Monday, August 05, 2013

Congratulations to Jessica McKellar, O'Reilly Open Source Award Recipient

The Python Software Foundation congratulates Jessica McKellar for winning a 2013 O'Reilly Open Source Award for her contributions to the Python community. The award was presented at OSCON in Portland, Oregon on July 26.



Jessica is an entrepreneur, software engineer, and open source developer from Cambridge, Massachusetts, USA. She is also a prolific volunteer in the Python community:

She is currently a Director for the Foundation and vice-chair of the PSF's Outreach and Education Committee. She is also an organizer for the largest Python user group in the world in Boston, Massachusetts, USA. With that group she runs the Boston Python Workshop, an introductory programming pipeline that has brought hundreds of women into the local Python community. The group has been so successful that it is being replicated in cities across the US.

She is tirelessly constructing new curricula and events that she play-tests with Boston Python and then pushes to the broader community under a permissive license to re-use and remix. Examples include an intro to Python workshop for first-time programmers, an intro to open source contribution workshop, a project-based intermediate Python workshop, and a CPython sprint for new contributors.

In addition to being a frequent conference speaker herself, Jessica has been evangelizing Python and PyCon in her role as the Diversity Outreach coordinator for PyCon 2014.

Thank you Jessica for all your contributions to the Python community.

The PSF also congratulates the other winners of this year's award:
  • Behdad Esfahbod of HarfBuzz
  • Limor Fried of Adafruit Industries
  • Valerie Aurora of the Ada Initiative
  • Paul Fenwick of Perl
  • Martin Michlmayr of the Debian Project

Wednesday, July 31, 2013

Sponsoring Teen Tech Camp in Durham, NC

The Python Software Foundation is happy to support an upcoming event in the Durham, NC area: Teen Tech Camp 2013! At the end of May, the board voted in favor of a $2000 grant to support the event that will use Python and the Raspberry Pi to teach local teens the joy of programming. For more information, see organizer Julia Elman's announcement, included below.

Local Teens Learn Computer Programming Using Raspberry Pi Microcomputers
Durham, NC – Refresh the Triangle is proud to announce Teen Tech Camp 2013, a one-day event to teach computer programming to area youth. The camp is the second to be hosted by Refresh the Triangle, in partnership with Durham County Library.
This year, students will learn basic Python computer programming concepts through the use of interactive curriculum with a Raspberry Pi, a pocket sized PC developed in the UK by the Raspberry Pi Foundation with the intention of promoting the teaching of basic computer science in schools.
Along with generous community volunteer support, a grant from the Python Software Foundation has made it so that each of the 20 students will receive his or her own Raspberry Pi, books and other materials to help further computer programing education.
Support from the following organizations has also helped to make this event possible: Ayima, Adzerk, Caktus Group, Greenlight Community Broadband, Linux New Media, Splatspace, Triangle Ecycling, TriLUG and TriPython. 
The event will take place Tuesday, August 13, at the Southwest Durham Regional Library (3605 Shannon Rd., Durham, NC 27707) from 10:00AM – 5:00PM.
For more information about the Teen Tech Camp 2013 and/or to schedule interviews, please email me at: juliaelman@gmail.com