Welcoming Google as a Visionary Sponsor of the PSF

Our top sponsors—companies who step forward to make the biggest investment in Python and its community—not only use Python for their own internal development, but also offer Python as a crucial part of the products they offer to their own customers. That is certainly true of Google, the Python Software Foundation’s first Visionary Sponsor.

Google's donations and sponsorship funds will be used to support a number of PSF initiatives, including the first CPython Developer in Residence. The Python Steering Council and Python Software Foundation will work together to contract a developer to help CPython determine what needs to take priority through analytical metrics as well as helping CPython understand how backlog can be addressed. The role will also be responsible for surveying maintainers to paint a better landscape of CPython, which will be used to ensure future funding and volunteer hours are used efficiently and effectively.

In addition, the sponsorship funds will also be used towards critical supply-chain security improvements, including developing productized malware detection for PyPI, a prototype of dynamic analysis infrastructure for distributions, and other foundational tool improvements. 

Google has been a Python Software Foundation sponsor since 2010. Our hearts are full of gratitude for their support. You can read more about how Google is supporting the Python ecosystem on their blog.

PyCon 2016: A look back, my take away, and thank you!

Portland, Oregon
photo credit: A. Jesse Jiryu Davis

A quick look back at PyCon 2016

I am writing this during my flight home to Chicago as I reminisce about PyCon, which officially ended yesterday in Portland, Oregon. This was yet another successful conference! We had over 3200 pythonistas check in! The 2016 tutorials and talks sold out in March, which is much sooner than previous conferences. Both committees did a great job reviewing and providing guidance to those that needed it. Personally I only found time to watch Lars' talk, but thanks to our efficient AV crew, I will watch the rest in the comfort of my home over the next few weeks. Hearing the positive feedback from our sponsors, even when logistical issues popped up, tells me the companies that helped make PyCon happen, are just as dedicated to our community as we are. I appreciate their support and understanding. 

PyCon 2016 was my ninth PyCon. I have enjoyed organizing each one of those nine conferences. Over the last nine years I have seen the Python community grow and become a respected community. PyCon is, for many, the central time of the year and I know it is for me and the PSF. Through our learning experiences at PyCon, we are able to help the Python community all around the world. We are able to offer others insight on conference childcare, our financial aid system, and volunteer involvement amongst other things. We also learn from others within our community and welcome guidance for how processes could be more effective and less overwhelming. On a larger scale, PyCon's revenue helps us (the PSF) fund hundreds of other PyCons and teaching workshops around the world per year. But those are not the only ways that PyCon impacts our community.

My main take away

I have noticed that it is easier for us to improve and grow as a community when we meet in person from time to time. Over the years I have learned through my own experiences that emailing about community relations is not always easy nor productive. When I come to PyCon and see the many interactions, I understand the reasons why conferences are so vital to any community. When we are face to face, we are able to put our differences and opinions aside. It is easier for us to put ourselves into someone else's shoes. When we find common ground, we become a stronger community. Watching Twitter the last few days has been my evidence for this happening at PyCon. I have seen so many moving "good-byes" and appreciations for our community. I have seen attendees publicly thanking our community for its openness and acceptance. Witnessing this energizes me and inspires me to further support the community through my PSF and PyCon work. Thank you PyCon 2016 for motivating me and making me a stronger individual in so many ways. Let us keep this inspirational motivation going all year round!

My long list of thank yous

• Betsy Waliszewski (psf event coordinator): Welcome to the PSF & PyCon community! Thank you for all of the time and energy you put into the pre-planning and onsite work. Having you at PyCon 2016 was a tremendous help that I have never had before. I look forward to developing your role as event coordinator!
• Kurt Kaiser (psf treasurer): Thank you for all of the work you do for PyCon, especially for financial aid. The work you do impacts hundreds of PyCon goers every year.
• Brandon Rhodes (conference chair): Thank you for being such a wonderful person. It was a pleasure working with you and seeing the way you work. Working with you has taught me much more than you know.
• Ruben Orduz, Carol Willing, Allen Downey (tutorial chairs): Thank you for all of your work reviewing tutorial proposals and helping those that needed guidance.
• Ned Jackson Lovely, Karen Rustad Tölva (program chairs), and the program committee: Thank you for all of your work reviewing hundreds of talks. Thank you for coming together as a community when needed. I admire your strength and ability to work through certain situations.
• Ashwini Oruganti and LVH (financial aid chairs): Thank you for continuing to improve our financial aid process. I know this task needed a lot of time, but we will continue to work to make it better for the volunteers as well as the recipients. 
• Barry Warsaw and Larry Hastings (language summit chairs): Thank you for working to put together a great language summit. I look forward to seeing the evolvement of the summit and the python language.
• Chalmer Lowe, Jessica Ingrassellino, Ria Baldevia (education summit chairs): Thank you for continuing to grow the education summit. This year, the event was a huge success and I look forward to what it will bring to PyCon 2017!
• Rami Chowdhury and Yarko Tymciurak (volunteer chairs): Thank you for helping organize our volunteer efforts. Our volunteers make our conference significant and special. I am sure they all appreciate you two also :)
• Felix Crux (mobile guide chair): Thank you for helping with the mobile guide. Your attention to detail helped us put together an awesome guide that many attendees took advantage of.
• Anna Ossowski, Kinga Kięczkowska and Hobson Lane (open space chairs): Thank you for putting so much effort into improving Open Spaces. I look forward to seeing what you will bring to 2017!
• David Wolever and Julia Duimovich (session staff chairs): The work you two put forth onsite is immeasurable. Without you both, the talks would not happen like clock work! The session chairs give our speakers the attention they deserve. Thank you all who volunteered to be a session chair and/or runner!
• Brian Costlow (CART coordinator): Thank you for taking on this task this year. Your thorough feedback will definitely help us make the process better going forward!
• Hannes Hapke and Gustavo Pinto (poster session chairs): I enjoyed seeing the posters get so much attention this year. Thank you for making that event run so smoothly!
• Lynn Root and Thursday Bram (lightning talk chairs): Thank you for putting together the lightning talks daily and moderating the 5 minute talks. 
• Don Sheu and Yannick Gingras (startup row chairs): Thank you for working so hard to give startups a chance to market their work and to meet awesome pythonistas!
• Mathieu Leduc-Hamel and Nick Lang (5k coordinators): Mathieu - thank you for helping us pre-plan the 5k. Also, your dedication to wake up that early and get everyone organized is appreciated! Nick - thank you for helping us onsite and giving us pointers on how we can improve the process!
• Doug Napoleone, Jackie Kazil and Lynn Root (pyladies auction chairs): Thank you for making the PyLadies Auction such a fun event and raising so much money for a great cause.
• Luke and Meagan Sneeringer (young coder setup and other volunteer tasks): Thank you for all of your support onsite. Having you both there makes us a stronger team. I really appreciate you both being up so early every day to help registration!
• Kushal Das and Naomi Ceder (sprint chairs): Thank you for the help you both provided to get the sprinters informed and organized. Your work at the Sprints impacts so many in our community!
• Barbara Shaurette and Andrew Dupont (young coder teachers): Thank you for staying strong and teaching the Young Coders classes this year. Your dedication is appreciated by me and the children! 
• Noah Kantrowitz (general volunteer): Thank you for just being there to help us with random tasks that needed attention. Having someone there with institutional knowledge that can jump in to help with anything is very useful.  
• Jon Henner (accessibility chair): It was unfortunate that you could not join us onsite, but we look forward to seeing you at 2017! Thank you for working with us to make PyCon more accessible. I am grateful for your guidance and I look forward to seeing the impact you will have on PyCon 2017.
• Jessica McKellar (diversity chair): Thank you for helping PyCon increase its diversity year after year! I look forward to seeing what 2017 will bring!
• Paul Hildebrandt (swag coordinator): Not only do you bring awesome gifts for our speakers year after year, but you also dedicate so much time to get swag organized and distributed. We are all thankful for you!

PyCon Singapore

The PSF is happy to report that the third annual PyCon Singapore took place June 17 to 19, 2015. This event, organized by the Python User Group Singapore, is a testament to the robust presence of the Python community in the Asia-Pacific region. In addition to three PyCons Singapore, PUGS has held three PyCons Asia-Pacific. Congratulations to Ivan Zimine and the organizing committee for a successful conference. According to Ivan, “Feedback from the participants was mostly positive. Out of 18 responses, 7 people gave 4 out of 5 stars, and 6 people gave 5 out of 5 stars for the “How did you like PyConSG?” question."

Photo Credit Martin Brochhaus

CC 2.0

The PSF contributed to the event as a Silver Level Sponsor, and we were proud that keynote speakers included our own PSF Director Lynn Root and former PSF Director Jessica McKellar. Django core developer Andrew Godwin also gave a keynote.

The event was attended by 181 people and was held on the campus of Singapore Polytechnic. It consisted of one day of tutorials and two days of talks. Tutorials covered topics such topics as unit testing, data stores, and beginning programming with Python and Django, and were attended by 96 people, of whom 64 were students. Lynn Root’s tutorial, “How to Spy with Python,” explained how the NSA and the UK’s Tempora programs can collect data on citizens' search histories, emails, IRC conversations, PGP usage, etc. As Lynn was clear to point out, however, the talk was not an endorsement of spying or a how-to, but rather a “… way of understanding the current political environment, as well as indirectly understanding how to protect one’s privacy” (see How to Spy).

127 people (of whom 41 were students) attended the two days of conference talks. Featured speakers included Anand Chitipothu, Kristin Nguyen, Ricky Setyawan, Sacha Goedegebure, Colm O'Connor, and others covering a wide range of topics, including interpreters, data processing, educational games, data processing, machine learning, multicore processing, and film production.

A first-time feature of the conference was its edu-summit, which was attended by approximately 40 Computer Science teachers. 

The summit included a talk by Praveen Patil titled Python in my Physics classroomabout how to incorporate computer science into the science curriculum using ExpEYES, an Open Source Pocket Science Lab (https://pycon.sg/schedule/presentation/59/).

Here are some links and pictures of the event: PyCon Singapore, Blog Post, Group Photo, Welcome.

I would love to hear from readers. Please send feedback, comments, or blog ideas to me at msushi@gnosis.cx.

PSF Python Brochure: Get your free copy at PyCon 2015

PSF Python Brochure PDF (low resolution version)

After having distributed the first 5,000 copies of the PSF Python Brochure to Python conferences and user groups around the world in the last 12 months, we have now finished the second print run with another 5,000 copies just in time for PyCon 2015 in Montreal.

Many thanks go to JetBrains for jumping in as additional ad sponsor to help finance the printing and community order shipping costs for this second print run. We would also like to thank all our initial sponsors and contributors for their hard work.

Promoting Python to new audiences

The feedback we have received for the brochure was positive all around.

Conference attendees were really happy to be able to easily show and prove how Python changes the world, to make the point that learning and using Python is a good investment.

The brochure helps them in promoting Python in their local and professional communities, especially to the many non-technical people we cannot easily reach with our python.org web site.

Get your brochure copy

Come and get your copy at the Python Software Foundation booth (booth number 101) at PyCon 2015 in Montreal.

If you cannot fetch your hard copy in person, you can order copies from our project page:

1. free Community Orders for conferences and user groups
2. paid Company Orders for companies and organizations

The costs for the community orders are sponsored through sponsor ads, the PSF and the company orders.

Meet the Team

I was very happy to work together with our core team members in the last 4 years:

• Jan Ulrich Hasecke who was responsible as editor in chief and managed the contribution side of things together with me.
• Armin Stroß-Radschinski and his company evenios which did the initial coordination of funding, layout concept, artwork, production and distribution.

Our efforts have resulted in a brochure of almost fully CC-3.0-BY-SA content that is reusable by the community. The feedback after one year of circulation is quite promising and we are considering doing a second volume with more success stories and use cases, provided we can get enough support from sponsors and the PSF.

More information

More information on the brochure, the idea and people behind it, media data and ordering links are available on our project page:

• PSF Python Brochure Project Website

Marc-Andre Lemburg
Director, Python Software Foundation

Sponsoring the Kivy App Contest

The Python Software Foundation is thrilled to support Kivy on their upcoming developer contest, the second of its kind. The contest begins by accepting entries, either for teams or individuals, on April 2. However, the topic of the contest won't be known at that time. On April 15, the Kivy Project releases the topic and the teams have one month to develop their applications, wrapping up on May 14.

The organizers aim to "encourage and give developers an opportunity to learn more about Python and Kivy," through the contest. As Kivy is a cross-platform toolkit, they hope to see applications running not only on desktop operating systems, but also on mobile. The theme they plan won't be too limiting, so all platforms can join in the fun.

Visual styling will be among the judging criteria, so they're hoping to see some good looking entries. "Without giving anything away, the ideas could range from a simple scientific calculator, to an alarm clock manager, a diary app, or a maths tutor," the organizers said.

"The PSF has been a big part of helping us grow by providing us sponsorship," they said of the $2000 USD granted to support the contest. Jessica McKellar, they said, was "a big part of helping us get this competition off the ground."

"The project has been getting quite popular lately, especially with the increasing interest in mobile applications," they said of Kivy. Part of the attraction comes from being able to work with pure Python across all of the platforms, allowing developers to leverage the huge amount of code the Python community has made available.

When it comes to Kivy's development, they're preparing a lot of new features for the next major release, especially support for SDL2 backends. Adding SDL support should make for a much more speedy experience on mobile platforms, and give them more flexibility overall. They're also putting some focus on some projects that surround Kivy, such as Plyer and Buildozer.

If you're new to Python or Kivy, the organizers have created a level playing field that will allow both experienced and new programmers to partake. "Our judgement criteria will include not just areas of technical merit, but also a focus on great app ideas, user engagement, and use of Kivy features," they said.

"So come on dive in and make your first mobile app using Python facilitated by the Kivy framework!"

PSF Python Marketing Brochure - Last call for Ad Sponsors

Please support the PSF in providing the Python community with
free high quality marketing material to
promote Python

Introduction

Over the last few years, the Python brochure team has worked on and created a high-quality brochure to help user groups, conferences and companies using Python to promote and spread the word about Python.

The brochure will be printed in a first edition of 10,000 copies which the PSF will then distribute to user groups, Python conferences and educational institutions on request and free of charge.

With the Python brochure, we hope to reach out to an audience which is not easy to address and convince using electronic and mostly developer oriented media.

Preview

Please take a look at our preview PDF version of the brochure to see for yourself:

http://brochure.getpython.info/preview.pdf

Seeking your help

The team set out to create and print the brochure without introducing extra costs for the PSF. Our aim is to fully finance the brochure production, printing and shipment to interested parties using money from sponsors.

To make this happen, we are seeking your help !

• We have already signed up sponsors for 6 half page ads, but still need another 5 half page ad sponsors to sign up.
  
  
• There are also 6 smaller reference entry sponsorships left to be sold.

If you are affiliated with or know a company investing into Python and looking for ways to reach out to a large audience of interested Python users, students, developers - and people in key decision making positions, please reach out to us and help make the project a success.

The deadline for ad and reference entry signups is Feb 28 2014 - in just under three weeks.

You can find all the details about the available sponsorship options on this page:

• Brochure Sponsoring Options

Orders can be placed directly with the production company, Evenios Publishing on the website. All sponsors will receive a box of about 120 free copies of the brochure as Thank You gift.

Ordering extra copies

Companies who are interested in receiving extra copies can pre-order additional boxes which will then be printed in addition to the initial 10.000 copy batch:

• Subscription Sponsorships

It is also possible to donate such extra boxes to educational institutions:

• Educational Sponsorships 

If you have special requirements, please contact the team at brochure@getpython.info for more information. We're very flexible in addressing your needs.

More information

More information on the brochure, the idea behind it, media data and ordering links are available on our project page:

• PSF Python Brochure Project Website

Thanks for your help !

In Search of Success Stories

The PSF is looking for information about successful uses of Python in order to create an updated list of success stories and find organizations that might be interested in sponsoring activities for the community. If you know of a company that uses Python for any purpose, please take a few minutes to answer the questions on our short survey. You don't have to work at an organization to tell us about how they use Python! Don't worry about duplicates, either, we'll take care of them once we have all of the data collected.

The answers to this survey will be kept private. If you still don't want to identify yourself, no problem! We just want to know where Python is being used, so responding still helps us out.

If (and only if) you decide to include contact information and you give the PSF permission, we may use the contacts provided to find sponsors for the PSF and Python-related events (PyCon, EuroPython, DjangoCon, etc).

Individual answers from this survey will never be published.

So please, take the survey now!

PSF Sponsors SciPy 2009

The Python scientific community has its annual conference in Pasadena CA August 18-23rd. SciPy 2009 has just opened up registration.

The keynote speakers include Peter Norvig and Jon Guyer. A preliminary schedule has been posted on the conference website.

The PSF is pleased to be sponsoring ten students to attend the conference. See the student sponsorship page for more details.