Wednesday, July 17, 2024

Announcing the 2024 PSF Board Election & Proposed Bylaw Change Results!

The 2024 election for the PSF Board and proposed Bylaws changes created an opportunity for conversations about the PSF's work to serve the global Python community. We appreciate community members' perspectives, passion, and engagement in the election process this year.

We want to send a big thanks to everyone who ran and was willing to serve on the PSF Board. Even if you were not elected, we appreciate all the time and effort you put into thinking about how to improve the PSF and represent the parts of the community you participate in. We hope that you will continue to think about these issues, share your ideas, and join a PSF Work Group if you feel called to do so.

Board Members Elect

Congratulations to our three new Board members who have been elected!

  • Tania Allard
  • KwonHan Bae
  • Cristián Maureira-Fredes

We’ll be in touch with all the elected candidates shortly to schedule onboarding. Newly elected PSF Board members are provided orientation for their service and will be joining the upcoming board meeting.

PSF Bylaw Changes

All three of the proposed PSF Bylaw changes are approved:

We appreciate the high level of engagement on the proposed Bylaw changes, and the range of perspectives and points that were raised. We hope that our efforts towards increased transparency, such as the Office Hour session, and our responses in the FAQ helped to continue to build trust with the community. Our goal with these changes continues to be:

  • Making it simpler to qualify as a Member for Python-related volunteer work
  • Making it easier to vote
  • Allowing the Board more options to keep our membership safe and enforce the Code of Conduct

This announcement serves as notice that the Bylaws changes have been approved by the membership, and will automatically go into effect 15 days from now, on Thursday, August 1st, 2024.

Thank you!

We’d like to take this opportunity to thank our outgoing board member, Débora Azevedo, for her outstanding service. Débora served on the PSF Board through a particularly eventful time; bringing PyCon US into an age of hybrid events, responding to calls from our community for transparency, and hiring multiple new staff members to continue to improve our organization. Thank you for supporting the PSF and the Python community through so much change- you are appreciated!

Our heartfelt thanks go out to each of you who took the time to review the candidates and submit your votes. Your participation helps the PSF represent our community. We received 611 total votes, easily reaching quorum–1/3 of affirmed voting members (794). We’re especially grateful for your patience with continuing to navigate the changes to the voting process, which allows for a valid election and a more sustainable election system.

We also want to thank everyone who helped promote this year’s board election, especially Board Members Denny Perez and Georgi Ker, who took the initiative to cover this year’s election and produced informational videos for our candidates. This promotional effort was inspired by the work of Python Community News last year. We also want to highlight the PSF staff members and PSF Board members who put in tons of effort each year as we work to continually improve the PSF elections.

What’s next?

If you’re interested in the complete tally, make sure to check the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors Election 2024 Results page. These results will be available until 10 Sep 2024 at 10:00 AM EDT.

The PSF Election team will conduct a retrospective of this year’s election process to ensure we are improving year over year. We received valuable feedback about the process and tooling. We hope to be able to implement changes for next year to ensure a smooth and accessible election process for everyone in our community.

Finally, it might feel a little early to mention this, but we will have at least 4 seats open again next year. If you're interested in running or learning more, we encourage you to contact a current PSF Board member or two this year and ask them about their experience serving on the board.