Inside Djangonaut Space: The Ultimate Mentorship for Django Devs with Lilian Tran

Speaker 1: Hello, we're at JingleCon US. It's day three. We're in Chicago And we are joined by a really amazing guest called Lillian from Jinganaut Space. Lilian, would you like to introduce yourself?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so um I'm Lillian and I got involved with Django Knot Space first as a mentee. We were in the same session together.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And then I continue getting involved as the captain. And then I also did the session organizer and so I've been really involved. Um and the next coming session I'll be the navigator.

Speaker 1: Wow, that's exciting. You've really gone through the different levels there are. Would you give us more details on the different levels there are.

Speaker 2: Yeah so there are many different roles. So there's um the Jango nuts, those are the mentees. There's the captains, those their mentors that are more focused on like one on one type of meetings with the Jango nauts and then there's navigators. They focus on the team level so they guide the projects and they help the team with their any bugs that they encounter. And then there's also session organizers and those are kind of the people who make sure that the sessions run smoothly. They make sure the sessions happen.

Speaker 1: Awesome. And now that you kind of like gone through the different levels or rules. What's your favorite? Oh

Speaker 2: that's a hard one. Um I think Session Organizer was um really interesting to me because I've always been an engineer but I never really knew how to think on like a team level and so this kind of gave me the opportunity to work on overseeing the different teams. So I thought that was really interesting and also putting on events and Just m making things happen.

Speaker 1: Yeah, that sounds exciting. And you mentioned now you're doing you're going to be a navigator in the next session, right? Um are there projects that you were buying to navigate for?

Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll be navigating the Django Core project.

Speaker 1: Wow. And I also saw that you did a couple of it was it live streams of like people reviewing PRs and actually working on an issue. Can you tell us a little bit more about that?

Speaker 2: Yeah so that was with space reviewers. Yeah. And that was started by Tim Schilling and Raffaella.

Speaker 1: Yeah.

Speaker 2: And so we We tried to put together um a live stream where we walk through how we think and how we review PRs so that other people could see what that process is like and they could see us make mistakes too. and they could have an idea of how they can get into PR reviews.

Speaker 1: Wow. How many PR reviews have you done for Django so far?

Speaker 2: I have not counted, but I think I have done maybe around five or so.

Speaker 1: That's huge. Congratulations to that. I mean looking at somebody else's work and trying to also make sure that they're hitting the right point and that they're not overdoing or underdoing is really important and I like the fact that you also mentioned at first that you were doing engineering first and then you started getting into the community and now you're a s uh session organizer. Will you tell us a little m bit more of why exactly you keep doing or keep getting involved with Jingon Art Space?

Speaker 2: Um, I think it's kind of a calling for me. I just get keep getting pulled in and I feel like I benefited from the program and I want to give back by helping it shape what it wants to become because I've been through the process and I've experienced many different sides and I think Um I'd like to make use of that experience.

Speaker 1: Yeah, totally unconcerned.

Speaker 2: I think there's like a lot of opportunities to take this very far.

Speaker 1: Wow, I would love to see it. We will still be following to see how far Jingon Art space goes. And one last question is if you wanted to let the community know what kind of help jingle not space needs, would you be open to telling us how we could help or how we could make it easier for other sessions and for the program to have more sessions maybe because a lot of people want to be jingle knots.

Speaker 2: Yes definitely um so In terms of having more contributors get involved, we are looking for more navigators always. And that would help us scale the teams because we're kind of limited by the navigators. And on top of that, we're also looking for funding. So if we could get funded, we would be able to continue operating.

Speaker 1: Awesome. Thank you so much Lillian for joining us. for this particular interview and telling us a lot more about Jingo Not Space. We are better for it. And we also thank you for continuously pouring in into the program to make sure that Jingo is sustainable at the end of the day. the day. So that was Lillian ladies and gentlemen and if you'd like to donate all these programs, Django Software Foundation, Django Events Foundation North America, Black Python Dance, Jingonut Space, and Jungle Girls are all looking for resources in form of whether mentorship or in form of money. They all accept donations. Donate. Thank you, Lillian.

Speaker 2: Thank you, Velda.