The top priority for the board in January was finishing the hiring of our event manager. We’re super excited to introduce Anežka Müller! Anežka is a freelance event manager and a longtime member of the Czech Python community. She’s a member of the Pyvec board, co-organizes PyLadies courses, PyCon CZ, Brno Pyvo, and Brno Python Pizza. She’ll be working closely with the board and OPS team, mainly managing communication with service providers. Welcome onboard!

Our second priority was onboarding teams. We’re happy that we already have the Programme team in place—they started early and launched the Call for Proposals at the beginning of January. We’ve onboarded a few more teams and are in the process of bringing in the rest.

Our third priority was improving our grant programme in order to support more events with our limited budget and to make it more clear and transparent. We went through past data, came up with a new proposal, discussed it, voted on it, and have already published it on our blog.

Individual reports:

Artur

• Updating onboarding/offboarding checklists for Volunteers and Board Members
• Started development of https://github.com/EuroPython/internal-bot
• Event Manager onboarding
• Various infrastructure updates including new website deployment and self-hosted previews for Pull Requests to the website.
• Setting up EPS AWS account.
• Working out the Grant Guidelines update for 2025
• Attending PyConWeb and FOSDEM
• Reviewing updates to the Sponsors setup and packages for 2025
• More documentation, sharing know-how and reviewing new proposals.

Mia

• Brand strategy: Analysis of social media posts from previous years and web analytics. Call with a European open-source maintainer and a call with a local events organizer about EP content.
• Comms & design: Call for proposal announcements, EP 2024 video promotions, speaker mentorship, and newsletter. Video production - gathering videos from speakers, video post-production, and scheduling them on YouTube shorts, and social media.
• Event management coordination: Calls with the event manager and discussions about previous events.
• Grants: Work on new grant guidelines and related comms.
• Team onboarding: Calls with potential comms team members and coordination.
• PR: Delivering a lightning talk at FOSDEM.
  

Cyril

• Offboarding the old board
• Permission cleanup
• Team selection
• Onboarding new team members
• Administrative work on Grants

Aris

• Worked on the Grants proposal
• Teams selection
• Follow-up with team members
• Board meetings
• Financial updates
• Community outreach: FOSDEM

Ege

• Working on various infrastructure updates, mostly related to the website.
• Reviewing Pull Requests for the website and the internal bot
• Working on the infrastructure team proposal.

Shekhar

• Timeline: Discussion with the Programme Team, and planning to do the same with the other teams.
• Visa Request letter: Setup and Test Visa Request Automation for the current year
• Team selection discussion with past volunteers
• Board Meetings

Anders

• ...

The board has been working tirelessly over the past month to bootstrap the organization of the 2025 conference and lead the Society toward a more sustainable and stable future!

In December, we focused on three main areas:

1. Onboarding
2. Hiring an Event Manager
3. Bootstrapping the 2025 conference

Onboarding:

All board members received access to the tools and resources they needed and went through important information in the board wiki to help everyone get started smoothly. We also had 6 board meetings.

Hiring an Event Manager:

This was a big priority and an important step for the future of the Society. We reached out to a candidate and we’re excited that they are interested to cooperate with us! We worked together to define their role, gathered resources for them, and drafted the first version of their contract. We are looking forward to working with them soon!

This is a big move toward making the Society’s future more stable and sustainable.

Bootstrapping the 2025 conference:

In December, we announced that the 2025 conference is happening in Prague. We also have a new website with a new logo. We defined team responsibilities, launched the Calls for Contributors, and promoted it within the EPS, the local community, and on social media. We reached out to our first co-leads to get things moving and currently we are onboarding our first team members.

Individual reports:

Artur

• Onboarding new board members - setting up access, sharing resources, setting up the board wiki and documentation
• Wrapping up the GA2024, and publishing missing records for GA2023
• Setting up the new server for EP websites
• Helping with the helpdesk migration
• Setting up new infrastructure for EP2025
• Coordinating the EP2025 conference launch
• Setting up the framework for the Event Manager - responsibilities and the paperwork
• Setting up Project Management tools for the Board/2025 Team.
• Board Meetings

Mia

• Finished all tasks and released videos and materials for GA 2023 and GA 2024.
• Went through the board Wiki and onboarded to board resources and tasks.
• Scheduled social media posts regarding the conference announcement and informed the local community about it.
• Updated the team descriptions document and the Calls for Contributors form, then launched the Calls for Contributors. Announced the Calls for Contributors internally and on social media. Delivered a lightning talk announcing the Calls for Contributors on the local meetup.
• Worked on the brand strategy: documented the current state and described personas. Analyzed our media and web presence, attendance data, community voting, and participant feedback. Researched similar-sized conferences for inspiration. Finally, created a 2025 brand proposal for the website and documented everything.
• Met with a CPython core developer to brainstorm ideas for the conference, followed by a meeting with the program co-lead.
• Reviewed previous venue contract discussions and compared the current contract to the previous one.
• Had a call with the event manager, helped define their role in the Wiki, and drafted the first version of the Letter of Engagement.
• Scheduled social media posts for the end of the year.

Cyril

• Onboarding to the board tasks (getting access, information on the tools used)
• Checked the 2024 GA recording for flare ups
• Updated the helpdesk instance and other infrastructure tasks
• Looked through the old tickets and tried to understand why they are open
• Set up part of the environments for the new teams
• Helped defining the context for the event manager job
• Looked through the old documents and provided cleaned up versions for part of the teams
• Prepared the responses from potential conference organisers for the selection
• Helped onboard the first Co-Leads

Aris

• Onboarding to the board resources and tasks
• Helped with the EM responsibilities and scope
• Feedback on the call to actions and co-lead recruitment
• Updated accounting information with info from the SEB accounts
• Board meetings

Ege

• Onboarding to the board tasks (getting access, information on the tools used)
• Launched the initial website for 2025
• Prepared call-to-action cards for the website (for CfC and pre-feedback form)
• Discussed the options for the new website/static server/repository structure
• Communicated with the PSF Trademarks Committee for the approval of the new logo variations
• Had a meeting with a CPython core developer to get feedback and explore ideas to improve EuroPython and EuroPython Society
• Discussed ideas for new EuroPython Branding

Shekhar

• Worked on EP Timeline Discussion and facilitation
• Helped to reach previous on-site volunteers for co-lead recruitment
• Board Meetings

Anders

• Initial board meeting
• Initiated data updates to local authorities

We’re happy to announce our new board for the 2024-2025 term:

• Anders Hammarquist
• Aris Nivorils
• Artur Czepiel (Chair)
• Cyril Bitterich
• Ege Akman
• Mia Bajić (Vice Chair)
• Shekhar Koirala

You can read more about them in their nomination post at https://www.europython-society.org/list-of-eps-board-candidates-for-2024-2025/. The minutes and the video recording of the General Assembly 2024 will be published soon.

Together, we will continue to serve the community and head off to the preparations for EuroPython 2025!