Held at PyCon USA on Monday May 6th with a select population of invited organizers and/or other stakeholders (e.g. regional representatives).
With the continued growth PyLadies around the world, PyLadies is facing growth pains as it relates to:
Organizational priorities Resource management Fundraising … and more
The purpose of this dialog is to review historical wins and challenges within the organization and determine the appropriate mechanism as how to manage central concerns and infrastructure for PyLadies.
A copy of the discussion slides and agenda can be found here.
Organizers
- Lynn Root (New York, New York, USA - Global)
- Lorena Mesa (Chicago, IL USA)
Active / Past Local Organizers
- Wendy Grus(Seattle, WA USA - Remote)
- Michelle Glauser (San Francisco, CA USA - Remote)
- Anwesha Das (Pune, India)
- Rachell Calhoun (Grand Rapids, MI, USA)
- Jackie Kazil (Washington DC, USA)
- Anna Ossowski (London, UK - Former PyLadies Remote)
- Elaine Wong (Toronto, Canada)
- Mariatta W (Vancouver, Canada)
- Tania Allard (Northwest UK)
Regional Representatives
- Marlene Mhangami (Zimbabwe)
- Katia Lira (Mexico)
To guide the conversation, we broke up into small groups and focused on answering the following questions:
- What is going well?
- What can be better?
- What questions do you have?
- What’s on your wishlist?
The group identified these following collective priorities, and voted on them with most important to least important listed below:
- Global Leadership (10 Votes)
- Finance / Funds (8 Votes)
- Resources (5 Votes)
- Support Network (3 Votes)
- Code of Conduct (2 Votes)
- Name and Branding (2 Votes)
- Tech (2 Votes)
- Connectedness (1 Votes)
- Decentral & Autonomy (0 Votes) - This is more of a description of our community & question if we should continue this way.
There was time to discuss the top three collective priorities with action items highlighted below.
Global Leadership
Overall, the group identified that we need to discuss the following: what the governance model for PyLadies going forward is and PyLadies needs to define the formal relationship between PyLadies and PSF.
Action Items:
- Get list from Lynn and determine how to break up
- Lorena will do a write up on the notes and check in with Lynn by EOW
- Review other organizations leadership, compile research
- Define mechanisms for how to change power (e.g. who votes on these changes)
- Create a recommendation to PyLadies organization by writing up different proposals (e.g. PEP governance)
- Tania + Lorena - May 13th check in
- Select one recommendation, send to PyLadies organizers
Finance / Funds
The biggest concerns here included such topics as: how to better leverage the PSF to setup PyLadies funding and gain access to a PEX card, understand how PyLadies funds support grants at PyCon USA, and lastly how to work with international fundraising. Many would like to see a fundraising committee.
Action Items:
- Writing a PyLadies financial report on the website (Lynn)
- Write up for how to do setup PyLadies on PSF for fundraising and obtaining a PEX card (Lynn/Lorena)
- International fundraising (Marlene, Anwesha)
Resources
Many organizers voiced their concern(s) about having content that is reusable across chapters as well as the general problem of determining how to make PyLadies content distinct amongst other diversity/inclusion tech groups for PyLadies at varying levels (e.g. beginner content vs mid career).
Action Items:
- Curate “Awesome” lists (e.g. PyLadies to follow, Python 101 modules)
- Add more people to PyLadies GitHub team to update resources
- Add Mariatta/Elaine to manage info@pyladies.com
- Add an FAQ page and links to PyLadies website