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)

My involvement with the Python community: * PSF Communications Officer: I've been running the blog and social media communications for the PSF, and keep the membership and community aware of PSF activities through website updates of minutes and resolutions. This recently extended to include summaries sent to PSF members. I was involved in communications starting in 2011, and became an officer in 2012. * PyCon: I'm the conference's publicity coordinator and run the blog, email, and social media communications, as well as assist the chair in any way possible. I've been involved with this since PyCon 2010. * Sprints committee: I lead the PSF's sprints committee, providing funding to user groups and events that want to get together and contribute to Python-related open source projects or other group coding activities. I've been involved with this committee since its inception in June 2010. * New Website: I was involved in pre-selection reviewing, and then during the implementation I was involved with updating and creating site content. * CPython and open source development: While CPython has gotten less of my attention that I've wanted to give it over the last year, I'm still involved in open source development with Python.

My plans for 2014: * Continue the increase in communications coming out of the board, increasing visibility of decisions and news, and keeping the membership apprised of what their foundation is doing. This was one of my goals for 2013 and I've somewhat improved it, but with the new membership model coming on board and an upward trend in information being available, I'd like to continue to grow this area for the foundation and the board. * Increase global outreach. The PSF is still heavily a US-centric organization, while Python is a global community. We need to continue to find allies in underrepresented communities and find what the PSF can do for them and their community, their event, their conference, etc. Promoting the new membership model and increasing our communications in general can help us progress in this area.

Affiliation: Rackspace

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 in 2013/2014:

• 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, FOSDEM, FrOSCON, 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, managed 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 of the 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 getting the wikis added to the preloaded HSTS list 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 30 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 focus on for 2014/2015:

• 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 my 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) - Together with Charlie Clark, I started a local Python user meeting series in Düsseldorf in 2012

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.

David Mertz

He has served on the PSF board for five years, would like to continue to do so.

He chaired the PSF Trademarks Committee, and have served on the committee for 6 years. We resolve legal matters in the committee, enter into relationships of fiscal sponsorship with relevant projects to further protect our IP, and generally improve the relationships with broader Python communities through friendly and productive conversations about trademark rights.

He chaired the Outreach and Education Committee, which was formed in 2011. The committee has funded numerous outreach efforts to user groups and educational efforts, and will continue to fund more in the future; acting as Board liaison is useful.

He created the voting procedure used by the PSF for the prior several years (and the small software tools needed to make it work), assisted the PSF Secretary in its operation, and administered the last election. In response to some requests by members, he worked wtih PSF member (and Web2Py lead) Massimo Di Pierro to get his E-vote software to provide all the same wonderful cryptographic and security guarantees as the prior email-based system (and some more).

He was very pleased to serve as PSF/Board representative to give one of the two keynotes at PyCon-India in 2012. As well as enjoying representing the PSF broadly, this tied in with the mission of the Outreach & Education to regionally/nationally diversify interest in and commitment to Python and to the PSF. He also gave the keynote in PyCon-UK 2013.

By background, he is 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).

He is 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. He has created some moderately well-used FOSS Python tools (most collected in Gnosis Utilities); these have been poorly maintained in recent years.

Often a speaker at PyCon and OSCON. he had been an advocate for use of Python by several public-interest software projects, including in the voting software developed by the Open Voting Consortium (he was CTO and board member of that organization). He has also been a consultant with a number of notable Python-using organizations, at the margins helping to expand that use.

Affiliation: David Mertz is a consultant for D. E. Shaw Research and owner of Gnosis Software.

(nomination by Kushal Das, accepted by David)

Rachel Sanders

New Board Member.

I helped found PyLadies San Francisco in 2012, and have run the South Bay chapter ever since. Internally at LinkedIn, I work on Python advocacy and standards in addition to my regular engineering work.

I've greatly benefitted from the outreach and work of the PSF board and general Python community, and I want to help contribute and advocate for it.

I would like to work on:

• Outreach to underrepresented groups
• Outreach to groups outside the United States and working on global diversity
• Understanding the real needs of the Python and PSF community and contribute to what needs doing

Affiliation: Rachel Sanders works for LinkedIn.

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