• Community Conference Reports

Current Travel Policy

Part of the effort to have better community relations, the Python Software Foundation attempts to have a presence in international conferences. Our goal is to have the Director of Operations or a Board Director attend four international Python conferences throughout the year.

Slides & Notes from previous PSF talks

Below are reports from the PSF representatives that attended a Python Conference.

* By Betsy Waliszewski: PyCascades 2018 - (speaker notes) https://docs.google.com/document/d/11IIOQiEtPs4pSaJ-YezHdCyAvyxTwh1nB30Y-yBEP5Q/edit; (slide presentation) https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/0B7Jit1pzkJbgSmJpV19LZUVtbFE

• By Naomi Ceder: EuroPython - https://goo.gl/tevB0D

• By Naomi Ceder: EuroPython members meeting - https://goo.gl/4F3Wwy

• By Naomi Ceder: PyCon Ireland 2015 - https://goo.gl/OUBjVN

• By Ewa Jodlowska: PyGotham 2016 about international outreach via grants - Transcripts: https://docs.google.com/document/d/1XwqQZFlsHmu6MGleKPzizjMQXVXdA8oVAgYOsTaYv2w/edit?usp=sharing. Slides: https://prezi.com/pksptnc5g2-n/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy

• By Ewa Jodlowska: ClePy Meetup 2017 about PSF and how we can grow fiscal sponsorship program: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1eAM0pf4-5XRblXA00OVjrYsmruqqF2NC2oTHKmOnClo/edit?usp=sharing

• By Naomi Ceder: PyConEs 2017 (Cáceres, Spain) - https://goo.gl/yDaZ8j (slides in Spanish)

• By Naomi Ceder: PyConEs 2017 (Cáceres, Spain) members meeting - https://goo.gl/KkHQ2o

• By Paola Katherine: Python Brasil 2017 (Belo Horizonte, Brazil) - https://speakerdeck.com/pkpacheco/o-que-voce-quer ( slides in Portuguese)

• By Ewa Jodlowska: EuroPython 2017 - https://www.dropbox.com/s/s04im5egf1u2vyz/EuroPython2017_MembersMeeting.key?dl=0

  • handout that Ewa gave out to those interested with helping the PSF: https://www.dropbox.com/s/v6glyw391v2rtys/handout%20for%20europython.pdf?dl=0

• By Ewa Jodlowska: ClePy Meetup October 2017: nitty gritty about PyCon https://www.dropbox.com/s/5fwqwufewch6de0/CLEPy_two.key?dl=0

Resources for Directors

• PSF Flyer to be printed 2 on an 8-1/2 x 11 sheet: https://www.dropbox.com/work?preview=PSF+Flyer+-+Print+2-up.pdf (a better version is coming)

• Contact betsy@python.org if you want stickers for your event. I will order them from Sticker Mule and have them shipped directly to you or to your event.

2018

PyLondinium

Location: London, UK

Date: 8-10 June, 2018

PSF Representative Present: Naomi Ceder

Report from Naomi Ceder

PyLondinium is a new conference, the brainchild of Mario Corchero, held in Bloomberg's new offices in the City. Mario's idea was to leverage Bloomberg's sponsorship to 1) have a very low cost conference (regular tickets were £35) and 2) give all of the ticket proceeds to the PSF. Thanks to the support of Bloomberg and other sponsors, they achieved this, with final attendance around 250 (the initial target was 200), and after expenses a net contribution to the PSF of over $12,000.

Diversity: On Friday, June 8, PyLondinium hosted a PyLadies tutorial using the Django Girls curriculum (about 30-35 attendees) and a Trans*Code hackday (about 20 attendees). Attendees to both of those events were offered free tickets to the rest of the conference. As founder of Trans*Code I attended most of that session, but also gave a brief welcome talk to the PyLadies group. On the main conference days 6 of 23 speakers and one keynote (me) out 4 were women, and I'd estimate that probably 25-30% of attendees were women.

Other Notes

* I spent most of my time at the conference talking to various people about the PSF, and encouraging people to sign up as supporting members. It seems that no matter how much we talk about it, people still haven't heard about what we're doing around the world. * On the supporting membership front, in my keynote and in conversation, I was more active in pitching the supporting membership as a way for Python professionals to give back and support what we do around the world. This was well received, and I think we need to do this more. * I also spent some time talking to the Bloomberg folks and making sure that they knew how much we appreciate their support.

Blog post: In discussing with Ewa, we decided that I will do a blog post on the event and their contribution to the PSF.

PyCon Colombia

Location: Medellín, Colombia

Date: 8-11 February, 2018

PSF Representative Present: Naomi Ceder, Lorena Mesa, Manuel Kaufman

Report from Naomi Ceder

PyCon Co is in its second year, and is looking to become a major conference in the region. They had 325 attendees, with 3 days and 2 tracks of talks, several keynotes and a Django Girls event and several workshops. It was a very well run conference, and it was encouraging to see that they had at least some Colombian sponsors. They had also put real effort into diversity, and 5 of 7 keynote speakers were women.

For most of the conference I was at a table with the PSF banner and there was a lot of interest in the PSF. As usual I was giving little PSF member stickers to those signed up and (again, as usual) I gave out a lot of those. Manuel Kaufman also hosted a talk specifically on the PSF, where Lorena and I answered questions from the audience. This attracted probably 75-100 attendees.

I left the PSF banner with them, and they were quite excited to have this for events around Colombia.

PyCascades

Location: Vancouver, BC

Date: 22 to 24 January 2018

PSF Representative Present: Betsy Waliszewski

Report from Betsy Waliszewski

PyCascades was held in Vancouver, BC on Granville Island at the Granville Island Stage. The single track conference was very well planned and organized and sold out about a month before the event - 400 attendees. They had 19 sponsors - amazing for a first-time conference. They scored some well-known speakers, including Guido van Rossum (keynote), Thomas Ballinger, and Brett Cannon. Our own Eric Holscher was on the organizing committee and Lorena Mesa handled the lightning talks.

Beverages, pastries, and snacks were provided - you were on your own for lunch (there were lots of great places to eat on the island).

I staffed a table next to registration and gave a short presentation on the second day at the end of lightning talks. I attended the Speaker Appreciation dinner at a fantastic Lebanese restaurant - a very nice evening!

I love participating in regional events like this. They’re small enough that you have a chance to speak to just about everyone over the course of two days. I saw some old friends and made some new ones. Many attendees were not clear on what the PSF does, so I was happy to enlighten them! I got some leads on PSF sponsorship and will be following up in the coming weeks.

1. Zillow
2. Coffee vs Bagel
3. Galvanize
4. Eventbase
5. Nusutus
6. Rover

It's really wonderful to see new Python conferences popping up. I hope the trend continues.

2017

Python Brasil

Location: Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais- Brazil

Date: 6 to 11 September 2017

PSF Representative Present: Paola Katherine

Report from Paola Katherine

Python Brasil happened in 6 days.

6,7,8 - Talks

9,10 - workshops/ 9-Django Girls

11 - Sprint

I attended all three days of the conference and 1 day tutorial, where I was organizing Django Girls.

Django Girls went along with the tutorials and had 49 participants and 19 coaches. Being 100% female participants and 80% of women coaches.

The tutorials and Sprint happened at a university located in the city center.

The main conference was in a hotel, very well organized, had 572 participants.

The conference location was good, close to shopping, which facilitated for lunch.

The Brazilian community is quite big and in my keynote I talked a little about the PSF and doubts arose. Some of them like the PSF earn money, like helping PSF, how to join, among others.

There was a vote for the new board of the Python Association Brazil. I believe that with this new board there is a greater connection between the PSF and Brazil.

• My talk was about community, help, donation, motivation. Slides → https://speakerdeck.com/pkpacheco/o-que-voce-quer

• During my talk, I spoke a little about social action and think in the next conferences, meetings, workshops, people are going to do more actions social and donations.

• During Python Brazil, I had another event called Anitas. Where we have three women telling his story, always based on a chapter of the Lean In Sheryl Sandberg.I was invited and the theme was impostor syndrome. I told a little about my story and the PSF. The ultimate goal is that other people see a little behind the scenes another woman's life, which is not always easy, that all the achievements were not easy.

• Some statistics about the event: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1cfMHOaxsc7Z8GrLJRrQoWpaPT8G9kc8JcT1KIrfMkiM/edit#slide=id.p

• I talked to many people and others keynotes that were not Brazilians, and were impressed by the size of the community.

• In addition to one year ago I had created a repository to list all communities in latin america in order to create a PyCon Latam. And this idea started walking this year along with Manuel Kauffmann and others of the Brazilian community. I would very much like that created a board as well as the Euro Python works, the Latam Python.

• During the conference was elected another board for the Brazilian Association (APyB) and was chosen the venue for 2019 will be Ribeirão Preto. The year 2018 had already been chosen and will be Natal-RN.

One final note - I believe that many have changed their thinking regarding PSF, I saw that many think in one day if you plan to go to a PyCon US, but is somewhat impractical because it is quite expensive. I saw a national movement for a PyCon Latam, there was much acceptance. I saw that future may have a Pyladies Conf in Brazil.

PyCon ES

Location: Cáceres, Spain

Dates: Sept 22 - 24, 2017

PSF Representative Present: Naomi Ceder

Report from Naomi Ceder

I attended all three days of the conference, actually traveling to and from London with the lead conference organizer, Mario Corchero. The first day (Friday) was a combination of Django Girls and tutorials, and I attended and spoke at the Django Girls event, which had 45 attendees, from teenaged to 50's, and was well organized and successful.

The main conference was in a beautiful 15th century convent that had been converted into a meeting space. It was well organized and had about 450 attendees. In particular they had come to PyCon US this year and they deliberately followed the notion of having a green room, session chairs, and session runners, and the organizers and the speakers I talked to thought that was a big improvement in keeping the conference flowing. Overall I was quite impressed with the vibrance and activity of the Spanish Python community.

• I spoke for about 20 minutes at the Django Girls event, which was well received. This talk was more on the challenges of being a woman in tech.

• My keynote on the Python community (video at https://youtu.be/xQj_s8oj4Bw?t=34m58s). It was a discussion of community that I've done before, but my slides were in Spanish. It was well received, and many people there told me that they hadn't been very aware of the PSF and they appreciated the information.

• Saturday afternoon I had a talk slot for a PSF meeting where I held more of an information session with more detail about what what the PSF did and how to get involved. I'd estimate about 50 people attended.
• I talked to people from Python Alicante about jumpstarting their community, which they felt wasn't growing much. We discussed possibilities involving hardware, since they seem to have a strong robotics element there, and the possibilities for getting grant money to support a day long workshop.
• I also talked to a man from the Maldives, who uses Python for government work there, and was looking for ways to attract native programmers who might otherwise emigrate. We discussed a workshop using the Django Girls curriculum, but open to all, as a way that he might do this. Again, the possibility of funding was raised, but more important to him was the possibility of getting an experienced and skilled instructor from the outside to both lead such an event and to be a "star" attraction. He promised to be in touch.

I was quite impressed by the size and level of organization at PyConEs. They had good sponsorship support (many of the organizers work in Bloomberg London, so Bloomberg was a key sponsor) and they had put a lot of thought, time and effort into making the event a success.

One final note - they were quite appreciative of the PSF's support (including sending someone, but also the sponsorship) and they gave the PSF one of their yearly Most Valuable Pythonista awards at the closing ceremony (I accepted on behalf of the PSF). They also wanted to donate a portion of their profits to the PSF. I did tell them that we would be just as happy if any profits were used as seed money for the next conference (which will be held in Málaga), but they were quite keen to make a donation in appreciation.

PyCon Nigeria 2017

Location: Lagos, Nigeria

Dates: September 15-16, 2017

PSF: Marlene Mhangami

Report from Marlene Mhangami

This was the very first PyCon held in Nigeria. Its interesting to note that the organizers of the event were inspired to start their own PyCon after attending PyCon Namibia (I felt that this was a testament to the benefits of collaboration amongst various African countries as a way to see long term growth.) The event was very well organized with over 100 people in attendance and a good amount of sponsorship most notably from a range of local companies.

A large number of the attendees present were students and I was happy to see some girls from the junior schools (9-11 years old) who had attended Django girls events not only just attend but speak! The Nigerian Python community was very responsiveand after my keynote speech titled 'the growth of the Python in Africa' I had many questions on how people could participate more in the PSF and the help with growth of Python.

I was able to meet with Aaron Yankey to start discussions about preps for a PyCon Ghanga 2017. I was also thrilled to meet a young lady named Karima who had lived in Egypt for some time and had actually been introduced to Python there! Karima mentioned that there were several companies in Egypt using the language, and that at the university she had attended they taught a course in it. She did however mentioned that the community there had know idea the PSF existed because none of the information on the website is in Arabic. I have been in contact with Karima post-confrenece and we are discussing ways to encourage community events there in the coming months.

Overall the conference was very well run and I enjoyed it very much. The talks were on a wide range of topics with an emphasis on creating projects that benefit the community (for example better and inexpensive ways to monitor diabetes, starting open source projects in Africa, and using code to benefit girls in impoverished areas.) A very vibrant and engaged community!

EuroPython 2017

Location: Rimini, Italy

Dates: July 9-14, 2017

PSF Representative: Ewa Jodlowska

Report from Ewa Jodlowska.

• I spoke to Marc-Andre and the possibly of EuroPython hiring a meeting coordinator for EuroPython. This year several of the volunteers fell through the cracks and MAL says most of the work fell on his lap. He was very stressed by the amount of time EuroPython took him this year. We discussed that it would be best for them to hire a contractor and not a full time employee. I provided a list of meeting organizations present in Europe. We discussed the best way to integrate paid help and decided that it is best to have them shadow at a conference before they are responsible for any tasks. I offered to contact them for suggestions and also offered to help with their interview process.

• Maciej Fijakowski asked about stats on Python conference attendance (expectations vs actual). PSF should maybe maintain this. Since we are now being more strict with reports, we will have the data to gather.
• New booth table clothes are needed for the Europe PSF Booth Kit. - these are dirty. Furthermore, Booths should be stuffed with standard promotional material (brochures/stickers/swag). Ewa has mentioned this to Betsy already.

• North/East/East African organizers to go to PyConZA to help develop trust - maybe PSF fund some of this travel. Discussed this with Maciej and Aisha and both think it would be a good idea. It provides exposure to other Python communities and sponsors. This discussion came about because we discussed how we planned on having one of the Ugandian organizers come to PyCon US and it did not work out. Having them travel within Africa will be easier Visa wise and money wise IMO.

• Discussion with Ruben - PyCon tutorial feedback - how do we improve it? We have tried Guidebook and Survey Monkey and neither have given good results. We discussed moving back to paper feedback. We discussed how to make the PSF mailing list more friendly during election times. We discussed how to get corporate execs more on board with open source support. I brought up the idea of having an open forum at PyCon to discuss how we handle sponsorship. Ruben suggested we have a committee for this. Start small and then grow it. We have 3 people from the PSF side and 3 people for the corporate side. We sit down with them and have an open discussion about how we can improve value for sponsors so we can improve financial sustainability for the PSF. Ruben wants to be part of the committee and I +1'ed. Ruben suggests we start this conversation now. I suggest we continue this committee at PyCon to have it also face to face. Video conference first. Ewa will be asking Betsy to schedule a call in the coming week.

• Ruben and I also discussed that it would be good for the public to know how much money is needed to put on PyCon US. This information will also be useful to the sponsors. I am planning on putting together a blog about it. I won't use exact $ amount to avoid ruining ongoing negotiations, but I will use percentages of the total operating budget.

• Discussion with David Liu from Intel: we talked about future PyCon sponsorships. They are going towards more scientific based conferences more likely. Internally: How do we make that work with PyCon. We discussed how we should get the corporate world part of the discussion of open source language sustainability. Financial support is important, but so is input on scoping projects, execution, etc. We discussed Intel and MicroPython: how can that be more

• Met with Richard from PyCon SK, met with PyCon WEB organizer. Met with someone who wants to start a PyCon Portugal and possibly have EuroPython there. Major concern of work load and volunteer commitment

• The PSF Meeting went very well. Attached are my slides and the two handouts I gave out to the participants. I common question I always get from attendees is how they can participate or contribute to the PSF. I created a 2 sided handout to go over some of the options. It was well received. We had ~40-50 attendees because I ran out of the printed sheets quickly.

• Spoke to Richard from PyCon SK about government support - embassy grants. Richard is the one that discovered the US Embassy Grants for conference support and shared it Wirth PyCon Czech. We discussed that every country with an Embassy can apply for the grant. How do we make that known to our organizers? Perhaps the PyCon Slack. Mario from PyConES mentioned that they also get EU financial support for their PyCon. Is it within our 501(c)(3) allowances to mention this to our local organizers?

• I also spoke to Richard from PyCon SK about their education summit. The summit created a lot of motivation and movement. They have even started a conference for educators that want to implement Python into schools. I told Richard that he should ask if any of them want to join the Python Education Slack channel that we just started to continue the conversations from PyCon US. He is going to email them and ask.

• Spoke with Mario from Spain (organizer of PyConES) about a Bloomberg python package issue - he mentioned that someone outside of Bloomberg packaged their open source module and they are not keeping it up to date. Mario is going to email them to see if they will remove it so Bloomberg can package it and maintain it.
• I had several people come up to me and ask me about organizing conferences and some of the struggles. We discussed the difficulty of volunteer management and financial risk. I know that this is a topic we are aware of, but I do see the importance of working on a community solution.

• Conference itself: had good presentations, I only saw the keynotes because I stayed at the booth other times but read positive comments on their app and Twitter. Lots of onsite volunteers and they were all very helpful. A/V did not work with the new Macs The Expo Hall was very long - it was open from Monday to Friday. Several sponsors complained to me and said they would leave the feedback to the conference. Lunch and breaks were provided. The food was average. I had a terrible experience getting to Rimini and I heard the same complaint from others traveling from the US and even those coming from Europe. It doesn’t help that the trains to Bologna (or anywhere) don’t run on time and that it is 90 degrees or higher every day. I was initially going to rent a car but everyone said it was too dangerous to drive around here so I switched to taking the train - it was much cheaper but way more inconvenient. I had the opportunity to have dinner with Aisha Bello one evening -- I am missing the evening event tonight since it starts late and I am getting up really early.

• I met the organizer from Lithuania who recently asked us for a grant (PyCon LT). He wanted to know what the best process is for getting PyCons going in Estonia and Latavia. We discussed how they are small countries and I suggested that maybe they should combine them all to one PyCon. He came up with PyCon Baltics. He says he will work on it and hopes to have one in 2019. I think that that conference would be amazing. Estonia has been ahead of most of Europe in terms of technology for several years so it would be great to grow the Python community there.

PyCon CZ

Location: Prague, Czech Republic

Dates: June 8 - 10, 2017

PSF Representative Present: Naomi Ceder

Report from Naomi Ceder

Due to issues requiring a change of venue, the conference had to ajdust its schedule about a month before the conference. I was only able to attend the second day of the conference and part of the sprint day.

Attendance was good, in the area of 300, and the conference seemed to have a reasonable amount of sponsorship. This was a very relaxed, but still well run conference. I gave a keynote on some of the issues facing the Python community going forward, both in terms of community and technically.

2016

PyCon Jamaica

Location: Kingston, Jamaica

Web: PyCon Jamaica

Dates: November 17 - 18, 2016

PSF Representative present: Lorena Mesa

Report from Lorena Mesa

Attendance was 60+. Attendees were blend of professionals from the community and students. While the number of women at the conference wasn't too sizable, of the 7 speakers 2 were women (I being one of the speakers).

November 17th were tutorials, including a an Introduction to Python 3 which I taught that had 15 attendees many of whom were undergraduates at the University of the West Indies where the tutorials were held. From what I was told, the UWI computer science program doesn't teach Python but Pascal however there is a growing interest to teach Python at the university. Conference chair David Bain runs a Python web consultancy in Jamaica and has commented on the growing interest in Python amongst undergraduates at both technical programs in Kingston. Other topics include Intro to Plone and Intro to Big Data Analytics with Python and Apache.

At the closing of tutorials were lightning talks wherein I did an introduction to the PSF for tutorial attendees.

November 18th was the main conference day. There wasn't a designated job hall as the conference was a single track event in one room at the Hope Zoo in Kingston. I represented the PSF in the conference venue, setting up right by registration to answer questions about PSF. Many were curious about how they could reach out to leverage the PSF's resources to help build a broader community in Kingston. Not many knew of the PSF.

While I didn't hold a formal PSF meeting for the conference, as the schedule didn't permit time for it, several attendees were interested in learning more about the PSF after the fact. I've already been in email communication with a few.

As a first year conference I think the turnout, while somewhat modest, included some of the most passionate organizers I've met. The attendees include an interesting swath of professionals using Python in the public sector (e.g. web consultancies, mechanical engineers), students, and those in government advocating for Python's use. I think next year it could be worthwhile to try to promote a Python & education track at the conference as there appeared to be a strong interest in teaching Python at the local universities.

Python Brasil[12]

Location: Florianopolis, S.C. Brazil

Dates: October 13-18, 2016

PSF Representative present: Naomi Ceder

PSF Members: Luciano Ramalho, Bruno Rocha, Fernando Masanori

Report from Naomi Ceder

Attendance was just a touch over 500 for the main conference. Somewhere around 30-40% of the presenters were women, which seemed to get great support. I'd guess that the percentage of female attendees was about half that.

October 13-14 were tutorials, including a PyLadies tutorial for some 30 women of whom only 2 had ever done any coding, and Django Girls with 50 women. I arrived late in the afternoon of Oct 13, and attended the social events that evening and the DjangoGirls and social events the next day.

October 15-17 were the main conference days. We didn't set up booth space, but instead we planned a PSF introductory meeting. What I learned in talking to people is that very few had any idea of how membership in the PSF worked.

The morning of October 16 I gave a keynote on diversity. The talk went well and sparked a lot of discussion at the conference and a lot of interaction with me. I also gave a morning lightning talk very briefly outlining the PSF and advertising a special PSF introductory meeting later that afternoon.

The afternoon PSF meeting was attended by 50-70 people. I outlined the main functions of the PSF very briefly and explained the membership model and the grants process. One of the attendees set up his laptop as a sign-up station and I think we had 30 (or possibly more) people sign up as basic PSF members, and I encouraged at least 15 to self-certify as voting members. At this meeting I distributed the bulk of stickers I had, both the Python3 and PSF stickers as well as the little PSF Member stickers I got from MAL at EuroPython. Stickers were definitely an effective incentive.

Oct 18 was the sprint day - I had to leave the evening of the 17th, but from social media shares it looked like they had a good turn out, sprinting on the PyLadies web site, BeeWare, and other projects.

It was a well run conference, and one of the most pleasant and fun conferences I've been to.

Notes:

• Again it was stunning how few people knew about the PSF membership model, even people who were doing tons of community related work. On the other hand there was some real excitement at the prospect of becoming a member of the PSF, so I'd say that is definitely an underserved market.
• There is a staggering amount of Python community stuff going on in Brazil and I think we would do well to recognize it.
• The explanation and sign-up for PSF membership still needs quite a bit of work. It might also help to print business cards with the correct links, etc. I'll make some suggestions to the board.
• The conference hired a translator and wireless headsets so that everyone could understand the English keynotes. This was good idea, and the fact that I did my slides in Portuguese was also greatly appreciated. This makes me realize that we aren't very foreign language friendly. I'm not sure how much we can do, but it may make sense to review the wording of key parts of the to make sure they are as clear and simple as possible.
• One interesting trick was that for lunch they had 4 food trucks. There were some longish lines at the most popular one, but not worse than lunch queues at other conferences, so I think this was a cool idea for small to midsized conferences.
• The tiny PSF member stickers that MAL had done are very popular. We need to get those or something like those done again.

PyBay 2016

Location: Mission Bay Conference Center, San Francisco, CA

Dates: August 19-21, 2016

PSF Representatives present: Betsy Waliszewski, Carol Willing

Report from Betsy Waliszewski

• There were just under 400 attendees and it looked like nearly everyone had checked in by the mid-day on Saturday.

• Friday, there were 2 pre-conference offsite tutorials (Wesley Chun and Raymond Hettinger) that were sold out. After that, everyone came back to the conference venue at the Mission Bay Conference Center for a reception, keynote by Jessica McKellar, lightening talks, and networking.

• Saturday and Sunday there were 4 tracks, a job fair & tools expo, reception & cash bar. The gold and platinum sponsors set up on Saturday morning, while the remaining exhibitors set up at 4:00 that afternoon. Hacker and open spaces were set up. I spent the day on Saturday helping out in the sponsor area and swag table. I brought stickers and the last of the Python desktop toys (400). Both were very popular. It was very busy all day and the sponsors got very good traffic.

• I was very impressed with the conference. The organizers are to be commended for creating a welcoming and professional atmosphere. The sponsors and attendees were well-taken care of, the food was good, and the talks well-received. For a first time event, it went off with very few issues. A couple of negative things I heard was that the women’s t-shirts were child-sized , and there were a few AV glitches. There were also some issues with the mobile app. Other than that, everything went very well. They had a nice printed program guide too.

• I understand from Grace that they were able to break even, which is a great. I’m sure if they do this again, they’ll start planning earlier than they did this year. It’s really amazing what they were able to accomplish in such a short time.

Report from Carol Willing

• I believe that they had 398 attendees. They mentioned at closing talks that 25% were women. I did meet a couple of folks that were there on a scholarship and they found the conference really worthwhile and the community very welcoming. They mentioned that next year that they would work on additional efforts on diversity. I think (and I may be off on the number) they were able to offer 10 scholarships and a number of volunteer-attend scholarships which one of my Cal Poly students did.
• Grace, Simeon, and all the volunteers were incredibly helpful. It was wonderful to have Betsy there to talk about the PSF and hand out the highly coveted PSF stickers. The venue was lovely and worked well for the size of the conference.

• I had a fabulous weekend. I attended Raymond’s workshop on Friday and Jessica’s keynote and the lightning talks. I liked the way they set up the schedule with breaks between the talks which people enjoyed since it gave folks a chance to meet each other and less pressure to rush from one room to the next. The hacker space was conveniently located between the sponsor/job fair and the outside patio where lunch was served. It was great to have the hacking so close to the sponsors since people would introduce folks to the sponsors and vice versa. Something to perhaps consider fostering more of at PyCon.

• Along those lines, a little thing that was very effective and entertaining was the little table signs in the hacker lounge. Just scratch paper and a little wire memory holder yet people enjoyed sharing topics and conversation.
• One surprise was how down to earth, helpful, and encouraging the conference felt. I didn’t expect that from the Bay Area based on other events that I have attended in the Bay Area. Grace and Simeon as well as the volunteers really worked hard to make everyone feel welcome and part of the community.

PyCon APAC 2016

Location: Seoul, South Korea

Dates: August 13-15, 2016

PSF Representatives present: Ewa Jodlowska, Younggun Kim, lvh, Don Sheu

Top tweets from the event: https://www.dropbox.com/s/kyol5e4xv8xqygr/%23PyConAPAC%20-%20Twitter%20Search.pdf?dl=0

Ewa's slides shown at the PSF booth: https://prezi.com/8kgq9e9o_1fk/?utm_campaign=share&utm_medium=copy&rc=ex0share

Report from Ewa Jodlowska

August 13, 2016

• Attended Wes’s talk (opening Keynote). During his talk, he mentioned how Scientific Python gets supported by NumFocus and the Apache Foundation but did not mention the PSF. Why is that? Perhaps we need to better publicize our working groups.

• Lvh worked at the booth
• Don Sheu arrived and staffed the booth
• Younggun staffed the booth when available, but since he was organizing, he did not have much spare time so in the end, I am very happy that we were there to staff the booth.
• Met with Django Girls Seoul organizers and passed on information for future grant requests. The original organizer of the group, Rachell, no longer lives in Korea so new organizers have been trained to take over. They are very excited and have lots of ideas on how to get more Koreans involved and engaged.

• Met with Dmitri from JetBrains. JetBrains is very interested in partnering with the PSF similar to how they have with the DSF. Discussed fundraiser (https://www.djangoproject.com/weblog/2016/jun/30/pycharm-and-django-fundraiser/), discussed https://www.jetbrains.com/pycharm/python-developers-survey-2016/. Discussed getting corporate stats to help drive better sponsorship. Discussed how companies and the PSF are interested in a common thread of sustainability. We discussed how Data Analysis/Scientific in Python is on the rise.

• Spoke to Maciej about moving PyPy over to the PSF from the FSC. I think once we figure this out for BeeWare, we can offer this the same model to PyPy. I think that kind of support is huge for the community and I would like to see the PSF assist with it. I would like to help with the accounting if needed in order to make it happen for our community projects.

August 14, 2016

• DG organizers returned and discussed other workshops they are interested in putting on. They are interested in putting on workshops with raspberry pis

• Armin’s talk Python having stageful modules & how Flask helps with state management. Flask is commonly used by developers in Korea so Armin's talk and presence at the conference was very well received. He was asked for pictures and autographs several times during his time at the PSF booth

• Maciej’s talk was great - funding open source. Open Source is saving companies billions. We need to make corps see this so we can use some of those saved funds to help support and maintain OS. His talk would be great for our Sponsorship WG to see unfortunately it was not recorded

• It would be better interaction onsite to have access to @thepsf twitter account.

• Met PyLadies local organizers

• Attending PyCon APAC organizers meeting. During this meetings, they discussed creating a guideline document that can help other countries put on an APAC. They discussed how to increase national diversity so all APAC countries are represented in the audience. They also discussed financial aid. Off line, they will discuss how to deal with APAC accounting. Since the conference moves to different countries, money tends to get moved around when possible, but they would like to better the organization. They are considering an approach similar to how EuroPython is done or to become a PSF working group and have the money be managed by us.

• Attended PyCon APAC dinner that the conference put on for volunteers, speakers, and sponsors. Met with two students who were conference volunteers. They have recently learned about Python and developing in general but are very driven and energetic about the prospects. I spoke to them about attending PyCon US when they have a chance and also informed them of our financial aid program. I also met with another PyCon US sponsor, Roy from CrossCompute. We discussed international PyCons and his experiences attending them.

August 15, 2016

• Sprints and tutorials happening at a local company.

• The conference had more attendees show up for this day than they had expected. Organizations had to book additional space last minute. Good problem to have in my opinion. After lunch I chatted with Manabu Terada, the PyCon JP organizer. We talked about doing a similar setup of the PSF booth in PyCon JP 2017 as we did in PyCon APAC 2016.

Europython 2016

Location: Bilbao, Spain

Dates: July 16-24, 2016

PSF Representatives present: Naomi Ceder, Lorena Mesa, Ruben Orduz

Report from Naomi Ceder

• gave keynote on Python Community and PSF (video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cCCiA-IlVco).

• ran PSF member meeting (with Lorena's help) (video at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kuMf6lnEumo).

• handed out PSF member stickers to new PSF basic members (Thanks to Marc-Andre Lemburg for the stickers)
• met with new organizer of London Python Meetup, Tariq Rashid, and discussed how PSF works with local orgs.
• discussed how to start a Python community with someone from Bosnia.
• referred someone from Colombia to Facundo B. to discuss forming community in Colombia.
• Ruben manned a PSF table in the main area during the main conference, handing out stickers, brochures, and talking to people.