[Inpycon] KG memorial award

[sankarshan]

Thanks for sharing the process leading up to the selection of Vijay
Kumar as the recipient of the award for year 2015.

On Fri, Sep 25, 2015 at 12:55 PM, Anand B Pillai
<anandpillai at letterboxes.org> wrote:
> FYI, the KG award is constituted by the PSSI board and technically the
> selection is a wholly internal process.

So, would the individuals involved in the selection include the office
bearers mentioned at <https://pssi.org.in/about/> Thus,

[excerpt]

The board positions of PSSI

Anand Balachandran Pillai - President
Sreekanth S Rameshaiah - Treasurer
Kracekumar Ramaraju - Joint-Secretary
Konark Modi - Vice president
vijay kumar - Secretary

[excerpt]

> If we share the names and details of the others who were nominated it
> might be doing a bit of injustice to them. The thought process is still
> evolving on this aspect.

I didn't see a request to have a long (and short) list of candidates
to be published. Although, it would be good to understand how the
board feels about it and whether there are differing opinions on this
topic within the selection committee.

> Apart from that here are the details that can be shared.
>
> 1. We got nominations for 4 different people from the community
> 2. Mr. Vijay Kumar got the maximum number of nominations and some of the
> more detailed ones with the maximum number of supporters (Referrals)
>
> He stood out as the person who did the most for developing and
> encouraging a local chapter - Chennaipy - of the Indian Python community
> .
>
> Plus his other contributions to free software - in embedded systems -
> and some in the Linux kernel - also made him stood out.
>
> In brief he summarized the two key aspects of the award - Excellence in
> community development plus capabilities as a technical contributor to
> Python and otherwise from India.
>
> We hope more people like him will evolve as leaders of the various local
> Python chapters in the future and play a larger role in the Python
> community in India. The award is also meant to encourage and inspire
> such future leaders.

I would think that this last section (paragraph) is the part which
needs a bit more thoughts around. The fact that there is a very short
list of 4 candidates is not very encouraging. Add to that the fact
that nominations and referrals do not contain sufficient level of
detail is worrying. PSSI and the local chapters have to be a bit more
planful when thinking about the award. It would be obvious that as
PSSI evolves through the years, the narrative around what the award
stands for will mesh with the narratives (and myths) around KG. It
would be good to think about whether there is enough space being
created for new sets of definitive leadership to come forward.


-- 
sankarshan mukhopadhyay
<https://twitter.com/#!/sankarshan>