Transcript: Django Software Foundation - 2021 Board Nominations

Hello.

I'm Carlton Gibson, joined us every by Will Vincent.

How are you, Will?

Hi, Carlton.

And so we're just gonna talk briefly about what the board does, and there's a whole number of things that um 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 yeah.

There's currently seven members.

I'm one of them, I'm the treasurer.

It happens every year.

Uh anyone can nominate themselves, 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 um, the board reviews.

Um, there's just basically a special mailing list.

So there's basically there's the board, there's the members, and then there's kind of everyone else.

Um 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.

Um, 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.

And there's to what what would I say?

Initial pitch.

I'd say, look, if you use Django and you're, you know, you it's an opportunity to give back, which isn't directly involving, you know, contributing cold.

You can uh, 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 involved?

We have uh 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, uh basically, but it's as little as a couple hours a month.

And the nonprofit handles everything non-technical about Django.

It handles paying the fellows like you, Carlton.

It handles raising donations, it handles conference and sponsorship um

Sponsoring Django girls, that kind of thing.

It helps with um, like we just had Depp 10, so there's a new technical board overseeing that election, validating it.

Um, 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.

Um, the board, you know, enforcing the trademark, right?

So that you don't have for-profit companies having Django in their name.

Um, there's a lot of different things, but um 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 um so it's an hour total.

Um generally it starts off with we've got uh notes, um, 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, um balancing you know, outflows and inflows.

Um broadly speaking, the outflows around two-thirds.

Uh 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.

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

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

Then there's also there's a Malcolm Trednik Award.

Um 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.

Um, 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.

I mean, while we're talking about this,

You know, it's a really valuable thing that you can do, and it'd probably be tax deductible because it's charitable, charitable, charitable donation.

It is.

And you'll what you're buying with that is hey, well, okay, you can put a 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 um security of the framework, the technology that you depend on.

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 um members this year, so that's a loss of $50,000.

Uh, 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're 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 uh cushioned to be safe.

Um, you know, one of my goals for next year, I'm running again as treasurer, um, 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 um, 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.

Um, 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 risk.

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 in the board could do more around that.

Yeah.

What are your thoughts about that?

Um and to adjust the site 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 Django,

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.

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 on the board or the technical side.

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 living.

And that's so I I started on the Django forum.

We'll put a link.

There is a a topic around, okay, what you know, if we increase the budget for the Django Software Foundation, however we did that, um, 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 would 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, but specifically to focus on these areas, right.

Well, then we can say, okay, how much is that gonna cost?

We can, you know, it gives us a goal to hit um and to improve things.

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

Um, so I hope you people will take a look at the funding things and and make your suggestions.

Um, 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 if he makes enough off those things, he can do what he wants and he can just act.

Django's a little bit slower by design.

I mean, we don't have um Adrian and uh 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.

No, I mean join yeah, join in the the the forum, join in the mailing list, join in 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, let run for it.

And if if you get on, you can implement those things.

If you don't get on, you can still implement those things.

You can write to the board saying, 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 build it, and we have a great community.

And you know, you go to a Django Con, 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.

Because it's not.

Longer term, it might be.

Um, 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.

Um 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 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, GitHub 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.

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 a, I don't know, an inclination, then join in because that's what keeps it healthy.

Uh 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 know, you know, if you're interested, 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.

So calls to action, sponsor the Django Software Foundation.

Join the Sam Software Foundation, vote in the election, nominate yourself for the election.

Even if you don't get on the board, put your ideas forward.

And if you are one and you want more from Django, do send us your ideas for things that we can implement, especially if we are able to have a docs fellow in rejigger that that part of the site.

Um, yeah, let us know.

So, yep, that's it.

Um, as ever, we'll be here every two weeks.

Um, 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.