JACOB: Hello and welcome to Greater Than Code. My name is Jacob Stoebel and I'm here with my friend, Carina. CARINA: Hi. And I'm here with my friend, Rein. REIN: Thank you, Carina. And I'm here with our guest, Ewa Jodlowska and Naomi Ceder. Ewa is the Executive Director of the Python Software Foundation and has been with the PSF since 2012. Prior to that, she assists with Python as a contractor. Ewa's responsibilities include managing the staff, giving direction and leadership to the foundation, working with the Board of Directors on long-range strategic planning, and overseeing financial and program operations, to name a few. Naomi earned a PhD in Classics several decades ago but switched from ancient human languages to computer languages sometime in the last century. Since 2001, she has been learning, teaching, writing about and using Python. An elected fellow of the Python Software Foundation, Naomi currently serves as chair of its board of directors. She also speaks internationally about the Python community, and on inclusion and diversity in technology in general. By day, she leads a team of Python programmers for Dick Blick Art Materials, and in her spare time, she enjoys sketching, knitting, and deep philosophical conversations with her dog. Welcome, both of you. Thank you for being here. EWA: Thank you for having us. REIN: So you know what's happening next week. We've prepared you for this moment. I would like to ask both of you, what is your superpower and how did you acquire it? EWA: I think my superpower is organization and I've definitely acquired that through PyCon because we've always worked PyCon through a very small team. And if organization wasn't a key element, it probably wouldn't have ever happened. So, that's mine. NAOMI: I would second that actually from personal observation. My superpower, I think, I hope, is kindness and empathy for the marginalized. And I guess I would say I got that the hard way, being kind of an outsider/insider as a trans person and then transitioning and I guess being an insider/outsider, I don't know. Seeing things from both sides has led me to, I think, have a feeling for what marginalized people, those on the outside, feel. I certainly hope so. REIN: Thank you. I would really love to talk to you about what your Classics degree taught you about software. But we're going to stay on topic. NAOMI: [Laughs] JACOB: For the first few minutes anyway. CARINA: I have the same question. So there's no way we're not going back to it at some point. NAOMI: Okay, I'm ready. Ready for you. REIN: So, let's talk about the Python Software Foundation. What's going on there? EWA: Yes, the Python Software Foundation is, what I like to say, the support of the Python community. So we're the nonprofit that backs the Python programming language and its community in a variety of ways. Right now, what's happening, I guess in the front news is PyCon and PyCOn being canceled in April, which is one of the things that the PSF puts on. So, we're currently working PyCon online, which some of you might have seen, that's just us releasing some of the content from PyCon that would have happened in the in-person event on a weekly basis for a couple of weeks. In addition to PyCon, I guess, the PSF does a variety of different communities and support things such as community infrastructure, [inaudible] Python.org, PyPI.org. We, up to Covid-19, had a grant program where we gave grants to events and efforts around the world. But we hope to revisit that again soon once we know the financial impact of Covid-19 and having to cancel PyCon in a more precise term. NAOMI: Having been around the Python community for a very long time, the PSF started out as what a lot of people, I guess, kind of expect a language type foundation to start out as, that is interested in protecting intellectual property and making people adopt the language and supporting the development of the language, those kinds of things. Certainly all of those things are still part of the mission. But I think the thing that I'd point to for Python's longevity and success so far has been the fact that the community aspect has been there pretty much from the beginning, but as an increasing factor. So, the fact that the PSF has been encouraging these regional and local meetings around the world, gatherings like that. Right now, we're not meeting in person, but I think I could probably come up with a dozen online meetings that I've heard of as people still work to preserve that community during the crisis. So, if I have to point to what makes us a little bit special, it's that aspect. CARINA: I'm curious to know a bit more about this, because you already between you alluded to a whole bunch of things that in generalities that I would love to hear more specifics on. So let's start working backwards. The regional and local meetings that PSF encourages, what are those? Are we talking about essentially meet ups or is it something more elaborate and specific? NAOMI: We do pay meetup fees for people who want to use meetup.com for Python Meetups. So it's certainly those around the world. But we also spend a lot of our money supporting things like Django Girls workshops, that sort of thing, and local and regional PyCons. Pretty much if people can establish that they're in good faith offering a Python-based conference, we will support them with some money. It's not a lot, but it's enough so that the organizers don't have to take on all of the financial risk themselves. Ewa can comment a little bit more. But as PyCon was growing, we realized we couldn't bring everybody in the world to PyCon. So the way to build a healthy community was to foster local and regional gatherings that then could some of that maybe bubble up to PyCon, but that wasn't the point. This is the way to build the community everywhere. CARINA: Speaking of PyCon, there's a couple of things. One is a lot of confusion about the policy of everybody pays. Ewa, could you explain a little bit about what that is and how it relates to PSF budget? Because I think there's a sense of, "Well, if PyCon has all this money, they're so rich spending all this stuff, why do they need me to pay?" And I think it's more reversed. Is that right? EWA: It's a policy that we had. I'm not sure what year it started. Maybe Naomi knows a little bit more history there. But we actually updated it a little bit more to kind of reflect on why is it important for everyone to pay to PyCon? Yes, we do. For example, our conference chair sometimes doesn't pay or some of the volunteers that they get a complimentary pass, things like that. But we want to highlight what that money is used for. The PSF has a financial reserve, which is maybe something that you were referring to, but that financial reserve is important for the PSF to happen because we rely on PyCon for about 65% of the PSF's entire revenue. So, for example, during this crisis, if we didn't have that reserve, we would have been in a lot of trouble. But we're very lucky to have that reserve so we don't have to cut down on any of our staff and can probably resume the majority of our program services in a short time. But we just want to highlight why is it important for registration fees to be what they are in terms of supporting the PSF. And also making low cost tickets available to other people as well. NAOMI: It's worth actually being clear here. I think it's probably been four or five years since we, as PyCon, have officially said, everybody pays. That actually is no longer the policy, but it is so stuck in people's imaginations that I've even had this discussion with regional PyCon organizers and they say, "Well, PyCon does everybody pays. We have to do that, too." It's like, "No, that's not actually it." We do expect, if possible, speakers should end up paying. But if they can't, then they get financial aid. And that's fine. When I attend. I pay. That's a way to keep the cost at a level where more people can afford to go. And I think it's also a way to kind of take advantage that there are a lot of people attending PyCon with corporate support. So honestly, if they're attending and they're expensing it, why shouldn't they go ahead and pay? And if we have somebody who is a hobbyist, a student, whatever it might be trying to get into the industry, then we do our best to make sure that that's affordable for them. It's hard to boil all of that down into a short slogan. So that means that the old slogan stays, even though it's not really accurate, I would say. CARINA: There's really good financial aid still, right? I mean, at one point I think I saw numbers in the six digits. I don't know if that's still a case or is that also an artifact of old times? NAOMI: No, that's true. EWA: Financial aid is kind of two fold. What Naomi was alluding to about us supporting our speakers. So, for example, if someone does not have corporate support to go to PyCon or it's too much for them to take at that time, we pretty much awarded to anyone that asks within reason. And that combined with the community support, I think this year would have been close to $180,000 in support. Obviously, that didn't happen. But because we were able to have the financial reserve of the PSF to kind of back up, we were able to reach out to all of our financial aid recipients and ask, "Did you have any out of pocket expenses that you would have incurred trying to get to PyCon that you may have not been able to get refunded," and things like that. So we were able to provide additional assistance even this year, which I think came out to be about $25,000. JACOB: PyCon can meet in person, which is a big deal. Obvious. But how else is the pandemic affecting the foundation? EWA: Well, definitely the big one is financially. I think also emotionally, because it is a stressful time because everyone has personal lives in addition to the foundation being affected with PyCon being canceled. But the financial one is definitely the one that we're concentrating on and trying to work through. And our team is working together to get through this. And it's honestly been stressful. But at the same time, it's been really awesome working with our staff and seeing everyone come together. It's such a hard time to get through this. JACOB: So PyCon, is it like a large fundraiser for the foundation every year? EWA: The majority of our revenue comes from PyCon. Sixty five percent of the money that the PSF has to work with comes from PyCon. So, it is the biggest fundraiser we have. REIN: How is the PSF adapting to this new situation? To make this question a bit more pointed, I mean, both large intentional leadership decisions, but also how do you see maybe regional organizers or even members changing how they work or how they work together? EWA: Well, we see a lot of regional conferences happening virtually. The largest one that's coming up is EuroPython, which is not run by the PSF, but it is one of those regional conferences that we would have financially supported through a grant. And it is, I think, the second largest Python gathering outside of the PyCon US. But they are going completely virtual and seeing their actual sponsorship prospectus come out recently, which now only offers virtual options is just kind of interesting and something that I'm sure others are watching and we'll have to adapt to as they consider funding for their event and things like that. Because also for EuroPython, the revenue that they get allows them to run their events as well. CARINA: One thing about PSF that has me really curious is that I think it owns a lot of the IP, correct? Which for someone coming from Ruby Community is a really alien concept. Matz still has all that IP. I think DHHS bought a fair amount of it. I mean, they both have at least a lot of control, whereas PSF has a really different relationship with Python itself and the intellectual property. So, can you give a better picture of what that is? NAOMI: It's pretty simple for Python, the language, the PSF owns all of that intellectual property. You can't become a contributor without assigning those rights to the PSF. In that sense, it's kind of the place for all of that IP and for things like logos and all sorts of other things that are related to that. That doesn't mean the PSF actually decides what the features of Python are. Sometimes people assume that. That's not the case. The core development team does that. But we do hold all of the intellectual property. And my understanding is that was one of the key purposes of the foundation when it was created in 2001. JACOB: It sounds like you're supporting sort of the surrounding core infrastructure like PyPI as well. EWA: Yeah. And we also have the trademark for that as well now. But still in the process, I guess, in some countries. REIN: So what is the motivation for this setup? Do you sort of feel that you're holding all of these things in trust for the community? How does that work? EWA: Yeah, I think that's a great way to look at it. We look at it as a way of preserving the goodness of it and preserving what the community wants out of it. NAOMI: A concrete example would be the transition from Python 2 to Python 3, was not without some controversy, I guess we could say politely. And the fact that the PSF holds that copyright then meant that if somebody would have decided to make their own mix of the two and go off in their own direction, fine. They can do that. It is under an open source license. They could not call it Python, though, which I think is an important distinction. You could do whatever you want, but Python is the thing that we actually watch over for the good of the community. EWA: And that also kind of extends to the events part of it, like PyCon, for example, or even PyLadies which is now something that we're going to be holding a trademark for, as well. It's to kind of help preserve aspects of these events that our community has come to expect. For example, making sure that a PyCon has Code of Conduct. How do you enforce that? It helps when you have a trademark. REIN: Do you think of this sort of like a company might think of brand integrity? NAOMI: Yes. EWA: Yes. CARINA: You mentioned Code of Conduct enforcement. PyCon was the first really big conference that I knew of that set out a really enforceable Code of Conduct. And it was very controversial at the beginning. Ewa, I think you were involved that year, and perhaps even earlier years. Were you there early enough to talk about what the development of that was, just to get to that point where it's public enough to stir up the storm? EWA: I think at that point, I wasn't yet really involved in the internals to know how that process went about. But I definitely was at that pipeline when the first one was kind of mandated. Actually, I do remember one of the aspects of it is some of our larger sponsors actually came to expect events to have a Code of Conduct in order for them to even consider funding. So I do know that that was an important consideration that everyone was making as well. CARINA: I think we've come so far where it's become really normalized among so many conferences. But it took that kind of leadership of a really large conference to say, "This is how we're going to play it, and this worked. And we're going to be doing it again next year, even if somebody didn't like it." And I was really part of that process of validating that this is necessary and can work. I remember a lot of criticisms saying essentially, "This is crazy. This will stigmatize conferences. Who wants to come to a conference that is essentially saying that there's something so problematic that they need to put rules on it?" And something really different happened as a result. So here you are, years later. I think that was around 2012, 2013, 2014, somewhere in there. At least now, sponsors have come to expect it. Do you feel like it's become a really smooth thing now? I mean, it probably wasn't in the first couple of years. Do you feel like it's all been just well established that we know how to do this? EWA: Yeah, I think even when we look at the first one they came out, I believe, in 2012 in comparison to what we have now, it was kind of like Code of Conduct lite versus the one that we have now, which is extensive and supportive. And yeah, I would say that right now, it is a very smooth process. Sure, we're still learning a lot of things along the way, and we'll continue to do so. But so far, so good. NAOMI: I think there was kind of an interesting evolution there. In 2012, having a Code of Conduct was shocking, almost. This was a big thing. And most of the thought went into the Code of Conduct. What does it say? Was the wording right? And then it's only been in the past few years that reality has caught up. And now, I think in implementing a Code of Conduct, the bigger issues, the bigger concerns are now, how do we actually enforce it and put it into reality? And we can kind of see that in maybe conferences around the world where they're just getting to the point of having a Code of Conduct. They really just want to check the box that they've got the right language and we have to stop and make them think about, "No, what will you do if someone actually reports something?" So, that's been the change I've seen over these years. CARINA: So what is the answer to the question, how do we enforce? NAOMI: [Laughs] It takes a lot of work and a lot of training. I know for PyCon, we've spent a fair amount of time and resources in getting some professional support and making sure that our responders and committee members are trained. And then we're trying to share that training, even out to regional conferences as well. EWA: Exactly. And we try to make it very clear to the point where the first welcome slide, we discuss the Code of Conduct when everyone's in the keynote. We make sure that everyone knows what the [Internet responder] t-shirts look like. So if people do need to make a report, they know what to look out for. And that also comes with phone numbers and being able to just text us if something comes across. Just making it easy and safe for everyone to be able to report. REIN: I think it might be important to mention that these aren't -- the trainings you're talking about, the skills that people are developing are technical skills. They're not soft skills. They're technical skills in a technical domain that isn't like computers to do stuff. NAOMI: Absolutely. I totally agree. CARINA: When you said that there's enough people to turn to, that they have identifying shirts, it made me curious. Can you tell if there's a ratio of enforcers or reporters, whatever it is, to attendees? Is there some sort of optimal minimum number or something? I think of a lot of conferences having basically one or two organizers [inaudible]. Should it be some other metric for thinking about what is a good sized team? EWA: Yeah, that's an excellent point. I'm not sure that we have that metric for PyCon yet. Simply when we work with volunteers, we take whoever is willing and able to help out. So, that's kind of the constraint that we work within. But it's all about visibility and making sure that there are alternative ways to report as well. NAOMI: Although we have had a paid consultant leading the response team for PyCon for a couple of years. I think my point is to this situation that you describe, Carina, is that is very likely not to work if something gets seriously wrong, if it's just a couple of organizers, because the odds that it is somebody who either is or has a conflict of interest relating to one of those organizers, that's the problem becomes dangerously high for the integrity of the conference. So at least I'd like to see them get somebody who is a little bit outside of that, so there's at least another voice. You can't report a problem with the organizer of the conference to the organizer of the conference. It won't happen. So that's part of the advice I give to regional organizers if they are asking about Code of Conduct. Still not a number, but just a general practice. CARINA: All right. So we said that we wanted to talk to you about Classics, Naomi. REIN: Yey! NAOMI: Oh, okay. That didn't last long. All right. [Laughter] CARINA: What is the background that you have and how did that eventually connect to where you are now in your career? NAOMI: Well, I'm not going to try to make this into some grand architected plan. I think I need to say that, first of all, a long time ago when I was a graduate student in Classics, I can remember having one of those almost all-night bull sessions with some friends where I argued that if I ever needed a computer program, I would just pay somebody to write it. End of discussion. So, I'm not claiming to have any great foresight. But I have a PhD in classical Greek and Latin, in classical literature. I found out as I was finishing that degree that not only is it impossible to get an academic job, but I didn't really want an academic job either. There are some nice things about it and some things -- I don't know. It just seemed not as interesting as I first thought. So, I ended up teaching at an independent school, which is kind of the refuge for classics types who can't find a job anywhere else. You can go teach Latin somewhere, and that's what I did. And then I decided I wanted to do that in a different country. So for two years, I taught Latin and Ancient Greek, believe it or not, in Athens, Greece, to people who spoke modern Greek. And that was kind of a fun experience, too, because when I would go into the shop and order pork chops, I would make all of the grammar agree. It sounded like I was from two centuries ago, at least. The butcher loved that. When I was in Greece, I ended up doing more with computing. I'd done a little bit in grad school, but not much with programming. When we lived in Athens, I don't know, for some reason, rather than spending all of my nights in the tavernas, I actually did spend some time learning how to program quite a bit of time, actually. When I came back to the USA, I got a job at a school in Indiana teaching Latin. But in the meantime, this interest had grown, so I figured out how to replace a memory chip in my computer. That was back in the day when that was really a weird accomplishment, but still possible. It's impossible now. But I've figured out because of the way it was acting, which chip had to be wrong, bitwise math and all of that good stuff. And then at school, they said, "Hey, this thing doesn't work." And I would fix it. And then, "This thing doesn't work," and I would help fix it. The grade card system we used was four layers of NCR form. I hated to do that. So I did something to do my grades on it on computer and people were saying, "Hey, can I use that thing?" We've got this thing, and so that was kind of an underground thing. All of which led to them eventually saying, "Look, we can get another Latin teacher, but we're having a really hard time finding somebody to do this other kind of stuff. Do you want to do that?" So, that led to me becoming Director of Technology and studying a fair amount. I've always been interested in funny languages. So rather than a funny language that was spoken by humans many years ago, I started learning funny languages that would tell computers what to do. So, I did C and Pascal and Visual Basic and Delphi and all of those 90's technologies sorts of things, C++. I gave myself really splendid headaches with C++. And then eventually discovered Python at Linux World in 2001, where Guido van Rossum was giving a daylong tutorial on it. So, I sat in for that. That's when nobody had heard of Python. So yeah, that was kind of how that all started. It wasn't as weird as you might think because in the late 80's, early 90's, they were looking for people to do computer programming jobs and they actually did, various companies actually did recruit amongst classical language types. We're used to formal rules of grammar and things like that. So it was actually not so hard to take a Latinist and turn them into, I don't know, a COBOL program or something like that. I had a couple of friends who actually went down that route as well. So that is the long story, I guess. REIN: Gharajedaghi has a really interesting definition of science and art. He says that science is finding similarities in things that are different. And art is finding differences in things that are similar. And so my question is, what have you found similar and different in these two domains of study? NAOMI: Well, as I alluded, there is kind of the notion of, and I suppose in a way, pragmatics. We use language to get other people to do things. We use computer languages to get computers to do things. The difference, of course, is that computer languages operate in a very much restricted environment with a very much restricted set of symbols and circumstances and things like that. So that is why we continue to struggle with natural language processing in the technological world, because there is that kind of mismatch between the two that way. REIN: I think potentially another way to look at that is that humans are very good at error correction. There are all sorts of utterings that humans are able to recover meaning from and computers are not as good. NAOMI: Absolutely. And I suppose that I always used to tell my language students that the way that I approached human language, foreign language was what would this mean if it made sense? Sadly, in the computer side of things, you can't quite do the same thing. CARINA: Having heard Naomi's story now, I'm really curious about hearing yours, Ewa. So, how does one get from a, I think you said, Consulting Organizer for PyCon to becoming the Executive Director of PSF? I know these two organizations are related, but they are also really different. It sounds like the roles would be pretty different. How did you end up in governance? EWA: My story is definitely not as interesting as Naomi's because I did not get to travel. I did travel abroad, but that's a bit different. I started in meetings and that's the industry I went into in my first part of the career. And I worked for an organization that provided services to conferences, whether it be registration, websites, meeting planning. And that's where I started to do some coding and I would help put up the registration sites, create the databases and all that. And I really enjoyed that part. And I enjoyed it a lot more than the meeting planning aspect of it. So, I actually went to night school and got my Computer Science Degree. It took me several years. But during that time, I also started working on PyCon, which for that point, I did help with the registration site and all that good stuff. But I also did a lot of the meeting planning, so I did all the logistical works. And through that process, I actually decided to move to Denmark and the PSF was like, "Well, we really like working with you. So can you work remotely on PyCon when you're in Denmark?" And I said, "Yeah, absolutely. That would actually work really great for my setup." So that's kind of where it all started. And eventually over time, I continued working with the PSF and got more involved and skills developed. And here I am. CARINA: And Naomi, you have a little bit different overall because -- you mentioned fellow also, but you're a board member. So, what is the difference between what you should do within PSF? You both are leaders, but you have different titles and different responsibilities. And so, can you kind of contrast what those are and what you feel is the strength of your role? NAOMI: Sure. First of all, I think, Ewa really sort of collapsed about 10, 12 years into and that's what happened. She really did a lot of work in organizing and holding things together that I know those of us who were around at the time and now appreciate, because I think really Ewa's progression into that role was kind of paralleled by the PSF's progression into a point where we needed somebody in that role. And I think that is a really special situation you don't find very often. It's something kind of amazing. But the contrast is that the board is meant to be sort of an oversight strategy and resources body these days. And in the tech space, there seems to be quite a bit of disconnect with the rest of the nonprofit world. And I think that's kind of set in a number of ways. I think we can do better to be part of that nonprofit world and help those causes. I also think we can do better at learning from them. We're trying to be much more like a board that would be something that would be recognizable in the rest of the nonprofit space by focusing on those things, as I say, strategy, oversight, resources. So, board members meet several times a year to discuss those things. Where do we want the PSF to be heading in the next five years? Are there resource needs where we need to actually take a decision as the organization for what we need to do? Are we going to, for example, monetize something that we do so that we can have another source of revenue? Or I guess maybe a point that is most timely, are we going to save a certain amount of money so that if we ever have a disaster, we'll be able to get through it? And if so, how much? This actually took the board several meetings' worth of discussions to come up with a decision that I will say now, even the people who were skeptical are rather relieved that we did. So it's those sorts of things. Ewa is, of course, the Chief Executive. She leads the staff in doing the day-to-day operations. As I say, this is something we have developed into, the PSF. Even when I joined the board five years ago, did a whole lot of that daily business themselves. So. The meetings were very frequent, every two weeks. And the board would have to decide whether or not so and so got a $250 check or not. The size that we're at now, that would not be sustainable, it would not be practical, it wouldn't be a good thing at all. We would have difficulty managing staff with the whole board. So that's why we've kind of, as I say, followed the traditional nonprofit world in making that distinction now. Staff does the day-to-day operations and execution. Board does strategy oversight in trying to find resources, including trying to find sponsors and donations and things like that. So, that distinction is kind of important between Ewa, as the Executive Director and currently myself as the Chair of the Board of Directors, that's really the way that we both look at that. That's really kind of a partnership, a way that we can work together to move things forward. I suppose technically, in some cases, it kind of looks like the chair is the boss of the Executive Director, but only in some very kind of loose senses. It really does have to function more as a partnership. The execution and the strategy need to go together. EWA: Naomi has been crucial in, what I like to say, our maturing into a real nonprofit. Moving the board away from a hands-on board, so to speak, to an advisory board has been tremendous in our next step forward. And I think Naomi key in that happening. REIN: I just wanted to highlight, Naomi, a thing that you said about how this decision to create an emergency fund, people originally disagreed with it, but are starting to come around in the current situation. I think that's really interesting because in an alternate universe, the same decision was made and that nothing of this magnitude, this is sort of a once in a century event. Nothing this bad happened for 10 years and then that evaluation might go differently. But the thing is, you can't take information at the present and use that to change the quality of a decision you made in the past, unless you have a time machine, which we don't. So, that's all sort of hindsight bias. NAOMI: Right. There is sort of a point. But I think we're seeing the same sort of debate being played out over and over again in the current times. Places that have been successful by going on lockdown to reduce the number of cases, then have people saying, "Wait a second, we did this for nothing." Well, in a way, yes, nothing was the desirable outcome. So, it is true that we could have kept a year or two of reserve funds going forward for the next 15 years and nothing would have happened, but that wouldn't have been a bad outcome by any way. We will continue to grow and thrive continuously. REIN: Yeah, absolutely. NAOMI: But we do have this, we have had to face it. I have had this argument with many people. "Why don't you just give all of the money to the community now? They can use it." And so, I think both Ewa and I have gotten a fair amount of experience making this argument that we can't take that chance. There might be a black swan event. And whether it was Covid-19 or whether it was -- you can come up with endless scenarios for doom and gloom. Maybe that's a function of me being older, but it's not hard for me to see ways that things could go horribly wrong. And it's just sort of taking even a reasonably cautious view of this. I mean, I think it also is part of becoming a larger, more mature organization. We now have many employees who depend upon us for [inaudible] half a dozen, but it still seems like many to me who depend upon the foundation for their livelihood. We can't take that lightly. We have millions of users around the world. We have thousands of people who rely on PSF support for events that they value very highly. There's just a lot riding on this now that maybe wasn't the case 10 years ago. And that's certainly the argument I make. I don't say that I always win these arguments, although I do say these days, I haven't had to make that argument very much. REIN: Yeah, I didn't mean to suggest that it was a bad decision. More that it is difficult to evaluate decisions in hindsight. NAOMI: Yeah, I think that's certainly true. And it is the case though that I would not have regretted the decision to build up that reserve even if nothing had happened. REIN: Yeah, I suppose it's a question about risk tolerance and other such things. NAOMI: Yeah, exactly. CARINA: I think this is an example of what you were talking about earlier, about the tech community being out of touch with the nonprofit community because the idea of a nonprofit or any other business having a reserve isn't really [inaudible]. Really the question is how much. What's the tradeoff we're willing to make between ability to spend right now and having flexibility. And we've seen a whole lot of businesses around the world collapse virtually overnight because they didn't have their reserves to weather things. But that's a different conversation. I mean, they made a different choice as to how much to put aside. But the idea of having money put aside, I think it takes the tech community's far distance from understanding if that's how anybody thinks, including us individuals. How much savings do you want to have in your rainy day account? REIN: I think this has a lot to do with, like the VC model, where even more than in general, capital that isn't emotion is a liability. NAOMI: Yes. And quite often, the arguments have come from exactly that spot, the ones that I've heard. JACOB: And of course, you're not looking for hockey stick growth. That doesn't even make sense in this context. NAOMI: Right. REIN: So one way, your risk tolerance is very different. But in another sense, the outcomes you desire are very different. NAOMI: I think that's fair. CARINA: So, PyCon is 65% of the revenue. Is the other 35% essentially the standard nonprofit stuff of grants, or is it other stuff? EWA: At PSF, we do receive some grants for packaging work, but we've only gotten our feet wet in incoming grants and we hope that one of the things that a nonprofit has to do in order to receive, especially federal funding, is to have a financial audit done. So, we're finally getting to that point. So hopefully by the end of the year, a financial audit can happen and we can apply for some of those larger financial grants. But the other percentage comes from sponsorships of the foundation, as well as donations and programs such as Humble Bundle. I'm not sure if either of you are aware of that program, but that program has brought in over $200,000 for the PSF over the last few years. So, it's been tremendous help. We try to find as many avenues as possible. NAOMI: And to revisit that 65% of revenue, as we have been clear, we're very grateful. A large number of PyCon sponsors did not demand to take back their sponsorship money. So we're still in the hole. Even with no more correctly how much we're in the hole or if we're about at the point of breaking even, but we have not been in this baddest spot as we could have been based solely on the contracts and agreements that were signed. We're there. We're very thankful to all of the people who either left their registration fees on the table or left their sponsorships with us. It makes a big difference. EWA: When we first canceled PyCon, we were looking at, I think, about $625,000 in loss even after the contracts had already been settled. But thankfully, so many sponsors have stepped up and individual donors that we're probably going to break even. The PSF actually applied for the PPP grant, which I believe we received yesterday. So, I think at that point, we're safe to say that we're going to breakeven this year. CARINA: Does that make you want to rethink contracts? [Inaudible] about refundability. Obviously, the community was incredibly generous about what they were willing to give back or leave with you. But I also think about the fact that the conference's expenses don't start the day that the conference starts. So, I mean, this is something I was thinking about as a speaker because I was in the middle of negotiating a contract when this all hit. And I had asked put in a clause about keeping the money after a certain point if it was canceled because of Covid. And at the time, they did not think that was a reasonable request. Now I feel much more happy about that request. But you've got a much bigger scale, that same dilemma. How are you in the future going to decide about what is in a reasonable amount to contractually say, "We're going to have spent this long before we can tell you for sure that we'll be able to put on a conference definitely." This is a poorly phrased question, but can you see where I'm going with that? EWA: Yeah, absolutely. To be honest, we've already signed contracts all the way through 2023. So we're way ahead of knowing what's going to happen with those. So at this point in time, it's just revisiting with those venues and cities and seeing what can we do? How can we prepare as a group, as a partnership for something that is still unknown? We don't know if the event will go to what it was or if there will be changes made to it. Will it be smaller? Will parts of it be virtual? Those are things that we're discussing now, especially with the board strategically looking at those things. And then just having those open discussions with our vendors and cities, that that's something we have to prepare for together. I'll be honest, when we first started talking about this with Pittsburgh, they did not receive comments from other events yet. So we were kind of like frightened that we were the first ones to bring up the concern that PyCon 2020 might not happen. But that all changed very quickly. And we're very happy that the venues in this city were great to work with and we will look forward to continuing that good relationship with them. REIN: It seems like from my sort of outsider's perspective, that conference organizers assume a disproportionate amount of the financial risk in these situations historically, while we're talking about with these contract deposits, all these things. Do you feel like that is going to change in a meaningful way after Covid-19, for you, for the industry as a whole? EWA: I think for the industry as a whole, it's going to change. I think meetings have at this point changed forever. As we see on all of these governor plans of reopenings, events are always the last on the list. So we don't know when those things are going to go back to normal. But I do see a lot of shifting happening to virtual things, which don't require a lot of contracts and a lot of deposits. It's a lot less of a risk to run virtual events, in my opinion, financially, than it is to run an in-person event. REIN: It's a lot cheaper than a conference hall. EWA: Sure is. CARINA: [Crosstalk] is a convention hall. I mean, it's like a couple of blocks worth of space. I can't imagine what the numbers are on that. EWA: For us, actually, the bigger risk is the hotel rooms that we get because the hotel rooms, us booking a certain amount of hotel rooms also gives us a lower fee to have to pay for the space itself. So sometimes for the space itself, we don't pay anything, but we do agree to pay for food, a certain amount of money for food and a certain amount of money in hotel rooms to get that kind of negotiation. JACOB: The question of how to make online conference more than just watching videos, I think is an event form that a lot of people are thinking about. And to my knowledge, hasn't been cracked yet. Have you been thinking about that? EWA: Absolutely. And I will tell you that every other spam email in my inbox that other vendors are thinking about it, too, because I've received hundreds of webinar invitations for how to engage people in a virtual setting. So a lot of new things are going to change. I think the biggest thing everyone has to think about is you can't duplicate an in-person event. It has to evolve to something new, and engagement is going to be a big thing. NAOMI: I think one thing I've heard of has to do with EuroPython. I'm happy because they just asked me to keynote. So, that's cool. But beside that, they are actually EuroPython going to hold all of the videos, so only people who are buying a ticket can get in to see the videos live. And then a week later, you can see the stuff released. I'm curious as to how that works. I'm not saying, "Oh, this is exciting thing we should try." I'm just saying this is a variation that I don't know if that matters or not. Then you know that you're seeing it live, does that help? I know they've had some conversations as to how to simulate a Hallway Track and breakout rooms, but I don't know what they actually have going for that. Those are kind of tricky problems. I mean, I know that there's a small conference called Python Pizza that -- EWA: I was just going to bring that up. [Laughs] NAOMI: [Laughs] Yeah, that happens in Germany. I went to their first one last year and they all had a social hour where they had beers and pizza in their Zoom meeting. I don't know how that worked. I don't know. EWA: They actually had 50 small meetings throughout like 24 hours. I didn't attend myself but from those that attended said it was an intense experience. JACOB: I've been thinking because I think you're right, like trying to replicate the in-person I think isn't the way. I think it involves thinking about what are things that the video conference format, for lack of a better word, can do better than any other format. I say as a relatively shy person, the Hallway Track is very scary to me. But also, I've heard people say it is the most valuable to them. And personally to me, inaccessible just based on my personality. And yeah, I've just been thinking about how that could include more people. EWA: I think that's a great point. I think also just even speakers in general, I think we're going to get away more diverse pool of speakers because you no longer have to consider the fact that you have to fly around the world. You no longer have to consider the fact that you might have stage fright. People might feel more comfortable recording in their own homes. So I think that that is going to definitely improve a lot of things. CARINA: It's also accessibility. I've heard from a number of people with various disabilities that they never felt able to attend a conference. Or when they had, it was such a bad experience for them physically that they'd just don't do it again. And that's a real change as far as what you can do. And then there's people who couldn't travel because I think access is one of the really big improvements for all the things that we're losing or trying to figure out. I think that's the biggest one that I know of. JACOB: And of course, not having fast Internet is also an accessibility. NAOMI: Yeah. EWA: Yeah. CARINA: Yeah, it's true. REIN: There's an interesting thing that happens where we tend to value the things that are visible and can devalue the things that are not visible or not present. And I think what we're seeing is a lot of the things that could be valuable in conferences just weren't present and so weren't valued before. JACOB: We can't do it. So let's pretend it's not there. REIN: We didn't even realize we were excluding these people or that these possibilities were possible. And so, there was no reason for us to value their inclusion. CARINA: Accessible venues has certainly been one of those things that has not been a huge priority for a lot of conferences with the idea that that's much more expensive or hard to research. I'm sure both of those are true. But it is for these things you're talking about that you don't see that people struggle with that because they decided not to struggle with that or didn't get to decide. REIN: I also think it's interesting that a lot of people aren't seeing this as just sort of some tweaks to the format to make it work online. They're really seeing this as a sort of paradigm shift where a lot of sort of fundamental ideas about how you run a conference are being questioned. CARINA: That's really interesting. So, perhaps as a wrap up, Naomi, you spoke at the beginning about the dual experiences of seeing marginalized issues, people in your life. How do you feel like that has circled in to where we are now, where you are as a board member, where PSF is, not just your experience, but approaching the marginalized people and issues that marginalized people experience? NAOMI: It's an interesting question. I think part of it is that I think even so, what we haven't yet fully realized is how in many cases the current situation is going to be much more awful for marginalized folk than it will be for people who or a little bit better shape. And that may depend on a number of things, certainly economically. So, I've been stuck in one place for two months, but I'm working. I'm basically fine, whereas there are a lot of people who are really facing desperate straits now. So, I think as a community, we haven't yet really started to grapple with that issue. And this maybe is a little bit of a diversion. But again, I'm old, so I can think of all sorts of horrible things. I'm really worried about how our community reacts and how we will move forward as we start to see serious casualties, which we haven't yet, and may we never. But I am worried that we will have rebounds. Things will get worse. And communities around the world like this are going to have to deal with key members suddenly not being there anymore. I worry about how we will deal with things like that. I have not a single answer there other than just a hope that the spirit I see now of people trying to come together and have meetings and things like that rather than just giving up, I hope that continues. And I think the good news with things being virtual is that, as we've seen many times, marginalized folk tend to, by necessity, be more resourceful. So I think they will probably end up playing some key roles as we move forward in kind of remodeling what conference experiences are and what those things are. I don't know. CARINA: This reminds me of a number of people who have compared Covid-19 to the beginning stages of the AIDS epidemic. And I just saw a thing about one of the people who was involved in the AIDS [inaudible] back in the day has taken out some of that fabric and is making masks out of it. So, there's something about what you're talking about, about marginalized people really understanding and having a depth of resources that is profoundly reflected in the community that was affected by AIDS. And that loss of a generation, I'm wondering if that's where we're headed to, a loss of intellectual contributions, community contributions of people who simply aren't going to be there. NAOMI: Could be. I mean, I think that those sorts of ramifications are going to just sort of unfold in many ways. I think we're potentially looking at a generation of graduating students who will be behind. Whether that means they're not ready for university or what that means exactly, or people who will be forced to work and then go back to school later. I sort of wonder if we will not see that kind of similar gap and then, who knows, maybe a rebound like during and after the Second World War. I'm not sure. But I do think that we will have a lot of those things here. CARINA: The earthquake has a couple of weeks. It's years. NAOMI: Yeah. CARINA: Aftershocks. I'm in California, I think about earthquakes. [Laughs] NAOMI: There you go. CARINA: Your metaphor, maybe some other weather event or natural. NAOMI: I grew up in the Midwest. It's probably tornadoes. I don't know. [Laughs] REIN: Should we move into reflections? My reflection is actually about something Naomi said about halfway through our chat. There was almost an offhand comment, I think, that I've been thinking about in the back of my mind ever since, which has actually made it somewhat difficult to participate in this discussion. Thanks, ADHD. And what you said was we were talking about how your study of the Classics has influenced your programming career and whatnot. And you said I was talking about how humans [inaudible] error correcting natural language. And you said -- I'm going to maybe say this wrong, so please tell me the right version. But you said something like, you tell your students, "What would this mean if it made sense?" NAOMI: Yes. REIN: I got it. Cool. So, this reminded me of this idea from resilience engineering that comes from safety differently and from Sidney Dekker this idea that no one gets up in the morning wanting to go to the hospital. Everyone is trying to do a good job. And so if you want to understand how an accident happened, you need to understand why what they were doing made sense to them at the time. NAOMI: Yes, I've run across that. I know what you're talking about. REIN: So, I think 'what would this mean if it made sense' is a new way for me to put that and I like it. NAOMI: Well, I'm glad. And that really is the point. Yes, you do have to assume someone trying to communicate with you is, to their mind at least, making sense. REIN: I really like that. Thank you. JACOB: I'm just thinking about, I'm really excited about the upcoming conferences in this new world we're in. I mentioned that meeting new people is not exactly the thing that come naturally to me. So, that's one thing. And also that I have a small child and travel is difficult with that. I have attended PyOhio in recent years, which is a smaller conference in Columbus, hundreds of people, not thousands. And I'm kind of looking forward to what that new format would be like and how it would sort of give me an opportunity to get back into the conference world a little bit more. EWA: I'll definitely see you on PyOhio online. JACOB: Excellent. EWA: I try to attend every year. It's only a four or five hour drive from here. CARINA: My reflection isn't nearly as deep. My ears were perked up when you said, Ewa, that you have hundreds of emails from various companies trying to pitch you on how to make online conferences great. It hadn't occurred to me that there is an entire industry pivoting all at once like that. I'm really curious to know what solutions they're pitching. Like, what ideas, without necessarily the products, can conference organizers who can't necessarily afford those things learn from. Should we be having discussions about those various approaches? I don't know. But it just was really striking me that there was this whole other conversation I suddenly wish we had an hour for, because it sounds fascinating. EWA: Yeah. You make a good point about a whole industry being impacted. NAOMI: I had two. For one thing, even though it's kind of something that I have been pushing, I really liked the way that Carina pointed out, that only in our space do we think it's weird to even talk about whether or not we need a reserve. So, thank you for that. I do like that. My other one is related to what Jacob was saying about the Hallway Track, actually. And I was thinking that maybe it's just sort of, I don't know, cosmic justice or something. I usually don't have a problem with the Hallway Track. But I do think online, if we have just like a room that you have to go into, chat space, whatever it might be, I don't know if I'll do that or not, honestly. In person, you can always see what's going on. Maybe somebody makes eye contact and then, "Oh!" So then you can go ahead and kind of engage a little bit. I hope we have a better tool than just enter the chat room to do that online. I don't know. REIN: It would be so weird to just talk to 100 people at the same time. NAOMI: Let's all figure something out for that so that we're all happy. EWA: So, my reflection is based off of what Naomi said and kind of what we're seeing right now within our community about everyone coming together, doing all these online events. It's really been emotional for me. And I know some of the staff, we sometimes are sitting here in tears just seeing the positive reactions coming from our community. And I really do hope that that energy and positivity sticks and stays, especially since we're going to be dealing with so many unknowns and possibly negative things in the near future. REIN: Well, thank you very much for taking the time to talk with us. I really enjoyed it. EWA: I did too. NAOMI: It was fun. JACOB: Yes. Thank you very much.