Panel Discussion: Two Decades of Django: The Past, Present and Future with Velda Kiara

Speaker 1: This is our way of celebrating two decades of Django. And today I am joined by a multitude of people. I know there are too many, but you'll understand why in a few minutes. So we're gonna start with introductions by Peter, but just to make it clear, I am Velda Chiara. I serve on the Django Events Foundation North America board. And I'm also a software engineer and I love coming to DjangoCon. So yeah, thank you.

Speaker 2: I'm Peter Grantstaff. I am the president of Django Events Foundation North America Board. This is my third Django Con. I'm actually fairly new to the Django community. And uh I've been using Django for fifteen years or so. And I run two rock software where we build stuff with Django a lot.

Speaker 3: Hi, my name is Don Wagis. I'm the chair of the Python Software Foundation Board of Directors. Uh sitting next to my former boss at Two Rock, I've been doing uh Django for about Well, ten years from since Django Girls, my first Django Girls, um and the way that I was ingratiated into the community. And I'm currently the director of community and developer relations at Anaconda. Wow

Speaker 4: Thank you. Hello, I am Natalia. I am one of the Bianco Fellows. I'm actually the half of the one and a half or two and a half fellows. Uh I've been a fellow for over three three years and I'm enjoying it, though it's a very challenging position. Um if you wanna know more about what the Fellows 2 or what the Fellowship program is, you can watch uh also if you wanna uh jiggle a little bit about Lord of the Rings. You can watch my talk that I gave my keynote from last year. It explains what a fellows do and the challenges that we face. Well, hopefully we talk a little bit about that today as well

Speaker 5: Hi, I'm Jeff. Um from Lawrence, Kansas. I am on the Django Software Foundation Board of Directors. Um I helped co-found DEFNA. I was president before Peter of uh DEFNA. Um I chaired and helped with this event over the years. I feel like I've done something with all I've been on the board of the PSF with Don , worked with Natalia on the board, been on organizing with these two. I do the Django News newsletter with Will Vincent and just a bunch of just kind of random community projects. I work at RevSys, I'm a partner, worked at the newspaper where Django was made and just been around Django for a while.

Speaker 6: Thanks, Jeff. Hi, I'm Rachel. I've been doing Django for about ten years now. I've also been going to Django conferences for the same time. I got started before I was a developer. I was a Django Girls organizer. Yeah, I am uh longtime Jane O Girls organizer. I'm also a trustee. So if you want to talk about JL Girls or how you can help support that, or if you're interested in doing your own events, come talk to me later. I'm also a co-founder and admin for Django Not Space. It's an open source contributing mentorship program. If you want to get into Django Django contributing and you're not sure how, come talk to us as well. Um and yeah, I'm also a Django uh con US organizer. Tim?

Speaker 7: Hello, uh I'm Tim Schilling. I'm one of the uh Steering Council members, I've been working with Django since 2013-ish. Um I help contribute or maintain the Django debug toolbar. There's a couple other libraries out there. I'm one of the admins for Jenga Not Space. I'm an admin for Django Commons. And I don't think we Jenger Commons actually got a call out for this conference yet. So it's a organization to help people maintain community packages. Um so it's a little unknown, but uh we are growing. Um yeah, I think that's about it for me.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Now that you know who they are, they are representatives. for the different programs and committees that exist in Django. We have the Django Events Foundation, we have the Django Software uh foundation as well. We have the PSF, we have Jenga Not Space and Jenga Girls and the Django Steering Console. So It's a lot of things to get a lot of people involved, right? So now that we're even talking about the 20 years, what do you appreciate most about Django today?

Speaker 6: Me. I'm first. No, no, because I have a good answer for this, I think anyway. Um one of the things I appreciate that has helped me when I first got um into into Django and developing is the low barrier to entry. Django Girls, the tutorial. We've heard this at the conference and other places that a lot of people's first introduction into web development or programming is the Django Girls. tutorial and I think that's really important. That's how we get more diversity and that's how we welcome newcomers and grow our user base and eventually hopefully with organizations like Django Naspace. get them in the pipeline, become leaders in the community and contributors. So hopefully we can continue having those low barriers. and getting people hooked in and once they're in, I mean then they

Speaker 6: then they see the hard parts because nothing's easy, but um uh that onboarding is the hardest thing once people are are in the organizations. And they see that they can do it. We have a good community to support them while they're there. So I hope, I mean, that's one of my favorite things about the community. I always felt welcome, always felt supported, and I hope we can do that for others in our respective communities as well

Speaker 4: Well actually I was going to say what I appreciate the most about the Yango in this twenty years, the community, because I really don't think that the Yango will be the framework that it is today without the community. I mean it the bulk of the code contributions, the documentation contributions, the mentoring contributions, the events, organizations, all done by the community. And I am amazed. the time and effort and energy that the volunteers, that everyone that is coming to the conference or doing stuff are putting and I think that's what keeps Thiango current and alive. Awesome.

Speaker 1: Anybody else care to add to that? Awesome. Are you done? Okay. Now speaking of all these great things that Django is a good community. This is going to be a crispy question. So what should we stop doing? I mean there are a couple of things that we're good at, but what in in this current day and age should we stop doing

Speaker 7: I think um it would we could uh stop asking people maybe it's not asking, but expecting implicitly to people to go through the the bumps that we've gone through or like it when you go through uh adversity, there seems to be like this expectation of You kind of have to go through that as well. And it seems like there's there should be ways for us to clear some of these roadblocks and make it easier to do things. One of those that I would pick out is When you create a third-party package, it'd be really nice if we had pathways for people to get eyeballs on those things and increase the visibility so that it's easier for people to um get exposure.

Speaker 7: And so like that's just one way that we could potentially make it easier for other people to you know follow behind, I guess.

Speaker 3: I have thoughts. Um so it's it's hard to word this one in a in a stop phrase, but I do think that in the funding environment that we have in open source, um Open source is one. I mean, it's not even a question anymore. Um, and there are lots of organizations, enterprise with deep pockets that are leveraging open source and reaping a lot of the benefits And that brought a lot of us here to this conference. It's also why we were able to run this conference because of the wonderful sponsors who've pitched in. We need more of that. From the vantage of the community, I do think that we had the opportunity originally to run really lean, not ask for much money, be very decentralized.

Speaker 3: Um but investing in the uh into the community costs money. This conference costs money and so as you are an organizer or as you're just an attendee in the conference And you want to put up a big wall to having enterprise interests, being a little bit more flexible but clear where your boundaries are, but a little more flexible and permeable. Um so we can have that give and take relationship with some of these enterprises. And I am not one to love and jump on for the corporate show of it all. I mean I really want to be discerning um and uh pragmatic about it. Um, but there is an opportunity to have a give and take relationship and have bullet points on what our demands are in exchange for some of the funds to support the community that make these enterprises run.

Speaker 3: I can

Speaker 2: I can phrase that as a stop.

Speaker 6: Yeah, okay.

Speaker 2: We should stop relying on sponsors who are stretching to give us what they give us. And I think enterprise and getting bigger, deeper pockets involved is a is a big component of that, and I'm in favor, but I also think there's probably room for more small dollar donations from individuals. Cup of coffee here and there that a kind of amount.

Speaker 5: I think we have a lot of roadblocks and it's kind of hard to get started sometimes with Django. And I think in the name of like security and trying to make things more beginner-friendly. I think we sometimes make it actually harder for people. I think our production story needs a lot of work. Python's production story is really bad, so deployment in Python is pretty awful. I think if we can as a group start looking at how can we make this easier every year, we can't just solve it, but I think it should be a let's just look at like Django's deployment guides and how can we make one step easier. Or how can we make one less check that maybe is a good idea if you're a bank, but it probably shouldn't error for everybody because maybe you don't use Stripe or maybe you use Stripe? And maybe we should have like an encrypted field in Django

Speaker 5: because if we're going to stop people from being able to like have easy beginner defaults, then maybe this is something that we should um you know kind of focus on. And then I'll get on a little tangent because I mentioned deploy in case the question doesn't come up. There's some really good, I really like Zag's talk about uh restful and I think Django should be more restful. And I think this deployment story too. There's some really good projects by people here. There's Django prod server, which kind of solves the How do we uh get used to using Django and then we need to learn this whole what's Gunnicorn, what's U Whiskey, why do I've learned to deploy it, well I've learned how to run a Django server or site, but I have no idea what what it should do in production and how it should work And there's some awesome work. One of the Adams is doing a Toml settings too, which kind of changes how

Speaker 5: makes it a little bit more accessible to do settings in production. I'm forgetting a couple more. Eric Mathis has a really good Django simple deploy, which is just it's that initial Django beginner story that deployments. I would love to see people focus on these things that really make this less of a barrier for people.

Speaker 6: On the other side of things, um like community diversity and contributions, and it's kind of like I'm speaking to myself, but like also I need community buy-in as we shouldn't Or we should stop expecting people from historically underrepresented groups and marginalized folks to work for free. I know that's kind of anathetical to open source, but like people have families, people have jobs, they're struggling in their lives, and we can't expect them to show up unless we support them financially. And that that would be the ultimate goal if we could. And we're trying to figure that out at Jingonaut space. So if you have money, throw it our way. But um we'll figure it out later. But uh I think that I would love to see more kind of support for those people. If you want to see them here, we have to support them.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And now that all of you are actively involved in Django in one way or the other, when did you realize that you were actually part of it? Like when did it clock to you that you were part of the Django community.

Speaker 5: I think it for me it's whenever I chair DjangoCon US and then it's Like hearing your name on a podcast, you know, kind of mentioned is kind of a weird, you know, thing, which is cool. Um, I think it was just, you know, for me like Uh I remember having DjangoCon Philly and seeing Don and Mariotta who were here and then seeing them like become the chair of the PSF and see them be the chair of PyCon US for two years. and like seeing people that are just like just petrified to even say hi and see them like blossom and be on stage and have A little part in just like hosting an event and helping have that. So for me it's been very gratifying seeing like your faces and seeing you the next year and seeing what you do and the cool stuff that you do. you do. So for me it's just kind of been along for the ride and watching people grow.

Speaker 6: I'll share. I was organizing Geno Girls before I was even working as a developer. I was learning it at the time. And a great way to learn is just do it. But even at that point, I didn't feel part of the community. I got a grant to go to JamalCon uh Europe in Hungary. I still didn't really feel like I belonged. And even I did a talk at DanielCon US. I got invited to panels. I think by the third time I was invited to a panel, I was like, okay, maybe I'm not faking it. Maybe I do belong here. Um and now that I'm seeing similar to how Jeff said, people that I've supported from their beginnings in contributing, become leaders in the community and giving back and and creating their own spaces. I think that's really rewarding. That's like, wow, okay, so my work here is impact and I am part of the community

Speaker 3: Uh I so I said ten years, uh Rachel said ten years. I have to be short of ten years because Rachel was one of the organizers for my first Django Girls. So right. Uh so even starting with that and like kind of there's always been increasing levels of feeling more part of the community. Um and I think one of it was my Django Girls. I immediately felt empowered. Um I love to shout out Philly Python Users Group and specifically my friend Tim Allen. because he's so good at making you feel like you belong when you're right next to him. Um and there's just been many moments with individuals like that. Shout out to my friend Kojo. We can do a whole bunch of these. It would take too long Um, but it's these individual

Speaker 3: conversations where someone really makes you feel like they're looking you in the eye and making you feel present. Um last shout-out was when uh I was asking technical questions with Carlton Gibson, who's just brilliant and great at explaining very, very complex topics. And I'd come off of a couple of career lows feeling invalidated and not like I knew where my place was Um and he talked to me like I was a human with common sense and the ability to understand whatever he was about to explain to me and it felt really empowering. So if you can do even small things like that, um slow down, you uh know that you're talking about something that's very advanced, but break it down into its component pieces and explain it to anyone,

Speaker 3: I'm sure they'll feel much more like they belong.

Speaker 4: So for me it's the story is a little bit different. I applied to be a fellow without being part of the community, which at the time it felt I don't even question that because I didn't know the Django community. Um I was a user of the angle but I I wasn't aware of the community or all the things behind it. So I applied to be a fellow. I got elected, which was a surprise. And then once I started my role, it was a little bit of a shock. what what there was around and n no not only shepherding and gatekeeping and housekeeping the angle but everything that comes with it. It was a little bit overwhelming at the beginning, but it was also extremely satisfying. And I do wonder whether we could do something to because there

Speaker 4: there are conversations about season technologies, Django, whether we need more of this or that, more AI, less AI But I haven't heard conversations about um sharing the hi the amazing community that is behind Yango. I've heard someone new to this conference uh saying that this is uh this event and this communities has a lot of uh similarities with the Drupal community which I am not aware of. There but there is also a lot of different things that other more toxic communities. So highlighting that and somehow showcasing that, I think it will be a great win for the angle.

Speaker 2: I guess my story is a little bit like Jeff's. I was sharing my first Django Con, is when I felt like I was part of the community. Um, and that was also the first Django Con I ever went to. And I guess now I I look at it and and I really enjoy when I'm talking to people for the first time at one of these conferences, uh particularly somebody who has never been to one before. um and realizing as I'm talking to them that they're part of the community, even though they may not know it yet.

Speaker 7: Yeah, exactly. That that that's it for me. Um it was 2022 JammerCount US. Uh I've been contributing to helping maintain the debug toolbar for years at that point Never really felt like part of the community. Like I knew Matthias well. We had been talking. I'd talked to Sarah Abdermain, been answering questions, but being at the DjangoCon US then, like It had that um closeness. Like I just everybody I talked to was interested in something technical or improving the world or something with Django in the community. As soon as I left, Kojo 's self-care sprint, like your post-conference depression had hit and had the summer camp vibes of like I want to get back to that, became an organizer, but like it was definitely at that

Speaker 7: DjangoCon US. Um, I finally felt like I was part of the community just being an attendee, just talking to other people. So it yeah.

Speaker 1: Yeah. And now that you have the micro You recently joined the stud the Django Steering Council. And what is something the console has had to learn or rethink since it started?

Speaker 7: I mean this steering council is kind of reapproached what the steering council is meant to do, like that that kind of For a while there was it exists to be the decision maker and when the community can arrive at a consensus and the community wanted to see a steering council be a little bit more proactive. So we've been I I think the role itself is still a bit undefined that we're trying to figure that out. Like that one of our things to do is Revise dep 10, which is which are the governance rules for how Django writes releases software, includes what does the steering council do. And in sense, if we're refactoring that, like it implies that our role is uh

Speaker 7: Um not perfectly defined. So yeah, a lot of that's just being relearned for us.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you. And Rachel, you've had to be part of both Django Girls and Djangonaut space Which is like a good spot to be because you get to see how people start out, how they also become leaders and be part of the community as well What are like what moment from either initiative made you question everything you knew about open source in the community?

Speaker 6: So my approach to these communities kind of stems from my background in teaching. I was a teacher of EFL in Korea for a long time. um to little kids. My youngest was like two and a half. Um and adults, we're all just like little kids but big. Um there is none so my I I treat People and communities, that's my kind of focus, not necessarily the open source aspect. I care about people, I want to support them, I want to create spaces where they can thrive. So I think that my background in that and teaching people like I would teach, you know, um kids, helping people believe in themselves. Right? I think that's a challenge all of us have in belonging. We've heard how long it took all of us to feel like part of the community, but we are all

Speaker 6: you all are part of the community because you're here. Um and so I mean there's not anything that's like made me question it. Um I think that we need to create spaces for community because when people feel welcome, they feel like they belong, they feel safe. They will thrive. When you're stressed out, you can't learn, you can't thrive. So I hope that answers your question.

Speaker 1: It does. In a way. Yeah, so the next question is to Jeff. I know Jeff says I ask hard questions, but this one is going to be a nice one. So if the DSF could act faster or more boldly in one area without any constraint, what would you personally push for? So what if if the DSF could act faster or more boldly? Yeah, in one area, without any constraints.

Speaker 5: So I asked some other uh directors this because it's it is a hard question. And I think what people understand is like how much invisible work goes into a lot of what we do. We want to hire an executive director. And that's like really pushing the board to try to get there. And we got to figure it out financially. And you know, we kind of courted somebody for most of the year. year and it it just we you know we were almost there and live things happen and it just didn't work out. And so that is invisible work that you don't see, but it was also four or five months. We also, it was very, it wasn't obvious to me when I got on the board last year that we needed a third fellow. And it very, very quickly became something we just had to do. And so we kind of also had to push budget aside, figure out like, you know, we're all volunteers, we believe in the community, we're going to do this, we're going to make it happen.

Speaker 5: Luckily, as Jacob said earlier, Jacob Kapomas, we've always had this surplus that we could work within. And so $0 for us is actually in that $200,000, $300,000 range. So we knew it's okay if we do take a loss for a little bit, we can make it up. We also changed our fundraising goals for the year from something like 200 to 300,000 to try to help with that. I think also it's really, you know, like Tebow's here, president, president role is really hard. And there's always more that you want the president to do. The community does as well. But you also don't see like the random things that people are not used to. Like we're all most of us are are either developers or designers, we're coming in from like various ways. And all of a sudden when you have this like

Speaker 5: global organization and How are you an expert about trademarks? And how do you handle like legal contracts and how are you now HR? There's just a lot that goes to it. And I just don't think the community sees that. And it's not like, A, it's not a job. It's all volunteering and it's unpaid, but it's really hard. And I think that's why like again I'll pitch the executive director, but I think that's just something that's like super, super hard to see. As far as acting faster too, there's a lot of groups that I wish historically, and I've only been on the board for a year, but I've seen it for a while, I wish we could have like established and helped like Django Not Spaces, Django Commons, Black Python devs over the years. You know, some of these programs, you start off and you want to help people.

Speaker 5: Very quickly you need money to do that and you don't have a place to take the money. And so the PSF has a sponsoree program. We don't. We arguably should. But it's also one more thing to put on the backs of volunteers that we would like to be able to do. I think it makes sense to do, but some of you work for companies too that either you give money to the DSF, you could give money to the DSF. Um GitHub sponsors is the best like cheat code life hack to be able to give money to the DSF because that can just go through your normal bill. And honestly, sometime if your company, if you pitch this to your company and your company says No, I won't give to the Django Software Foundation for some reasons. Please tell us those reasons and work with us on that because we want to solve this answer this year too.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Not a not so hard question after all. Yeah. The next question is for Natalia. What's one thing the community could start doing tomorrow that would make your work less invincible and more sustainable?

Speaker 4: That is a tough question. So uh what the community could do more for my work to be less invisible?

Speaker 1: Yeah

Speaker 4: Well acknowledgement for one for the floor.

Speaker 1: I mean we need to give you your flowers.

Speaker 4: Yeah, I know, I know, no, no, no. No, I don't mean it. Thank you. But I don't mean it like that. So uh I I don't wanna generalize, but I have seen some patterns. Some people come to contributing to the angle when they have like a Selfish need to put it to put in some word, not in the bad way, but it's something that they want, that they need. And I'm trying to push hard on that. And sometimes I will ask for that group peop that group of people a little bit of stepping back and evaluating how that solution or or that idea could benefit the the grand community or the project as a whole. Then

Speaker 4: all the things um and Sara Boy's uh presented this in the last thing okay in Europe is a little bit around A lot of people has this drive to try to contribute code to the angle, but really it is not that simple. It's not just putting a PR up there. There is a lot that comes with a PR which is around ensuring that it's consistent with the current code, it has it's properly documented, it's proper tested, it makes sense with the demo code because If you this is an analogy that I use a lot. If you think of the Angle Web Framework as a huge building, it has a lot of things that are already set in stone, a foundation, uh given amount. The heights that it can have, the depth that it can have, the amount of rooms, the amount of bathrooms, the amount of kitchens, let's say

Speaker 4: it can have It's not that you can just put a pool on top of the building because if you don't have the right structure, you cannot just put a pool, it will fall down. So all those things sometimes people when they want to their pool at the top of the of the building And we say we cannot do just do this without a proper structure, a proper um ways of ensuring that this this doesn't uh this this is not going to break. it's a little bit hard to har to have the conversation. So not only that, but also the other side. All these PRs need some form of review and meaningful feedback to the authors. And that's also something that we are struggling a lot with. I have mentioned this to a lot of people, and a lot of people from the community is trying to help with different initiatives.

Speaker 4: So I'm very appreciative of that. But well, yeah, those are one of the things.

Speaker 1: Oh, thank you. And we will try to make your work easier as a fellow, we as a community. So please let's not harass the fellows so much. Yeah, so the next question is to Dawn. You've had a front row seat from both the DSF, DEFNA being part of the Django community. community and now being part of the wider Python community. What does the Python community do different that we should steal sort of steal and try to implement in our communities?

Speaker 3: It's open source, so take away. Um So I I think there's a theme in most of the conversations that I've been having this week is really about funding our ecosystem. Um I We have a fantastic deputy director who is, you know, boots on the ground trying to find the funds. It's also so there's a there's a kind of a caveat as well, like I don't think we have it all solved. Our main driver is coming through PyCon are to get funds each year to sustain the Python Software Foundation. There's efforts and movements to diversify. Um, and we're I think we're doing a great job, and a lot of the seeds are planted.

Speaker 3: Um, but Really, I think there's an opportunity to um be more strategic on how and why Django is used in all of these ecosystems. We know, um, but funnel it up to the big guy. Use some of those um fancy words on glossy print paper um to articulate why we um have such a stronghold in the Python ecosystem and what we want next, not next for us, like being a more restful framework is um also something really interesting and that I want for us. But what is the context? What do we unlock by being able to be a more restful framework? Well maybe there's a performance increase.

Speaker 3: Maybe we all can have faster web and that can revolutionize the the industry and think big on what we can do and have uh you know really profound language through that because we we matter and we're deciding the direction. And there's deep pockets that don't understand the technicalities of it and we should explain it to them.

Speaker 1: Thank you. So the next question, hey Peter. So you're in a way in charge of this conference that we have every year because you're the president. And there's a lot of logistics and people managing as well and resource managing. What is something you'd wish that other organizers who are trying to pull something like this? that you would give them as advice when they're starting out just their first conference.

Speaker 2: Start small. Start with really committed people who you trust to have the bandwidth to deliver what they say they're gonna deliver because that is one of the fundamental things to actually getting this to work. Of course you need the money, you need the ticket sales, whatever, the sponsors. But all of it would fall apart if people didn't put the hours in to get the talks, put all the word out. get the the world to know what you're doing, to review the talks, to show up on the day, to introduce the speakers.

Speaker 2: uh all those things. So I think it's we're I I I came in and and inherited something that worked pretty well. Thanks, Jeff. and all the other organizers and prior board members. But somebody who's just starting out and wanting to start somebody, a community event in their area, I would suggest starting small. Maybe uh a Django Girls workshop would be a good place to start.

Speaker 1: Yeah, and now I have a layer of that question too. You mentioned that you also work with a lot of people and part of some of the things you inherited from previous leadership. But what would help the person actually organize like through the various committees or how do you people manage that to have this conference because managing people is difficult. How do you keep people accountable and how do you make sure that everything gets done when it's supposed to get done?

Speaker 2: Frequent check-ins. You know, we do bi-weekly meetings for this organizing committee for most of the season, and then we switch to weekly when we get a little closer. And uh showing up and paying very close attention to those meetings is a big part of what I see my job as, and then reacting uh when there's something that's not on track. But there's also also things that can slip through the cracks and so just being aware of where your milestones are and reaching out to your top-level organizers. In my case, it's the committee chairs. directly and checking on things, saying, you know, what's the problem? And, you know, I I think it's been very helpful a number of times to sit down with somebody just one-on-one and talk.

Speaker 2: Find out what's going on, why things aren't moving, what's going on in their life that's causing them problem and try and find resources to help them out or just better understand what their situation is

Speaker 1: Thank you. And the next question is actually for Dawn. From where you sit, what would a next generation relationship between the PSF and DSF? stuff look like if you had the power to make that happen?

Speaker 3: Yes. So for context, I am the outgoing chair, so I will I'll be real, there's like institutional w cachet that happens once you leave. You know you know the right people to post when when something's not getting done. So there's that, but I'm like I'm just a guy. Um so all of the things that we are able to do between our different organizations or different communities is through the power of like getting the massive amount of buy in and moving people forward in inches, not in miles. But thinking thinking about the miles ahead. Keep a keep ideas um f um kind of in our in our minds eye. And some of the ways that I think we could do that, I think specifically

Speaker 3: the PSF could um leverage uh the way that Django um And there's just a like a softness that comes with this community. I don't know how to describe it. It just feels like home. It feels like coming back to camp. And there's no, it's like alchemy And I love the Python community. There's definitely the uh come for the language, day for the community vibe there as well. Um, but I think that there is a just a tenacity of idea that is that is supersedes the kindness and the human first approach that I see in Django and it's absolutely because the b the leaders will continue to beat that drum over and over again and so the next group of people who come up and take the lead are able to beat that same drum confidently

Speaker 3: Um and say like spicy takes like don't be a butthead in in you know I use different language when I'm not on stage, but like don't be a jerk out in the hallways. Um So I think that's something that I I want to have in the Python community more at large with from Django. And I think there is a way that we can um make space for Django and these stuff different subgroups in Python specific spaces, um hallway tracks and events and things like that. So Come to PyCon. PyCon's happening in May and it's gonna be in Long Beach. Um, and there's absolutely room for you there. It's more of A similar audience, but you have some good stuff to bring. And so help change and continue to press the

Speaker 3: progress the culture of Python community.

Speaker 1: Thank you for that. Natalya. Hi. So you get to be part of Django releases. Right. So what is one thing that you're most proud of in all the releases that you've done so far

Speaker 4: Okay. Um so I'm part of uh releases because as a fellow you're also a par uh member of the releasers team. Um for a tiny bit of context, Diango has Um calendar based releases or the feature releases are scheduled every eight months. And between the fellows we take turns and who is the release manager of each feature release. Feature release means 5. 0, 5. 1, 5. 2. Now we have next week the feature freeze for 6. 0 release for which I am the release manager. So I will be doing the alpha release, beta release candidate, and final release. And we also have monthly releases that those are like bug

Speaker 4: fixed releases for the current stable version, and it might also include security releases. if there is a security issue to fix and release that fix, that will include the releases that in long-term maintenance period. So I can speak a little bit so based on that. I have sometimes have the hat of a monthly release and also sometimes the hat of a feature release. Right now, uh said I am the release manager of 620. So um I'm very proud of the features that are coming into that release, to which Frank spoke a little bit today in the DSF community sharing this morning. Um so I would like to focus on s something that I'm proud of, but it's sort of like a silly thing, but I'm I'm proud of

Speaker 4: because One of the things that is uh very difficult for the release is a fully manual process. We have to go through a lot of steps And uh for security releases those are way more involved in order to build the artifacts that get published at a given time when it's a security release and are available to everyone And with manual work sorry, with manual work, it comes in inevitable errors because we are human, we make errors. So every time that I make a release, I'm terrified to make mistakes which I have made and I will continue making, I'm sure. So the thing that I'm proud of is working on a checklist generator

Speaker 4: where it's it's silly because It just produces a markdown checklist, but it has every single thing that you need to do and the comments that you need to copy and paste. And we have iterated over that with Sarah and hopefully Jacob will help as well. And at least that gives me a little bit of peace of mind when doing the releases.

Speaker 1: So you mentioned the executive director and how the the position kind of fell through because of moving parts. What are some of the other things that the DSF has wrestled with behind the scenes that the community should probably know about, but we never got the chance to see?

Speaker 5: I think some of a uh I think whenever the steering council was changing kind of methodologies from and groups of people, um, it was very hands-off. Um I think there were more people who wanted to run, the community wanted uh people that were gonna be more progressive and the community wanted like decisions to be made. I think philosophies in the old council were we should never make decisions. I and I think there was a lot. For me, I was just getting on the board, but I saw the the board themselves really wrestle with it because the DSF board does not make decisions as far as the language goes. You know, we that's that's all handled by the community and the developers. And so that was pretty big. I think some of the you know the funding and how we deal with it too. You know, just trying to figure out like

Speaker 5: if a company comes to us and they want certain features, like what's the right way we can talk to them about sponsorship. Uh we don't sell features to get things in the Django. But we also, you know, it would be nice to have a little bit more money and support from companies. So I think we're trying to figure it out. I think the first 20 years Just kind of seeing that we started off as just, you know, people are very prideful that we can we can be a president or we can do these things and um you know we can help, but Uh sorry, I'm getting a little into the uh weeds about uh the initial years. I I think we're acknowledging more how much work it takes now and how much time it takes. And I think we kind of went from people who had uh big tech jobs, maybe um they were more like

Speaker 5: the the incomes have changed for what they were could they could afford to do with their time. Now we have more members with families. We're trying to scale it down to be more realistic. And a lot of that's just kind of help and just kind of realizing how much time it takes to be, to be on a board.

Speaker 1: Um Rachel, what's the most surprising insight you've gained about fostering innovation among beginners that no textbook could teach you based on Django Girls and

Speaker 6: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that holds people back um when they're entering new spaces, and that could be Django Girls events, as well as Djangonaut Space, your first contribution in open source. It's not the lack of skills or the lack of knowledge. You can gain that, but it's the it's the fear of looking foolish. It's very humbling to do things in public. um to do new things and it kind of goes back to creating that space where people feel comfortable to look like a fool, you know. I mean we don't say they are, but you know what I mean. So you can ask stupid questions You can't ask silly questions. And I think the biggest thing you can do to make people feel comfortable is to tell them your own struggles. It's something we talk a lot about in Django Girls events, leaders um can share things that they don't know

Speaker 6: Um for me personally when I was first learning I had a mentor be like, I don't know, let's Google it. And I was like, oh, okay, cool. Like you don't have to know everything. You just have to be able to figure it out and trust yourself. So I think for For communities and for teaching and mentorship in these spaces, I think that can go a long way in making people feel empowered to find their own answers and to try new things.

Speaker 1: Mm, nice. And Tim, you mentioned that there are a lot of changes that this steering console is doing differently from previous consoles. And what How many changes should we expect, or what other aspects of changes do you think that are going to come up and are going to affect the Django ecosystem as a whole?

Speaker 7: So how many changes the steering council is gonna make?

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 7: We have three. That's what we're going. I'm going for three. Um so we we've made good progress on two of them. One is the new features process and While we it's not perfect, we don't know great answers for every single stage and every single gate. Um we are one of our priorities with that was to get the new features out of the fellows purview because it was becoming distracting. And so we've done that. So that that that's a win for the steering council. Not quite there yet for the whole community maybe, but that's also just something we're going to have to iterate on together. Uh the other part was the third-party ecosystem. And so we have the community page. We're trying to get that community page into the search.

Speaker 7: And then the last thing is DEP 10. We we we have to we suspended those rules back in February and just kind of said like we are going to act as a steering council as a group. um with the understanding that we were gonna go back and refactor that. So that is what's up next. And yeah, if we can get all three of those things done in our term. Get the next steering council in a good spot. Um to me that's a major win. Uh I will be very happy with that.

Speaker 3: Can you explain what Deb Ten is, you said?

Speaker 7: Uh it's the governance rules that define like yeah how we get code out. like defines the releasers, the mergers, steering council, security team's not in there yet. Um yeah, stuff like that.

Speaker 1: Yeah. So if I could give you all a free pass, obviously you need to comply with the COC guidelines. What hot take do you have? It can be as spicy or as junk or whatever you want it to be. Those goes.

Speaker 5: I think I jumped a gun on the um you know deployment story, which is truly terrible. We can make it a lot better. Um I again I want to hit the Django needs a good rest story. That doesn't mean whether that means bringing something in which we can argue about or disagree with. Um one thing that really was eye revealing to me, and Zaggs and I have talked about it like for 24 hours. Uh but it's really wild. If you look at the download stats of how many people download Django, pip install Django, pip install Django Rust Framework, 52% of people install Django via Django Rust Framework. I don't know that we need to like absorb it, but we need to acknowledge after 20 years, when you hit the docks, how do I do rest? Whether that's pointing outside the framework, whether that's bringing something in, whether that's just highlighting parts of Django

Speaker 5: with maybe like a good how-to. I know there's a section where we talk about how to like how to work with CSV files, which is Really handy if you're me and do a lot of data imports, but like that rest story is really important. And if we're not gonna have and and you know there's been some good work Uh Tim's been doing some good work too to try to like get some of the search to go into other parts of the website. But I think we really need to look at that and see like how can we uh solve this problem because it's really big. And I think that's why you've seen Fast API come out of nowhere and even get bigger than f in Flask just in the last couple years.

Speaker 7: I'm gonna say go ahead. Uh I think mm we need to lean into the rest of the community, like Bringing third-party packages into our documentation. Like I I personally think we should have links to community third-party packages that are popular that have been around for a while. We are 20 years old. Our strength is the amount of functionality that is out there that you can pip install, add to your installed apps. It's hard to compete with that. And there's documentation out there, there 's answers on Stack Overflow, there's reasons AI is good at answering those things. So let's lean into that, add more to the documentation so when people evaluate Django as a whole. They're evaluating the actual whole and not just Django what's

Speaker 7: under the fellow's purview. And then it gets a little bit more interesting of what is the real trade-off between Django, Fast API, or Phoenix or what else is out there.

Speaker 6: Um pay people to contribute.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 6: I already said that. We need we need people that, you know, have families that are coming from, you know. financially precarious situations. We we want to know how to help lift them and I think they're a great target. Um but we need to financially support them, emotionally support them. Um communities and and embrace the messy middle. Like we have people um in that do Django Girls and then we kind of like leave them good luck, you know? And then we see them a few years later at Django Not Space for example Um and what's that in-between space? Uh we can't fill all the gaps. I can't fill all the gaps, I guess that's what I mean, because we have Django Girls in January space, but what happens in between? Um so I'd love to see some more support there as well, trying to help people get into tech.

Speaker 3: I could do one. Um bring junior engineer positions back. Um it uh I think it's something that's plaguing the entire industry. Uh we can talk about how AI is also kind of in uh part of the problem or part of the solution. I I mean we could It's where we are right now and having a really pragmatic approach to it is is important. And also shout out to Wagtail and Torchbox. I'm I didn't mention before, but I'm on on the core team of uh Wagtail CMS Um and Torchbox has consistently done and I I'd love to see investments continue to go in it. It's very hard. So if it goes away and comes back, it is not for not trying.

Speaker 3: Um, but there is a an apprentice program that they did. And so if people are interested or have the ability to support people in either freelance. um which has a little bit more flexibility or in your companies leaning on whatever powers that be for junior engineers it's really important for our ecosystem and just to have a human-first approach to software

Speaker 6: And I would like to add to that because and if you don't know where to go to find these people who are looking, talk to me in Django Not Space. We had Django CMS had a um somebody come out of our program and that they liked them and they were an intern for them, paid internship. We can we have the infrastructure, we have the people to do that. So if you're looking to support, maybe um you know, more junior folks or people who are um trying to get in more to open source and pay them like we we have we know people. And

Speaker 2: uh Two Rock has some junior people on the team. So if you're a company and you're just not sure how to do it, reach out to me. My how take is we we need to do a better job of making people aware that this conference exists. There's always so many people who just tell me, oh, I didn't even know that happened. And I'd love to hear suggestions for how to do that Uh Natalia says I can't put our conference date and ticket link in the readme in the repo.

Speaker 4: My hot take will be um so I have said that the community is great and I truly believe that, but I would like to see a little bit more accountability when it comes to committing with something, whatever that is that is. IPR, um membership in a wonker group, um I'm going to do this or whatever. Try to be realistic with what you're committing to, but also be please accountable. Because When you are not, you have set a level of expectations that um when when unfulfilled generate burden to other people. Being accountable could even be saying I can't sorry, I know that I committed to this, I cannot further

Speaker 4: policy this and that's okay. But just not doing anything around something that you have committed to, I think that has bad consequences and put the burdens on other on other people and that's not good.

Speaker 1: Awesome. So that's it for the panel. But I'd like to mention that all these people represent the groups that also need help in some way or form. They accept donations. They also accept you as a resource because you're part of the community and you're also open source leaders.

Speaker 8: Okay, we're back.

Speaker 7: Yeah. Um

Speaker 8: we do have time for some questions, so I'd like to open up to the floor. Hi. Thanks.

Speaker 1: This was very interesting. Um I heard echoed both on the panel here and in in talking to some first time attendees. I use Django for a while and I didn't even know this community existed. Do we have any idea like what percentage of people who use Django don't have a clue? Do we have any idea how we might tap into that set of people?

Speaker 2: I I don't have a measurement for that. I wish I did. That would be awesome. If anybody's got ideas on figuring that out I'd love to hear it, but it it is, it's a tiny fraction if you look at the amount of downloads Django gets versus the number of people in this room.

Speaker 1: I have somewhat an answer to that. The website kind of has like local communities that you could easily get involved to. And there are some that are up and coming so you could easily find a group that's maybe close to you city-wise or countrywise that you could get involved with. But I think we do need to do a good job about publicizing that Yeah.

Speaker 6: I think that one thing um Don was talking about we need to get out into the other bigger communities too. And show them how awesome we are. Because I'm sure there's a lot of people at PyCon, for example, that probably use Django, but they don't maybe know about this or yeah. So I think that we need to go there and represent. Um yeah, my question is kind of just out of curiosity, especially for

Speaker 8: the people on the board and kind of on the other side of the community thing, like we talked about like more enterprise support, larger companies, and I feel like Been around this community long enough to they cure the sort of anecdotal like uh oh l even earlier today, like oh Instagram uses Django and Pinterest and all these other like big companies and like I never see them here. Um and those like is the board is it Does the board try to reach out to those larger companies? Is it like kind of a capacity issue or is it do they just not want to come? Don't do they not like us?

Speaker 5: I think historically there's been a a rub there from like uh one of the founders had made a bunch of money in the billions and said, you know, made something that kind of kind of said you get this for free when you use open source software. And so there may be particularly some animosity there. One point I was trying to make, maybe I didn't do the best job of, is That is a job and that is a skill that people get paid. Salespeople sometimes are really good at it, can make a lot of money because Because they're really good at that. We live off of Goodwill. The PSFs has finally had like their first, I think, deputy director, but they've only had a few people who are even like versed at being able to talk to big donors. You know, right now that you know if I'm gonna critique what we have on the website, we have a sponsorship section

Speaker 5: and it has a lot of goodwill. When we were on the Python, I was on the Python Software Foundation, we had that too, and we kind of pushed a like let's put PyPI on Because we could go to the NVIDIA's the world, we could go to Amazon's the world, we can say you're downloading a bunch, you're getting petabytes of data downloaded your clients. I don't know what that is for Django. So when I say when, you know, what we need is both to get money from your companies, but we really need that feedback of like, what is it that we get out of Django that we can put on the sponsorship pages? And I think there's somebody recently mentioned the pub test. Like I can't I can't show this to my boss and it passed the pub test. And I want to be very open that that's a that's a critical thing we need to figure out. Because there is goodwill and that's we've made it twenty years with that.

Speaker 5: But we really need to figure out like is that a sponsored fellow Is that talking about like maybe it's some of the AI features like vector fields and different things that we can look into? These are all forum suggestions, by the way. I'm not just making this up or sounding smart. Like I'm summarizing. But like kind of like Claude or you know an LLM. But so there's that too, just to see Drew shake his head. Um we do need that help, but we don't just need the positive feedback. We need to know so we can kind of do a better job with it. But honestly, it's a job. And I would love to be able to figure out like who can we get to help with this? Or maybe that becomes the position after an executive director.

Speaker 8: All right, thanks guys. That's all the time we have for questions, but um the panel is still around, so feel free to come up and ask them any other questions. Another round.