PSF Board: A Year in Review
As we welcome new members to the PSF Board, this time of the year reminds me that it has already been a year since I joined the board. I am still grateful for the support and trust from the Community.
This reminded me to share an update on the status of some of the initiatives I promised to work towards, and any other activities I involved myself with on the board.
This is also to announce that due to my intense research commitments, in the next few months, I will take a brief leave from most of my board duties. I will only attend the strategy meeting, and pycon committee meetings during this time. This brief leave will last until Winter (January 2023).
Moving on, this has been an interesting and unique time to be on the board, having had to go through a change of executive director, the pandemic and other life things. In this blog, I will give an update on some key initiatives, categorized as:
- Officer work
- Key commitments in my nomination statement
- Committee work
- General Board
Office Work
Being a new board member, its common to watch from a far initially as you ease into role. In my first meeting, I volunteered as vice chair of the PSF, working along with Marlene which was a good way to ease in as I learn to adjust with different aspects on the board. I look forward to continue serving if I am voted for any officer role this year.
Key commitments in my nomination statement
When I ran last year, I detailed my passions and desires for joining the board in this nomination statement. I am glad to say, I still feel the same zeal for the three areas in this statement.
I have been clear from my on-boarding with Ewa, our former executive director, that if the PSF strategy cannot help in these areas, then I feel there is nothing for me to do on the board. Lucky enough in all discussions with even the new executive director, there has been positive reception for all three areas. These areas include research, the ambassador program and education, which I detail in the sequel.
The Ambassador Program
During my keynote at EuroPython last year I talked about Python, the community and my vision for the board. It turns out several people in the community had similar views on this program and reached out.
I have discussed with both the previous and new executive director, regarding improving execution, systems and accountability for this program. In both engagements but also board discussions, we resolved that we can finally come to a resolution directed by our strategy meeting this Fall.
Among the things we agreed on are that this program:
- Should be documented well for transparency
- Should also have a clear nomination and recruitment path
- Since it has had impact, it still makes sense to be run as a separate program
- Should have a work group to avoid previous hiccups
There are many things not in my control even in pushing this, because the PSF board and staff need to be on board for this to be possible. I hope I can get the support we need for these changes.
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I for one think, if we don't see any strides in this coming year, I will stop pushing for it, since I have talked about these same issues since 2018 (before I even thought of being on the board) and getting a bit wary, but I am very hopeful.
Research
To foster R and D for Python, we need to actively engage the researchers in our community. On this, from the two meetings we have had with Deb, the new executive director, I have started to send out requests to different academic researchers.
Together this year, I will propose a new Pycon US workshop/summit, where we will hopefully publish selected research in formal journals and proceedings like ACM, IEEE etc.
I encourage any academic folks that can inform us on any things or strides to take to reach out if they want to help.
Education
We also discussed with Deb some areas to avail useful resources to the community to foster education efforts, but I will not actively push this agenda this year, rest assured next year, its still on my radar.
Committee Work
I signed up for two committees this year, i.e., the executive director (ED) search committee and the Pycon committee.
I resigned from the ED search committee but nevertheless continued to review, and attend interviews for all the potential ED candidates we had. I am happy to work with our new ED and she is already doing well.
I continued to attend and engage in the Pycon committee and will continue in the next year, even in the time when I will take a semi-leave until winter.
General Board Work
For an overview of my other activities on the board, feel free to review the following open access reports:
https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2021-08-24/#joannah-nanjekye
https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2021-10-26/#joannah-nanjekye
https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2022-01-25/#joannah-nanjekye
https://www.python.org/psf/records/board/minutes/2022-02-24/#joannah-nanjekye
Conclusion
I look forward to effective board engagements this year. I still hope and pray that board continues to foster an environment for all board members to air and present community views for the good of our community.
May the force be with all of us!
As always for any feedback on anything in this blog post shoot me an email at jnanjekye@python.org
