever been called the PyLadies Benevolent Dictator for Life (BDFL). Lynn shook her head, she does not see herself in that fashion. But it is hard to refute the strong footprint she has left on the PyLadies community. Lynn has written several Python open source tutorials, like the web scraping with scrapy and postgres, that are often used in PyLadies workshops and are highly visited (over 65,000 times to date this year!), and has spoken at PyCons around the world: EuroPython, PyCon Finland, and PyCon Brasil. Lynn was the original PyLady I consulted with when starting the PyLadies Chicago chapter in 2014.

From founding her local PyLadies chapter, to volunteering at PyCon, to catalyzing other initiatives like the Django Software Foundation, Lynn has been an unwavering advocate for women in the Python community and for the broader Python community itself. The thing that Lynn says has been most satisfying for her as a Python community organizer and advocate has been the rise of women in Python. “In 2012 only 8% of speakers at PyCon were women now in 2017 we have approximately 33%”.

With the rise of PyLadies at PyCon and throughout the world, it’ll be exciting to see what comes next for the PyLadies community and for those that have helped make PyLadies such a tremendous success.

Improving Python and Expanding Access: How the PSF Uses Your Donation

2017-09-18T16:02:00.000-04:00

The PSF is excited to announce its first ever membership drive beginning on September 18th! Our goal for this inaugural drive is to raise $4,000.00 USD in donations and sign up 3,000 new members in 30 days.

If you’ve never donated to the PSF, you've let your membership lapse, or you've thought about becoming a Supporting Member - here is your chance to make a difference.

Join the PSF as a Supporting Member or Donate to the PSF

You can donate as an individual or join the PSF as a Supporting Member. Supporting members pay $99.00 USD per year to help sustain the Foundation and support the Python community. Supporting members are also eligible to vote for candidates for the PSF Board of Directors, changes in the PSF bylaws, and other matters related to the infrastructure of the foundation.

To become a supporting member or to make a donation, click on the widget here and follow the instructions at the bottom of the page.

We know many of you already make a great effort to support us; you volunteer your time to help us keep our website going, you join working groups to help with marketing, sponsorship, grant requests, trademarks, Python education, and packaging. Even more, you help the PSF put on PyCon US, a conference we couldn’t do without the help of our volunteers. The collective efforts and contributions of our volunteers help drive our work. We will forever be grateful to the people who step forward and ask, “What can I do to help advance open source technology related to Python?”

We understand that not everyone has the time to volunteer, but perhaps you’re in a position to help financially.

We’re asking those who are able, to donate money to support sprints, meet ups, and community events. Donations support Python documentation, fiscal sponsorships, software development, and community projects. They help fund the critical tools programmers use every day.

If you're not in a position to contribute financially, that's ok. Basic membership is free and we welcome anyone who would like to join at this level. Register here to create your member account, log back in, then complete the form to become a basic member.

What does the PSF do?

We fund great projects. So far this year we have approved over $200,000.00 USD in grants to over 140 events worldwide. We’re on track to surpass last year’s total of $265,000.00 USD in grants to 137 events in 45 different countries. 
We organize and host PyCon US. This year’s event brought together 3,389 attendees from 41 countries, a new record for PyCon! Our sponsors’ support enabled us to award $89,000.00 USD in financial aid to 194 attendees. 
We celebrate awesome Python contributors. Community Service Awards are given out quarterly, honoring individuals who support our mission.  
We implemented a trial Python Ambassador program that we hope to expand in the next year. This program provides funding for a dedicated Pythonista to travel locally to perform Python outreach.  
We provide fiscal sponsorship support for Python projects, where the PSF collects targeted donations and reimburses expenses on that projects' behalf. 
We support Python programmers worldwide by funding sprints and workshops that enable people to work on Python-related projects that advance the mission of the PSF.

Here is what one of our sponsors has to say about why they contribute to the PSF:

“Work on stuff that matters is one of O’Reilly’s core principles, and we know how very much open source matters. The open source community spurs innovation, shares knowledge, encourages growth, and creates industries. The Python Software Foundation is a prime example of the power of open source, showing how focused, thoughtful, and consistent efforts can create a community whose impact extends far beyond meetups and lines of code. O’Reilly is proud to continue to sponsor this great foundation.”
-- Rachel Roumeliotis, Vice President at O’Reilly Media and Chair of OSCON

Lastly, if you’d like to share the news about the PSF’s Membership drive, please share a tweet via the tweet button here:

Or share a tweet with the following text:

Donation & Membership Drive @ThePSF. Help us raise $4K and register 3K new members in 30 days! http://bit.ly/2h3dxpb #idonatedtothepsf

We at the PSF want to thank you for all that you do. Your support is what makes the PSF possible.

Au revoir PyCon Pune

2017-09-14T20:21:00.001-04:00

By Anwesha Das

February 2017 marked the beginning of a new journey for a new regional Python Conference - PyCon Pune.

PyCon is the meeting place for community. It gives Pythonistas an opportunity to come out of the virtual world and meet the real people behind the nicknames and the handles. It gives them an opportunity to learn new things and share their knowledge with others.

Considering the vast geographical territory of India, a single PyCon event wasn’t sufficient. PyCon Pune offered the Python community another chance to interact.

It was a four-day event; the main conference on the first two days and development sprints the second two. It was a single-track event, so all 550 attendees could attend all the sessions.

The inside story:

Pune, also known as the Oxford of the East, is amongst the fastest growing cities in the Asia Pacific region. Pune witnessed this PyCon at a hotel called Amonora, the Fern. The venue was beautiful, and we were grateful to have it: just a few weeks before the conference began, we were afraid we would have no venue at all!

The event had been located at one of oldest engineering colleges in Pune, but the venue canceled two weeks prior to the conference. Not quite the kind of news any organizers would like to hear, last minute (I can vouch for that, I was one of them).

Python Software Foundation then extended its hand to help. Team PyCon Pune as well as the Python community in India cannot thank the PSF enough for this.

PyLadies in PyCon Pune:

The PSF has always been a huge supporter of PyLadies. This time, they offered to share their booth with us. PyLadies had a huge presence at the event. From volunteering, to management, PyLadies were there everywhere. Yes, “Python is for girls.” And if we PyLadies need support in the face of a crisis, the PSF is there to hold us.

United we stand:

The first ever thing that we decided for the conference was the quote to be used on the conference t-shirt.

“Came for the language, stayed for the community”, by Brett Cannon

This set the tone of the conference. The conference is a completely volunteer-driven event: the website, finance, AV and the overall management were run by volunteers, celebrating the community in the truest sense. Help poured in from pythonistas worldwide. The logo was designed by Ryan Larch from Australia. Python communities from all over India along with Python Pune and PyLadies worked tirelessly together to make the event a success. These people keep the soul of Python (the community and language) alive.

Day 1 and Day 2 of the main conference:

With a welcome note by Kushal Das, the chair commenced the conference. The first keynote was by Honza Král. He talked about his journey in the open source world. It was interesting to know about his hurdles and how he overcame them. It is also always inspiring to see at masters were students once too. Next, Anand Chitipothu taught us to write beautiful code.The post-lunch session began with the keynote by the “official Perl guy” of the Python community, John “Warthog” Hawley, who described the path from software to hardware hacking.

The day ended with an enchanting experience - a keynote by Pravin Patil, a teacher who uses Python to teach Physics. Python plus Physics plus a Laser equaled magic in his presentation.

Katie Cunningham began Day 2, followed by the Economics Professor Stephen Turnbull. He has helped to develop Ghostscript, XEmacs, Python, and GNU Mailman. He offered a word of encouragement to us saying, “You can help develop Python - and you should!” After lunch, Nick Coghlan delivered his keynote. He discussed “opportunities and challenges in open collaboration.” The last keynote talk was by Terri Oda, about security in the open source world.

This led to the end of the main conference. The mentors for the dev sprints spoke on what they were going to work on. An open feedback session marked the close of the main conference.

Day 3 and Day 4 of the Developers Sprint

For sprints, the conference moved to the Red Hat office in Pune. A dozen projects added features and fixed bugs during the final two days of the conference. The sprints had proven to be the most popular portion of the conference: Tickets had sold out within a week.

The Red Hat office looked like a hackerspace over the weekend. People were coding, learning, having fun and celebrating Python. It was the first ever dev sprint experience for more than 95% of the attendees. It took most of the people to some time to understand what is going on and how they could participate.

Slowly folks started flocking around different mentors. There were good number of people gathering around Nick—many Pythonistas have a dream to become CPython core developers. More than 10 patches were submitted to the language. Web.py, ElasticSearch, Django, es-django-example, OpenCabs, Pagure and micropython held sprints as well. The actual number of patches submitted can be found here.

I took shelter in the micropython and hardware room, where we were worked on fun bunny boards with esp8266 devices. John was there guiding us, changing our lives (my life for certain) with blinking LEDs. The best surprise came at the end. He gave each of us a bunny board. What a lovely souvenir to take home!

The conference is intended to give people the feeling of community. The event is over but the spirit is hasn’t diminished. Please join us next year for PyCon Pune 2018, February 8 - 11.

PythonDay Mexico: Recap of the Inaugural PythonDay in Mexico

2017-09-13T09:00:00.000-04:00

It has been three years since I first learned about PyCon. I watched some workshops and talks and I was amazed by how inviting, open and inclusive the community was. In fact, that was one of the key aspects that inspired me to learn Python, use it, help build the Python community here in Mexico.

Fast forward to the beginning of this year: I was contacted by the organizer of LinuxChix in Mexico, who is also member of PyLadies, with the idea of organizing a PythonDay in Mexico. This first PythonDay, she suggested, had the purpose of bringing a PyCon to Mexico. We eventually found another woman who shared the same ideal and we set about working to bring the Mexican Python community to an event that, hopefully, inspired them to be better Pythonistas the same way the first PyCon i witnessed did to me.

We first wondered how big of a community we had in Mexico. Despite being involved with Python for three years I barely knew the people or meet ups, apart from PyLadies, in Mexico devoted to the language. We figured that with Mexico being a country of 130 million there was large chance there would be a sizable population interested in Python. Along the way we discovered that the Python community in Mexico is not only vast, but also scattered across the nation. These reasons only encouraged us more to organize a PythonDay, it would be a great starting point to bring together the community.

Who came to PythonDay Mexico

We selected June 10, 2017 as the day for the first PythonDay Mexico. People from all over the country came to meet their fellow Pythonistas and listen to the amazing talks we selected for this year.

Initially we expected about 160 people, but we could not have been farther off! Over 400 people registered for the event and in its peak, approximately 300 Pythonistas were in attendance. We were glad to learn that 30% of the attendees in the event were women, which is not a high number, but in comparison to the roughly 15% of women in technology it gives hope to learn that many women are interested in programming.

Attendees traveled up to 1270 miles to attend PythonDay Mexico. In terms of geography there were attendees from Sinaloa, Jalisco, Hidalgo, Nuevo Leon, Puebla, Mexico City and Yucatan and every one of them was excited to hear the talks and workshops as well as to meet other Python lovers.

During the event we did not have any incident or complaint; everybody followed and honored the Code of Conduct lending to a greatly collaborative. Honestly we could not have asked for a better audience. But then again, Python communities all over the world are like this, awesome.

A Global Selection of Python Speakers

PythonDay Mexico had an amazingly diverse set of speakers. We had people from Paraguay, India, USA, Italy, Germany and Mexico. Even if our speakers could not be physically present, they made efforts to actually engage and interact with the audience in their remote presentations. Many of our remote speakers are a part of the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors like Naomi Ceder, Trey Hunner. Board member Lorena Mesa gave her talk in person.

Topics covered by the talks and workshops included data science, machine learning (e.g. deep learning), CPython, Python core development, Python in web development, Python extensions in other languages (Rust, Go), Testing, building bots with Python and getting Python ready for production. The range of topics permitted a bit of something for everyone.

We at PythonDay want to thank everyone that helped make this possible. The organizers spent many months talking, planning, getting funds and convincing people that Mexico is a great place for Python. The PSF was a major player in the making of this event, given that not only were they one of our major sponsors but were also a wonderful source of speakers, advice and even promotion of the event. Of course the speakers and volunteers were also a huge part of the success of this event. Finally, the event would not have been possible without the attendees, without them the event would only have been a bunch of speakers and swag.

What’s next?

Our mission after PythonDay Mexico is to bring a PyCon to Mexico and to keep connecting all the people interested in Python within Mexico with programming and events. For PyConMx we are actively seeking volunteers and organizers, if you'd like to help us or learn more you can contact us at pythonday.mx@gmail.com or mx@pyladies.com, we really hope to hear from you!

2017-08-30T13:54:00.000-04:00

Python in Nigeria

In 2015, the PSF sponsored the first Python event in Nigeria - the Codesses Workshop in Lagos. In 2016, the number of events increased to 13, and there have been 28 events funded so far in 2017! What has happened in the last 2 ½ years to create such a demand for learning Python in this part of the world?

Aisha Bello

I spoke with Aisha Bello about this. She serves as vice-chair for the Python Nigeria community. She has helped co-organize and support a number of Django Girls workshops in Namibia and Nigeria, and also co-organizes PyLadies Nigeria. Aisha is enthusiastic about the Python community, with a strong desire and passion for social change, women’s tech education and empowerment in Africa. She currently works as an Associate Systems Engineer for Cisco Systems.

Chukwudi Nwachukwu

Sharing his thoughts as well, is Chukwudi Nwachukwu, PSF Board Director, and Team Lead Integrations, TechAdvance. He is also a volunteer member of the PSF Grants Work Group, helping to review requests from Africa and all over the world. He has also been invited to speak at PyCon NG in September. When I asked why he’s passionate about Python, he said, “Python is easy on the brain and I thank Guido [van Rossum]for such a concept.”

Python + Community

Smart Girls Project

According to Aisha, Python is popular in Nigeria because it’s one of the easiest ways to learn programming. Knowing how to code opens up many career options. The advantages of open source software are becoming more well-known in this region, and have allowed the community to grow because they’re not tied to any one vendor. She notes: “What we have is community. It means a lot to people that there is a common place or forum where they’re not afraid to share their struggles and ideas with people with like minds. We took the Python language and community and made it our own.”

Django Girls Lagos

Chukwudi believes that “the recent urge for more women to be in the workforce of Nigeria through IT has been a huge factor in the growth of Python programming. The Federal Government of Nigeria has also keyed into this drive by choosing Flask as a framework of choice to be taught in their Npower programme.” In addition, Django Girls events nationwide, startup companies incorporating Python as part of their stack, and IT companies training people to code in Python, have all made Python a leading programming language in Nigeria.

Funding for Events

Aisha and Chukwudi agree that getting funding for events in Nigeria is challenging. Often, it’s startups that come forward to help sponsor events. Aisha believes that “By creating more awareness and putting ourselves more out there, we’re hopeful things will change. Organizations like Github, the PSF, and the Django Software Foundation believe in us, and sponsor our events even when no one else will.”

Fortunately, the Django Girls Foundation offers help through their Organizer’s Manual and a template for how to run a workshop: the Coaching Manual. These documents provide a framework to help groups get started. Having a professional-looking proposal goes a long way toward convincing organizations to support these events.

Positive Outcomes

Many of the participants of these workshops have gone into IT careers, received internships, become mentors, organized workshops, and are actively involved in helping out the community. Outreach to girls in primary and high schools is working too. Girls are learning to program in Python, and most importantly, they’re learning how to use the tools to continue in their journey toward a career.

One very real example is what Abocoders did in collaboration with DjangoGirls in Lagos. Girls who had been displaced from their homes due to Bokoharam in the North were able to learn about computers and programming. In addition, they each got a refurbished computer to use during and after the workshop.

#GirlCodersRock came out of one of the events. An attendee of a Django Girls event in Nigeria is now an intern at TechAdvance, where Chukwudi works. She’s now coding Python full time. There are many Python-related jobs being advertised right now in Nigeria - Google Nigeria and Upperlink are hiring, and Alljobs.ng has 40+ listings. It looks like the trend will continue.

Chukwudi has seen a large increase in members both on slack channels and mailing lists. The community is very excited about the first PyCon Nigeria, September 15-16, 2017, in Lagos. It’s the largest gathering for the Python community in Nigeria, and is organised by members of the Python Users Nigeria Group, a nonprofit organisation dedicated to advancing and promoting the use of the Python programming language in the country.

Django Girls Lagos

Chukwudi suggested that I speak with a woman he mentors, Hamdalah Adetunji, about her road to a career in programming. She explained: “It is all a step towards growth and progress, but I hope one day in the near future, I get to do more than wish I wasn't the only female on the team. I hope to mentor women to give back the amazing support I have received all through my journey, and also let them know they can be anything they want to be as long as they are focused and determined."

The Ethical Maintainer: Community Service Award Recipient Glyph Lefkowitz

2017-08-10T08:30:00.000-04:00

Glyph Lefkowitz was barely 20 years old when he promised himself, "I am never going to use a proprietary programming language again!" He had been writing a Java application for his first professional programming job, which he had started directly after high school. The firm was a mom and pop shop that sold inventory software. Glyph was hired to rewrite their application for a contemporary platform: Java's Abstract Window Toolkit. With the hubris of the young, he promised, "Sure, I can rewrite your whole application in a new language." He could do it working only four days a week, too, and make time to work on his multiplayer online game.

"I had a pretty terrible experience with Java," he says. In those early days of the Java AWT, on classic Mac OS it leaked a tiny bit of memory every time it opened and closed a window, and in his application, nearly every task a user desired required opening and closing a window. On the constrained Macs of the time, the application would crash after about 100 tasks, often taking the whole OS down with it. The AWT was proprietary, so there was no way to fix the bug himself. "I was fired," says Glyph, "because I was having a nervous breakdown over this."

The Birth of Twisted

Meanwhile, Glyph was also building his multi-user text adventure in Java. He wanted to rapidly experiment with varied gameplay logic, and to avoid constantly restarting the server as he tried new code, he built a system in Java that could load new modules at runtime. When, burned by his Java defeat, he switched to Python, he found that practically all of the Java code required to load modules and execute them simply disappeared.

The switch from Java to Python had another effect, which profoundly determined the direction of Glyph's career. He discovered async.

Glyph's friend James Knight, who would become an original contributor to Twisted, helped with the Python port. The initial code for the Python server ran a thread per player, but Knight used a select call to determine, within each thread, whether it was time to read a message from the player or send one. When young Glyph saw that code he was astonished. "It's doing two things at once! But it's also kind of one thing." After all the bugs he'd battled in his multithreaded Java, he thought, "Couldn't we just do one thing all the time?" He and Knight rewrote the entire game server as a single-threaded event loop. He liked how it simplified the code. Only one thread accessed a shared data structure at a time. His original motivation to use an event loop was not efficiency: rather, it was how much easier it was to make his code correct.

Glyph says that his strength, in his 20s, was knowing what he didn't know. His father is a programmer, and he taught Glyph that most programming techniques are already well-known. Therefore when Glyph and James Knight got their event loop working, Glyph thought, "Someone must have done this before." He searched on Alta Vista and found the ACE project, which included a C++ event loop. Glyph refined his Python event loop based on the best practices he found in ACE, and this became the basis for Twisted, which is now one of the oldest and most influential of all Python libraries.

Based on this early experience discovering that event loops were a well-known technique, Twisted's motto is "no new ideas allowed." Twenty years later, however, Glyph has begun to innovate on the margins. For example, his Tubes library implements asynchronous I/O as "flows" of data with flow control and backpressure. But when it comes to event loops, he says, "There's so much prior art that coming up with new inventions is not worthwhile."

Twisted's Influence On Python

In the second quarter of 2017, the Python Software Foundation recognized Glyph Lefkowitz with a Community Service Award for his work on Twisted and his contributions to the Python community. Nick Coghlan nominated him, saying that Twisted "predates almost all other Python event handling systems by years, and still has by far the most comprehensive set of network protocol handlers." The decade-long journey from PEP 342's generators-as-coroutines, which enabled Twisted's inlineCallbacks feature and Tornado's Futures, to native coroutine support with "async" and "await", began with Twisted. Coghlan says that evolution could be reasonably described as taking the concepts first embodied in Twisted and drawing them ever closer to the center of the language.

In 2012, Guido van Rossum began writing asyncio, an async framework for the Python standard library. He collaborated closely with Glyph, as well as Tornado's maintainer Ben Darnell, to incorporate their best ideas in asyncio. He was interested in Twisted's notion of a Deferred, but he couldn't seem to understand it. Glyph says that trying to explain Deferred to Guido "was the worst time I've ever had on a mailing list." Guido wrote, "I really don't get Deferreds. Don't bother pointing me to docs or tutorials; I tried and failed." He said that Glyph's "snarky tone is seriously affecting my ability to process your response." Then he went silent for a week.

Glyph was devastated. He felt like he'd been flamed and ghosted by the founder of the language itself. Then Guido suddenly returned to the mailing list, with what Glyph calls "the most trenchant and keenly observed critique of the Deferred module. It was possibly the best code review I've ever received." It was suddenly clear that Twisted's Deferred would interoperate just fine with the new asyncio event loop. "We were all on board."

Responsibilities of Open Source Programmers

Glyph is distinct among Python programmers for his outspoken views on ethics. In his 2015 PyCon talk he proposed that programmers write a code of ethics, similar to other professions such as medicine and journalism. If we don't, he says, "someone else is going to do it for us, and they are not going to understand our field well enough to do it correctly." Since software is eating the world and it influences nearly all economic activity, we have a grave obligation to write code ethically.

Open source programmers often think we owe our users nothing, because we give away code for free. But this attitude ignores the benefits that we've gained. "Being an open source maintainer has opened all sorts of doors for me," says Glyph. "Whenever anyone does anything with Twisted the credit accrues to me. That's not really accurate, because there are lots of other maintainers like Amber Brown, David Reid, Ashwini Oruganti, Jean-Paul Calderone, Moshe Zadka, and Christopher Armstrong." Regardless, anyone who releases open source code engages in a subtle exchange with users, which obliges the coder to uphold some responsibilities. In my conversation with him, Glyph identified three responsibilities for open source programmers: to make clear promises, to secure our code, and to release code of appropriate quality.

Open source maintainers are uniquely obliged to make clear promises. If a maintainer abandons a project, her main obligation is to announce her departure and to transfer control. "Being an open-source maintainer is not a life sentence," says Glyph. But it is irresponsible to make a worthy piece of software, gain users, then disappear without a word.

We also have a responsibility to protect our personal information security; for example, a Python project maintainer must protect her PyPI account so her users know they won't be hacked when they install her package. That responsibility is shared with the community's infrastructure maintainers, and Glyph cites PyPI as one of the best modern examples. "It doesn't get enough credit because of Python's checkered history with packaging," he says, "but the way Donald Stufft thinks about practical information security, and the other folks who work on PyPI as well, and the resources the PSF has invested there," have laid a foundation for securely distributing open source Python.

And finally, many of us set a low bar for the quality of code that we release: if the project scratched our own itch, we might as well open-source it. In Glyph's opinion, we must more carefully consider the impact of the code we give away, because we can't predict how it will be used. Glyph knows that many of the largest sites run Twisted somewhere in their stack, and he feels the responsibility keenly.

"A lot of our software completely escapes its originating context," says Glyph. The author might intend to release a mere prototype, but downstream packagers come to depend on her code, and other programmers even farther downstream might not know they depend on it at all. Of course, software users share some responsibility for auditing what code they use. "This responsibility is not black or white," says Glyph. "There's small tradeoffs and fractional proportions. It's not 100% yours or not, but you've got to think about it."

2017 Bylaw Changes

2017-07-24T10:00:00.000-04:00

The PSF has changed its bylaws, following a discussion and vote among the voting members. I'd like to publicly explain those changes.

For each of the changes, I will describe 1.) what the bylaws used to say prior to June 2017 2.) what the new bylaws say and 3.) why the changes were implemented.

Certification of Voting Members

What the bylaws used to say

Every member had to acknowledge that they wanted to vote/or not vote every year.

What the bylaws now say

The bylaws now say that the list of voters is based on criteria decided upon by the board.

Why was this change made?

The previous bylaws pertaining to this topic created too much work for our staff to handle and sometimes it was not done because we did not have the time resources to do it. We can now change the certification to something more manageable for our staff and our members.

Voting in New PSF Fellow Members

What the bylaws used to say

We did not have a procedure in place for this in the previous bylaws.

What the bylaws now say

Now the bylaws allow any member to nominate a Fellow. Additionally, it gives the chance for the PSF Board to create a work group for evaluating the nominations.

Why was this change made?

We lacked a procedure. We had several inquiries and nominations in the past, but did not have a policy to respond with. Now that we voted in this bylaw, the PSF Board voted in the creation of the Work Group. We can now begin accepting new Fellow Members after several years.

Staggered Board Terms

What the bylaws used to say

We did not have staggered board terms prior to June 2017. Every director would be voted on every term.

What the bylaws now say

The bylaws now say that in the June election, the top 4 voted directors would hold 3 year terms, the next 4 voted-in directors hold 2 year terms and the next 3 voted-in directors hold 1 year terms. That resulted in:

Naomi Ceder (3 yr)
Eric Holscher (3 yr)
Jackie Kazil (3 yr)
Paul Hildebrandt (3 yr)
Lorena Mesa (2 yr)
Thomas Wouters (2 yr)
Kushal Das (2 yr)
Marlene Mhangami (2 yr)
Kenneth Reitz (1 yr)
Trey Hunner (1 yr)
Paola Katherine Pacheco (1 yr)

Why was this change made?

The main push behind this change is continuity. As the PSF continues to grow, we are hoping to make it more stable and sustainable. Having some directors in place for more than one year will help us better complete short-term and long-term projects. It will also help us pass on context from previous discussions and meetings.

Direct Officers

What the bylaws used to say

We did not have Direct Officers prior to June 2017.

What the bylaws now say

The bylaws state that the current General Counsel and Director of Operations will be the Direct Officers of the PSF. Additionally, they state that the Direct Officers become the 12th and 13th members of the board giving them rights to vote on board business. Direct Officers can be removed by a.) fail of an approval vote, held on at least the same schedule as 3-year-term directors; b) leave the office associated with the officer director position; or c) fail a no-confidence vote.

Why was this change made?

In an effort to become a more stable and mature board, we are appointing two important positions to be directors of the board. Having the General Counsel and Director of Operations on the board helps us have more strength with legal situations and how the PSF operates. The two new Direct Officers are:

Van Lindberg
Ewa Jodlowska

Delegating Ability to Set Compensation

What the bylaws used to say

The bylaws used to state that the President of the Foundation would direct how compensation of the Foundation’s employees was decided.

What the bylaws now say

The bylaws have changed so that the Board of Directors decide how employee compensation is decided.

Why was this change made?

This change was made because even though we keep the president informed of major changes, Guido does not participate in day to day operations nor employee management. We wanted the bylaws to clarify the most effective and fair way we set compensation for our staff.

We hope this breakdown sheds light on the changes and why they were important to implement. Please feel free to contact me with any questions or concerns.

Welcome New Board Members

2017-07-17T07:30:00.000-04:00

The PSF is thrilled to welcome six new board members, chosen on June 11 during the 2017 PSF Board Election. The PSF would not be what it is without the expertise and diversity of our board, and we look forward to seeing what our new members accomplish this quarter. Read on to learn more about them and their initial goals as PSF Board Members.

Paul Hildebrandt has been a Senior Engineer with Walt Disney Animation Studios since 1996. He resides outside of Los Angeles with his wife and three boys. In his first quarter, he hopes to serve the Python community by better understanding the well-oiled machine that is the PSF and by handling regular board activity. He desires to contribute by focusing on sponsorship and corporate involvement opportunities.

Eric Holscher is co-founder of Read the Docs and Write the Docs, where he works

to elevate the status of documentation in the software industry. He has hiked 800 miles of the Pacific Crest Trail, and spends most of his spare time in the woods or traveling the world. His wish is to focus on sustainability and to create a new initiative that will bring in sponsors who are focused on the sustainability of the ecosystem such as PyPI, Read the Docs, and pip.

Marlene Mhangami is the director and co-founder of ZimboPy, an organization that teaches Zimbabwean girls how to code in Python. Through her organization she has worked with the organizers of Django Girls Chinoyi and Harare, as well as PyCon Zimbabwe to grow the use of Python locally. Her goals for the quarter are to help connect, support, and represent issues relevant to Pythonistas in Africa. She will seek to increase the number of PyCons in the region and facilitate the inclusion of women and other underrepresented groups.

Paola Katherine Pacheco is a backend Python developer and organizer of Python groups such as PyLadies Brazil, PyLadies Rio de Janeiro, Django Girls Rio de Janeiro, Pyladies Mendoza and Python Mendoza. She runs a YouTube channel where she teaches Python in Portuguese. Her goals this quarter are to energize Python events for the Brazilian and Argentine Python communities, and to increase diversity by promoting education and events to women and underrepresented groups.

Kenneth Reitz is the product owner of Python at Heroku. He is well-known for his many open source software projects, specifically Requests: HTTP for Humans. He seeks to contribute towards the PSF's continued optimization of its operations, increase its sustainability, and the sustainability of the entire Python ecosystem.

Thomas Wouters is a long-time CPython core developer and a founding PSF member. He has worked at Google since 2006, maintaining the internal Python infrastructure. His immediate goal is to get reacquainted with the PSF procedures and the matters the board attends to, both of which have changed a lot since he last served on the Board of Directors. Longer term, he would like to work on the awareness of the practical side of the Python community: the website, mailing lists, and other help channels like IRC, as well as actual code development and services like PyPI.

2017 Frank Willison Memorial Award Goes To Katie Cunningham And Barbara Shaurette

2017-05-19T08:00:00.000-04:00

Every year the Python Software Foundation awards the Frank Willison Memorial Award to a member(s) of the Python community. The purpose of this award is to recognize the outstanding contributions that Python community members have made having began as an award, “established in memory of Frank Willison, a Python enthusiast and O'Reilly editor-in-chief, who died in July 2001”.

The Python Software Foundation has awarded the 2017 Frank Willison Award to Katie Cunningham and Barbara Shaurette in recognition of their work creating Young Coders classes. Cunningham and Shaurette have gone above and beyond making the Young Coders teaching materials freely available.

The program began at PyCon 2013 in Santa Clara and was an immediate success. The follow-up blog post is the second most popular post in PyCon's history by a wide margin. Additionally the event was one of the most talked about topics of the 2013 conference.

Lynn Root and Jesse Noller pitched the idea to Cunningham asking her to lead it. Cunningham then reached out to Shaurette seeking her assistance, or as she said, “Omg help!”

Shaurette has experience teaching early childhood education. Her experience teaching younger students came in handy as she reworked materials used for adult classes into the materials the program uses today. The class includes Raspberry Pis, keyboards, and a mouse that the students were allowed to take with them, along with two books Python for Kids and Hello World! Computer Programming for Kids and Other Beginners.

The first class for students aged 10 to 12 did not go without hitches. That year there were a lot of technical issues with the Raspberry Pis. Noah Kantrowitz saved the day helping Cunningham and Barbara getting the Raspberry Pi’s set up. “The setup is a little complex, but he set the guidelines for what equipment we use, and how we plan the classroom every year,” Shaurette said.

“There were moments setting up that I said, ‘I don’t know if this is going to work,” Cunningham recalls.

That first class was eight hours. Then Katie and Barbara wrapped up and did it again the next day for a second a time with a whole new class.

By the end of the first day it was already a noted success. “The enthusiasm around it was insane. People were so excited that we were doing it. We were off in our own corner and not central to the conference, but people were stopping by and peeking in,” Cunningham explains.

Once the kids were let loose to experiment, they tried all sorts of things. “I don't think you'd ever see that kind of experimentation in a classroom full of adults, who would more likely do everything in their power not to break their computers,” Shaurette wrote of the kids’ ability to learn, write, and run code.

The second day was a whole new class, but this time it was a group of 13 to 16 year olds, and just as successful. “One thing that I find is how energizing the kids get at the end,” Cunningham said.

Not long after that, Young Coders was approached by the PyOhio and PyTennessee organizers. Both conferences have held Young Coders nearly every year since. Brad Montgomery has taken over responsibility in PyTennessee, but Cunningham still runs the workshop at PyOhio.

Since the start of the program Cunningham and Shaurette have taught over 400 kids!

We thank Cunningham and Shaurette for their work in actively promoting and teaching Python to a new generation of programmers.

Attending PyCon 2017? Consider Becoming a Sponsor!

2017-05-04T10:30:00.000-04:00

As PyCon approaches, we would like to invite attendees and members of our community to join the Python Software Foundation as a sponsor. Your generous support enables the PSF’s mission to promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language.

Thanks to our current sponsors, some of our recent accomplishments include:

Organizing successful PyCons. Last year’s event brought together 3,388 attendees from 49 countries, a new record for PyCon! Our sponsors’ support enabled us to award $94,000.00 USD in financial aid to 142 attendees who would not otherwise have been able to attend. This year we were able to expand upon our financial aid by awarding $111,653.00 USD to 194 attendees.
Hiring more staff. In addition to adding more blog writers to keep the public aware of the most recent PSF news, we have added an IT Manager to help maintain our growing infrastructure, as well as an additional accountant to deal with the high demand of requests for financial support from all over the world.

Funding great projects. So far this year we have approved $70,000.00 USD in grants to over 60 events. At this rate 2017 will surpass last year’s total of $265,000.00 USD in grants to 137 events in 45 different countries.

Acknowledging awesome Python contributors. Community Service Awards are given out quarterly, honoring individuals who support our mission. Read about recent CSA recipients on our blog.
Implementing a Python Ambassador program. This program provides funding for ambassadors to travel locally to perform Python outreach. This is currently in trial mode in South America and is going very well. If the trend continues, we will expand this program to additional locales.

We plan to continue our efforts in the coming years by developing fiscal sponsorship support for Python projects, implementing a Customer Relationship Management system to better communicate with individual PSF members, and continuing to support Python programmers worldwide.

We love to hear from happy sponsors about why they contribute to the PSF. Here are what a few have to say:

"ActiveState is proud to be a founding member and continued supporter of PSF. We recognize how important Python is for developers, IT administrators and data scientists--it continues to evolve and grow in popularity as a very powerful language with many use cases. We're excited about its future and helping the foundation's goal in advancing the language."

- Bart Copeland, ActiveState President & CEO

“Sponsoring PSF brings tremendous opportunities for the entire Python community to actively participate, connect, and engage in many meaningful ways. It’s an opportunity to enrich the language by encouraging active dialogue on future directions, and to nurture compelling new ideas and projects, support the accompanying logistics and infrastructure needs, and uphold the open source values of the community. Intel continues to foster innovation with Python and is committed to contributing to the growth of this vibrant ecosystem.”

- Sonali DeSouza, Product Manager - Intel® Python & Scripting tools team

“‘Work on stuff that matters’ is one of O’Reilly’s core principles, and we know how very much open source matters. The open source community spurs innovation, shares knowledge, encourages growth, and creates industries. The Python Software Foundation is a prime example of the power of open source, showing how focused, thoughtful, and consistent efforts can create a community whose impact extends far beyond meetups and lines of code. O'Reilly is proud to continue to sponsor this great foundation."

- Rachel Roumeliotis, Strategic Content Director at O'Reilly and Chair of OSCON

“Delivering digital projects in Python is the core of our business; it solves the needs of our clients. The PSF does a fantastic job of protecting and investing in the future of Python. Sponsoring the PSF is how we not only give back for the past, but also protect our future.”

- Steve Hawkes, Director, Blanc LTD

If you value what we do at PSF, we hope that you too will consider becoming a sponsor. For details about PSF Sponsorship and to get started, please visit our Sponsors page.

Brian Costlow, “the quietly amazing rock” Python volunteer: Community Service Award Recipient

2017-04-27T10:30:00.000-04:00

Brian began volunteering unofficially, when he threw out a pile of pizza boxes. He was at PyOhio in 2009 when, as Brian recalls, “Lunch was delivered pizza and the organizers had to clean up after the conference. I felt bad that I had attended a great event, entirely free, so I started to help them sweep the floors and throw away the pizza boxes." The next two years Brian worked the conference as a volunteer. In 2012 he joined the organizing committee and he went on to chair the conference in 2014, 2015, and 2016.

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to present Brian Costlow with the 2017 Quarter 1 Community Service Award for:

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation award the 2017 Q1 Community Service Award to Brian Costlow for his work organizing PyOhio, chairing PyOhio, and for being the head volunteer for PyCon US captioning.

A Jack-Of-All-Trades PyOhio Organizer

“I was working in IT for a large printing and media company when I started to use Python for a number of projects. I joined the Ohio Python Mailing List and when the planning for the first PyOhio began, I made plans to attend,” Brian recalls. Regrettably Brian was unable to attend the inaugural PyOhio conference. He did, however, attend the second PyOhio, where his volunteerism began with a simple act of cleaning empty pizza boxes. Since 2010 Brian has worked alongside PyOhio organizers like Catherine Devlin and Eric Floehr, the founder of the Central Ohio Python User Group, chairing the conference, recruiting workshops, seeking new speakers.

Katie Cunningham, one of the leaders of the Young Coders project, first met Brian when he invited Young Coders to join PyOhio. During their first year Young Coders encountered a few technical hiccups. Cunningham recalls, “Brian wasn’t fazed. He helped keep the room together." She adds that “he is one of those quietly amazing people who quickly goes from someone you know to someone you couldn't do without. In an industry rife with people who tend to be a bit flighty, he's a rock”.

On a personal note, I first attended PyOhio in 2015 as both an inaugural speaker and attendee. I was terrified. Following my talk I had the pleasure to meet Brian. He was excited to hear about my experience as a novice speaker and we continued our discussion after the conference. Brian has been continuously interested in learning how to recruit more women and underrepresented individuals to both attend and speak at PyOhio. What makes PyOhio unique as a place to begin one’s speaking or Python career is the simple fact that PyOhio is free to attend. According to Brian, PyOhio never deliberately set out to be accessible, “it just happened organically because the Python community really is a community, and we all wanted to give back to the community that gave so much to us”.

Continuing to Give Back at PyCon through Captioning

Brandon Rhodes, PyCon 2016 and 2017 chair, reached out to Brian a year early in 2015 seeking assistance with captioning. Brian, mindful of Rhodes's support for PyOhio, says, “Brandon has always been a great friend to PyOhio. So when he was selected as chair for PyCon 2016 and 2017, I reached out and said if there was anything I could help him with, I would gladly do it."

Captioning was a remote volunteer position in 2015. “Brian first helped out in Montreal and then took the lead in 2016 at Portland. Every year Brian takes part in the process, takes careful observations, and notes what works and what doesn’t,” Ewa Jodlowska explains. Given some of Brian’s feedback and other lessons learned at 2015 the PyCon organizing team opened to turn the captioning position into a staff position. “We learn lots year after year and make several improvements thanks to Brian's involvement,” Jodlowska adds.

Brian continues to work with the captioning staff team. He says, “If someone wants to get involved, just reach out to Ewa or me, we're always open to suggestions for improvement!"

Brian Costlow, by his willingness to work behind the scenes on jobs big and small, demonstrates the spirit of Python's community. It’s about supporting one another and always looking forward to doing things better and bigger that makes the community so vibrant.

Look for Brian at PyCon 2017! He may just want to share with you some exciting ways you can help with PyCon captioning in the future.

Community Service Award Recipient Ian Cordasco

2017-04-21T07:00:00.000-04:00

The Python Software Foundation depends on its board of directors in order to function. Board members are elected every year by PSF voting members in a process run internally by non-board members. Ian Cordasco has been the PSF’s Election Administrator since 2015, volunteering his efforts for this important role. Cordasco is also a valuable member of the Python community, frequently mentoring newer coders and supporting their Python endeavors. For these reasons, the PSF is delighted to award the 2017 QA Community Service award to Ian Cordasco:

RESOLVED that the Python Software Foundation award the 2017 Q1 Community Service Award to Ian Cordasco for his contributions to PSF elections and active mentoring of women in Python community.

PSF Elections

Cordasco began as the PSF’s Election Administrator during a time of turmoil. “The first year I ran the election was something of a nightmare,” he recalls. Due to unforeseen circumstances, the previous Election Administrator stepped down on short notice and was unavailable to relaunch the election efforts. “Many people did not get ballots via email as they should. Some people were accidentally excluded from the voting rolls. Further, there was a lot of confusion because I stepped in at the last minute.” Without the aid of documentation and prior experience, Ian threw himself into the cause. The PSF has since reviewed, solidified, and documented the election procedures.

Since his dramatic start as Elections Administrator, Cordasco’s work with PSF elections has been much smoother. Mark Mangoba, PSF’s IT Manager, works closely with Cordasco during the election process. Mangoba notes, “Ian is a great volunteer. He does an excellent job with the elections, assuring that all votes are accounted for and that there is no fraud or issues of any kind.” Cordasco has also gotten creative with how he manages elections. For example, to reduce bias, he uses Python code to break ties and to randomize the order in which candidates appear to voters. Additionally, those that work with Cordasco describe him as an enjoyable collaborator. Mangoba explains, “Ian is energetic and thoughtful. His passion and enthusiasm for the PSF shows through, he’s always available to help and answer questions.”

Mentoring

Cordasco has a history of going out of his way to support and encourage female developers. When Carol Willing, a developer for the Jupyter project, wanted to work on the Requests library, she got in touch with Cordasco. “We worked together on the project and my first commit to the Requests library got accepted!” Cordasco later wrote a fantastic post about it on his blog.

Cordasco has also found newer coders to mentor at Python events, such as Anna Ossowski. “I met Ian at PyTennessee 2015, a day before I was scheduled to give my very first ever conference talk. Ian’s encouragement and support helped me a lot and it’s thanks to him and Carol [Willing] that I had the confidence to go up on stage and deliver my talk.” But his support didn’t stop there, Ossowski goes on to say, “every week he would reserve an hour for me where we would program together, he would answer questions, and just generally help me with any programming issues I experienced. Ian helped me get the PyLadies Remote website up and running, something I would have never managed without his help.”

Adrienne Lowe, a developer at Emma, has also enjoyed Cordasco’s support and encouragement. She recalls, “He models the kind of developer that we all want to be in terms of being encouraging and open.” She continues, “he sets himself apart by being genuine, welcoming, and happy to explain anything from simple things to more complex concepts, all in an ego-less way.”

The Python community as a whole is very lucky to count Cordasco as its member, and we hope he continues to help others contribute and achieve their goals.

CSA 2017 Q1 Winner Ian Cordasco

In his free time, you can find Cordasco blogging on his website, riding his bike, or reading books.

Pay What You Want for "The Humble Book Bundle: Python" and Benefit the PSF

2017-04-05T14:00:00.000-04:00

Pay what you want for a stack of Python ebooks from No Starch Press, and decide what portion goes to the PSF. This deal is presented by Humble Bundle, which sells ebooks and games to raise money for nonprofits. When you buy a bundle you choose how much to pay, and how the money is divided among the creators, Humble Bundle, Inc., and the nonprofit organization.

The Humble Book Bundle: Python is available now through April 19th. Pay a dollar or more for these three books:

If you choose to pay $8 or more, you also receive:

If you pay more than $15 you get all of the above, plus:

To help the PSF and get a stack of fun and useful Python books at a price you decide, buy the bundle before April 19th!

Humble Book Bundle: Python

Python at Google Summer of Code: Apply by April 3

2017-03-28T23:39:00.000-04:00

Google Summer of Code (GSoC) is a global program that offers post-secondary students an opportunity to be paid for contributing to an open source project over a three-month period. Since 2005, the Python Software Foundation (PSF) has served as an "umbrella organization" to a variety of Python-related projects, as well as sponsoring projects related to the development of the Python language.

April 3rd is the last date for student applications for GSoC 2017. You can view all the sub-orgs under PSF and see what projects are seeking applications, then go to the Google Summer of Code site to submit your application.

Questions?

Python and Google Summer of Code: Getting Started
IRC: Join the #python-gsoc channel on the Freenode server
Email: Join the gsoc-general mailing list.

To ask questions about specific projects, go to the sub-orgs page and click "Contact" under the project you want to ask about.

The student application deadline is April 3, and decisions will be announced on May 4.

Timeline for Google Summer of Code 2017

Ernest takes the call - Community Service Award Recipient Ernest Durbin III

2017-03-10T07:30:00.000-05:00

The day was October 23, 2015, Friday afternoon. The PSF and PyCon organizers were busy pulling together sponsors for the upcoming PyCon conference when suddenly, the ancient mail server 'albatross' suffered a hard disk crash. Email was down, grant requests would not go through, and PyCon planning was at a stand still. To make matters worse, most of the volunteers who had helped set up the initial mail server were away. Something had to be done, and fast. Ernest Durbin, a volunteer systems admin, took the call. With no documentation on how to fix the existing mail server, he worked diligently through the weekend to rebuild it. Thanks to Ernest’s hard work and dedication, the PSF and PyCon US were able to resume operations before the following Monday.

For his enthusiasm and years of volunteering, the Python Software Foundation awards the 4th Quarter 2016 Community Service Award to Ernest Durbin III:

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation award the 4th Quarter 2016 Community Service Award to Ernest W. Durbin III. Ernest has been a dedicated volunteer of the PSF for several years. Countless times he has triaged PSF infrastructure. Beyond that, Ernest has been a key person in creating structure for our infrastructure. Not only does that include internal infrastructure such as mail.python.org, that also includes external infrastructure such as PyPI. Recently, Ernest has also accepted the position of PyCon 2017 US co-chair and PyCon 2018/19 conference chair.

Durbin’s involvement in PSF began in 2012. He recalls, “A friend of mine submitted a proposal and we were selected for the task.” After a few months of doing paid work for the PSF, he realized that he would be more comfortable volunteering his time, and has been doing so ever since. “Ernest has been a huge help with the growth of PSF's infrastructure,” says Ewa Jodlowska, Director of Operations at PSF. “[He] ensures that we are keeping best practices and that the knowledge of proper processes is passed on. I am grateful that he has been able to lend his expertise in such a way.”

In addition to providing volunteer technical support for the PSF, Durbin has also become a Python community organizer. He will serve as co-chair of PyCon 2017 and has taken on the responsibilities of full conference chair for PyCon 2018 and 2019. He is also an organizer for his local Python meetup group.

When asked about why Durbin chooses to promote Python and the PSF Durbin responded, “Python has been my language of choice for most of my career,” adding that he “has always appreciated the great breadth and depth of experience in the Python community as represented by the available packages on PyPI. It is such a testament to the community's collective knowledge and generosity when nine times out of ten you can find something that fulfills your need.”

As for the email server incident, Durbin simply brushes off the stress explaining “it was a great way to meet new folks in the Python community and work with them towards a common goal.”

Ernest Durbin, CSA Winner 2016 Q4

When not programming, you can find Durbin out in his garage working on his 1960’s era SAABs or hosting Taco Tuesdays for large groups of friends.

Discovering the Python Community in Zimbabwe at their first PyCon

2017-02-10T10:30:00.000-05:00

On the heels of attending a successful PyCon in Namibia in 2015, a small group of Python enthusiasts in Harare, Zimbabwe vowed to organize the first-ever PyCon held in Zimbabwe.

After months of planning on November 25th, 2016 they achieved their goal in dramatic fashion with an enormously successful sold-out conference at the ZESA National Training Center in Harare. I was privileged to give the keynote to an extremely attentive audience. For an hour, we had a tremendous time in discussing how to contribute to open-source successfully and how to grow ideas into successful open-source projects.

In all my years of speaking, I've never had such an incredible audience. Often at technical conferences audience members are more engaged with their smartphones than the speaker. Not so at PyConZim! Questions were thoughtful and engaging. Truly a pleasure.

Throughout the conference many enjoyable talks were given. I enjoyed Dennis Murekachiro's inspiring talk on how to be a game-changer as he encouraged Zimbabwe technologists not to settle for "good enough" but to work hard to use technology to better themselves and the communities they live in. Tendai Marengerke's talk on how to create reproducible research in Python was absolutely fascinating; it's a must-watch for anybody using Python in an academic setting.

Petrus Janse van Rensburg from South Africa gave an outstanding overview of challenges that low-bandwidth connections create in Africa and how he is working to solve them by re-designing the way e-commerce platforms operate. I can virtually guarantee we'll be hearing a more about him and his work in the coming months and years.

One of the most astonishing things about PyConZim is the way in which every single attendee is brilliant and, without fail, engaged with pragmatic ideas about how to use Python to make a better life for their communities. One could go to every PyCon on Earth and never find one as inspiring as PyCon Zimbabwe.

The highlight for me, though, was having the chance to meet Marlene Hangami and Ronald Maravanyika.

Marlene and Ronald have single-handedly started an organization to teach Python to young girls across Zimbabwe.

Fueled by a desire to simply improve the lives of girls in their country, they've started free workshops in community centers and now operate in over forty community centers across the country.

They've had to battle a number of difficult obstacles that would discourage most people but they're continuing on.

As a direct result of my trip to PyConZim, I've started working with Ronald and Marlene to start a program to bring female software developers to Zimbabwe to work with selected girls on Python-based projects to help out in their communities.

Mentors participate in projects that girls work on by volunteering as little as four hours of their time and conduct their mentorship via video-conference and email. It's a very simple way to advance the case for women in technology in Africa and beyond. More information on mentorship programs and application information is available here.

My humble thanks to everybody at the Python Software Foundation for sponsoring my trip to Zimbabwe and for sponsoring the conference itself.