[Inpycon] Stepping down from the PyCon India 2018 core team

[chandan kumar]

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