Stepping down from the PyCon India 2018 core team
Hello Anand Chitipothu, Noufal Ibrahim, Anand Pillai, Bibhas and the other members of the community, Sayan and I initially proposed to organize PyCon India's 10th anniversary in Bangalore [1]. During the initial planning phase, we had requested Bangpypers community to support [2]. We have done two face to face meetings in Bangalore and have had several hangout sessions. The minutes of the meetings were also posted to mailing lists. During the first face to face meeting at the Cafe Coffee Day near Forum Mall, Bangalore, we formed the team. We consulted Vijay and Vanitha to help in the core team. Vijay joined us as sponsorship & Python for Kids Track co-ordinator and Vanitha was helping Content, CFP, and other parts as required. The core team consisted of these 4 people to start with, apart from that, we had website, content and social media team for helping each other. We tried to keep all the discussions transparent on the mailing lists and IRC. We have done call for volunteers for every task as and when required. We wanted to follow 2014/2015 model of working and make the conference decentralized as that's how we can build future leaders for the community. Vijay laid the foundation for a decentralized way of working in the year 2014 and 2015. He always encouraged each volunteer to understand and take the responsibility to own the task end to end, provided confidence and made them comfortable. The job of core team was to support volunteers on a need basis. Under the leadership of Vijay during PyCon India 2015, we had taken PyCon India one step above and all the participants, from sponsors till attendees had something to appreciate in the event. I don't think anyone can deny that PyCon India 2015 was one of the best conferences to date. Here you can find the complete volunteers list [3]. I do not think there was transparency maintained in last two editions of PyCon India (2016 and 2017) where I and many other volunteers had helped in shaping the volunteering team on conference days. In spite of us raising concerns during PyCon India 2016 feedback sessions on bringing all the discussions in the mailing list, in 2017 edition all the discussions were taken offline through Telegram groups. Were those Telegram groups more trustworthy and transparent than this year team? All the decisions were taken by a particular group of people in their sacred Telegram groups without consulting the remaining community (makes me think of the high Priests culture). No concerns could have been raised by the community then as no community had a chance to get involved (thanks to those sacred groups of Lords and friends). Last year, even a profit-making organization was given permission to conduct hackathon without any discussion with the community. If anything would have gone wrong during the hackathon, it would have impacted the Python Community in India not a particular group of people and I am not sure if everything was analyzed before taking a call. We all saw one incident during the panel discussion, and how it was handled. We haven't even seen event report for last year from the organizers or PSSI, is not that a basic rule for the PSF grant? Where were all the folks who are commenting now when all this did not care? How would PSF trust us next time when we approach any grant? Are not we impacting whole Indian Python community with this act? There was a big discussion on Github access policy. How was the original access provided? Is it true that it was based on 1:1 Telegram discussion, as I haven't' seen any discussion here, now without the proper information he merged a request and we all spoke all policy? Can Anand C, Noufal, and Anand P share information on how original access was provided? Did you guys check if he was just reviewing? Is that really community way of working? Let me share how we all did in 2014 or in 2015. It was based on trust. Every year is a fresh start. We reconfigure access to email alias, social media, and other required locations. let us know if we misunderstood it? Coming to PSSI, they have given us n-steps on how invoices should be raised for sponsorship money, one step says they are the only people to share invoice as they are the statutorily accountable for invoices. We completely understand we wanted one changed in steps Sponsorship co-ordinator will loop PSSI board while we should be sending an invoice as continuity for discussion instead of PSSI suddenly sending the invoice as a surprise. The problem is it took 5 days for PSSI treasurer to accept our proposal, but other members did not agree. Looks like PSSI even don't trust that we will do it in right spirit and they are citing like a company where marketing team's job is to find a customer and let other teams take over. Does PSSI really trust any PyCon India volunteers? And that makes me think of a very interesting point. If the people (Lords?) running PSSI are so concerned about the community, why are you not involving the community in the organization (PSSI), instead kicked everyone else out from the organization (no one allowed us to renew our memberships)? Could anyone please tell me when was the last Annual General Meeting happened? So, please do not show your concern about the community when you do not care about the community at all. In the last thread, Vijay and Vanitha stepped down and we both are in there in core team still. Yet, you have asked for a new leadership team to run PyCon India 2018 without consulting us. Looks like you and others already have a plan in place and wanted us to move away. Since this community does not trust the core volunteers and most of the people had already had some plans made, I do not think we are needed here anymore. Sayan Chowdhury and I are stepping down from the PyCon India 2018 core team, I hope new team members will continue the work as they want. Links: [1]. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/inpycon/2017-November/011249.html [2]. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/bangpypers/2017-October/011872.html [3]. https://in.pycon.org/2015/team.html Thanks, Chandan Kumar & Sayan Chowdhury
My name is prateek Mishra I am from jaypee University persuing btech from jaypee University guna I want to volunteer in social media team. On Jan 16, 2018 12:36 AM, "chandan kumar" <chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Anand Chitipothu, Noufal Ibrahim, Anand Pillai, Bibhas and the other members of the community,
Sayan and I initially proposed to organize PyCon India's 10th anniversary in Bangalore [1]. During the initial planning phase, we had requested Bangpypers community to support [2]. We have done two face to face meetings in Bangalore and have had several hangout sessions. The minutes of the meetings were also posted to mailing lists.
During the first face to face meeting at the Cafe Coffee Day near Forum Mall, Bangalore, we formed the team. We consulted Vijay and Vanitha to help in the core team.
Vijay joined us as sponsorship & Python for Kids Track co-ordinator and Vanitha was helping Content, CFP, and other parts as required.
The core team consisted of these 4 people to start with, apart from that, we had website, content and social media team for helping each other. We tried to keep all the discussions transparent on the mailing lists and IRC. We have done call for volunteers for every task as and when required. We wanted to follow 2014/2015 model of working and make the conference decentralized as that's how we can build future leaders for the community. Vijay laid the foundation for a decentralized way of working in the year 2014 and 2015. He always encouraged each volunteer to understand and take the responsibility to own the task end to end, provided confidence and made them comfortable.
The job of core team was to support volunteers on a need basis.
Under the leadership of Vijay during PyCon India 2015, we had taken PyCon India one step above and all the participants, from sponsors till attendees had something to appreciate in the event. I don't think anyone can deny that PyCon India 2015 was one of the best conferences to date. Here you can find the complete volunteers list [3].
I do not think there was transparency maintained in last two editions of PyCon India (2016 and 2017) where I and many other volunteers had helped in shaping the volunteering team on conference days. In spite of us raising concerns during PyCon India 2016 feedback sessions on bringing all the discussions in the mailing list, in 2017 edition all the discussions were taken offline through Telegram groups. Were those Telegram groups more trustworthy and transparent than this year team? All the decisions were taken by a particular group of people in their sacred Telegram groups without consulting the remaining community (makes me think of the high Priests culture).
No concerns could have been raised by the community then as no community had a chance to get involved (thanks to those sacred groups of Lords and friends). Last year, even a profit-making organization was given permission to conduct hackathon without any discussion with the community. If anything would have gone wrong during the hackathon, it would have impacted the Python Community in India not a particular group of people and I am not sure if everything was analyzed before taking a call. We all saw one incident during the panel discussion, and how it was handled.
We haven't even seen event report for last year from the organizers or PSSI, is not that a basic rule for the PSF grant? Where were all the folks who are commenting now when all this did not care? How would PSF trust us next time when we approach any grant? Are not we impacting whole Indian Python community with this act? There was a big discussion on Github access policy. How was the original access provided? Is it true that it was based on 1:1 Telegram discussion, as I haven't' seen any discussion here, now without the proper information he merged a request and we all spoke all policy? Can Anand C, Noufal, and Anand P share information on how original access was provided? Did you guys check if he was just reviewing?
Is that really community way of working?
Let me share how we all did in 2014 or in 2015. It was based on trust. Every year is a fresh start. We reconfigure access to email alias, social media, and other required locations. let us know if we misunderstood it?
Coming to PSSI, they have given us n-steps on how invoices should be raised for sponsorship money, one step says they are the only people to share invoice as they are the statutorily accountable for invoices. We completely understand we wanted one changed in steps Sponsorship co-ordinator will loop PSSI board while we should be sending an invoice as continuity for discussion instead of PSSI suddenly sending the invoice as a surprise. The problem is it took 5 days for PSSI treasurer to accept our proposal, but other members did not agree. Looks like PSSI even don't trust that we will do it in right spirit and they are citing like a company where marketing team's job is to find a customer and let other teams take over. Does PSSI really trust any PyCon India volunteers? And that makes me think of a very interesting point. If the people (Lords?) running PSSI are so concerned about the community, why are you not involving the community in the organization (PSSI), instead kicked everyone else out from the organization (no one allowed us to renew our memberships)? Could anyone please tell me when was the last Annual General Meeting happened? So, please do not show your concern about the community when you do not care about the community at all.
In the last thread, Vijay and Vanitha stepped down and we both are in there in core team still. Yet, you have asked for a new leadership team to run PyCon India 2018 without consulting us. Looks like you and others already have a plan in place and wanted us to move away.
Since this community does not trust the core volunteers and most of the people had already had some plans made, I do not think we are needed here anymore.
Sayan Chowdhury and I are stepping down from the PyCon India 2018 core team, I hope new team members will continue the work as they want.
Links: [1]. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/inpycon/2017-November/011249.html [2]. https://mail.python.org/pipermail/bangpypers/2017-October/011872.html [3]. https://in.pycon.org/2015/team.html
Thanks,
Chandan Kumar & Sayan Chowdhury _______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
Hi, On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar <chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Anand Chitipothu, Noufal Ibrahim, Anand Pillai, Bibhas and the other members of the community,
decentralized way of working in the year 2014 and 2015. He always encouraged each volunteer to understand and take the responsibility to own the task end to end, provided confidence and made them comfortable.
Until that distasteful/impolite github comment...
The job of core team was to support volunteers on a need basis.
Under the leadership of Vijay during PyCon India 2015, we had taken PyCon India one step above and all the participants, from sponsors till attendees had something to appreciate in the event. I don't think anyone can deny that PyCon India 2015 was one of the best conferences to date. Here you can find the
We all agree that he has made great contributions in the past. No one refuted that. But past achievements do not automatically make someone exempt from criticisms. This current call for apology is for what happened in the last few days and the response that he has given in that specific thread.
the mailing list, in 2017 edition all the discussions were taken offline through Telegram groups. Were those Telegram groups more trustworthy and transparent than this year team? All the decisions were taken by a particular
Of course not. Any thing other than publicly accessible means(mailing lists, IRCs) etc. should be considered bad.
chance to get involved (thanks to those sacred groups of Lords and friends).
I fail to understand why criticism of an incorrect stand taken by one volunteer is now getting into "us vs them" :( If discussions happened behind "closed doors" it is bad. Doesn't matter when/which year. Doesn't matter who did it. It is bad. period.
Let me share how we all did in 2014 or in 2015. It was based on trust. Every year is a fresh start. We reconfigure access to email alias, social media, and other required locations. let us know if we misunderstood it?
Was access to everyone's github removed on that day or only that specific guys ? You have been saying you were open and transparent, but organisers of the last two weren't. If that's the case, should you have not brought up the case of an "incorrect" PR acceptance in the mailing list and suggested that the access rights of that account be revoked if it happens again ?
makes me think of a very interesting point. If the people (Lords?) running PSSI
uncalled for.
are so concerned about the community, why are you not involving the community in the organization (PSSI), instead kicked everyone else out from the organization (no one allowed us to renew our memberships)? Could anyone please tell me when was the last Annual General Meeting happened? So, please do not show your concern about the community when you do not care about the community at all.
Who is this addressed to ? You had a list of people + the community in your original greeting. Do you think the community doesn't care for the language ? If that's the case, there would not have been this community :)
In the last thread, Vijay and Vanitha stepped down and we both are in there in core team still. Yet, you have asked for a new leadership team to run PyCon India 2018 without consulting us. Looks like you and others already have a
I am just quoting Anand B Pillai from this[1] thread <quote> I'd suggest for the current team minus Vijay to have a meeting and discuss options and suggest approaches. And discuss them in the mailing list - listen to feedback and take appropriate actions. </quote> So, looks like you missed that email. The suggestion was to have a meeting of the core team minus Vijay. Also, Anand C was referring to problems he had faced with Vijay. So, I don't understand how you arrived at your conclusion. Thanks [1] https://mail.python.org/pipermail/inpycon/2018-January/011749.html This mail seem to have taken the focus on what triggered the whole episode and so I have to add the next bunch of lines. I have not been an organiser or a formal volunteer ever. But have been participating and doing bits and pieces in every edition that's been out of Bangalore since 2009. I don't know anyone from the organising team of the last couple of years. And I don't know most of the 2015 team either. So, I am as neutral as possible here, without taking sides. But here is what I believe the core team should do 1) Come up with a list of all action items 2) Check with community if something is missed/needs modification 3) Start with the first item on list 4) Discuss how to get it done (may be IRC or even mailinglist), inform others so that they can join the discussion 5) Send minutes to list, seek opinion with a max response wait time (say 2 or 3 days) 6) Act on it (either the core team, or the sub team responsible or some ad-hoc volunteer) 6a) If core team/sub team/random volunteer does something unexpected, discuss on mailing list/IRC(inform IRC meet timings on mailing list) 7) Inform list that the action item is complete 8) Pick next item from list (created in (1)) 9) GoTo step 4 In the current incident, (6a) happened (some volunteer unexpectedly accepted a PR). The reaction was * He was asked not to volunteer * His access rights were revoked That's neither open nor transparent nor welcoming. 6a could have been properly followed. Or at least on github he could have been asked, in a polite way, to wait for a couple of more people to review before accepting it. When this point was brought up, an apology would have solved the problem. But there was none until the mail in which apology and stepping down came together. That isn't how someone who has been volunteering and co-ordinating responds. A person with such experience should have shown more patience and restraint. That didn't happen and that triggered this mess. Hop you understand. Thanks -- Thank you Balachandran Sivakumar
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 1:14 AM, Balachandran Sivakumar < benignbala@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar <chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Anand Chitipothu, Noufal Ibrahim, Anand Pillai, Bibhas and the other members of the community,
decentralized way of working in the year 2014 and 2015. He always encouraged each volunteer to understand and take the responsibility to own the task end to end, provided confidence and made them comfortable.
Until that distasteful/impolite github comment...
The job of core team was to support volunteers on a need basis.
Under the leadership of Vijay during PyCon India 2015, we had taken PyCon India one step above and all the participants, from sponsors till attendees had something to appreciate in the event. I don't think anyone can deny that PyCon India 2015 was one of the best conferences to date. Here you can find the
We all agree that he has made great contributions in the past. No one refuted that. But past achievements do not automatically make someone exempt from criticisms. This current call for apology is for what happened in the last few days and the response that he has given in that specific thread.
the mailing list, in 2017 edition all the discussions were taken offline through Telegram groups. Were those Telegram groups more trustworthy and transparent than this year team? All the decisions were taken by a particular
Hi Chandan, I hope you remember me as the volunteer who always *"joke" *around during the conference. The point which you have raised is quite critical that while most of the discussions were taken onto the Telegram group, I believe we need to focus on the current thread and not deviate from the topic. As I wrote in my previous email on the epic "100+ long" email thread that we should not make it* A vs B*. The past is gone! All we need to do now is think about what all we can learn from the same. I don't know if ever I have seen EMOTIONS on this mailing list but I am going to pour some of them now. I completely respect each and every volunteer who works for PyCon India. My first Pycon was Pycon 2014. Funnily enough I would say my ticket was booked by "XYZ" and my flight ticket was booked by "ABC" and that how I landed in Bengaluru for the very first time. I can get your frustration and things which are happening around. But let me tell you and for the matter [others who are in the mailing list] that this all *NOISE. *As people say "IN THE LONG RUN, NONE OF THIS WOULD MATTER" . What actually matter is the fact that we did some epic stuff e.g like running a conference. For most of the people Pycon India is just not only a conference, it's more like GEEKY HOLIDAY BONANZA for them. I am not being nostalgic but it's quite sad to see that everyone is leaving because of "X" , "Y" and "Z" . And to be honest both of the things "PR ACCEPTANCE ISSUE" and "PUTTING YOUR PAPERS DOWN" are completely unrelated thing. I mean for me it's more like : [SARCASM] : *mera bat hai, main out! toh main ghar ja * I don't know if you remember this or not but you only selected me to be the lead volunteer for MAIN HALL during PyCon 2014. And I can never forget the fact that I fell sick due to food poisoning on the second day. Courtesy [PRAWNS :P] and when I woke up I found Haris, Satya, Anuvrat standing right next to my bed in hospital. And as Noufal pointed out in his email earlier, it's about these small moments which you remember about the conference. Now coming back to the point I would say let's have face to face discussion over this put everthing on email
_______________________________________________ Inpycon mailing list Inpycon@python.org https://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/inpycon
-- Aniket Maithani www.aniketmaithani.net
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 1:29 AM, Aniket Maithani <maithani.aniket@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 1:14 AM, Balachandran Sivakumar < benignbala@gmail.com> wrote:
Hi,
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar <chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Anand Chitipothu, Noufal Ibrahim, Anand Pillai, Bibhas and the other members of the community,
decentralized way of working in the year 2014 and 2015. He always encouraged each volunteer to understand and take the responsibility to own the task end to end, provided confidence and made them comfortable.
Until that distasteful/impolite github comment...
The job of core team was to support volunteers on a need basis.
Under the leadership of Vijay during PyCon India 2015, we had taken PyCon India one step above and all the participants, from sponsors till attendees had something to appreciate in the event. I don't think anyone can deny that PyCon India 2015 was one of the best conferences to date. Here you can find the
We all agree that he has made great contributions in the past. No one refuted that. But past achievements do not automatically make someone exempt from criticisms. This current call for apology is for what happened in the last few days and the response that he has given in that specific thread.
the mailing list, in 2017 edition all the discussions were taken offline through Telegram groups. Were those Telegram groups more trustworthy and transparent than this year team? All the decisions were taken by a particular
Hi Chandan,
I hope you remember me as the volunteer who always *"joke" *around during the conference. The point which you have raised is quite critical that while most of the discussions were taken onto the Telegram group, I believe we need to focus on the current thread and not deviate from the topic. As I wrote in my previous email on the epic "100+ long" email thread that we should not make it* A vs B*. The past is gone! All we need to do now is think about what all we can learn from the same.
I don't know if ever I have seen EMOTIONS on this mailing list but I am going to pour some of them now. I completely respect each and every volunteer who works for PyCon India. My first Pycon was Pycon 2014. Funnily enough I would say my ticket was booked by "XYZ" and my flight ticket was booked by "ABC" and that how I landed in Bengaluru for the very first time.
I can get your frustration and things which are happening around. But let me tell you and for the matter [others who are in the mailing list] that this all *NOISE. *As people say "IN THE LONG RUN, NONE OF THIS WOULD MATTER" . What actually matter is the fact that we did some epic stuff e.g like running a conference.
For most of the people Pycon India is just not only a conference, it's more like GEEKY HOLIDAY BONANZA for them. I am not being nostalgic but it's quite sad to see that everyone is leaving because of "X" , "Y" and "Z" . And to be honest both of the things "PR ACCEPTANCE ISSUE" and "PUTTING YOUR PAPERS DOWN" are completely unrelated thing.
I mean for me it's more like : [SARCASM] :
*mera bat hai, main out! toh main ghar ja *
I don't know if you remember this or not but you only selected me to be the lead volunteer for MAIN HALL during PyCon 2014. And I can never forget the fact that I fell sick due to food poisoning on the second day. Courtesy [PRAWNS :P] and when I woke up I found Haris, Satya, Anuvrat standing right next to my bed in hospital. And as Noufal pointed out in his email earlier, it's about these small moments which you remember about the conference. Now coming back to the point I would say let's have face to face discussion over this put everthing on email
Aah.. I hit the sent button by mistake. I would keep it short. Let's take this through with maturity and keep up the spirits high. :) regards Aniket Maithani
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar < chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
Hello Anand Chitipothu, Noufal Ibrahim, Anand Pillai, Bibhas and the other members of the community,
[...]
In the last thread, Vijay and Vanitha stepped down and we both are in there
in core team still. Yet, you have asked for a new leadership team to run PyCon India 2018 without consulting us. Looks like you and others already have a plan in place and wanted us to move away.
I never meant that. My apologies, if it sounded like that. When I said leadership, I meant only the chair of the conference. Whatever I've said is not because I don't like the person, but because of his actions. I can share many incidents, each which is probably more serious than the one that is discussed in the mailing list. But my point is not to prove someone is bad or wrong. I was offended many times with his actions and behaviour and I know many other people who got offended the same way. IMHO such behaviour is not appropriate and it is better for the community to have someone else lead the conference. I request you to stay back and make PyCon India 2018 a great event. Anand
Since you mentioned me by name, I'll just clarify. All these things which you mentioned in your email are problems that need to be fixed. Lack of transparency, moving discussions to telegram groups etc. are all bad. I've not been very involved in the events since 2011 so I can't comment on all the things you've mentioned but I'm sure they're valid and need to be addressed. In this specific thread, all I objected to was Vijays response in the PR. I think, and still hold, that the comment was inappropriate and his explanation inadequate. I don't have any trust issues with any of you. So, if you Chandan and Sayan are leaving because you think I don't trust you guys, I ask you to reconsider. -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar < chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
Coming to PSSI, they have given us n-steps on how invoices should be raised for sponsorship money, one step says they are the only people to share invoice as they are the statutorily accountable for invoices. We completely understand we wanted one changed in steps Sponsorship co-ordinator will loop PSSI board while we should be sending an invoice as continuity for discussion instead of PSSI suddenly sending the invoice as a surprise. The problem is it took 5 days for PSSI treasurer to accept our proposal, but other members did not agree. Looks like PSSI even don't trust that we will do it in right spirit and they are citing like a company where marketing team's job is to find a customer and let other teams take over. Does PSSI really trust any PyCon India volunteers? And that makes me think of a very interesting point. If the people (Lords?) running PSSI are so concerned about the community, why are you not involving the community in the organization (PSSI), instead kicked everyone else out from the organization (no one allowed us to renew our memberships)? Could anyone please tell me when was the last Annual General Meeting happened? So, please do not show your concern about the community when you do not care about the community at all.
There is the email thread that happened in PSSI mailing list. https://anandology.com/tmp/pssi-sponsorship-thread.pdf In which, Vijay threatened to run PyCon India without PSSI and demanded Sree for explanation for why a courier was delayed by a day. Is that a way to treat a senior volunteer who as been with PyCon India from the very beginning and even lost a family member for PyCon India (yes, many of you don't know that). I Agree that PSSI has its own problems. I've been arguing that PSSI need to be more efficient and transparent. It is a big mess and there is no sense of trust among the members. I've suggested everyone to stepdown and let new people representing all python usergroups in India to take over and drive. Everyone who replied to that agreed except Vijay and Varnita. I don't want to change the topic to PSSI here. I'll start a separate thread discussing that. Anand
Greetings, I am one of the opensource passionate and Python lover. I am a first timer this year (2017-2018) for Pycon and wanted to learn and contribute for Python in new regions. I am already on this job in my own way - and its a real community and purely non-commercial activities without hulla bulla. I feel for making community successful we need people with different mindset, transparency and real people management & team management capabilities and should keep commercial as a byproduct and not the ONLY goal. Arrogant, dictatorship kind of approach will fail us surely and we will not be able to build a healthy community and cannot sustain for a long time. Kindly excuse me for my statement and I really mean it. I am unsubscribing myself from this mailing list, because every email I receive make me feel that there is something serious issue and this is NOT what I should get into. I am glad that I learnt this in the initial phase and thank you for all the learning. This whole episode helped me to think twice before getting involved with any new communities. Good wishes to everyone. I feel some of the senior members should sincerely drive this Aug 2018 event and make it a success. PS: I am not pointing fingers at anyone. Its just my general opinion and NOT referring to any communication/ discussion within this mailing list. Regards Atul ________________________________ From: Inpycon <inpycon-bounces+atuludupi=live.com@python.org> on behalf of Anand Chitipothu <anandology@gmail.com> Sent: Wednesday, March 7, 2018 9:36:54 AM To: Mailing list for the PyCon India conference Subject: Re: [Inpycon] Stepping down from the PyCon India 2018 core team On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar <chandankumar.093047@gmail.com<mailto:chandankumar.093047@gmail.com>> wrote: [...] Coming to PSSI, they have given us n-steps on how invoices should be raised for sponsorship money, one step says they are the only people to share invoice as they are the statutorily accountable for invoices. We completely understand we wanted one changed in steps Sponsorship co-ordinator will loop PSSI board while we should be sending an invoice as continuity for discussion instead of PSSI suddenly sending the invoice as a surprise. The problem is it took 5 days for PSSI treasurer to accept our proposal, but other members did not agree. Looks like PSSI even don't trust that we will do it in right spirit and they are citing like a company where marketing team's job is to find a customer and let other teams take over. Does PSSI really trust any PyCon India volunteers? And that makes me think of a very interesting point. If the people (Lords?) running PSSI are so concerned about the community, why are you not involving the community in the organization (PSSI), instead kicked everyone else out from the organization (no one allowed us to renew our memberships)? Could anyone please tell me when was the last Annual General Meeting happened? So, please do not show your concern about the community when you do not care about the community at all. There is the email thread that happened in PSSI mailing list. https://anandology.com/tmp/pssi-sponsorship-thread.pdf In which, Vijay threatened to run PyCon India without PSSI and demanded Sree for explanation for why a courier was delayed by a day. Is that a way to treat a senior volunteer who as been with PyCon India from the very beginning and even lost a family member for PyCon India (yes, many of you don't know that). I Agree that PSSI has its own problems. I've been arguing that PSSI need to be more efficient and transparent. It is a big mess and there is no sense of trust among the members. I've suggested everyone to stepdown and let new people representing all python usergroups in India to take over and drive. Everyone who replied to that agreed except Vijay and Varnita. I don't want to change the topic to PSSI here. I'll start a separate thread discussing that. Anand
On Wed, Mar 7, 2018 at 9:36 AM, Anand Chitipothu <anandology@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar < chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
Coming to PSSI, they have given us n-steps on how invoices should be raised for sponsorship money, one step says they are the only people to share invoice as they are the statutorily accountable for invoices. We completely understand we wanted one changed in steps Sponsorship co-ordinator will loop PSSI board while we should be sending an invoice as continuity for discussion instead of PSSI suddenly sending the invoice as a surprise. The problem is it took 5 days for PSSI treasurer to accept our proposal, but other members did not agree. Looks like PSSI even don't trust that we will do it in right spirit and they are citing like a company where marketing team's job is to find a customer and let other teams take over. Does PSSI really trust any PyCon India volunteers? And that makes me think of a very interesting point. If the people (Lords?) running PSSI are so concerned about the community, why are you not involving the community in the organization (PSSI), instead kicked everyone else out from the organization (no one allowed us to renew our memberships)? Could anyone please tell me when was the last Annual General Meeting happened? So, please do not show your concern about the community when you do not care about the community at all.
There is the email thread that happened in PSSI mailing list.
https://anandology.com/tmp/pssi-sponsorship-thread.pdf
In which, Vijay threatened to run PyCon India without PSSI and demanded Sree for explanation for why a courier was delayed by a day. Is that a way to treat a senior volunteer who as been with PyCon India from the very beginning and even lost a family member for PyCon India (yes, many of you don't know that).
Request you not to mistake me for asking this. But I could not understand "for PyCon India" in the above statement. Anand C, I would request you to provide complete info for everybody here to understand. All I asked Sree was to share the soft copy of invoice when the hard copy was already couriered. Even after repeated requests Sree neither shared the soft copy with PSSI board members nor with PyCon India core volunteers. This was not the first time he did this but he did the same during PyCon India 2017 for every payment or invoice. He always agrees to follow a protocol defined however,when the time comes, he ignores the protocols and end up doing what he wants. He ignores the reminders and requests to follow what we agreed as well. Just to let everyone know here, I had requested Sree to share PyCon India 2016 and 2017 expense report which he agreed. But he never could get approval from the core team of PyCon India 2016 and 2017 to share the same even after multiple requests. After which he requested PSSI executive members to process Audit report of 2016-17. I would request everyone here to help me understand how an Audit report can be processed without knowing the expense report of the one and only event supported by PSSI. And for the record, Anand C and even the President of PSSI did not take any action to get PSSI follow process instead I was questioned for requesting to follow process. And it continues here as well. Also, every year PSSI comes up with new process for PyCon India depending on who are leading PyCon India that year. In PyCon India 2017, PSSI agreed to let the core volunteers take decisions on everything related to the event and PSSI act only provide financial support. But in 2018, the process was changed and the core volunteers were not consulted neither their concerns were considered. That was the reason I said that we might have to rethink on working with PSSI. The email shared by Anand C has all the necessary info. I had a hard time making PSSI board members understand our bye-law to involve executive members of PSSI in all the decision taking. I took that struggle hope that would help resolve the issues in PSSI but you went ahead with dissolving the board without even understanding how Indian law works and what is there in the bye-law. How can one trust PSSI when there are so many internal conflicts? Note: I was told repeatedly that PSF has given PSSI authority to run PyCon India. Could you please provide me insights as to when and how this discussion with PSF happened. Being a PSSI secretary, I do not have this details. All this make me feel that a set of people here has something against me and come hard on me for whatever I say or do.
I Agree that PSSI has its own problems. I've been arguing that PSSI need to be more efficient and transparent. It is a big mess and there is no sense of trust among the members. I've suggested everyone to stepdown and let new people representing all python usergroups in India to take over and drive. Everyone who replied to that agreed except Vijay and Varnita.
Thanks to you, who helped creating PSSI bye-law, we cannot just get the new members in and replace the board at once. Any member must complete a year before becoming a board member. Looks like you missed to read the response instead made up mind that we are not agreeing by just checking who the sender is. Sorry to say I can't support illogical and immature decision like this.
Apologies for top posting. Looks like community is neither bothered about the concerns raised on PSSI nor does it want to bring transparency in PSSI/PyCon India with accounts and the policies followed on all aspects. I tried my best to clear things out with internal discussions and also tried bringing a couple of things here in the mailing list. It seems to me that you have to be friends of senior people here to get answers. Otherwise your concerns will be neglected altogether and you will be targeted badly even for a small mistake of yours. I do not have time, energy or patience to fight indefinitely. Just to make my stand clear, am not comfortable with the culture PSSI follows. Being secretary of PSSI , I doubt I can co-operate without transparency in policies and procedures PSSI follows and also all the queries raised are not addressed. I do not entertain groupism in open source community and do not want to be indulged in one. If we cannot work as one team, we cannot call ourself open source community. Hope this email will be taken constructively and I won't be targeted for this email again. On Thu, Mar 8, 2018 at 11:40 PM, vijay kumar <vnbang2003@gmail.com> wrote:
On Wed, Mar 7, 2018 at 9:36 AM, Anand Chitipothu <anandology@gmail.com> wrote:
On Tue, Jan 16, 2018 at 12:35 AM, chandan kumar < chandankumar.093047@gmail.com> wrote:
[...]
Coming to PSSI, they have given us n-steps on how invoices should be raised for sponsorship money, one step says they are the only people to share invoice as they are the statutorily accountable for invoices. We completely understand we wanted one changed in steps Sponsorship co-ordinator will loop PSSI board while we should be sending an invoice as continuity for discussion instead of PSSI suddenly sending the invoice as a surprise. The problem is it took 5 days for PSSI treasurer to accept our proposal, but other members did not agree. Looks like PSSI even don't trust that we will do it in right spirit and they are citing like a company where marketing team's job is to find a customer and let other teams take over. Does PSSI really trust any PyCon India volunteers? And that makes me think of a very interesting point. If the people (Lords?) running PSSI are so concerned about the community, why are you not involving the community in the organization (PSSI), instead kicked everyone else out from the organization (no one allowed us to renew our memberships)? Could anyone please tell me when was the last Annual General Meeting happened? So, please do not show your concern about the community when you do not care about the community at all.
There is the email thread that happened in PSSI mailing list.
https://anandology.com/tmp/pssi-sponsorship-thread.pdf
In which, Vijay threatened to run PyCon India without PSSI and demanded Sree for explanation for why a courier was delayed by a day. Is that a way to treat a senior volunteer who as been with PyCon India from the very beginning and even lost a family member for PyCon India (yes, many of you don't know that).
Request you not to mistake me for asking this. But I could not understand "for PyCon India" in the above statement.
Anand C, I would request you to provide complete info for everybody here to understand. All I asked Sree was to share the soft copy of invoice when the hard copy was already couriered. Even after repeated requests Sree neither shared the soft copy with PSSI board members nor with PyCon India core volunteers. This was not the first time he did this but he did the same during PyCon India 2017 for every payment or invoice. He always agrees to follow a protocol defined however,when the time comes, he ignores the protocols and end up doing what he wants. He ignores the reminders and requests to follow what we agreed as well.
Just to let everyone know here, I had requested Sree to share PyCon India 2016 and 2017 expense report which he agreed. But he never could get approval from the core team of PyCon India 2016 and 2017 to share the same even after multiple requests. After which he requested PSSI executive members to process Audit report of 2016-17. I would request everyone here to help me understand how an Audit report can be processed without knowing the expense report of the one and only event supported by PSSI.
And for the record, Anand C and even the President of PSSI did not take any action to get PSSI follow process instead I was questioned for requesting to follow process. And it continues here as well.
Also, every year PSSI comes up with new process for PyCon India depending on who are leading PyCon India that year. In PyCon India 2017, PSSI agreed to let the core volunteers take decisions on everything related to the event and PSSI act only provide financial support. But in 2018, the process was changed and the core volunteers were not consulted neither their concerns were considered. That was the reason I said that we might have to rethink on working with PSSI. The email shared by Anand C has all the necessary info.
I had a hard time making PSSI board members understand our bye-law to involve executive members of PSSI in all the decision taking. I took that struggle hope that would help resolve the issues in PSSI but you went ahead with dissolving the board without even understanding how Indian law works and what is there in the bye-law.
How can one trust PSSI when there are so many internal conflicts?
Note: I was told repeatedly that PSF has given PSSI authority to run PyCon India. Could you please provide me insights as to when and how this discussion with PSF happened. Being a PSSI secretary, I do not have this details.
All this make me feel that a set of people here has something against me and come hard on me for whatever I say or do.
I Agree that PSSI has its own problems. I've been arguing that PSSI need to be more efficient and transparent. It is a big mess and there is no sense of trust among the members. I've suggested everyone to stepdown and let new people representing all python usergroups in India to take over and drive. Everyone who replied to that agreed except Vijay and Varnita.
Thanks to you, who helped creating PSSI bye-law, we cannot just get the new members in and replace the board at once. Any member must complete a year before becoming a board member. Looks like you missed to read the response instead made up mind that we are not agreeing by just checking who the sender is. Sorry to say I can't support illogical and immature decision like this.
-- Thanks, Vijay
On Thu, Mar 22 2018, vijay kumar wrote: [...]
Just to make my stand clear, am not comfortable with the culture PSSI follows. Being secretary of PSSI , I doubt I can co-operate without transparency in policies and procedures PSSI follows and also all the queries raised are not addressed. I do not entertain groupism in open source community and do not want to be indulged in one. If we cannot work as one team, we cannot call ourself open source community.
PSSI needs a complete overhaul. Let's just focus on making sure that whatever resources it has (especially the ability handle amounts from sponsors) is used to help the volunteers in Hyderabad this year. Once that's over, we'll reignite this thread and decide how to deal with the PSSI. [...] -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
On Thu, Mar 22 2018, vijay kumar wrote: [...]
Just to make my stand clear, am not comfortable with the culture PSSI follows. Being secretary of PSSI , I doubt I can co-operate without transparency in policies and procedures PSSI follows and also all the queries raised are not addressed. I do not entertain groupism in open source community and do not want to be indulged in one. If we cannot work as one team, we cannot call ourself open source community.
PSSI needs a complete overhaul. Let's just focus on making sure that whatever resources it has (especially the ability handle amounts from sponsors) is used to help the volunteers in Hyderabad this year. Once that's over, we'll reignite this thread and decide how to deal with the PSSI. [...] -- Cordially, Noufal http://nibrahim.net.in
participants (8)
-
Anand Chitipothu -
Aniket Maithani -
Atul UDUPI -
Balachandran Sivakumar -
chandan kumar -
Noufal Ibrahim KV -
prateek mishra -
vijay kumar