An Invitation to Get Involved in Python Advocacy

[Jeff Rush]

I'd like to extend an invitation to those who would like to get involved in 
advocating the use of Python.  In August, the PSF hired me, for a 6-mo 
contract, to coordinate the Python advocacy effort.  Since then I've been 
working to make the next PyCon one of the best conferences yet, and putting in 
place the infrastructure of a newcomer portal (http://advocacy.python.org) 
focused on drawing in those people who don't know much about Python but have 
developed an interest for various reasons.  The portal also has an entry point 
(http://advocacy.python.org/getinvolved) to organize the materials and 
activities of those already in the Python community who want to get involved. 
I've also established a new mailing list <advocacy at python.org> on which to 
discuss advocacy, replacing the <marketing-python at wingide.com> list, and a 
blog.(http://python-advocacy.blogspot.com) for keeping the Python community 
up-to-date about advocacy goings on.  The blog is aggregated into the official 
Planet Python (but I can't seem to reach the coordinator of the *unofficial* 
Planet Python).

A bit about the newcomer portal to place it in context; the portal is designed 
to help someone who has just become aware of Python decide if the language is 
right for them.  It seeks to quickly direct visitors to the information they 
want, and bring to their attention how diverse and vibrant the support for 
Python is.  The audience is not only programmers but also journalists, project 
managers, scientists/engineers, recruiters and educators.  Different audiences 
come at Python with different needs and often need different explanations. 
And some  are indeed programmers, but using other languages, who wonder how 
Python compares to what they are using now.

For the newcomer portal we have a need for content writers to focus on 
specific problem domains, for the various subcommunities to provide technology 
roadmaps and representative samples of source code that would entice someone 
to check them out.  As one example, the SciPy/NumPy group could write about 
what makes their software attractive to the scientific community and provide 
one-page sources that illustrates certain common operations, to show off the 
clarify and expressiveness of Python.  I've found plenty of material on the 
SciPy website that I'm weaving into the newcomer portal.

The portal is not designed to replace what we have at www.python.org but to 
complement it, and to serve as an organizing point for the extensive content 
already on www.python.org and elsewhere.  The portal also specifically 
supports dynamic content, relational database storage of information and easy 
plug-in of new components to add new features.  Such features will eventually 
include, among other things, a searchable roster of user groups, a registry of 
speakers and trainers and a catalog of books about Python, each with RSS feeds 
where appropriate.

And for the curious, the portal is written using the Zope 3 component system, 
building on the underlying Twisted subsystem for internal background 
scheduling and hooked to a PostgreSQL database.  The site makes use of Zope 3 
viewlets to provide pluggable display elements, reStructured text documents 
for a clean separation between content and infrastructure, and Nabu for 
synchronization of document collections into the indexing engine and 
persisting of the reST DOMs to enable content manipulation at presentation 
time according to what is to be viewed (biblio data, abstracts, content).  The 
portal is located on the python.org servers and all software and content are 
checked into svn.python.org.

In closing, I am greatly honored by the trust of the foundation members in me 
and hope to serve the community well.  As coordinator, I invite others to get 
involved and will strive to provide an assistive environment within which 
everyone can be productive.  The primary discussion area is the new mailing 
list which can be joined at:

   http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/advocacy

and a list of what is needed is at:

   http://advocacy.python.org/getinvolved

I am also maintaining a list of accomplishments and near-term To-Do's for 
myself at:

   http://wiki.python.org/moin/PythonAdvocacyCoordinator

Jeff Rush
Python Advocacy Coordinator