Tim Schilling
I'm a Django/Python developer who has become very involved in the Django community over the past few years. I started by helping maintain the django-debug-toolbar library and have started helping in other areas, including Djangonaut Space, Django Commons, and the Django Steering Council. I also was a DEFNA director and a DjangoCon US organizer. Beyond community organizing I like to bake bread, brew beer, ferment hot sauce and as of 2025, roast coffee. If you see me around, come say hi!
Session
"Come for the language, stay for the community." This is a mantra of Python communities, including Django. It's clear how easy it is to forge a strong bond with people in our communities. But have you noticed when you solve one problem for the community, you're soon asked to help with two more problems? You might have even noticed that this phenomenon seems to never stop either. As long as you have time and energy, you're welcomed to do more and more for the community.
Our communities and our contributors need boundaries. Open source software governance is one way to help raise those boundaries. The presenters want to share with you their lessons learned from their time as open source contributors and community organizers in various organizations in the Django community. Leaving this talk you will understand why governance is important to think about from the start, how to define a basic governance structure and how to integrate it into an existing community. Our goal is to raise awareness around the need for clearer expectations so people feel more confident contributing and feel less guilty when they can't.