Nominations are open for the 2025 Django Software Foundation Board of Directors.
I thought it might be nice to share "DSF initiatives I'd like to see", similar to Jeff Triplett sharing DjangoCon US talks I'd like to see, in the hope it might spark some ideas and encourage folks to run for the DSF.
Initiatives are hard and require time and energy. In a volunteer role, folks can only do so much and must make choices.
This aims to encourage folks around what COULD be done. This is a wishlist rather than a list of critiques.
I hugely appreciate the DSF board, past present and future, for their service to the community ❤️
The Board of Directors consists of seven volunteers who are elected to two year terms.
As stated in the blog article, the DSF board:
- Guide the direction of the marketing, governance and outreach activities of the Django community.
- Provide funding, resources, and guidance to Django events on a global level.
- Support the Django community with an established Code of Conduct and make decisions and enforcement recommendations for violations.
- Work with our corporate and individual members to raise funds to help support the Django community.
Will Vincent published personal notes about a month and a year on the Board.
Thibaud Colas also shared that from his perspective as a board member, roughly 1-2 hours per week per board member is required to "keep the lights on", additional time can be dedicated towards initiatives.
4 positions are open in the upcoming election. Anyone including current Board members, DSF Members, or the public at large can apply to the Board. It is open to all.
Those elected will join Jacob Kaplan-Moss, Sarah Abderemane, and Thibaud Colas.
They are currently 1 year into a 2 year term.
Their full manifestoes are available here along with other candidates who ran last year.
Jacob Kaplan-Moss
Jacob was one of the original maintainers of Django, and was the original founder and first President of the DSF.
From his manifesto, he wants to develop onramps so that "new blood" in the Django community could level up and move into leadership positions at the DSF and core team. The working groups and membership changes were the start of this.
In DjangoCon US 2024, Jacob delivered a talk If We Had $1,000,000: What Could The DSF Do With 4x Its Budget?. With more money, he suggested the DSF has a paid executive director, more fellows, and a hardship fund. He also welcomed community members to email him jacob@djangoproject.com with why you or your company chose not to donate money to the DSF.
Sarah Abderemane
Sarah is a Django contributor, Accessibility team member, djangoproject.com maintainer, Djangonaut Space co-founder and organiser, Django Paris Meetup organiser, and DjangoCon Europe organiser.
From her manifesto, she wants to increase fundraising by improving communication and making each sponsor feel special - highlighting sponsors both on the website and on social networks. She wanted to set up a working group for mentorship and push accessibility in the framework (see the 2023 Accessibility report). She's passionate about showing that Django is a framework for everyone by everyone.
Thibaud Colas
Thibaud is a Accessibility team member, and a core team member of Wagtail.
From his manifesto, he wants to improve Django's diversity, accessibility and carbon footprint.
In DjangoCon US 2024, Thibaud delivered a talk Faster, leaner, greener: 10x lower website carbon emissions on the carbon emissions from Django sites.
When creating the social media working group, I deliverately avoided the word "marketing" throughout. I know nothing about marketing and feel that, as a community member, I shouldn't be defining a marketing strategy for Django.
Some decisions are too big for individual community members - a marketing strategy (to me) is one of them.
If folks have experience in marketing or feel they could coordinate community help in building this (perhaps providing a starting point, a CFP, and willingness to review and give feedback) - I would love to see you run.
We have limited community docs on the different roles that folks are doing in the community, especially on "how much time is involved in X".
I love that Will Vincient published personal notes about a month and a year on the DSF Board.
I feel having this for almost everything (Accessibility team, Ops team, Steering Council, security team, DjangoCon organising team, Code of Conduct team, etc.) will help folks learn about these positions and want to put their name forward for them. Onboarding documentation is also very useful.
I don't think a board member should write all of this themselves, but do a gap analysis and reach out to folks and ask if they can write something up. This can help us:
- Appreciate and celebrate the work people are doing
- Recruit future community members to fulfill this role
Thibaud mentioned that roughly 1-2 hours per week per board member is required to "keep the lights on".
That sounds like a lot.
I'm sure we could make some tools to make some of this easier. As an example, I feel like the granting of DSF membership could be automated.
I'd love to see Board members scope this out and invite community members to automate as much admin/ boring work as possible.
When reading the Django survey results, I don't see very much the Django community or developer team can action.
What should Django get better at? Where are we falling behind? Why don't you sponsor Django?
I feel this survey has been the same for many years and we should have someone take the lead on giving this a refresh.
This feels like something too big for an individual saying "I care about..." and needs to be driven by the board.
Small typo on my surname here, Sarah. It's "Vincent." Thanks for writing this up!