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Candidates for the 2011 PSF Board of Directors

The following people have been nominated as Directors of the Python Software Foundation for the term beginning in March 2011. Their self-written summaries follow.

There are currently 13 seats on the Board of Directors (last changed in the 2010 PSF Members vote).

Jesse Noller

2010 Board Member.

I (VanL) am nominating Jesse Noller to continue to sit on the board of directors. I have had the opportunity to work with Jesse very closely for a couple of years now, and he has put in extensive work to elevate the PSF and make it a better organization.

Just three things that Jesse has accomplished in the last year show his dedication to Python and the PSF.

  • Established the Sprints Project and funded several worthwhile projects. This is the PSF at its best - finding and serving Python-related projects to advance the language as a whole. Not only did this get code committed for the benefit of Python generally, Jesse also got the Python Sprints website launched (an endeavor in itself).
  • Served as Program Committee Chair (PyCon 2010) and Co-Chair (PyCon 2011). This is a lot of work and is the PSF's biggest project from year to year. Jesse knows about how PyCon works from the inside out, having established himself as a real contributor over several years.
  • Acted as a mini-BDFL for PEP 3148, shepherding the Futures module through the PEP process all the way to acceptance.

In addition, Jesse continues to work as a core committer, blogs about Python, works at a Python Startup, and is always active defending and explaining Python on Reddit and Hacker News.

Raymond Hettinger

2010 Board Member.

David Mertz

2010 Board Member.

I have served on the PSF board for two years, would like to continue to do so, and would be honored if the membership elects me again to do so.

Beginning prior to membership on the board, and on a continuing basis, I serve on the PSF Trademarks Committee, currently as its Chair. During this last year, I created the voting procedure now in use for the PSF (and the small software tools needed to make it work) and assisted PSF Secretary Pat Campbell in its operation. In general, I have assisted with the administravia of Board operation, including acting as Chair in one meeting where our esteemed Mr. Holden was unable to, taking and publishing minutes in another case, and have sheparded a few of the funding requests that have been requested of the Board.

By background, I am a recovering humanities academic, tempted away from post-structuralist political philosophy by the intrigue and wiles of algorithms and data structures (always best expressed in this language Guido gave us).

I am the author of Addison Wesley's Text Processing in Python, of the IBM developerWorks' column Charming Python (since 2001), and of various other articles advancing and explaining the use of Python and its tools and libraries. I have created some moderately well-used FOSS Python tools (most collected in Gnosis Utilities). Sometimes speaker at PyCon and OSCON. I have been an advocate for use of Python by several public-interest software projects, including in the voting software developed by the Open Voting Consortium (I was CTO and board member of that organization). I also have been a consultant with a number of notable Python-using organizations, at the margins helping to expand that use.

Jeff Rush

2010 Board Member.

Tim Peters

2010 Board Member.

Allison Randal

2010 Board Member.

James Tauber

2010 Board Member.

Steve Holden

2010 Board Member.

Marc-André Lemburg

2010 Board Member.

I've been working with Python since 1993/4 and on Python since 1997 as core developer. Many of you may know my company eGenix.com and the mx* extensions (mxDateTime, mxTextTools, mxODBC, etc.). As Python core developer I designed the Unicode integration, the codecs subsystem, wrote the platform module and helped with lots of details that I found useful during my consulting work over the years.

From 2002-2004 I already served on the PSF board and was PSF vice president in 2003/2004. Back then I got the Public Support Committee (PSC) off the ground with the aim of finding ways to generate income for the PSF and initiated the work on getting Python contributor agreements in place.

Last year, Steve Holden asked me to candidate for the PSF board again and I accepted.

Here's my 2010 agenda, which is still valid:

  • organizing fund raising in a professional way
  • starting with some real PR work for Python
  • getting a web firm to give the python.org site a face-lift, make it more attractive for users (pupils, students, novices, developers, educational institutions, governments and businesses), donors and the press
  • giving the PSF a face at various important IT- conferences by sending delegates there to give talks, setup and run a booth, etc.
  • establishing the PSF as lobby organization in the political sphere in order to participate in projects where Python and its mindset can help, e.g. open-source, scientific and educational projects
  • establishing and running services for the community, such as those needed for running small- to medium-sized conferences or meetings
  • I hope to add a more a business-like mindset to the PSF board, in order to enable the PSF to mature both in terms of figures and responsibility.

During my year on the board, I carried on the work started by Steve to setup a budget for the PSF to work with. This was completed for 2010 with the help of Steve, Doug Napoleone and Kurt Kaiser. It made working with grants and spendings in general a lot easier for the board. We are currently working on setting up the budget plan for 2011.

The net effect of having such a budget was that we were able to give out many more grants than in previous years. See http://www.python.org/psf/records/board/resolutions/ for details.

I also kicked off two new PSF projects: one to create a professional quality marketing brochure for Python which will help us get Python known outside the developer community and another one to make PyPI both more performant and reliable by pushing most of the content onto a content delivery network in an automated way.

Both projects are run by small teams and working steadily towards reaching their respective goals. Please see my monthly reports on them for details.

I'd like to continue with the work started in 2010 and look forward to another year serving on the board.

Greg Stein

2010 Board Member.

Gloria Willadsen

2010 Board Member.

Martin v. Löwis

2010 Board Member.

Douglas Napoleone

2010 Board Member.


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Candidate Name
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