EuroPython Society

Organisers of the EuroPython conference series. Working for the Python community.
EuroPython Society

List of EPS Board Candidates for 2020/2021

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 DĂĽsseldorf. 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

EuroPython Society General Assembly 2020

As with our EuroPython conference, we are holding the General Assembly (GA) of the EuroPython Society (EPS) online for this year.

Normally, we’d have the General Assembly at the EuroPython conference. Due to the difficulties in switching from in-person to online, the board decided to first focus on the conference and run the GA after the event in a separate session.

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General Assembly

In accordance with our bylaws, we are calling for the EuroPython Society General Assembly to be held on September 20th 2020, from 18:00 - 20:00 CEST. As with the EuroPython conference, we will use a Zoom meeting to hold the event and send around the URL closer to the event.

We will publish the agenda with all motions put forward by the board and the members on Saturday, 2020-09-05.

All reports for the GA will be published on Saturday, 2020-09-12, to give the members enough time to read them and prepare questions. We’ll then answer any questions at the GA.

Board Nominations

Since we will be voting on a new board of directors at the GA, we would like to call for nominations or self-nominations from the EPS members. We have up to 9 seats available on the board (including chair and vice chair). We’ll publish a first list on 2020-08-21 and a second, more complete list on 2020-08-30.

If you would like to run as a board member, please send your nomination text to board@europython.eu. Similar to our previous GAs, the text should include your name, a short tag line, your bio and a paragraph on what you think you should be voted in as EPS director. You can look at our previous year’s candidate list for examples.

Deadline for candidate submissions which will be published on 2020-08-30 is Saturday, 2020-08-29.

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.

Motions by the Members

EuroPython Society Members can propose motions to be put forward and voted on at the General Assembly.

If you want to put forward a motion, please send this to  board@europython.eu no later than Friday, 2020-09-04, so that we can add them to the agenda.

Timeline

2020-08-18

Announce GA date and online location, ask for board  nominations and motions by the members

2020-08-29

Deadline for board nominations which will go on the board candidate list

2020-08-30

Publish board candidate list

2020-09-04

Deadline for motions put forward by EPS members

2020-09-05

Publish agenda for GA, with all known motions, ask for candidates for: GA chair, secretary and two checkers, auditor and replacement

2020-09-12

Publish annual report, financial report, auditor report, budget

2020-09-20 18:00 - 20:00 CEST

General Assembly Online

Many thanks,
–
EuroPython Society

Sharing our research and licenses for going online with Python events

In March 2020, we had to make a tough decision on whether to cancel EuroPython 2020 or run it online. Since we did not want to lose continuity and all the work we had already put into the in-person event, we decided to go for an online version.

Now, just as many other in-person events, running the online version required a lot of research, experimentation, gaining knowledge in using online conference tools and finding a concept which would allow us to carry over as much of the in-person conference experience to the online version as possible.

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This is an on-going effort, but we believe that our existing research will help other Python events go online as well and want to share this knowledge with you.

Running Online Conferences

The two central documents we have are:

  • EuroPython 2020 - Online Conference Tools
    This covers research on a lot of different tools available out there, our experience with them, hints and tips on how to use them effectively (esp. for Zoom and Discord).

  • EuroPython 2020 - Virtual Conference Concept
    Since we had to start afresh with the conference concept, we ran and still are running a brainstorming phase to come up with ideas and are now starting to materialize these into a concept, which we’ll use as basis for running EuroPython this year.

If you have questions around these documents and their content, feel free to contact us at helpdesk@europython.eu.

Sharing our Zoom Webinar and Pro licenses

In addition to sharing our research, we’d also like to share the Zoom Webinar and Pro licenses we have with other events, where possible (*). We have already shared them with:

The only thing we ask is that some of our work group members can participate in the event as co-host to observe and help, since we need to train and gain more experience in using these tools. As a bonus, we can also help with the configuration and share our existing experience.

If you’re interested in this, please get in contact with us at helpdesk@europython.eu.

(*) We can make the Webinar and Pro licenses available in May and June. In July we need to setup and prepare for EP2020.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2020 Team
https://ep2020.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

EuroPython 2020: Ticket sales started

europython:

We have started the EuroPython 2020 online conference & sprint ticket sales today.

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https://ep2020.europython.eu/registration/buy-tickets/

Simplified ticket structure

In order to keep things simple for the EuroPython 2020 online version, we have significantly reduced the ticket prices and refactored the ticket structure to just two ticket types and two categories:

Conference & sprint tickets

The conference & sprint ticket includes admission to the EuroPython 2020 main conference (July 23-24) and sprints days (July 25-26).

  • Business conference ticket: EUR 175.00 incl. 0% Swedish VAT
    (for people using Python to make a living)
  • Personal conference ticket: EUR 95.00 incl. 0% Swedish VAT
    (for people enjoying Python in their free time or as a freelancer)

Sprint-only tickets

Admission to the sprint days (July 25-26) is free of charge, but we still require you to register and “buy” tickets, since that way we can send out the conference details using our ticketing system:

  • Business sprint ticket: EUR 0.00 incl. 0% Swedish VAT
    (for people using Python to make a living)
  • Personal sprint ticket: EUR 0.00 incl. 0% Swedish VAT
    (for people enjoying Python in their free time or as a freelancer)

Full details

Please see our registration page for full details on the available tickets.

As a reminder, here’s the conference structure:

  • Thursday & Friday, July 23 & 24:
    Conference talks, keynotes & virtual exhibition
  • Saturday & Sunday, July 25 & 26:
    Sprints

Participate in Talk Voting

With conference tickets, you will also be able to participate in the talk voting which is still available until Sunday, April 26 23:59:59 CEST. Talk voting is your chance to tell us what you’d like to see at EuroPython 2020.

Sprints-only tickets are not eligible for talk voting, but if you have bought a ticket for one of the previous EuroPython conferences, you can still vote after logging in to the website.

Guido van Rossum Core Developer Grant

For Python Core Developers, we have put a special grant in place, which will allow core developers to get free tickets to the conference.

If you want to sign up, please check our grant page for details on how to apply.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2020 Team
https://ep2020.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

Farewell to Oier Echaniz Beneitez

We received the very sad news today, that Oier Echaniz Beneitez has passed away, after a long-term illness (not as a result of COVID-19).

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Oier was one of the initiators for bringing EuroPython to Bilbao in 2015 and co-chaired the conference in both 2015 and 2016, together with Fabio:

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Oier giving the EuroPython 2015 welcome speech together with Fabio Pliger

He was one of the most enthusiastic and engaged organizers of the conference, served on the EuroPython Society board from 2015 - 2017 and founded and chaired the local Python organization in San Sebastian (PySS, pronounced “peace”). Oier also started the pyjok.es project, together with Alexandre Savio and Ben Nuttall, inaugurating the first Python Jokes-as-a-Service of its kind.

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His humour and friendly approach to everything, even when things turned bad on him, were inspiring and created a great atmosphere for everyone who worked with him. Oier’s love for pyntxos was famous and I’m sure all of you who attended the EuroPython conferences in Bilbao will never forget.

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“Oier was an exceptionally funny guy with a wonderful sense of humour. He was kind, caring and considerate, and worked hard for PySS and EuroPython. I have fond, happy memories of any time I spent with him and know he’ll be greatly missed.” — Ben Nuttall


“Oier put so much enthusiasm in everything we did, in our first quests together and then doing all the activities of ACPySS. He was not only an active member of the Python community but also very involved in the local cancer research and care community. We knew his end was going to come sooner rather than later, and these last 2 years have been quite harsh on him. His amazing will to live was what kept him going for so long and we are sure that the Python community motivated him to keep on. Rest in PySS, my friend.” — Alexandre Savio


Our good friend: We’ll miss you!

May the good vibes and pyntxos always be with you.


Thank you for all the good times,
–
Your friends from the EuroPython community

EuroPython 2020: Online conference from July 23-26

europython:

In the last two weeks, we have discussed and investigated concepts around running this year’s EuroPython conference as an online conference. We have looked at conference tools, your feedback, drafted up ideas on what we can do to make the event interesting and what we can accomplish given our limited resources.

Today, we are happy to announce that we will be running

EuroPython 2020
from July 23 - 26 2020
as an online conference

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We are planning the following structure:

  • 2 conference days with keynotes, talks, lightning talks, poster session
    (Thursday and Friday)

  • 2 sprint days with multiple sprint teams
    (Saturday and Sunday)

Attending the conference days will require a ticket, participating in the sprint days will be free.

We will publish additional information on the new format as it becomes available. A few updates for today (more details will follow in separate blog posts):

Call for Papers (CFP)

With the new plan in place, we will extend and retarget the CFP we had been running in the last three weeks to the online setup.

Please note that we will not have training sessions at EuroPython 2020. We will have keynotes, 30 and 45-minute talks, panels, interactive sessions, as well as try to come up with a format for doing posters and lightning talks.

Unlike for our in-person event, speakers will get free tickets to the event, since we don’t have to cover catering costs.

We need your help

Given that we had already put a lot of work into the in-person event organization, a lot of which we’ll now have to adapt or redo for the online set up in the few months ahead of us, we will need more help from the community to make this happen.

If you would like to help, please write to board@europython.eu. We are specifically looking for people with experience using online conference tools to help host tracks during the conference days.

Sponsoring

As for the in-person event, we will have sponsorship packages available for the online event as well. Because the format is different, we’ll have to adjust the packages we had intended for the in-person to an online setup.

If you are interested in sponsoring EuroPython 2020, please write to sponsoring@europython.eu. We will then send you more details, as they become available.

Thanks,
–
EuroPython 2020 Team
https://ep2020.europython.eu/
https://www.europython-society.org/

EuroPython 2020: Venue and location selected

After a work intense RFP over two months with more than 40 venues competing, 18 first round entries, and two rounds of refinements, we are now happy to announce the winner:

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EuroPython 2020 will be held at the CCD in 
Dublin, Ireland, from July 20 - 26 2020

We will now start work on the contracts and get the organization going, so that we can all enjoy another edition of EuroPython next year.

Many thanks,

EuroPython Society Board
https://www.europython-society.org/

EuroPython 2020: RFP for Venues

We are happy to announce that we have started the RFP for venues to host the EuroPython 2020 conference.

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We have sent out the details to more than 40 venues.

Like last year, we also want to give the chance to other venues who were not on our list to participate in the RFP. For this purpose, we are making the details available in this blog post as well.

RFP Introduction

The EuroPython Society is the organization behind the EuroPython conference, the largest Python programming language conference in Europe, with more than 1100 professionals from IT, science and educational fields attending to learn about new developments, network and learn from experience of others in the field.

Python is a very popular open source programming language, with a large following in the web development and data science fields.

EuroPython was initiated in 2002, with the first conference in Charleroi, Belgium, and has since toured Europe for a total of 18 editions so far. For EuroPython 2020 we are looking for a new location and venue and are reaching out to potential venues.

If you’d like to participate in this process, please have a look at the RFP spreadsheet in form of an Excel spreadsheet with a quote section and list of questions, as well as our EuroPython 2019 sponsor brochure with more details about the conference, the demographics and our offerings for sponsors, to give you an idea of what we are looking for.

Please see the first tab in the spreadsheet for a description of the submission process. If you have questions, please write to board@europython.eu.

Update 2019-09-21:
We have answered the questions received by a number of vendors in the first round and put the answers into a new first round answers spreadsheet.

You can also check these other resources:

Timeline

This is the timeline for the RFP:

First round:

  • Start of RFP process: 2019-09-09
  • Deadline for RFP vendor questions: 2019-09-16
  • Vendor questions answered by: 2019-09-20
  • First round submission deadline: 2019-09-27
  • Second round candidates will be informed until: 2019-10-07

Second round:

  • Second round RFP questions posted: 2019-10-13
  • Deadline for RFP vendor questions: 2019-10-16
  • Vendor questions answered by: 2019-10-20
  • Final submission deadline: 2019-10-25
  • Final candidate will be informed until: 2019-10-30

RFP Resources

Many thanks,
– 
EuroPython Society Board
https://www.europython-society.org/

EPS Board 2019/2020

For those of you who were not at EuroPython 2019, we’re happy to announce our new board for the next term:

  • Anders Hammarquist (Treasurer)
  • Angel Ramboi
  • Jakub Musko
  • Marc-AndrĂ© Lemburg (Chair)
  • Martin Christen (Vice Chair)
  • Raquel Dou
  • Silvia Uberti
  • StĂ©phane Wirtel

Together, we’ll head off into the EuroPython 2020 RFP process next month and then kick off planning next year’s conference.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

List of EPS Board Candidates for 2019/2020

At this year’s EuroPython Society General Assembly we will vote in a new board of the EuroPython Society for the term 2019/2020.

List of Board Candidates

The EPS bylaws require one chair and 2 - 8 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).

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 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 hosted.

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.

Anders Hammarquist

Pythonista / Consultant / Software architect

Anders brought Python to Open End (née Strakt), a Python software company
focusing on data organization, when we founded it in 2001. He has used
Python in various capacities since 1995.

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.

Marc-André Lemburg

Pythonista / CEO / Consultant / Coach

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 DĂĽsseldorf. 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.

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 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 2017, 2018 and 2019 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, setting up the conference app, writing blog posts and many other things that were needed to make EuroPython happen.

Going forward, he would like to intensify work on turning the EPS into an organization which aids the Python adoption in Europe not only by running the EuroPython conference, but also by help build organizer networks and provide financial help to other Python conferences in Europe.

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!

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 by email on the board mailing list or the board’s Telegram group, 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 at least 100-200h 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.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society