Distinguished Service Award Granted to Naomi Ceder

Naomi Ceder, a longtime Python activist and organizer has been recognized with the PSF’s Distinguished Service Award. Naomi served on the PSF Board from 2015-2020, and as Chair from 2017-2020, supported the search for a new Executive Director last year and keynoted the most recent PyCon US in Salt Lake City.

The PSF’s Distinguished Service Award (DSA) is granted to individuals who make sustained exemplary contributions to the Python community. Each award is voted on by the PSF Board and they are looking for people whose impact has positively and significantly shaped the Python world. Naomi’s work with the Python community very much exemplifies the ethos of “build the community you want to see.” She seems to particularly enjoy taking on the hardest parts, getting a new initiative started and figuring out how to take an idea from the drawing board to a regular activity that we can’t imagine leaving out.

After receiving the award Naomi shared, "I'm so grateful for the recognition, and even more grateful for all of the support that our community has given me over the years. I'm excited to see a new generation of Python volunteers continue the work to make our community and the PSF more global and inclusive, and I'm looking forward to working with smaller communities as they grow and develop."

Over the years Naomi has taken on many leadership roles to make PyCon US successful and welcoming. She served as Chair of the Hatchery Program and she helped found PyCon Charlas, our Spanish language track. At different points in time, she’s also been the Co-chair of Sprints, an Organizer of the PyCon Education Summit and Chair for poster sessions at PyCon US. She also co-founded Trans*Code, an on-going series of hackdays (mostly) in the UK, which aims to build community and foster tech education and skills for transgender and non-binary folks. PyCon US and the global Python community would not look like it does without her tireless, largely behind the scenes work. Her deep thoughtfulness coupled with her energy is an immeasurable gift to the Python community. 

Curious about previous recipients of the DSA or wondering how to nominate someone? We got you.

Announcing Python Software Foundation Fellow Members for Q2 2022! 🎉

The PSF is pleased to announce its second batch of PSF Fellows for 2022! Let us welcome the new PSF Fellows for Q2! The following people continue to do amazing things for the Python community:

Archana Vaidheeswaran

LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Website

Carlton Gibson

Twitter, GitHub, Website

Jürgen Gmach

LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Website, Launchpad, StackOverflow

Matteo Benci

Matthew Lagoe

Paul McGuire

GitHub, Blog

Reshama Shaikh

LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Website

Seth Michael Larson

LinkedIn, Twitter, GitHub, Website

Thomas A Caswell

GitHub, Website

Thank you for your continued contributions. We have added you to our Fellow roster online.

The above members help support the Python ecosystem by being phenomenal leaders, sustaining the growth of the Python scientific community, maintaining virtual Python communities, maintaining Python libraries, creating educational material, organizing Python events and conferences, starting Python communities in local regions, and overall being great mentors in our community. Each of them continues to help make Python more accessible around the world. To learn more about the new Fellow members, check out their links above.

Let's continue recognizing Pythonistas all over the world for their impact on our community. The criteria for Fellow members is available online: https://www.python.org/psf/fellows/. If you would like to nominate someone to be a PSF Fellow, please send a description of their Python accomplishments and their email address to psf-fellow at python.org. We are accepting nominations for quarter 3 through August 20, 2022.

Are you a PSF Fellow and want to help the Work Group review nominations? Contact us at psf-fellow at python.org.

Board Election Results for 2022!

Congratulations to everyone who won a seat on the PSF Board! We’re so excited to work with you. New and returning Board Directors will start their three year terms this month at the next PSF board meeting. Thanks to everyone else who ran this year and added their voice to the conversation about the future of the Python community. It was a tough race with many amazing candidates. 

• Kushal Das
• Jannis Leidel
• Dawn Wages
• Simon Willison

Thanks to everyone who voted and helped us spread the word! We really appreciate that so many of you took the time to participate in our elections this year. By the numbers, we sent ballots to 1,459 voting PSF members who then chose among 26 nominees. By the end 578 votes were cast, well over the one third required for quorum.

While the board elections are over, there are lots of other ways to get involved with the Python community. Here are a few things you can get started with or you could consider serving with one of our working groups. If you want to start participating on the technical side of things, you might want to check out our forum. Next year’s board elections will happen at approximately the same time in 2023. If you want to make sure you are notified via email, join the psf-vote mailing list.