Transcript: Python Software Foundation - Ewa Jodlowska

Hi, welcome to another episode of Django Chat. This week, we're joined by Eva Jodlowska from

the Python Software Foundation. I'm Will Vincent, joined as always by Carlton Gibson. Hi, Carlton.

Hello, Will. Hello, Eva.

And yes, Eva, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me. I'm really excited. I think this is the first time I've

met you both. So I'm really excited to chat with you more and talk about the PSF.

Yeah, and I think it'll give us a chance to talk a little bit by proxy about the Django

Software Foundation, which I'm on and Carlton works for. So that should be great. So maybe

so quickly, you're executive director. What does that mean? And then we want to get into

how you came to this role at the head of the PSF. Yeah, absolutely. So executive director,

I mean, there's a lot of hats that are involved. But as an overview, it's pretty much oversight of

all of our programs, managing our staff, as well as working with our board of directors to ensure

that we're following our strategic plan

or whatever kind of plan is at our feet.

And then the PSF is a nonprofit, just like Django?

Exactly, so the PSF is a 501c3 nonprofit in the US

and we are comprised of a board of directors

who are volunteers and now eight of us that are paid staff.

Wow, that's amazing.

And then how long have you been there?

So you were as a consultant and then full-time role,

maybe we can dive into, you know,

how'd you find yourself in your current position? Yeah, absolutely. It's definitely a unique

road. I don't think there was any clear path forward to where I am today. So it's always

really interesting when people ask me, so how did you become executive director? Well,

in 2008, I started working for PyCon as a meeting planner, as a contractor for a company that I

worked outside of Chicago here in Illinois, where I'm located. Over time, I decided I was going to

moved to Denmark and tried my hand at a master's degree in computer science. So then the PSF was,

you know, still excited about keeping me on board for PyCon. So they asked if I wanted to do it

part-time. So I did for a little bit. And that lasted a couple of years, maybe not even a full

year before, you know, not just me, but everyone kind of involved realized that we really needed

a full-time position to help with PyCon because that was around 2012, which was, in my opinion,

probably the first year where PyCon really blossomed to the size that it is today when

we were in Santa Rosa, California, Santa Clara, California.

So then I joined the PSF and I became an official employee around that time.

And I worked full time. The administrator that used to work for the PSF stepped away. So it was like a part time position that I added into my position. So that kind of got me involved into the PSF side of things and not just PyCon.

So that's when I really learned more about the whole ecosystem in the community and how it's like working with a board of directors.

So that was a really interesting transition for me because it opened up so many other areas of the role that really interested me that wasn't just PyCon, if that makes sense.

And over time, I became the director of operations after we hired on some staff.

And then I believe last year, gosh, I can't believe I don't remember this.

I should remember such a great milestone in my life.

But a couple of years ago, I became the executive director.

Yeah, it all blurs together.

Yeah, over time, for sure.

So it's been more than 10 years at this point in time.

That's amazing.

So I have it in my head that you're like kind of responsible for driving the fundraising

effort largely, is that?

Actually, it's kind of a really exciting question to bring up because as of Monday last week,

we have our first ever director of resource development.

So that is now the person that's going to be in charge of our fundraising.

And of course, the executive director and the board of directors are always still involved

to some capacity, and it will always be my responsibility in the end on how our staff

delivers.

But we're really excited to have someone kind of spearhead that effort because that

also opens up the door for not just corporate fundraising, but also grant fundraising, all

the all the different things we could do with donation drives and it's just we're no longer

restricted on the resources that we put forth on that effort which is really exciting one thing

that you know think just think thinking about the django environment we're obviously much smaller

and you know we have a couple of fellows i'm part-time maris is full-time but beyond that

it's funding django girls funding the django cons and then it's kind of like what would we do to to

to bring money into django and then what would we need it for and one of the things is sustainability

um but you know to look at python the psf and see what the psf is doing it's like wow you can

actually get out there and really push push to bring in money sustainability is a large topic

that i'm sure we can spend just an hour talking about that in itself um you know to me the biggest

thing is yes we can fund for i mean william and i were just talking about you know funding one-off

projects and those are all great but to have the structure in place of the staff that can actually

support managing that kind of work and making sure it's done efficiently and effectively

has really helped us you know to build from the ground up to be able to handle all that stuff

which i think has been very beneficial for the psf especially grants you mentioned those i mean

so carlton has helped lead we've done google has a summer of code in a season of docs the last

couple years i think i know we've gotten a couple other grants but we don't do a lot of that in part

because we don't think to apply and there is that management capacity on top of it you know they

are giving you money for a reason and they want something to show for it so and actually carlton

maybe you could mention i mean i feel like your summer of code work is completely hidden from

people most people have no idea that you do anything on that to be honest yeah i mean so

what do i do there's an application process that takes quite a lot of time to put into that's not

the hardest bit the hardest bit is then going through the many applications and trying and we

you know we have capacity to mentor one or two people each year and that's but you know we might

have a hundred applications so you've got to try and do justice for those and then working with

them and you know maris has worked with sage who did the json field um previous years and i've

worked with mentees and you know we we get in there and it's real features the project not just

small stuff yeah like i mean the cross db jason field that's a major feature like that's you know

a big thing hopefully this year we're going to get a redis back end in court you know these are

these are important things historically google historically google summer of code has been

a big thing but it's not it's not it's not free you know it it takes quite a lot of effort to

to put that together and that that's kind of the well that's the trick isn't it is how do we how

do we manage that on on volunteer basis i mean i can put i'm paid as a fellow but i can't put

so much time into it because i'm meant to be managing the framework so

you know that's one thing i kind of wanted to discuss with you ever was

um the the sort of the non-code side of of the psf and the and lessons that we might learn for

the dsf from that yeah i mean because it's not just about the software absolutely i think that

Carlton, you have a great setup with how you're supporting mentors and mentees and all that.

And I feel like the PSF also participates on behalf of Python for Google Summer of Code.

And our volunteers do a great job of that.

But I feel it's always about building a balance between how you're spending your work supporting volunteers, managing volunteers, and actually doing the work that you're supposed to be doing outside of that.

So we're kind of in this, we're also growing in that aspect. And I know that, you know, for you all, it might not seem that way, because you seem to describe the PSF as a much bigger entity. But we do take a lot of things from you all, like, for example, the fellow role is something that inspired the PSF to recently help CPython hire, we're calling it a developer in residence.

And so recently, Google gave us funding to hire that position for a year. And we hope that during that year, we can do additional fundraising to kind of help sustain that role. But you know, it'd be great to provide that support for CPython to help manage some of the work for volunteers and to guide volunteers on the work that needs to be done help, you know, create a roadmap for Python as it might be, which is something that we've been lacking, or at least lacking in the visibility of to the rest of the world, if that makes sense.

yeah i mean communicating it's a big thing like what maris and i do our best to try and

communicate with the rest of the community but like literally sometimes it's just maris and i

sweeping the floor in the closet you know it's yeah well that and that's why the role exists

because it's the all the things that wouldn't get done and you know since since you've been

there carlton tim before i mean django has largely hit it's all its dates i mean 3.2 comes out

next week next from when we record but you know it's a reason why you and marius are paid and

you know it's not all not all the fun stuff you'd want to do after a full day of programming

yeah no i think that's true i think that's true oh i wanted to ask about so the that new position

eva um so you're a non-profit django software foundation is a non-profit so we're not allowed

to directly pay for code for example carlton is a community manager um how do you guys work around

that with something like a dedicated programmer position? Or at least that's been our understanding

of a nonprofit in the US? Oh, that's interesting. So we definitely do. We definitely do pay for code,

I guess. I mean, so if we look at the grants that we've received for PyPI, let's use that as an

example, because that's, you know, the warehouse, launching warehouse code was definitely paying

someone through a grant to do that, which is definitely within our rights as a 501c3.

So I'd be interested to hear more of where that restriction comes from for you all.

Basically been passed down through Frank, our previous president, had that fully on board. So

maybe we need to talk to our attorney because that, I mean, Carlton, that rings a bell for

you, right? I mean, your contract is structured. Yeah. So explicitly, Maris and I are community

managers and whilst we're allowed to contribute as volunteer contributors the dsf does not

contract us to write software um i don't know about you know i don't know i don't know the

realities of that. I'll look into that after this podcast. I mean, it sounds on the surface

crazy and it's quite possible that we had it wrong or it's changed, but certainly it would

make things easier if either of those is true. Well, I mean, we're, I'm sure Frank has some good

reasoning for that to be there. So I'd love to learn more about it. Maybe we need to have another

podcast in the future where, where we get together as a group and discuss that. But, um, I do know

that, you know, the, the roles that we're hiring for are also along the lines of community manager,

project manager, but that's mainly because that's what we need. But to hire developers in the

future, once that structure is in place, that's definitely something on our radar. So I'd love

to hear more about it if we're not supposed to. Well, one of our new board members is a former

lawyer. So we'll, I'm gonna look into that. I mean, being a US nonprofit too, I mean, that maybe

we can talk about how international both groups are. So our current president is based outside

the US, she's based in Africa. So that sometimes has some issues, like I think my, you know,

a US address is used for filling out the nonprofit form. So I guess I say that as a way to maybe you

could talk about how global the PSF is. I mean, you're in Chicago, but Python and the PSF is

very global. Yeah, we do have a board of directors from all over in the world. Right now we have one

in Australia, we have some in Europe, we have one in Zimbabwe, which also does come with financial

sanctions, especially for the PSF, which is a U.S. nonprofit, you know, cannot send,

we cannot send money to certain sanctioned countries around the world, which could be

one of the obstacles. You know, as a U.S. organization, we also probably can't hire

someone that's outside of the U.S., at least not easily. So we do probably, you know,

look to contract, you know, if we were to hire Carlton next round, we'd probably contract with

Carlton versus hiring them on as an as an actual employee of the PSF, because you can't get

benefits living outside of the US and whatnot. And it's based in Zimbabwe, actually. Okay,

but she's not paid. So yeah, well, our directors are not paid either. We have staff that is all

within the US at this point in time, and the director, sorry, the residents, developer in

residents and some other roles that we're looking to fill you know if if folks come from other

countries to apply for those we'll definitely take them in consideration just as equally as someone

as from within the u.s just hire them differently so it's so it's all legal and and by irs rules

it's curious isn't it because we're all just kind of software geeks really and we don't you know and

then there's this whole legal layer on top of like oh actually we've got to do it this way we've got

do it that way well it's funny that you mentioned that because even you know when i first started we

did have kurt b kaiser who was also with the psf for over 10 years and retired a couple years ago

and he was like our first accountant accountant's light i guess we can call it um because once we

then uh you know transition to a full accounting staff which there are now three people working at

different time capacities um we're really dialing into those restrictions and policies and it could

really add up so for example we're going through our first financial audit this year which is

something that you actually you know opt into experience which when people hear being audited

they're like why would you want to opt in for that but as a non-profit you have to go through

that profit through that process in order to be able to apply for certain grants that are funded

by government organizations so you said that uh we we will and i like the psf is so much bigger it

really is though i'm thinking about we were talking about before we start i mean so dsf

accounting so i'm the treasurer and i work with um katherine who helps me but it's you know we just

we just do it on our own i mean it's basically we pay carlton and marius we give grants to

conferences we pay the legal filing to be a non-profit and that's about it um most of our

hosting, you know, most of our hosting stuff, um, is donated and almost all of it. And sometimes

things happen there. Um, there was something with Rackspace last year where they

were doing things and, um, but we're fortunate that it's largely, we have a volunteer ops team

that handles that, but it's, yeah, it has, it has strains, but it's incredibly simple. So like

our accounting statement is, yeah, we don't have three accountants though. Certainly I'd love to

not have to do that part of the gig you'd like three accountants well

i mean it's it's literally we write a check to marius and and carlton and you know a couple

recurring things and then one-offs for conference sponsorships that's you know the i should say that

the entire budget is under two hundred thousand dollars a year so ours probably by the end of

this year will be more than five will probably be around five million so i think we're a little bit

a little bit bigger in that aspect. And that's probably why all the additional accounting tasks

are needed. Right. So can I ask, where does that money come from? Is it corporate sponsorships or

individual? It can't be individual members. It must be corporate. That's a great question. So I

think a large portion of that I have to account for our financial reserve, which has been a really

big topic, especially since the pandemic hit. So since 2008, when we experienced almost bankruptcy,

I guess you could say, because of the market situation back then, the PSF really noted that,

most of our revenue comes from an in-person event, which is really dependent on socioeconomic

factors happening around us. So let's make sure we have a financial reserve in place. So in case

another market crash happens, in case XYZ happens, we can still continue our operations through that

difficult year and my oh my am i really glad that that was in place for when 2020 happened because

six weeks before pycon us all of a sudden you know you're canceling the event scraping all

your contracts for any kind of fees or legal implications that you you need to prepare for

and just crossing all your fingers that you don't lose any money on it and it's at that point you're

on the hook for everything exactly so we now have at least um a year and a half worth of operations

that we can pay for in that financial reserve so that you know we especially knowing that we've

almost now needed it twice in at least in in my history of being with the psf which is only a half

of the psf existence it's definitely something that you know i for one will make sure the psf

always takes consideration for and hopefully all future board directors do as well. But outside of

that, we have our corporate sponsors, which is definitely the majority of the funding as well as

individual grants that we've received. So if we look at, if anyone peeks and maybe we can include

a link in the podcast later on for when it's published to our annual report, if you look at

a lot of the chunks goes to packaging and PyPI. A lot of funding has come in from CZI recently,

as well as the Mozilla open source support office has funded a lot of the work. And when you receive

money for $300,000, $400,000 worth of work in one year, that's going to be a substantial part of

your budget for revenue. Yeah, reserves is so that's something as treasurer and on the board,

we think a lot about as well.

So we have, that was something Frank Wiles,

the previous president, was very good and focused on.

So we have a year's worth.

But at the same time, so that should be more,

but we also are not as tied to an event

in the same way that you are.

We have, there's the DEFNA, which Jeff Triplett,

who works with Python, is on that provides funds.

And we have had a number of issues around DjangoCon Europe,

in particular, going virtual.

And as you say, all those costs, um, that are borne by individuals.

So we've had, the board has had to do a number of things around that, but we're, because

I guess we're smaller and more flexible.

It's not as big a concern, but it's still the concern.

And, you know, that's one of the big things is I would like us to get a year and a half

sounds good.

Two years sounds better, you know, both in case something happens, but also, um, hopefully

Python doesn't go away, but if Django ever goes away, which it will, you know, that that's

a graceful decline.

it's not just you know boop like we're done and so we need to have funds to handle that sure

absolutely carl's on your face right now i mean hopefully not

i'm thinking we're going to maintain django till the heat death of the universe so that's like

there's this buddhist thing you like stare at dead bodies and watch them dissolve to like think

about it you know it's it's coming anyways so that's something a concern that we have to um

well can you uh let's talk let's talk about pi pi wait yeah yeah well actually well so very

quickly just so python versus psf so on django there's a django developers list and they do

their thing and the dsf has no direct control over what they do so we can't tell them to put

a feature in and those are very separate i believe it's similar with python can you just go over that

distinction yeah absolutely so i guess before i go can you tell me does the dsf own any trademarks

for Django it owns the Django trademark copyright and that's basically it so something else we

periodically have to do is go in and enforce that but yeah it's very rare absolutely same for the

PS app so yeah I guess in that sense I mean overall if you know all developers decided to

really go against you know the policies and and good work that we've been putting forth and that

can always come into play but we have just like similar to to the developers list we have now the

steering council, which, um, proceeds the BDFL model, which I'm really excited about because

that has really opened up the door to have a, you know, structured partnership alongside with

the PSF. So we can work with them to a, not only support the work that they need to be doing, but

then once that work is kind of itemized and let's say, you know, prioritize, then we can help

fundraise for that work. So they're, so they're supported in that capacity, which is really

exciting and and partially why the uh developer in residence is is going to be published soon

hopefully by the end of this week wow that's great well i'm thinking about the you know big

companies in copyright and carlton i'm blanking on this i i won't look it up well so so the

django project.com website for example that code is open source it's bsd um and was it amazon i

believe um gave us a heads up it was either amazon or microsoft that they're going to be using it

with a new skin basically for their for some big internal site, which they're allowed to

do as long as they provide attribution.

of those ones where like what is the copyright status of you know we had to like double check

because you know while django they can't say this is django but you know the code is for that site

is open source and if someone really doesn't like what the team is doing and they can go fork django

and maintain it if they want to just call it something else yeah same same exactly yeah so

you know there was something on um uh npm someone had a django package um on the called django i

mean, it was inadvertent, but it basically like bundled Django with the JavaScript thing. And so

we had to go in and say, you know, we need to own Django on NPM, but it's fine to have a third

party package. So those are just the types of things we have to do, which I'm sure you're very

familiar with. Well, I think bringing up trademarks is a very interesting part of the

role because I never thought that I would know so much about the legal aspect of things than I do

now. And I've actually been internally kind of trying to promote the amount that we spend on

trademarks as to the official, like, so I don't know, if you look at an annual impact report,

expenses and incomes are usually split up. And the way that you support community services is

bundled up into something called programs. And I've been trying to get trademarks to be bundled

up into that just because, you know, technically all of the money that we're spending on trademark

support and filing trademarks around the world is technically a community support system right

like if python or django is is trademarked in whatever country then it's just so much easier

to make sure that it's reflective of the community and you know the code that you all work so hard

for for me it's the big thing that the dsf does and the psf is very active in similar thing it is

the community side and you know things like code of conduct and inclusivity programs and

all these stuff and without the dsf there to kind of play that role the django community for all

its goodwill wouldn't be able to maintain it i think you know because you'd have bad actors and

you wouldn't have the right the ability to deal with those exactly exactly can you um i do want

to i still want to talk about pi pi but i wanted to first um talk about why people in the django

community should be regular members of the PSF if they're not already, because on the Django side,

and many people don't know this, I'll repeat it. So there's the board of seven of us that's elected

every year. And then there's around 200 individual members that anyone can be not so you nominate

someone for that, and it needs to be approved by the board and other people. But, you know, if I

feel like a lot of people don't know about that aspect of it, because it's you don't have to pay

for it. It just puts you on the list of the 200 people who, who vote on the board, who sometimes

if the board can't solve something, we'll, we'll ask for input. Um, I believe there's, so talk

about the levels within the PSF. Yeah. So when I first started with the PSF, that is exactly what

the membership structure looked like. And then over a period of few years, that kind of expanded

to kind of open it up for people to self-certify and not just get voted in by a group of people

as a way to kind of open up membership to people all over the world and to help us diversify our

membership. And I think it worked fairly well. And now we have several structures. So we have

basic, which is just simply signing up online and saying that, you know, you want to be a PSF

member. And it just adds your name to the list of thousands of people that, you know, say that they

want to be a member and support the cause, which I think is the easiest and simplest way to kind

of support the PSF. Outside of that, we have contributing and managing members, which then

kind of breaks into the tier of folks that do vote on, you know, a board of board of director

elections, as well as any kind of bylaw changes. People that we report our finances to, for example,

and they are people that self-certified that they spend, you know, X amount of hours on

something Python related. It could even be maintaining Django, right? It could be core

core libraries third party libraries um it could be people that organize events it could be people

that um organize their their monthly meetups whatever the case may be um and then we have

the yeah it's it i think it's important just to inject interject there that it's not a high bar

it's not it's only like you know five hours a month or something so if you're if you're involved

in any project in the django world at all you you you reach that bar and you can be a contributing

Yeah, exactly. And I think it's actually really cool that a member gets to vote on such things like board of elections and bylaw changes. I mean, these are things that actually impact and shape how the PSF grow to be. You know, the board of directors are selected to help us kind of steer how that PSF vote goes along the way.

Yeah. And then you were going to say the other layer. Sorry.

just because $99 isn't the same value in the US as it is in Poland, for example, where I'm from,

right? So we want to be able to kind of be alert of those scenarios. So hopefully in the coming

year, we'll kind of change that up. But the last tier is fellow members. And those are probably

most similar to what you all have, where people get nominated and voted in by our fellow work

group and it's probably like the most prestigious tier of membership that we have so way more

complicated than jango it is way more complicated i don't know when this is gonna air but it's

probably not gonna air mid-april okay so our membership drive will be over but that doesn't

mean that people shouldn't become a member and if they ever have any questions they could always

contact me yeah and actually um so speaking of membership drive so of the jango's two hundred

thousand dollars a quarter to a third of that comes from a promotion we're gonna be doing in

april with jet brains where for the month you can buy pie charm and um at 30 off and all the

proceeds go to the dsf so that's sort of a one-off that we've done for the last five or six years and

um again because django sort of exists to exist that's our main you know one of our main funding

things right we have that then we have a handful of companies that are at the highest tier um but

it's around, you know, I think 30, 40% is individual contributors, and then a solid 60.

So it's probably not as weighted towards corporate as a lot of places. But if we

needed to raise more money, obviously going corporate one way or another would be a lot

easier than people donating. Sure. So out of curiosity, is the DSF structured that

corporate sponsors are also members? We don't really have that distinction. I mean,

so this is actually something that Carlton is going to be working on that the board has approved

is that members, they get a prominent place on the site, they have a badge they can use,

but they'll get a couple of tweets. It doesn't much go beyond that. That's definitely something

we're looking at in terms of giving them more and what that looks like. So that's something Carlton

with all his time as a fellow, like for example, Carlton's been putting out 3.2, which comes out

April 6th. And then he's been working on Stripe changed all their billing. So Carlton's been

having to work on our our billing page and then once he's done with that carlton can look at

integrating with github sponsors which we've added last year but we want to show that and then also

you know improving the corporate member experience so right now it's very manual but having it so

they can log in um and self-serve more than they do now that is a long to-do list carlton

if you ever need any help with the sponsorship coordination i'd be happy to kind of review or

chat with you brilliant because yes i do need help i mean i take on these jobs so that marius can

focus on the framework more and he you know he if i provide air cover doing these kind of things he

he's got more capacity there so that's super but this is kind of one thing i did really want to

pick your brains about was like you know drive drumming up corporate sponsors and managing them

and you know like it must because that's surely where they where the where the money is like to

get a corporate sponsor on board it just sort of like massively dominates individual members

it really does i mean 65 of our revenue comes from pycon and the majority of that is sponsorship so

it's definitely a telling there it's just now the matter of making sure we have a diverse set

of programs that sponsorships can apply to and not just pycon so for example i'm not sure if

you've seen but we recently redid our sponsorship program completely where before it was just psf

and PyCon, and now it's PSF, PyCon, PyPI, and CPython. So now we have four buckets that

sponsorship goes through. So it's not just, hey, we want to make sure that the impact sponsors get

is improved, especially since we're only having a virtual event this year. We want to make sure that

their impact is worth their time and money, but also because it helps fund these two additional

large you know smaller ecosystems of the python community um which is really important and so

do you try and provide visibility that for so if i you know i'm a corporate sponsor i've come in

like what is it i get my logo in all the key places as i get key mention i get mentions in

the right places that kind of thing yeah that's a great question um so we when we revamped the

sponsorship program we did obviously had to redo the python benefits because we've never hosted a

virtual events. So we're kind of, you know, it's been an interesting process. We'll see how it pans

out in May, but our team is definitely has been, you know, learning all these new things that we've

never had to deal with before. And part of that is what kind of benefits do we give our sponsors?

So right now it is a lot of visibility on our websites, whether it's pypi.org, whether it's

python.org, whether it's, you know, on our jobs board, jobs.python.org, us.pycon.org. We were

literally we want to make sure every aspect that we could brand we could offer to our sponsors just

because you know sponsorship is such a large chunk of the psfs and python sustainability yeah i think

for django sponsors one of the big things is hiring so if you say you know when you get a

hire in and you say oh well you know we're sponsors of the dsf then it's sort of like oh

you know that's a that's a good thing when you're a django not looking to work for a company if

if they're involved in the DSF,

then that's kind of a cool thing.

But I think we do need to do more will on this.

So we do need to.

Well, this is like the conversation Carlton and I have all the time.

I mean, it comes down to, to me, to two things.

One is we're all volunteers.

And the second is we need a clear, it's a little chicken and egg.

Like, yeah, we could go raise a bunch of money, but until we know exactly what we go for,

and perhaps we're wrong about paying for software.

But even so, like, we don't have that clear, this is what we would do with the money.

Like in the past for new features, like we had Postgres support was added, or Postgres

full-text search. It was a Kickstarter. I mean, it's so junior league. So I know you're sitting

there saying, well, there's all these things you want the PSF to be, but where we're sitting,

we're going, wow, you're so high above us in terms of all your functionality. Speaking of which,

PyPI, I want to ask you about that. So that's truly internet scale and that's grown. And that's

probably where a bit of the funding goes to. Could you just remind people what that is and

how much it's grown in the last couple of years? Yeah. So pypi.org is, you know, Python's main

central location for Python packages and how those are distributed, whether they're corporate users

or individuals sharing their hobbyist projects. I think that in the most recent years, the biggest

growth has been around the packaging work group, which is the kind of central group that helps

Steer and Manage, PyPI.org, to getting some grants. And that has really helped

its progression over time and also show grantors the kind of success rate that this group has had

with grants that they've received. They've done an excellent job with transparency,

with reporting, following back up with grantors, which is always a big thing,

and just flat out managing the work.

So that has been really successful.

And honestly, we've used that success

to help us kind of tell our story

of other things we can do with grants,

which has led to additional grants,

which has been awesome.

You're just making me think about

the infrastructure on grants.

Because for example,

we got a $5,000 grant from Google last year.

And the amount of hours that Catherine,

the assistant treasurer and I had to spend

getting that money,

it's almost unsustainable to keep doing it each time.

Like we finally built that up.

So like being in Ariba and their payments

and this, that, and the other thing.

And then, you know,

we could definitely do a better job

talking about where the money went,

but there's a whole slew of grants

that Django could get

if we had the time to apply for it,

you know, monitor it

and do all those things that you just mentioned

that, you know, if they're giving you money,

they have, it makes sense

that they would want something back

and sorting out what that is

and being able to say,

here's an example of what we did in the past.

Um, something I hope Django can do a little more of in the future.

I think you also bring up an excellent point on, on the accounting side, how much work

is needed.

For example, let's say we receive a grant for $300,000 that needs to hire three people,

three contractors that we at that point have to have to track their timesheets.

How do we get their timesheets?

Who approves their timesheets, right?

All of that.

If we can automate that, which our accounting staff is looking to do, that would make the

process so much easier because when pypi.org received some of its first initial grants that

was all done manually by our by our team which is a lot of back and forth it's a lot of work

yeah and it comes out of the budget ultimately yeah because all volunteer time absolutely

so going back to pypi i think that um it's this will air in mid-april so i'm going to hint to

something really exciting happening but we received another um corporate grant that is

allowing us to spend significant amount of money in 2021 to kind of help steer a lot of the work

around Python packaging and helping kind of shape its roadmap over the next few years.

So one of the things that I maybe sort of glazed over, but didn't specify more, because PyCon is

such a up in the air kind of situation, especially for 2022, will we be able to hold a 3000 person

conference, who knows? We are really looking to diversify our revenue streams and PyPI is one of

those focuses, seeing what kind of functionality we can import, what kind of functionality we can

add to, you know, I'm sure it will involve some sort of import. What kind of functionality can we

add into PyPI.org that makes it easier for corporations to use and things like that.

So that is definitely something that's in our focus this year, just because it is such a grand tool for our community on all sorts of levels, you know, not just individual users and open source projects, but also corporate users.

And we talk about it all the time, packaging. Packaging is the one sort of last bad bit.

You know, it's the one thing we've got to resolve. Python needs a better story than, you know, the various competing options and none of them quite interact.

And how do you get it installed?

If that could be a smooth, glossy story, then Python really would have the full tale to tell, I think.

Yeah, and I do think a lot of that will come from collaborative efforts between paid staff and volunteers.

You know, all of these great ecosystems and projects have grown kind of beyond the capability of a volunteer to manage and run.

So we're really excited that the PSF is kind of, you know, learning a page from the DSF book and putting money towards supporting those, you know, community managers, project managers, all that good stuff.

And we hope to be able to sustain that in the long run.

Yeah.

I mean, just working data, you know, I see what's going on in the Python one.

I just think that's all great.

But working on Django every day or, you know, I only do it part time, but working on Django every week, it's like this just wouldn't happen.

If Maris and I weren't there or someone, you know, if there weren't fellows, it just wouldn't happen.

And then, you know, Django would be unmaintainable.

Well, I know we're coming up a little on time.

Are there any last things you want to mention?

I did want to ask just as a last question.

So I see sitting in the DSF, so many people doing kind of unseen work.

I'm sure there are similar people in the Python PSF world.

And I'm curious, what sort of roles are those that, you know, people who are doing unsung work that they don't get the publicity for?

So one person that I'm sure I think, William, you mentioned you're going to be interviewing E in an upcoming episode, but they are a huge contributor to not just the paid work that they do for the PSF, but also all the volunteer work that they contribute to PyPI and PyPA in some sorts.

They, you know, the extra time and energy that they have, they spend on tasks, making it easier for people on PyPI or PyPA, you know, and it's incredible as well.

You know, the rest of our staff and there are so many volunteers.

I mean, we could sit just for an hour talking about that.

You know, all of all of the programs that I talk about, whether it's PyPI, whether it's PyCon, all of those take hundreds of volunteers to happen.

Yeah, well, I know that I talked to E because they have office hours or did in the past. And python.org is a Django site, which is open source. And I had a question about how the markdown is being implemented and had a really good conversation, which is really open and wonderful to do for the community. I mean, no direct benefit to E.

I know that for a long period of time, it only supported restructured text. And then all of a

sudden it had Markdown. So I wonder if that conversation helped that happen, which I thank

you for. Because personally, I appreciate Markdown more. Yeah, no, it didn't. So I have a site,

learnjangle.com to plug it that uses Markdown on the back end. And so there's a package being used

that does RST and Markdown on python.org. And I was asking, why didn't you just do it raw,

basically and um it was to support both of those and then of course i was able to ask jeff triplet

because he did the early version hey jeff why'd you do that and so it all becomes very very very

small it helps to know the right people yeah at this point well that's you know carlton if i have

a question on django i just ping him at this point so yeah that's why i do that you don't use the

docs anymore you're just like carlton yeah well the dirty secret is the people who wrote the docs

look up the docs all the time because they've forgotten too so i'm sure there does come this

you know you you sort of like look around you're like nobody knows the answer like i guess i need

to do some original thinking for a change instead of just googling for anyways um carlton did you

have anything else you wanted to no i i just um i just have to say i'm awestruck by the by the

the way you managed to coordinate the psf and all the great work you're doing and i i really wanted

to pick your brains and you know get some insight and some thoughts into well i definitely hope that

you know things we can things we can steal on a smaller scale yeah and i'm happy to have a chat

offline at any point in time i like the fact that within our community it's you know open source but

it's not just open source code it's open source information and how we can make these groups and

projects be sustainable in the long run so i'm happy to talk anytime super thank you for that

offer that's amazing and i really need to sort out that legal question you really have me thinking

about that so carlton too it's like yeah if we if we could in fact fund people to do development

then you know there would be there's precedence python's doing it yeah yeah yeah we're definitely

gonna have to touch base on that one offline for sure yeah either that or we're gonna get

in trouble for saying something i don't know yeah the i we can't put the episode out if it's um if

turns out we can't do that that's right yeah the episode that never aired

but no but that is you know it is true that being a non-profit there are so many other things

additional things you need to do to be compliant and you know so only someone who also works at a

non-profit or runs one can sort of understand it's not just this is by far my favorite podcast i've

ever done simply because it's more of like a therapy session than anything else you know

people that can commiserate and understand it's like it's like that every week you should do

no it really is yeah um so we have links to everything in the show notes um links to your

personal twitter and people should listening should become python members if they're not

already for sure definitely so thank you for taking the time really appreciate it and hopefully

you'll see you pycon virtually or in person soon salt lake city 2020 fingers crossed thank you

2022 yes we're not going back to 2022 i was about to say how's that

awesome i love salt lake thank you both so much all right thank you all right everyone we

we're at jango chat.com uh chat jango on twitter we'll see you next time bye