Comment by JonAtkinson | Hacker News Reader

Comment by JonAtkinson | Hacker News Reader

Some thoughts on this from my perspective as a white, European, who was graciously invited to speak at DjangoCon Africa. I am not involved at all with the PSF, but my company has given the PSF money in the past.

I think that I could sense the slight uncertainty about the conference, and the post above had made plain why. Considering what more could have been done if that uncertainty was resolved more quickly, the PSF’s procrastination (which is a generous interpretation, a less generous interpretation could be “tactical stonewalling”) is very disappointing.

I generally supports PSF initiatives, I hope they will answer publicly and if necessary make commitments to improve their communications and processes. The PSF need to recognise the pent-up demand for support and financial aid outside of the Anglosphere. With good leadership they could make a huge contribution.

I appreciate the difficult situation that the organisers are now in: it takes courage to call out poor behaviour.

This doesn’t diminish the organisers or the event in any way: it was a huge success from my perspective as an attendee. DjangoCon Africa was the most invigorating conference experience I have had in years.

What strikes me most about this is that, apparently by the timeline described in the open letter, the conference organizers planned the event with the expectation they'd get funding and asked for the funding fewer than five months before the event. That seems like extremely poor planning from my perspective.

Maybe that's normal for events given money by PSF, I dunno, but "we've already decided to do this so hurry up and say yes now or it's your fault" doesn't seem entirely reasonable to me. It is, unfortunately, something I've run into time and again, with community driven events.

I don’t see why it would take more than one PSF board meeting to approve funding for an event. Even if the board had questions, the follow-up is supposed to happen quickly. Several months to approve $9000 is silly. That’s probably just the catering budget for a 3-day, 200-person conference in the Bay Area - let alone for a conference for all of Africa’s Python community.

The FAQ[1] asks for 6 weeks before an event, so I suppose that's fair. That still seems like poor planning, though -- clearly the event was planned the the presumption that the funding would be approved. What would this open letter have looked like if the ask had been turned down altogether?

IMO the order of operations should be 1) ask for funding, 2) plan the event, not the other way around.

[1] https://www.python.org/psf/grants/faq/

Poor planning to ask for money 6 months in advance? How is that poor planning?

You ask for money far in advance so you can get a no with a reasonable timeframe to switch to something else.

Yes is easy, what's you're no plan?

Or you simply are extremely cautious not knowing how bureaucratic and slow the PSF is or is not.

6 months is way in advance. PSF policy is to ask 4-6 weeks before the event (Timeframe: We require that applications be submitted 6 weeks before the event/project start date - this gives us enough time to thoroughly review, ask questions, and have enough time to send you the funds.), so 6 months is more than enough time.

And we're missing the issue: the organizers were asking for $9k, which by all means should have been an easy yes/no. If they would have asked for 100k, maybe, but $9k is chump change.

The funding FAQ gives general guidance of $2500 at the high end and still discusses virtual events. I suspect some of the problem is the process is for very low budget meetups, and virtual things, not six-day real world events.

> asked for the funding fewer than five months before the event

The Python Software Foundation says that they need less than 6 weeks for processing grant applications:

https://www.python.org/psf/grants/

Yeah, just dug that up myself. I still feel that you ask for funding and then plan the event, if the funding is crucial, but clearly the PSF set an expectation that it didn't live up to.

Note the same FAQ, though, says this: "There is no set maximum, but grants are awarded with consideration for the annual PSF grant budget and that events/sprints will be virtual...with that in mind are willing to consider up to $2,500 per request for larger virtual events."

My guess is that this FAQ needs an update now that the PSF is once again willing to fund in-person events.

It's a bit chicken and egg though: I would expect that a grant would be much more likely to be granted for an event that had a decent amount of groundwork already done? For new events especially, you'd want to see some commitment.

I'd want to see a plan, for sure. I would, in the place of the PSF folks, not want to be handed a "this is already in motion, and we are depending on funding so you better say yes."

This doesn't appear to be the case, and they had a plan if the PSF had said no. The problem is that they didn't say anything, which in turn meant they couldn't finalize the program or answer to their own requests for travel expense (either way).

In case you've never organized events before, it's a bit of a catch-22. You need to be prepared to accomplish what your funding request entails before you are awarded, to the degree of satisfaction of the grantor.

When the criteria and timelines are unclear, as they were here, the requestor is put in a position where budgeting becomes a more serious jeopardy to an event than any planning concern.

The PSF should have responded. There's really no cause for what they did, even if it was only miscommunication.

I’ve organized a lot of events, and I’ve been in the position of holding funding for community events. I’ve never put an event in motion with uncertain funding like this, ever. If I can’t do it without funding from a single entity and they may say “no” then I don’t set things in motion until they’ve said yes.

The letter says it was approved "nearly three months" after, and that's including the request for more information (idk if that should count as "processing" delay or not).

Definitely over 6 weeks but not as much as I first assumed.

I'm missing something: you're saying 5 months in not enough time for a bunch of people to meet up and say "yeah, we're giving money for this event" or "no, we're not interested" ? It should be a week or two to decide, not months.

I'm very disappointed in the PSF leadership. Their organization has a clear mission, and it's leaders need to be held accountable. Folks leading institutions ought to understand that they are placed there as stewards, not as an opportunity to exercise leverage in other areas, regardless of their good intention. People who donate to PSF do not want to be an instrument for another cause, they could just as well donate to that cause.

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