Armin Rigo Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the fourth quarter of 2011 to Armin Rigo for his outstanding work on PyPy.

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to recognize Armin's contributions to the community.

Mike Müller Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the fourth quarter of 2011 to Mike Müller for his outstanding work in bringing Python forward in the science world, through the organization of the first two EuroSciPy conferences and for heading the new yearly PyCon DE conference, which gives the large number of German speaking Python users a platform for interchange and discussion.

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to recognize Mike's contributions to the community.

PSF Grants Over $37,000 to the Python Community in 2011

The Python Software Foundation provides financial support to many Python related conferences and projects. In 2011, the grants and awards totaled US$37,511. As we enter the new year, we want to take this opportunity to review some of the work funded by, and for, the Python community throughout the year.

Conferences

One of the most prominent ways the PSF supports the community is through the conference assistance program. Organizers of Python-related conferences are eligible to receive grants toward conference-related expenses, including renting space, travel, catering, etc.

• PyCon AU (Australia) was the first conference to be granted money in 2011 and received US$1500
• EuroPython 2011 was given US$2000
• SciPy 2011 received US$2000 for the conference held in Austin, TX
• Kiwi PyCon 2011 also received US$2000
• PyCon DE (Germany) was given US$1500
• PyArgentina received US$1500
• PyCon Ireland received US$1500
• PyCon PL (Poland) received US$750
• PyTexas 2011 received US$750
• The GNOME Foundation for the 2011 Libre Graphics Meeting was given US$1500 in funds

Projects and Porting

This year the PSF gave grants to support several software and community projects that provide significant benefit to Python users.

• Read the Docs received US$840 for hosting fees
• The Python Miro Community project received US$1800 to cover service fees and project expenses
• The PyPy Project was awarded US$10,000 at PyCon 2011
• Chris McDonough was granted US$3000 to port the WebOb project to Python 3
• The PSF also gave US$2121 to 11 Python-related sprints

Outreach

Besides funding projects from existing community members, the PSF has also funded projects intended to introduce new people to Python and expand our community.

• Vern Ceder was granted US$500 to travel to the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) for a speaking engagement
• PyLadies received US$1220
• The Boston Python Workshop received a US$3300 grant to support and grow the workshop

Receiving Grants

There are several sources for funding through the PSF, depending on the nature of your project.

1. Conference organizers can contact the PSF Board directly (psf at python.org) with inquiries. Please keep in mind that it may take some time to approve and transfer the funds, so plan ahead and submit your request early.
2. The Python Sprints project provides modest grants for groups to host sprints on Python-related projects.
3. A special fund is set aside for porting open source projects to Python 3. All you need to do is apply for assistance, and Jesse Noller will even help you with your proposal! See the Grant Guidelines for more information.
4. Other projects seeking assistance should also email the board (psf at python.org) with a detailed request.

Donating to the PSF

The Python Software Foundation accepts donations through the web or via check or wire transfer. For US taxpayers, contributions to the PSF are tax-deductible.

PSF Proffers Payment to Port to Python 3

As news of Python 3 porting becomes a more frequent occurrence and Python 3.3 development takes strides towards becoming the version everyone wants, the PSF has their own way of helping: money. With a grant program in place, the PSF is awarding funds to projects that plan an effort to port their work to Python 3.

As we've previously written about, R. David Murray's work to port the email package was funded by a PSF grant. Jean-Paul Calderone took advantage of a grant to port PyOpenSSL. Most recently, Chris McDonough used grant funding to port WebOb to Python 3. The foundation has been able to help these projects make the move to Python 3 and hopes to help even more in the coming year.

As PSF Director Jesse Noller states on http://www.getpython3.com, "The Python Software Foundation is here for not just CPython, or python-core, or python the language. It is here for Python -- the community, its efforts, its developers, designers and people." These grants are being made available for the betterment of the Python community, and funding can be used in any number of ways to get the job done. For some self-employed developers, funding may mean that porting a project could become more than a side-project. For projects with multiple developers, funding could mean a series of team sprints to complete the work. This could even be used in conjunction with funding from the PSF Sprint committee.

If you're involved in a project which could benefit from funding to complete a Python 3 port, Jesse Noller has recently written on the topic and offers his services to assist with grant applications. From templates to reviews, he is willing to step up and help represent projects before the PSF board for approval.

For more information on the PSF's grants program, see http://www.python.org/psf/grants/.

First annual PyCon China a hit in Shanghai

The first annual PyCon China recently wrapped up an excellent event in Shanghai, with the December 3 and 4 conference serving over 450 attendees and just under 500 viewers of their live webcast. The new conference drew so much interest that over 100 people were put on a waiting list to get in.

The conference schedule included 25 topics with 13 of them being 45+ minute presentations. After a keynote speech by Sting Chen titled "Python Enriches the World", the conference went on to cover Tornado, the Xunlei download manager, OpenStack, and others. They also included a lightning talk series with twelve 10-15 minute sessions. As with many other PyCons around the world, video of each talk is available online.

After the conference, attendees reported about the event here and here. Tech news sites InfoQ and ITEye also posted coverage of the conference.

The PSF applauds the PyCon China organizers and their sponsors for making a great conference, and we hope to hear about PyCon China in 2012!

Boston Python Workshop PSF Grant

(This is a guest post by Jessica McKellar, a Boston Python User Group organizer and co-organizer of the Boston Python Workshop for women and their friends.)

I am thrilled to report that the Python Software Foundation's Outreach and Education Committee awarded a $3300 grant to the Boston Python Workshop to support and grow the workshop over the next 8 months. We are excited to continue our successes at bringing more women into the Boston Python community and to take the show on the road!

The Boston Python Workshop

The Boston Python Workshop is a free, volunteer-driven introduction to the Python programming language for women and their friends who have no or limited programming experience. We run the workshop every 2 months for between 30 and 50 women, and it has run 4 times so far. We strive to:

• Show new programmers and the Boston Python community examples of smart, confident, capable programmers of all backgrounds.
• Bring new, awesome, diverse people into the local Python community through diversity and outreach events.
• Inspire others to run their own introductory workshops and outreach events, and to get more user groups thinking about diversity and outreach.

An important part of our philosophy is a commitment to running the workshop as part of the local user group.

This Python Software Foundation grant will help us run the next three workshops in Boston and bootstrap workshops in 3 new cities. As a result of this grant:

• Over 200 women will learn Python fundamentals and join their local programming communities as empowered, confident beginners who are excited to continue learning.
• 3 new Python user groups will learn how to run high-quality diversity outreach events.
• Volunteers at the workshops will get experience with public speaking and teaching technical content -- a great stepping stone to leading future PyCon talks and tutorials!
• The Python community as a whole will continue to benefit from our shared, online, Creative Commons-licensed workshop material as we expand and refine it.

Results

The workshop has resulted in dramatic, lasting diversity improvements for the Boston Python User Group. Many workshop alums are now fixtures at our hack nights and lecture-style events, and the group has gone from 0-3% women at its events to consistently over 15%. Additionally, group membership has doubled since the workshops started, to over 1350 people, making it the second-largest Python user group in the US.

If you do the math you'll see that we aren't just bringing women into the user group through the workshop. The secret is that running beginner-friendly outreach events for women focuses the group on being more welcoming to everyone. Our monthly hack nights grew out of the workshop and are one example of bringing beginner-friendly ideas from the workshop to the group as a whole. The Boston Python user group is now a more diverse and vibrant community full of beginners, scientists, artists, entrepreneurs, and people switching to a career in software/IT, and we're very happy that the workshop has played a significant role in this.

Beyond Boston

We want to help other user groups see the same kinds of successes that we've had here in Boston, and a large part of this PSF grant is dedicated to bootstrapping workshops in other cities. If you want to bring the workshop to your city, read the full grant proposal and get in touch!

All of our material is online and shared through a permissive Creative Commons license. Check out an example curriculum and photos from the workshops. Our goal of stress-free experiences for attendees makes our material a good base for other intro events; for example, we believe our cross-platform installation instructions for Python are the best we've seen.

We look forward to a larger, more diverse Python community, and we want to thank the Python Software Foundation for supporting our efforts. The Outreach and Education Committee, PSF Grants program, and PSF Sprints program are all interested in new grant requests to push the Python world forward. Make something awesome happen in your city!

2011 Frank Willison Memorial Award

The 2011 Frank Willison Memorial Award for Services to the Python Community has been awarded to Georg Brandl.

Georg has been a core contributor to CPython since 2005, contributing bug fixes for compiler internals and modules such as pdb. His most widely known contributions are to Python's documentation, through writing as well as by creating and maintaining the Sphinx tool chain for converting reStructuredText input files to more easily consumed formats such as HTML and PDF.

The video announcing Georg's award at OSCON 2011 is available on YouTube.

Making Documentation Easier

Earlier versions of Python used LaTeX and a Perl-based tool-chain to convert documentation into HTML and PDF. The reliance on Perl, and the relative difficulty of contributing to LaTeX-formatted source files, came up from time to time, but Georg was the one to finally take on the problem of building the necessary tools to manage the content in another format, and then converting all of the existing files.

Georg studied the docutils project and decided that it met most of the requirements, but needed a few custom markup features and a tool to convert individual input files to a unified output document. He wrote a tool called "doctools" for Python's documentation, which was eventually re-christened to Sphinx "because of the build tool for python.org, which was called Pyramid -- and unhappily without regard to the two existing projects called Sphinx."

Over time, the user base for Sphinx grew beyond CPython's documentation team, and Georg continues to work with other contributors to make it more generally useful for other projects. For example, some of the Python-centric features have been reorganized with the recent addition of the "domains" system, allowing Sphinx to be used for projects written in C, Java, and other languages just as easily as Python.

When I asked him about Sphinx, Georg said,

Today I'm very happy and very proud of what the community has done for documentation, also thanks to Sphinx: while Python itself always had excellent docs, now extensive and usable docs are basically a trademark of the whole Python community (just look at ReadTheDocs or packages.python.org).

About Georg

Georg is a PhD student of Physics. He works at the Munich research reactor slash neutron source on magnetism, researching novel materials for the computing of tomorrow. He uses Python to control experiments consisting of dozens of individual devices, and for teaching other scientists how to do so efficiently. When he is not working on Python-related projects, Georg likes to cycle and to cook.

About the Award

Since 2002, O'Reilly Media has presented the Frank Willison Award for Contributions to the Python Community to someone who has done outstanding work for the Python community. The award was established in memory of Frank Willison, a Python enthusiast and O'Reilly editor-in-chief, who died in July 2001. Previous recipients include Christian Tismer (2010), Martin von Löwis (2008), and Steve Holden (2007).

PSF Granted PyTexas 2011 US$750

The Python Software Foundation gave the recent PyTexas conference US$750 in funds.

About the Conference

PyTexas 2011 was the fourth annual free Python programming conference in Texas. It took place Saturday, September 10 - Sunday, September 2011 at the Texas A&M University in College Station, Texas. They have a blog that has some photos from the conference on it. All of the talks at PyTexas were recorded and are starting to appear on NextDayVideo and Miro. If you would like to help plan next year's conference, you can join the PyTexas mailing list.

They estimate about 170 people attended PyTexas 2011, up from 94 at PyTexas 2010, and 22 at PyTexas 2009.

PyCon 2012 Proposals Due 12 Oct.

PyCon 2012, the tenth annual Python conference, is accepting proposals for talks, tutorials, and posters through 12 Oct 2011. Please submit proposals at the PyCon speaker page, and then encourage someone else to prepare one, too.

Call for Proposals

Last year set records for attendance and talk submissions, and the conference organizers are looking forward to an even bigger and better conference this year. Anyone, whether hobbyist or professional programmer, can propose a talk, tutorial, or poster. The call for proposals includes recommendations for creating a good submission.

About PyCon 2012

PyCon 2012 will be held in Santa Clara, California, from March 7 - 15. The conference itself runs March 9 - 11 with two days of tutorials preceding the conference, and four days of sprints following.

Arc Riley Receives PSF Community Service Award

The Python Software Foundation has presented a Community Service Award for the third quarter of 2011 to Arc Riley for dedicated long-term support through organizing the PSF's Google Summer of Code activities, and by managing DNS for PSF servers.

Please join us in recognizing Arc's hard work and dedication.