We are having three EuroPython Society (EPS) sessions today at EuroPython 2014. They are all held in room B09.

• Presenting the EPS at 16:00 CEST

• EPS General Assembly at 16:30 CEST

• New work group approach for EuroPython 2015. at 17:00 CEST

All EuroPython attendees are invited to join in to these sessions and to become EuroPython Society members.

If you would like to support the EuroPython Society and want to sign up for membership, please visit our membership application form.

Membership is free and we’d like to get as many EuroPython attendees signed up as members as possible, because the EuroPython conference series is all about its attendees.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

At this year’s General Assembly we will vote in a new board of the EuroPython Society.

List of Board Candidates

The EPS bylaws require one chair and 2 - 6 board members. The following members from the current board have stated their willingness to continue working on the board. We are presenting them here (in alphabetical order).

Jacob Hallén

Facilitator

Jacob is a Python veteran with 15 years of Python programming. He also is PSF member, member of the PyPy team and a former EuroPython organiser. He uses Python for multiple non-profit projects as well as for development of commercial applications.

At Open End, Python is used for a collaborative task manager. At Sotospeak, Python serves in the backend of an application providing language courses on the mobile phone.

When not working with Python, Jacob enjoys kayaking.

Marc-André Lemburg

Pythonista / CEO / Coach / Consultant

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 Winter 1993/1994. He became Python Core Developer in 1997. In 1999, he designed and implemented the Unicode support in Python and continued to maintain the Python Unicode implementation for more than a decade. Marc-Andre is a founding member of the Python Software Foundation (PSF) and has served on the PSF Board several times. He is the author of the well-known Python “mx” Extensions, e.g. mxTextTools, mxDateTime and mxODBC, which are now distributed and maintained through eGenix.com.

In 2002, Marc-Andre was on the executive committee to run the first EuroPython conference in Charleroi, Belgium. He also co-organized the second EuroPython 2003 conference. Since then, he has attended every single EuroPython conference and continued being involved in the workings of the conference organization.

In 2012, he was elected as board member of the EuroPython Society (EPS) which organizes the EuroPython conference series. He enjoyed the last two years working with the EPS board members on steering the EuroPython conference to new organizational structures and believes that the new model will make it possible to sustain the continued growth while maintaining the EuroPython spirit and fun aspect of the conference.

Anthon van der Neut            

Consultant / Software Engineering Manager

He has been working with Python on a professional basis since 1998, after having been introduced to the language a few years earlier while working in Amsterdam. Since 2007 he maintains the C implementation of OrderedDict he developed, used by those pythonistas for whom a Pure Python implementation is not fast enough. He has spoken at and visited PyCon and visited several EuroPythons after moving back to Europe.

He has managed software development in companies across 3 continents, primarily oriented at 3D resp. 2D computer graphics and media management software. This included managing the Commotion development team, then used at ILM for rotoscoping Star Wars episodes I-III.

He was quaestor on the board of the student society Augustinus while studying Mathematics, Japanese and Linguistics in Leiden. He was founding chairman of the Dutch 68000 user group (back in 1984 when that processor was state-of-the-art) and published about his work on how to hook up a floating point coprocessor in his Atari ST, as well as on how to adapt the libraries of Modula-2 to use it.

More recently he has managed the website and member administration of his local karate-club.

When not working on Python, but still at the computer, he can be found answering questions on the Unix & Linux resp. Ebooks StackExchange sites, or refreshing his math skills at Khan Academy where he is one of the few to hold the coveted Tesla badge.

When detached from his keyboard, he can be found cooking for his teenage daughter or practising karate.

He joined the EPS as he likes to work with like minded people in a multicultural environment promoting his favourite programming language.

Fabio Pliger

Software Engineer / Trainer / Consultant

Fabio currently works as a software engineer, trainer and consultant. He has a degree in Computer Science from the University of Verona, Italy. Has started working with Python on a professional basis since 2003 building different kind of tools and projects mainly for pharmaceutical companies. In 2007, he co-founded his own software and consulting company focused at the pharmaceutical industry market, that he left in 2013.

He has been the chairman of the board of the EuroPython Society since 2012 trying to help the Society maintain the series of successful conference, improve it’s interaction with the community, scale as numbers grow and keep the Conference spirit of fun, openness and respect that is a deep trait of the EuroPython conference. He has been a co-organizer of the EuroPython Conference series for the 2011, 2012 and 2013 editions in Florence.

In 2007, he co-founded the Python Italia Association, a non-profit organization devoted to advance open source technology related to the Python programming language in Italy. As result of this he has been a co-organizer of the PyCon Italia conference in 2007, 2008, 2009, 2010 and 2014.

He joined the EPS because he loves the social interaction, community and to help promote his favorite programming language.

Outside the Python community Fabio loves to spend time with his family, friends, cooking and traveling.

Vicky Twomey-Lee

Software Engineer / Tech event Organiser

She currently organises Python Ireland monthly events as well as being on its committee. She was the chair of PyCon Ireland from 2010 to 2013.

She is now involved in diversity initiatives in Python and PyCon Ireland, founded PyLadies Dublin which launched in October 2013 during PyCon Ireland, and is currently organiser of its monthly meetups. Vicky has been a member of PSF since 2012.

She joined EPS as board member to learn about and help local organisers to run EuroPython.

Outside of Python community, she organises female-friendly adult workshops to encourage diversity in the tech area via Coding Grace which she co-founded with other developers based in Dublin, Ireland. She also co-founded and co-organise community game jams called Global GameCraft bringing game enthusiasts, hobbyists, developers as well as those in the games industry (big and small) to make games in one day, play each others games at the end of it and make new connections.

Want to run as candidate ?

More candidates from the EPS membership are welcome. Please write to board@europython-society.org to get your name added to the list of candidates. We will keep this posting updated with all new candidates.

What does the EPS Board do ?

The EPS board runs the day-to-day business of the EuroPython Society. 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 by email on the board mailing list, board meetings are usually run as phone conference calls.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

The EuroPython Society is pleased to announce that we have received the CTM registration for our “EuroPython” word mark in Europe.

Please see the EU Office for Harmonization in the Internal Market (OHIM) trademark page for details:

    https://oami.europa.eu/eSearch/#details/trademarks/012636635

The EuroPython Society has owned the trademark since its inception in 2004 on a first use basis, but we believe that by registering the word mark, we are helping to protect the IP rights for the growing numbers of assets of the Python community.

Since owning a trademark also requires actively protecting it in order not to lose the rights to the mark, we have set up a trademark policy for the mark:

    http://www.europython-society.org/trademarks

If you have questions regarding the trademark or its use, please write to board@europython-society.org.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

We are pleased to welcome all new EuroPython Society (EPS) members and would like to officially invite you to attend this year’s EPS General Assembly (GA), which we will run as in-person meeting at the upcoming EuroPython Conference 2014 in Berlin.

Place of the General Assembly meeting:

We will meet in room B09 at 16:30 CEST on Thursday, July 24, 2014.

There will be a talk presenting the EPS at 16:00 CEST in the same room, and another one following the General Assembly at 17:00 CEST presenting the new work group approach we will use for organizing EuroPython 2015. You may want to attend those talks as well.

General Assembly Agenda

The agenda contents for the assembly is defined by the EPS bylaws. We are planning to use the following structure:

• Opening of the meeting

• Selection of meeting chairman, secretary and 2 checkers of the minutes

• Motion establishing the timeliness of the call to the meeting

• Presentation of the annual report and annual accounts by the board

• Presentation of the report of the auditor

• Discharge from liability for the board

• Election of members of the board

• Election of chairman of the board

• Determination of the size of the board for the period until the next annual meeting of the General Assembly

• Election of one auditor and one replacement. The auditor does not have to be certified in any way and is normally selected among the members of the society.

• The optional election of a nomination committee for the next annual meeting of the General Assembly

• Presentation of a budget by the outgoing board.

• Acceptance of budget and decision on membership fees for the upcoming year

• Propositions from the board

• Motions from the members

• General discussion

• Closing of the meeting

Election of the members of the board

The EPS bylaws limit the number of board members to one chair and 2 - 6 directors. The following directors from the current board are running again for board for the next term (in alphabetical order):

• Jacob Hallén

• Marc-André Lemburg

• Anthon van der Neut

• Fabio Pliger

• Vicky Twomey-Lee

We will post more detailed information about the above candidates in a separate blog post.

All members of the EPS are free to nominate or self nominate board members. Please write to board@europython-society.org no later than Friday, July 18 2014, if you want to run for board. We will then include you in the list we’ll have in the final announcement before the GA.

Propositions from the board

The board would like to amend the EPS bylaws with the following changes:

Expanding the scope of EPS membership to EuroPython attendees

The bylaws currently state:

4. Membership is open to individuals wishing to participate in the organising of a EuroPython conference.

Proposed new text:

4. Membership is open to individuals who have attended a EuroPython conference, or are wishing to participate in the organising of a EuroPython conference.

Changing the official abbreviations for the EPS to “EPS”

The bylaws currently use the abbreviation “EP” for the EuroPython Society. Since this abbreviation is also used for the EuroPython conference, we would like to make “EPS” the official abbreviation for the EuroPython Society.

The bylaws currently state:

1. The name of the society is “The EuroPython Society”, abbreviated “EP”.

Proposed bylaws change:

1. The name of the society is “The EuroPython Society”, abbreviated “EPS”.

including changing the abbreviation throughout the bylaws text to read “EPS”.

The bylaws allow for additional propositions to be announced up until 5 days before the GA, so the above list is not necessarily the final list.

Motions from the members

EPS members are entitled to suggest motions to be voted on at the GA. The bylaws require any such motions to be announced at least 5 days before the GA. If you would like to propose a motion, please send it to board@europython-society.org no later than Friday, July 18 2014.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

We would like to invite all EuroPython attendees to become a member of the EuroPython Society (EPS).

Since we regard the EPS as representation of the EuroPython attendees, working hard to make every single EuroPython conference a professional, high quality and fun event.

If you have suggestions for enhancements, changes or anything we could do to make EuroPython an even better event, please contact us at board@europython-society.org.

You can sign up as a Member via the following form:     

        http://www.europython-society.org/application

Deadline is Tuesday 22nd, Midday (CET).

Note: Our bylaws do require members to be voted in by the board and because this hasn’t been done in the past, the new board is working towards getting all EuroPython attendees who want to have official voting rights in the EPS General Assembly signed up as EPS members.

Enjoy,
—
EuroPython Society

In order to give local teams a better idea of what organizing a EuroPython conference is all about, we have put the call for proposals for recent editions of the EuroPython conference online:

• Call for Proposals 2011
• Call for Proposals 2013
• Call for Proposals 2014

For the 2015 edition we are aiming at a new setup, which will hopefully make things a lot easier for the local teams submitting proposals. The details are still in the works, but we’ve already put a high level description up on our Call for Participation page.

Note that we are also changing the term to “Call for Participation”, since the “Call for Proposals” is often used for requesting submission of talks and papers to a conference.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

The EPS used to work under the assumption that all EuroPython attendees are automatically members of the EPS. After the EPS board vote in 2012, we reviewed the bylaws and found that this is not actually the case.

https://ep2013.europython.eu/blog/2012/07/08/change-board-europython-society

Because of this unfortunate misunderstanding, no membership records are available. What we do know for sure at this moment is that the EPS board members which have been active over the years are EPS members legally recognized by the bylaws.

Since this number is nowhere near where we’d like it to be, we are actively encouraging all EuroPython attendees to become EPS members.

That said, and even though the EuroPython attendees don’t have voting rights per the bylaws, we do feel that it’s the EPS board’s responsibility to listen and act based on their preferences, so that all attendees do get a say, regardless of whether they are EPS members or not.

Enjoy,
—
EuroPython Society

The EuroPython Society (EPS) has started work on preparing the Call for Participation (CFP) for organizing the EuroPython 2015 conference.

For 2015, we are setting up a new structure for the conference organization, which is focused on local and distributed work groups that are closely integrated with the EuroPython Society.

We hope to greatly reduce the work load for the local teams, attract community members that want to get involved and to streamline the whole process of transitioning from one location to the next, making the conference organization a lot easier for everyone.

If you are interested in potentially signing up as local team or participating in the work groups, please subscribe to one of our communication channels:

• Tumblr
• RSS
• Twitter
• EuroPython Mailing List

We are aiming for end of February as announcement date for the CFP 2015.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society