For as long as I can remember, I have been passionate about using technology to help others learn and to offer access to inspiring educational resources. It's a profound gift to be a small part of someone's joy and excitement about learning something new. The satisfaction of being told that you have helped someone learn something new that they weren't confident that they could do gives meaning to why technology matters most to me.
As I get ready to step back from being a Director of the Python Software Foundation, I'm taking a moment to reflect back on the past two years on the PSF Board and open source. I enjoy coding in Python for its flexibility and rich ecosystem of libraries. Yet, it's the Python community that I truly cherish.
A Fab Lab is a community space for people to gather and fabricate their dreams and ideas.
Today, the Python Software Foundation, commonly known as PSF in the Python community, gave the PSF Distinguished Service Award to Mark Hammond. Brian Curtin, a past PSF Director and long-time communicator of "community" importance, wrote a thoughtful PSF blog post about Mark's many contributions to our Python community.
The wonderful Python community also has itself to thank for allowing this book to come to fruition. The Python newsgroup seems to be one of the final bastions of Usenet where spams are ignored, newbies are treated kindly, and trolls are either ignored or quickly turned into a serious and on-topic discussion. Many smart and friendly people hang out on the newsgroup, and it's one of the more esoteric reasons many people find using the language enjoyable.Source: Mark Hammond and Andy Robinson, Python Programming on Win32, O'Reilly & Associates, Inc., 2000.
Today, I reflect on a life changing event. For a few days, we came together from around the world to form a community to share our thoughts on change and our compassion for individual experiences in technology.