Transcript: DjangoCon US 2024 Recap - Tim Schilling
This episode of Django Chat is sponsored by TalkPython and their new HTMX courses.
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Hi, welcome to another episode of Django Chat, a podcast on the Django Web Framework.
I'm Will Vincent, joined by Carlton Gibson. Hello, Carlton.
Hello, Will.
And we are joined...
I've always been...
Go on, Will.
I was going to say, I've always been curious how that gets recorded. Like,
is that actually recorded or is that all live? Then seeing the pause in there, this is...
Yeah, this is why I have to edit things.
We do it live, we do it live.
Yeah, yeah, Bill O'Reilly style. We do it live.
This is great.
Yeah, I don't know if we want to keep this in or not, but anyways, we're very pleased to welcome...
Let's keep it, let's keep it. This week we've got with us Tim Schilling. How are you, Tim?
I'm doing great. The first time I met you, I just want to point out because that little
bit of surrealism was in San Diego.
And going to dinner and I'm just sitting out there in the front and you two come by and you're
like, oh, you want to go to dinner and end up in the back of a van with both of you and just looking
around, what is going on here? So, yeah. So now seeing the actual recording of it, it was kind of
cool.
It was cool.
That's good.
Yeah. Okay. We want to talk about DjangoCon US because you were an organizer, Carlton and I
spoke. It was a couple of days ago and I just wrote up a little recap. Maybe I'll put in the
show notes, but I've been thinking about...
First conference, second conference, I think this is sixth or something for me. And I vividly
remember the first one I ever went to was in San Diego. It was there three years total. But that
first year, didn't know anyone. You're sort of milling around in the evening, like I don't have
any friends. And then people just appear in the lobby and often it's like, yeah, let's go to
dinner somewhere. So it's very organic and very friendly in a way that other tech conferences
aren't as much.
Yeah.
I have no idea what other tech conferences are like. I just know I was walking down the hallway
and Carol Gantz recommended, hey, go down to the lobby. You'll find people to eat there.
So I did that. And yeah, everything kind of was great after that. So once I learned that
superhero trick.
So was that your first, before we talk about this year, was that your first entry into sort of like
the wider Django community there, Tim?
Yes. Yeah, it was. I was trying to think of a different one and no, it was, it's really that.
Which year was that? Was that...
20...
That was 22.
22. Oh, wow. Okay. Yeah.
So you get up to a flying start then, right?
Yeah, you kind of stormed onto the scene. I know. Yeah. You just show up and then...
Yeah, I had a plan. Yeah, no, I kind of had a plan coming into it. And then Kojo had his
orientation where he's like, hey, know what you're here for. And so did some quick reflection and
yeah, tried to make the best of it and just dove both feet in and haven't really looked back.
It's amazing that you've only been really in like active in the community for those,
two years then, because it seems like you're everywhere and involved in everything and being
massively. So that's just super. What a great effort.
Yeah. I mean, it started back in like 2000. Like, so I was answering questions on Stack
Overflow for many years and then the forum and then the Discord and then I became a moderator
of Discord and then, yeah. Then it was really the 22 DjangoCon US conference and then Django.NET
Space and Defna and an organizer. Yeah. So everything kind of...
Just snowballed. But yeah, I've kind of been around on the edges, just not as deep into it
as I am right now. And you meant 2020, right? I mean, because you don't look like you've been
involved since 2000. You're a bit younger than us. No, no. Yeah. Sorry. 2020. Yeah. Okay.
Well, so DjangoCon, one of the things is everyone has a different experience. There's the first time
experience. There's this speaker experience, but there's also the organizer experience,
maybe you could touch upon that. How did you get involved? What is that like? Because I know
from talking to Jeff Triplett specifically, who helped run it for years, it's just wildly
different when you're behind the scenes making things happen as opposed to just showing up.
Yeah. I didn't really process this until I just... Lacey Henschel did an interview with Jay Miller
and I just watched it recently. And she was talking about how her perspectives on DjangoCons
have changed.
Originally, she was there for the technical talks. And then as she became more involved
in the organization, that's where she ended up skewing to. And I realized that is exactly what
happened this year. The first two years, I had pages and pages of notes from every single technical
talk. This year, not so much. Trying to manage the organization side of things and keep up with
the communication, check and make sure that everybody else is having the conference that
they're intending to have. You have to take that.
That's from somewhere. That focus has to come from somewhere. And so a lot of it's like that
deep thinking during the talks. So now I'll have to go back and rewatch them and really consider
what they were. So there were a couple that stuck out, but those were more of the emotional ones.
Some of the technical ones were a little bit harder for me to grok fully. But yeah, other than
that, it was great. This year went a lot smoother for me than last year. I took some advice and
tried to step back and not do so much.
So that was really nice. We were able to do a couple of new things that I'm proud of.
There's the interviews that I just referenced. Nathan Zieger was helping organize those,
and we'll be releasing those over the next couple of weeks. And I'm really excited about those.
And then, yeah, we had the hackathon this year. Yeah, there was a bunch of new things that we
added that were pretty cool. I remember I just wrote up my recap,
and a lot of it is not focusing on the talks. I mean, it is a little bit because I want to link to
them later. But I remember my first year, I felt like I had to go to every single talk,
go to every single thing. And so I ended up staying inside for three or four days. People
were like, "What was San Diego like?" And I was like, "I don't know." I took the airport to here,
and then I basically didn't leave. And then the next year, I think that's when, Carlton, you and I
did the biking thing. Yeah, we did biking, didn't we? We biked down to the sea every morning.
Yeah, because E. Durbin, I'd seen he had done that. I was like, "Wow,
like, that's a good idea." So we went out in the mornings. And then now I feel like I'm almost like
at the other extreme where writing up my recap, it seems like nothing but walks and coffees and then
a little bit of the talks. But I think that's because the talks, I still went to a lot of talks,
but I know that I can see them online after. And it's about meeting people. And it's also about
pacing yourself and not being overwhelmed by everything.
I think as well, like you might, you might, like, you might be like, "Oh, I'm going to do this. I'm
going to do that." I think as well, like, you might, you might, from the technical talks,
you might pick up some sort of high, high level strategic things, but the sort of lower level
tactical things, you've got to rewatch the videos and tech, you know, you're not going to capture
those as the talks are going on. I mean, well, you might, but that's hard work.
Well, no, I was like you, Tim. I have like pages and pages of notes from my first DjangoCon,
because it was, it was like, you know, being in grad school. But I didn't, I don't know if I knew
that the talks were going to be, I don't think I knew the talks were gonna be online later, or
somehow it didn't click for me that I could just absorb it. And then, you know, that's, that's,
I could just absorb it. And then, yeah, go back and dive in later. Like it wasn't going to
completely. And so now actually that's what I do. I try to make a point of watching basically every
talk from DjangoCon Europe and US. And then I have like a whole notes section. Because otherwise I'm
not going to remember anything, but then I can be like, Oh, what was that talk? You know, what was
that code snippet? And yeah, it's a lot, makes everything a lot more enjoyable and you don't
feel like you have to write things down or, or you'll forget it. I, I, the, one of the technical
talks I, I really enjoyed though, was, um, uh, Ryan Chili's air culture one. That one hit pretty
close to home. Like, uh, I was there with a couple of employees and afterwards we were talking about
like, yeah, we might have a few of those and we're just kind of letting smolder for a bit here. Uh,
but yeah, I've, I've not got too much done since I came home, but I have been, uh,
turning off a few of those and tweaking them and like, Oh, I'll create an issue for that
rather than just having it every day. Oh yeah. It's still, that's still life. That's still,
well, that's the benefit of a break, right? You come back and certain things like I should really
do something about these, you know, ongoing things that, that bug you. So yeah, yeah, we had,
uh, we, um, Jeff triplet and I run the Django news newsletters, which we put out during the
conference or tried to, and, uh, it was having one of its periodic issues on Friday. And so I think
it was a combination of like being tired, being home, new, he and I are both ready to just like,
rip it all up and switch to some other platform. And we, yeah, you came out with a new perspective.
Um, there's some things that might be changing there. Um, some that's fun.
Well, of course, other platforms are always bug free, right? Yeah. What it's sort of like, um,
it's like a murder mystery. I don't know. Maybe I'll tell the story another time with how it all
plays out, but there's some interesting things with how, yeah, curated and other things. Carlton
knows I've I've complained to him about it, but we'll see how it all shakes out. But we, we got
someone, we were like, is this a zombie project that we're, we've been using for five years and
paying like real money too. And we found someone involved and yeah, when I sort that all that out,
we'll, we'll tell that tale. But you know, the point is you come at it these month everyday
things and you're like, you know, maybe we should do it differently. Yeah. That that's a,
that's a big one to change though, for a project. Like, well, okay. Well, not really. I mean, we have
the email addresses, like we, we don't, it would be as simple, you know, I actually already moved it
over to, uh, to something else, but it would just be about giving the Django, the Django knots access
and be a little bit of a hassle, but it's not, it's not that like, there's no payments that go
through it because we have sponsors, like that's all separate. So, um, you know, it's weighing up
the annoyance of change versus the annoyance of three times the amount of money that we're spending
three times in six months, no newsletter, not going out. And then, um, this time, at least though,
Jeff and I both wrote some pretty frustrated emails for us. Uh, and we actually got a response.
Um, and then, yeah, found out that trying to figure out the ownership structure of it right now,
which when I have that nailed down, I'll talk about it, but
yeah, I'm always shocked whenever people send like, Hey, Django newsletters. Amazing. It's, it's,
great. And then Jeff responds back with, well, I didn't even realize like people read it that much.
I'm sitting there like, no, this is fantastic. This is a really core piece of, uh, of our
community that that's required almost at this point. So, yeah, well, that's, I mean, that's
the benefit of Django con, right? It's all these digital friends and colleagues you get together
and you hear just a couple of token. Hey, thanks for, thanks for organizing the conference, Tim.
Like, thanks for all these packages. Thanks for helping out. Right. I mean, you don't, you don't
have to, you don't have to, you don't have to go through all this stuff, right. You don't have to,
you don't have to, you don't have to go through all this stuff, right. You don't have to, you don't have to,
you don't get that. Right. I mean, GitHub stars or listens, uh, you know, you don't,
I mean, I can speak for the, you know, the podcast, like Carlton and I, every once in a
while we get an email or something, but absent Django cons, it's almost like it doesn't exist
beyond the people we're interviewing. Right. Cause it's like, I see some numbers, but I don't know,
unless someone says something, same thing with the newsletter. Right. It's just like, okay. I mean,
I see that it goes to thousands of people, but until someone says something, it might as well not.
So I, I've got a question for both of you then, um, along that vein,
like how important are Django cons to the Django community?
Okay. I, I just think they're utterly essential. Like, um, I often tell the story of,
um, how I kind of really got deeper into Django. I was using it for years and years and years,
but I never went to any events cause I had been to tech conferences in my early career and they
were, they were okay, but they weren't particularly great. And lots of things that we pride Django on,
being about, well, these events weren't like that. And so I, I, I, and then I don't know,
I saw the Django under the hood events come out and I was like, oh, I should've gone to,
I could've gone to those, but they, they sold out quickly and I had missed them.
And then the year after I think Django was in like Florence. I was like, I can go to Florence.
And I went and the talks were, um, you know, there were technical tools, sure. But the, the, the, the
talks were on things like, um, cognitive biases and diversity hiring and like all these just
topics. I hadn't even really
considered. Right. And I literally think of it as changing my life. I was like, yes, I'm home.
This is where I want to be. This is what I want to engage in. And at the time I was at an inflection
point in my career. I was, um, I've been, I'd had a kind of five years or so of building mobile app
front ends with Django backends. And that was a nice niche, but at the time it was getting harder
and harder to maintain that. And I either had to specialize more on the mobile front ends or
specialize more in the Django. And I remember going to that conference being like, well,
which am I going to do? And it
was very much the conference that made me say, no, I'm okay. I'll double down on Django. And
yeah, it was literally life-changing and I met all these people and I
engage more with the community and every year it refreshes it. And every year you go and you
see these folks and you're like, oh, how are you? And that is magic. And it's irreplaceable.
Yeah. Is that where you gave that?
Then you will.
I just wanted to ask Carlton, did you give a talk at the first one, the
growing old gracefully, or was that the, that was the next year? Was it also in Florence?
Yeah. No, that was in Heidelberg, um, the following year. But basically I came away
from, I came away from DjangoCon EU7 2017 being like, I got to submit a talk for the next one.
And then was it 2018 when you gave the talk on in Heidelberg,
I guess, cause it would have been the spring, right?
Yeah. Yeah.
Okay. I'm just trying to say, I mean, this was my first talk six years ago because I I'll answer your question.
Tim, but I've found Carlton cause I saw that talk. So I probably, cause I was going through the
videos and I emailed you, I believe. And so then DjangoCon 2018 US, my first one, I gave a talk.
I sort of knew who Carlton was. Um, and then he came up after the talk and said, hi, and had
feedback. And then that, you know, here we are now. So, you know, it's always like a great love.
You never, I mean, Carlton will know this every year. I'm it's a ha it's, it's a big ass to go to
a conference. Like it's a lot of time it's it's money and stuff. And I have, I can sort of talk
myself out of it, but every time I go, all these good things happen and it's often after, you know,
it's not, you know, I can't evaluate the conference based on how I feel, you know, the week after as
we are now, it's like the weeks and months and getting to know people. And then, you know, just
having, just having a meal or coffee with someone later, when you interact with them online, you,
you know, they're a human being, right? So it just makes it a lot easier. You can understand,
oh, they, yeah, maybe this is how they're thinking about things. Cause you've had
conversations about it and you have a, just, you know, just a sense of them as a, as a full person,
not just this name out there. That's helping or hindering what you want to do with Django or with
code. Um, so absolutely the same experience for me. Like I've been, I've been to a PyCon,
I've been to some tech.
Conferences in San Francisco when I was out there, but nothing, nothing like a Django con.
See, it's those comments that I could always make me worried about going to other conferences then.
Cause like there's, there's a couple that I know and like the conference chats group, like I would,
if they're there and there's the organizers there, I'm willing to go to those conferences because,
um, I, I have that bit of trust, uh, in them and that's willing to spend the money and the time to
go do it. But it took a lot for me to go to that first Django con. Um, like it was really a decision.
Like, Nope, I am investing a lot of my career into this and like, let's see what happens.
Um, but yeah, that part of the question behind the reason behind that question was, uh, do you
both then feel so you both agreed that like, Hey, personally and community wise, like Django cons
mean a lot. Do you feel like we accurately represent those, uh, within the community?
Like the, the, sorry, do, do we accurately reflect that importance within the community of like Django?
Cons kind of keep things together moving forward.
Oh, yeah. I mean, what, well, I don't quite understand the concern, like, yes,
they're big things, right? And we, a lot of effort goes into them. A lot of promotion goes into them,
but it's more of like, um,
could we be doing more of really leaning into jangler cons like if if we know that they're
important and we know that this is where community members get together and they build that level of
trust so we can have those difficult conversations like i think it was the last episode you two were
talking about um the the auth uh change and how we might be able to get a decision made at jangler
con because we're gonna have a bunch of people jangler con us because we have a bunch of people
in the room um and we can kind of hash out a bunch of these differences and hopefully arrive
at a solution that moves us forward and so like this is a common trend in these conferences um
but i don't know if we're i think everyone within it we all know that this is true but are we
actually actively marketing it and telling people like hey if you want to be a part of this like you
need to be here like you really should be here if you really want to invest um into the community if
you want to integrate with the community if you want to integrate with the community if you want to
integrate yourself into the community and then also making sure like the people that are in the
community that we are trying to help support like are we helping them get to these um so like that
that's kind of where i'm yeah yeah i mean you said the magic word marketing and you know i'm just
gonna say like i mean jacob kaplan moss gave a talk this year on what would the jango software
foundation do with a million dollars and one of the big takeaways was having an executive director
of the jango project do things like that that fall through the cracks you know we could also do
things like put the conferences on the home page of jango project right like i i we could i mean we
don't track the statistics but i would venture that the number of people who see the news community
section of the website is point something percent you know that's that's kind of why that's why the
newsletter exists that's why the podcast exists i would rather the newsletter be a jango newsletter
um so maybe i should jeff and i should push harder for that like we've offered to run that
for jango but i think the reality is it's a lot of work and it's a lot of you know i think the
ongoing volunteer commitments are difficult that's why we have the fellows role um which i thought
um natalia gave a really great talk about it this year um but yeah mark marketing shining the light
on you know organizers like i didn't i didn't know that i didn't know that i didn't know that i
volunteers ran the first jango con when i was there i just like oh it's a conference you know
i didn't realize it was like nope nobody's getting paid it's it's just right and then as you get into
it you start to see and you know however we can shine a light on the people who are making jango
happen the better but i think it's easy you know it's running a conference doing code doing
community doing docs you know sarah boyce um gave an amazing talk on accessibility features in jango
5.x but we basically don't talk about them
by the time we've done everything involved everyone's just exhausted right and so that
last bit that if we were a commercial enterprise or something would get all the focus instead all
the focus is on the the meat and not on the the sizzle yeah that's what i would say carlton what's
what's your take yeah no exactly that like there was this line i think from emmerich well um years
ago that jango is it's a framework but it's like an ecosystem around that framework and it's a
community around that and the biggest part is the community
and then the ecosystem and then the framework is the least of it but the framework is the only
bit that we have on the website and if you come along as a django a new django dev and you find
the website you manage to download it you manage to go through the tutorial you kind of don't even
know that there's this ecosystem around it right we finally tim you managed to get django debug
toolbar into the tutorial as that final step so look there is there are these third-party packages
and here's one and look there's a there's a site that tells you about more and that but that was a
major change for django to even just even hint that they're not going to be able to do that
they're all these third-party packages and could we perhaps hint that there was a community that
missed in fact the best bit about it but this change this change is happening i mean this was
the discussion carlton and i had a little bit with the fellows and then we had even further we had
we had dinner with them at the conference i mean the fact that there's people like you tim right
there's people who are new to the community who are stepping into these major major roles
because especially during covid there was there was definitely a changing of the guard i mean
of especially when he was fellow some of the founding figures were stepping away a little bit
which makes sense but there wasn't that next generation and i feel like now we have we have
it or we have it more so so change is happening you know we're there's a ticket open to add user
profile models you know all these i think because a lot of people who did so much work back in the
day are slightly less involved but can still inadvertently be a block on change and so having
in-person conferences seeing newer people come in nobody wants to be a block but we kind of need
you know new ideas new enthusiasm you know reconsider things uh you know so that forum
post my talk was on auth i think most people when they step back and think about it like yeah we
why don't we have a template for login so we have built-in login it's i don't think it's
controversial it's just hasn't been done and the whole auth thing was there were there was a big
not fight but discussion about it you know 12 years ago and a lot of the people who were involved
with it then have scar tissue from that but yeah you know it's it's hard natalia ran a
um a code review session during the sprints of because that's one of the needs right now of the
fellows is they need other experienced devs to come in and leave code reviews on things
and one of the prs she pulled up was this verb changing the variable name
to be more straightforward and then there was a comment about performance and immediately i'm
just thinking like oh my goodness like that this is so difficult to try to reason about and like
this is just one small change that isn't functional it's literally if you're reading just happen to be
reading this one function this will help but then you have to have how much time of investment over
how many people and that's just it it was mind-boggling right then of how much time it goes
and that's just one of the things that i've found is that if you're reading a lot of this code
and you're reading a lot of this code and you're reading any bit of this code and then
when you make it much larger of talking about models and like a core part of like the developer
experience yeah i can see it's going to take a while one of the things that i've come increasingly
to think it's not just a new thought but it's been um brewing for ages but it came up at the
end of my talks daniele asked me a question um about um i don't know about getting new features
into django or or something around that thing he asked a very similar question when i gave the talk
about um i don't know about getting new features into django or or something around that thing he'd asked a very similar question when i gave the talk
about um i don't know about getting new features into django or or something around that thing he'd asked a very similar question when i gave the talk in vigo and i'd been reflecting on it and
in vigo and i'd been reflecting on it and
in vigo and i'd been reflecting on it and i'd read a few essays and there's um this
i'd read a few essays and there's um this
i'd read a few essays and there's um this idea of having um like the kernel by uh
idea of having um like the kernel by uh
idea of having um like the kernel by uh kernel django the kernel django like the
kernel django the kernel django like the
kernel django the kernel django like the core bit that's small and tight and
core bit that's small and tight and
core bit that's small and tight and difficult to mean difficult to edit and
difficult to mean difficult to edit and
difficult to mean difficult to edit and system and so django's philosophy of
system and so django's philosophy of
system and so django's philosophy of batteries included
batteries included
batteries included sort of fades away and dies unless we
sort of fades away and dies unless we
sort of fades away and dies unless we find a way it well either we have to pile
find a way it well either we have to pile
find a way it well either we have to pile it all into django in which case it's
it all into django in which case it's
it all into django in which case it's hard to maintain and it can't be done
hard to maintain and it can't be done
hard to maintain and it can't be done because we can't make changes quickly to
because we can't make changes quickly to
because we can't make changes quickly to django or we have to find a solution to
django or we have to find a solution to this problem this messaging problem
this problem this messaging problem
this problem this messaging problem about hey and if you need i don't know
about hey and if you need i don't know
about hey and if you need i don't know if you need rate limiting there's
if you need rate limiting there's
if you need rate limiting there's option one and option two for rate
option one and option two for rate
option one and option two for rate limiting if you need
limiting if you need
limiting if you need debug tooling there's these options for
debug tooling there's these options for
debug tooling there's these options for debug tooling if you need
debug tooling if you need
debug tooling if you need i don't know two-factor auth there are
i don't know two-factor auth there are
i don't know two-factor auth there are these packages that are all
these packages that are all worth looking into we need to solve that
worth looking into we need to solve that
worth looking into we need to solve that problem so that a newcomer arriving at
problem so that a newcomer arriving at
problem so that a newcomer arriving at the django project
the django project
the django project has some guidance and doesn't have to go
has some guidance and doesn't have to go
has some guidance and doesn't have to go and find say awesome django on the
and find say awesome django on the
and find say awesome django on the github repo like millions of people
github repo like millions of people
github repo like millions of people don't even never even know about this
don't even never even know about this
don't even never even know about this awesome awesome x projects right we
awesome awesome x projects right we
awesome awesome x projects right we can't be relying on that as our
can't be relying on that as our
can't be relying on that as our information distribution channel yeah i
information distribution channel yeah i
information distribution channel yeah i mean curation is tough right like this
mean curation is tough right like this
mean curation is tough right like this is i mean
is i mean
is i mean when you're on the board right i mean
when you're on the board right i mean
when you're on the board right i mean just historically django hasn't wanted
just historically django hasn't wanted
just historically django hasn't wanted to put its finger on anything which
to put its finger on anything which
to put its finger on anything which makes a certain amount of sense but has
makes a certain amount of sense but has
makes a certain amount of sense but has these drawbacks and
these drawbacks and
these drawbacks and i think i think that's one of the
i think i think that's one of the
i think i think that's one of the blinds i should say one of the blind
blinds i should say one of the blind
blinds i should say one of the blind sides
sides
sides of um blind sides blind sites whatever it
of um blind sides blind sites whatever it
of um blind sides blind sites whatever it is of
is of
is of of django or these conferences is most of
of django or these conferences is most of
of django or these conferences is most of the people there are
the people there are
the people there are deeply involved with django and you can
deeply involved with django and you can
deeply involved with django and you can forget these you know
forget these you know
forget these you know how international it is you know these
how international it is you know these
how international it is you know these i you know how off-putting some of these
i you know how off-putting some of these
i you know how off-putting some of these things are to newcomers which
things are to newcomers which
things are to newcomers which people aren't trying to be but our
people aren't trying to be but our
people aren't trying to be but our concerns as
concerns as
concerns as developers are different than new people
developers are different than new people
developers are different than new people and we sort of lose that perspective
and we sort of lose that perspective
and we sort of lose that perspective over time i mean it's also the counter
over time i mean it's also the counter
over time i mean it's also the counter argument
argument
argument sorry sorry there's a slight lag on the
sorry sorry there's a slight lag on the
sorry sorry there's a slight lag on the so it's i don't know exactly what the
so it's i don't know exactly what the
so it's i don't know exactly what the solution is but
solution is but
solution is but there's the dilemma
there's the dilemma
there's the dilemma it's also like on the other side too of
it's also like on the other side too of
it's also like on the other side too of you want to start
you want to start
you want to start contributing to that ecosystem so you
contributing to that ecosystem so you
contributing to that ecosystem so you start writing blog posts you start
start writing blog posts you start
start writing blog posts you start creating a package how do you get the
creating a package how do you get the
creating a package how do you get the rest of everybody to know about it like
rest of everybody to know about it like
rest of everybody to know about it like if you're not
if you're not
if you're not in the in group it's really hard for
in the in group it's really hard for
in the in group it's really hard for people to take you i wouldn't say take
people to take you i wouldn't say take
people to take you i wouldn't say take you seriously but
you seriously but
you seriously but to give you to invest the time to
to give you to invest the time to
to give you to invest the time to research it and provide you like
research it and provide you like
research it and provide you like critical feedback and stuff and so it's
critical feedback and stuff and so it's
critical feedback and stuff and so it's yeah there's challenges on both sides of
yeah there's challenges on both sides of
yeah there's challenges on both sides of it by not
it by not
it by not having a standard like hey this is where
having a standard like hey this is where
having a standard like hey this is where you go for
you go for
you go for community like third party like this is
community like third party like this is
community like third party like this is where you go and submit your
where you go and submit your
where you go and submit your your blog post for greater reach and
your blog post for greater reach and
your blog post for greater reach and um yeah we can't rely on just
um yeah we can't rely on just
um yeah we can't rely on just me and jeff randomly seeing something
me and jeff randomly seeing something
me and jeff randomly seeing something and making a
and making a
and making a well that's a quick call
well that's a quick call
well that's a quick call after 2023 that jango con like i was
was like i'm gonna create django cairn like that's that's my idea like the central index of all the
django knowledge and like have some curation in it and yeah never got anywhere but like it's that
need is still there i just there's other things i'm investing my time in right now well can we
talk about django commons because i think that ties into some of this third party stuff so give
us the pitch uh yeah so django commons um i think the the working tagline is like the last place
you'll need to transfer your project to um theoretically it's going to be ideally we want
it to be a home for django and python packages uh so that you know that package will have a good
chance of always being maintained like we can't guarantee there's always going to be a maintainer
for things because that's not our purview but we're going to work our hardest to make sure that
we're identifying packages that do maintainers and help new people become maintainers and try
to ease that logistical burden
around maintaining software so it we we've learned a lot from other solutions in the ecosystem like
jazz band did a lot of things has done a lot of things really well and continues to um so we've
copied a lot of our organization from there but the the main difference was we started with a group
of people uh at the administrator level at the top to create that redundancy and create a success
like an immediate succession plan and then we started with a group of people at the administrator
so everything we have to do we have to allow multiple people to have access to it and and by
confronting that from the beginning then it's easier to like all right we can onboard somebody
we can remove someone um and then that that idea then permeates down um and then yeah so i held
i don't want to say community interview but like kind of asked who would be interested and i had
10 or 12 people respond yeah carlton was one of them and uh yeah we had like a list of responsibilities
and the four people
that i ended up going with were the they were the ones that had responded like yes to everything
wanting to be involved with the community like responding to questions reaching out to maintainers
reaching out to new people like i felt that at least in the initial phase we need to be really
strong on the community aspect of trying to maintain relationships and set up those
organizational flows so that like later on people have then processes and workbooks or
playbooks to be like oh we just need to go implement this now and so that's kind of the
idea behind it this episode of django chat is sponsored by talk python are you serious about
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with the talk python course links in your podcast player show notes now i think there's that's
probably quite wise in that we've historically chad the hero does code by themselves approach
and that's worked very well and that goes very so far but it it's it reaches its limits and there's
those difficulties about succession that's the key how do we hand off to the new generation that's
i've heard this topic come up just a billion times recently but baking the community in from the start
reversing the the framework ecosystem community it's like well let's go let's go community
ecosystem framework and see if that works better i mean it's also the only way i can write do
community things like django karen didn't go anywhere because i was the only one working at
it but then like the debug toolbar has been really fun to maintain with matthias we have a
co-writing group and then we meet every six months just talk about the project
we've recently added a couple new maintainers and then django.space is so much more fun because we
have a group of administrators we now have some new session organizers and then django commons like
it helps create that accountability but then it also creates that connection and then when you go
to the django cons and see people's faces and you get to connect with them and yeah it's a lot of fun
i think it also just gives you that outlet where if it when it's just you it just be it can easily
become overwhelming and at some point you think i'll just stop for a little bit and then you kind
of stop stop you know i mean i certainly this podcast with carlton the newsletter with jeff
i mean even the awesome django repo jeff came in i forget like two three years ago because i was
feeling overwhelmed and you know when it's a non-paying you know community thing it's very
easy to just be like throw your hands up um but if you just have that little bit of help it gets
you over the edge can we talk about django not spaces though because that i feel like we've
talked about some of the challenges here this is this unbelievable success story that yeah if
came from you know this new generation of people who are like we should do something and and
actually did it and now the thirds the thirds cohort um just closed the yeah the picks for it
right yep we just sent out the announcements to people who uh were selected um yeah it's
yeah that another another django con product uh rachel and dawn i think it was after
2022 i think that was the one whichever one rachel was on the panel at the end i think it was
2022 um they realized like hey we we should have something to help people get contributing like
start contributing um yeah and from there like it kind of grew they added sarah abdomen and then
sarah boyce and i joined a couple months after that then we had the little pilot program and now
yeah we're on session three we now have we session two we had one new session organizer
uh tushar gupta and this session we now have three new session organizers helping um pre-up
poa i'm sorry for pronouncing your name wrong priya and then uh lillian tran and uh emmanuel
catchy so it's it's really exciting to see people like go through the program advance up and like
take more and more ownership and now being to the point like actually helping us out because
but the the organizers of django not space like haven't stayed static like dawn's now
president of the psf board sarah abdomen is on the dsf board sarah boyce is a django fellow like it
people keep moving so like we
there was a vacuum growing like we need to pull people up and help out um and so it's it's really
exciting to see see that happen real time well and that's i think that's the the life cycle
built in right where it's expected and celebrated that people can do different things but still be
involved i mean and even something as simple as the um sarah boy started on the django newsletter
she was like hey because she was on the review and triage team at the time like why don't we
celebrate all the prs and we're like that's a great idea and she's like and i'll do it for a
while so you know and that's turned into a regular feature in the newsletter and a bunch of the
django nuts and rafael has done it a lot recently and that's a perfect i think a perfect example
where it's not just and you know it's like yes we should do it and someone raises their hand and
takes it on and there's a way to have some continuity so that's yeah i think a beautiful
thing right if we could mimic that like you can't and this ties into carlton's initial talk of
growing old gracefully like you can't it's unreasonable to expect the hero model and to
it's off you know it's off-putting initially and it's off-putting long term when people
when that you know the it's almost like the burnout thing right it's like it just builds
up builds up builds up and if there's no release you just throw your hands up and walk away you
know unless unless you're actually getting paid for it which almost none of us are yeah i was
getting paid for it opens a whole host of other issues but well i don't want to go down that
channel well speaking of relatively unpaid things can you talk about mentoring google summer code
this past year because i feel like this is something that's really really really hidden
within the django community i mean i only knew about it from carlton mentioning it because he
was mentoring and it's this long-running thing that's had major changes and yet has basically
no visibility as far as i'm concerned um so how did how did you get involved with that and what
was your experience like so i um basically when i came back to helping maintain the debug toolbar
the first things matthias and i talked about uh or shortly after was making the toolbar async
compatible because at the time like everything was moving async and we were fearing like hey
we need to make sure like the developer tools are compatible with this new paradigm
and the toolbar is one of the most popular ones like we need to make sure that we're not
a bottleneck and so we had came up with the project we had done some work on it but it
kept stalling and yeah for the last three years i've been submitting it as a
project for google summer of code and this year we had i think it was two submissions
and we ended up selecting aman pandes and he did a fantastic job um we actually had so it was
on the mentor side it was myself uh matthias keston holes daniel harding and then elenita
and elenita was a django not from django not space session one which was really exciting for me and
then yeah aman had previously done a google summer of code with wagtail and yeah tebow recommended him
um and yeah it went really well it was fun to see his ideas and like pushing things forward and like
the actual direction of the project changed as well because originally it was like this serializable
version of it which we still need to do but aman identified like oh we we can't even run the the
toolbar in an async fashion like we should start there and so yeah we moved over there we got as
many of the panels to be async compatible like there's a couple that aren't like profiling we
have to swap out what does that underneath the hood and so yeah we moved over there we got as many of
the panels to be async compatible because that's just not async compatible or we have to yeah it's
a little tricky um yeah i'm really proud of aman and the team's work on it and i agree like there's
it's another thing where we're not we don't have the visibility and into it because like there were
four really big projects and um i'm gonna plug jagger not space once more shafia uh she did the
json it was sage abdullah his uh mentee shafia was a part of django not space i believe it was
actually our pilot program so that's yeah it's really good to see like things just kind of come
full circle and all the connections between things well and sage gave a talk on this this
year but that's that's one right carlton you and i sit back and you know smoke our virtual pipes
because he was you know he was just a college student who did google summer of code who became
a core contributor on wagtail and now he's mentoring and and that's you know if not
for those entryways he wouldn't be part of the django community right so yeah that's a huge
success story yeah yeah um and you know just from the the code point of view as well that
the cross db jason field one example the reddest but the back end another example these bits of
code that that need you know a dozen weeks to get done they literally wouldn't exist
if it wasn't for you know google summer of code and that's and over the years it's enabled all
number of projects in the django ecosystem i mean imagine if we had django summer of code
i mean because the thing is google provides the visibility but the funding is not super high
so i would also push back the phrase of summer of coding because well yes
yeah yeah the hemisphere i learned about that um yeah but i can't change google
but i can affect us uh no but to the community and the marketing aspects mario his keynote on
community i was talking to him after it and he was saying like why don't we celebrate the people
who are involved in like the releases and stuff and his example to me was if you are on the craft
services team you should stay through that entire list of credits just to see your name on the
screen at the very end we could do something similar like on each one of our release notes
or at least on the major releases of having a credits or at least crediting like the fellows
that are part of it and then eventually start adding the list of everyone who's contributed to
that and like what they're
contributions were yeah um so that people rather than just saying like hey i've got these commits
and linking to github like you can link to django project.com and be like well we need someone to
do that other than well no this already exists right so um like this this just needs the just
needs i'm gonna say just needs right there is no just needs here but this just needs a teeny bit
more life what's katie mclaughlin built a tool which goes not only pulls the um github commits
and who the committers are which is relatively easy to do but it goes through tracks and it
looks at who's commented on all all the issues and it pulls those people out and i think it even
hits the forum api you know it goes through and it finds the wider set of contributors you know
because lots of people just leave a an insightful comment and that leads to the solution but they
don't get a credit because they're not a git contributor for the you know they're not the
git committer for that they've done all katie's done almost all of this work and it just needs
just needs like that little bit of life force to get it over the line and we
we've done a lot of work on that and we've done a lot of work on that and we've done a lot of work
you know i was working with them to get it done and i i failed and you know i ran out of life force
and it never happened for i know 4.2 but the tooling it's there it exists and it's it's ripe
to be picked up and we could so work so very well create something like this which is much richer
than just a list of the git committers much richer yeah i don't i don't doubt that we have
things like partially done and like that i'm not saying like anyone here has to go do that it's also
throwing things out there because someone might be listening like oh i could do that
and then even if you can't do it yeah sorry should someone email katie and say can i
pick that up is that the next step yeah well we what do you think we should do something along
those lines hey you know because katie's got this tool it's right because it's like a meeting like
we can't just we can't just complain we have to like end with action items and be like and
you do this and you do this you do this and then i don't want more action items that's that's not
what i was told no but i know i know we don't have time we want we want to
your path right because you can only have the same discussion so many times without saying okay let's
just identify what a solution would look like okay i can't commit katie but i can commit myself so
if somebody listening wants to help pick up that project up ping me and i will communicate with
katie and see if we can pick up something in that domain because it needs to be it's so close and it
was you know a couple of years ago and life was different let's try now but i don't think it has
to be the whole solution that you implement either like you can do half a solution or like
just do like what the front end would look like and be like i need help populating this and once
you've already invested that time someone's more willing to come in and say oh i can help you with
that like we can just do this yeah no i think i think that was perhaps our mistake is we had the
list of git contributors and then we tried to do that that that bit more but it was like ah we
should have shipped yeah you know you got yeah you gotta that's one of the things i learned being on
that space is like you gotta the public marketing of celebrations is such a great way to like raise
awareness it's it's literally a cheat code that you know that i found um or that we found i learned
from everybody else i think we need the just working group right let's just have a have a
list of just just or maybe it could be an open source repo no but i i'm i'm not totally joking
because there are all these things that are so close if only yes carl
well no if only yes i was gonna um there's a way of rephrasing just is um seth godin who's the
marketer he has a mental exercise which is ask yourself if only so you know when you've got
if only this then and and you keep just saying if only and then that's the job list right if
you can knock off the if onlys then you achieve what it's a you know it's a power maybe it's a
forum section i mean we can't just dump everything on the forum but uh that's i i'm excited to see
the forum seems to be coming into its own the last year or two i mean because
it i think andrew godwin started up or someone i think started up a number of years ago just
because the the developers list on google i mean couldn't be more off-putting to a younger person
or a newcomer i mean not the content but just the whole format and it's just like it's it it
just shrieks of like yeah not not what jango really is i won't i won't you know so anyways
that's a good choice anyway before no today i was looking i was a thing that i posted 18
months ago came up and i was able to find my post really quickly i would then there was a related
issue that tim um was was working on i was able to find that in a single shot with the search whereas
i as a fellow used to have to spend time on the jango developers mailing list searching the history
to find the relevant threads and every single time it's 20 minutes of scrolling you know it's
it's just oh it's a life it really is you know forum versus email yeah i understand the oldies
like email but seriously the search and the the filtering
and the threading and these things these are you know worth any disruption you get from not having
an email interface anyway can we talk about your day job tim yeah yeah where were you gonna ask
carlton you give well i was gonna ask that you give up all these vibes of being like a some sort
of really senior engineer and i'm just what what is it you do what's your what's your gig learn
from a bunch of mistakes that i've made myself yeah that's cool that's what's cool i'm working
no i i work for a company called aspire edu we do education analytics we don't do data science like
that i feel like that's relevant here um yeah we're a really small company i think we have nine
people and then three of us are on the software side of things and yeah i've been i contracted
with this company for a while like half time for a number of years and then about two and a half
years ago now i was brought on full-time um we've got it's it's an interesting project so we we
run django celery postgres and then we have rabbit mq and redis but like we do everything on
platform as a service or software as a service so we don't run any of our own hardware we don't
use aws it's we run on heroku we have redis labs we have uh cloud amqp crunchy data um we do i guess
we do have some s s3 aws stuff for like s3 and backups and stuff but um yeah so we do all that
because we do a lot of stuff for like s3 and backups and stuff but um yeah so we do all that
because we do a lot of stuff for like s3 and backups and stuff but um yeah so we do all that
um yeah so we do a lot of stuff for like s3 and backups and stuff but um yeah so we do all that
none of us are all that great at devops work and we there's enough work elsewhere that we're just
trying to ease the developer experience and just kind of work on what we're focused on um it's it's
an interesting project we have i think the last time i counted over 200 models now we got some
tables in the two billion row mark so we can hit some it it's so we don't have a lot of usage on
process to capture data we have these massive celery signatures that run and have to hit all
these endpoints to capture data determine like what these differences are and um yeah we're
working on one of the things i'd really like to do is instead of capturing all the data every night
the the some of these lmss they offer the ability to listen to like an event queue but then like
that then introduce new problems like sorry we're gonna go real deep on this one particular problem
so like if you have an assignment and you
have the due date set at midnight and we're scheduled to capture data at midnight or even
if you set like due date at 1 a.m you then run into this problem where all the submissions are
most likely going to occur in that last hour because it's like ticket sales or something
that you get this spike yeah so then the concern is like all right so as we're capturing like
nature of our product we have a snapshot thing so you can go back in time and show data at a
certain date if you we need to cut off that date at some point so now we're trying to deal with
all right if we have this backlog of submissions that can accumulate and we don't know when we're
going to get them like there's no indication like oh you've gotten all the submissions like you're
good now um so now we're trying to figure out like how do we do a cutoff point but then continue to
allow more submissions and put those before the cutoff points that you can properly um dictate
things like it's uh yeah as you just keep growing it's like all right next problem up and then try
to like patch things together and make it all work and yeah so
that's one of the things i really like working with like the same project for eight nine years is
you know all the gnarly but all the gnarly bits and like you can be really effective really quickly
um yeah you can get deep into some weird problems can i ask about so you mentioned redis so one of
the platinum sponsors at the conference was was valky what so for those who don't know redis has
whatever it's sort of a longer story but basically there's a license for it now and a group is
as i understand it trying to control redis itself so there's a fork one of which is valky which is
supported by aws and some other places that want to keep it open source i'm curious working on a
like real world project how does that filter to the decision making like are there these
red lines when you say we switch or like you know what does that look like in the real world
yeah so for me it's more of do do do they have a managed offering
that we can just swap it one for one and have everything that we have elsewhere
like if i have to go and set something up in aws and manage the user accounts and
because of another nature of how we scaled we have like different app what we call backends
it's not super simple so like there's a major cost to us switching over to things
um it's like once that exists doing the price analysis like the cost analysis on it
if it's going to make sense for us to spend time on it because
it's going to require my time and i could be spending that elsewhere so like it's a lot of
forward momentum elsewhere that would prevent us from going back and like all right let's change
just one other thing real quick right i mean that's the arbitrage i guess of the business
opportunity is squeezing that that pain point um but it is it's interesting to see right i mean
a little bit of the history right where it was open source for forever and then the maintainer
i got sold it and it stepped away and you know selling open source and
this has happened a couple of times but uh i mean carlton's made this point i mean redis is
it's really a pillar of of the web right so you sort of can't can't it's hard to think of that
being in private control um so i guess it's yeah interesting to see eventually we're still doing
heroku so like yeah we're clearly a very slow organization to change things so i'm all about
heroku i
don't think there's anything wrong with throwing money at DevOps. If you're not DevOps people and
you can throw money on it, do it. It's a whole separate beast, right? It's separate from what
you need. And until it becomes prohibitive, why not? I'm very pro. And you're doing billions.
You're doing real scale, right? You manage services. You're using Crunchy. We don't need
to be heroes doing everything ourself because no one does a good job of that.
So yeah, don't apologize. I'm all about services, personally. Carlton, you agree with me.
Yeah, no, I mean, this line about Heroku, what did Heroku do? Well, they stopped evolving because
they got bought by Salesforce. So that was a bit of a shame, but they got rid of the free tier.
That was from the beginning.
No, but I can never be...
I can never be like, oh, you got rid of your free tier? I'll boo to you. Like free tiers are
not good business, right? They don't make any sense. So I'm not so worried that Heroku got
rid of their free tier. I mean, that they stopped evolving is more of a shame, I think, overall,
but their product was good and it hasn't gone anywhere, right? Salesforce kept it running.
Yeah, it actually has been pretty stable for it. There was a good year where they had a bunch of
outages where it became a real... That's the reason we moved to Crunchy data is like,
if we want to move off Heroku, we need to get the database off first so that we can just swap out
the application layer. And so that was a major hurdle. But yeah, Crunchy data and CrunchyBridge,
they helped us out tremendously with that. And then, yeah, we haven't had the need to
switch out Heroku yet. It's been running well. Yeah.
But that, I mean, when Craig was on the podcast, he was making that point that
this federated model of managed services, it makes sense, right? It's sort of amazing that
Heroku was able to combine everything at scale, but they're all separate problems, right? Managing
the database, managing this, managing that. And all of us kind of just want to build web apps and
not worry about those things. Unless you're at a huge company and then you can just only
worry about those things, but they're... Yeah. It's not what interests me personally.
Yeah.
It's a challenge to document all these things and keep it straightforward of when somebody
new comes on. Because we don't have a ton of turnover, but then trying to onboard somebody
onto all these services and... Yeah. I can see how it'd be a lot easier to just have a massive
server somewhere running everything there and you can just give someone a little bit of access and
stuff. But then someone comes in and buys that company and then you're dealing with...
Oh, I mean, rolling your own. Yeah. Well, yeah. Well, Carlton, I have to say,
you wrote something the other day in reference to the money stack.
Yeah. Oh, so I managed to draft... This was my newsletter for the month was... Stack Report
newsletter for the month was about avoiding R&D in production. I managed to draft it on the plane
home from DjangoCon. Actually, I was like, right, I've been taken away. So I managed to block out
the major points. But yeah, I mean, the core idea there is stick to the boring tech, the money stack
as Craig called it, the Django's, the Postgres's, the Python, the mature, sensible technologies,
because their failure modes are known for want of a better word. The difficulties you're going to
have are known. Your ability to plan around the risk that that involves is known. And so you can
actually plan it. Whereas if you pick up new and shiny tech, it promises it's going to be faster,
but who knows what goes wrong in the worst case? It could be multiples of time lost.
And yeah, so anyway, the piece was about that.
But yeah, I'm a massive believer. I think more for doing research instead of just not on your
production stack. Unless it's UV, right? That seems to be the next thing that...
Oh, don't get me started. We've got Hinnick coming on in a few weeks. We'll save it for then.
Yeah, yeah. He just did a video. We should link to that. He just did an all-in-one video,
I think, making the case. But yeah, I think I'm the same way. Sort of like what you were saying
earlier, Tim, about with Redis, you don't need to change for the sake of change. And it's fun to
try things out, especially on side things. But on a real-world project, you don't want
change unless you have to have it, or unless it's clearly cheaper or better. And often,
things aren't quite so simple. What haven't we asked you, Tim? We've covered some stuff. I know
we haven't delved into your origin story. We can do that. Or is there...
Are there any other projects you want to call out? What would you like?
I think we've covered most of them. I mean, yeah. I don't really know.
Well, let me ask you then. So two questions. So one is, what is your magic wand? We just
come out of DjangoCon. I know you're working on a bunch of things, but what is something you're
not directly involved with that you'd like to just change about Django?
Not directly involved. So...
You're directly involved in a lot. It's okay. It could be something you're directly involved with.
Go ahead. Take that.
Take the wand.
Yeah, I think I'm going to go back to the earlier point of we were talking about we have the
community, then the ecosystem, and then Django. And I'd really like for us to have solved the
community aspect of a new person comes in, and here's everything you need to know, and where to
go to find A, B, C, and then X, Y, Z. And if you want to contribute R, S, T, cool. This is where
you go, and this is how you do that. I think having that solved would unlock a lot of the
new people getting involved, and then just kind of make everything else easier. And also, I'm really
big on community, and so that would be really fun to see.
And it might even be, we do have a slash community page on the Django Project site, and it's been
updated a little bit. Maybe it's a matter of some love and care there, because it certainly could be
improved.
In my mind, it's more than just having static site. This is going to be a retoll.
But it's going to require people effort of maintaining it, and communicating out,
and welcoming people in, and making them feel like, hey, you're seen. Because it's more than just
saying, hey, here's the open door. You actually have to step out and be like, hey, come in.
This is where you belong. So I think taking more of an active, I think in my version of it,
it would be more of an active role, rather than us saying, yeah, we're really welcome. Come on in.
Yeah. We don't have the people to do all that.
The problem with the contributing guide was always that it's like a 5,000-word essay that you've got
to start and read. It's like, oh, that's quite a steep cliff face to climb up. I just wanted to
sort of help out a bit.
Yeah. Yeah. Well, I mean, we could also have character archetypes of like, oh, so how do you
envision yourself being in this world? How do you envision yourself being in this world? How do you
envision yourself being in the Django community? Do you want to be a contributor? Okay. This is a
tough path. This is our contributing guide. And here, you can go apply to Django.NotSpace. And if
there's any meetups, these are the ones you want to go talk to or go participate in. Submit a talk.
And then if, oh, you want to be a community organizer, all right, where are you located?
Here's DjangoCon US, DjangoCon Europe, DjangoCon Africa. Look up all the various Django user
groups, Python user groups. Go help them organize. And kind of provide those different ways for
people to learn, like, to see themselves in our community and then provide a pathway for them to
go implement it. So like, yeah, again, these are all ideas and we just need somebody to go implement
them. And that was a joke. Just. Yeah. If only someone would implement them. I mean, just looking
at the homepage for Django Project, you know, down at the bottom, stay in the loop. We don't
have to move to the forum. Instead, it links to these Google Developer lists, which, you know,
it's like a firehose of stuff. It's not, you know, it's not that casual, you know, it's not what the
newsletter is, for example, the Django News newsletter. It's not this monthly thing. Like,
that could be. And again, Carlton and I were discussing at the conference because
Paolo was there and we're remembering that his consultancy had spent a lot of time
mocking up potential changes to the look and feel of the site. And
it didn't quite get over the line. But I think if I would, one of my, you know,
wands to wave would definitely be to have the website look as modern as Django itself is.
Anyway, so what's next for you, Tim? So you're involved with all these things.
Oh, Carlton has a question, but. Well, no, no, no. Go on. You do that. You do that.
Yeah. Like what's next? Yeah. Like how do you
maintain what you're doing? Are there other things? Are you looking to hand off certain things? Like
yeah, what comes next? Yeah. All of the above. So I'm going to run through a couple of things. Like
if people want to help with Django comments, like if you want to move a package there,
please do. We're open to it. If you want to help maintain another package,
we're working on getting those, but definitely join, participate in the discussion groups.
Regarding DjangoCon US, like we just had, as we mentioned, we've just finished up the conference
for this year, but we are looking for organizers for next year. We're also always open to new venue
and it doesn't have to be for 2025. Like if you want to submit something for 2027 and take us to a
different place, please submit. Another thing my fellow board members mentioned to me, people can
donate to us. Like we had a tough year this year with sponsors. I don't know if you all saw, like
we didn't have a single, I think it was Platinum or Diamond. Diamond. Diamond. Diamond. Yeah. So
like, yeah, that there's, yeah. So we, people can donate. That's always great. And then Django.Space,
we'll probably have the next session coming up sometime in 2025 early, early in the year. And then
hopefully maybe, um, I'd like to do like these streams of doing code reviews for Django to kind
of like help other people see like what goes into it. Um, I don't know, after watching Natalia go
through the one, I'm like, Oh boy, this is, this is gonna be challenging. But so that's, that's the
space we need. We're really good at having like the small group of people and getting them in,
but there's so many more people that apply that don't get accepted. And some of those people just
need to be told, like be held a little bit accountable of just, I want to talk to somebody
once a month. Um, and I think we can do that. We just need to create some time for folks and
with the new session organizers that kind of freeze, I'm taking some time away for the session
to maybe try that. Um, so we'll see how that turns out. I think I covered it.
I covered everything. Yeah. I had the Django, Django, Django con Django commons and Django
notes. Yes. Yep. Yep. And then you also find time to blog on your, your personal site too.
We haven't even mentioned that. Yeah, I, I, I try. Yeah. Um, what's the name of it again?
Uh, better dash simple.com. Yeah. It's the last one I had. I I've been trying to keep up with
one per month and yeah, the last one I think it was after I said, good night,
to both of you and a couple other people. And I had a different blog post in mind and then this
one hit me and I was like, yep, I'm going to go ahead and write this about how Django and Django
kind of like, I can see there's a group of people that really want to participate and like they're
starting to organize at like the grassroots level. And yeah, we just need to connect that
to pathways to really just enable them, um, to have more, uh, to affect change a little bit better.
Speaking of that, we should mention this, um, this autumn, there's going to be both, um, the
board elections, which nominations are open for now. Um, and then the steering council is likely
to have an election, you know, very soon it seems, um, which is, you know, for the more for the
technical direction of Django, I guess, whereas the board is more for running the DSF and looking
after Django from a kind of organizational perspective. So do you think we can encourage
the, the, these, this heads, headswell of grassroots
organization to apply for those positions and to, to take up those leadership roles?
I think so. Um, I, it's a challenge. Like we, the thing I've learned about organizing,
especially at like the top part is a lot of it's not well-defined. Like I know,
well, you have a poster, like what it was like to be a DSF board member.
Um, but how much of it still is, oh, this new thing cropped up. Like we need to spend this month on
this. And you work on that and you don't ever get back to the thing that you wanted to do
originally. Um, and like, it's hard to define that. And so much of it is problem comes up,
take the initiative and like go solve it. And then to the point of where could this all go
in the future and making sure that we don't have those roadblocks in the way. And so like
communicating that to people is difficult. And then there's, when you sometimes phrase it that
way, then it's, you're putting people off. Cause like that's a little,
scary. Um, so I think going and messaging people and be like, Hey, I think you'd be good at this
for this reason, but be aware, like these are the challenges you're going to face. And, but this is
why I think you're good for it. Well, it sounds like an executive director kind of thing. I mean,
Deb Nicholson came on. Well, no, I mean, cause I think, I mean, you know, this is a fundamental
issue is that a board is meant to be a board, not to be a board and do all the work. And we need,
you know, we have, we have working groups.
That do great things, but to, you know, to bring in this, you know, dozen, two dozen more people
who, if for a little accountability and guidance would be super involved, there isn't really a
mechanism for that just yet. Like, um, so yeah, but it would be, you know, it'd be great to have
some sort of tears, some sort of public recognition, which is important to people, but then
yeah, all these others really being more of like, if you're
in the community and you want to make sure that we have qualified people, like good people on these
two boards or groups, like you can send these messages to people of who you think would be
really good. Um, once they get on there, like, yeah, you're a hundred percent, right. Like we,
we do need an executive director. And, but I mean, I think we need, we can have,
we can have more, more public facing than just the steering council and the board,
because there are all these other groups that, I mean, internationalization team that just work in
the shadows and,
um, suffer a little bit from that.
Yeah.
But I mean, we've got the feature Friday posts. Like I, now that we have that going, like it's,
it's not a far stretch then to say like, all right, let's highlight this group and then stretch from
there. Like, all right, let's highlight this new person. And before you know it, like we have a
really good marketing team, like exposing our community and helping people see where they can
get involved. Yeah. I don't know. I think things are looking up. Like I know there's some, uh,
flux always, but,
but yeah, I'm, I'm, I'm pretty positive about this.
Yeah. Why? I mean, I think all of us involved are, and when you reach a boiling point, step away,
just raise your hand. And if someone can come in, you can recirculate and reemerge elsewhere in the
community. Anyways, I think we could keep talking to him. I wish we could, but we're at about an
hour. So I think that's the cutoff point, but thank you for coming on. We should have had you
on a while ago and thank you for all the work that you've done. And as Carlton said, you really just
came in like a tornado.
And are making all these great things happen that, um, yeah, I'm, it's very exciting and gratifying
to see everything I do as a team effort, every single aspect.
Of course, it's not just you, but it is also you.
Okay. I don't know, but sure.
So we'll have links to everything in the show notes. And thanks again, Tim, for making the time.
Yeah. Thanks for coming.
Thank you both.
Join us next time.
All right. We'll see everyone next time. Bye-bye.
This episode was brought to you by TalkPython. And then you can find us on Twitter at talkpython.com.
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