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Hi everyone, The below post is an April Fools joke. It was written by PSF Blogger and Basic Member Mary Ann Sushinsky, with Director and Outreach & Education Chair David Mertz, to encourage, in a tongue-in-cheek way, more international cooperation in the Python world.     It did this by poking fun at how the governments of various countries have hindered events like a hypothetical PyCon Cuba from happening. It touched on a political area where sensitivities are often high, and a number of people were hurt or offended by the post. That wasn't cool of us, and we apologize. The post remains below because we believe in acknowledging our error rather than just deleting it and pretending that it didn't happen. One positive thing that came out of this was a better understanding by many of us about what many people from Cuba have gone through, and it has strengthened our resolve to find ways to do good by them. We very much hope better to aid Cubans in coming to future Python even...

As most of you already know, last year the PSF changed the bylaws regarding membership in order to become more inclusive, diverse, and participatory. Several previous blog posts have detailed aspects of this change and its implications (see e.g.,  Enroll as a Voting Member , or  Membership Vote ). Building on this foundation, PSF Director Nick Coghlan has recently completed a draft of the procedures detailing the process for recognition as a  PSF Fellow Member.  The full text of this draft has been posted to the  members' list  and to the  PSF Wiki , for your review and discussion. The category of  Fellow Member  is described in the bylaws as  based upon certain criteria to be established by the Board of Directors and which criteria shall be designed to emphasize extraordinary contributions (see  Bylaws ). The full text of Nick’s draft has been posted to the  Members' List  and to the  PSF Wiki , for your review and d...

Earlier this month, the PSF opened an election on two issues: the first was a straightforward vote on the adoption of new Sponsor Members; the second was more experimental: a non-binding vote for the membership to weigh in on a complex issue to be decided by the Board. This poll was part of the larger project (featured in several recent blog posts, see, for example,  Let’s Make Decisions  to make the PSF a more inclusive, diverse, and democratic organization. Source: National Museum of American History. PD-USGOV The election was closed yesterday, March 26th. The results can be found at  Election 9 Results  and are as follows: Sponsor Members, Bloomburg LP, Fastly and Infinite Code were all voted in by large margins. Sponsor Member Candidates yes no abstain Bloomberg LP 174 7 28 Fastly 193 3 13 Infinite Code 147 13 49 The second issue: The PSF Board of Directors is seeking the collective perspective of PSF Voting Members on the appropriate handling of video recording ...

A couple of years ago, I discovered the edX MIT course 6.00x  Intro to Computer Science and Programming Using Python . At the time, I was eager to learn Python and CS basics, so I took the plunge.  The course has been offered through edX each semester since, and at some point it was divided into two courses to allow more time for in-depth study, as the original one-semester course moved very quickly from basics to more advanced topics, such as  complexity classes, plotting techniques, stochastic programs, probability, random walks, and graph optimization.  I can’t say enough good things about the excellence of Professor John Guttag, who developed the course and wrote the accompanying textbook (which is recommended but not required), along with co-teachers, Profs. Eric Grimson and Chris Terman. I was grateful at the time to have found a free introductory college-level course in computer science that uses Python, rather than C, Java, or another language, as I had alrea...

Personal opinion: I think it’s always a good idea to periodically revisit one’s purpose and basic goals; speaking from experience, getting lost is inefficient and no fun at all. Photo credit: Gerd Altmann;  License: CC0 So, let's review: The mission of the PSF is to: […] promote, protect, and advance the Python programming language, and to support and facilitate the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers. The PSF takes this mission seriously. Last year, the Board of Directors changed the membership by-laws in order to make the PSF a more inclusive and diverse organization. Since then, the PSF leadership has been working on ways to build on that change. The recent non-binding poll of voting members ( PSF Blog ) is one such tactic. Another is a new procedure for strategic decision-making recently proposed by PSF Director Nick Coghlan. Last week, Nick posted this proposal on the Members' List  for discussion (it's also on the  Python wiki...

Google Summer of Code is a program for post-secondary students who want to work on open source projects as a means of summer employment, and the Python Software Foundation is serving as an umbrella-organization to a large number of Python-based open source projects this year! Whether you want to write code to help with manned missions on Mars, help manage online content, do machine learning, enhance medicine, study complex networks, do faster mathematics, create innovative user interfaces or... well, we'd say the sky's the limit, but with folk like AstroPy on our sub-org list, our sights go pretty far into the sky! Check out the full list of participating sub-orgs here: https://wiki.python.org/moin/SummerOfCode/2015 We know it can be overwhelming, so here's 7 things you can do to get yourself started: 1. Choose an organization to work with. 2. Start communicating with the developers. 3. Set up your own development environment. 4. Find some beginner-friendly bugs and try to...

For those of you not familiar with the Raspberry Pi Foundation, this UK based educational charity provides fun projects and opportunities for bringing coding literacy to students in the UK and to learners all over the world. This blog previously featured two of their projects,  Astro Pi  and  Unicef’s Pi4Learning . There are many more, including  Piper  which uses the game,  Minecraft , to teach electronics to kids, or the use of Raspberry Pis on weather balloons to observe and record (from the UK) today’s solar eclipse, or  Picademy , which teaches programming skills to teachers (for these projects and many more, see  RPF Blog ). The one thing these widely-varied projects have in common is that they all rely on the high-performing, incredibly affordable, versatile, and fun to use  Raspberry Pi ! First produced for sale by the RP Foundation in 2011, the device has become hugely popular, with over 5 million in use around the world. And it just...

Announcing: the brand new PSF Python Job Board We are happy to announce that we have successfully relaunched the PSF Python Job Board . After almost one year of development and lots of work by our volunteers and contractors, we are now live with the new Python job board system. New modern system The new system is fully integrated into the python.org website. Job submitters can create an account on the system, log in and directly submit their job posting for approval by the PSF Job Board Team. The team can then review the postings, check them against our submission criteria, possibly fixing some formatting, and then approve or reject the postings directly through a web interface. No more sending dozens of emails back and forth to get the job template fixed and adding jobs to the website by hand. Thank you to our volunteers The new system was a major effort for all of us and I'd like to say thank you from the PSF to everyone who helped make this happen (in alphabetical order):...

Several recent blog posts have focused on Python-related and PSF-funded activities in Africa and the Middle East. But the Python community is truly global, and it has been exciting to witness its continued growth. New groups of people are being introduced to Python and to programming so frequently that it’s difficult to keep up with the news. Not only that, but the scope and lasting impact of work being accomplished by Pythonistas with very modest financial assistance from the PSF is astonishing.   One example is the recent work in South America by  Manuel Kaufmann . Manuel’s project is to promote the use of Python “to solve daily issues for common users." His choice of Python as the best language to achieve this end is due to his commitment to "the Software Libre philosophy,” in particular, collaboration rather than competition, as well as Python's ability "to develop powerful and complex software in an easy way." Toward this end, one year ago, Manuel began his...

This morning, PSF Director David Mertz announced on the PSF Members' mailing list the opening of a vote. For those of you who have already self-certified as voting members, or if you are already a Fellow of the Foundation, you should have received the announcement in a private email. This is our first stab at using the voting mechanism to get a sense of the larger membership's views on an issue currently under discussion (the non-binding poll), so we urge you to take a moment and make your voice heard. To review your eligibility to vote and to see the certification form, please see my previous blog post Enroll as Voting Member  or go to the  PSF Website . Here is the announcement: Membership Vote for Pending Sponsors and Non-Binding Poll   The candidate Sponsor Members listed below were recommended for approval by the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors. Following the ballot choices is a detailed description of the organization (the submit button is after the de...

I previously posted about a wonderful education program utilizing Raspberry Pis  ( AstroPi ) . Here’s another one: Since last May, Unicef has been using Raspberry Pis to educate Syrian children who have been displaced into Lebanon due to their country’s civil war. The program, called  Pi4Learning  was developed by  James Cranwell-Ward , UNICEF Lebanon Innovation Lead, and  Eliane Metni  of the International Education Association. With approximately 300,000 Syrian school children living as refugees in Lebanon with no educational resources, Unicef’s Cranwell-Ward sought an inexpensive, ready-to-go solution that could be implemented in refugee camp environments. Already a Raspberry Pi enthusiast, he paired the device with Alex Eames' KickStarer funded  HDMIPi screens . Working with Eliane Metni, who had been piloting Raspberry Pis at  Dhour El Shweur Public Secondary School in Lebanon , they obtained free Arabic language curriculum from Khan Academy ...