Leadership for PyCon US 2011

The PyCon organizing committee has started making plans for PyCon US 2011, to be held in Atlanta, GA on March 9-17 of next year. One of the first steps is ensuring that the conference committee leadership is in place.

Van Lindberg returns as Conference Chair this year. Van manages all of the activities related to running PyCon US, including organizing the volunteer and paid efforts.

This year Jesse Noller will be assisting Van as Vice Chair. Jesse's primary responsibility is serving as the Program Committee Chair, but he will work with Van in other areas as well.

Doug Napoleone will be the Technical Chair. He is overseeing the redevelopment of the PyCon web site, including the talk selection and schedule management software. Doug will also be responsible for coordinating the technical vendors for the conference, including A/V, networking, and recording.

Greg Lindstrom is returning as Tutorials Coordinator. Greg has been organizing tutorials for a number of years, and his patience and skill have been a big factor in the successful tutorial program that has grown from eight tutorials several years ago to the 32 sessions we regularly have now.

Vern Ceder is returning for a second year as Poster Sessions Coordinator. The poster sessions were one of the big hits at PyCon 2010, and we expect that they will be much bigger for 2011.

Volunteering

Although having good leadership is important, five people cannot organize a conference as big as PyCon. The organizing committee depends on the participation of dozens of volunteers from the community to do most of the work. If you would like to help, join the PyCon organizers mailing list and follow the blog to keep up with other announcements.

Connect with the PSF on Twitter

If your Python user group, conference, or major project has a Twitter account, send a message to @ThePSF so we can follow you and help spread your news.

Updated: We want to follow your user group on twitter. There are just too many individuals to make following one at a time realistic. Sorry for the confusion!

PSF Officers for 2010

The 2010-2011 Board of Directors for the PSF has appointed officers to oversee activities of the Foundation.

Returning Officers

Guido van Rossum returns as President of the PSF. As President, Guido serves as the principal representative of the Foundation.

Steve Holden is Board Chair. He is responsible for organizing and presiding over all Board meetings and keeping the Foundation focused on fulfilling its mission.

Van Lindberg will serve as PyCon Chair again this year. Van manages all of the activities related to running PyCon US, including organizing the volunteer and paid efforts.

Most officers are volunteers from the community, but there are two paid positions on the Board. The Secretary and Treasurer both require regular and timely activity in order to keep up with their duties, so nominal compensation is provided for these officers to make that possible.

Pat Campbell is Secretary, and keeps all of the records of the Foundation. She also prepares the minutes of the Board meetings and delivers formal notices, for example before the start of official voting periods.

Kurt Kaiser continues as Treasurer. Kurt manages the finances of the PSF, receiving income and making payments. He reports the financial status of the Foundation to the members regularly through the members' mailing list.

New Roles

In addition to the traditional organizational roles, the Board is working to identify other areas where focused attention is needed and appoint officers to oversee them. Positions for overseeing Membership, Voting, and other areas are planned but not yet filled.

As Communications Director, Doug Hellmann is responsible for publishing information from the Board, with priority given to any actions taken at Board meetings. He will also be helping to connect other members of the community with information channels to publicize the work they are doing.

More Information

• PSF Board Responsibilities
• PSF Bylaws, including the duties of each officer.
• Board history

Follow the PSF on Facebook

The Python Software Foundation now has a page for sharing news through Facebook. If you're a Facebook user, follow us at http://www.facebook.com/pythonlang for updates on PSF activities.

Members' Meeting at EuroPython 2010

The PSF is organizing a second members' meeting this year, and the first ever held outside of the United States.

In the past, official meetings of the members of the Foundation have been held at PyCon US. This summer, a meeting is being organized for 19:00 GMT+1/BST Monday, July 19 to be held in conjunction with EuroPython in Birmingham, UK.

An agenda for the meeting is being prepared online. It currently includes proposals for increasing the presence of the Python Software Foundation in Europe through a partner network and/or branch of the Foundation. As with the meeting in February, official voting on resolutions put forward will take place online a short time after the in-person event.

The meeting is open to all PSF members, not just those from Europe. If you plan to attend, please contact Marc-André Lemburg so he can make sure a large enough room is reserved.

PSF Sponsored Sprints

At their May 10 meeting, the PSF Board create a new Sprint Committee to organize a series of sprints for working on Python. Jesse Noller is the committee chair.

This new "focused sprint" initiative is part of a concerted effort to attract more contributors to Python's development team and to speed the adoption of Python 3. The PSF has agreed to provide funding to groups interested in organizing sprints related to:

• Python core tasks such as bug triage and evaluating patches
• Python core documentation work
• Porting existing third-party libraries to run under Python 3
• Enhancing http://python.org/ with new content, organization, or design work
• Development of PyPI

Over time, other projects may be added as the committee identifies them. Complete instructions for proposing a sprint for your group will be posted once they are worked out.

In the mean time, the Sprint Committee needs volunteers to help launch this project. The first steps will be to set up some communication channels, and then start developing several guides for new contributors. If you want to help out, contact Jesse Noller via sprints@python.org.

See the announcement on Jesse's blog for more details.