At our General Assembly during EuroPython 2016, we voted in a new board and extended the number of board seats to 9:

• Marc-André Lemburg, Chair Person
• Borja Ayerdi
• Christian Calogero Barra
• Oier Echaniz Beneitez
• Joaquin Berenguer
• Darya Chyzhyk
• Alexander Hendorf
• Anthon van der Neut
• Alexandre Manhaes Savio

Apart from the usual assembly business, we also voted to broaden the scope of the EPS to support Python and its community in Europe in general and no longer limit ourselves to running conferences, initiate the move of the EPS to a different EU country and amend the bylaws to remove the GA agenda point to vote on the board size.

The minutes of the meeting are available on our records page:

• Invitation to the General Assembly 2016
• List of Board Candidates for 2016/2017
  
• Slides used for the General Assembly 2016
• Video of the General Assembly 2016
  
• Minutes of the General Assembly 2016

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

The EuroPython Society (EPS) is happy to announce the Call for Interest (CFI) for EuroPython 2017. The purpose of this call is to get to know teams willing to help organize the EuroPython conference on-site at a suitable location and determine the Call for Participation (CFP) candidates in the second phase of the selection process.

Introduction

This Call for Interest is meant to collect a brief notice of interest from teams wishing to help run EuroPython 2017 in a location they are local to. This first contact is mandatory to any team with intentions of organizing EuroPython in 2017. We are doing this first call in order to slowly integrate both teams. The objective of this call is twofold, on one hand the EPS will be able to help the teams to prepare their proposal document and on the other hand the local team will be integrated into the workgroups organizational structure of the EPS.

http://www.europython-society.org/post/99718376575/europython-workgroups-call-for-volunteers

We require members of these teams to work as volunteers in previous editions of the conference. This allows both sides to get to know each other better: the EPS has a chance to meet the team and the team can learn more about how the EuroPython conference organization works.

The main idea behind the workgroup model is to make sure that tasks which do not need to be done by on-site team members can be implemented by distributed workgroups, that can work remotely and persist from location to location, greatly reducing the loss of institutional knowledge we have seen in past location switches.

Unlike the final Call for Participation (CFP) for the EuroPython 2017 conference, the CFI is much less formal. Our main goal is to get a first impression and to know who we will be working with the CFP phase, which follows after the CFI.

Timeline for Proposals

The Call for Interest will run until the following deadline for submissions. Proposals must be submitted until midnight UTC on the deadline day, and must adhere the requirements specified in this document. Please make sure to read the whole document carefully.

Proposal Workflow

1. Send your proposal as an email or a PDF to the board list: board@europython.eu. This is a private list, so you can include confidential information.

2. We will announce the groups who have already submitted CFIs in the closing session of the conference.

3. The board will review the proposals and possibly request for a short meeting with each team.

4. After the conference, the EPS will work with the local teams separately to produce a good conference plan for the Call for On-Site Team Proposal. You can have a look at previous years calls to have an idea:

http://blog.europython.eu/post/101422012382/europython-2015-call-for-participation-on-site

What is EuroPython

EuroPython is the second largest Python conference in the world, right after PyCon US in North America. These are some statistics from EuroPython 2016, to give you an idea of what the on-site team should be ready to handle:

• 1100+ participants

• 8 days of conference

• 1 day for workshops (Beginners day and Django Girls, weekend)

• 7 parallel tracks (5 talk tracks, 2 training tracks, weekdays)

• 2 days sprints (weekend)

• Total revenue of more than 500,000 EUR

Note that we are open to accepting proposal which can only host fewer attendees, with 1000 attendees being the minimum. These numbers are just to give you an idea of how big the EuroPython event has become over the years and how much potential there is for growth.

Please see the EPS EuroPython page for more details on past EuroPython conferences:

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

How EuroPython is run

The EuroPython conference series brand is owned by the EPS. In the past the EPS granted permission to use the brand to local organizers based on a set of requirements, and the local organizing team then had to run the event in collaboration with the EPS.

Since this model no longer scales and doesn’t encourage the community to take part in the organization process, we have started a new approach based on workgroups as explained in the document linked to in the introduction. The on-site team has to integrate with the other EPS workgroups and be responsible for taking care of the tasks related to the conference organization on site.

Unlike in previous years, and to further reduce the burden on the on-site teams, we will only request the on-site teams to sign up for one year, keeping in mind, of course, that the team may want to submit a follow-up proposal for the next year. The EPS will take such prior knowledge into account when deciding on the proposals.

On-site Team Requirements

These are the requirements the on-site teams signs up to when submitting a proposal during the second phase, the Call for Participation (CFP). We are mentioning them here to not cause surprises later on in the process.

1. The conference will be legally run by the EPS and the on-site ream. The ticket billing and the sponsor billing will have to be done by the on-site team, so the on-site teams needs to be backed by a legal entity that can write VAT invoices and has an accountant capable of handling the necessary bookkeeping load. Our website can help with invoicing for tickets, but not for sponsors. Budgeting is done as joint operation by the EuroPython finance work group.

2. The on-site team should be geographically located in a country within Europe.

3. The on-site team must be willing to actively coordinate with the EPS board and the other workgroups, so that all parts of the EuroPython ecosystem can work together in a productive way.

4. The on-site team must be composed of at least 5 active people. We feel that 5 is the bare minimum for the team to successfully handle the amount of work. Please keep in mind that the team is required to grow significantly during the conference days and it’s considered an advantage, if the on-site team can show that they already have a good number of volunteers to count on during the conference days.

5. The on-site team must know that there is conference centers in the location. Locations must provide room for hosting at least 1000 attendees, but please keep in mind that demand for EuroPython is more in the range of 1200+ attendees. It is usually a good idea to have a workshop/sprint venue (for weekends) and a separate conference venue (for weekdays), since the weekend sessions have different requirements than the conference sessions and it’s often possible to get cheaper venues for the weekends. Additionally, the weekend sessions are usually attended by only about 50% of the attendees.

6. The conference must take place within the following timeframe: May 1st - October 31th. EuroPython traditionally takes place in July. The conference duration is 8 days: 1 day workshops, 5 days conference, 2 days sprints.

7. The on-site team will work as on-site workgroup in the context of the EPS (see below for details) and has to follow the same rules as all other workgroups in the EPS. Members of the on-site team should also participate in other workgroups to simplify coordination, e.g. there should be on-site team members in the sponsors workgroup to help the sponsors with booth setups, shipment of goods, customs, etc.

Proposal Content

The CFI proposal is a lot less formal than the CFP document. However, it should contain at least the following details:

• Short intro to team members (with contact details)

• Available legal entity to back the local team, including VAT ID.

• Possible conference venue and catering choices, including cost estimates

• Possible dates for the conference

More information is always welcome, of course. Even if your team is not chosen for next year, we will still keep you in the loop for subsequent years.

If you have team members at the EuroPython 2016 conference, please let us know, so that we can connect in person. Since we’d like to know whether the teams will integrate well into the EuroPython Workgroups, we ask the candidate team members to actively participate as on-site volunteers during the conference.

Please note: Information about potential venues, catering services and rough cost estimates are very useful, even at this early stage, since they can provide input for the teams and the EPS to talk about how to evaluate venues in the later CFP proposal and drive the conversation with the venues when talking about quotations.

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 candidates have stated their willingness to work on the EPS board. We are presenting them here (in alphabetical order).

Borja Ayerdi

PhD Student / Co-Founder and CEO of Neurita / Treasurer

Borja is a PhD student in the University of the Basque Country. He has a degree in Information Engineering of the same university. His PhD thesis is focused in several areas of machine learning applications to image processing, including aortic and brain imaging as well as hyperspectral satellite imaging. He uses Python for his research projects.

He is a co-founder and the treasurer of the non-profit Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS).  With the local community he is co-organizer of Python San Sebastian Conference Series. He is member of the EuroPython 2015 and 2016 core organization team. He loves the social interaction and the community.

Christian Calogero Barra

Curious / Traveler / Pythonista / Student of Statistics @UNIPD

From 2015 he is a member of the EuroPython Organisers, chair of the Web
workgroup and a member of the Program and Support workgroup.
He is a Free Software enthusiasm and he would like to teach Python to
european kids.

Until 2014 he had a company in the renewable energy sector, company founded in 2009.

He is also a member of PyCon Italia Organisers and Python Italia
Association and plans to join other Python Communities in Europe.
Currently is studying Statistics at the University of Padua, with a focus
on big data and technology applications.

When he is not having fun with his computer he likes to enjoy Travels, the
Nature, sports and books.

Oier Echaniz Beneitez

PhD Student /  Consultant / Chair of ACPySS

Oier currently is a PhD Student in the University of the Basque Country. He has a degree in Information Engineering from the same university. His PhD is focused in medical imaging, cancer diagnosis and machine learning. He uses Python in his daily programming projects. He is also co-founder and chair of the Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS), a non-profit organization involved in the use of Python, Free Software and Technology in business and education. With the local community he co-organized a Software Carpentry and is co-organizer in the Python San Sebastian conference series. He is member of the EuroPython 2015 and 2016 core organization team.

In his leisure time he helps as an IT expert in a non-profit organization called ASPANOGI. This organization takes care of children with cancer, teaching them computer science and providing them tools and machines where they can play during hospitalization.

Joaquin Berenguer

PhD / Consultant / Software Engineering Manager

Joaquin is Director at Berentec, a Professional Services Company.

He has a MS in Telecommunication at University of Madrid, and MS in
Robotics at University of Alicante, Services Manager at Sybase during 19
years.

Python is my favorite Language, and EPS gives the opportunity to be engaged
in the future of this Language.

Dr. Darya Chyzhyk

PhD / Python programming enthusiastic for research and science

Currently, Darya is a Post-Doc at the University of Florida, USA. She has a degree in applied mathematics and defended her thesis in computer science. Last 7 years Darya has been working on computer aided diagnostic computer systems for brain diseases at the University of the Basque Country, Spain and she is a member of of the Computational Intelligence Group since 2009. Her aim is to develop computational methods for brain MRI processing and analysis, including open sours tools, that help to the medical people in their specific pathologies research studies.

She has experience in International Conference organization and take part in the events for the teenagers and kids such as Week of science. Participant in more than 10 international science conference, trainings and summer courses.

Board member of Python San Sebastian Society (ACPySS) and on-site team of EuroPython 2015 and 2016.

Alexander Hendorf

Pythonista / CTO / Speaker / Data-Nerd

As Chief Information Officer of German management consultancy Königsweg, Alexander is guiding enterprises and institutions through change processes of digitalization and automation.

Alexander always loved data almost as much as music and so no wonder he’s organizer of local meet ups and one of the 25 mongoDB Community Masters.

He loves to share this expertise and engages in the global community as program chair of the EuroPython conference, speaker and trainer at multiple international conferences.

Since 2015 he is member of the EuroPython core organization team.

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 1994. He became Python Core Developer in 1997, 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.

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). He enjoyed the last few years working with the EPS board members on steering the EuroPython conference to the new successful EuroPython Workgroup structures to sustain the continued growth, while maintaining the EuroPython spirit and fun aspect of the conference.

For the EuroPython 2016 edition, Marc-Andre chaired the EuroPython Admin WG and Communications WG and contributed to several other WGs. He worked on the EuroPython website, signed up new sponsors, setup the conference app, wrote tools for the registration desk, the schedule and the speaker lists. He also setup the pre-launch website back in Nov 2015, helped running the budget and kept an eye on the EPS operations.

Going forward, he would like to broaden the scope of the EPS, aiding Python adoption in Europe, enable it to provide full financial backing of the conference and prepare it for a bright future.

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.

Dr. Alexandre Manhaes Savio

Pythonista / PhD / Co-Founder and CTO / Trainer / Spokesperson

Alex has a PhD on machine learning applied to different modalities of brain MRI for the detection of neurodegeneration and psychiatric disorders. After that he tried to start a company, but instead co-founded a local Python society called ACPySS. He was one of the core organizers of EP2015 and now EP2016.

He currently works as a researcher in the Nuclear Medicine Department of the university clinic of the Technical University of Munich in Germany. There he contributes to and create neuroimaging modules with Python as well as code to improve the efficiency of the EuroPython organization tasks. He doesn’t know very well what to do with his life so he is trying to enjoy it for now.

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 conference calls.

Board members are generally expected to take on leadership roles within the EuroPython Workgroups.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

We would like to officially invite all EuroPython Society (EPS) members to attend this year’s EPS General Assembly (GA), which we will run as in-person meeting at the upcoming EuroPython Conference 2016 in Bilbao, Basque Country, Spain.

Place of the General Assembly meeting:

We will meet on Thursday, July 21 2016, at 14:30 CEST in room A2 of the EuroPython 2016 conference venue Euskalduna Conference Center (ECC) in Bilbao, Spain.

There will be a talk to invite volunteers to participate in organizing EuroPython 2017 in preparation for next year’s event at 14:00 CEST in the same room, right before the General Assembly. You may want to attend that talk as well. In this talk, we will present the EuroPython Workgroup Concept, we have been using successfully for two years now.

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 chair, 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
• Presentation of a budget by the outgoing board.
• Acceptance of budget and decision on membership fees for the upcoming year
• Propositions from the board (relating to the board election)
  
• Determination of the size of the board for the period until the next annual meeting of the General Assembly
• Election of members of the board
• Election of chair of the board
• 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
• Propositions from the board (all others)
  
• Motions from the members, if any
  
• 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, at most 7 directors in total (also see the proposition below to increase this number to 9). Experience has shown that the board members are the most active organizers of the EuroPython conference, so we try to get as many board members as possible to spread the work load.

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 15 2016, if you want to run for board. We will then include you in the list we’ll have in the final nomination announcement before the GA, which is scheduled for July 16.

The following people have shown interest in running for board in the next term (in alphabetical order):

• Borja Ayerdi
  
• Christian Barra
  
• Joaquin Berenguer
• Darya Chyzhyk
  
• Oier Etxaniz
  
• Alexander Hendorf
  
• Marc-André Lemburg
• Alexandre Savio
• Anthon van der Neut
  

We will post more detailed information about the above candidates and any new nominations in a separate blog post.

Propositions from the board

The board is currently preparing a number of changes to EPS bylaws to broaden the scope of the EPS and prepare it for taking on more responsibility in the coming years:

• Broaden membership to all Python users in Europe and broaden the focus to not only run conferences, but also further the use of Python in Europe.
  
• Initiate the rebasing of the EPS from Gothenburg, Sweden, to Brussels, Belgium. This will be a two step process and we’d like to prepare the first step at this year’s GA by creating a new EPS non-profit in Brussels, possibly as subsidiary of the existing society in Sweden.
• Increase the possible number of directors to 2-8 in addition to one chair (9 directors in total), in order to attract more highly active board members and better distribute the work load.
  

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 15 2016.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

europython:

We are happy to announce the schedule for EuroPython 2016 in Bilbao. The program WG has been working hard trying to fit all the sessions in the last few weeks.

With over 180 sessions, over 150 speakers, one day for workshops, 5 days of talks, training, keynotes, lightning talks and open spaces, followed by 2 days of sprints, EuroPython will be one of the most exciting and vibrant Python events this year:

EuroPython 2016 Schedule

The schedule is available in table and list format. Please note that we are still applying changes to the slots and will also add some more interesting special sessions to it in the coming days.

Early in June we will have a short second Call for Proposals, limited to hot topics and most recent developments in software and technology. We will announce details soon.

Many thanks to everyone who submitted proposals. EuroPython wouldn’t be possible without our speakers.

If you want to join the fun, be sure to get your tickets as soon as possible, since ticket sales usually start picking up quite a bit after we announce the schedule.

With gravitational regards,
–
EuroPython 2016 Team

After the Call for Proposals for EuroPython 2016 last week, we are now calling out to everyone interested in signing up as EuroPython attendee early. You will be able to benefit from reduced ticket prices for a short period of time.

Our early bird ticket sales are limited to 300 tickets. Regular sales start shortly after we’ve ended the early bird sales.

More Information and Ticket Shop

We will be opening the flood gates on Tuesday, 23.02.2016, 09:00 CET, so set your alarms to make sure you can secure your ticket. Experience shows that early bird tickets sell out quickly.

PS: Remember to submit your proposals for the conference. There are less than two weeks left.

With gravitational regards,
–
EuroPython 2016 Team

We are pleased to announce the launch of our all new EuroPython 2016 website. Over the last few weeks, we have been busy talking to sponsors and getting the website prepared for the launch.

You may have heard about the recent direct observation of gravitational waves by the LIGO (Laser Interferometer Gravitational-wave Observatory). What you may not know is that Python helped in analyzing the data (archive.org), so we now have two things to celebrate:

1. Python’s use in this phenomenal direct proof of Einstein’s prediction and
2. the launch of our 2016 edition of the EuroPython conference.
   

So here it is:

https://ep2016.europython.eu/

Many thanks go to our launch sponsors who have signed up early to give us that extra boost in motivation to get the conference and it’s website set up.

Meet our Launch Sponsors

• Bilbao Ekintza
• Intel
  
• UPV/EHU
• Udemy
  
• Python Software Foundation
  
• Blue Yonder
• JetBrains
• Numberly
• Flying Circus
• Limejump
• RedHat
• Vzzual.com
• Django-CMS
• Riverbank

PS: We’d like to thank the EuroPython Web WG  for the web site improvements and our friends at Python Italia for making their code available.

With gravitational regards,
–
EuroPython 2016 Team

The EuroPython 2016 Team is ready for starting the organization of next year’s event.

If you would like to actively help with the organization, we’d love to have you as volunteer in one of our workgroups. Please see the EuroPython Workgroups page for how to sign up.

On-site Team WG

One of the workgroups, the on-site team workgroup, is especially important, since they provide the services and management on-site in Bilbao, as well as in the case of EuroPython 2016, also take on a major role in the financial and legal infrastructure of the conference organization.

This team is your contact in case you have questions related to on-site setups.

• Oier Echaniz Beneitez (Chair)
• Borja Ayerdi Vilches
• Darya Chyzhyk
• Ion Marqués
• José David Nuñez
• Alexandre Savio
• Luis Javier Salvatierra

Conference Administration WG

Manages and organizes the administration side of the conference, in particular: contracts, venue contact, ticket support, satellite conferences, legal support, insurance, licensing.

• Marc-Andre Lemburg (Chair)
• Borja Ayerdi Vilches
• Vicky Twomey-Lee
• Stéphane Wirtel

Finance WG

Manages and organizes the finances and budget of the conference, in particular: budget, controlling, accounting, billing, invoicing, taxes, payment system administration.

• Borja Ayerdi Vilches (Chair)
• Darya Chyzhyk
• Marc-Andre Lemburg
• Anthon van der Neut (EPS Treasurer)
• Stéphane Wirtel

Sponsors WG

Manages and organizes the sponsor activities of the conference, in particular: sponsor contacts, sponsor logistics, room/booth assignment, recruiting session, jobs fair, exhibit hall, startup row.

• Fabio Pilger (Chair)
• Borja Ayerdi Vilches
• Darya Chyzhyk
  
• Raúl Cumplido
• Marc-Andre Lemburg
• Alexandre Savio
• Vicky Twomey-Lee

Communications WG

Manages and organizes the public communication and community relations of the conference, in particular: press, community relations, diversity/outreach/CoC, CoC contact, announcements, social media, attendee tools,  volunteer coordination, mailing lists, Trello and Loomio groups.

• Marc-Andre Lemburg (Chair)
• Darya Chyzhyk
• Raúl Cumplido
• Kerstin Kollmann
• Leire Ozaeta
• Vicky Twomey-Lee
• Chris Ward
• Stéphane Wirtel

Support WG

Manages and organizes the attendee/speaker support of the conference, in particular: helpdesk, attendee support contact, visa help, travel management.

• Christian Barra
• Aisha Bello
• Darya Chyzhyk
• Anthon van der Neut
• Alexandre Savio
• Stéphane Wirtel

Financial Aid WG

Manages and organizes the financial aid program of the conference, in particular: setup, grant selection, aid organisation.

• Darya Chyzhyk
• Vicky Twomey-Lee
• Stéphane Wirtel

Marketing/Design WG

Create and manage marketing and design aspects of the conference, in particular: brochures, advertisements, banners, flyers, travel guide, t-shirts, lanyards, badges, panels, logo.

• Darya Chyzhyk
• Marc-Andre Lemburg
• Alexandre Savio
• Stéphane Wirtel

Program WG

Manages and organizes the conference program of the conference, in particular: talk selection/voting, scheduling, session chairs, sprint/openspace/keynote/lightning talks/poster session organization.

• Alexandre Savio (Chair)
• Alexander Hendorf  (Co-chair)
• Christian Barra
• Raúl Cumplido
• Moshe Goldstein
• Vicky Twomey-Lee
• Chris Ward

Web WG

Manages and organizes the web site, in particular: web site support, helpdesk ticket system, administration, backups, payment system integration, hosting.

• Christian Barra (Chair)
• Oier Beneitez
• Raúl Cumplido
• Cesar Desales
• Patrick Guido
• Marc-Andre Lemburg
• Fabio Pliger
• Alexandre Savio
• Stéphane Wirtel

Media WG

Manage and organize the talk and session recordings of the conference, in particular: video recording, live streaming, uploads to YouTube and archive.org.

• Anthon van der Neut (Chair)
• Luis Javier Salvatierra

Code of Conduct WG

Manage and organize the code of conduct (CoC) workflows, create CoC documents, provide CoC contacts and handle CoC requests.

• Darya Chyzhyk
• Marc-Andre Lemburg
• Anthon van der Neut
• Leire Ozaeta

On-Site Volunteers

In addition to several of the EuroPython Workgroup members, we will need quite a few attendees helping us as session manager, room manager, at the registration desk, bag stuffing and during set up and tear down of the conference.

We will run a separate announcement for on-site volunteers closer to the event.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

At our General Assembly during EuroPython 2015, we voted in a new board:

• Fabio Pliger, Chair Person
• Borja Ayerdi
• Oier Echaniz Beneitez
• Dr. Darya Chyzhyk
• Marc-André Lemburg
• Anthon van der Neut
• Dr. Alexandre Manhaes Savio

Apart from the usual assembly business, we also voted to amend the bylaws to use “chair person” instead of “chair man”.

The minutes of the meeting are available on our records page:

• Call for the General Assembly 2015
• List of Board Candidates for 2015/2016
  
• Slides used for the General Assembly 2015
• Minutes of the General Assembly 2015

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 candidates have stated their willingness to work on the EPS board. We are presenting them here (in alphabetical order).

Borja Ayerdi

PhD Student / Co-Founder and CEO of Neurita / Treasurer

Borja is a PhD student in the University of the Basque Country. He has a degree in Information Engineering of the same university. His PhD thesis is focused in several areas of machine learning applications to image processing, including aortic and brain imaging as well as hyperspectral satellite imaging. He uses Python for his research projects.

He is a co-founder and the treasurer of the non-profit Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS).  With the local community he is co-organizer of Python San Sebastian Conference Series. He is member of the EuroPython 2015 core organization team. He loves the social interaction and the community.

Oier Echaniz Beneitez

PhD Student /  Consultant / Chair of ACPySS

Oier currently is a PhD Student in the University of the Basque Country. He has a degree in Information Engineering from the same university. His PhD is focused in medical imaging, cancer diagnosis and machine learning. He uses Python in his daily programming projects. He is also co-founder and chair of the Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS), a non-profit organization involved in the use of Python, Free Software and Technology in business and education. With the local community he co-organized a Software Carpentry and is co-organizer in the Python San Sebastian conference series.  He is member of the EuroPython 2015 core organization team. He is also promotor of a local project Asmatu Intelligent Solutions, where he works as data analyst consultant.

In his leisure time he helps as an IT expert in a non-profit organization called ASPANOGI. This organization takes care of children with cancer, teaching them computer science and providing them tools and machines where they can play during hospitalization.

Dr. Darya Chyzhyk

PhD/ Python programming enthusiastic for research and science

Currently, Darya is a Post-Doc at the University of Florida, USA. She has a degree in applied mathematics and defended her thesis in computer science. Last 7 years Darya has been working on computer aided diagnostic computer systems for brain diseases at the University of the Basque Country, Spain and she is a member of of the Computational Intelligence Group since 2009. Her aim is to develop computational methods for brain MRI processing and analysis, including open sours tools, that help to the medical people in their specific pathologies research studies.

She has experience in International Conference organization and take part in the events for the teenagers and kids such as Week of science. Participant in more than 10 international science conference, trainings and summer courses.

Board member of Python San Sebastian Society (ACPySS) and on-site team of EuroPython 2015.

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). He enjoyed the last few years working with the EPS board members on steering the EuroPython conference to the new EuroPython Workgroup 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.

For the 2015 edition, Marc-Andre chaired the EuroPython Admin WG and Communications WG. He set up the internal EuroPython organization wiki, most of the EuroPython and EPS accounts and mailing lists, managed the WG member accounts, EPS member accounts, helped setting up and running the EuroPython 2015 website and the pre-launch site before that, the EuroPython Guidebook, running the conference budget, and a gazillion smaller things needed for the conference.

Going forward, he would like to continue the transition process of the EPS and prepare it for a bright future.

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.

Dr. Alexandre Manhaes Savio

Pythonista / PhD / Co-Founder and CTO / Trainer / Spokesperson

Alex has a PostDoc position in the University of Wroclaw, he is an expert working with Neuroimaging. He has a PhD and degree in Information Engineering in the University of the Basque Country. In the university he is a member of the Computational Intelligence Group, where he participated in the organization of 4 scientific conferences. He is core developer of medical image tools which are popular in the computer Science Faculty of the University of the Basque Country in San Sebastian. His interests are oriented to medical imaging and computer vision applications, computer clusters administration and high-performance computing.

He is the most veteran Python user in the Python San Sebastian society (ACPySS), he is also a co-founder and the spokesperson in this non-profit organization. With the local community he organized trainings for beginners and intermediate Python users, Software Carpentries and is co-organizer of Python San Sebastian Conference Series. He is member of the EuroPython 2015 core organization team.

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 conference calls.

Board members are generally expected to take on leadership roles within the EuroPython Workgroups.

Enjoy,
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EuroPython Society