Stepping Down as Fellow

Some new year’s news.

A week or so before Christmas, I emailed the DSF’s Fellowship Committee to say that I wanted to start thinking about stepping back as a Fellow. I’ve been here since January 2018. It’s been the greatest honour serving. But it’s time for me to do something else.

I’m not leaving Django — far from it! — I want to code, and mentor, and write. But mostly I want to build stuff.

So many threads have come together over the last few releases, that Django, whilst still Django, is a glistening font of new opportunities and patterns to explore and codify. I haven’t felt this fresh about it in many a moon[^1].

Aside: if you’ve an exciting project that needs a little extra, the new year would be a good time to chat. Get in touch.

There are long-schemed plans to play out. Some of those are for Django, maybe, eventually, but they’re not straight-into-core: I’ve spent the last 5 years telling folks they need to build things in third-party apps; now it’s my turn to do that.

Could you be a Fellow?

I’m not stepping down instantly. I said not before End of Q1, but possibly, it takes longer.

Finding a new Fellow will take a while, and (I think I can say this 😬) I may phase out to help mentor if that’s needed.

So, could you be the next Fellow? Would you want to? (Think about it!)

Jacob Kaplan Moss has a (recent) suggestion about keeping a Transition File on the role you play. I’ve not done that but, over the coming weeks, I’ll write up a few thoughts about Fellowing and what it involves. Hopefully, they’ll inform the next Fellow, whoever she may be.

Hopefully, too, they’ll give you an idea about whether you want to apply when the call goes out.

You know Django, right? You probably could be the next Fellow, even if you’re doubting that, reading this.

I have spent the last 5 years shouting about how, unlike our community, almost all code contributors to django/django are men. (Nothing wrong with men, but…)

If you’re a woman in the Django community, and if being the next Fellow is at-all of interest to you, and if you’d like to chat about it, just to get a better feel, do reach out. I’d be happy to discuss it with you.

Happy New Year all. 🥳

[^1]: Since about the DRF Kickstarter, if you’re old enough to remember that. 😜