2025-12-06 –, Main Stream Language: English
The tech is the easy part; people are the real challenge. Machines follow instructions. People follow principles — and that’s what makes leadership both hard and meaningful. Communities rarely fall apart because people lack passion; they fall apart because they lack systems and resources.
When Matt and I first attended PyCon PH 2012, we didn’t plan to lead anything. We were just two young developers who found a community that felt alive. In 2013, with seven others, we incorporated PythonPH to keep that spark going. What followed were years of learning the hard way: burnout, stretched volunteers, and the truth that passion alone can’t sustain a community. Early on, it takes unsustainable effort before anything feels stable.
As co-founders stepped back — the way people naturally do when life and priorities shift — we stayed because someone had to. But when responsibility quietly piles onto the same few people, it wears them down. That’s how burnout really happens.
Over time, we learned that communities flourish not because of exceptional leaders, but because of systems that make leadership shareable. When the structure makes it easy for committed people to step up, sustainability finally follows.
This talk is for anyone who carries the invisible load of keeping a community alive — especially those who quietly hold things together. The emotional labor, the coordination, the reliability. These things are rarely seen, but always felt. And showing up matters; you never know who’s drawing strength from your example. For many women, that quiet kind of role modeling will feel familiar.
If you’re stretched thin but still hopeful, this talk is for you — a reminder to pause, reconnect with what matters, and lead from your values. The work is tough, but rewarding, and you don’t have to carry it alone.
Grassroots leadership often begins with passion, but passion alone can’t keep a community alive. After more than a decade of building PythonPH and PyLadies Manila, we learned that communities don’t flourish because of exceptional leaders, they flourish because of systems that make leadership shareable. When you create structures that make it easier for committed people to step up, sustainability finally begins to take shape.
This talk is a practical and honest look at what it really takes to build a volunteer-driven community that can outlast its founders. We’ll talk about the early years of unsustainable effort, the realities of burnout, and the turning points that forced us to rethink how leadership works. We’ll also explore the Kaizend approach: a culture and values-driven model for supporting, developing, and retaining volunteers. Part of that work meant accepting that even nonprofits need business-level clarity — resources, budgeting, and operations — to stay healthy and fair to volunteers.
If you’ve ever felt stretched thin but still hopeful, this session is for you. I’m just sharing what we learned the hard way, and hopefully it sparks ideas you can shape into something that fits your own community. It’s a reminder to pause, reconnect with what matters, and lead in a way that honors your values. The work is tough, but fulfilling, and you don’t have to carry the load alone.
1. Systems make leadership sustainable.
I learned the hard way that communities flourish when leadership is shared, not concentrated. Simple systems made it easier for committed people to step up, and that’s when things slowly started to become sustainable.
2. Burnout is a design problem, not a personal failure.
Early on, it takes unsustainable effort before anything feels stable, mostly because you’re learning faster than you’re structuring. But once we started spreading responsibility and building systems around the work, things slowly got lighter. Burnout wasn’t a sign that we were weak; it was a sign that the system needed to change.
3. Care doesn’t have to depend on vibe. It can be intentional and structured.
Through Kaizend, I realized that volunteer care can’t be left to chance. The Salesian Oratory model (Home, School, Spirituality, Playground) helped us build a system that supports the whole person, and that foundation became our real source of resilience. It’s what inspired us to build Kaizend.
4. Culture and values are your real levers.
I learned that what works for one community won’t always work for another. Filipino Bayanihan, our cultural instincts, and our shared principles shaped the systems that ended up working for us. One-size-fits-all models rarely work. Leading with your community’s values is what helps you build something that lasts.
5. Even movements and nonprofits need to be run like a business.
I learned that even nonprofits need clarity in budgeting, planning, and operations. Passion drives the mission, but structure keeps the work fair and sustainable for volunteers.
Micaela Reyes builds systems that align tools and technology with human needs. She helps ideas move from intent to impact, working through uncertainty and limited resources to reach ambitious goals.
Drawing from her roots as a software engineer, she now builds ecosystems at the intersection of technology, education, and social impact—translating vision into systems that actually work through her roles at Ateneo TRL (Technical Resource Lab) and PythonPH. She is a Fellow of the Python Software Foundation and a recipient of its Community Service Award for sustaining the Python community in the Philippines. Volunteers at PythonPH fondly call her “Ate Mickey” (older sister), a gesture of closeness that she deeply values.
Python has been at the center of her journey—not just as a programming language, but as a community she has chosen to serve. As a woman in tech, Micaela sees empowerment as a matter of deliberate action: not just being heard, but making change where it counts.