Jesse Noller

2012 Board Member.

Jesse has been a PSF board member since 2010, and was the PyCon Chair for 2012 and 2013. He's also been involved in (and pushed for) many different projects to make the PSF visible and usefuul: outreach programs, the Code of Conduct, the Sprints committee, the professionalization of the python.org infrastructure.

Affiliation: Jesse Noller is employed by Rackspace.

Lynn Root

2013 Board Member.

Lynn has been a PSF board member since 2013, a member of the PSF Outreach and Education committee since 2012, and continues to lead the PyLadies of San Francisco since 2012. She currently leads the development and growth of the global organization of PyLadies, including helping other locations starting a local PyLadies, maintaining pyladies.com and github.com/pyladies/pyladies-kit. Lynn is also helping organizing PyCon 2014 by leading the lightning talks segment and PyLadies presence at the conference.

Lynn wishes to be a board member for the next year to accomplish the following things:

• PyLadies trademark on name & logo,
• Broadening the PSF's reach in diversity,
• Finding more PSF/PyCon sponsors that align with the PSF's diversity mission.

Affiliation: Lynn Root works for Spotify.

Jessica McKellar

Current board member (2012, 2013)

It has been an honor and pleasure to serve on the PSF Board for the past two years. I love this community, and I hope to have the opportunity to continue to serve it as a Board member as it grows into new challenges and opportunities next year.

I bring several perspectives to the Board, as:

• a user group organizer, for the Boston Python user group -- the largest Python user group in the world.
• someone who regularly interacts with beginners, new community members, and first-time open source contributors, through various initiatives including the OpenHatch project, Google Summer of Code, and as a Twisted core developer.
• someone who regularly does programming outreach to underrepresented groups, through my work on the Outreach and Education Committee, Software Carpentry, and as head organizer for the Boston Python Workshop.

This past year, as part of my Foundation work I:

• served on the PSF Outreach and Education Committee, and in particular worked to promote the committee and help groups write and submit grant requests.
• regularly spoke and wrote about the PSF and encouraged community participation (e.g. Kiwi PyCon 2013 keynote, All Things Open, upcoming PyCon North America 2014 keynote, upcoming PyTennessee keynote, upcoming PyCon APAC 2014 keynote, PSF blog posts).
• regularly reached out to individuals and initiatives about partnering with the PSF or applying for grants / getting community support to run Python events.
• after informally playing this role in 2013, became the first ever Diversity Outreach Chair for PyCon North America 2014. The conference has a record-setting percentage of proposals submitted by women, and will have a record 33% women speakers. There are of course many more axes to diversity and more to do next year!

The language and community continue to grow, which is great, but with this growth have come some growing pains for the Foundation. I think the most important goal for the PSF for 2014 is to finish several important but lagging initiatives, and to do so in a way that is transparent and with sustainable volunteer obligations. In particular, 2014 will be the year we finish:

• the PSF Bylaws and membership structure changes
• the python.org redesign
• the Python Brochure

Additionally, I'd like to lead:

• more global community development, including support for user groups, conferences, and outreach initiatives, in particular outside the United States.
• proactively seeking out/creating and supporting opportunities for Python in education.

Affiliation: Jessica McKellar is a co-founder of Zulip.

Brian Curtin

Current board member (2012, 2013)

(Brian, leaving this for you to fill in)

Alex Gaynor

Current board member (2013)

It's been a privilege to serve the community on the board in this past year. I additionally serve on the Sprints and Outreach and Education committees. I've also served as the co-chair of the PyCon US Program Committee, and I've worked with the Infrastructure committee on various projects.

In the coming year I'm looking forward to working on implementing the new working group-centric organization for the PSF, and empowering more people to promote Python within their communities (whether geographic or shared-interest).

Affiliations: I'm employed by Rackspace.

Marc-Andre Lemburg

2013 Board Member

I've been board member in the years 2002-2004 and then again since 2010.

PSF things I've been working on last year:

• ran the PSF Python Brochure project, which is currently being finalized, with the first edition to be available for PyCon 2014 in Montreal; also see the PSF Python Brochure wiki page
• worked with the Python Events Calendars team to build a central place where Python users can lookup Python events; calendars are shown on http://www.python.org/ and http://www.pycon.org/
• took the European PSF Conference Kit to several conferences (EuroPython, PyCon UK, PyCon DE, PythonCamp Cologne) to show PSF support
• created giveaway marketing material for use at Python conferences and by user groups (flyers, stickers)
• promoted the PSF at conferences in Europe, giving talks and available as contact for people interested in the PSF (EuroPython, PyCon UK, PyCon DE, FOSDEM, FrOSCON, PythonCamp Cologne)
• setup a central PSF domain management account at Gandi.net, manged the transfer of all domains to that account and registered about 50 new domains for the PSF
• setup the work groups example wiki pages in the PSF wiki and created pages for the bylaws and meta work group
• helped work out several details around new PSF bylaws; see the PSF Bylaws WG and its mailing list
• administered the Python, Jython and PSF wiki systems, improved the spam protection mechanisms and managed their transition to HTTPS-only systems (including preloaded HSTS in Chrome and Firefox)
• administered the http://www.pycon.org/ page and put the page under bitbucket control
• ran the call for volunteers and kickstarted the new Python Job Board team with the help of over 25 volunteers
• initiated creation of new PSF sponsorship levels and drafted a list of possible PSF sponsor benefits - all part of creating a more diverse PSF marketing strategy
• a lot of the above relates directly with my PSF work to create closer ties with the Python community

in addition to the usual PSF board and trademark committee work.

Things I'd like to work on this year:

• help promote the PSF at European Python events and get more people involved in the PSF
• create a marketing work group to (a) develop a more diverse marketing strategy for Python which doesn't only focus on developers, (b) create more marketing material and tools to enable Python user groups and evangelists to better promote Python in their local and professional settings, and (c) create more Python merchandise
• try to get local and regional Python user groups more directly connected to the PSF, so that they can more easily benefit from PSF resources
• build closer relationships with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, so that we can offer RasPi kits at better prices, have integrated Python course material readily available for schools and teachers to use

I'd like to continue to work as director and look forward to another year serving on the board.

Other Python community projects I'm involved in:

• EuroPython Society (EPS) - I'm a board member of the EPS, which is the organization behind the EuroPython conference series
• Python Meeting Düsseldorf (PyDDF) - I am co-founder of our local Python user group in Düsseldorf

Affiliation: eGenix.com GmbH, Germany

Van Lindberg

Current board member (2012, 2013)

I love being part of the Python community. I am glad to have a chance to help out where I can. There are a lot of things that I've started over the past couple years that I want to help continue. Specifically:

• Grow the membership. In 2013 we reworked the new membership model into new bylaws, got community feedback on those bylaws, and got them passed by the board. In 2014 I want to use the flexibility given to us by the new membership model to grow the PSF and Python community internationally. My goal is to 10x the size of the Python membership over 2014.
• Support great things happening in the community. One of the new tools we have is the working group structure, which allows us to identify, recognize, and support the great things that are already happening in the community. I think that we currently have three working groups (PyCon US, trademark, infrastructure). I want to grow this by 100x, supporting and highlighting the great things that are already happening in the Python community.
• Create opportunities for new sponsorship. We just put in place a deal that will provide $300K of free services to the PSF over the next five years. There are opportunities to do this multiple times, making it so that we can provide more services and better support to the community while keeping costs low. In particular, I would like to...
• Get some corporate-supported paid Python devs. It is amazing that Python still doesn't have any full-time paid Python ecosystem core developers. This is something that is done regularly in other communities - certain levels of corporate support carry with them a requirement to provide one or more full-time heads working on the project. This is something that we can do to accelerate our community and make us more responsive overall.
• Provide new support for local conferences. We have the opportunity to bring higher levels of sponsorship to local conferences all around the globe. We will keep investing in PyCon US, but we also want to grow the network of PyCon conferences worldwide. Initial discussions have already taken place; we have the opportunity to put this support in place over 2014.
• Continue to provide legal and operational infrastructure. We were taken somewhat by surprise by the python.co.uk trademark flap last year. We were able to bring that to a successful conclusion, but there is ongoing work to help us continue to level up and protect "PyCon," the two-snakes logo, and other parts of the Python brand that we want to make sure are not misused.

I was recently interviewed by a consultant for the Wikimedia foundation, who remarked that we were way beyond them in the friendliness and the diversity of our community. They - and others - are looking to us to show the way toward a more community-focused approach to growth.

Affiliation: I work at Rackspace.

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