Miracles in Anarchy with Timothy Allen

Speaker 1: Howdy my friends, can everyone hear me okay? That's normally not a problem. So good afternoon. This feels great, doesn't it? We're back here in person for the first time in three years. It feels like I'm home again. This just feels like the ultimate, you know, family reunion barbecue. And uh thank you all for coming out This talk is going to be an opportunity to poke a lot of fun at some of the more absurd things I've done in my tech career and hopefully maybe even learn something from them. But first I wanted to take a moment to give a huge thank you to all the DjangoCon U. S. organizers and volunteers in particular. The amount of volunteer work that goes into running of one of these, uh one of my favorite weeks of the year is just it's truly immense. So Y'all are awesome. Thank you for doing this. And uh I have to admit that when I was invited to give this talk a week ago, my first thoughts were that

Speaker 1: you know, I'm a fraud, and that nobody would really want to hear what I had to say, and that I should probably politely decline. These are the thoughts that always go through my head when Somebody asks me to do something like this, and I I I feel overwhelmed. I feel I don't know enough. I feel I'm just gonna be faking my way through it. And uh over the years the Python and Django communities have been huge in helping me They've taught me that we all have value and that I really need to fight through these thoughts. So, in that spirit of community, let's dive right in So howdy y'all, I'm Tim. My pronouns are he, him, his. And this talk is largely fueled by my own imposter syndrome. I started programming at age six, and every step of the way I've been intimidated by what I didn't know.

Speaker 1: My godfather was one of the original computer scientists. In 1974, he wrote a book called An Introduction to the Theory of Computing. And he actually wrote the assembly code on the chip that went in that memory game Simon, which had the colors and the sounds, and you had to repeat it. We probably all had versions as kids. And unfortunately he took a one-time lump sum payment instead of a percentage of sales over the years But uh you know hindsight is 2020 and all that. Um It just often feels like everybody else on this planet has been given this magical instruction manual and I haven't gotten my copy And I know I'm not the only one that feels that way. We all get these feelings of inadequacy at some times. And uh, you know, so much of that is driven by anxiety. And anxiety used to be a really good thing. It used to be a really great thing for humans when you know

Speaker 1: there might be a tiger roaming around in our village. But these days, in modern times, anxiety seems to create more problems for our species than it helps. And it can drive irrational fear. And anxiety is the key ingredient to imposter syndrome. And we all have it, we all feel it at different times. And, you know, I thought I have these feelings that I'm the only one who builds tech over the years with a lot of leaps of faith, and I make websites that are built with a lot of bubblegum and duct tape. But what I've come to learn over my four decades of writing code is everywhere I've gone, every tech I've seen, there is at least some bubblegum and duct tape in every project I have ever seen. And with all that I don't understand, and there's so much I don't understand, it does feel like a miracle that anything works at all, ever.

Speaker 1: So I have fooled myself into believing that there are people out there who understand everything about computers. From the zeros and ones in the CPU all the way through the latest, hottest JavaScript library. And that just isn't the case, especially in technology where we exist in ecosystems and build on the expertise of others We need to remember this reality. We tend to think that we know very little and others know much more than us. That's the figure on the left here in the classic imposter syndrome. chart in front of you. But the reality is the figure on the right that all of us know about the same, just different pieces of the puzzle to put together. And it is humanly impossible to know and understand everything that allows us to create what we need to create and be productive.

Speaker 1: So, welcome to the reality of the situation. This is a classic XCD, XKCD comic that uh I think we can all relate to. We all rely on code we don't see. We all rely on code we don't understand. Like what about Linux? Have you ever read some of the more terrifying comments in the Linux source code? If you haven't had the opportunity to do so, Google funny Linux comments when you get a chance, and uh careful there's some not safe for work language in there. There's a hell of a lot of it actually. But uh yeah, there's some interesting comments in there. Or another good one that I like to bring up. There are few things more core to what most of us do in here with Django than putting data into a database How about database drivers?

Speaker 1: All the layers of them, from the operating system to libpq and Postgres written in C to Psycho PG2 to Django's database engine. That's a lot of layers. Is there anybody in this room who actually understands all of it soup to nuts? I didn't think so. And You know, I certainly don't, and I've helped written, you know, the Django DB backend for Microsoft SQL Server for a couple years. I certainly don't understand all the layers. that are necessary to do it. We have to take these leaps of faith. We have to build upon trust. We have to trust in our community. Nobody can know it all, yet somehow my brain says that I should It often tells me this fairy tale that I should know all of these things. And, you know, I haven't even mentioned all the packages you

Speaker 1: see when you type pip freeze in your project. So quick, how is Django Core's headers currently maintained? There's probably one or two people in this room that know how, but not many of us. How about SQL parse? These are all things basically all of us will see when we type pip freeze on a Django project. And how many people in this room can name a current maintainer of PyTest Django? Not many. We have to rely on this trust. And uh there's a great story from a couple years ago. The story of Leftpad in 2016. And I see some people nodding their heads here. This is a good one. So a significant amount of the node ecosystem relied on a package called Left Leftpad. It was 11 lines. So all LeftPad did was added characters to the left side of a string, a certain number for like padding zeros in a zip code or adding spaces, whatever was necessary.

Speaker 1: And it was ubiquitous in dependencies throughout the entire node ecosystem. The developer that created LeftPad was a um a really smart 28-year-old named Azer Kusulu from Oakland, California. And he had gotten into a dispute over a trademark with a company called Kik, K-I-K, who were trying to force him to rename a different open source package he had made called Kik K-I-K of the same name And after getting lawyers involved in the company threatening NPM, NPM decided to side with the company rather than our 28-year-old friend. And as is his right, he decided to delete all of his packages from the NPM repository. So goodbye left pad. Hilarity ensued, and basically the entire node infrastructure came to a grinding halt.

Speaker 1: Build stopped working and it broke the entire node ecosystem because basically every package had a dependency on leftpad. And it's a dependency tree. It might not have been something that they added directly to their equivalent of requirements. txt. It might have been a dependency on a dependency on a dependency on a dependency down the dependency tree. And with all the dependencies in my projects, it feels like an absolute miracle that anything works at all ever. So who here in this room relies on Python? Yes, a hundred percent of us rely on Python. The entire world relies upon Python, right? This is a slightly terrifying photo that came from my friend Dustin Ingram last week across Twitter. in which half of the Python core team is crossing a very busy street together, seemingly deep in conversation, not paying any attention to the traffic.

Speaker 1: Every Fortune 500 company has Python somewhere in it, and they were all blissfully unaware of the danger to a key technology component of their bottom line at this very moment. Python now touches key parts of the human experience everywhere on Earth. Its criticality cannot be overstated. Yet here is half of the core team crossing the street, not knowing if a school bus is coming barreling at them. It's a good thing it's not in Philadelphia, I'll tell you that much. It isn't possible for us to fully understand every technical component. We need to do what we need to do. There has to be a level of trust. We take calculated leaps of faith to minimize risk, but still get things done.

Speaker 1: Done. Otherwise, we would just unplug every computer everywhere and give up. And some days that does sound like kind of an appealing option, especially when the weather outside is this good, but With all that in mind, let's laugh at some of the more absurd moments from my career. So you read that right: a bank for Bowie. So let's go back to the last millennium and party like it's 1999. I made some interesting fashion choices at the time. And when I dressed like this, I was actually the IT director for an online bank. I led the web team and dressed like this. Because it was the dot-com era and these things were supposedly normal. Our CEO had struck a deal with the David Bowie

Speaker 1: to create him a private label bank. All of this seemed perfectly normal during the dot-com bubble, during that whole era. So we knew for David Bowie to sign off on a private label bank, it would have to be pretty cool. It would have to be pretty stylish. I mean David Bowie was incredibly careful about protecting his brand and an incredible marketer And to design this card, it took over 150 back and forth iterations between our team and his team before we came up with one that approved. We spent about four hours on the final design deciding whether or not to put a signature somewhere on the card. So he was very meticulous. So knowing it had to be that cool, we did the absolutely logical thing, and we used a fairly new technology called Macromedia Flash

Speaker 1: to build a bank. And I I have to admit I'm enjoying watching some of the security-minded people I know in here squirming. It's always fun to make you squirm. That's part of my job as a developer. I also have to admit, I really miss having a Bowie MasterCard. There was something that was just awesome about having Ziggy Stardust, the Picasso of Pop, the Starman himself in my pocket. So we actually made a private label bank for David Bowie. The core banking system was written in COBOL, and there was a system called Miser built on top of it. And the Django REST framework of this day was a system called Upstanding Client Banking that was an interface to the COBOL backend that we could query as a web service that only ran on Windows NT4 service pack 6.

Speaker 1: To install Windows NT for Service Pack 6 back in those days, you had to install Windows NT from 35 floppy disks, and then You got to upgrade to Service Pack 4 before you could upgrade to Service Pack 6. It all had to be done in this order. So bubblegum and duct tape anyone? It was definitely true. And this was not a very stable operating system. And on top of it, we installed a product called Timbuktu , which was the remote desktop or team viewer of its day. So that when we were away on weekends, we could go in and restart the service or reboot the system on the core banking system because we had to do this several times a week when either the service crashed or Windows NT4 crashed entirely. I'm really again enjoying watching the security-minded folks in here

Speaker 1: because this is bad idea on top of bad idea on top of bad idea. And speaking of bad ideas, our website was built with PHP 3, MySQL 3, running on Solaris with Apache, and ModPHP. And we didn't patch it nearly as much as we should. At a bank. And again, I am really watching, enjoying watching the security people in here. The flash site was built on top of all of this using some flash plugins I can't even remember. And even with all that, you know, the most incredible thing about all this. Is really that we were giving 5% APY on checking. Not that it actually worked. It was that you could get 5% APY on checking. And look at the CD rate as well. It was really pretty incredible. And uh so this is uh the CEO of that company. He was uh a bit of a lunatic just like me, and we're still friends to this day, and we laugh about the absurd anarchy we wrought on the banking system at that time.

Speaker 1: Time. The FDIC was not exactly thrilled, but that's a story for another day. It was a hell of a stack, but it actually worked. It felt like a miracle. People could log into Flash into this awesome Bowie bank. and get their balance, which was where the excitement kind of ended. But it made Star Trek sounds when you went through the interface. It was uh it was kind of cool. I felt really inadequate at the time though because I only sto understood maybe ten percent of the stack that all this was built on and you know I was running the IT team. We had used consultants, we had used some Some fairly elderly gentleman who understood COBOL at the time. If if you want to have a job forever, either go into like healthcare or COBOL. You'll be fine. And if I'm being honest, I still have no clue how a lot of it worked.

Speaker 1: But that gets back to you know having to have that trust. And even back then, you know, to get things done, we had to take leaps of faith. into things that even we knew we weren't exactly secure, you know, gave you kind of that unpleasant feeling right here in the gut, but we still had to put forth that trust. Another good example of this that's more current is from my current job, querying company codes. So I've got to thank my colleague Ryan Sullivan for reminding me this one last week. Gee, thanks Ryan. I had almost erased this work of genius from my memory until Ryan's like, oh you gotta put this one in your talk, Tim. This is one of your worst. Thank you, Ryan. So at Warden Research Data Services, we have a few hundred data products with many different entity

Speaker 1: environments. Everybody's heard of tickers, but there are many, many others that we use throughout our our system. And uh we had them all in one huge table. And when we got new data sets, we would just append the new identifiers to this table at the end of this huge table. And this is called fusion code. Which would query the SQL Server information schema for the columns from that really wide table with well over a thousand columns. This cold fusion code would then generate more cold fusion code to be gener to be called as a web service from even yet more cold fusion code on the front end. And it would also generate stored procedures for SQL Server based off all these columns and their metadata from the information schema to be on the receiving end of these cold fusion calls.

Speaker 1: I still can't believe this all worked, but our users loved it, and they certainly didn't see or care how this sausage was made. You know, it really does feel miraculous that this all worked. So we've seen some embarrassing moments from my career. But how about a couple done by a huge company? You ever notice there was never a Windows 9? We went from Windows 8 straight to Windows 10, and rumors have abounded for years, but one of the reasons was mediocre developers like me. You think we might have learned from taking shortcuts with Y2K, but apparently, you know, developers like me never learned their lesson. And Windows 95 and 98 were very similar. It was starting with Windows 2000, Windows Millennium Edition, and Windows XP that Microsoft made their consumer operating system

Speaker 1: use the more robust underlying Windows NT code. So developers needed to add shims to their code to support both generations of the Windows systems from inside their apps. It was a lot like Python 2 to Python 3. The result was that the ecosystem became polluted because of this common code snippet here, where developers like me would just check to see if the version started with Windows 9, for both Windows 95 and Windows 98. Of course, by the time they wanted to use the actual Windows 9, it would also start with Windows 9. Because back in Windows 95 and 98 land, people thought they would just keep keep using years to number forever, forgetting again about that whole Y2K thing, which of course everybody would uh you know go to new naming conventions about that.

Speaker 1: Frankly, I think we go to new naming conventions a lot of the time just out of boredom. But that's a whole nother topic. So, with the tools we all have, even the biggest companies in the world do this kind of thing. And it's throughout every ecosystem everywhere. So again, I have to go back that it really feels like a miracle that anything ever works at all. Here is the pip freeze from my division at Wharton's biggest project. And alphabetically here you'll see we're just up to the D's. We have dependencies that have dependencies that have dependencies that have dependencies. And in this anarchy, it is essential that we have trust in the communities and ecosystems that our business relies on.

Speaker 1: That means we have to trust Django. That means we have to trust Python. That means we have to trust the people who build the packages in the in the e-commerce. ecosystem because it is far too much to ever review, analyze, or comprehend on our own. It means we need to trust you, the community. And that we rely on you, because collectively we can do great things together. Together we can do all this review and analysis of all these packages that we all rely on as a community. All of us together are more than the sum of our parts. Which brings me back to this slide. This slide is a celebration that together We can make beautiful music. It's a reminder that we are the orchestra, not the soloist. Working in technology is to be part of an anarchy

Speaker 1: in the best sense of the word. In the best sense of the word, an anarchy means we are all equal members who work together to make the miracle happen. And as I'm back here at JagoCon US in 2022 for the first time in three years with a community for which I care deeply, I realize maybe it isn't a miracle at all. Maybe y'all are just an amazing community. A community which we can collectively trust. A community in which I deeply trust. And I'm talking about a lot more than technology Now let's take a moment to see what lessons we can learn from one of the most successful anarchies in history. Alcoholics Anonymous!

Speaker 1: Yes, it is an anarchy, in the best sense of the word. I've been in recovery for almost the same amount of time that I've been involved in Python and Django, and I've seen beautiful parallels between recovery communities and the Python and Django community. 12-step recovery groups are also anarchies, as I said, in the best sense of the word. And I'll primarily be referring to Alcoholics Anonymous AA, which is the largest 12-step fellowship. But other 12-step fellowships follow the same 12-steps and the same 12 traditions. Such as Narcotics Anonymous, Overeaters Anonymous, Gamblers Anonymous, Cocaine Anonymous, Crystal Meth Anonymous, Sex and Love Addicts Anonymous, there's now Social Media Anonymous, there's Video Games Anonymous, there's an anonymous for everything. Any kind of compulsive behavior, you can be sure there's an anonymous out there for it. And anonymity in this sense doesn't just mean not revealing what you might hear in a meeting with your fellow addicts.

Speaker 1: It also underscores the equality and importance of every member. That once you come into these rooms, these communities, your voice is as important and as valid as anybody. Anybody who's been, whether you have 30 years, 30 days, or 30 hours, your opinion matters. Your voice matters And I felt that way from the first moment I became a member of the Python and Django community. And I hope everybody here feels that as well. Most people have heard about the 12 steps of recovery groups. They exist for the individual. to go through a recovery process. But not many have heard of the 12 traditions which exist for the various groups of recovery groups around the world. The first tradition is that our common welfare should come first.

Speaker 1: Personal recovery depends upon unity. Recovery groups and technology groups. are at their best when they are working towards inclusion. Without the group being solid, the individual's recovery within a recovery group is at peril. And again, we are greater together than the sum of our parts. In many ways, this is the recovery code of conduct. A way to establish guidelines for common welfare. Don't be a jerk. Consider the whole. Be excellent to one another, as Bill and Ted reminded us. Our codes of conduct in tech communities allow us to exist as a whole in a place of respect. In tradition too, we establish that member is the highest rank in recovery. If you are elected to a service position, you step down.

Speaker 1: from the highest rank to serve the membership above you. I think our elected servants in Washington could probably use a reminder of this lesson. In Python and Django, our founders have eschewed top-down leadership. The term BDFL, or benevolent dictator for life, was jokingly given to Guido Van Rossum. And later to Adrian and Jacob, who helped start Django along with Simon Wilson and Frank up here. And ultimately, Guido Adrian and Jacob rejected the BDFL title. Preferring a community-run project. And thank you for that. They led the way by allowing us to run the As a community, to come up with our own solutions, to build consensus, or

Speaker 1: as Jacob pointed out in this blog post, the open source default is rough consensus and running code. Tradition 3 is a t is tweaked depending on the fellowship you're in. The only requirement for membership is a desire to stop drinking, drugging, gambling, whatever it might be. But it states that anyone who wants to be a member can be a member. One of my favorite stories from the AA book, Pass It On, The Story of Bill Wilson and How the AA message reached the world, is this And I quote directly. In 1945, Barrielle was doing desk duty at a clubhouse on 41st Street. A man came in needing help. He was black, and we had no black members then. He was an ex-convict. He had all his earthly belongings on his back.

Speaker 1: His hair was bleached on. He had on makeup. And he told us he was a dope fiend. We didn't know what to do for this person. I got together with some of the older members and we talked to the person and about them. What could we do? When no satisfactory group conscience was forthcoming, Barry did what many another AA would have done. He called Bill Wilson, AA's founder, to whom he described the prospective member. After a silence, Bill asked Barry to run over the list again, and Barry did so. Now, said Bill , did you say he was a drunk? Oh yes, Barry replied. There's no question about that. He is certainly a drunk. And Bill W. replied, Well, I think that's all we can ask. This prospect was then invited to attend meetings, and although they soon disappeared,

Speaker 1: their presence created a precedent for the third tradition So ponder this for a second. AA was entirely made up of privileged white businessmen in 1945. And in that era, they chose to allow a drug addict. person of color and person of trans experience into their ranks in 1945. That's a powerful moment. And it's in that same spirit that 80 years later, we now have Django 's diversity statement. When Wharton chose to use Python and Django as our framework of choice many years ago, we went through a process where we compared Python and Django to many other frameworks. Ruby on Rails, PHP Code Igniter, and so forth. And uh asked a lot of questions, and they were almost all of a technical nature.

Speaker 1: I think the closest we got to the community was, oh, how many questions are there on Stack Overflow to gauge the quality of the community? We got lucky that we landed on such an amazing community of people whose moral code aligned with our academic code. in so many different ways. We got lucky. If I were to redo that process today, if we were to redo that process today, I think the vast majority of our questions would be about the quality of the community rather than the quality of the technology. Tradition four is that each group should be autonomous, except in matters affecting other groups or the fellowship as a whole. There are over 1,800 AA groups in Philadelphia that meet every week. So, hundreds of thousands across the world. And each group, like each open source project, is somewhat autonomous.

Speaker 1: But there are norms that develop. In 2016, to be more inclusive, we started a secular meeting in Philadelphia And we decided that we would change the AA preamble to read, AA is a fellowship of people, instead of AA is a fellowship of men and women. Some other groups weren't too pleased that we were breaking with tradition. But you know, over the years they came to accept that, oh, it's just our meeting doing this. But to my shock, in 2021, after much deliberation, AA worldwide adopted this language across the world, a fellowship of people. Instead of a fellowship of men and women. It's similar in open source communities Where you know each open source community can be somewhat autonomous. We used to have a wonderful event in Philadelphia called Red Snake Philly, where the Ruby and Python communities would come together for lightning talks and a battle royale.

Speaker 1: No, just really lightning talks But while we had enough in common as open source scripting languages, the details of each community and how they were implemented was quite different, and that's okay. You know, the more communities there are, the more likely it is that somebody can get involved, that somebody will find a home somewhere Tradition five is that each group has but one primary purpose, to carry its message to the alcoholic who still suffers. It is good to plainly state your primary purpose in any open source project you're involved with. And to avoid any kind of confusion You know, recovery groups have primarily have plainly stated their primary purpose, just like their membership requirements. And as you can see here, Django and recovery groups have a common thread in our primary purpose.

Speaker 1: The Django Foundation states very plainly here that the foundation's goals are to support development of Django by sponsoring sprints, meetups, gatherings, and community events. To promote the use of Django among the worldwide web development community, to protect the intellectual property and the framework's long-term viability, and advance the state of the art in web development. In many ways, what both are doing, the recovery group and the Django project, are asking what can we do for the newcomer? What can we do to make sure that the person writing their first line of Django today or the person coming to their first meeting finds a safe, comfortable place. Tradition six is that AAA shall never endorse finance or lend the fellowship name to any related facility or enterprise.

Speaker 1: Less problems of money, property, and prestige divert us from our primary purpose. Django is also very explicit in how you can use the Django name in projects. This is all available on the website You may use the Django name and logo on a list of services, tools, or supported platforms, or as an identifier that a product or service is Django related, provided that usage of the logo does not imply that the organization is official or otherwise endorsed by the Django Software Foundation. You may use the Django name in the form Django Foo or Foo Django in any software library that can be used to augment or extend the capabilities of the official Django project software, provided that the project is distributed under the terms of an OSI approved open source license.

Speaker 1: Hooray And the website for that project does not imply that it is official or otherwise endorsed by the Django Software Foundation. So there is much more to this. Please see the site if you haven't had a chance to read it through. But being very explicit in how the Django name can be used is uh is a very good example for many other open source projects. And going back to LeftPad. It may have avoided the whole kick versus kick controversy that we saw either that took down saw earlier that took down the entire node ecosystem over an overzealous company and a somewhat angry developer. Tradition 7 is that every AA group ought to be fully self-supporting, declining outside contributions. So

Speaker 1: recovery groups do the opposite of what most nonprofit charities I've ever seen do. You know, most nonprofits I hear, you know, kind of are knocking down my door, asking for money. If you were to come up to Alcoholics Anonymous and say, hey, I love the work you're doing, here's $10,000, Alcoholics Anonymous would say, Oh, thank you for your generous offer, but we decline. They will not accept money from any outside source. Sponsorships are, you know, rejected outright. All funding comes from the highest rank, the members. And while Django doesn't enforce anything like this, the same thing has kind of happened organically. Django is funded by those who use it, the sponsors you see in this hallway, and individual members. If you take a look at the Django website, who's been sponsoring it, you can see me up right there, Pi Philly, and a bunch of other individuals named.

Speaker 1: It's not huge companies for the most part. It's the people we know in these hallways. It's the red sises of the world. It's the Lincoln loops of the world. It's individuals. And uh and there's something pure about that. That funding goes to some amazing causes, like Django Girls. Rachel, who's working the registration table right now, had this quote. Django Garo Sol had 425 applicants from 11 different countries, ages ranging from 16 to 50 years old. After acceptances, we had about 105 people to feed and caffeinate. Thanks to Django's sponsorship, we could get all of our participants coffee for the day. It really made a huge difference because we all know how a cup of coffee can change the atmosphere and mood.

Speaker 1: Gee, where else is coffee a big thing? Oh yeah, the rooms of recovery. We were so grateful to the sponsorship we received from abroad. We tried to get sponsorship from a lot of Korean companies. But the same generosity doesn't translate well into a Korean business culture, I guess. This made us even more thankful for our friends at the DSF. So as you can see, this funding is critically important. And if you look back at the slide behind it, you'll see we're only at 77% of this year's funding goal. So if you can, please give. It's a worthy cause, as you can see from quote. Like these. It's really worth going through the Django Project website. There's a lot of inspiring stuff on there beyond the documentation. And a lot of thought has gone into it, as you can see from these slides.

Speaker 1: I'm just calling out a few of the stories that are on there, but there are many, many more. So, tradition eight is that the fellowship should remain forever nonprofessional, but our service centers may employ special workers. So, recovery groups explicitly call out membership as being equals But it allows for specialists to fill certain roles. Think office managers, attorneys, etc. things of that nature. Once volunteering crosses the line into work, it should be paid. And Django follows a similar path with our fellows. So we're lucky enough to have both of our fellows here for the first time ever. So thank you, Marius and Carlton, for all of your work. It's so good to have them both here. Be sure to say hello and a big thank you when you see them

Speaker 1: because uh these two gentlemen are doing so much to keep Django working. And again, the funding makes sure they get paid, as they should be, for the work they do, for keeping all of our ideas, all of our dreams, all of our enterprises, all of our businesses flowing Tradition nine is that the fellowship as such ought never be organized, but we may create service boards or committees directly responsible to those they serve. And in a similar fashion, Django has several teams directly responsible to the community that they serve. they serve. They're at the technical board. There's the triage and review team. They're at the security team. They're mergers and releasers. They're the COC committee And if anybody has any interest in getting involved with any of these, I strongly encourage you to. If anybody in this room is not a Django

Speaker 1: Software Foundation member. Please see any of us after the meeting and get nominated because if you have come to a Django Con or if you're viewing a Django Con online or if you're on YouTube and you're even interested enough to watch this video of me talking about Django and recovery on YouTube after the event. Please consider joining the Django Software Foundation. It's free. And the more voices we have, the better. We are stronger together as a community than we are as individuals. We are more than the sum of our parts. And we would love to have your voice as part of the community. Tradition 10 is that the fellowship has no opinion on outside issues. Hence, the name ought never be drawn into public controversy. Recovery groups focus on doing one thing and doing it well. And to be as inclusive as many people as possible, in line with our Django

Speaker 1: diversity statement, we have to be very careful about any outside endorsements that we make, any causes that we endorse. Because we might end up offending somebody. We want to be a big tent in here. We want to make sure that everybody feels welcome, that there's a landing spot for everyone here. And uh, you know, the trademark page that we referenced earlier makes Django's neutrality pretty clear. 11 is that our public relations policy is based on attraction rather than promotion. We need always maintain personal anonymity at the level of press, radio, and films. Okay, that one's a little dated. They probably add social media to that, but we'll go with it. I heard about Django for the first time while I was interviewing a job candidate.

Speaker 1: We didn't end up hiring him because we were planning on becoming a Ruby on Rails shop, but he's now a friend and it stuck with me how emphatic he was about only working with Python and Django. At one point in the interview he said, I really don't want to ever type a semicolon again in my life. Which I thought was one of the best lines I've ever heard in a job interview. And uh he was incredibly friendly, he seemed incredibly happy, and that's how I decided to check out Django. It wasn't because of some blog post or, you know, some top-down uh you know, decree that we had at work or anything like that. It's because I saw somebody who was using it and seemed genuinely enthused about it. You can have used Django for one week and show that same enthusiasm

Speaker 1: and help get the word out about Django through attraction rather than promotion. He wasn't selling Django. He wasn't promoting Django. I was attracted to checking out Django purely because of his enthusiasm. And you know, we have the phrase around here, come for the technology, stay for the community. It really is an amazing community here. And last but not least, we have Tradition 12, which is anonymity at the spiritual foundation of all our traditions, ever reminding us to place principles before personalities Django has put its principles before any individual any individual personalities, as has Python. And I've been involved in some other open source communities that are more personality driven, and that's okay if it works for them. But I much prefer the principles before personalities, you know.

Speaker 1: Guido kind of set the mood in the room. And the Xenopython underscored our ethos. And our codes of conduct and inclusion practices have kept us improving. Our BDFLs have stepped aside in favor of a community-run, community-led spirit. Django Con is by the community for the community. So please consider being an organizer. I did it for a couple years. We always need new blood involved, new ideas to make DjangoCon to con to continue to grow and be a dynamic conference. I mean how many conferences didn't make it back after the pandemic, after three years in person? It really is kind of a miracle that we are here. But it's not really a miracle. It's because of all the hard work of the organizers and volunteers. And I cannot underline

Speaker 1: I cannot underline how much that means. But this is a very special place to me. This is a very special. This is a second non-DNA family for me. You know, I love coming back here. In the past three years, I have really missed it. It is a highlight of my year every year, and I hope for a first-time attendee or somebody who's been to 10 DjangoCons, this is being a highlight of your year too. And if it's not, come see me afterwards and we'll get some ice cream and try to turn it around. So let's ditch the term. Practice makes perfect. There is no perfect. And as our diversity statement clearly says, we have enough experience to know that we won't get any of this perfect on the first day. But let's instead say practice makes progress. And as we say in recovery, aim for progress, not perfection.

Speaker 1: Progress is where true growth happens. Progress is where life happens. It feels much less intimidating that way. And we can minimize our imposter syndrome with that. You know, over the years I've done some pretty cool things with Django. I brought Excel support to Django Rest framework. I hosted and helped organize the first two Wagtail space conferences at the Wharton School, and I'm on the Wagtail core team. I uh implemented a new it worked page for Django newcomers. I don't know if you remember the one before this, but it used to say it worked. Of course you haven't done any real work yet. It's like that's not very nice. I've seen people struggle to install Python on Windows before they had that add to path

Speaker 1: checkbox on the installation for like two and a half hours and then finally get Django up and be told they hadn't done any work yet. I also led a team which hosted DjangoCon US 2016 at Wharton in Philadelphia. But you know, all of those pale in comparison to the really important moments. Those precious moments where I got to help somebody write their first line of Python code or get their first Django page up. Somebody who is new to computers. And I've seen some of those people join our compu our community and grow and contribute in so many different ways. Or those precious moments when a fellow Django nut has reached out to me for help and saying, I'm an addict. I need your help.

Speaker 1: And some of those people are still around here today and helping yet others. Because there are a lot of people, just statistically, there are a lot of addicts at this conference right now, and many of them are not getting help So I want everybody here to know within this community, I am here if you ever want to talk about addiction, alcoholism. It'll be done in full anonymity, and I'll do everything I can to help you My first day in recovery was April 12, 2015. It was the last day of my first Python-related conference. PyCon in Montreal, 2015. I'm extremely lucky to be part of two amazing communities that have so much in common, so much acceptance, so much love, so much tolerance. And you know, the most important work we do here has nothing to do with technology.

Speaker 1: It has to do with our connection and support of one another. That support is something I have felt through the past seven years that I have been clean and sober. I get the support within the recovery rooms that I I need, but I also get support here from a second family, wonderful friends, amazing people. So I'm going to wrap up by saying the most important thing I will today, which is I'm Tim, I'm an alcoholic addict, and thanks for letting me share everyone.

Speaker 2: I just have a quick question as a current organizer to a former organizer. How do you best uh recruit new organizers to uh conferences like these

Speaker 1: Uh I would lie to them very much. I would tell them how wonderful an experience it is. No. It really is, I mean, it's such a rich and rewarding experience. We got involved very early. So I can't my my first PyCon was 2015 and we were hosting DjangoCon US at Wharton in 2016. team where I was uh I was lead of the host team, I was an organizer, and I was speaking on the last day. It was quite insane. But I'll never trade that for anything. You get to meet incredible people. You get to get to the core of this community in a way that you can't in so many other ways. You get to speak to amazing people. You get to meet amazing people I would strongly recommend if you would ever consider being an organizer for DjangoCon, please come talk to me, talk to Drew, talk to Jeff

Speaker 1: Talk to Lacey. There's so many core organizers. Adam right here has been running our A V for days. Ken Whitesell in back has always been a fixture here. Russ is always around. Jorge does an amazing job I hope I'm not missing anybody. I'm looking out and you know LASIK is failing me in my late forties. So if you're in the back, I apologize if I didn't see you. But they're some of the most amazing people in the world you ever meet. So I strongly encourage Get involved in any way you can. It will enhance your life. You know, I tell people, and I'll close with this, I tell people, you know, I go I tend to go to a recovery meeting every day. Because the one hour that I spend at that recovery meeting enhances the rest of my day so much. You know, I sleep better, I have more patience, I'm a better partner, I'm a better son, I'm a better employee, I'm a better friend.

Speaker 1: And I think getting involved where you give back through something like Django for maybe a couple hours a week can do the same thing. Because I know I felt that. You know, I have five principles that I like to list. uh for how to stay sober or clean. One, you have to convince yourself that you cannot drink a drug successfully. Two, you have to stop doing things you're ashamed of. Three, you have to start doing things you're proud of. Four, you have to make a practice out of keeping your word. And five, you have to develop a moral and ethical code that makes sense to you. And doing things like getting involved to make a community better is a great way to hit all five of those points

Speaker 2: I think we're probably at time at this point, so thank you again very much.

Speaker 1: Thanks so much, everybody. Thank you.

Speaker 2: Small token of appreciation. Four , and I think that 's the one.