4.1   Argentine SciPy

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation sponsor the Argentine Conference on Python for Scientific Applications happening October 20-24, 2014 in the amount of $3,000 USD

Approved 11-0-0, via email September 26, 2014.

5.1   PyCon Event Coordinator Report

1. Continued Activities from Last Month

• Budgeting: Working on finalizing the 2014 budget and making sure all payments are accounted for in the ledger. I have added the Catering Actual detail into the 2014 budget for history. I am waiting for KBK to confirm any outstanding issues with the 2014 budget before we send the 2015 budget to the board. We have already started 2015 payments such as housing deposits, registration/housing site, and PyCon website work. I have placed these in the tentative 2015 budget ledger.
• Housing Management: Kurt and I are working on getting old hotel commission accounted for. We have received 90% of what we are owed for 2012/13 commission. We have started selling our hotel blocks for 2015.
• Friday PyCon Dinners: Contracts have been signed at the Intercontinental and Place d’Armes hotel for two planned dinners. We may add another dinner location if the tickets sell out January/February.
• Registration Management: Registration has been tested and launched. We have been debugging issues with CTE as they come up. So far the early bird rate tickers are 30% sold. I have finalized a PDF reg form and sent to CTE to place on their site for distribution for those that need to pay by check.
• Sponsorship Management: This is still in the works. We are at $400,000 for 2015 sponsorship. At a steady pace, we keep receiving requests and also we continue to work with those sponsors that want customized packages.
• Mobile Guide: I have continued to reach out to the top mobile app providers for comparison. I have had a call with Guidebook to discuss what can be improved from 2014 and what sort of offer they can provide us with for 2015.
• AV Management: The Palais has enforced new regulations for offsite AV vendors. I have gone through them with Frischkorn to determine the impact and it was decided that the impact will be minimal.
• Job Fair: I am still working on a new layout for the job fair. I hope to have this done in October.

2. New Activities

• Decorator Management (GES/Mendelssohn for 2014 & 2015): At this point the Canadian tax rebate papers for 2014 have been filed and we are working on getting the refund back from the Canadian Revenue Agency. The refund should come October 2014. Mendelssohn is working with me to get the process complete as soon as possible.
• Housing Management: I have increased our initial housing blocks at the Westin and Hyatt to better represent 2014 needs for 2015.
• Staff Management: I have created a write up for the most important staff positions for a “call for volunteers” process. I have also created a google form to use for our “call for volunteers” applications. It does not look like we will need it for 2015, but we may use it for 2016/17.
• Budget Management: I have created the new budget for 2015 and it is ready for approval once the 2014 actual values are final.
• Future Event Planning: I have gone over the Letter of Intent for Portland with fine detail to ensure that the information and allocations are correct.
• Tutorial Management: Have had discussions with Stuart and Ruben on what processes we need to change for 2015. This included the amount of tutorials we should have, process for tutorials that need additional equipment ordered/setup, and creating forecasted budgets for different tutorial counts.

3. Planned for Next Month

• Get the ball rolling on PyCon Internet
• Continue with Canadian “tax rebate”
• Budgeting: Send PyCon’s 2015 proposed budget to board for review. Next month I plan on beginning the invoice process for 2015 sponsors.
• Sponsor Management: Create sponsor information pamphlet and start working with GES on sponsor manual. My goal is to have those sent out first week of November. I have many improvement notes for 2015 from 2014 feedback provided by sponsors. Will incorporate those as best as I can.

4. Ongoing Projects

• Everything has been stated above

5. Tabled Activities

• Getting 2015 budget approved by the board. I want to make sure 2014 is in order before this is done.

6. Issues / Blockages

• None

5.2   PSF Secretary/Admin Report

1. Continued Activities from Last Month

• Worked on updating the “old” PSF budget which worked from Jan 1 - Dec 31
• Worked with Van to create a new fiscal budget from July 1 - June 30

2. New Activities

• Had a new mailist list created for supporting members.
• Sent out a form to all supporting members for voting options. Figured out how to use pymailer with my python.org email address and sent the emails through that service.
• I looked into getting a self storage unit and created a comparison list for the board to view. I have decided that one in SF on treasure island is a best fit due to location and cost.

3. Planned for Next Month

• Sponsor Members need to be contacted about 2014/15 sponsorship. After that, invoices need to be sent out. (Did not finish this task in June - still waiting on Sponsor Member Letter template)

4. Ongoing Projects

• Website: I have updated the minutes page, CSA page, and resolution page on pydotorg. I continue to update them after every board meeting with new content as necessary.

• Board Agenda / Minutes: I continue to write up the Board Agenda and keep it up to date. I continue to write up the Board Meeting minutes.

• Grant and Award Notification: I continue to notify respective parties of board resolutions. I have also notified the CSA winners and collected necessary info for KBK.

• Email and Communication: I am continuing to monitor all PSF Board/Members mailing lists also making sure emails are being answered/followed up on. I am continuing to read through all of the email threads that occur on the board/members mailing lists.

• Contributor Agreements: I continue to collect agreements coming through EchoSign and marking them in bug tracker.

• Bylaws: No changes since May

• pydotorg Redesign: I worked with Van to create an initial list of important items that need to be worked on for pydotorg. We have initiated work with PE and RevSys again. We have an ongoing weekly meeting where we discuss questions, blockades, and updates. In August, we started working on:

  • PE/RevSys will update pydotorg Trello board
  • PEP URLS
  • /download insufficiencies
  • pushing to production the login/edit fixes for user accounts
  • going through Job Board github issues and pointing out what needs to be elaborated on
  • building out personas

5. Tabled Activities

• Sponsor Member Letter

6. Issues / Blockages

• None

5.3   Marketing Material Report

1. Continued Activities from Last Month

• The PSF Python Brochure is available for shipment

  Brochures were sent to the ad sponsors, EuroPython 2014, PyCon UK 2014, PyCon ZA 2014, PyCon India 2014, Nick Coghlan and a few user groups for local distribution.

  If you'd like to get some brochures, please use our support website. Orders will be processed by evenios publishing:

  http://brochure.getpython.info/

  We have two types of orders:

  • community orders which are free
  • company orders which are paid at cost

  Community orders are accepted for user groups, community conferences and educational institutions. Shipment is paid by the funds we collected from the ad sponsors and by the PSF.

  Companies or other commercial users who would like to use the brochure for marketing purposes, can buy copies via the company orders. Brochures are sold at cost prices and the money is used to support the free shipment of the community orders.

  You can also get a screen resolution PDF to pass around from the website.

  Due to licensing constraints you may not change the PDF or extract data from it. We will setup a special license page to clarify the details. Most of the content is CC licensed, but some images and especially the logos in used on the brochure can not be reused without getting prior permission from the resp. owners.

• Python Stickers / Merchandise

  Other than the brochure, we also have stickers available for use at conferences and user group meetings.

  I took a set of stickers to EuroPython 2014 in Berlin.

  I also regularly send stickers to user groups. If you'd like some, feel free to contact me and I'll get them sent out. I have enough in stock to last for about 1-2 months.

  Jessica brought up the idea of creating more such giveaways for conferences and user groups. I had already collected ideas in the PSF wiki:

  https://wiki.python.org/psf/Merchandise

  The plan is to have the marketing work group create these and, most importantly, sort out the logistics for shipping them. Creation is usually done quickly and is fun, but logistics get difficult once you do them at a global scale and is plain work.

2. New Activities

• None

3. Planned for Next Month

• None

4. Ongoing Projects

• PSF Python Brochure
• Python Stickers / Merchandise

5. Tabled Activities

• None

6. Issues / Blockages

• None

5.4   Community Relations Report

1. Continued Activities from Last Month

• PSF Conference Kits / PSF at conferences

  I took the EU PSF Conference Kit to EuroPython 2014 in Berlin and also ran a lightning and full talk about the new PSF open membership to get people to sign up for membership.

  See https://wiki.python.org/psf/MembershipModelTalks for talk slides. I did not use slides for the lightning talk; instead I walked people through the sign-up process, which is still a bit rough on the edges.

  I also ran a PSF members meeting at EuroPython.

  No updates on the kits in the US or South America.

  I guess we should look into finding new champions to manage the US and South American kit to put it to some better use than catching dust somewhere.

• PSF Marketing

  I have setup a LinkedIn company page for the PSF, which people might like to use in their LinkedIn profiles:

  https://www.linkedin.com/company/python-software-foundation

• Python Events Calendar

  I'm continuing discussions with national and local groups, encourage people to make use of the Python events calendars:

  http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEventsCalendar

  and help maintain it, along with a team of volunteers.

  The new python.org site shows the calendars and the issues with the calendar app have been partially resolved. I'm still checking it every now and then to see whether the events are correctly displayed, but

  Meanwhile, we are getting a constant stream of listing requests to the events mailing list and via events at python.org:

  https://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonEventsCalendar#Mailing_List

  It seems the calendars are now reasonably well known and people are putting them to good use.

  The Twitter account is also being used a bit, but probably needs to be promoted a bit more:

  https://twitter.com/pythonevents

  It gets all newly added events as tweets.

  Given the success of the Twitter account, we may setup additional streams on e.g. Facebook and Google+.

• Python Jobs Board

  Work on the jobs app has stopped. The job board volunteer team simply did not find enough time to work through the app's issues.

  Work on the app is now continuing as part of the site redesign deals we have with the two consulting companies.

  Once the major road blocks have been removed, I'll relaunch the volunteer project to get the review process working, as this is what most volunteers were interested in.

  If you want to have a look at where we are at the moment, please see our fork on github:

  https://github.com/python-jobs-board/pythondotorg

  Issues are managed here:

  https://github.com/python-jobs-board/pythondotorg/issues/

  More information on the jobs board team is available on our wiki page at:

  https://wiki.python.org/moin/PSF%20Python%20Job%20Board

2. New Activities

• None

3. Planned for Next Month

• None

4. Ongoing Projects

• PSF Conference Kits / PSF at conferences
• Python Events Calendar
• Python Jobs Board

5. Tabled Activities

• PSF Marketing Work Group

  No group has been established yet. I simply haven't found time for this and instead continue pushing the marketing side in an adhoc fashion: sending out stickers, letting people know about the brochure, etc.

  If anyone is interested in joining such a work group, please let me know.

• Python Events Calendar

  I am thinking about adding additional calendars for e.g. Python training sessions - perhaps with some form of payment added for commercial entries and having someone paid to enter the data and keep the calendar up-to-date.

  No time for this anytime soon, so tabled for now.

6. Issues / Blockages

• Job board issues (see above)

5.5   PSF Domains Report

1. Continued Activities from Last Month

• Register pycon TLDs

  No progress, since the board hasn't yet decided which domains to register.

  We now have a trademark policy for the term "PyCon" in place. See https://www.python.org/psf/trademarks/pycon/ for details.

  User groups who want to use the term for Python conferences will have to get approval from the trademark committee before they can use the term. This includes using it in a domain name.

• Adding pycon.org subdomains

  dhaka.pycon.org for PyCon Dhaka in Bangladesh. by.pycon.org for PyCon Belarus (site not online yet).

• Monitor domain renewals

  All renewals since June were processed without problems.

• Current status

  Please see the wiki page for details on the current status and a list of registered domains:

  https://wiki.python.org/psf/PSF%20Domains

2. New Activities

• python.io was registered by Cory Benfield <cory at lukasa.co.uk> to protect it from domain grabbers. We have transfered the domain to the PSF in June.

3. Planned for Next Month

• None

4. Ongoing Projects

• Maintaining the PSF Gandi account

5. Tabled Activities

• None

6. Issues / Blockages

• None

5.6   PSF Infrastructure Report

1. Continued Activities from Last Month

• No specific activities (see Ongoing Projects)

2. New Activities

• Digicert "extended validation" cert obtained for www.python.org and other services
• bugs.python.org SSL cert updated to one trusted by browsers by default
• Fastly provided dedicated IP addresses to avoid .python.org services getting caught up in IP filtering of shared CDN addresses

3. Planned for Next Month

• No specific plans (see Ongoing Projects)

4. Ongoing Projects

• Infrastructure management and maintenance (see http://status.python.org/)
• Infrastructure consolidation (see https://wiki.python.org/moin/PSFInfrastructure)
• Infrastructure security hardening
• PyPI architecture modernisation

5. Tabled Activities

• None

6. Issues / Blockages

• None