Keynote - The Fellowship of the Pony with Natalia Bidart

Okay, so um When Drew asked me to present a keynote, I was honored. I am still am, so thank you for for for trusting in me. Uh one of the things that I've been meaning to share with the community at some point and I didn't know how to or where to do that is to talk about the Django Fellowship. Many times I have said or I have heard people say, I am a Diango Fellow, what is a Diango Fellow? What is the fellowship? And that's a very fair question and a very good question. And is in fact a question that I also had when I applied to uh the Diango Fallujah. So in this uh presentation, I'm going to try to address what the Dango

Fellowship is, and I will try to share the importance of the fellowship. And hopefully by the end of this talk you will understand what it is and why it's important and what we can do as a community to uh keep supporting that program. Okay Uh I am Natalia. I'm also known as Nesita. I'm a Django Fellow. We are going to cover in a while what that is. Since uh April last year, I am a computer scientist. I am a fan of Python and Django all the way. There is a theme in this talk, which is about Lord of the Rings. It's not because I am a super fan of Florida of the Rings.

I'm going to explain a little bit about why I chose that team. Even though I I'm not a fan and I have watched the movies many years ago when they came out Uh by then I was way younger and perhaps naive. So Nessit is actually my elf name. So you will say I'm a super fan, but I am not, but I really liked uh the movies. Why did I choose that theme? Is because in Spanish the the so many words in English have like a direct translation to Spanish, which is my uh native uh language. But fellow, there is no direct direct translation, nor fellowship. So there are other words that you can use to uh to signify that meaning. uh some words that translate directly to member

or membership or colleague or uh yeah. And but fellow itself is not a word. So in general when you have in at least in in with the people that I that I usually hang with or in in the tech um environment that I that I that I work with uh in in in uh in in Argentina where where where I started my career fellow is not a word I use and fellowship is not a word I use but the only moment that we're we're familiar with the word fellowship is when Lord of the Ring came out because the first mob is called The Fellowship of the Ring. So Every time I see someone of my friends, my family, I am a younger fellow now. Oh, it's a lot of the doing

thing. No No, it's and I started explaining. So it but my sister friends anyone's like I am part of the Django Fellowship program. Oh you're a frodo? Sure. So uh when when I say okay how I'm going to present the Yang of Eloshi, well of course I need to use the Lord of the Ring as as The theme for for um so about this talk, how I'm going to present it is that I'm going to split it in four parts. The first part is an introduction. I will try to be subjective sorry, objective about describing the fellowship. Then I'm going to give an also

fairly objective description of the task that we do and then I'm going to go into the extremely subjective part which is uh the juicy bits, uh about my view and my experience and my uh definition of what I what is a fellow or what do we do and and then when I will have some call to actions to to to help with the with the program. This is Klember's slide. Thank you, Tim. Where are you? Yes. There's in Lord of the Ring there are a lot of characters. There is the good, the evil, the good characters, the bad characters. I don't mean to draw any parallelism between that. and young or a community the fellowship or anything so there is no sorrow sorrow there is no

uh one ring to roam them all Uh but I've been trying to use images from the movie and concepts in order to keep you hopefully engaged and eager to know what is next. And hopefully you will laugh as well. So, the Django Fellowship, what it is. So, if you go to Django Project. com, you will see that the DSF has built this amazing description of what the Django Fellowship Bro uh the fellowship program is. It's a project where paid contractors are engaged uh to manage some of the administrative and community management tasks of the Django project to support paid rapid development of Diango itself. It's a great definition. He will say that everything is great, you know, it's lovely, it's green, it's tidy

up, it's colorful. Oh yeah, this is amazing. This is the best program ever. Then in the same website you will have um this is in the donation page um you will have some a description of what uh a few more details about the fellowship problem. He will say that it has a major positive impact on on Django. He mentions the Django Fellows, but we don't know what it is. So the Django Fellows Try agent tickets, they review and merge PRs, they fix and and take care of release blockers and severe bugs. They also actually uh perform the releases and ensure that you have all those things available uh uh for you to use So what is that

young fellow? I mean, because that is not said anywhere in the site. And with the fellow world doesn't ring a bell to you, it's like What is it? So I from the site as well you can see that the simplest definition or I don't know is the a full or part-time contractors So the fellows, we are people that get paid by the Django Software Foundation using donation money. This is something that Jacob addressed and explained a little bit yesterday. The past fellows are Berker, Tim, Carlton and Marius. And the current fellows is Sarah, who is here. Um and myself. Okay, so everything is very uh objective I will say

so far. And then we have um so I still haven't said what the angle fellow is, so I say how do you explain this to you? So okay AI is so hype, everything, everyone is asking to claw the ChatGPT things. Let's ask Chat GPT what a younger fellow is And he says this, individuals who are highly experienced and contribute significantly to the Yango community, focusing on key areas. Like development support promoting the young framework. Sure. So you will say sorry I look like this, right? Can you see the resemblance?

Yeah. Uh okay. So then uh I try to gather another definition and I have Carlton here. Carlton was sort of not sort of was one of my mentors. I actually Carlton retired and I stepped in as a as a young fellow, so you can say I'm his continuation or something like that. So he is a mentor and many times he has said, you are in charge You run the show. I'm like I wow as a fellow we trust your judgment. So this this is me, you know. Yeah good Again, can you see the first time? I just changed my hair, but I just

it's like that. So I've I've when when Carlton said this, I felt so empowered, so powerful, you know And then, well, at some point Marius retired, Sarah joined and the continuation of Marius, let's say. And we have been Sarah has been a fellow for uh six months now, so we've been going through a lot of mentorship. and on boarding and explaining a lot of things that the fellows do. And we chat a lot of course, thankfully And Sarah has this amazing quality of being able to put words to feelings. And I feel very identified with the things that she said. So I wanted to bring this quote from her, which is amazing.

One is not a stomach pain. Sleeps night. Kind of one upon it Which is really how we feel so often. Um So this is also us, you know, because this is also a phrase from Sarah. I don't have the steam of I know what I'm doing. So often we feel like I have no idea what is going on. I have no idea what I'm doing This is just, you know, an an illustration. And these are two characters from the movie Marion Pippin who might seem sloppy, my seem like They mess things up. But they are really key to the success of the story of the books.

And I what I want to to to bring here and and and to to uh have you asking questions we have this uh dichotomy between how the fellows sometimes are seen or described and also how we feel and how we sometimes feel like we might be exploding fireworks in our in our faces Or we are about to uh get into that situation. Okay, but seriously, what is the diango, what is the diango fellow? Do you know by now? Who does by now? Okay. Yes. Jacob. Yes! A board member that knows. Okay. Sorry, I don't mean

that was a little bit sarcastic, but I didn't mean to I didn't expect you to raise your hands, you called me afar. So this list Is taken from the DSF call for applicants for a Young Fellow. This is the breakdown uh of the tasks that the Young Fellow should do So this gives a little bit more detail of uh about what a young fellow does which is. Uh in order of priority roughly We handle security reports. I'm going to provide some details in the breakdown part of the conversation of the presentation. We try edge tickets, we fix things , those that have high priority. We review and merge pull requests, we ensure timely releases, and we also have the responsibility of engage with the community and to try to answer questions, help contributors.

We also did have the obligation to produce some uh reports about what we do and then uh well basically we need to um Do all the unfund things that are that are very necessary to have a healthy open source project So from this list when uh when there was the the the call for applicants that I applied to, I read this list and I said I can do this. I mean, this is really a role of a lifetime. This is something that I feel I can do. I in my previous job where I was for a lot of years I try edge bugs, I engage with the community, I handle security reports, I do tons of reviews and merges, I done

tons of releases of taking code in from uh dev to stage into production environments. I advised people on how to do that, so I felt absolutely uh capable of um well I f I felt uh that I was a a good fit for the position. And I I want to say this that I really when I saw that call uh I I felt like that was my dream job You know, and I wanted to share with you, this is a quote from a cover uh letter when I said that when I apply. And I would say I'm honored to be a fellow right now, and I feel so lucky to have been chosen for the position. But at the same time, I had no idea what I was getting into. But yeah, I'm I'm still

I'm still happy to be one and I think I will keep being happy and and let's go into the uh second part of this talk, which is about the breakdown of the talks. Of the task, sorry. So I said that we handle security reports. You know, this is like guarding the real everything that is a threat to the Yango, which says stop and we're going to defend it. Specifically, we receive security reports at a given email address or via specific platforms. We the fellows uh are part of the security team, which is uh bigger than the two fellows, and we all receive these notifications. When we have a report, we have the obligation to analyze it and decide whether this is a valid report or not

If it is a valid report, we need to follow a very specific disclosure, fixing a disclosure process, which comes along with a security release, which is one of the most involved ones and stressful ones. This is one that we kind of sort of one of it. And um there are many details to this. I don't mean to go into details because I don't think that's the interesting part of what the Ding of Fellow does, but I I did wanted to share with you some notion of all the things that we need to do and take care of in order to eventually understand why some other things might feel like are are going a little bit too slow or why we need more fellows, which is something that was proposed yesterday in in Jacob's talk Then we also do you know the tidy up of the things. Uh

we have to be in charge of uh handling all the back reports and ticker reports. And this is very like sorting everything out and the logs and and and and and and the houses and have everything uh beautiful Uh particularly all the issues are reported in a specific uh platform which is called a track ticket system. And every time that there is a new ticket we need to uh as soon as possible try to triage it in order to know whether that's a severe uh um release blocking back or not we usually uh need to do some history digging or uh d searching on whether there are duplicate tickets uh for a given report and try to make sure that we have

uh clear information in how to continue with that ticket uh in order to uh have the community going into the ticket track system and doing things uh for the angle But as I said, the most important thing from this process, other than that responding to people when they create tickets, is to uh decide whether something is a release blocker. And that's something that I want to have another slide on in order to to express the importance of that. Release blockers are something that The fellows need to prioritize in fixing is right below security reports. Security reports is the first that we need to attend first and then the release blockers. Release blockers is something that

shall not pass. They n we need to they should have been there in the first place, ideally. So there is something that we need to take care uh with some sense of urgency. So a release blocker is something that as I said it would have prevented a release in the first place. It's something that the fellows might likely fix or chase someone to get fixed soon is something that needs to be ideally solved for the next point release that we're going to make And uh it always needs to be accompanied with uh regression test and regression revision and we have some sort of different format for the commit message in order to identify those in the

history. We also always provide a release note for them with with within coming release. The other uh when we are traveling tickets, as I said, they could be bugs and we need to decide whether that's a release blocker or not. The other type of tickets that we um handle are those which are asking for things. things. So you know we have a lot of people say it would be good if Diango will grow a garden with flowers. It would be beautiful if Diango would uh cook my meals. So we are like, ah yeah, sure, I would love to do that for me as well. But we have a process to do that. And this is where the fellows come in and we need to ask them uh

to follow a specific documented procedure which is about requesting new features which involves the community. Basically the angle is community driven. There is no BDFL that is dictating what to do. So uh the changes, whether we incorporate the cookie, the lunch making or not, is something that the community will decide. trying to make the best of our judgment and committing to supporting and and and and and um maintaining that Larger features might require a specific Django enhancement proposal, which is a document very similar to the Python enhancement proposals. or the features might require to first provide a third-party app as a proof of concept of the feature.

But yeah, it varies. Then the other task that we have as an obligation of as a responsibility is to review a manage pull request. you know and this is something that while not the top of the priorities is very important because The fact that we rely on the git history of Triangle in order to do reviews of existing features or existing design decisions or we find uh we try to debug why something is failing and we go to see what changes happen in the Django repository. We

need to ensure that whatever goes into the angle new so whatever new is going into the angle sorry needs to be something that is follows all the all the right procedures and that will then in the future allows the fellows and whoever else is debugging to understand what happened at that moment in time So for any code change, we require Apple request in in the GitHub project And there is uh anyone can can can uh propose a PR but there is only a reduced team of triage um reviewers that are allowed well that have like a more firm word of whether that is approved or not

and always the fellows will give like a second pass. To NEPR in order to assure that follows a given set of requirements. The fellows are members of the review and trial team and also members of the merger team, which is a separated team. The mergers are the only ones that can actually put something into the Django main branch. Django has, because of what I said about the importance of the git history of the repo, Django has high standards. for what can go in. And the fellows are the one that ensures that that standard, that those requirements are met. Specifically, we need to go through a lot of checks when we review the PRs, which can

often lead um lead to A long iteration cycle of providing feedback to the um authors and then processing that feedback. And we always need to I mean a review is not something that we do quickly because we need to pay attention to a lot of details. We have uh process checks. whether there is a ticket, how um uh the solution is the one that was described, was agreed with the community. We have a lot of style checks in terms of how the Python code is written, how the docs is read, how the comments are written, how the release notes are present or not, and which verbs are are used. There is a consistency across the Django

Git history which is amazing. and we are in charge of ensuring that that continues that way. Then there are also all other checks um that we also need to uh ensure. So once all of these things are progressing, so we have security reports and potential fixes, we have tickets about release blockers or regular bugs and there's someone fixing those. We also have PRs that have been reviewed and merged. We are the time that we need to share this with the people using Django because I don't think the majority of you uses Django directly from the main repo That would be a little bit uh risky, I will say. Well, not risky because the young is super stable, but I I wouldn't recommend to do that on on On a production uh service.

So we really need to send this and make this available to the rest of the people using Django as a way of doing a release. Releases are something you can define as three types of releases. We have uh the releases that we do every month, which are called the batch releases, that might also be a security release. uh if there was a security issue reported and dry edge and fixed. For security reports that might be critical, which hasn't happened while uh I was a fellow, we may have like an extra release, a specific security release. But that recently hasn't been the case because Siango is quite stable and secure. And then we have the feature releases, which are the

5. 0, 5. 1, 5. 2, which happens every eight months. Okay, another task that the fellows do is uh this with engaging with the community and enabling the community to do things. The fellows we are one and a half in that Sarah is a full-time fellow. I am a part-time fellow. We one and a half fellow Things will not progress. We absolutely need and rely and count on the community doing things and helping and proposing things. For that we have the task of allowing things to occur within the community. And that

sometimes means um uh keeping an eye on on the forums, ensuring that everyone is the everyone is talking to the right Person stands and say, well, someone might request something in a specific area. We might tag more people into that post in order to raise awareness, or we might ping someone on the side to say someone is asking about this. We might also welcome uh new contributors. We might try if we have any time left, try to mentor. Um there are of course um mentorship initiatives which I'm sure you're aware because of the different talks and there will be a panel this afternoon about uh mentorship which is very important as well We try to collaborate with that as much as we can, at the very least, being present and available for doing the reviews of the mentees

being proposing things for the first time. We are uh present and reading uh the mainly list about the Angle Bell Development, the forum post, and we are also on the Discord public but unoffi unofficial server and we're also on the Slack which is not public, sort of a semi-private server. And well, we, as I said, uh we participate in various um mentorship programs. And lastly, The other obligation that we do that we have is to provide reports to you all because we're actually being paid with your money. all the donors' money. So we need to uh provide some accountability and visibility of what we do

and how is our time spent So we have to write a weekly report in a public place. Right now Sarah and I have chosen to do that in the Django Forum. and we describe what we do what we did. We describe the tickets that we target and the resolution. We describe the PRs that we review. We describe w what we have produced, that might be a release blocker bug or uh a small fix or or something that was not ch uh an improvement in the documentation or something that was needed. And um we also need to uh every day we need to keep track of the time that we spend doing things because we are hourly contractors, so we also need to produce a monthly invoice for the DC DSF to pay us. So okay, so that was the first

half of the talk, and hopefully this was all despite the half my own view of things and and and tone for talking about something. This is uh the most objective description that I can build uh about what a young old fellow does. I'm guessing that by now you are sort of getting the sense of the responsibilities that we have. the priorities that we have which is very important because sometimes I I know that a lot of people in the community feel that we are slow, we are not paying attention to them And it's just because we have all the things that we do in the security reports, for example, those are not visible. You will never see them unless you're on the security team. And those take a considerable t uh chunk of our time and we have that is our top uh the num number one priority.

So let's go now to the juicy bits of my talk, how I call them. This is what I call the challenges and the trioms that I we have had as a fellow. Sometimes I may use the plural because I don't wanna leave s other fellow uh outside, but some views and feelings might be my own, so I'm not necessarily sure by by the other fellow. And um so I I wanna first think about I want us all to think about Django. How old it is, how it started, this is something that Frank is going to share with us right before lunch, the history of the angle. the age of the angle, how it evolved.

So in in the movie there is Gandalf, which is a uh uh uh the best wizard ever, but originally was the grey which is um uh one stage of of of wizardry and then uh uh uh because of some battle it seems to be uh gone and then he reappears it's as Gandalf the Y, you know, it's like this. Oh sorry, I didn't mean oh yeah, that's what it's okay, sorry. It reappears as the as Gandalf the Y. As you can see there's something very shiny and like it gives you peace and it gives you you know a sense of comfort and security. And in a way I see Diango uh my view, and this is really my personal view, and my might might relate to to my work experience and and uh

work stuff that how how that happened. At some point I thought that the angle was like was great, had like you know the the this this huge spike in usage and and and momentum and then it sort of fade away, at least from my view And then recently, well recently the last five years, I'm not sure I I can put a time frame to it, it felt like it was reborn and it was reborn like more solid, more uh powerful, more established. And I have listed as uh a set of adjectives there to describe the angle which I'm convinced that the angle qualifies to be called foundational and mature, is powerful and scalable, reliable and secure.

It's also resilient and robust. And it's also, of course, and has battery included. And we make a lot of effort in order to ensure an easy and good and painless, hopefully, upgrade path. Those are qualities that is anyone objecting to any of those qualities? I'm happy to talk. Well, I'm putting you on the spot. I don't mean to do that, but you you can talk to me about whether you you disagree High know those qualities in a single open source project, which is a web framework. I think it's it's something that we I will like us To stop for a moment and contemplate that. Think about that. Think about

Open source software, all the challenges that are around that, keeping it going, keeping it current, keeping it secure, keeping it bug free ish. Um it 's it's it's something that is worth pausing, thinking about it. And giving it the importance that it has and also how Django can remain that way. I mean, how how does that happen? It's not matching, you know, because despite Gandalf is a wizard, As far as I know, we don't have any wizard within the Angle community. Or if you do, please please let me know because I have some requests. But So that's that's work.

Keeping it that way, keeping it mature, keeping it uh resilient, keeping it secure, keeping it stable, is work and it's a lot of work. And that work is done by the community, but is I would say, and this feel like I'm I'm just putting me on me on a pedestal, but that's not really the case. And it's the fellow that ensure that all the work that is done is done in a way that we can uh uh keep describing the angle with all those nice qualities. So this is something that we need to continue. This is something that we wanted to to to remain that way. Django needs to remain mature needs to remain stable, needs to remain secure, needs to remain stable.

So in order for that to happen, we have the fellows This is my view again, no. We have this weight on our shoulders that this magnificency of the angle keeps that way and and it 's it's it's not a trivial burden to have because we feel like Every time we look at a PR, it's like this is a tiny PR, this is a small PR, it's a small code change, or it's a small optimization, it will be fine. But we cannot do that. We cannot say that we cannot have the luxury to think that we always need to think this might break something. This will break something out there. There might be a project out there in the field

doing this very niche. use case having this very niche use case of something. So we always need to think about the implications to to some dark corners of the web of how a tiny change or a big change might reverberate, might have a butterfly effect to all the a lot of the angles that are out there. I want you to think that How I I don't have a number. I know that. Thibaut presented some numbers yesterday regarding the the uh carbon emissions of the Diango services. I don't know how many Django service services out are out there, but I know that there are a lot.

And there are a lot are are um being used to fulfill businesses, to provide, you know, are the best layer uh for businesses model for successful companies. So Or or even not it besides successful and medical companies. So I don't know. I sometimes I have thought, well if we ch if we break chang uh the angle, sorry, if we break the angle uh is someone risking their life or their health or I I don't know. I mean that's it's something that when you stop and think about it, you think, wow, this can a small thing have a huge impact. And so this is how sometimes I think of the fellow, you know.

These are the pillars of the king in the movie, and these are representing something that guards a kingdom. you can say we we sort of guard uh the angle in a way. And I'm not saying this just to uh say oh we're great, we are amazing. This is because it's huge and it's a huge responsibility and it's an honor to to be trusted with that responsibility as well but it 's also uh non-trivial to to um be that and to f to be able to feel like a rock uh you know all the time it's it's tough. So again, uh we all this these things that I've been trying to share with you and try to share it with the most

uh emotional honesty that I can. I sometimes I know that Carlton described the fellows as janitors, which yes, we do janitor tasks, but I also see us as custodians. We are curators. We are facilitators of the community. We are housekeepers. We do a lot of housekeeping. We also are safeguards and and well orchestrators in that we uh uh have a lot of moving parts that we need to try to make sense of and have uh all those parts working together well and in symptom. We uh I think that we uh need to be general generalist engineers. We need to uh

understand a little bit of everything. Not in well ideally in depth, but there is no way to know everything, you know, in depth. So we need to be while being systematic and being able to prioritize our own work and understand how what we're going to do next and understand um understand or try to decide what is the best use of our time. We also need to have a lot of many hats, you know, because When you have a a a ticket report, it might be about the URM, it might be about a UI, an accessibility issue, an UX issue. It might be I don't know something about uh something that is not properly said in the documentation. So we also need to have well for me it's more difficult because this

uh English is not my native uh language. I I need to well understand whether the the change makes sense is uh better in English or is not or is better say the words that is that is said. So we need to have all those These different rules or and and all of a sudden to start to grow in all that knowledge and a little bit of SQL and HTTP and then we also need to know JavaScript because the admin has some and CSS like Why? Yes, we also need to to to know that. And I mean this is not like a negative thing, no? This is great because all of a sudden I'm pushing myself to learn all of these things and in in every time that I have a a ticket report, try to understand a little bit more about something that is related to the the ticket report.

So a little bit more of JavaScript, a little more of the C CSS, a little bit more of uh the ORM or how a specific uh database backend works and and all that. But you can see that we sort of shuffle things around and and we need to morph, I will say, or or change hat very often. So in a way, uh we sometimes have sort of like uh, you know, multiple personalities because Uh on the one hand, we need to be these enablers and welcoming people, you know, saying yes, come to the community, come work, yes Contribute to the angle. The community is great, which is independently of what I'm going to say next. But at the same time, we need to be these gods, you know, and say no. This now, this this this does not below to the angle, this is not secure, this is not

resolution, this doesn't have this, this is not well documented So I think that sometimes people, the community see us like sort of a smeagal and golem mix and and and and yeah. I think that's accurate. And then something that I I uh uh a very strong struggle that I have, Natalia, the younger fellow It's this decision making process and this prioritation process that we need to Constantly uh wonder about what to do next, not because there is no clarity on what to do next, because there is so much to do next

that I all the time I feel like I have the ring and I'm not sure whether to throw it or to keep it to myself because you know there is appealing in in in in in in both uh uh actions. So uh and the the constant need of prioritization, it's really something that is d the h the the biggest burden, at least uh to me And um I have all these questions that I would like to talk to someone. Right now I I well I of course talk to Sarah and that helps enormously. But I have this how I mean with reviews, what do you do? Do you grab the oldest one and that contributor might be already Mia M AI or or disengage or more, uh but it's the oldest one, is the one that has been waiting the longer.

Or do we want the most recent one where the contributors are engaged, are energetic, and they they want to do more. So if you provide feedback soon, early, they will do more. I I don't have that answer. So if you have ideas, I I'm I'm happy to hear them. Then also we have um you know the the PRs and and I said that we the importance of how a patch, uh a given a given revision is to be tidied up, the the comments, the length of the lines, the punctuation, the verbs. how pedantic uh we need to be because there are small things, small perhaps grammatical, not even errors, things that you might say differently Do we correct those in in the light of uh having this miss in Tariq history that Gandalf can read in the future and understand

that the ring that he found is the ring? Or do we just make allowances and and and in order to ensure that the the people uh contributing, the person contributing Does not feel that you're doing everything wrong because that's how I felt when I started doing PRs. While being a fellow, I started doing PRs contributing to Yango and I was like the reviews were you're doing everything wrong. Let me rewrite everything for you because this is wrong, you 're missing things. I don't know. I don't have that answer. And well Of course, this translates as well in in a fair sense of frustration from the contributors. You know, they get frustrated and they sort of s some more than others pressure us into

do things. I understand why they they they end up in that place. But it's hard to deal with that. And in a way, you know, we are this coach a layer, uh coach a layer because we are paid and I understand that, but uh things that do not have like a resolution or a clear path forward, we are asked what to do with that. And I'm like, no idea. I don't know uh can I do this or uh how is this resolve or uh all those sort of things. So um like uh Pause here. Uh there is a a current initiative by Jacob in order to grow the fellowship working group has been created and then that needs a little bit more uh structure

and and have people defined to be part of that with specific roles that will certainly help in help me at the very least into uh resolving or having someone to talk to about all these things. So I I see that's a very positive thing and I'm looking forward for that to be uh implemented or released. I'm not sure what's the word. But yeah It's not not everything is sis that's bad. Okay, so the last part of the of the call of the talk. Sorry, I have a few minutes Slept which is uh we need help. Yes, we have been saying this like the four the four whole three days. How you can help Well um first of all I want to talk about the community and why I chose the title. I already say why I chose the the theme of the

um of the of the presentation, but I didn't say uh something that I've I chose this picture to represent w how I see the Django community. Leaving aside the Perhaps questionable lack of gender variety in that image because we don't really know how the characters identify themselves. But uh there is a uh a diverse uh crowd there because there are many races, there are very different capabilities and knowledge and uh goals as well that at some point get They get together for a specific mission with a specific goal and they succeed in doing that. So this is how I see the Angle community. We are very different, different races, different ages, different backgrounds, different strengths.

And we I have seen the Django community being able to get together towards a common goal, which is, you know, having Django growing. and being successful at that. So in a way I mean this is called in the movie the Fellowship of the Ring, but this is the Fellowship of the Pony because we are the Fellowship Pony. We are the people that get together and work very hard, but if you can see how hard they work, it's like they went through some stuff in order to uh fulfill uh a common goal. Um so the community, uh I see the community as an amazing place. The community is a safe place. the their key to the angle growing, the angle being what it is today. I don't think the fellows have any um

uh key part in that the key part is keeping everything tidy, right? But but the actually growing, the actually Substantial contributions to the Angle are being done by the community, which are s like these orchestrators to to ensure that that 's goes in into the right place. The community is very friendly, it's very welcoming. I have felt welcome from the first moment I was in a way an outsider because I applied for a fellow, not having not been contributing to the Angle in the past. So I can see now, after being a fellow year and a half, how that might have been like a very awkward I mean someone that hasn't been participated in any community discussions in any community forum With without producing any Django PR of the Southern Sadiango Fellow, I can see how that was a

shock to many people And yet I I felt extremely welcome by everyone. So I'm very, very, very, very thankful for that. And you know, the Community is this place where I I feel safe and I 'm hoping that you all feel safe as well. is a place where um uh you can count on other people and you can rely on other people and and and you can be honest. I I don't know this, I don't know how to do that, um I'm um can you help me? And um I'm don't have the energy to work on this right now. I need to pause it and and I have seen messages like this and I have seen supportive responses uh to that. So I think that's worth mentioning in in a slide.

I'm a little bit uh uh beh um over time I'm I will try to wrap up quickly Um I have a few things about things that we can improve, which is about onboarding processes. I see a lot of disconnect between the ticket track system and where we sold uh where we host the code I'm not saying that we need to sell or sold to Microsoft and be uh completely on GitHub. I'm not saying that. I do think that the disconnect between the two systems is a huge issue, especially for new contributors. So I think that we need to do something uh with that. I'm not sure why, but I would like to discuss. And then we have for the fellows specifically, we have uh a notoriously lack of automation for things that could be automated and I think that that will make our life easier

since that we will have a little bit more time to do other things that cannot be automated. And then we have this thing which is called the consensus process for accepting a new feature. which I will describe like as as a mess. I I don't understand it still and I don't think it's working, but it has been a few conversations in the forum about it. So if you are interested you can go to the forum and find them and perhaps uh share your opinion. Well, and as I said, the Fellowship Working Group has been started. I would like to see that progressing hopefully quick here. But yeah, I know that everyone do uh collaborate when they can So what you can do, of course, you can contribute to the project, do triaging, do reviews of PR, write code, red docs.

Help us build automation. If that's something that you are familiar with and you are um skilled with, please uh help us. And you can also contribute to the community by just answering new users or engaging and sharing your opinion or your view. uh helping decide whether something is good for Django or not. This is really I I chose this image for this live because the the prancing pony is an inn in the movie where the hobbies go to feel safe So this is the message that I want to convey to you all, which is you can feel safe in the community. You can go and be part of independently of your background or your uh seniority in Tango or in Life or whatever, you can go there and and and above all you can also um join the working groups and there will be uh very soon a call for

new board members and a little bit after that a call for new steering console members. So please pay attention to those and nominate yourself if if if you feel like you want to to help with with the community. And then the other ask that I have, the other cultural action, is for uh in a way the DSF board, which is about I feel like I need a clearer process to make decisions myself and the community. There are a lot of things that are undecided and unresolved and those are not being r resolved in any way. And we have a lot of trail of things that are hanging there, just unresolved. And I really need that we need a decision-making body What is that?

How does that look like? I don't know. I would love to be part of that conversation, but I think that something needs to happen. Whether that is the an engineer director or um sorry, executive director or a working group, I don't know. But uh this I think this is something that we really need to work with. And last, donate, please. Yes. Jacob said all about it. Also, please be mindful of the PyCharm campaign that we currently have. As it was already mentioned, if you buy Charma and PyCharm, it will be an discounted price and all that is gained from that it will go to the DSF directly. So the final slide and Lord of the Dring is a fairy tale in a way because it has a happy ending and I'm sorry if I'm spoiling that

to you. It has an ending, you know? It has like a story and it has an ending and it's a good one. And what I want to emphasize here is that Django is a fairy tale But I don't see the ending because I it's not happening anytime soon. It's still current. This is still going on. So we have our fairy tale which is ongoing. So I think that we uh I think I want us to embrace that and to uh enjoy it and and and and and and understand that we can we are part of that fairy tale and that we are a key part of of key characters in in in in that and and and enjoy it and Keep doing what we do. Thank you.