[PSF-Community] Introductions

[Iqbal Abdullah]

Hi everyone,

Thank you to Ewa for setting up a community list to connect us all together.

There has been some flack on the self-introductions, but as Justin
mentioned in a different thread: "We *are* python". And since the
purpose of this list is:

"The purpose of the psf-community mailing list is to provide an
environment where pythonistas can communicate with a large audience,
share experiences, launch projects, and/or discuss their Python & OSS
interests."

I am happy to read many of us sharing our python experiences and also
doing a really good job at giving back to the community or working
hard to be better at python.

In the same spirit, my name is Iqbal and I am residing in Tokyo.
Community wise, me and a few friends founded PyCon JP in 2011 with the
first mini PyCon with 100 people coming and enjoying a day of python
tracks. We've been doing regular local PyCons since then: we hosted
PyCon APAC in 2013 in Tokyo and our upcoming PyCon JP 2015 will be
held on Oct 9th 2015 in Tokyo. We expect 500 people to come and join
us. Tickets are still on sale if you're interested to check out how
diverse and fun the PyCon in Tokyo is!
(https://pycon.jp/2015/en/registration/)

I am also the founder and chair for PyCon MY (Malaysia). We had our
first mini PyCon MY in 2014, with a small group of 70 people
participating for a one-day one-track event just to check out how much
interest the community has for a local PyCon. We had wonderful
feedback for the mini PyCon, and so we decided to have our first major
local PyCon MY 2015 in Aug 21 to 23, which was a 2-track event,
including a workshop for beginners (http://www.pycon.my). The
community and our corporate sponsors was very encouraging and with
their help, we managed to make it into a fun event! The plan now is to
have a regular yearly local PyCon, to build up on the newly found
interest for a local python conference.

At the same time, I am also working closely with the larger APAC
community (active participation is currently from SG, JP, TW, KR, MY,
HK with PH showing strong interests). We are now working towards
creating a common framework for the APAC countries to host an APAC
PyCon (something like the EuroPython). I believe having a closer
regional PyCon conference is beneficial for this part of the world, to
support pythonistas that are not able to attend the larger US or
Europe conferences due to financial, time and travel restrictions.

The PSF has been supportive by granting us grants for the JP, MY
PyCons and also supportive of our work for the APAC community. Van
Lindberg was also in Taipei during the last APAC conference and was
one of the panelist for our APAC community discussion event, giving
insights on what the PSF can help with and ideas on how to move the
APAC community forward.

If you are interested to know more about JP, MY or the larger APAC
community, please drop me an email. I will be more than happy to
answer your questions.

Live long and prosper,
- Iqbal


On Tue, Sep 22, 2015 at 4:44 AM, Christopher Welborn <cjwelborn at live.com> wrote:
> My name is Chris Welborn. I live around Birmingham, AL (USA). I've been
> writing code since childhood (32 now) using various languages, though Python
> is definitely one of my favorites. I've also built a couple sites using
> Django. It's really nice.
>
> It's hard for me to make it to the PyCons, but if I ever see one closer to
> home I will be there. Like I said though, I live "around" Birmingham not in
> it, so it makes it even harder for me to make it to meetups.
>
> As for the "introductions or not" discussion, I think it could be annoying
> for some people at first, but surely the amount will settle a little after
> some time. I also like reading the introductions to see what other people
> are up to. I recently turned emails off for python-list because the amount
> was too much, even as digests. I still read the list using Thunderbird and
> GMane though.
>
> Sorry for the long message. You can find me on IRC (freenode, #python) as
> cjwelborn, or on github as cjwelborn and welbornprod. I try to help out
> where I can, and receive help from those that are more experienced than me.
>
>
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