From gvwilson at cs.toronto.edu Wed Aug 25 16:12:09 2004 From: gvwilson at cs.toronto.edu (Greg Wilson) Date: Wed Aug 25 16:12:20 2004 Subject: [Grants-discuss] Getting the ball rolling... Message-ID: Hi everyone. Quite a coincidence --- I mailed a PDF of a grant proposal to psf-grants last night, then saw David Ascher's notice about this mailing list in my blog feed this morning ;-). So, a handful of questions: 1. Are multiple applications from the same person or group encouraged, discouraged, or neither? 2. Is it OK to circulate drafts of proposals here to get feedback from other potential proposers? 3. Are there any special tax considerations for proposers outside the US? 4. Do the committee members have a favorite font? I've been using Garamond, but if Palatino would improve the odds, hey, I'll switch ;-) Thanks, Greg p.s. apologies if this message appears twice; the University of Toronto still can't decide whether it's "toronto.edu" or "utoronto.ca", which confuses Mailman as much as it confuses us. From nnorwitz at gmail.com Sun Aug 29 17:21:23 2004 From: nnorwitz at gmail.com (Neal Norwitz) Date: Sun Aug 29 17:21:29 2004 Subject: [Grants-discuss] Getting the ball rolling... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: On Wed, 25 Aug 2004 10:12:09 -0400, Greg Wilson wrote: > Hi everyone. Quite a coincidence --- I mailed a PDF of a grant proposal > to psf-grants last night, then saw David Ascher's notice about this > mailing list in my blog feed this morning ;-). So, a handful of > questions: Hi Greg. Good to see some questions, thanks. I am not on the grants committee, so most of my answers are just my opinions. > 1. Are multiple applications from the same person or group encouraged, > discouraged, or neither? IMO, either encouraged or neither. I don't see any reason to discourage completely different proposals. However, the proposals should be different. Two similar proposals should not be encouraged. > 2. Is it OK to circulate drafts of proposals here to get feedback from > other potential proposers? I think this is ok. The PSF's goal is to improve Python. We *want* to pay out grant money to improve Python. But only if we perceive a benefit to the community. IMO anything you can do to improve the quality of your proposal and strengthen your likelihood of success is a win-win. > 3. Are there any special tax considerations for proposers outside the US? Since I'm treasurer, this is probably as definitive of an answer as you are going to get: we don't know. I haven't done any research on the issue. My intention was to send 1099s at the end of the year. But that would only apply to US residents. My guess is that there are no special considerations. From the PSFs perspective we list all our grants, including amounts on the yearly tax return. >From a grant recipient's perspective, they are receiving income from the PSF as a subcontractor. It is income just like any other income they would receive from another company. HTH, Neal From gvwilson at cs.toronto.edu Sun Aug 29 17:37:49 2004 From: gvwilson at cs.toronto.edu (Greg Wilson) Date: Sun Aug 29 17:38:04 2004 Subject: [Grants-discuss] Getting the ball rolling... In-Reply-To: References: Message-ID: Hi Neal; thanks for your mail. > > GVW: > > 2. Is it OK to circulate drafts of proposals here to get feedback from > > other potential proposers? > NN: > I think this is ok. The PSF's goal is to improve Python. We *want* to > pay out grant money to improve Python. But only if we perceive a > benefit to the community. > IMO anything you can do to improve the quality of your proposal and > strengthen your likelihood of success is a win-win. Thanks very much. If anyone's interested, the current proposal is at: http://www.third-bit.com/~gvwilson/psf-proposal-course.pdf I've already sent it in (before I knew this list existed ;-), but if anyone can suggest ways to improve it, I'd be very grateful. Thanks, Greg From gvwilson at cs.toronto.edu Tue Aug 31 15:58:31 2004 From: gvwilson at cs.toronto.edu (Greg Wilson) Date: Tue Aug 31 15:58:53 2004 Subject: [Grants-discuss] re: popularizing Python Message-ID: Hi Neal; thanks for your mail. I'm cc'ing Michelle Levesque, my occasional partner in crime, as well as the grants-discuss list; would enjoy hearing from others as well. > > GVW: > > If anyone's interested, the current proposal is at: > > http://www.third-bit.com/~gvwilson/psf-proposal-course.pdf > NN: > ...I liked your proposal and I thought it included all the > necessary info: what your propose to do, the cost, schedule, and your > credentials. It was reasonably short and readable. I like the > proposed license arrangement. GVW: Thanks very much. > NN: > I suspect the training material you propose would be quite useful. My > largest concern would be how to get others to use it. This isn't > necessarily a criticism of the proposal, but rather just a general > concern about how to go about things. I have the same concerns about > how to promote Python in general. GVW: I agree, getting a large number of people to try it --- esp. people who don't have a passionate Pythonista poking them in the ribs saying, "Go on, you'll like it!" --- is the hard part. If the proposal is accepted, I would try to place a short series of popularizing articles in a magazine like "Physics World" [1], "Computers in Physics" [2], "IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology" [3], or "American Scientist" [4]. I didn't include this in the proposal because there's no guarantee I could actuall do this; do you think I should mention it? On a larger scale, I think that it would be a lot easier to convince non-Pythonistas to give Python a try if Python had clearer answers to some common questions. For example, there are at least four (maybe five) web app frameworks out there; as Michelle Levesque observed a month ago [5]: The real problem with this kind of rampant fragmentation is that you have no guarantee that the piece you choose will still be an active project in one, two, or five years from now. Furthermore, every piece will be far less mature than if there were very few options to choose from, since the developer effort will be spread thin across so many projects. I understand why "let a hundred flowers bloom" appeals to open source developers, but it's a real pain in the body part to someone trying to persuade the other 99.99999% of humanity to give Python a try. I'm hoping that Michelle's "web off" [6] will encourage the Python community to come up with a clearer story; it would be very cool to see PSF grants support such rationalization. Just my $0.02, Greg [1] http://physicsweb.org [2] http://www.aip.org/cip [3] http://www.ieee.org/organizations/pubs/magazines/emb.htm [4] http://www.amsci.org/amsci/amsci.html [5] http://pyre.third-bit.com/hippoblog/archives/000058.html [6] http://pyre.third-bit.com/pywebblog