All members of the EPS are invited to the 2022 GA at 17:00 - 19:00 CEST on Saturday 29 October 2022.  This year’s GA will be held online again to allow as many members as possible to engage with us.

As an EPS member, you are welcome to join us to discuss Society matters and vote at the meeting. While we cannot allow non-EPS members to join the online meeting, a recording of the meeting will be made public on YouTube.

For your convenience, a separate calendar invite with the Zoom link will be sent via email to all EPS members subscribed to the members mailing list. If you are an EPS member and have not received an email, please email us at board@europython.eu.

Your support of EPS is greatly appreciated and we hope to see many of you!

Board Nominations

Every year at the GA, we will vote in a new EPS Board of Directors. EPS members who wish to stand for election to the board of directors or nominate others must send in your nomination notice, along with a biography of yours.

Though the formal deadline for sending in your nomination is at the time of the GA, we would appreciate it if you could return it to us by emailing board@europython.eu by Saturday 22 October 2022. We will publish all the candidates and their nomination statements on a separate blog post for our members to read in advance.

The EPS board is made up of up to 9 directors (including 1 chair and 1 vice chair). The duties and responsibilities of the board are substantial: the board runs the day-to-day business of the EuroPython Society, including significant workload in running the EuroPython conference series, and supports the community through various initiatives such as our grants programme. The board collectively takes up the fiscal and legal responsibility of the Society.

General Assembly Agenda

The agenda will go through all the items business set out in Section 8 of the EPS bylaws. We will send out - via our members mailing list - the agenda, and all motions put forward by the board and members by Saturday 22 October 2022. This will give our members time to go through the information in advance, hopefully leaving more space for questions.

All reports for the GA will also be published in advance, to give the members enough time to read and prepare questions to raise at the GA.

Propositions from the board

• None at the moment.

Should there be any propositions from the board, they will be announced and made available to all our members at least 5 days before the GA, as per Section 10 of our bylaws.

Motions from the members

• None at the moment.

All EPS members have the right to propose motions to be voted on at the GA.

If you want to raise a motion, please send it to board@europython.eu no later than Friday, 21 October 2022, so that we can add them to the agenda. The bylaws require that members’ motions be announced at least 5 days before the GA and we will need time to clarify details and make the agenda available to our members accordingly.

Hope to see many of you at the EPS 2022 GA! ❤️🐍

Raquel
EuroPython Society Chair
on behalf of the EPS Board

• Giovanni Bajo
• John Pinner (posthumously)
• Rob Collins (posthumously)
• Valeria Pettorino
• Harald Armin Massa
• Marc-André Lemburg
• Artur Czepiel
• Patrick Guido Arminio

EuroPython Fellows

EuroPython Fellows have contributed significantly towards our mission, the EuroPython conference and the Society as an organization. They are eligible for a lifetime free attendance of the EuroPython conference and will be listed on our EuroPython Society Fellow Grant page in recognition of their work.

Giovanni was a board member of the EuroPython Society between 2012-2014. He was one of the main organisers and a driving force of the EuroPython editions in Florence between 2011-2013.

John taught Python to so many people in the world. As Nicholas Tollervey put it, “This kind and gentle man understood the value of computing education and, through his work as founder and chairperson of the PyConUK conference, promoted it with great zeal.” John brought EuroPython to Birmingham in 2009 and 2010 and served as chair to the Society in those years, in which he brought together a great team and managed to raise the standards of the conference. He sadly lost his fight with cancer in 2015, but his love for the (Euro)Python community still burns bright.

Rob ran many sponsored massage sessions at past EuroPython conferences. He not only performed but taught and ran a group of volunteers to do these massages, which regularly raised more than a thousand dollars, donated to the Python Software Foundation (PSF) to do even more good. He sadly passed away in 2016, but we all remember fondly his humour, kindness and love for Python, and they will inspire generations to come. The Board has unanimously agreed to make him an honorary member and Fellow to honour his legacy.

Valeria was a Society board member in 2018. Between 2017-2019, she made significant contributions to the organisation of the conference as a member of the Program, Marketing & Design and the CoC Workgroups, as well on-site.

Harald Armin hosted countless lightning talks sessions at EuroPython in the 2010s, becoming another icon of EuroPython. Similar to Rob, Harald contributed much to the fun of EuroPython.

Marc-André is a giant figure in the history of EuroPython. He had served as an EPS board member for 9 years since 2012 and chaired the Board between 2016 to 2021. During this period, he has dedicated tens of thousands of hours to the betterment of the Society and the conference editions - establishing Workgroups to retain institutional knowledge, broadening the mission of the Society to serve the community, modernising and maintaining the software infrastructure, and creating a formal RFP process in venue selecting - to name a few of the many things he helped achieved for the EPS. Marc stepped down from the Board this year, but his passion for EuroPython continues to fuel the team.

Artur was a board member in 2018-2019 and contributed a great deal to the conference website codebase with many patches, refactoring and significant updates. Through chairing the Web Workgroup, he not only modernised the software used for the website, but provided crucial support to core infrastructure used by most Workgroups. He was nominated a Fellow before rejoining the Board and serving as the current vice chair, and we are very happy to have him back!

Patrick started working in the Web Workgroup in 2015 and chaired the WG in 2017 and 2018. He contributed a lot towards the design and the looks of the EuroPython website which still is in use. He is also the chair of Python Italia. His love for Python, technology and dedication to the community sets a great example. Patrick was nominated a Fellow before joining the current Board and what a great addition to the team!

The EuroPython Society Board would like to congratulate and thank all the above new Fellows for their tireless work towards our mission! If you want to send in your nomination, check out our Fellowship page and get in touch!

Many thanks,

EuroPython Society

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

• Anders Hammarquist (Treasurer)
• Artur Czepiel (Vice Chair)
• Cheuk Ting Ho
• Francesco Pierfederici
• Martin Christen
• Nicolás Demarchi
• Patrick Arminio
• Raquel Dou (Chair)
• Silvia Uberti

You can read more about them in their nomination post. If you missed the General Assembly 2021, you can catch up here.

Together, we’ll continue to serve the community and head off to the preparations for EuroPython 2022 in Dublin, 11-17 July, with our fingers firmly crossed!

• Laura Creighton (2021)
• Oier Etxaniz Beneitez (2021, posthumously)

EuroPython Fellows

EuroPython Fellows have contributed significantly towards our mission, the EuroPython conference and the Society as an organization. They are eligible for a lifetime free attendance of the EuroPython conference and will be listed on our EuroPython Society Fellow Grant page in recognition of their work.

Laura has been very active in the early days of the conference, especially in running the EuroPython editions in Gothenburg and helping with the selection process for later editions.

Oier was one of the team members who ran the conference in Bilbao. Sadly, he passed away last year, so we can only recognize him for his efforts posthumously. Still, we believe that he would have liked his new status.

The EuroPython Society Board would like to congratulate and thank Laura and Oier for their tireless work towards our goals.

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

The grant is intended to honor and show gratitude towards members of the EuroPython Society (EPS) and the EuroPython Workgroups who have contributed significantly towards our mission, the EuroPython conference and the Society as an organization.

EuroPython Fellows

EuroPython Fellows are eligible to a lifetime free attendance of the EuroPython conference and will be listed on our EuroPython Society Fellow Grant page.

The EuroPython Board will decide on new Fellowships based on nominations by the EPS members and its own deliberations.

Our first Fellows

To launch the grant, the current board has decided to make all board members since 2012 who have served at least two terms and are not members of the current board EuroPython Fellows:

• Alexander Hendorf
• Alexandre Manhaes Savio
• Anthon van der Neut
• Borja Ayerdi
• Christian Calogero Barra
• Darya Chyzhyk
• Fabio Pliger
• Jacob Hallén
• Vicky Twomey-Lee

The board will announce more Fellows in the coming weeks. If you are an EPS member and want to nominate another member as a Fellow, please write to board@europython.eu and include the reasons why you believe the member should become a Fellow.

The EPS Board would like to congratulate all of the above Fellows and thank them for their tireless work towards our goals.

Enjoy,
EuroPython Society
https://www.europython-society.org/

General Assembly

In accordance with our bylaws, we are calling for the EuroPython Society General Assembly to be held on Sunday, October 10th 2020, from 19:00 - 21:00 CEST. We will use a Zoom meeting to hold the event and send around the URL closer to the event.

All EPS members are welcome to join and vote at the meeting. Please be aware that we cannot allow non-EPS members to join, as we often do at the in-person GAs we hold at the conference, since we would then not be able to control access to the Zoom call.

Board Nominations

As every year, we will vote in a new board. We have already sent out the list of board nominations in a separate blog post on 2021-09-23. Please see that post for details on the candidates and the nomination process.

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 Sunday, 2021-10-03, so that we can add them to the agenda. The bylaws require that any such motions be announced no later than 5 days before the GA and we will need time to clarify details and prepare the agenda.

Agenda

We will publish the agenda with all motions put forward by the board and the members on Tuesday, 2020-10-05. The agenda will follow the template set out in our bylaws under section 8.

Reports

All reports for the GA will be published on Friday, 2020-10-08, to give the members enough time to read them and prepare questions. We’ll then answer any questions at the GA.

Enjoy,
EuroPython Society
https://www.europython-society.org/

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 days before the GA. Please send in any nominations or self-nominations to board@europython.eu.

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.

The following fine folks have expressed their desire to run as a group for the next EPS board elections: Patrick Arminio, Prof. Martin Christen, Nicolás Demarchi, Raquel Dou, Anders Hammarquist, Cheukting Ho, Francesco Pierfederici and Silvia Uberti. They have a good track record of working well together and share a common vision for the betterment of the EPS via strengthening ties to the larger Python community. They will present their plans and vision during the GA.

Marc-André Lemburg, who has been serving on the EPS board since 2012 and as its chair since 2017 is not running for the board again, as already announced in last year’s GA. He’s looking forward to enjoying the conference from the attendee perspective again.

Patrick Arminio

Software Developer / Python Italia Chair

Patrick started his journey with the Python community at PyCon Italia 2 in 2008. After many years of helping run PyCon Italia (and other conferences) as a volunteer he became the Chair of Python Italia in 2017.

He has also been nominated as a PSF Fellow for his contribution to conferences and also open source software.

He currently works as a Software Engineer in London.

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 many 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. I’m looking forward to a great physical/hybrid conference in Dublin.

Artur Czepiel

Software developer

Artur started writing in Python around 2008, originally using it mostly to implement backends for websites and later expanding to other areas.

He joined the EuroPython team in 2017 after watching a talk about the state of the conference software at the time. Then contributed patches, joined various work groups and helped with EuroPython 2018 and 2019 editions.

For the 2019 conference, he also joined the board where he helped with due diligence in the RFP process, but kept the focus on web/infra including major updates to the website software, and supporting other workgroups. Other than Europython, he's co-organising two local Python meetups in Kraków, Poland where he's based. He was also part of the team behind Remote Python Pizza, and provided minor software updates to other conferences.

I would like to join the EPS board again, with my main focus being (again) infrastructure. I've learned a lot, both during the 2019 term and since then, and I believe that for the 2022 conference we can improve the conference setup even more. My main focus will be the ease of organisation and ultimately making the conference experience better for everyone.

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.
He joined the EPS board in 2021 and helped to organize Europython2021-online.

I would like to continue in the EPS board 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. For 2022 I want to work for the whole European Python community to have a better relation with EPS and to work on other smaller/local events apart from EuroPython.

Raquel Dou

Linguist / Python enthusiast

Raquel first met Python in 2013, during her MSc studies in Evolution of Language and Cognition, where she used Python to model the evolution of a simple communication system over time. She operates a small business providing language and technical services, in which Python is one of her primary tools.

She first attended EuroPython when it took place at her doorstep (Edinburgh) in 2018, and was an onsite volunteer. Since then she remained closely engaged in the EPS, as well as the organisation and execution of the conferences. She has been serving on the EPS board since 2019, working closely with the brilliant teams which delivered the two recent EuroPython Online editions. In 2021, besides leading the two amazing Sponsor and Support teams, she was also heavily involved in the conference lineup and speaker management.

During these 3 years, she has experienced warmth, openness, creativity and desire to do good in every aspect of her engagement with the Python community which proudly serves. For the next edition, she hopes to finally meet in Dublin every one of the volunteers she has worked so closely with for years. She shares a community building vision with the amazing EuroPython team and would love to continue in this exhilarating journey with them to take the Society to new heights.

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.

Cheuk Ting 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 before 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 organizing sprints for open source projects, at the same time contributing to open source projects including Pandas, Keras, Scikit-learn, Dateutil and maintaining open-source libraries. 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.

Last year, Cheuk joined the EuroPython Society Board and was nominated to be the Python Software Foundation fellow. Cheuk has been leading the Financial Aid team to provide accessible tickets for people around the world to join EuroPython. Cheuk has also started a speaker mentorship program and organize workshops for new speakers. Believing in the benefit the society has with diversity and inclusion, Cheuk would like to continue bringing new faces to the society and keep connecting people in it. In 2021, hopefully we will meet again in person and Cheuk would like to make sure that EuroPython is accessible to everyone both online and in-person.

Francesco Pierfederici

Pythonic Beer Brewer and Drinker

The year 2000 was the year that Python saved Francesco from Perl and Java. He worked on a large variety of projects over the last 20 odd years all involving Python, mostly in scientific environments.

He is currently driving a 30m telescope with Python at IRAM (https://www.iram-institute.org). In his free time, he is trying to optimise his beer brewing with a host of sensors and micro controllers running MicroPython and still failing at that.

He has been volunteering with and in the EuroPython community since the conference in Rimini in 2017 and has helped with the website since 2019.

Why serve on the EPS board for a second year? 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 working in it a lot and wants to help more!

Chair / Vice-Chair Nominations

Raquel Dou is running for the chair position and Artur Czepiel for the vice chair position.

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.

Enjoy,
EuroPython Society
https://www.europython-society.org/

Since we started touring Europe in 2002 in Charleroi, Belgium, we have come a long way. The conference has grown from the initial 240 to around 1200-1400 attendees every year. The organization had started with a small group of people in a somewhat ad-hoc way and has now grown into a well structured team backed by the non-profit EuroPython Society (EPS), while still keeping the fun spirit of the early days.

EuroPython 2002 was the first major all volunteer run event for Python. A lot of other conferences have since emerged in Europe and we're actively trying to help them wherever we can, with our grants program, growing conference knowledge base and our Organizers' Lunch, for which we regularly invite representatives of all European Python conferences to get together to network, exchange experience in organizing events community building and understand how we can most effectively help each other.

To celebrate the anniversary, we took a deep look into our archives and have put together live website copies of the last few years, going back all the way to EP2009, which was held in Birmingham, UK.

Join us for a quick tour of 20 years of EuroPython over at the EuroPython Blog.

Hope to see all of you again at EuroPython 2021 and even more so at the next in-person event (hopefully EuroPython 2022 in Dublin).

Enjoy,
EuroPython Society
https://www.europython-society.org/

We are currently working out the format for this year’s online EuroPython conference. The conference will be run using online conference tools during the week of July 26 - August 1 and we would like to learn about your preferences regarding the overall structure.

For this reason, we’re running a poll to gather input from our (potential) attendees:

EuroPython 2021 Format Poll

Please add any comments you may have to the comment field. We’d love to hear about new online conference platforms you may have seen (last year, we used Zoom and Discord), suggestions on social event formats, etc.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython 2021 Team
https://www.europython-society.org/

After completion of the EuroPython Society General Assembly 2020 last Sunday, we’re happy to announce our new board for the next term:

• Anders Hammarquist (Treasurer)
  
• Cheukting Ho
  
• Francesco Pierfederici
  
• Marc-André Lemburg (Chair)
  
• Martin Christen (Vice Chair)
• Nicolás Demarchi
• Raquel Dou
• Silvia Uberti
• (*) Jason C. McDonald

Details about our board members are available in the candidate list blog post. 

Together, we’ll now kick off the organization of EuroPython 2021 and the planning of the next EuroPython editions.

(*) Update: Jason C. McDonald resigned on 2020-11-20.

Enjoy,
–
EuroPython Society

After the confusion which was caused by a rock band starting to use the name “EuroPython” for themselves a few years ago, which we resolved amicably with the band, we had decided to register for a US trademark in addition to our European CTM mark for “EuroPython”.

We are happy to announce that we have now received the official certificate of the US trademark.

EUROPYTHON - US trademark 6,166,760 

Please help us maintain and protect our trademarks by letting us know if you find any unauthorized or misleading use. Thank you.

Thanks,
–
EuroPython Society

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 Düsseldorf. 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

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.

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

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.

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:

• PyAmsterdam
• Remote Python Pizza

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:

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

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/