Monday, December 28, 2020

Election Reform Community Update

This past June, the PSF Board of Directors opened a discussion to solicit feedback on the topic of election reform. The discussion was a lively one and touched on the following topics:

  • PSF Director term limits
  • PSF Board geographic makeup
  • PSF Board employer limits
  • PSF membership diversification
  • Revamping PSF membership levels
  • General discussion on election procedures, ballot, and voting
Over the course of the last few months, the PSF Board has discussed these topics to identify opportunities for both short-term and long-term reform.

Short-term reform: PSF Director Term Limits and Employer Limits


The Board is discussing bylaw changes that we will introduce to the community for comment around February 2021. These bylaw changes would investigate PSF Director term limits as well as PSF Board employer limits. We believe that these changes can have an immediate impact on the makeup of the Board, and depending on the community’s feedback, could be decided by the next public vote in 2021.

Longer-term reform: Diversifying the PSF Board and voting membership


Two efforts are well underway to address longer-term reform to help diversify the PSF Board as well as the voting membership: the Diversity and Inclusion Workgroup and the Community Leadership Council.

In 2016, when staggered 3-year terms were introduced for PSF Directors, a significant motivating factor for this resided in the need to continue to promote the sustainability of the PSF. High board turnover every year minimized the contributions any one Director could make as onboarding and becoming familiar with the duties of a Director can take a few months. Additionally annual turnover was a significant burden to the PSF staff. Together these both impacted the ability of the PSF to fulfill its larger mission.

In this same vein, the PSF is implementing the creation of a Community Leadership Council (CLC) to help promote the sustainability of the PSF as well as to increase the global outreach of the PSF.

The goal for the CLC is to start in 2021 and the proposed final format will be discussed in the January 2021 PSF Board meeting. The CLC will offer members opportunities for leadership development. Of particular importance, recruitment for the CLC will heavily focus on regional representation where the PSF Board is currently lacking. To assist with the execution of the CLC, the PSF will be seeking the expertise of the newly founded Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Workgroup led by PSF Director Marlene Mhangami.

The PSF recently published a blog post announcing the D&I Workgroup to the community. In short, we believe that the collective expertise of the D&I Workgroup will greatly help the PSF in its ongoing efforts to promote diversity and inclusion in the community.

Takeaways and Next Steps


A forthcoming update on the timeline for the CLC will be published on the PSF blog in early to mid 2021. Reports will also be made available from the D&I Workgroup in the monthly PSF Board minutes. Should anyone wish to collaborate or provide feedback to the D&I workgroup you can contact `diversity-inclusion-wg@python.org`.

As for other next steps, the PSF Board is committed to continuing to have open and transparent discussions about issues that relate to our mission. We will continue to host open discussions on our Python discuss page. We will additionally host virtual PSF member meetings in early 2021 that are accessible for all timezones (e.g. one meeting for Americas/Europe/Africa time zones, one meeting for Eastern and Asia/Oceania/Australia time zones). When the times and dates for those virtual meetings have been decided, we will post them to the blog.

Lastly, the PSF in the continuation of our mission has an end of year fundraiser where we are actively working to offset the financial setbacks from the global pandemic. Please consider donating, any size donation welcome! Some of the PSF Directors (myself included!) are running matching campaigns too.

We thank the community for weighing in and providing this crucial feedback as we continue to evaluate mechanisms for how to best fulfill the PSF mission. We send our best wishes to you all for a safe end of 2020, and a safe start of 2021!

Friday, December 18, 2020

Virtual Python Core Developer Sprint 2020

Overview 

From October 19th to 23rd, 47 participants gathered for the first-ever virtual 2020 Python Core Developer Sprint. This included 41 Python core developers, 3 triagers, and 3 core dev mentees. The core dev sprint is an annual week-long meeting in which the CPython core team has the opportunity to work directly together on projects and get to know one another better, free from outside distractions. Many of the core developers participating in the event received the week off from their employer to focus on the sprint. 

Due to the challenges of the COVID-19 pandemic, the event had to be done remotely. This was unlike previous years, where it was hosted in-person by a sponsoring organization. While it was not exactly the same experience, it came with the silver lining of allowing participants to join the sprint from anywhere in the entire world, including those that would have otherwise been unable to travel to a physical event. Participants joined in from Canada, USA, England, Poland, Israel, China, Germany, South Korea, Japan, and the Netherlands. 

Google stepped up to host the in-person event in 2020. Since that didn't work out, they were able to sponsor the virtual event so participants could receive a meal stipend for the entire week. We hope the availability of that stipend made it a more enjoyable event for participants.

Setting

The virtual event itself was hosted on Python Discord, one of the largest and most active dedicated Python communities with over 100k members. Hosting the event on an existing Discord server allowed us to significantly simplify the setup process, obtain invaluable help from the Python Discord admin team, and create a greater audience pool for the community Q&A. The platform choice was reached democratically through a poll in the “Committers” section of discuss.python.org.

Leading up to the sprint, we created a readthedocs site as a centralized location for documentation on the sprint, links to shared docs, google calendar, project participants, Discord setup, and more. There was also a dedicated “Tech Check” day, where we set aside a full day to answer participant questions about the sprint and help them with any platform setup. Other components involved in organization of the sprint were tracked via the python/core-sprint repo.

Statistics

By the end of the sprint, we merged a total of 215 pull requests within the core Python repositories, including CPython, devguide, peps, etc. On Discord, sprint participants posted more than 5,800 messages across various channels. 

 

The Ask a Core Dev Anything session was hosted by the Python Discord admin team and live-streamed to YouTube. It had 2,100 unique live viewers, and peaked at 385 concurrent viewers. By the end of the sprint, the session had 3,339 total viewers, with 37 countries tuned in. After the session, a number of core developers continued engaging with Python community members on Discord in the #stream-afterparty channel. 

Project Highlights

Each individual project effectively had their own sub-group, and organized internal meetings via a shared Google Calendar. Some of these projects included stdlib modules such as asyncio, importlib, pegen, ast; as well as other areas like C-API/subinterpreters, PR review, pattern matching, PEP 594 and improving new contributor experience. Here were some of the highlights for each project:


  • documentation - Completed a Documentation Workgroup Charter to be approved by the Steering Council, which would effectively act as a committee of active documentation contributors to create goals for large projects, work through pending documentation PRs, and vote on general documentation decisions (such as the purpose and direction of the tutorial).

  • asyncio - Initially started with a focus on a new streaming API, but was redirected to mapping out the blueprints for an upcoming exception group PEP, which would allow multiple exceptions to be simultaneously propagated for better exception handling in concurrent programs. This is intended to eventually lead to task groups in asyncio.

  • importlib - Worked on support for namespace packages, which was a longstanding issue. Also worked through 3.10 blocker around unreleased zip file handles.

  • pegen - Discussions around steps moving forward with migrations to the new parser. This included publishing a PyPI package with the new parser for 3rd party packages to utilize, merging a PR to make the parser faster, and porting f-strings.

  • C-API/subinterpreters - Created a PR for finishing remaining parts of PEP 573, gathering ideas for improving stable ABI, isolation of extension modules, progress towards isolating runtime state to being per-interpreter, and work on runtime finalization code.

  • garbage collection - Discussions around prototyping a tracing garbage collector with the constraints of maximizing backwards-compatibility with existing C extensions.

  • pattern matching - Completed drafts for PEPs 634, 635, and 636, sent to SC, and opened a draft PR for the reference implementation of those PEPs.

  • core mentorship/new contributors - Discussions around automated welcome and first PR merged messages, incentivising contributors with 2 other reviews for one review of their own PR, automated reminders for stalled PRs, revitalization of core dev office hours, increasing core dev mentorship with documented guides.

  • PEP 594 - Discussions around moving forward with the PEP, archiving removed modules, adoption of modules from 3rd parties, and making the transition smoother for the few users who still rely on them.


For a more comphrehensive summary, see the Send-off Meeting 


Promotions and Mentorships

The team gained two new Python triage members during the sprint: Irit Katriel and Andre Delfino. Irit has been actively contributing to CPython for the past several months. Andre has been contributing to CPython for more than two years, and already had the bug triage permission on b.p.o. 

 
One of the mentees who participated in the sprint, Hai Shi (mentored by Victor Stinner), was later granted the bug triage privileges a month after the sprint. Batuhan Taşkaya, who was one of the bug triage members participating in the sprint, was promoted to core developer a few weeks after the sprint. 
 
Other mentees participating were Lewis Gaul and Filipe Laíns. Lewis was being mentored by Eric Snow to work on subinterpreters, and Filipe was being mentored by Jason R. Coombs to work on importlib.resources.

Retrospective

In order to improve future sprints (especially any with a virtual component), we also asked participants at the end of the event to fill out a survey to provide feedback on parts of the sprint for parts they enjoyed and areas of improvement.

Enjoyed:

  • Usage of Discord as a platform

  • Unscheduled voice/video chats

  • Social games (such as the escape room event)

  • Having an agenda for large meetings

  • The Kick-off meeting

  • Dedicated off-topic channels

Improvements:

  • For each project, having one person as the assigned leader to schedule meetings, create an agenda, and provide a summary of accomplishments

  • Using a shared cloud/google drive folder instead of sharing individual documents

  • More automation for joining the Discord server and assigning roles

  • Dedicated separate server going forward to help with overload of unread channels

  • Maintaining a single centralized dashboard. Our readthedocs site initially started that way, but could have used more periodic updates

  • Swag/merchandise for the event (did not have adequate time this year)

      

Links

 

Thank you!

A huge thanks to:

  • Everyone who participated in the sprint

  • Google for sponsoring the event so we could provide meal stipends for the week

  • Python Discord for hosting the event, as well assisting with the live streaming and editing of the community Q&A

  • The PSF for supporting and providing infrastructure for sprint


Sprint attendees: Joannah Nanjekye, Barry Warsaw, Batuhan Taşkaya, Pablo Galindo Salgado, Mariatta Wijaya, Łukasz Langa, Senthil Kumaran, Carol Willing, Andrew Kuchling, Neil Schemenauer, Petr Viktorin, Zach Ware, Brett Cannon, Ammar Askar, Eric V. Smith, Stefan Behnel, Ned Deily, Lysandros Nikolaou, Emily Morehouse, Tal Einat, Jason R. Coombs, Hai Shi, Kyle Stanley, Terry Jan Reedy, Guido van Rossum, Ronald Oussoren, Thomas Wouters, Yury Selivanov, Steve Dower, Dong-hee Na, Christian Heimes, Larry Hastings, Eric Snow, Gregory P. Smith, Brandt Bucher, Lewis Gaul, Filipe Laíns, Mark Shannon, Inada Naoki, Paul Ganssle, Éric Araujo, Irit Katriel, Fred Drake


Written by: Kyle Stanley and Mariatta Wijaya

Thursday, December 17, 2020

Rebuilding the PSF Fundraiser 2020 - Your support means so much 🤗!

The Python Software Foundation launched its end-of-the-year fundraiser on December 1st and the response has been overwhelming 💙💛. Even in this difficult time, our community has come together to help the PSF in its efforts to support Python development and to grow a diverse and international community of Python programmers. 

In 2019, the strategic plan for the PSF shifted towards supporting CPython sustainability. With lower expected income from PyCon US for two years, we need donation and sponsorship support to make these plans a reality. 

As of Dec 17th, our fundraiser has generated over $52,000 in donations and there are still almost 2 weeks to go. If you haven't yet donated, there are several ways you can help:

  • You can purchase a product/service from any of the below companies and part of the proceeds will go to the PSF. Click on the infographics below to see the offers.
  • Donate directly to the PSF! No purchase is necessary to participate in the fundraiser. You can donate directly here so that 100% of your donation goes to the PSF.
  • A number of individuals are offering to match donations to the PSF, see matcher.pyfound.org for more information.

If you have already donated, thank you from the bottom of our hearts. If donating is not an option, helping to spread the word about the fundraiser would be greatly appreciated.









Tuesday, December 15, 2020

PSF Scientific Working Group announces call for grant requests

The Scientific Working Group of the Python Software Foundation is excited to announce a next call for funding proposals in 2020/2021. The goal of the Scientific Working Group is to advance the scope, breadth, and utility of Python for scientific work. This call places specific emphasis on maintainer / maintenance support, outreach and education, as well as improved infrastructure & documentation. We would be especially excited to fund developers within the Global South.

A proposal might be, for example, to implement continuous integration or overhaul documentation for an existing scientific Python project. Funding is for a maximum of three months. A brief report, to be provided upon conclusion of the grant, will inform future extension or expansion of grants.

Funding guidelines are outlined in the working group charter, and previously funded events and projects are listed on our homepage. Funding is for up to $4,000 USD per project. Project maintainers and creators are encouraged to reach out to the Working Group if they are aware of developers who may benefit from these funds. 

We look forward to sharing the work produced by our grant-holders with the Scientific Python community, and inspiring others to take advantage of these funding opportunities.

Please submit proposals as directed at https://www.python.org/psf/grants/. We have extended our deadline to consider the first batch of grant requests on February 15th, 2021, and announce decisions at the end of that month. Subsequent proposals will be evaluated on a quarterly basis.


Monday, December 14, 2020

PSF is hiring: Director of Resource Development

The PSF is seeking to hire a Director of Resource Development to spearhead fundraising and sponsorship efforts! We are accepting resumes through January 14th, 2021. See the job description section below for more information.

After 5 years, our sponsorship coordinator, Betsy Waliszewski, is beginning her transition towards retirement. Betsy has been an incredible help to the PSF and the Python community. Our goal is for Betsy to work with the new hire for a dedicated time in Q1. Additionally, Betsy will continue helping with administrative tasks in the first half of 2021 in a part-time capacity. We wish Betsy the best as she begins a new chapter beyond the PSF!

Taking into consideration Betsy's retirement and the financial impact of 2020 and 2021, the PSF's need for this role is now greater than ever. We look forward to reading the resumes that come in!

Job Description

The Python Software Foundation is a 501(c)(3) non-profit corporation that holds the intellectual property rights behind the Python programming language. We also run the PyCon US conference annually, support other Python conferences/workshops around the world, and fund Python related development with our grants program. To see more info about the PSF, check out our Annual Impact Report and public records. Please see the sponsor program and application from the PSF site.

The Python Software Foundation is looking for a full-time Director of Resource Development responsible for the following:

  • Develop a plan for achieving budgeted fundraising goals consistent with the values and strategic priorities in coordination with the Executive Director
  • Develop and implement an overall plan for increasing new and current donors* and the measurement of success of that plan
  • Develop working relationships with Board Fundraising Committee
  • Build relationships with sponsoring organizations
  • Coordinate with all program* sponsors to deliver on benefits provided
  • Coordinate with program leads to ensure prospectus stays up-to-date and relevant
  • Build relationships with donors*
  • Build relationships with Sponsor WG, Marketing WG, volunteers and coordinate with Work Groups on helpful resources and donor gifts
  • Conduct outreach with potential new donors
  • Stay up-to-date on tax-advantageous giving opportunities 
  • Prepare quarterly print materials (ask letters, newsletters, annual impact report, etc.) to share with donors
  • Ensure timely thank-yous and follow-up for all donations in coordination with Accounting
  • Develop and oversee annual fundraising events
  • Assist with database management to ensure we keep up to date records
  • Track donors, memberships via database and run relevant reports through CiviCRM database
  • Develop annual marketing plan and the development of marketing materials 

Preferred & required skills:

  • Fundraising and marketing experience is required
  • Strong written and verbal communications skills
  • Strong organizational skills with a focus on detail orientation
  • Able to pick up on new technologies/software platforms 
  • Experience with customer resource management systems (CiviCRM preferred)
  • Comfortable working with remote team (Slack, Google docs/sheets)

We believe that the future of open source must include everyone. We welcome all job-seekers regardless of race, color, religion, age, sexual orientation, gender identity or expression, national origin, veteran or disability status. Python is a global community and the PSF aims to support a safe environment for all. More information can be found on our Code of Conduct page.

  • * “program” here refers to each sponsor program we offer as part of our sponsorship prospectus (example: PyCon, Foundation, PyPI, CPython)
  • * “donors” for the PSF also includes members since some members pay a yearly fee

Please email questions and resumes (in PDF format) to apply@python.org. We are accepting resumes through January 14th, 2021.

Friday, December 11, 2020

Elaine Wong Awarded the PSF Community Service Award for Q3 2020

 

 

Elaine Wong organizer PyCon Canada, PyLadies Toronto and CSV Conference, has been awarded the Python Software Foundation 2020 Q3 Community Service Award. 
RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation award the 2020 Q3 Community Service Award to Elaine Wong for her community work. Elaine is an organizer for PyCon CA, PyLadies Toronto, and CSV Conference, a conference speaker,  she co-hosts a monthly virtual Conference Organizer meetup, and Elaine helps with video at community events.
We interviewed Elaine to learn more about her inspiration and work with the Python community. We also asked several of Elaine's close associates -- including John Chodacki, Lorena Mesa, and Tom Meagher -- who have had the opportunity of working with Elaine within CSV conference, PyLadies and PyCAR - a yearly bootcamp for journalists learning Python.

Elaine Wong's Origin Story


Can you tell us about your origin story?


My dad showed me how to program his DOS computer when I was 5 years old and I was hooked on tech after that. The only downside was he tried to show me how to write a start-up script and I ended up overriding his and he couldn’t start his computer up anymore. So that put a pause in my programming career until I was older and could read English. 


I’ve really been a tech nerd all my life, in high school I joined the computer science and robotics club and I always wanted to try the latest tech in my Radio and Television Arts classes when I was in undergrad. 

 

I tried to code an iOS app when Apple released its iPhone SDK to some pretty hilariously bad results because I had no idea what I was doing.


What was your earliest involvement with the Python developers community?


After graduation, I started working in the newsroom as a journalist. After taking a Python class at NICAR, which is a conference for Computer Assisted Reporting, I wanted to continue learning how to use Python so I went to my local user group meet-up in hopes of finding support. 
 
It was pretty intimidating—there were probably 100 people there, mostly seasoned developers and I didn’t know how to say, as a beginner, “hey, anyone want to pair program? I have this code problem and I’m stuck”. 
 
A friend recommended going to PyLadies Toronto, so I started going to these meet-ups and met a great group of people who helped me along with my coding journey, answering my questions and offering to help me troubleshoot my Flask app. It was lovely to have a community willing to give up their free time to help me. In the end, it allowed me to level up my skills. 

Paying it Forward - the driving force behind community volunteering


What drives and inspires you into volunteering your time and resources into the Python Community - organizing PyCon CA, PyLadies Toronto, CSV Conference and all?

Coming from a non-traditional coding industry like journalism, it was hard to find mentors and I am forever grateful to those folks I’ve met at Pyladies and PyCon Canada for taking the time to help me. I wanted to pay it forward, so I continued volunteering so that other people would get this opportunity too. 


Interdisciplinary conferences such as csv,conf, were and still are a great excuse for folks from various countries and industries working on similar data problems to chat with each other. And, it is always so great to see new forms of collaboration happening among people who normally might not interact with one another. 


Being able to help provide a platform to help facilitate these types of discussions has been rewarding.


I really want to echo what Rami said about the Python community: 

Some of the most intelligent, empathetic, thoughtful and inspirational people I've met have been through the Python community.

I wholeheartedly agree with that statement, and it has been really inspiring to continue to learn and grow as part of the Python community because of its strong and positive spirit.

How has your involvement within the Python community helped your career?


My involvement with the Python community has really helped build my confidence, and I have also learned a lot about the importance of teamwork. 

 

Years of organizing conferences and meet-ups have helped me become less shy, more willing to ask for help and more understanding about how to lead a team, especially one made up of volunteers. 


What are your thoughts about women's participation in the dev community and how can more women be encouraged to be active in the community?


I recently found this quote that really sums up my thoughts on women’s participation in the dev community, as Karen Sparck Jones, who was one of the pioneers in information retrieval (IR) and natural language processing (NLP) said, 

Computing is too important to be left to men.


As for encouraging more women to be active in the community, I think it’s important to support those women who are currently active to show that the community wants more women to be active and to thrive. It is the responsibility of everyone in the community to build an inclusive community that has everyone willing to listen to one another, respecting each other’s opinions and create a positive culture.  

 

As Débora Azevedo said, 

Together with the PyLadies, the wider Python community can collaborate, working as partners with one goal in common. Having women become active participants and leaders in the Python community is important. It shouldn't be just one group's fight. By joining forces we can go a lot further. Being part of PyLadies Brazil and Django Girls Natal is the way I found to do my little good in the IT world. Teaching, advising and helping more women to believe in themselves and feel like it is possible for them and to feel like they can do it.

Elaine Wong's Impact Story

Tom Meagher speaks on Elaine’s contribution to PyCAR - a bootcamp focused on  introducing data journalists who are comfortable with spreadsheets to the basic elements—and power—of programming, using Python.

For the past several years, Elaine has been an integral part of the teaching team for PyCAR, a two-day workshop at the annual Investigative Reporters and Editors Computer Assisted Reporting Conferences. 


Elaine has helped lead the first lessons in the curriculum, and her calm, self-effacing tone has helped scores of journalists, who tend to be a technophobic lot, recognize that programming is something they can do. She eases them over their initial fears and with gentle humor gets them started taking their first steps as programmers. 


She is very effective at teaching, and by kicking off the lessons, she helps to create a space that is inclusive and welcoming for journalists from a wide array of backgrounds. 


We've been lucky to have her as part of the effort, and she's been a great supporter of the mission of PyCAR, to help investigative journalists see that programming is something they're perfectly capable of learning and that it can revolutionize the way they do their jobs. 

Lorena Mesa, Director and Chair, Python Software Foundation speaks on Elaine’s impact on PyLadies Toronto and the Python Community

Elaine is a selfless person whose volunteerism is second to none. Always a joy to work with, Elaine has contributed her videography and broadcasting skills to help such Python conferences as PyCascades - a regional conference in the Cascades region - as well as several user groups events like the PuPPy's (Puget Sound Python Programming Group) first annual gala featuring Guido Van Rossum.


Elaine was the chair of PyCon Canada in 2018 and co-chair in 2019. I have only heard the best things from anyone who works with Elaine. She has helped offer her technical expertise to several organizers this past year as everyone has moved their conferences online. As a frequent participant in the monthly Python conference organizer meetup, she is always keen to help.


For PyLadies, Elaine throughout 2019 and 2020 helped us build PyLadies Global. 


PyLadies Global, started from a PyCon PyLadies "Future of Us" workshop in 2018,  is the ongoing effort to build global PyLadies volunteer teams where PyLadies members can contribute to various efforts - such as our technical team and our community outreach teams - as you would an open source project. 


These project teams all report to the newly formed PyLadies Global Council team, which Elaine was instrumental in helping us form. Hours of time spent managing our online presence such as our Slack and our repositories, as well as outreach and various other administrative tasks were instrumental in getting the word out about this effort. 


Elaine took on the bulk of the administrative tasks, as an example she has helped build processes around how we approve new chapters. Much of the work of PyLadies Global is the type of work that many don't find "glorious", it is the small daily tasks which need to be done to help build a strong foundation for a community. Elaine has never shied from that work. It is an honor to consider her a colleague and friend.

John Chodacki on Elaine Wong impact on CSV conference

Community-led events are hard to pull off.  You need committed people who both own the success and be willing to put in the hard work.  It takes passion for community and the cause to get it right.  From the moment Elaine joined the organizing committee, she brought her passion.  She put her heart and soul into CSVconf.  


As a result, the entire organizing team and CSVconf community looks to her for support and for guidance.  Everyone involved would agree: CSV conference is successful because of the service and leadership of Elaine Wong.


CSVconf is a global community of data makers and hackers. We have attendees and presenters from tons of different places and communities.  It is great how Elaine has helped bridge our event with the Python community, in Canada and globally.  If you have worked with her, you will know that Elaine’s approach to collaboration is inclusive and welcoming.  She brings everyone to the table and that allows for no drama cross-pollination of ideas and approaches.  It's been a privilege to learn from her approach: taking action and expanding the sense of community along the way. 


We at the Python Software Foundation wish to once again congratulate and celebrate Elaine Wong for her amazing contributions to PyLadies and the wider Python community.

Wednesday, December 09, 2020

Announcing the PSF Diversity and Inclusion Work Group

Python has become one of the most popular programming languages in the world, meaning that along with this growth the Python community has continued to expand, in every continent around the globe. While this growth has been exciting, it has also brought new challenges and opportunities to improve our global community. In order to further the PSF’s mission to ‘support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers’, the Python Software Foundation is excited to announce the launch of the Diversity and Inclusion Workgroup (hereby referred to as the D&I workgroup). The D&I workgroup will help own this important work, as well as provide guidance to the PSF Board of Directors in line with this mandate.


Throughout 2020 the PSF and PSF Board engaged the community in a discussion about board election reform. Many members voiced concerns over the lack of geographical representation on the Board. Given the prior conversations the Board has had about how to better support our international community members and the feedback collected throughout 2020, the D&I workgroup was created. Ultimately, the D&I workgroup will help advise on how to increase diversity and inclusion on a global scale in the Python community. Whether it’s supporting international users, improving board representation or increasing core development mentorship, this group will proactively engage with the community and PSF leadership to achieve this larger goal. 


D&I Workgroup membership

The D&I workgroup will initially focus on geographical diversity. We are aware that diversity and inclusion is multi-faceted and must address issues beyond geography. As the workgroup becomes more established, its mandate and membership will broaden as well.

With this purpose in mind, the Board has recruited Python community members from every continent - minus Antarctica - in the world. Our members will advocate for and provide insights on behalf of their local communities as best they can, and the workgroup will be chaired by PSF Director Marlene Mhangami. Below is the list of initial members:

Member List (In Alphabetical Order)

  • Anna Ossowski (United Kingdom/Germany)

  • Anthony Shaw (Australia)

  • Boluwaji Akinlade (Nigeria)

  • Christian Heimes (Germany)

  • Cynthia Xin (China)

  • Dustin Ingram (USA)

  • Débora Azevedo (Brazil)

  • Georgi Ker (Thailand) 

  • Iqbal Abdullah (Malaysia/Japan)

  • Katia Lira (Mexico)

  • Lorena Mesa (USA)

  • Mannie Young (Ghana)

  • Manuel Kaufmann(Argentina)

  • Mariam Haji (Kenya)

  • Marlene Mhangami (Zimbabwe)

  • Phoebe Chua (Malaysia/USA)

  • Reuven Lerner (Israel) 

  • Sara EL-ATEIF (Morocco) 

  • Sayantika Banik (India)

  • Tereza Iofciu (Germany)

Goals of the D&I Workgroup 

The Workgroup will pursue its goals in several ways including: 

  1. Communicating and collecting feedback from the Python community to understand how the PSF can better serve and grow a diverse membership. 

  2. Measuring, evaluating, and sharing the PSF’s progress towards its diversity initiatives on a regular basis

  3. Discussing policy, initiatives and grant proposals to recommend to the PSF Board of Directors in line with the group’s purpose. 

  4. Recruiting members that will advocate for and provide insights on behalf of their local communities and groups. 

We need your help! 

For more details about the D&I workgroup (e.g. how it will function & report feedback, values) our full charter is available here. We are also asking for feedback from the community on your thoughts about diversity and inclusion. Please take a few minutes to fill out this form. The community can expect ongoing reports as part of our commitment to transparency. If you would like to reach out to the workgroup directly with any questions, ideas, or thoughts please email diversity-inclusion-wg@python.org. If you would like to become a member of the workgroup, please send us an email expressing your interest. We will begin to review new applications for membership in the first quarter of 2021.

We are excited about supporting the global Python community in new and creative ways. The D&I workgroup is only able to do this work with the help of the Python Software Foundation. Currently, the PSF is running a fundraiser to raise $60,000 USD by December 31st. Pythonistas can get discounted offers on products and services to level up their Python knowledge, and help the PSF raise funds at the same time! Visit the fundraiser home page to see more details or read more on the blog

Thank you for being part of our community!