The Python Core Mentorship Program

Jesse Noller recently announced the formation of the Python Core Mentorship program. The idea behind the program is to help programmers, including students and developers from other projects, connect with experienced contributors who serve as mentors to ease them into Python Core development.

Contributors Wanted

The mentors will help people regardless of experience level by bringing them up to speed, answering questions, and giving guidance as needed in a non-confrontational and welcoming way. The contributors will receive guidance through the entire contribution process, including discussions on the related mailing lists, the bug tracker, Mercurial, code reviews, and much more.

Early Success

The program already has been successful, and the participants have actively committed a number of patches. There have also been several constructive discussions on the mailing list, helping guide people in the right direction for a variety of issues.

Code of Conduct

The program has a code of conduct explained on the website that aims to assuage concerns many new contributors have when interacting with experienced developers and mailing lists on contribution in general. Jesse and the other mentors hope that this program can act as a model for other projects long-term, not just benefiting Python-Core. They also want the program to help increase the overall diversity of the contributors to Python.

Signing Up

The program is run via the mailing list and has a clear, concise website devoted to it. If you would like to join to ask questions and begin on the path of core contribution, or even if you are an experienced developer (even experienced in Python-Core) looking to ask questions you're worried about asking on other lists, this is an excellent opportunity to jump in, ask and get your feet wet!

Summer pyGames Registration Open

The 2011 Summer pyGames event is now accepting registrations for student teams and volunteer coordinators. Registration will remain open until the competition begins on 11 June at 9:00 AM US Eastern time.

Summer pyGames

The Summer pyGames project is a six-week long competition during which high school students develop open-source educational software and games to be used and distributed to schools in South Carolina. Many of last year's competing teams presented at the FIRST Championship in St Louis. The program has also been showcased at the FIRST Robotics Palmetto Regional, POSSCON and INNOVENTURE Southeast.

Competition Details

The Summer pyGames will begin on June 11th at 9am with the announcement of this year's challenge. Students will have 6 weeks to create a new video game or modify previous games submitted to the competition. Scoring, theme, and rules will be announced at the season kickoff.

Teams may be made up of 1-7 students. The competition is geared for high school age students, high school graduates for 2011 are welcome to participate. Younger students may be admitted to the competition upon request. All teams must have an adult contact who can communicate directly with the Summer pyGames coordinators.

Resources will be available on the Summer pyGames website, and additional forums and chat channels will be made available to registered teams. Volunteers will be available to assist students with questions regarding their projects.

The projects will be graded by professional programmers, graphic artists, audio professionals, teachers, and students.

Sponsors

The Python Software Foundation has given the Summer pyGames organization a grant of US$1,000. After combining the grant with contributions from One Laptop Per Child, BAE Systems, Reaction Apps LLC, The Palmetto Project, BOSCH, and FIRST Robotics Team 342, the organizers plan to offer netbook computers as the grand prize for the competition this year.

Additional prizes and donations are still needed for the 2011 season. Donations can also be made via Paypal at the Summer pyGames website. Summer pyGames is a 100% volunteer run non-profit organization (501(c)3 under the Palmetto Project). All donations go directly toward prizes for the students.

PSF Needs Help Creating Logos

The Python Software Foundation board is looking for volunteers to create logos that can be made available to supporters and members of the PSF. Whether you are a professional graphics artist or you just enjoy creating artwork, the PSF would appreciate your contribution.

PSF Member Logos

The first set of logos is for members and sponsors of the Foundation. We need logos for the following support levels, listed in order from lowest to highest:

• Supporter of the Python Software Foundation
• Honorary Associate Member of the Python Software Foundation (HAMs)
• Sponsor Member of the Python Software Foundation
• Principal Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
• Patron Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
• Benefactor Sponsor of the Python Software Foundation
• Member of the Python Software Foundation

Python Marketing

The PSF also needs several other logos for Python 2 and 3 marketing. For example, a set to identify which version of Python is supported by a piece of software. There are three combinations:

• Supports Python 2
• Supports Python 2 and 3
• Supports Python 3

Mobile Applications

Developers occasionally request permission to use the logo for mobile phone application icons. Ideally, we can establish a standard for these (such as a square with one line of text below the Python logo).

Logo Variations

The PSF trademark committee frequently receives requests for permission to use modified versions of the standard Python logo. Ideally, all the new logos should be available in four variations for size and color. Having wide and tall versions, like the existing "Python powered" logos on the website, will allow the logo to be used in different layouts. Versions with and with dark and light backgrounds will let it to fit into different color schemes.

Submitting a Proposal

Email the PSF board (psf at python dot org) with a URL to your proposal. The font files for Flux Regular, used in the official Python logo, will be made available to designers who need them.

The final logos needs to be licensed to the PSF with the option to re-license to other projects or uses. If your submission is selected, you will be asked to sign a contributor agreement.

GSoC Student Applications Accepted

The Python Software Foundation is pleased to announce that 36 applications from students wishing to participate in the Google Summer of Code program have been accepted with Python-related projects sponsored by the PSF.

Accepted Projects

Below is a list of the projects accepted for this summer. The links point to the application abstracts on the GSoC site, so click through for more details about a given project.

Name	Project Title
Amaury Medeiros	PySoy’s interactive widgets
Anthus Williams	Mesh morphs for PySoy
Bart Baker	statsmodels times series and state-space model estimation
Ben Edwards	Implement Community Detection Algorithms in NetworkX
Benedict Stein	Mailman: # Complete the Django web u/i
Boris FELD	PYpi Test Infrastructure
Daniel Kluev	Pyjamas - in-browser python interpreter
Daniel Neuhäuser	Developing a benchmark suite (for Python 3.x)
Danilo Freitas	Turn Codespeed into a multi-project, statistically savvy application
Douglas Morato	TRYTON : Add full text search capabilities on Tryton records
Drew Rodman	Mailman 3 Pipermail SQL conversion and upgrade script
Dushyant Bansal	Developing Archives for Mailman 3
Ezio Melotti	Enhancements to the Python issue tracker
Greg Slodkowicz	Python Import Engine
Henri Bollig	Tryton, Pysql, python module to generate SQL strings
Xu Dehai	fulfil setuptools features for distutils2
Idan Kamara	Mercurials command server
Joe Dallago	Pylons Project - Porting Pyramid to Python 3
Joel Bohman	Porting Pyramid to Python 3
Jon Neal	Game Networking using ICE-UDP for pysoy
Juhani Åhman	PySoy: Enhanced 2.5D scenes
Mark Florisson	Cython: Supporting Parallelism, Templates and Typed Views on Memory
Max Holtzberg	Implementing a POS system for the Tryton project
Mayank Singh	Motion-sensing as an alternative user input for PySoy games
Pieter Holtzhausen	Focused improvements to scikits.image
Putra Manggala	NetworkX: More Flow!
Rodrigo Hübner	A Rich Text Editor for Tryton Client
Romain Guillebert	Python backend for Cython using PyPy's FFI
Sara Foster	PySoy Scene Designer
Sara Kazemi	Creature Artificial Emotion [PySoy]
Martin Leon Sébastien	[Tryton]Relatorio: FODT format, embed opendocument and support for opendocument spreadsheet.
Torsten Becker	Implementing a Flexible String Representation for Python Based on PEP 393
Vlad Niculae	Dictionary learning in scikits.learn
Wojciech Wojtyniak	Implementing parallel builds of Python's modules
Yeswanth Swami	PyTI(PyPI Testing Infrastructure)
Yun Lee	Improve Mercurial's built-in help

Statistics

This has been a growth year for the PSF's involvement in GSoC. We have had the largest group of applicants and mentors since we began participating in the program, up about 10% from last year. Students submitted 89 applications, both for core Python development work and for one of the projects being sponsored by the PSF. The community has provided 72 mentors to help the students.

Increasing Diversity

The PSF is committed to increasing the diversity of the Python community. One way we have been working toward that goal is by encouraging women and other minorities to apply to participate in GSoC through one of the PSF-sponsored projects. This year, three of the 36 accepted applications are from women. That is an improvement over past years, but we still have work to do to raise the participation rate further.

What Next?

The GSoC program is now in the Community Bonding Period. Community members should watch for messages from the student participants on mailing lists and in other forums, and take the opportunity to get to know them. This is also a good time to introduce them to the development tools and processes, and answer questions about how patches are reviewed and approved or how best to communicate with other team members.

For more details about the schedule, see the GSoC timeline on the project web site.

EuroPython Early Bird Registration Deadline is 12 May

The early bird deadline for registering to attend EuroPython 2011 is midnight 12 May. The discount for registering early is €60 for standard tickets, so reserve your spot now, before the price raises!

EuroPython

EuroPython will be held in Florence, Italy June 20-26. It is the official European conference about the Python programming language. For more information about the amazing lineup of tutorials, events, and talks, check out the program guide on the website.

Uniblue Systems Ltd. Joins the PSF as Sponsor Member

The Python Software Foundation is happy welcome Uniblue as a sponsor member. Uniblue is a software company with products designed to improve the speed and stability of PC operating systems.

Uniblue explained their interest in the Python Software Foundation:

Our success with Python has shown us, clearly, how important is the strength of the Python community to our own long-term strategic success. Ultimately we benefit from a Python language that is robust, bug-free and as broadly supported by the development community as possible. By deepening our commitment to Python we can motivate our current development team, while also demonstrating to potential future employees that a career with Uniblue is a path to more actively participating in the broader Python project. Combined, these two vectors will help us build the team we need, while also helping Python develop its code and its community.

Becoming a Sponsor

Sponsor members pay annual dues to support the Foundation's activities. Prospective sponsor members apply for membership to the PSF board. The board verifies that they meet the criteria set out for sponsor members and then votes on whether to recommend them for sponsor membership in the next election. For more information about membership in the Python Software Foundation, refer to the Membership FAQ.

Next PSF Members Meeting: EuroPython 2011

The next official meeting for members of the Python Software Foundation will be held Tuesday, 21 June 2011 19:30 CEST (local time) at EuroPython in Florence, Italy. The meeting will take place at the EuroPython conference venue, the Grand Hotel Mediterraneo. Attendance is expected to be similar to the event as last year in Birmingham, when 30 PSF members and 8 invited non-members participated.

If you plan to attend, please contact meeting chair Marc-André Lemburg so we can estimate the size of the room we will need.

For more details, see the Members Meeting Agenda in the PSF wiki.

PyPy Receives US$10,000 at PyCon USA

The PyPy Project received US$10,000 from the Python Software Foundation at the 2011 USA Python Conference in recognition for the speed with which the project has matured. Jesse Noller officiated, and gave them the check on behalf of the PSF. You can read their response on the PyPy status blog. We would like to congratulate them on their success and wish them well!