EPS Board Candidates for 2014/2015

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

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