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The Python Software Foundation
Minutes of a Regular Meeting of the Board of Directors

December 06, 2013

A regular meeting of the Python Software Foundation ("PSF") Board of Directors was held over Group Conference Call via phone and Internet Relay Chat beginning at 18:00 CET/ 12:00 EST, on December 06, 2013. Van Lindberg presided over the meeting. Ewa Jodlowska prepared the minutes.

All votes are reported in the form "Y-N-A" (in favor-Y‚opposed-N‚abstentions-A; e.g. "5-1-2" means "5 in favor, 1 opposed, and 2 abstentions").

1   Attendance

The following members of the Board of Directors (9 of 11) were present at the meeting: Van Lindberg, Tim Peters, Jesse Noller, Brian Curtin, Marc-Andre Lemburg, Jessica McKellar, David Mertz, Brett Cannon, and Alex Gaynor. Also in attendance were Ewa Jodlowska (Secretary/Administrator) and Kurt Kaiser (Treasurer).

2   Minutes of Past Meetings

The 15 November 2013 Board meeting minutes were voted on and approved.

RESOLVED, that the PSF approve the minutes at https://mail.python.org/mailman/private/psf-board/2013-November/023555.html as representing a true and accurate record of the November 15, 2013 meeting.

Approved, 6-0-3.

3   Votes Taken Between Meetings

There were no votes taken between meetings.

4   Votes Taken Over Email

There were no votes taken over email.

5   Reports

5.1   Event Coordinator Report

  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • Attendee Registration: The current overview of registration is good. With the current early bird rate cap, we have sold over 60%. Last year this time, registration was less than 60%.
  • Childcare: Continuing to work with Kimberlee Care to draft up a contract for PyCon 2014.
  • Sponsor Reg and Housing: Sponsor reg was launched. Email from sponsors is increasing and I will continue to be as responsive to them as possible.
  • Expo Hall: I have finalized the sponsor kits with GES (they were sent out December 2). I have created a two page insert for the kits that contains PyCon specific details: Now I will work with the Palais to get their forms ready (for electrical, rigging, etc).
  1. New Activities
  • Housing Management: After the visit to the Marriott Suites, we have decided that we could get a block of rooms there since there is no attrition. We will wait a few weeks to see if housing picks up.
  • AV Management: We have managed to narrow it down to 2 and in the end we picked Frischkorn. They were competitive on their pricing, detail oriented and offered good quality equipment for the price we were quoted.
  • Future Planning: Getting details down for the Education Summit. Checked with the convention center to see if coat check could be arranged for PyCon.
  • Budgeting: I have sent out invoices to all current 2014 sponsors.
  • Convention Center Management: I have worked with Karine to get additional space by our expo hall for lunch. We will most likely be able to go over our 2000 mark now.
  • Sponsor Reg and Housing: I have sent the first updated list of sponsors to CTE. I will continue to send an updated sponsor list to CTE about once a week until the conference.
  • Expo Hall: I have planned and finalized a new floor plan for the expo.
  • Attendee Registration: I received the web app from CTE to create registration promo codes and I have created and sent out the codes that were requested.
  1. Planned for Next Month
  • Attendee Reg: Work with CTE to get the tutorial registrations up and work with Caktus to get the conference program out
  • PyCon dinner: finalize details with the local restaurants and include the registration for this on CTE?s site
  • Expo Hall: I will want to send an email to all of the sponsors making sure they received reg info and booth info. In this email I will include the forms from the Palais.
  • Convention Center Management: work on lunch setup
  • Expo Hall: Create a page on the pycon site for all signed up sponsors to see sponsor kit, deadlines, and ad requirements.
  • Budgeting: I am going to contact all outstanding balances from 2013 sponsors.
  1. Ongoing Projects
  • Financial Aid planning
  • 2016/2017 RFPs: Received word that Portland will not be submitting a proposal. At this point I will wait to receive the revised Austin proposal and then begin negotiations. I have also added Orlando to the mix.
  • Budget: Updating PyCon 2014 budget ledger with invoices that need to be paid and new funding
  1. Tabled Activities
  • None
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None

5.2   Administrator Report

  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • None
  1. New Activities
  • I have created an echo sign form for the membership application
  1. Planned for Next Month
  • Finish updating CiviCRM with current sponsors and canceling those that are outdated.
  • Create an echo sign for the sponsor member application form
  • PSF Budget: Update the PSF budget with recent spending (since the last time we edited it)
  1. Ongoing Projects
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • PSF Infrastructure: the new VM host is up, spec?ed out PyPI on public cloud, worked on static fallback for PyPI, wrapping up new PyPI infrastructure, looking to deploy testpypi.python.org on new infr. ASAP, fixing PyPI for clean deploy
  • Bylaws: No progress since my last report, but Marc-Andre has come up with a list of action items in order to complete the bylaws.
  • pydotorg Redesign: an update will be included in the next report.
  1. Tabled Activities
  • None
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None

5.3   Sprint Workgroup Report

  1. Summary
  • No recent action, need to send a few followups
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None
  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • Jannis Leidel ran a Django sprint at the end of last month, so I need to follow up with him and ask for details so the the reimbursement can be processed.
  1. New Activities
  • Got a request from a group in Mexico - need to respond and see how we can help them. It's a small group that needs more material than funding.

5.4   Communications Report

  1. Summary
  • Brought minutes back up to date, announced Barry's CSA
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None
  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • None
  1. New Activities
  • The board minutes have been brought back up to date from a minor lapse, and Barry Warsaw's Community Service Award was announced and tweeted.
  1. For Next Month
  • A previous effort to highlight conference sponsorships doesn't seem to have happened, so I'll pick that up and begin a 2013 summary with it.
  • Will be bringing the resolutions page up-to-date as well based on the recently updated minutes pages.

5.5   Marketing Material Project Report

  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • We're still in the process of selling ad spaces to get the finances all setup for going to print.

  • We have made room for 3 additional 1/2 page ads available and limited the number of reference entries to about 8-10.

  • Current statistics

    6 half page ads sold and paid

    1 half page ad reservation

    2 reference entries sold and paid

    4 reference entry reservations

  • Sending stickers to conferences

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

    Stickers have been sent to Albania, South Africa and Spain. I also took a set to PyCon UK (and they were gone within 15 minutes).

  1. New Activities
  • Print more Python stickers for use at conferences, since we're running out of stock
  1. Planned for Next Month
  • None
  1. Ongoing Projects
  • PSF Python Brochure
  1. Tabled Activities
  • None
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • The only issue at the moment is the slow progress in signing up ad and reference entry sponsors.

  • We'd really like to finish the project and go to print.

  • We'll wait a few more weeks and then go ahead with the money we have to print the first edition. Depending on how many more sponsors we'll find, this may mean that we'll have to request some extra financial help from the PSF (in addition to the payments already granted in 2011) to finalize the project.

    This is not the outcome we had wished for, but at least the PSF will then have the printed copies available to distribute to conferences, user group events, universities and schools around the world.

    Given how much work we've put into this project, it would still be a good deal for the PSF.

5.6   Community Relations Board Report

  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • PSF at conferences

    I took the EU PSF Conference Kit to PyCon DE 2013 in October.

    For PyCon Ireland 2013, we had ordered a smaller roll-up version which will stay in Ireland to reduce the shipping costs overhead.

  • PSF Marketing Work Group

    Going forward, I'd like to setup a new PSF working group for managing and coordinating PSF marketing activities. This will hopefully happen in the next few months, available time permitting.

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

  • 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.

  1. New Activities
  • None
  1. Planned for Next Month
  • None
  1. Ongoing Projects
  • PSF at conferences
  • PSF Marketing Work Group
  • Python Events Calendar
  1. Tabled Activities
  • None
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None

5.7   PSF Domains Board Report

  1. Continued Activities from Last Month
  • Register pycon TLDs

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

  • Monitor domain renewals

  • 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

  1. New Activities
  • None
  1. Planned for Next Month
  • None
  1. Ongoing Projects
  • Maintaining the PSF Gandi account
  1. Tabled Activities
  • None
  1. Issues / Blockages
  • None

6   PythonJS Grant

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant $1,000 to Brett Hartshorn for one month's work on making PythonJS self-hosted so that it may run completely within a web browser

Approved, 7-0-2.

7   Beslist.nl

RESOLVED, that the board recommends Beslist.nl as a new pending sponsor member

Approved, 9-0-0.

8   PSF Contribution Forms

RESOLVED, that the PSF contribution forms be made available under the CC-0 (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) license

Approved, 9-0-0.

9   Encryption for Python Project Websites

RESOLVED, it is the policy of the Python Software Foundation to support the appropriate use of encryption by project websites in the Python ecosystem, and will grant appropriate subsidies for the purpose of purchasing certificates for this purpose

Approved, 9-0-0.

10   PyTennessee Video Recording Grant

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation grant PyTennessee $28,000 for video recording, which consists of four tracks per day for two days

Denied, 0-9-0.

11   Community Service Award for D. Stufft

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation award the 2013 - 4th Quarter Community Service Award to Donald Stufft

Approved, 9-0-0.

12   Community Service Award for H. A. Massa

RESOLVED, that the Python Software Foundation award the 2013 - 4th Quarter Community Service Award to Harald Armin Massa

Approved, 9-0-0.

13   Other Business

  • The directors discussed the next move with the bylaws and Van decided to have a Bylaws Workgroup meeting on December 10, 2013 via IRC and phone.
  • The directors continued to discuss how to deal with a certain PyPi package name. No decisions were made, the discussion will continue on the board mailing list.

14   Adjournment

Van Lindberg adjourned the meeting at 19:05 CET/ 13:05 EST.