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Next week Ana Balica will give her first keynote, but she isn't nervous. At least, not yet. "I definitely will be before going on stage," she says. "That’s a natural response; you can’t help it." Balica is a Django Developer at Potato, a web agency in London. Although she is only two years out of university, she's making a name for herself as a programmer, community leader, and conference speaker. This month at PyCon CZ in Brno, Czech Republic , she presents "Humanizing Among Coders," a talk that describes five aspects of effective communication. "I hope it will get people talking about how they communicate, and believing they can make a difference by being empathetic." Python and Ana Balica first met while she was studying software engineering at the Technical University of Moldova. Although the school focuses on C and C++, she tried out Python as a sort of snack on the side, and got hooked. After she graduated she spent her "gap ye...

As many of you will know, the PSF has been a partner in the British Broadcasting Corporation's (BBC) micro:bit project . A million devices capable of running MicroPython have been distributed to every 11 and 12 year old in the UK. Those of you lucky enough to attend EuroPython and PyCon UK will have also been given a device to take home. The PSF wouldn't be involved if the project were not open source, and it has always been the intention that all the software and hardware designs should be released under open licenses so that anyone can recreate the project themselves . We're very pleased to continue our association with the project as a partner with the new MicroBit Foundation ~ a charity tasked to promote and develop the project now that the BBC is stepping away. (It was always the intention of the BBC to step back once the UK "drop" of devices was complete.) A few days ago they revealed their website and the final piece of the jigsaw was revealed: the har...