Come for the Language, Stay for the Community

please welcome and now I mean she's going to talk about the community so please and given

mm the graph OK good morning

I and I know that at

least I find is the conference goes on it gets harder and harder to get up from morning keynote that's my confession uh so I appreciate seeing you all here I and yet not ah I may only see the eyes this year is my 2nd year on the Python Software Foundation board and it's the 2nd year that I have been devised a

vice-chair of the PSL so but I want to talk today a little bit about community but before I go any further I should say there is

a Google link to the slides so you can have a look at those as usual they contain very very little real information there are some links to the PSF site that you might want to i in the speaker note there is an

occasional smart remark but that's about it but in case you want those that will be showing up on

all the slides so talking about community these days strikes me as as a bit of a challenge we seem to be in hard times for community mean it's

certainly there are people protesting in the EU there are people protesting in the UK back in the US there are people who seem to be against almost everything involved with community if you've been listening political news from there so it in some ways this is it seems like the idea of community is almost undeceive and yet as I've talked to people these days it seems to me that this is probably the most important thing to most people here I certainly know it it's important to me what is the group of people that I'm going to be working with like but

then if you think about it none of what we do in terms of writing software in terms of open source software in terms of the pipeline ecosystem none of this would be

possible without community and so I think this is kind of my 1st my 1st point here is that people make a distinction between technical and community work I think that's a false distinction without the community work the technical work cannot exist community work is technical work in some ways you can actually affect more people by the community work then you can buy the technical work so the title

of this talk comes from something that was said high kind 2014 in Montreal in the opening remarks of Brecht's Cannon who is 1 of the of Python core developers

I got to to kick off the conference and he took advantage of of the platform to say something that

you wanted to say that it was something that resonated with a lot of us I think I know what he said was I don't know about the rest of you I came from the language but I stayed for the community and that really is sort of the the case with me and that's what I want to talk about a little bit today there but

before I do that I'm going to make a confession it's not like I've never made a personal confession to this audience is at the and out

that confession is I am actually quite quite old

laughing you don't believe me I n and m and normally don't talk about this but in fact In the I 11 days I

will turn 60 OK that's 6 I have not disclose that in

public before that was the 1 I told you that no I just didn't want you sitting there working out the map as I go through this next bit alright I was trying to save you because you're going to be the what she started her career at age 6 this doesn't work for us so that's that's that's

where I gets up to give you a little background I actually had been working

with but computing in some form or another I for Prior for not quite 20 years before I learned about Python so

I actually started back in the old days the 1st machine that I ever interacted with was the Univac 1108 it was 1 of these things that was down in the bowels of a building at the university I never saw it personally out we had line in the generators

but it's it's kind of weird to even think about this but basically you could do a screen at a time and then saving it would send it to the server or you could do a line of text at a time saving it would go to the server but if you wanted to do the there were these weird things called macros wow where you could actually go

ahead and do multiple things at once of a line of text I'll confess I was not actually a computer science person as some of you may know I actually was was working on a phd in classical literature at the time of this but I think sort of as a start they actually had some of us from the humanities department but into work on

a dissertations and use the computer to actually format the dissertation and everything itself that was I got my start there is this wonderful device I think there were only 2 of them on campus of the University was constant that seems to me at the end was amazing it was called the laser printer it was really great so that was how I actually printed up my dissertation after that but I I learned things on the apple 2 whose so these were very big in the States the apple 2 e the apple to see that for a couple of years I was actually teaching in school in Athens Greece so I had an apple to see with the Greek character wrong but in in the heat it would get flaky and occasionally switch back and forth between Greek and Roman character sets which is kind of interesting I learned basic island 65 or to assemble at you still have the published printed out 400 page listing of the assembly or the

apple to see you wrong OK you could poke around it and find easter eggs and all of that sadly I got rid of it I think about 15 years ago I think it might actually be a curiosity that I eventually Pascal CD-based 3 C +

+ Visual Basic DelFly yes I suffered through the Windows 9 x there are and I even did job I even was faced with the the possibility of teaching job of because by that time again I've I've I've mentioned this before I was the technology director and main computer teacher at a private school and we have a policy that all students had to learn how to write a program before they graduated all right so I was faced with the possibility of teaching job to every 14 and 15 year old in the school this was a frightening frightening time for me so as

it happens and this was about 15 years ago there was a on that Linux World in San but which was I think Linux world is

still going on but it's a much different thing now but then it was in in some ways I guess kind of like what what up icon is today there were there were thousands of people there but everyone was an open-source enthusiastic and this guy and never heard of before named Gino van Rossum was there and he was doing a day-long tutorial in this language of his that not

many people knew about but it was being touted is this interesting kind of odd little language are called Python so I went to this tutorial all day long and I high recall

asking some gainfully stupid questions because I was coming at this as a C programmer so that there were a lot of surprises for me at the time segments strings renewable I can't just stick a character and where I want this does this seem right but I found actually but that day that that this was a very there was a very powerful moment for me in fact as I was flying back from San Francisco on the plane I really wrote our school curriculum so that I could teach those 14 and 15 year olds Python rather than on job but and that was actually pretty easy to do but I like the

fact that it was such a readable language I like the fact that it could do a lot of things I in fact the summer after that I started writing a student information system

tracking all of our students records and things like that but using it was so and maybe you haven't heard of soap some of the old-timers yes some of the old-timers here have which we talked about it the other

nite that in in some ways a lot of what we're doing on the net today wouldn't be here if it weren't for the whole so ecosystem but but so I wrote an application in the soap to which I started in 2002 last fall the school finally retired OK so it ran for 14 years even better I had been gone for 4 and a half years before they retired it so it had to have run essentially unmaintained for 4 years but so as they say this

is result of a very a very cool language it was something that that really with a powerful thing so

again I would agree with Brett that I came for the language this was what actually really what got me in the I and I would say that even though I started with Python 2 . 1 and I'm now on Python 3 . 5 but there is still of the language in fact I will admit that but the only religious text I have is the Zen of Python and you

will find me muttering to myself in various situations you know such beautiful is better than ugly as you as simple as better than home work error shouldn't pass silently unless explicitly I haven't quite work more namespaces into my personal life yet but that I am working on OK so

so that was in fact a very a very powerful thing for me and it's still lives however I think that was not the only thing I mean it's been 15 years since I've been working on Python in that time a lot of languages have come and gone I n you hear a lot

of things so that I people tell me I you know you must learn closure you must learn scholar you must learn review must learn this and that and for while I was actually wondering you know what what what language is going to come along and actually make me move away from but there was something else going on I think that is the reason that I was never really tempted by a lot of this language some part of that is the community so in a the guy

who was working for me discovered that they were announcing this 1st Conference for the Python community no there had been pipeline conferences before but they were put on up by

a professional conference company they expensive they were not they were not a community-based conference but for the 1st time in 2003 there were going to put on this thing called high cost and the the tickets for relatively cheap but it was a small conference in Washington DC if you could get the beginning we put in a talk proposal and much to our amazement we were accepted and we went there we found that it was really a very nice an open community while we were there representing a private school we were at a software house we were engineers and yet God the

developers ruling to talk to the people from education we met other people in education out we had up open spaces of back in those days they were called box birds of a feather sessions and usually the in the evening so you

gotta talks all day and then we would get around and spend a lot Freud's part of the evening but talking about Python in education or the latest new thing and if you

remember the of One Laptop Per Child X 0 when that 1st came out actually months before it was released we had about 4 we spent the evening passing around and playing with 1 of the prototypes so it will use just just a lot of fun I end up having them eventually there were other things that that we got involved with I want asked the Steve Holden was the chair the Python Software Foundation what I could do to help out and he said well we need a poster session of my god I had never been to a poster session but but I suggested 1 we put 1 together and and I've been

sort of spreading the word about poster sessions ever since so we we in other words the whole high con experience was something that was as this 1 is

a great way to come together as a community and I like that a lot so I spoke a lot about teaching in education because I was in education at the time and I was eventually the elected as a Fellow of the PSNR so what I'm trying to say with all of this

is that over the years the language has been a powerful thing for me but I would have to agree that the experiences I've had as a part of the community working on kinds working in other things has been probably more powerful and that led me

particularly since I was going to be

talking about it let me to think a little bit about what it is that makes a a a a a the pipeline community but it good to community in that way what is what is it about the Python and I came up with a couple of things so for 1 thing this is a hard 1 to

define and I'm not sure I'm totally happy with this With this definition but but it's it's always been and inclusive plates and by that I mean a few things but certainly you know as we have gone on and and and as we have advanced we have worked on this and we have improved the but from the very beginning i it had 3 qualities that I think a pretty important 1st of all it was see it was it was not a place where even in the early days but you were likely to be little old or

attacked or something like that because you didn't know something and and again my experiences there go all the way back to to 2001 and asking you to some really really stupid questions from the audience is we're having these tutorials and him answering

quite patiently but it was it was respectful in that everyone was not certain treated with respect and it was also all been in that you could and and this is something

that that still happens at a pipeline at a pipeline conference at any of these events you could go up to any of these people who are you know just the gods of the language and talk to them and they would talk to you back I assume so this also I think is a good thing and you know if you do not have these qualities if you feel threatened if you don't feel respected if you're unable to talk to people it's very hard to engage with the community so the

2nd thing now that's

that's the 1st part of that at least has people come to your community but I'm not sure that it keeps them in the 2nd part the part that I think you need in order to keep people in the community I is the fact that

contributions are welcome and it doesn't matter if you're new where you've been around for a while making meaningful contributions is something that we as a community encourage people to do even if they are you even if they are perhaps not part of some special group this is a hard thing for communities like ours to do it always is because it is always are not always but it's quite often much easier rather than in a bowling somebody to help it is quite often easier to just do it yourself even though you have a lot of things to do and that's whether or

not your accord envelop a project or organizing an event or whatever it is so it is not always easy to take the the time to

enable people to to contribute but in general I would say we have always done a good job with this as well of my 1st example of this

was and I think it's about about 10 years now I gave a talk at at a on I was using the the Turtle module at the time to do some teaching and at the time the Turtle module was just really kind of at a proof of concept demo in all sorts of things that need really irritating to use for teaching and so I mentioned in the course of my talk about these things are really irritating and they should be fixed they're not that hard and after the talk are a heading here who is is was 1 of the core developers came up and you know it wasn't a confrontation there wasn't a all put your code where your mouth is or anything like that it was very polite like 1 of those are good observations if you

put together a patch will try to get and i'd like they gathered some other people from education we put together a patch by it when it it was it was for like a glorious year my contribution to to the Python code base then of course sadly the next

version of Python the replaced with regulators extra library whole things gone but I'm there I'm there the list and so it was but it since the attitude there that rather than being shot down rather than you know being turned away I was I was gently encouraged to make a contribution out when you let people when you encourage people to make contributions that is when the community becomes there's that is 1 of the the things that I think gets people to stay

and of course I'm not just sort of talking about this in theory in fact I've kind of put the Python community to the test over the years I had no need to dwell on it but I have I am I am as a tell people in many ways a living ATP test OK

I I have seen the Python community from both the male and female point of view I I I have then no not not had the good grace to keep quiet about it but I had talked about it

but I have seen the Python community from the US community had seen from the point of view the UK community from both sides of the Atlantic but back and forth and I think that the things that I'm saying have been kind of amazingly have been uniformly true or cross that out of all of the communities that I have known as I have made these changes in my life the Python community has stayed 1 of the places where you are safe you are respected you are able to talk to people where your contribution is always welcome and in fact and part of

this is led me to to understand but what I'm talking about the Python community

what what I'm talking about is in fact a global community and and this also was 1 of the things I learned that the 1st I think it was the 1st we grew to that I was in London someone from the Python community that I only ever met in on Twitter that took me out to have a drink and a and a welcome to to London meal and things like that so that I I I sort of with know somebody imposters are in fact by the time I had moved to the UK was solidly already recruited me that help them do something up I cut UK to to do a

presentation I already knew the the about 1 of the organizers of pi ladies there so you know and it's not just in North America and Europe but you know that that's where historically there have been more people doing quite funny but I you know it's very exciting these days that there is is a lot of growth that the same community spirit is growing rapidly all over the world so I know that you know in South America and Central America there are groups springing up in developing all the time I know that we've got on a sizable group from Brazil here uh and in Africa you heard may have her Daniela to do a lightning talk about a Python Namibia I also because I promised I I also have to talk about my friends in Nigeria who did not have the community at all at the beginning of this year at the beginning of 2016 they have now done 4 or 5 Django girls with at least 1 more in the works they're getting themselves registered as a non-profit they're going to see if they can figure out a way to have a high kind Nigeria but they they are organizing an after school program that they're going to be teaching some people are just a tremendous explosion of this kind of community spirit and and the same is true in in Asia I in Australia New Zealand all around the world and and even as as we mentioned here that some of things were running Python involuntary antartica which the continent I don't usually mention too much but I was so all of this we've got this sort of community

and it's it's got so much going on and so there there there are a lot of these things mailing lists IOC's slack diagram meetups but high ladies GenGO girls there sprints they're a pie kinds I was trying to kill it up the number of icons and

I don't think you can actually do an accurate count on the pipeline that word about website there are 30 picons listed I know this is wrong because off the top of my head without thinking about it much at all I could come up with at least 5 more that were listed

so my guess is maybe you 30 there's there's maybe there's 14 maybe there's 15 so I know that love last fall out Larry Hastings I joked about whether or not you could do up icon every month of the year I think it's probably almost possible now to do up icon every week of the year as this would be a great challenge for somebody you have a lot of time to travel again so there's a lot of

things going on and and who who is behind all of this whose organizing all of this well but you me all of these people around the

world are doing this organization and of course there's a little bit of help from the and I wanted to to spend a little bit of time here I started feeling you in on what the PSF does what role the PSF plays in in the community the

mission in fact that the PSF it but both to promote protect and advance the Python programming language but it's also to support and facilitate but the growth of a diverse and international community of Python programmers In other words exactly what I have

been talking about and it does that but by dealing

with 3 things and I'm just gonna go through these kind of briefly because I think some people don't know what the point PSF does and what it doesn't do so it's

got 3 areas that it works in really it's got money it's got a intellectual property it's got of membership and it does do some things with money I'm intellectual-property property somebody needs to hold all of the licenses for this

entire thing that is by far alright and and in fact that is the PSL that is is 1 of its key roles and

in fact as as a member of the Board from time to time we will get these e-mails from corporate lawyers saying 0 dear PSL we're very interested in using your software pipeline and it's usually something like 2 . 6 . 5 or something like that up please send us you know the

licensing agreement so that we can sign this and you software as like what we are the people to ask and we then have to go back and explain no you really don't understand how they do agree that works out but

that's the PSF that deals with things like that but we also hold the trademark so in fact if you

wanna use the q logo I've got down on the bottom of my my slides that belongs to the PSF reuse it

just as a symbol for pipelines and as I've done here that's OK if you're going to put it on something that you're going to sell like a teacher I you really should check with the PSF integrated change it at all you really should check with the PSF because if you do things to the trademark we have to protect that if we don't protect it we lose our control of it over so this is something that the PSF the I we have

members and and this is kind of a part of my commercial here we change the way that we do members of a few years and it seems to lose some of us that we have been telling people accept that it seems that we also have

a very good at getting the word out so anyone in this room can

become a basic a non-voting member of the PSF although that you must do is go to python . org there's a little membership link at the top you click on that you create a username password create an account and you are a non-voting basic member of the PSF and it would be

very helpful for that this is a way you can make it out formally declare your membership it helps us have an idea of who is

you know the Python community around the world and if you do that and you can do it today if you do that and see me I would give you a cute little sticker that says European self number or just finding got

themselves but the so so you you can you can declare that but they're supporting members

discuss about 100 dollars a year 99 dollars a year where you if by a by giving that donations you are a voting member of the PSF so that you can vote

for board members and any other things that come up for election to the PSF membership ah I have known people who sort of told me you know hi work with Python it it helps me make a good living I feel that I should do this as a way to give back to the Python community so you can do that you

can be a contributing managing member In this case I mean how many of you here just out of curiosity but how many of you here organized

something in the Python community help organize whatever

OK that looks like other out of the on maybe I don't know there there are quite a number of hands if you

spend more than 5 hours 5 hours a month or more working on activity on it on a community activity on the up Bureau Python whatever it might be but you can become a voting member of the PSF OK if you spend that 5 hours or more working on software that is released in the Python so not just CRPs pipeline but you have a library or an application or something that has been released and that the internet as open source that people are using you can also self-declared that on a form and the of voting member of the python software which I know that we do

not have even a tiny fraction of the people who should be voting members as voting

members so once you become that that the basic member and I give you sticker I'm probably going to ask you some and he did you do enough work here you

should go be a voting member because we want to be voting members but we also have the of some Python software working groups to form a working group then you're managing member and we have we haven't done it for a while but we need to to

to talk about doing this again some people get elected then as Fellows basically the membership votes on people who were elected as fellows there are also of them so that's where they're going on but more important let's talk about so the PSF actually does have a fair amount of of of financial obligations money coming in many going out donations you may have over the course

of the past couple days not been approached by Harry who would let you do not get a massage if you gave him money OK I and those that sort of donations of the PSF get something like 50 thousand dollars a year in donations like that what we have companies that give us of money as sponsors by this middle little change there it used to be that these companies were sponsor members and they had votes but it turned out that for 1 thing they didn't really care that much about the voting and for another thing it was really kind of a problem because that meant the entire membership had to vote every time somebody wanted to become a sponsor which seems are cumbersome so we change that now we ask the existing sponsor members do you really want the vote they said no we don't care bylaws committee change that the Board approved that few months ago so that sponsor members are now just sponsors of the PSF

and that they provide a substantial amount of money something on the order of 100 and 80 thousand years and finally finally pipeline US 5 is a big conference provides probably more

than the other 2 combine depends upon the year of 2009 we had a very bad year and we did not do so well but but in general I Can you US but provides a lot of money and we use that money to go back

into the community so of those 30 to 50 microns we end up giving Grants to help support those regional like OK it's it seems to us that it was a better way to spend that money or other option with the extra money we got from Picon US could of

course be just support US but but in fact it seemed of a much more responsible thing to use this to help start other conferences roughly 100 thousand dollars a year gets

distributed to other conference including this 1 but all around the world and about that much money again goes for things like Django girls various workshops I mean up these so if you're starting on pipeline meet up and that you want to use of meetup . com to organize it but it depends upon the market here in some places made up is really cheap other places where more mature market it's not that you all i doesn't matter the Python Software Foundation will reimburse you for me these if you're using it around a hyphen media I and then we have the to support

infrastructure things like PI PI to to download package is a lot of our infrastructure is donated from various companies but there is still expenses that we need to meet what we now have a Python suffer phonation now has former employee to help us manage things so course we

need to take care of that so that's that some of the things that we do now I wanted to fill you in on that because I want you all to

become part of the PSF and supporters but try return back to my main point the PSF is not the community and I don't want to suggest that the PSF is there to support the community and the community is the collection of meetups developers organizers communities all of us all of you around the world and of I think In

general we have a lot of good

things going for the community itself many times I've talked to people who have said you know if I could choose a language is based on the community it would be quite I I heard evidence from Ruby people from scholar people from JavaScript people we we actually are a leader in this regard the people and from say the Ruby

community a little bit amazed that we even have this and suffer a foundation that is giving this amount of money to have other conferences it doesn't happen very often elsewhere education I think of all the programming communities we have the most devoted to education we have a lot to do there are many things that we could and should be doing in education but we're still 1 of the leading another thing is Data Science I mean today where is officially more PPI data I a few years ago everybody was using are now if you talk to somebody who does data science they will go 0 yeah I used to do ah but on going Python uh and it's the same thing is actually with science not we had a keynote about astronomy yesterday 6

years ago a friend of mine who is as is a in astronomy professor I could try to talk him into trying quite an no we we have our languages for handling data don't don't bother me that about 3 years ago I heard from it's like you know I'm actually doing by and now I so we're actually moving into

that area those those are great things to be involved but I think we

have some things that were not doing as well at some things that we could do better OK in the embedded in the I O space micro Python is a great start but were not what people think of when they think of I O T I hope that they it will only what we think of the more that that I he becomes a thing of Python should be the thing on it we still have a lot to do in the area of mobile I'm I'm I'm

completely with Larry in that we have you know the dual is an issue here and Godspeed the galectin me or something like that but that's an issue and here's another 1 that I have found lately and you may not believe me on this but I've talked to people at a lot of of meetups and industry general programming things real stable yes I've done some CSS and doing JavaScript now and I'm gonna learn Ruby on Rails and maybe 1 of these days and the Doha cross-language like and that

kind of money I remember when it was the C programmers talking about how we restricting language and not really programming but this is

kind of strange but I also think it's not the place we want to be we don't want to be what people think of as the hard language the system right but community I've been praising our community I meant every word I say we have made some great strides in making more inclusive community up but honestly if we think we're anywhere near Don we're sadly mistaken we have much much work to do there and then finally as we continue to grow how are we going to manage this what we've already moved away from the way that the PSF did things with the Python community 10 years ago we have a long way to go there to in terms of sort of giving enabling the communities the regional groups and everything like that I but to do more work and having the PSF be at the the very sort of supporting and in effect doing last this will be a hard problem to solve it's 1 the PSF can't solve alone nor can they really regional and local groups all that alone we need to work together on that so

there's a lot of things that we need to do and we need as many people helping us do these as possible what I would

suggest my call to action basically comes down to the you should and there few 1 more time I'll even give you a sticker remember what you should join the PSL OK I'm whether that's just a

basic membership or whatever you might choose to do but you should seriously current I consider engaging with your local or regional community OK you will have that opportunity at the euro Python meetings this afternoon for 1 you may have a local mean if not you can consider starting a local media I it's

not that impossible to do and then contribute that's the last piece that I talked about to

recall but whether that's organizing whether that's mentoring are teaching whether that's writing code make the contribution you will you will indeed be happy that you did and what if you do

all of those things what is in it for you well I expect I hope that what you will find there is

the same thing that that brat found I found that I think many people in this room have found community so thank

you very much be if microphones

thank you very much no questions so if you have questions please try to come over here because I'm to try to walk away and I think it's pretty much the only and do you have any idea python might have a better or better functioning community than other languages because they're not different kinds of human beings in those users of the languages the not from different places in the world but not from different generations so what I don't have have the I think that it does

actually have a lot to do with the people who were behind it initially so um they In even in the early days but you know has always been very much in support of the community so yeah it may just be the happy accident of who came together in the early days to start the community that that would tend to be my guest there's nothing magical about the language I don't think but but it is 1 of these things I think we'll get a virtuous circle going get a

case uh so about the voting members of the penis because of its sins of a cool thing to be but when I hear that's I could be a voting member it sounds like a responsibility and it sounds like I should know note a lot more about the community you know what it was all around it so can we say something more about being voting of magnetic it's it's

important it is it's not a thing that that requires a lot of work honestly the the mean thing that at this point that the voting members do is decide upon a board of directors and we are working to make sure that we can get as much information both about what the current board is doing as well as what I mean you know potential candidates have done so that they can select that in terms of other day-to-day things what we found in general that the membership does not want to lose a lot more only to vote again so it's largely doing that but it is still the group that will decide if if a change in bylaws or something needs to be done that would affect the way the peers operates that would be the group that will make the the decision so it's not a lot of day-to-day things but it's still something quote you're right now

and in an ideal world in 10 years time what's the community digital morning in an ideal world in 10 years time what will the path and community like in my opinion in

10 years time in an ideal world the Python community will be on larger but much more devolved so that there will be things like like this conference probably you know 2 or 3 of them in Europe I mean you know these these will be all over and they will be supported by local ones in a lot of ways sometimes people will contact I I've had over the years people contact me saying and really like to be part of a Python community there's nobody else around I I hope that we don't have that problem and I hope that not looking out over a group like this in 10 years time that I will see a lot more different kinds of people that I know so this would be the 2 things I think you

for um you mentioned among the slides that not all differences are on the right and official site and there are many different communication channels also notice that there I sometimes feel like communities fragment and the US in the general community in the fight they data community this is also something you talk about what to use if and this this is a concern or a sister group thing I think it's good that

we've got a lot of things going on I think that we're having a real struggle in getting the information and communication transparency that's are all relatively hard problems to solve part of the problem I think he is actually the way that the PSF is organized right now where there is not enough mechanism to to give all these things down and then bring that stuff back together so that everyone can find it it's it's an organization problem that takes a lotta time to solve and the members of the PSF board for example we all have other jobs so we can't spend the most time doing this so this is a problem as they say will need input will need help people actually stepping up to do this from from a number of places to work on but that I I don't think anybody really likes the notion that like Django sometimes looks like it's going completely off in its own direction and whatever got that's not a great so the question is this

kind of question a concentration like to to hear your thoughts on that last year there was a lot of growing new growing local communities local associations and in the years in the US there we talk about improving the the use of presence especially local groups where no new new new people coming to the Community could to feel like a 1st step in not having to travel without having to the variance water the year 7 of the distance would start doing this and it was a time to the time start making a strong presence of at least you know that the concept is in the that's a good

point and it is some something that has been discussed from time to time it's hard to decide what that would look like in a way but 1 suggestion that was raised on the board not long ago was that we make a much more organized effort to track which local conferences regional conferences have had a PSF board member at and and then actually even allocate a little bit of funding specifically so those that have maybe had 2 or 3 conferences and never had any representative of the PSF that can actually be supported to 2 go ahead and make sure that we get in touch with them but that's still not going to steal necessarily there 11 board members we all we can just go so there have to be other things that would probably involve some other people in the PSF doing that kind of as well but we have talked a little bit we've experimented a little bit with the idea of the PSF ambassador in in South America and there's a lot of work that needs to be be done to they're all

right arm talk about community would again I would like to mention or on your Europe western society meetings at school at 2 o'clock and the of course to to you as meeting and thank you very much no me but then you know me that you

thank

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