Transcript: Django Software Foundation - 2021 Board Nominations

Hello. Welcome to another episode of Django Chat, a fortnightly podcast on the Django

web framework. I'm Carlton Gibson, joined as ever by Will Vincent. How are you, Will?

I'm good. Hi, Carlton.

Today we're going to talk about the special edition to talk about the upcoming Django

board election to the Django Software Foundation board, which is this week, right?

Yeah, it's nominations are due by the end of day of the 30th. And this should come out on the 25th. And so we're just going to talk briefly about what the board does. And there's a whole number of things that the board could do and really encourage people to get involved either nominating themselves or think about what they want Django to do the next year because the board drives this. So it's, it's pretty important, but I don't know that everyone has a sense of what the board does.

So, so let's talk about, so, so Django is run by a nonprofit, the Django software foundation,

and it has annual elections. There's currently seven members. I'm one of them. I'm the treasurer

happens every year. Uh, anyone can nominate themselves. It doesn't matter who you are.

The voting happens by the individual members. Um, we have a link to that. There's,

I want to say around 200, I think it's a little bit less than that. Um, but an individual member

is someone who's nominated by the community,

the board reviews.

There's basically a special mailing list.

So it's basically there's the board,

there's the members,

and then there's kind of everyone else.

So you should also,

if you're involved with Django and not a member,

consider nominating yourself or nominating someone

because we want that list to be accurate.

But that's who votes on the board,

but anyone can be on the board.

You don't have to be a member to be on the board.

Yeah.

And what would I say?

Initial pitch.

I say, look, if you use Django and you, you know, you, it's an opportunity to give back,

which isn't directly involved in, you know, contributing cold, you can, you know, what

have you got to, what have you got to, um, give Will to be on the board?

You're on the board.

So what have you got to do?

What commitment is it?

I think I've gone a little overboard this year, but I mean, generally speaking, it's

a couple hours a month.

We have a one hour meeting, uh, once a month and in the interim, there's emails that go

around it's it can be as as little or as much as you want it to be basically but it's as little as

a couple hours a month and the non-profit handles everything non-technical about Django it handles

paying the fellows like you Carlton it handles raising donations it handles conference and

sponsorship um things like sponsoring Django girls that kind of thing yep it helps with um like we

just had DEP 10. So there's a new technical board overseeing that election, validating it.

You know, we put out a statement around Black Lives Matter. Sometimes there's code of conduct

things. It's really just everything that makes Django, Django, the board, you know, enforcing

the trademark, right? So that you don't have for-profit companies having Django in their name.

There's a lot of different things, but maybe I can talk about, so what does a normal meeting look

like because the minutes are public but they're a little hard to find but so

it's an hour total generally starts off with

we've got notes, we do video conferencing, we go over the budget. So I'm the treasurer. So I've

been, I'll talk a little bit more about that. But the budget matters. Balancing, you know,

outflows and inflows. Broadly speaking, the outflows around two thirds. So the annual budget

is around $180,000 a year, that varies a little bit, but it's about that. And then the balance

sheet of what Django has on hand is, has gone down a little bit this year, it's around 155,000.

So we have less than a year's operating cash for everything.

And most of that money goes to the fellows, so to you and to Marius.

The next biggest slug by far is to conference and sponsor workshops.

Then there's also, there's a Malcolm Trednick award.

There's a small amount, like it's maybe $2,000 total of just legal financial to maintain

the nonprofit status.

There's also hosting costs for the Django Project website, things like that.

So we go over the budget, if anything's changed.

really this a lot of this is um donors um so money comes from general donations so you and i

can and do make donations you can do that in the website you can do that with github sponsors

you can um use amazon smile and now you can do the merchandise so that's that's a chunk but the

biggest chunk also corporate sponsors right i mean while we're talking about this the biggest one

corporate sponsor is the biggest chunk by far if you're a company that depends on django then it's

really you know it's like taking out insurance on your technical dependencies to sponsor the

django software foundation it's a really valuable thing that you can do and it'd probably be tax

deductible because it's charitable charitable donation it is and you're what you're buying

with that is hey well okay you can put badge on your um website and you can say hey we sponsor

the django software foundation which really helps with hiring but what you're really buying is the

security of the framework the technology that you depend on yeah absolutely and i think speaking

for myself on the board corporate sponsors is an area we've done some things we added badges we

could do a lot more we've lost our two platinum members this year so that's a loss of fifty

thousand dollars i think the board can and should do a lot more to give prominence to okay i'm a

member it's not just that you're on the site but maybe you're featured in some way or they're you

know, we'll talk about, we'd like to make some updates to the documentation in general to give

corporate sponsors a little bit more, but it, but it is security because we know that these companies

rely on Django and, uh, you know, it's a handful of companies that contribute. It's really not that

many. And part of that is the budget of Django itself is not that big. It's not Python or

anything. It's not millions of dollars. It's meant to be small, but it's also meant to be

a cushioned, to be safe. Um, you know, one of my goals for next year, I'm running again as

Treasure, if I'm selected, is to try to increase the cushion so we have at least a year and a half,

a year or a year and a half, you know, cushion for maybe Django at some point needs to wind down.

Maybe we want to add different things. Like we don't want to have a cash crunch. And if we had

to, there's a number of things we could do. I mean, we could put ads on tomorrow. That would

raise money. You know, we could go around more directly to companies and say, hey, Django's at

But what we'd rather do is have it be a healthy community

where the companies that are using Django contribute

to Django and get something for that um and probably more than they currently get I think

we and the board could do more around that yeah what are your thoughts yeah I mean to to call out

the the sponsors would be a a good thing um and to adjust the site to to make that happen but I

you know I think we don't exactly don't want to get to this position where we're like hey Django's

in risk at risk can you sponsor it's you know if you use yeah we want to avoid that a corporate

sponsorship for this for your size of company isn't a big commitment and you know if you are

listening and you do run a Django shop you know do go and check out the corporate membership and

and join yeah and you know right into the board tell us what would be beneficial to you too I

mean again it's it's seven people it's volunteers I think there is this sense of who is Django

Django should do more it's like well Django is the community people need to you know apply to

be an individual member you know make comments make an effort because it doesn't happen

you know on its own no one's paid to do this yeah on the board or the technical side but like you

know for instance to to call out sponsors say on the django project website more that would involve

a bit of a redesign of the django project website but that's not something that an individual

contributor is just going to do by opening a pull request on django project.com it needs to be

kind of put forward but which i always think but hang on we're web professionals surely we can put

as a community we can put together a you know a really good website this is what we do for a

Yeah, well, it's the difference between a burst and a sustained effort. And that's so I started on the Django forum, we'll put a link, there is a topic around, okay, what, you know, if we increase the budget for the Django Software Foundation, however, we did that, what would we use it on? Because partly the board, you know, isn't going to put in the effort to raise more money unless we know where it needs to go. So we know that it'd be nice to have more of a cushion. But, you know, if we, if the community agreed, we really want to have a docs fellow. And maybe that's full time, maybe that's part time.

time, but specifically to focus on these areas, right, well, then we can say, okay, how much is

that going to cost? We can, you know, it gives us a goal to hit and to improve things. So it really

needs to come from the community, I would say, before the board can do it. So I hope you people

will take a look at the funding things and make your suggestions. You know, one of the things

about Django that's great is that it's a community, but it can be frustrating in that it's a community.

it's not, you know, Laravel, right? Which is a PHP framework where there's the creator,

he runs it all. And he has a handful of services. Like he has a hosting thing. He's adding all

sorts of stuff. Um, you know, there's a direct link between he, if he makes enough off those

things, he can do what he wants and he can just act. Django is a little bit slower by design.

I mean, we don't have, um, Adrian and Jacob step down as benevolent dictators for life.

So it is a community. So people do need to speak up, I guess is what I'm saying.

Yes. Yeah. No, I mean, joining the forum, joining the mailing list, joining the, you know, join the Django Software Foundation as an individual member, contribute to the discussion there. If you've got ideas to how to push forward, put them forward. If you think, do you know what, I can really make a difference here? Well, put yourself in for the board. Let's, you know, run for it. And if you get on, you can implement those things. If you don't get on, you can still implement those things.

those things you can write to the board say hey i want to do this like it's not it's not an all or

nothing but django is just as strong as the community that built it and we have a great

community and you know you go to a django coin what an amazing environment it is but it does

need us to stand up and do that you know hour or two a month that's that little bit extra just to

you know keep the life in it yeah and i and i think it's important to to do it from a sense

of contributing rather than the sense of, you know, worry that Django is at risk in some way,

because it's not longer term, it might be. But yeah, if you're and also, it's a great way to

meet people. I mean, if I think about my own time on the board, I mean, I've met the other board

members I've interacted with, you know, it's been personally beneficial to donate my time.

And again, as you said, like it does, you don't have to be a board member to do these things. So

it's great. If you come onto the board, come on with a, a goal of what you want to achieve,

right? I mean, because there is a whole, a bunch of day-to-day things the board needs to do, but

I think it's great if people come in with, with goals around what they want to do. Um, so, I mean,

that was for me when I, uh, applied last year, I had an internal list of a couple of things I

wanted to do. And one of them was set up a merchandise store, which we have. One of them

was to do the Django survey, which we did, um, get up sponsors emerged that took quite a bit of

work, but we got that on there. Um, so I think it's, you know, again, as the nominations come

up, as the new board will take place in December, it's important to come in with ideas of what you

want to do rather than just, you know, show up and be like, what should we do? It's like, well,

you need to have agency on that matter. Yeah. And it's an opportunity, isn't it? I think it's

right that Django is a healthy community. Um, and all we're really saying is, you know, if you've

got a bit of a, if you've got a bit of, I don't know, an inclination, then join in because that's

what keeps you healthy. Yeah. And I guess the one more thing I would say is this upcoming election,

there'll be a new president because, so Frank Wiles has been the president for the last five

years and unofficially it's been a five-year post. Russell Keith McGee had it before him.

So the president is, you know, the lead person who plays the largest role. So it's especially

important, you know, look at who not, you know, if you're interested in nominate yourself for

president and look at who's nominated themselves and give some thought to who do you think would

be a good leader uh for Django because that position in particular matters quite a bit

going forward for the direction of the project okay what else I think that's it I think we just

wanted to call attention to uh these nominations you know the board's important the nominations

are important if you have questions you can always email the board you can ask us I'm happy

to answer in the forum um but you know get involved yeah so calls to action sponsor the

jango software foundation join the same software foundation vote in the election nominate yourself

for the election even if you don't get on the board put your ideas forward yeah and if you're

at a company and you're not a corporate sponsor consider doing it and if you are one and you want

more from jango do send us your ideas for things that we can implement especially if we are able

to have a docs fellow and rejigger that part of the site um you know let us know so yep that's it

um as ever we'll be here every two weeks and we've got a whole bunch of interviews in the can

and we'll look forward to sharing those with you next time.

Join us next time.

Bye-bye.