At this year’s EuroPython Society General Assembly (GA), on September 20th, we will vote in a new board of the EuroPython Society for the term 2020/2021.
List of Board Candidates
The EPS bylaws require one chair, one vice chair and 2 - 7 board members. The following candidates have stated their willingness to work on the EPS board. We are presenting them here (in alphabetical order by surname).
We will be updating this list in the coming days. Please send in any nominations or self-nominations until 2020-08-29 to board@europython.eu. The final update will happen on 2020-08-30.
Please note that our bylaws do not restrict nominations to people on this list. It is even possible to self-nominate or nominate other candidates at the GA itself. However, in the interest of giving members a better chance to review the candidate list, we’d like to encourage all nominations to be made before the GA.
Prof. Martin Christen
Teaching Python / using Python for research projects
Martin Christen is a professor of Geoinformatics and Computer Graphics at the Institute of Geomatics at the University of Applied Sciences Northwestern Switzerland (FHNW). His main research interests are geospatial Virtual- and Augmented Reality, 3D geoinformation, and interactive 3D maps.
Martin is very active in the Python community. He teaches various Python-related courses and uses Python in most research projects. He organizes the PyBasel meetup - the local Python User Group Northwestern Switzerland. He also organizes the yearly GeoPython conference. He is also a board member of the Python Software Verband e.V.
I would be glad to help with EuroPython, to be part of a great team that makes the next edition of EuroPython even better, wherever it will be hosted (even online).
Nicolás Demarchi
Pythonista / Software Engineer
Nicolás is a self-taught software engineer working professionally for more than 15 years. After participating on some Linux User Groups and the Mozilla community, Nicolás joined the Python community around 2012, fell in love with it and never left. He is a founder and has been a board member of the Python Argentina NGO since 2016. In the PyAr community, as an organizer, he participated several events and conferences as organizer and/or speaker, ranging from Python Days in various cities, PyCamp and the Python Argentina national conference, being a core organizer in the 2018 one in Buenos Aires (an open and free conference with ~1500 attendees). Since 2014 Nicolás has been maintaining the Python Argentina infrastructure that supports the mailing list, webpages, etc. He was (still helping a bit) the host of the Buenos Aires Python Meetup. In June 2019, Nicolás moved to Amsterdam and he is currently living and working there. A few months after the move, he joined the organization of the Python Amsterdam meetup and he is working with a small team to build the local community: py.amsterdam. He also joined the https://pycamp.es/ team trying to replicate the Pycamp Argentina experience in Europe. In 2020 he volunteered in the Media Workgroup of Europython 2020 online as a core organizer.
I
would like to join the EPS board members because I think Europython is
the event connecting all european communities and therefore the right
place to invest my time. In addition, I believe I can learn a lot as a volunteer and my experience and contacts in Latin America can also result in fruitful exchanges with the EPS.
Raquel Dou
Linguist / Python enthusiast
Raquel befriended Python in 2013, during her MSc in Evolution of Language and Cognition, where she used Python to model a simple communication system’s evolution over time. She runs a business providing language services and often uses Python to make her work and life easier and more fun.
She was an onsite volunteer in 2018 when EuroPython took place at her doorstep (Edinburgh), and has since been helping with preparations for the 2019 conference in the support and sponsor workgroups. In 2020, she served on the board and had the honour of working with a cracking team in the media workgroup bringing EuroPython 2020 online. Whatever uncertainty is ahead in 2021, she trusts our amazing team will bring us to a good and exciting place, and would love to be part of the exhilarating journey again.
Anders Hammarquist
Pythonista / Consultant / Software architect
Anders is running his own Python consultancy business, AB Struse, since 2019 and is currently mostly involved with using Python in industrial automation. He has been using Python since 1995, and fosters its use in at least four companies.
He helped organize EuroPython 2004 and 2005, and has attended and given talks at several EuroPythons since then. He has handled the Swedish financials of the EuroPython Society since 2016 and has served as board member since 2017.
Cheukting Ho
Pythonista / Developer Advocate / Data Scientist
After spending 5 years researching theoretical physics at Hong Kong
University of Science and Technology, Cheuk has transferred her
analytical and logical skills in natural science and built a career in
data science. Cheuk has been a Data Scientist in one of the biggest
worldwide wholesalers in the travel business; an AWS partnered
consultancy which delivers machine learning model; a startup aiming to
revolutionise revenue management with data science and; a global bank
using machine learning to investigating financial crime. Now Cheuk is
working in a team of developers building a revolutionary graph database.
Cheuk
constantly contributes to the community by giving AI and deep learning
workshops and organize sprints for open source projects, at the same
time contribute to open source projects including Pandas, Keras,
Scikit-learn, Dateutil and maintaining open-source libraries. Cheuk has
also been a guest speaker at Universities and various conferences.
Believing in gender equality, Cheuk is currently a co-organizer of AI
Club for Gender Minorities to support Tech Diversity and Inclusion. On
top of speaking at conferences, Cheuk has joined the organizing team of
EuroPython as a member of the programming workgroup since 2019 and was
hosting the lightning talk in the same year.
Learning from the experience of EuroPython 2020 which is an online
edition, using the internet for participation and getting involved
becomes an option. With this in mind, Cheuk would like to be part of the
EPS board to make Python communities to be more connected, more diverse
and inclusive. She would like to make EuroPython more accessible to
Python lovers across the continent or even across the globe. She would
also like to be an ambassador to engage conversations with various
Python communities around the world.
Marc-André Lemburg
Pythonista / CEO / Consultant / Interim CTO
Marc-Andre is the CEO and founder of eGenix.com, a Python-focused project and consulting company based in Germany. He has a degree in mathematics from the University of Düsseldorf. His work with and for Python started in 1994, in 1997 he became Python Core Developer and later designed, implemented and maintained the Unicode support in Python. Marc-Andre is a founding member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and has served on the PSF Board several times.
In 2002, Marc-Andre was on the executive committee to run the first EuroPython conference in Charleroi, Belgium. He was elected as board member of the EuroPython Society (EPS) in 2012 and enjoyed the last few years working with the EPS board members on developing the distributed EuroPython workgroup structure, while maintaining the EuroPython spirit and fun aspects of the conference.
For the EuroPython 2017 - 2020 editions, Marc-Andre was chair of the EuroPython Society and ran lots of activities around the conference organization, e.g. managing the contracts and budget, helping with sponsors, the website and conference app, writing blog posts and many other things that were needed to make EuroPython happen.
Going forward, he would like to focus on having the EPS provide more help for other organizers of events and conferences in Europe, not only financially via the grants program, but also by helping with our acquired knowledge and experience in running community events. In addition, of course, to running the annual EuroPython conference and starting experiments with additional smaller events.
Jason C. McDonald
Author, Software Developer, Python enthusiast
Jason C. McDonald has been coding and writing about software development since 2010, first picking up the Python language in 2012. He’s the founder of MousePaw Media, an open source organization that trains software development interns through a year-long remote program designed to equip them for a successful career. He has developed desktop applications, games, and libraries using the Python and C++ programming languages.
Jason is the author of the forthcoming “Dead Simple Python” book from No Starch Press, which is based on his popular article series on DEV, explaining the finer points of Python for newcomers to the language. He is an active member of the Python community via Freenode IRC, where he enjoys answering questions and debating the finer points of Pythonic practice. He was the first tag moderator for the Python tag on DEV, where he continues to regularly advise on moderation policies as one of the community moderators, to foster the safe and healthy community DEV has come to be known for. He’s an outspoken advocate for diversity, inclusion, and mutual understanding through communication.
Jason first joined EuroPython 2020 as a volunteer to help with the transition to an online format, and fell in love with the conference and its diverse and distributed community.
Francesco Pierfederici
Pythonista / Director of Engineering / Python Trainer / Python Author / Beer Brewer / Astronomer
The year 2000 was supposed to be the distant future for Francesco’s generation. We were supposed to be driving flying cars, being able to golf on the ocean floor, wear spandex suites and vacation on Mars.
While nothing of that sort came to be, something incredible happened that year nevertheless: Francesco stumbled upon an amazing language called Python and was immediately enthralled by its elegance and speed of development. He soon threw away C, Java and (gasp!) Perl and has not looked back since.
While in the US, together with amazing folks like Perry Greenfield, he spearheaded the Python revolution in astronomy. He is the author of the Python pipeline frameworks used on the NASA HST, JWST and HLA missions. Back in Europe, he introduced Python in the core business of one of the largest and most conservative companies in the world. He ran Python on the top 10 most powerful computers processing weather simulations. He is currently serving as Director of Engineering at IRAM (https://www.iram-institute.org), driving one of the largest radio telescopes in the world with (you guessed it) Python. I his free time, he is trying to optimise his beer brewing with a host of sensors and micro controllers running MicroPython.
Francesco has a degree in astronomy, has been programming since BASIC was cool and lives in southern Spain with his wife and two cats. Francesco is currently organising the 2020 edition of ADASS (https://adass2020.es), the premier conference on astronomical software development. He has been volunteering at EuroPython since the conference in Rimini in 2017 and has helped with the ep2019 website and its port to Python 3.
Why
serve on the EPS board? Francesco loves the EuroPython conference and
its volunteers, organisers and attendees. He would love the opportunity
to give back to this community and to the Python community in general. A
community that has given him so much.
Silvia Uberti
Sysadmin / IT Consultant
She is a Sysadmin with a degree in Network Security, really passionate about technology, traveling and her piano.
She’s an advocate for women in STEM disciplines and supports inclusiveness of underrepresented people in tech communities.
She fell in love with Python and its warm community during PyCon Italia in 2014 and became a member of EuroPython Sponsor Workgroup in 2017.
She enjoys a lot working in it and wants to help more!
Stéphane Wirtel
Pythonista / CEO / Software Architect / Consultant / Coach
Stéphane is the CEO and founder of mgx.io, a Python-focused consulting company based in Belgium since 2017. He has started to use Python in 2001 with the Aragne company in Belgium and was a helper for the two first EuroPython in Charleroi (his hometown).
Formerly core dev of the Odoo software, Stéphane is a fellow member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) since 2013 and works with the marketing and fellowship teams of the PSF.
He has also received a Community Service Award from the PSF during PyCon 2017 for the creation of PythonFOSDEM and contributions to the Python Ecosystem in Belgium.
In July 2014, Stéphane became a member of the EuroPython Society and started to contribute to the web site and some other topics of EuroPython, he was also the financial auditor of EuroPython Society for EuroPython 2017/2018/2019.
He gave a lot of Python talks at EuroPython, PyCon France, UK, PyCon Ireland, Canada, Italy, Germany, Ukraine, and Slovakia.
He became a Python Core Developer in 2019 and Board Member of EuroPython Society for EuroPython 2020 in Dublin, where he worked in the Program WG, Communication WG, Sponsors WG, and Web WG.
In 2020, he became a Director of Python Ireland where he works on the web site and the several components of the Python Ireland infra.
For the future, I would like to help the organizers of the European PyCons with the EuroPython Society and continue EuroPython 2021 in Dublin and the next EuroPythons in Europe.
What does the EPS Board do ?
The EPS board runs the day-to-day business of the EuroPython Society, including running the EuroPython conference events. It is allowed to enter contracts for the society and handle any issues that have not been otherwise regulated in the bylaws or by the General Assembly. Most business is handled on the board’s Telegram group or by email on the board mailing list. Board meetings are usually run as conference calls.
It is important to note that the EPS board is an active board, i.e. the board members are expected to put in a significant amount of time and effort towards the goals of the EPS and for running the EuroPython conference. This usually means 200+ hours work over a period of one year, with most of this being needed in the last six months before the conference. Many board members put in even more work to make sure that the EuroPython conferences become a success.
Board members are generally expected to take on leadership roles within the EuroPython Workgroups in order to facilitate good communication and quick decision making. They should be passionate about EuroPython, the Python community and working in a team of volunteers.
Thanks,
–
EuroPython Society